“Yes,” the man coughed. Blood coated his busted lips like garish clown makeup.
“Do you have children?”
The man nodded.
“Do you think my knowledge of this will spare your life?”
The doctor’s face filled with horror and he tried to slide farther away. “I don’t know.”
“It won’t. Today is the day your wife becomes widow and your children become orphans.”
The man began to cry, his lips opening in a grotesque circle, tongue arched in the back of his mouth. “Please, don’t.”
Zolner stood and inspected his prey with a pretend frown. Then he casually leveled his gun and fired twice. A spatter of blood hit his face and he wiped it away. He pulled the knife out again and cut another fine incision into the black rifle barrel.
Twenty-nine.
He blew the flakes of metal out of the newly formed gouge and strode casually down the next hall, on the hunt for number thirty.
He kicked in the first door he came to. It swung wide, hit the wall, and bounced back toward him. He stopped it with his foot and surveyed the room. A man lay in a hospital bed – in a coma, from the looks of it – with a tube threaded into one nostril.
Zolner snorted his disgust. This was not sport. He might as well kill a child as it slept.
As he exited the room, he heard a loud, crashing explosion over the sound of gunfire. Chatter came through his earpiece in Russian, “They’re on floor six!”
So they had come right to him, rather than going down. This was an unexpected but pleasant development. As luck would have it, he was on the sixth floor.
Zolner smiled and walked onward. The only thought on his mind now was: Thirty and thirty-one.
60 Blasted to the Past
April 23, 1986, 11:22 AM
Blake and Ethan looked down the elevator shaft, mesmerized by the carnage below. They both wore smirks of triumph as they pulled away from the edge.
A pool of blood was forming near Blake’s foot. He put pressure on the wound and hoped the bleeding would stop soon.
The sound of stomping boots resonated from every direction on the sixth floor. Blake and Ethan froze. Before they could face the enemy, someone spoke to them with a harsh Russian accent.
They leaned against the edge of the opened elevator door as they turned around. Heavily armed men surrounded them, each wearing a gas mask.
In the silence that followed, a peculiar clicking came from the back of the group as someone walked forward. This uniformed man was in no hurry, like he enjoyed the sound of his own approach. He spoke again, this time in Russian. Neither Blake nor Ethan understood Russian; they both shrugged their ignorance in unison.
Blake took a furtive glance behind them. The elevator shaft would not be a route of escape this time. Even if they jumped back inside and made it to the next level, the men in front of them would open fire before either Ethan or Blake could pry apart one of the other doors. Blake evaluated his remaining options – to either transport or teleport – but they were just as disastrous. He played them out in his mind.
Option one: transport himself and maybe Ethan to his failsafe – a pre-programmed destination on the watch. But that would take him to a when and where that wouldn’t be helpful. The images of the unfortunate Snow, Amhurst’s white rat, exploding flashed in his mind. Would it even work?
Option two: take on each of the Sons of Stalin by using the teleporting function. But the variable in that equation was Ethan. Even if Blake managed to take them all out, there was no guarantee that Ethan wouldn’t be shot down in the melee. Plus, his weapon was currently empty and he wouldn’t have time for a magazine change.
That left the final option: surrender and hope for survival. These people were after the watch; his only leverage.
The soldier with tap boots was now in front of the troops. He was an enormous man with military crew cut blonde hair. He spoke again, this time in thickly accented English. “Put down your weapons and give us the watch.”
Ethan glanced at Blake, who said nothing. Their choices were exhausted.
“Okay.” Blake pulled his bloody hand away from his leg and reached for the watch, taking care to move slowly. He gave the face dial a deft counter-clockwise turn. He didn’t have to look to know what the display would read; the series of numbers that were his failsafe. Three clicks on the bottom right prong would provide a three second delay.
Ethan stared in astonishment at Blake. “Don’t give it to them.”
Blake began to wrestle the watch off his arm. “They want it. Once they have it, they kill us. If they don’t get it, then maybe we live another day.”
“Then why are you handing it over?”
The hooks retracted from Blake’s arm, and he winced, then winked at Ethan as he pulled it off and whispered, “I’m not.” He clicked a button on the watch and threw it at the Russian in charge.
It took one second for the watch to travel through the air, and another for the Russian to stabilize it in his hand after instinctively catching it from Blake’s lopsided toss. The final second caught everyone off guard except Blake.
A whip-strike sounded, accompanied by the now familiar rush of air, and the Russian was torn apart from the waist up. Everything from his huge barreled chest, to his rifle, and his snarling face, all gone in an instant.
The lower portion of his body was all that remained. The pair of stationary legs buckled and fell to the tile floor in a bloody pile. Guts spilled down on top of them, looking like a string of slimy sausage links.
From behind the gas masks, all eyes must have been staring in disbelief at the carnage, because no one moved a muscle. With their leader gone, another would need to fill the role. After several long, silent moments, a random man disengaged from the mob of matching uniforms and said, “That was not wise.”
The self-appointed commander pulled another cylindrical device from his ammo strap and tossed it at them.
