Day 277 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 16.3 (4012 Words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 16.3

With a hiss the machine opened and Brian Crouse came out in front of the dimension-hopping partners. They had retrieved the bag with the extra ammunition and the weapon they needed most when dealing with the extra versions of themselves. They had let the first teams handle much of the work until they became too sick to do much else except be put back into stasis for the return to the dimensional origin universe.

Each time they put someone in the stasis pod they could transmit that pod via the field itself to the next dimension and eventually make it all the way back to the present, the final dimension from where the operation was being spearheaded. Each journey took it out of someone so they quickly worked out how impossible it was going to be to make each journey without killing themselves with the tumours sooner than expected.

A few dimensions in they worked out with the help of the first few Brian’s released that they avoided exposure to the ravages of dimension hopping if they were in stasis, so for the return journey they would use a timer remote on the stasis units to protect them from the journey forwards. That was fine and fair enough for forward travel where they knew exactly what to expect but not for backward travel where they did not know what to expect and who they may find in the warehouse. The remote also let them hop backwards and forwards in different locations, extending the field remotely from the origin machine.

That was the new method, land somewhere neutral and figure out the lay of the land before scoping the bank, the warehouse and the status of the Freeze Room, and up until this dimensional reality it had been straightforward enough. Now though they had run into trouble, they had seen that from the bank onwards and knew that the warehouse was potentially compromised and that precautions had to be taken against the machine and the future of the other dimensions being outed and possibly destroyed.

They had not been prepared enough though and now Kyle was in serious trouble and they needed to either cease his deterioration via the machine or get him to a hospital ASAP. Kyle knew that Hospital in this dimension was out of the question, the way that the thugs had taken violent and direct action in the warehouse, they would be on the lookout once they knew that their men had been killed or captured. Hospitals would be watched and police frequencies monitored.

So in the machine he would have to go and Brian would have to help them repair or replace the machine, and at a new location so they would not have to worry about the return of the men with guns and a violence beyond their capability. They had been lucky to escape the way they did; the machine gave them that advantage surely. But while they would keep that edge, a future full of freezing time and murdering villains was not palatable to either man.

“Who are you?” Brian Fifteen (the fifteenth they had encountered since starting this process) stammered his questions, the blood and wounds on Kyle gave him more than enough to be concerned about and this intrusion into the inner sanctum of his lab could only have come from his future self in some fashion. He recalled as had Brian Two had done, the way his future self had sold him on the need to go into stasis and to be brought out to solve the problem that plagued the time travelling scientist. “Am I dead?” he asked quietly.

“No, you’re not dead. You’ve been in stasis. It’s a state between the time of…” Started George not thinking that he was explaining the obvious.

“I know this body is alive you idiot.” Snapped Brian Fifteen and then George got a flashback to all the arrogance and superiority that followed this man in his various guises. He always reverted to type under stress or when not forced to think or evaluate the situation. “I mean the OTHER version of me, the Prime version I would suppose to call him?”

“Yeah, yeah Brian Prime, we understand the nomenclature.” Not a word George would have used in normal conversation but his vocabulary had expanded somewhat in the last few days of linear time. “And not yet, no. But … well just watch this please and get out of the way.”

George bundled a severely pale looking Kyle into the machine and set to freeze the time around him and seal his wounds.

“Time Seals all wounds then eh?” he said to himself with a mirthless chuckle.

“What?” Asked Brian Fifteen without looking up from the tablet.

“Nothing Brains, just watch the thing…” He pointed at the icon on the tablet that contained a message, several messages and strings of information designed to convince copies of Brian, Kyle, George and where necessary Harold White of what they needed to know to cooperate with the other copies of reality.

Brian pulled up a chair and started watching the videos and diagrams from the future copies of the universe and then ten minutes later he paused the video and looked up to see George Samuels checking his watch and then checking out the Doctor.

“That was quick?” he said and raised an eyebrow. “The other versions of you get maybe twenty minutes before they need a break.”

“How many other versions have turned up with bullet riddled and bloodied, what? Ambassadors from other dimensions?”

“Good point, this has very definitely been the most… interesting, of arrivals and circumstances.”

Brian nodded his head and he looked quite pale and out of sorts. “What have I done?”

George shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, you can’t change what has happened. We thought, they thought really, that you could but you lied to them. This is your fault, you know that and you haven’t got anywhere near the same amount of information as the other versions of yourself. It’s totally your fucking fault man.” George did not sound angry though his words had more than a hint of accusation in them.

“I was just trying to…” Brian stopped his sentence there.

“I don’t care. I did, before you know but not now. I just want you to fix the machine and get us back into a place where we can get some help for the guy not-dying in the stasis box. Can you do that?”

Brian stood up and walked to the door and when he saw the state of what had once been the machine in the main warehouse space he sighed heavily and George saw his shoulders slumping in despair. He reached into his pocket for the gun.

If there was to be justice, then it was to be up to him to deliver it.

“I can check from this machine, but I’m guessing it won’t be what you want to hear.” Brian did not looked behind him as he spoke; he scanned the warehouse for details on what happened and none of his logical conclusions were going to well received. “Is there much more on the tablet to see?”

“Quite a bit, mostly about the plan to save the other universes and how to use the remote.”

“There’s a remote?” Brian turned around at that and stared at George who picked up the tablet and handed it back to him.

“We’re probably on a time frame here, though I guess we can stop it anytime we want to right?”

“What about this gentleman right here?” Brian pointed at the tied up thug in the chair, who was staring at the scientist with hatred and loathing in his eyes. Trying to convey all the fear he wanted to project into the men who held him captive, this was the only game he could play. “Is he necessary?”

“Jesus, you are unbelievable. Is he necessary? People are just a … to you I mean, we are …” George gripped the gun in his pocket so tightly he could feel the metal digging in his skin.

“It was just a question, I just wanted to know if we need him alive or not.” Brian was eyeing the man carefully trying to determine if he was useful.

“Alive or not? You want to kill him now do you? Haven’t you killed enough people already?”

“Me?” Said Brian with indignation, “I haven’t killed anyone yet.” The word yet hung in the air between them and finally Brian heard what he sounded like. “Right. Yes. I see.” Though George was not sure that this was true, but he had the small decency to pretend to feel some guilt for the situation.

Several hours later they had figured out what they needed to do and what the fate of the universe rested on and neither man was that happy about it, but it was inevitable that things would soon collapse and their choices were not going to make much of difference to the following realities.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Brian was asking George who was standing by the stasis box with him taking a last look at his former partner.

George had tears in his eyes as he stood there, wondering what had happened that this was his fate. There was no easy way out of the situation, reality was going to collapse and there was no way out of it. “He’s going to die anyway?”

“He won’t survive the trips back to the Prime dimension, there are seven more jumps to make and well frankly you are not going to do too well out of it all either. There is no other way, I have to turn it off to send you back and as soon as that starts to work the universes will start to unravel and then the chain reaction will cascade backwards and this reality will no longer exist like all the other ones. The only way to survive is to travel backwards to the Prime and then let the other entire universes all die. We can escape; you and I but Kyle here will not survive the trip. We can take your friend out there but I am guessing that he’s not necessary, as per my earlier question?” Brian looked too happy with himself and George saw little else he could do but accept the situation and travel back to the prime dimension and take the horrid little scientist with him.

Or at least that was the plan, on the face of it. Underneath that George had counted on a couple of extra things that Brian had not taken into consideration. The situation would be working out differently than Brian would expect, George Samuels would make sure that justice was served.

“You ready?” Brian asked, his finger hovering over the machine.

“Yes.” George whispered and pushed the doctor’s hand out of the way turning the machine off himself.

“What happened?” Kyle asked, coughing through blood spitting out of his mouth.

“You’re not going to make it, there’s no way to save you.” George had tears streaming down his face as he talked. The bastard who caused all this was going to bounce back through the dimensions and survive, albeit with a few days to live by the state of his cancer, but certainly longer than Kyle would live with the wounds he had.

“Right. I … I don’t want to die.” Kyle said to him and raised a hand to George, reaching into his pocket and taking out the gun that was there. “Slowly, I don’t want to die slowly and painfully, let me take care of it?” they wrestled over the gun but Kyle was too weak to win any contest of strength. “Give it to me? Please?”

“No. No you can’t.” George was blind through his tears and he did not see Brian shove him aside and take the gun in the same movement. “Hey!” He yelled as he fell backwards and then there was a loud bang of a gunshot and the sound of a body hitting the back of the stasis box.

