Day 263 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 14 - (2068 words)

 ©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 14

George was watching the proceedings from the cold storage room, where he had the time frozen Brian of this dimension, this version of things, in the coffin arrangement frozen and immobile in time. Ivan Prime and Brian Two both knew he was here and they sent him in to hide, to be the ace-in-the-hole should the need arise. Neither of them really knew what the more modernised, albeit only a few hours different, versions of themselves would be like. One could not comprehend the man he had become in what was at most a few days, and the other could not believe what he already had done in the name of greed without conscience.
So they had secreted George away, which he willing did because he was an unknown element and he had no stake in being discovered and no power in revealing himself to the others too soon. He took his gun with him, and a quick lesson in how to freeze time if the opportunity presented itself.
He watched the group reacquaint itself with its component members, and the copies that were unexpected to say the least. The revelations came thick and fast, the CCTV footage he was watching and listening to was shocking and shed a little light on the how and the when, but not really the why. They tore into each other and George watched dispassionately, not tempted to freeze time until Ivan Two drew a knife and stepped into Brian Prime, cutting him on the face.
The machine ceased all activity as soon as George reacted and set the controls in motion. It was not fast enough to stop it all together, in fact it froze the act halfway across the face of the attacked man and showed that the trajectory of the knife was too shallow and to oblique to be a killing blow. George stood in the now open doorway of the room and stared across the space between themselves, he the master of the moment and they the immobilised and unaware.
George had his gun trained on the Ivan holding the knife and he aimed down the sight line, taking his time and thinking his options through. It was not going to be fatal and taking the shot would not significantly change the outcome unless a second and more visceral attack was to follow on. He could shoot at the knife, but that came with some risk. The velocity of the shot could drive the knife further in, or it could twist the blade and do more damage. It could deflect the attack and make the cut a little smaller, a little shorter but the damage would still be done.
Alternately he could shoot the man holding the knife, in the arm and potentially have the same effects as shooting the knife, positive and negative. With that option of course it would also incapacitate the attacker, the other as yet uninformed Ivan number two. Was there any advantage in that? By learning what the other Ivan already knew then it would be a fair guess to think that the new Ivan, would become more like the Ivan Prime, the one that was driven by guilt and regret to be a better person and make up for his actions.
Either of those options would reveal George in the room, and create a new round of 'explaining' between the members of the group and lead to another sudden, seismic shift in power that would potentially compromise his investigation.
His investigation, that was what was going on here. He was investigating a crime, multiple crimes really across multiple dimensions. He had taken the idea of the time travel and the creation of multiple instances of reality in his stride and the idea that criminals were exempt because the crime was elsewhere, elsewhen and had no evidence made little difference to him. They had caught up with the gang, there was little else to call them, and they had congregated in one handy location.
So that was part of his plan, he came to realise as he stared down the barrel of his own gun at the men who had raped and pillaged through alternate realities, that some recompense had to be made. It was not going to be easy, and it had no legal precedent to establish a law to be broken.
What they did was wrong, foolish and immoral to be sure and there would be plenty for lawyers and agencies to work out in order to prosecute and bring them to justice.
Justice was required.
George lowered his gun and went back to the console, looking intently at the men in the room. There were only two people who knew how to make the machine work, and one of them was incapacitated with a knife in his cheek right now. The other was kneeling next to him, in close proximity and there was no easy way to get across the space and activate either the machine or the time freeze device that was in the room with George. Execution was out of the question of course, it was not his place to dispense justice, it was his to bring the offenders to justice. If the system freed them, pardoned them or excused their behaviour then that was the system at work.
The machine would engender fear in the system, it had to. So the men would be incarcerated for their crimes or locked away where they would not do any further damage. There would be a clean up, there would have to be. As he understood it, if the Brian that had shown him the ropes was telling the truth, and there was no way to know for sure, but if he was? Then there would be the potential of a dozen more Brian's unfreezing in a few years time as the stasis fields collapsed in each dimensional anomaly and wake the scientist up without the benefit of knowing any more that Brian Two did when he woke up, knowing little else except how to work the machine.
