It was unclear whether Arcadia overshot their destination by two years, or
if she fully intended to arrive back in Fletcher House in 2019. Fortunately,
Declan was still living there, and currently attempting to help Nerakali and
Serkan remove their Cassidy cuffs.
“Okay, this is the last time you people can do this,” he said when all the
others showed up in the bunker. “I mean it. Adelaide Fletcher is going to
buy this place with her reparations in a couple months, so we gotta be out
of here. I was trying to strike my lab, and move on.”
“I’m glad you haven’t taken it down yet,” Mateo told him as he was helping a
weak Zeferino into the isolation chamber. “We need this to contain and kill
a psychic. We don’t have the Insulator of Life anymore.”
Declan stood up, and walked over to make sure the chamber was secure. “I
told you that I’m not killing anybody.”
“You don’t have to,” Mateo said. “This is just the safest place for everyone
until he can kill himself.
“What are you goin’ on about?” Zeferino questioned.
“How old are you right now?” Mateo asked him.
“Ballpark?” Zeferino asked rhetorically. “Three or four thousand years.”
“That’s like...” Mateo began. He turned his head to elicit Leona’s help.
“Thirty,” she helped.
“Thirty or forty times longer than the average human lives. You’ve traveled
up and down the timeline, seeing an unknowable number of things more than
most people do, and throughout it all, you were a stone-cold killer.” Mateo
stepped back to address both him and Declan. “We have one chance to get
Erlendr Preston out of our lives before he does something wildly dangerous.
I’m not very smart, but if there’s one thing I learned from all those time
travel stories I used for research, it’s that paradoxes are bad. Avoid the
paradoxes. I’m sick of all this bloody time travel. I can’t stop it, but I
sure as hell can alleviate it. So if you’re not on board, then get out of
this basement!”
“This is my basement,” Declan argued.
“No, it’s a community basement,” Mateo insisted. “Several disparate groups
use it for their needs over the years. Your mother moved you here after we
made her feel unsafe at the old place; you used it to train to become a
vigilante; Gunbender, Armbreaker, and Fairware use it for their base of
operations; two separate groups use it to help put right what once went
wrong. Do you know who built it? It was a man by the name of Baudin Murdoch,
who designed it specifically with all these different future people in mind.
He’ll even be the one to install the bank vault door when it’s time for
that. I need it for a special purpose right now, so I’ll ask you again, to
get out! Go climb up a salmon ladder, or something. This has to be done.”
The group was silent, like they knew Mateo wasn’t quite finished yet.
He looked back to Zeferino. “This is called a sacrifice. I was prepared to
make it myself, but I am beholden to the powers that be. This is your last
chance to do something good. I don’t know what you know, but the man inside
your head raped your mother. He probably felt entitled to it since they were
married. You may be evil, but you would never do something that bad, and we
all know it. I don’t think you would be happy knowing your body might be
used to hurt someone like that. You’re dying either way, so at least try to
go out a hero. I’ll personally see to it that The Historian writes favorably
of you.”
Wow. It almost looked like Zeferino was actually considering letting himself
be killed. Then it happened; the biggest shock of them all. “Just so we’re
clear,” he begins, “this doesn’t undo anything I’ve already done to you, and
I don’t regret a single choice I’ve ever made, including this one. I always
win...Flash.” After his one last pop culture reference, his pulled a knife
from his boot, and stuck it through his neck, all the way into his brain.
“You were right. Turns out, I’m a hero after all. That’s not what I wanted
to be.” Then he died.
“That was very noble,” Jupiter said. “Unfortunately for you, if you were
trying to prevent the creation of The Parallel, then you didn’t kill enough
people.” It was only then that Mateo realized Jupiter had secretly placed
Erlendr’s primary cuff on his own wrist. He was now in control of all of
them.
“What are you doing?” Arcadia questioned, anger building.
Jupiter tapped on his cuff screen. “I’m saving our sister.” He executed a
program, sending the cuffs that were on Nerakali and Serkan flying through
the air. They landed around both of Declan’s wrists. “And also Mr. Demir,
even though he gives my friends huge headaches.”