He wiped his eyes and there was Brian with a look of determined purpose on his face and he eyed the ex-cop carefully gun still in hand, facing his unarmed opponent squarely with the pistol at the ready.

“What have you done?” Wailed George, but it was a fake wail and it masked pure rage that was waiting for the opportunity that he knew would be coming.

“What had to be done! You heard him, he wanted this, he needed this and you were not going to give it to him. This is logical, you may not see it yet, but… one day.” Brian lowered the gun but not all the way, waiting to see if George would take any action, even unarmed, against him.

“But, but you … you could have…” George waved his arms in mock surrender and sat backwards and drew some deep breaths before continuing. “How long have we got?”

“Now that … this is out of the way… we have maybe a few minutes to calibrate the remote and then we can get to the Prime and carry out the rest of the plan.”

George nodded and looked up at the Doctor, supressing the hate he felt as far as he could. “You’ve killed someone now haven’t you?” he said in a low voice.

“What? No, I mean yes obviously, but it’s not the same as say … murder is it? It’s euthanasia if anything.”

“It’s very different to look someone in the eye who is not going to die already and pull the trigger, end their life.” George said to his new partner, hinting at what was to come when justice would eventually be served.

“Is it?” Brian asked, breathing a little heavier and wondering what it would be like to kill someone so directly. “I guess I’ll never find that out, since our plan is to do the same thing again, to someone already dying. Right?”

George shrugged and looked away, waiting for Brian to reach the conclusion that he had already made.

Brian looked at the doorway and the man who was sitting bound to the chair out there. “I guess, if I wanted to satiate that scientific curiosity?” He nodded to the doorway and raised an eyebrow. “I could do?”

“Nothing to stop you.” George admitted, but added “Except your conscience of course.”

Brian weighed the gun in one hand and the odd scenario they were part of, in the other. “No there isn’t.”

He walked out the doorway and disappeared from sight. As soon as he was gone George went to the bag and undid a secret compartment in the lower lining and removed the small Taser that was there and pocketed it just as the voice of the unlucky thug echoed from the other room.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

There was no reply.

“What the fuck are you looking at your fucking weirdo?” the man’s voice had risen but there was also some fear among the bravado now.

There was still silence in response.

“Go ahead, you fucking pussy! You’re dead anyway so pull the fucking trigger if you have the balls!” The thug screamed the last few words but the end of his life was punctuated with a single gunshot.

George smiled, the cold and sociopathic nature of the doctor would make the final stages even easier to play out, he would deserve everything he got.

“Feel better now? Your bucket list complete?” George asked lightly as Brian Fifteen walked back in the room.

“It’s… ummm… it’s more affecting than you’d expect?” Brian said in a low, quiet voice and his hand shook as he held the gun; it was definitely very different from the logical exercise he had undertaken in the mercy killing of Kyle Stone. This was deliberate and murderous.

“I would not know. Not exactly, I never killed anyone in cold blood.”

“I wonder why they call it that? My blood feels like it’s on fire. It’s not the sensation I would have thought it was.” Brian looked at the still smoking gun in his hand. “Was it smoking like this when I put down your partner?” He was not choosing his language very carefully but he was too distracted to notice the blush of fury that coloured the face of the detective. “Sorry, we should get to it.”

“Yes.” George agreed and made no attempt to grasp the electric weapon in his pocket, he so wanted to insert it into any open wound on the scientist and discharge it for as long and as much charge it would stand before dying off. Then he’d want to recharge it and do it all again.

“Righto.”

They travelled through the dimensions one at a time, using the remote to trigger a new jump each time they moved backwards to the next dimension. Where the transitions had been instant before they now took on a coloured hue, and lasted a few flickering seconds each time. Brian explained that one by one the dimensions were collapsing on themselves in reverse order, and the dimensions they had come from initially, the final copy was already gone. It would have been gone long before they had started their travel backwards to the prime dimension.

They were falling in on themselves at regular intervals and they would need to be back at the Prime dimension to shut the original machinery off and cause the cascade to accelerate and bring back Brian Prime to the originating universe and bring him to justice.