It landed in a weird spin, swiveled to a stop, and balanced on its end like the previous one from two floors below. As before, five tubes ejected from the device, spilling gas into the air. Blake and Ethan covered their mouths against the fumes, but it was pointless.
The Russians watched them, motionless. Then they began to fade and disappear behind a rising cloud of thick smoke.
61 The Long Goodbye
April 23, 1986, 2:52 PM
The media was calling it The Massacre at New York Medical, and a massacre it was.
Art didn’t feel there were adequate words to describe what he saw. Death was everywhere his eyes touched. An arm stuck out from beneath a blood-splotched white blanket, as still as stone, cold and pale. From another square of red-white, a leg in khaki pants protruded. There wasn’t a room he passed by or a hallway he walked down that didn’t bear some sign of the devastation that had been caused by the gang of armed men. Close to a hundred souls lost.
Art’s pulse had been beating a roaring cadence in his chest from the moment he’d gotten word of the situation. Mary wasn’t supposed to work that day, but his first reaction was to phone home and check on her to see how she was handling the news, which had hit the airwaves immediately. When she didn’t answer, his mind reeled with fabricated possibilities.
He found out that his initial assumption had been close to correct; she’d decided to head to the hospital after he had been called in instead of spending the day alone. His imagination kicked into high gear then, anticipating the worst for his wife. However, when he found her safe, the story she relayed had been one that his mind could have never conjured.
He engulfed her with his massive frame, clutching her against himself like a warm blanket on a cold night. It wasn’t an embrace of passion, but one of security. Her arms were curled into her chest, hands tucked under her chin, head burrowed deep into the safety of her husband’s chest. She hadn’t stopped weeping and shaking since he’d pulled her into his arms.
Of all the dead bodies he’d seen in the building, onl
y two were peculiar in appearance, as corpses go. One individual – a member of the gang that had shot up the hospital, if his military garb was any indication – had been sliced clean through, the body strewn about, its pieces needing more than a single covering to hide the nauseating display. Art had taken a curious peek, and what he saw was beyond the scope of his expectation. What could do that to a person?
The second gruesome killing was that of another uniformed man, and stranger still. This scene portrayed an entirely different – though no less brutal – story. The top half of this body had been sheared off, as if it had received one clean slash from a massive sword. An arc of blood had showered down and around the bottom portion in a giant, sticky, red circle, punctuating the finality of the event. But the odd gruesomeness wasn’t the only thing that perplexed Art. The torso wasn’t just separated from its body, it was absolutely missing. No trace of it could be found anywhere in the immediate area. This posed another question in Art’s mind: where was the other half?
The two oddly mutilated bodies weren’t the only thing strange though. There was a gaping hole in the floor of one of the hospital rooms, and a secondary hole in the hallway below as well. Art couldn’t begin to guess what sort of device might have caused such uniform damage to the surrounding concrete.
As Mary told and then retold her story, he began to piece together some of the mystery surrounding Ethan. As rattled as his wife might have been, and as scarce as some of her details were, her words rang true. Two Ethans! It was an outrageous development, but at the same time, it fit the picture. Ethan wasn’t being framed. Ethan was being protected – by himself. Or so it would appear.
How it was happening, Art wasn’t sure. All he knew was that the set of prints on Tobias’s gun and the sniper rifle from the shooting at Jo Ann’s Café now made sense. But what kind of sense includes an identical twin of Ethan I’ve never heard of before? And even then, identical twins shouldn’t have the same prints.
The more troubling discovery of that day was that Art’s friend and the man carrying his likeness were gone. He felt helpless. Where is Ethan? Will I ever see him again? At this point, the prospect seemed unlikely, after witnessing the mayhem throughout the hospital.
Mary shifted in his hold. She was still crying, and he understood why. It wasn’t just the shock of her workplace being stormed by armed men. She’d also lost many of her coworkers in a matter of minutes. Hiding in the bathroom was the only thing that spared her life.
As he looked down the hallway again, his heart fluttered at the thought that she could have been lying beneath one of those sheets.
“It’s going to be all right,” he assured her, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. But his words sounded hollow to his own ears.
It was only the second time he’d ever lied to his wife. The entire world around him felt the opposite of all right, but it was what had to be said during times like this. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t true, but if left unsaid the air of this place would likely suffocate her. Each day hereafter would never be the same – for Mary, or for him.
Of that much he was certain.
62 Blakes on a Plane
April 24, 1986, 5:08 AM
Quad turbine engines vibrated the interior hull of the cargo plane. Ethan was slumped in his bench seat, his mind tuning out the external noise as he tried to think.
They’d both been caught, so why did Blake – or, rather, his past self, or other linear self, or whatever the hell he was – seem unconcerned with their predicament? Ethan’s thoughts were going in a vicious loop, processing everything that had happened, and everything that had-had happened, and what had happened before but now wouldn’t happen. It made his head hurt from the sheer absurdity of it all.
His concentration scattered for a brief moment as the plane pitched side to side in a violent shake, burrowing deeper into the dark clouds and turbulent weather. When it stabilized, Ethan went back to his unsettled musings.