“Why am I cuffed now?” Declan asked.
“Wait, did they both just transport themselves to you? I didn’t do that on
purpose. Weird, I guess I don’t know how this works. What does this button
do?” He selected another program. Three cuffs appeared out of the aether,
and wrapped themselves around Ramses, Leona, and Mateo’s formerly free
wrists. “No, that’s not what I meant either.” Jupiter was just screwing with
them now. “Hm. Ah, here it is.” He pressed one last button, which summoned
J.B. to them. He was also wearing two Cassidy cuffs of his own. Now all
eleven were accounted for.
Before Jupiter had the chance to say anything else, Daria Matic appeared in
the room.
“Why did you have to bring her into this!” Mateo cried.
“I didn’t do that,” Jupiter replied defensively. “I certainly wouldn’t have
brought her here with what I assume is vomit on her shirt.”
“I just came from Vegas,” Daria explained. “I’m not sure what I’m meant to
do here.”
“Him,” Leona said, pointing to Serkan. “Get him to safety.”
“You got it.” Daria slipped her arms underneath Serkan’s, and spirited him
away.
“Noooooooooo!” Jupiter screamed, arm outstretched towards the emptiness
where Serkan just was. “Just kidding, I don’t need him.”
“You don’t need J.B. either,” Ramses suggested.
“Oh, him? He’s vital to the plan. You, on the other hand, are just a
hangeron. I could take you, or leave you, but then I would have to give
someone else your handcuffs. I don’t want them in this reality anymore, so
I’m trying to get rid of them all at once.”
“What’s your plan...brother?” Arcadia asked.
“It’s the same as Erlendr’s, for the most part. The main difference is I’m
going to be the one in charge. The other main difference is that I know what
the hell I’m doing. He may understand the flow of time, but I know people.”
“Why do you care about any of this?” Nerakali interrogated. “You have your
own life going with the Springfield Nine.”
“Can someone get her up to speed, please?” Jupiter requested. “Sherwood, go
ahead and set it up whenever you’re ready.”
The half-brother, Sherwood stepped into the isolation chamber with his
duffel bag. The first thing he did was drag Zeferino’s dead body out, and
leave him carelessly in the corner. He pulled out a little tripod table, and
a huge canister of what looked like paintballs, but of dozens of different
colors. He then removed what looked like a bomb. But no, it couldn’t be a
bomb. Could it?
Jupiter carried on explaining himself as Sherwood was working on setting up
his apparatus. “I didn’t always know everything about our species’ history.
Athanaric kept us very sheltered, and then when I joined up with the other
Springfielders, my focus was...well, too focused. It wasn’t until
recently—which I recognize is a relative term—that I started branching out,
and learning about what everyone else has been doing. I discovered this
obsession the other Prestons had with the Matics. Why was it? What is it
about the two of you that draws people in; gets them to sacrifice themselves
for you, and give you everything? Well, I never figured it out, but in my
trying, I realized that I too was obsessing over you. I was just becoming
another twisted stalker. I was stanning you, Mateo. I wasn’t happy with
doing this from afar, though. To free myself from this, I realized the only
thing I could do was echo my estranged siblings. They toyed with you, forced
you into harrowing challenges. Then I learned what our illustrious father
was planning, and that helped me come up with my own plan.
“I’m going to challenge you too. Don’t worry, though. Most of the time, it
probably won’t be deadly. You’ll probably even want to do the work; you’ll
just wish it wasn’t necessary. If you fail any one of these challenges, the
consequences will be whatever they are. I won’t actually be controlling
anything you do. I’ll be transplanting people from this reality, to the
Parallel; one at a time. Your mission will be to get them back home. You
could always go back with them, but then you would be sacrificing however
many people in the timeline you haven’t gotten to yet. Oh, and you’ll be on
a brand new pattern, courtesy of those Cassidy cuffs. It’s a perfect
blending of Mateo’s and J.B.’s. I’ll let the smart one explain what that
means. Are we ready?”