That was a catastrophic roll of the dice to take, so the machine itself would not likely be destroyed as then the reparative work would not be able to be done. Maybe it would be a matter of travelling through each dimension and disabling the machine, maybe it would be an assassination squad killing the frozen Brian in his sleep, humanely but definitely.
George pondered the various outcomes and what would come of the next thing he would do, but he knew as he always did that it was irrelevant eventually. Justice was served blindly, that was not his all and not his problem. He had a job, it was to bring them in and let the rest sort it out, and he was glad it was not on him, and never would be.
He unfroze the scene and watched the following events as the men repositioned themselves. Two Brian's on the floor. Two Ivan's squaring off. Harold sitting aside and watching it all, and of course the very ill Mike who could not even lift his head.
That was what he wanted an explanation of, what was going on there with the criminal leader and the brains behind this who scam? Why was he so sick, and what did the scientist know about it? He had mentioned before his own 'illness' but had been vague and not very explanatory, other than the supposedly fatal nature of it. He was a man that could not be trusted to tell the truth and made no attempt to hide his socio-pathic actions in looking out for his own self, even over the copies he had made.
He had killed off the other people he had taken on board, though how exactly he did not fully understand. It did not matter to George, murder was murder and this man was a confessed serial killer, a mass murderer. It would be a mine field for the prosecutors, if it ever got that far of course. He was a liar and a killer, a man bent to a purpose and willing, able and with a history of crossing the lines of humanity to get his way.
That was the man he needed to watch out for.
He needed back up. There was a phone on the wall and the seeds of a plan started germinating in his mind. He froze time once more, and counted the men in the room, watched them unmoved and out of time, in more ways than one. He had an idea that may work, but it would require more than his own actions to carry it out.
Could he trust any of the people in the room? It seemed unlikely.
Brian Prime was the one to watch out for, he was dangerous and ruthless when put in a corner, he had a proven track record of reacting that way. Brian Two, he was more reasonable and shocked by his own behaviours certainly, but he was a few days or hours from becoming the more socio-pathic version of himself. Who was to say that pushing him too hard would not just create two monster scientific minds, not just the one psychotic one they had so far.
Ivan Prime was a mess of guilt and regret, he was a good reason why George had made it this far, alive and able to take control of the situation. Would he agree with what George wanted to do? At first, maybe on an intellectual or emotional level he could be on board. That was a possibility alone though, and a remote one. Fear and loathing aside, he was still a criminal and who was to say that the code was somehow overridden by this new level of regret? He would not be trustworthy enough to cooperate in his own demise. Ivan Two had the same issues but with an even bigger risk of failure or betrayal. He was unstable and violent, much like Ivan Prime had most likely been, in those early hours when he had arrested him and was questioning him. He made no sense then, but now it was obvious, repressed rage and conflict internally drove him along to the desperate attempt to right wrongs.
Harold White, was as guilty as the rest now, much less so apparently for the violence, just the larceny. None the less the thefts were crimes, not victimless as he had been lead to believe, but criminal enough for a charge on each count. He had mitigating circumstances of course, but where did his loyalties lie? Did he have any at all? Did he want or need to return to whichever copy of reality he belonged to?
What would they do, what could they do to repair the amputated fingers, the ones that belonged to another version of the Bank Manager? That juicy little detail had come out while the Brians and the Ivans worked out the time-line between them and it filled in a few little details about how and what was done to whom, where and when.
That left Mike, and he was already known to George, who had been waiting sometime to find a new crime to pin on that one. He had a reputation and a history. He was not to be trusted, he was to be watched very carefully. The first time the bullets went flying? The chances that they would come from him would be nearly 100%, and the next one had to have his name on it. The only way that George would pull this off was if Mike was out of the game, he was sick right now, so now it had to be. If he was going the same path that Brian Prime had already been done then recovery was on the way, most likely, and despite the claimed fatal nature of this 'ailment' there was a remission or recovery period before the worst stages to come.
He could trust none of them but he needed to take action soon in order for justice to be served, for the criminals to be delivered, packaged with evidence and enough understanding of the crimes to not send them all to the crazy house with stories of time travel. He could not do this alone.

The only person he could trust, was himself.