Are they going to kill us? If so, why transport us? Just get it over with! The armed guards sat across from them, their hands on the grips of their rifles, ready to fire if needed. A ‘dead or alive’ policy order must have been placed on the set of twins now that the watch wasn’t recovered, but all of them seemed itchy on the dead part. Less risk for them that way. Exactly what he’d be thinking if given such a mission.
Blake seemed more concerned with the bullet hole in his thigh than anything else. It probably hurt like hell, but even Ethan knew better than to mess with such an injury the way Blake was. Dirty fingers made dirty wounds. Dirty wounds meant infection. Infection meant possible death. Death was no good.
“Stop picking at it,” Ethan hissed under his breath.
Blake returned the scolding with a stare and gleaming teeth. Then in his harsh, gravelly voice he fired back, “Mind your own, I’m working on something.”
“I can see that, looks like a stage five infection. Maybe you can work on something else – or at least tell me what the fuck is going on? Like maybe where the fuck they’re taking us?”
“You have a dirty mouth – anyone ever tell you that?” Blake grinned again then rolled his eyes. “Fine, they’re taking us to their headquarters – which at first I was trying to avoid – but this might be more fortunate for us.” Blake’s prodding at the bullet hole caused a spurt of blood to hit the floor of the cargo hold, and he grunted. “It’s started to clot; it’s better this way.”
Ethan made a face of disgust. “Are you trying to dig the bullet out with your fingers? And how does being shackled in a Russian plane make things more fortunate for us?” He shook his wrists. They were chained to a metal ring bolted to the floor.
Blake’s eyes darted to the troops sitting along the length of the plane keeping watch. The men had removed their gas masks, but they looked no less intimidating. “Prying ears,” he whispered, “Just sit tight. They’re taking us to where we need to be.” He pulled his fingers out of his open flesh. They’d been buried almost two knuckle joints deep. “It’s hard work with only one hand.”
Ethan had witnessed stranger things in his life, but what Blake did next caught him off guard. The man examined his bloody fingers for a second and then jammed them in his mouth.
“What are you doing? Swallowing your blood?” Ethan shuddered and almost gagged from the display. “This time travel shit has made you sicker than I thought.”
Blake pulled his fingers out of his mouth. The blood was gone, but now they were covered with saliva. Then he went back to work on the bullet wound, digging deep again. He grunted and squirmed as he prodded. “There, that should be good. Now give me the sleeve of your shirt, I’m bleeding like a woman on her period.”
“You’ve done it to yourself, you fool.”
Blake slid his fingers out of the wound and pressed his hand against the hole. “Just give me the damn sleeve and wrap it.”
Ethan reached up to his shirt and began to rip the sleeve loose. It was awkward because his hands were manacled, but after a few forceful tugs the seams ripped apart.
One of the Russian guards sat forward and clicked off the safety of his gun.
“He needs a dressing, he’s bleeding everywhere.” Ethan held up a placating hand while using the other to point at Blake’s blood soaked pants. He hoped the gestures were enough to communicate his benign intentions.
Nothing was said and no other indication was given for him to proceed; just another soft click of the gun’s safety as the soldier sat back and relaxed in his seat.
Ethan began wrapping the wound – which at this point seemed more self-inflicted than not – and wondered if Blake, like Tobias, had lost his mind from the radiation sickness.
***
April 24, 1986, 5:28 AM
A thousand miles away, Ben Wallace stood in his skyscraper office, staring out at the cityscape through the tinted glass.
I’ve failed. They were no closer to finding Ethan Tannor than before. The future was sealed, more unchanged than ever.
> He moved away from the windows and looked over at the desk, where The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam lie, its green, faded cover inviting him forward. He obeyed its call and ran his fingers across the title words.
A laced cigarette seemed to whisper his name also, but he resisted the urge. It was either end it now, or …
He eyed the time. There was little over a day left, but after hearing the reports from New York Medical, the chances of finding Ethan Tannor were closing in on an absolute zero.
They’d come close to acquiring him once, at the Keane Mansion. That was the alternate path. Wallace could send a message back, and Jackman and his crew would be able to strike just a few moments sooner. The end result would be the ruining of this timeline, but it seemed like the most viable option.
He pulled a piece of paper from the drawer and began to scribble a coded message, referring to the Rubáiyát from time to time.
A ring cut the silence, and he picked up the phone, answering it with a tired, “Wallace.”
“Sir,” a female voice blared with urgency. “This is Three Mile HQ – there’s something you need to see.”
63 Not Without My Slaughter
April 25, 1986, 11:44 PM
Blake had become feverish, and he could see that Ethan was freezing as well in the windowless room they’d been locked in for the past few hours.
It had been quite the trip; much of it a blur for Blake when the fever set in. The flight itself and the stop for refueling midway through felt like it took forever. After landing several hours later, there was the drive from the airfield, and then they were dragged from the vehicle and down the hallways of this facility. Every sign was scripted in a different language – he assumed it was Russian – so any attempt at reading them was useless.