“It’s ready,” Sherwood said as he was standing back up from a crouch. “I’ve
set the timer for fifteen seconds.”
“I thought I asked you for a trigger,” Jupiter asked in an audible whisper.
“I wanted to push a button.”
Sherwood stepped out of the chamber, and sealed the door behind him. “I
don’t work for you. A timer is fine.”
A few seconds later, the bomb went off, spreading the paint all around the
glass. It was actually quite beautiful.
“That was cool,” Jupiter said with a genuine smile. “I’m gonna need this,
dear,” he said to Arcadia. He lifted the hundemarke from her neck, and
placed it around his own. “I need to be the one who makes sure it’s actually
activated. I’m not clear on your loyalties.”
Arcadia appeared too shocked to go against him, which was unlike her.
He continued, “sisters, you can watch from outside. The rest of you, get on
in. It’s a tight fit, but there’s enough room for eight, and there are only
six of us.”
No one moved.
Jupiter sighed. “Very well. I’ll do it myself.” He tapped on his cuff, and
transported all of his prisoners into the chamber. It was even more
beautiful from the inside. Jupiter was in there with them, but Sherwood was
not. “Boot it up, brother!”
The pain swirled around, and reformed itself. Where once it was chaotic and
random, colors began to organize into deliberate shapes. Shapes sharpened
into discernable images, and the images began to move. They were watching
dozens of movies at once. Mateo had heard about some of them before, others
he had been there to see, and some were completely unfamiliar. The one thing
they had in common was the hundemarke. These were all moments when it was
used to create a fixed moment in time.
“My God,” Declan said. “All these people are gonna die.”
“Not if I can help it. All right!” Jupiter said happily. He took a gun from
the back of his pants, and held it up like one of Charlie’s Angels.
“Everybody ready? Only shoot the red-shaded moments. The blue moments are
meant to stay put. We want those to happen in both realities.” He looked
around at the rest of the group. He relaxed his arms in feigned frustration.
“Ugh. Where are your guns? Did you not bring the guns? I’m sorry, I thought
this was America. Okay, fine. I’ll shoot ‘em all myself. Here..we..go!” He
started shooting at the images. Each time a bullet went through, and planted
itself in the head of a future killer. He was killing real people all
throughout time and space, but treating it like a video game. Mateo was just
surprised he wasn’t literally keeping score.
Mateo watched him a little, but his eyes wandered to a very specific moment.
This one was shaded purple, unlike any of the others. Also unique to it was
that it kept playing over and over again in the same spot, while the other
moments had to come back in the next cycle, because the chamber walls
weren’t large enough to fit all of them at the same time. They only turned
black and disappeared for good once Jupiter had paradoxed his target
successfully. He had an idea to fix all of this. There was a reason the
Prestons were obsessed with him and Leona. They would always ultimately
lose, and they were never happy with that. It really was a game to them, and
they absolutely despised losing. Perhaps Arcadia had the right idea, even if
she was coming from the wrong place. Anyway, it was the only way Mateo could
think of to stop all this. Even if it was a bad thing on its own, it at
least went against their enemy, and sometimes, that just had to be enough.
Before Jupiter could finish shooting all the hundemarke killers, Mateo body
slammed him. That was one good thing about close quarters. Jupiter had no
room to fight back fast enough. Knowing he didn’t have long, though, Mateo
grabbed the gun for himself, rolled back to the other side of the chamber,
and aimed the best he could.
“Hey,” Jupiter said jovially. “You want in on this? Oh wait, no; not that
one. That is the worst one you could pick.”
Damn, his target was gone. The GIF started back at the beginning, but he
didn’t have a clear shot at Anatol Klugman. He didn’t really want to kill
the guy, but it was his only move, and The Warrior was the one man he could
trust to understand and appreciate the dilemma. Jupiter got up and tried to
attack Mateo, but Leona and Ramses held him back. Just a few more seconds.
Three..two..one..fire.