They arrived in a short while in the very first dimension and set up to destroy the machinery. George knew where most things were in the warehouse and he felt tired, achy and slightly hollow from all the travel and action they had seen in the last dimension. His anger had not eased at all and he wanted the Prime to turn up and by hook or by crook he would see justice done. He picked up the sledgehammer and raised it above his head to smash the main machine, knowing that was the second half of the job they started in the Freeze Room breaking that machine first and severing the back up link to the following dimension.

Brian Fifteen was going to be the one to kill Brian Prime, and he had a taste for killing now and George could see it in his eyes. He knew that once the machines were down, they had a few minutes at best before Brian Prime would blink back to the Prime Dimension and appear in the spot where the first universal copy was made days, weeks ago by his relative time excluding the time spent in the stasis boxes himself. He would be riddled with cancer and much like the reasoning Brian Fifteen had used on his decision to euthanize Kyle, this would be a merciful exit.

George on the other hand knew that it would be a fearful and far from merciful death for Brian Prime when he arrived and stared down the barrel of a gun held by himself. His last thoughts would have to be fear and confusion as he sees his own self in the figure of the executioner. That would be fitting and just, or as close to it as he could get with the deaths of several billion alternate versions of all of humanity on his hands.

The sledgehammer fell and with it George poured all his rage and anger. This was it, the last and the most telling of blows as he slammed the hammer down and down until the flying pieces of plastic and metal screamed their dissent to his rage. With an electric bang and a small concussive blast from a power unit explosion George was thrown back a little way just in time to see the flickering he now knew to be the collapsing transition of the universes.

“This is it, get ready!” George scrambled to his feet and stood behind Brian and watched him grin manically as he stared down the barrel of the gun and waited for himself to arrive. He had committed murder and a mercy killing already, and now he got to kill himself and survive? This was a fascinating experiment in the ending of human life.

“Now!” shouted George and he silently pulled the Taser from his pocket, out of sight of Brian Fifteen.

Brian Fifteen stared across the room at Brian Prime and saw a man already dead. He was still technically breathing and alive, but he could barely stand at all let alone any semblance of standing up straight. He was a bag of bones in a loose and translucent skin, he would not have been able to survive one or two more jumps and he had endured more than anyone else up until this point.

Brian Fifteen held the gun straight and his mouth open he stared horrified at what he had become, he shook like a leaf and he shot towards his other self but the bullet went wild, unable to control the emotional shock of seeing himself this way. He took another shot and it also went wild and then he fell to his knees weeping openly.

George did not even need to use the Taser, he just reached forward and took the gun away from the weeping, sobbing and shuddering mess that was Brian Fifteen. Now here he was with both versions of the scientist and a loaded gun and the broken down machine. He was facing a similar fate as the cancer riddled Prime version and it would be at best a few months before he too saw himself in the mirror in the way that Fifteen had looked at Prime just now.

“Fuck it.” He said and shot Fifteen in the back of the head, his life ending in an instant, his body falling forward and blood spilling across the floor to Brian Prime whose eyes had widened at the noise then sought out George and looked at him pleading for release.

“I thought that justice was killing you, making you pay for the billions of people you created and killed, but now? Justice is letting you live to the end, serves you right.”

George stood and walked away from the bloody mess on the floor and found the final piece of the puzzle, a gas canister and a lighter. He spread the accelerant around the machine parts, saving a third to take into the freeze room and douse the machinery and the computers there. It took him a while longer but he removed the hard drives from the computers and erased them with an industrial magnet kept for this very purpose. Brian did not back up to the cloud and wanted no one but himself to have access to his recordings on how to use the machine and how the technology worked.

Satisfied that he had done as much as he could he walked back to the corpse of Brian Fifteen and looked into the cold dead eyes of Prime, who had expired alone on the floor while he was away ensuring the death of his scientific legacy. The last thing he had seen was the blood coagulating on the floor from the corpse of one of his copies.

“Good.” Said George and lit a match.

“Hello?” Detective George Samuels answered the phone on his desk with a look of confusion on his face, the number was his own house phone and there should have been no one there because he was at work. Instantly he was on alert and as he answered the phone he signalled to a fellow detective, Joe Bell, to trace and record the call.

There was silence at first an then a hacking cough followed by a very tired and weary voice.

“Hi George. It’s me.”

The END