PROLOGUE - LAST TIME PAYS FOR ALL
Gydeon stepped out onto the balcony and gazed out across the darkened land before him, inhaling deeply on his cigar, holding the bittersweet smoke in his lungs before expelling it with a deep sigh. He looked up at the sky, at the tiny pinpricks of light twinkling above him.
"They even put the constellations back in the right place... well, well, well." He stared at the stars a moment longer, then dropped his gaze back down to dark hills and rolling landscape before him, trying to remember before. He shook his head. He couldn't. It all looked right, but it just wasn't the same. It no longer felt like - home, to him. Not any more. Suddenly he wanted to be away from the place, far away. And never come back.
He could do that. Couldn't he?
Laughter drifted out through the house behind him. The others had all taken their photos and were taking it in turns to make the Leap, joking and joshing with each other as they did so. Have fun, kiddies, he thought sourly. Make the most of it, because pretty soon, it'll stop being fun. And then what will you do?
Yes, what will you do, he thought. He held up the photo clenched tightly in his right hand. He still hadn't looked at it. Lavarre had passed it to him with a jolly wink and said: "Somewhere nice and exotic for you, dear boy!" He'd taken it without comment and stalked off away from the dining room to think. He had felt Lavarre's eyes burning into his back as he did.
He knows, he thought shakily. He knows I've lost the taste for it.
A voice called his name. Lavarre, of course. Wanting to know where his prize pupil was. His ex-prize pupil. Lucylla was the crème de la crème now. And may the Goddess have mercy on her soul. If she possessed one.
The voice was louder, closer. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then straightened up and flicked his cigar over the balcony, watching its glowing tip spiral over and over before striking the ground in a shower of sparks.
"Time," he murmured to himself regretfully. "Time definitely ain't on my side."
As he turned to re-enter the house he collided heavily with someone - something. One of Lavarre's new serving robots, its black garb and mask rendering it almost invisible in the darkened room beyond.
"Your pardon, sir," the robot murmured politely. "I believe the master is calling for you."
"I heard," he snapped back, trying to regain his composure after the collision. "I'm coming!"
As he swept past, the robot held something up. "You dropped this, sir." Gydeon snatched what the robot held in its hand. A photo. He must have dropped it in the bump. He stuffed it back into his pocket without looking at it.
"Thanks for nothing!" he growled, and strode angrily from the room.
The robot watched him leave, then held up the original photo Gydeon had been given, the one it had swapped, and replied, in a voice totally unlike the one it had used to Gydeon:
"You're more than welcome, believe me!"
Then it turned and disappeared back into the shadows.
***
"Ah, there you are! We were beginning to wonder. All ready for the off?" Lavarre beamed cheerfully at Gydeon outside his study.
"Oh yeah, absolutely..."
Gydeon made to push past and enter the Leap room but Lavarre suddenly reached out and seized his arm. Hard. Gydeon gasped in pain at the surprising pressure Lavarre inflicted.
"Gydeon, Gydeon... what am I to do with you? You avoid me for months, then when I ask you assist in performing a small favour for me, you deliberately go out of your way to continue avoiding me and I practically have to get you dragged here."
With his free hand, Lavarre reached up and plucked Gydeon's shades free. He winced theatrically at the bruise that surrounded one eye. "Oooh, I do hope that's feeling better now. Sometimes my associates do get a little carried away, even after I ask them to be careful!" he smiled, full of false apology.
"Yeah, I bet!" he whispered, trying to dislodge the fingers that squeezed his arm but totally failing. Lavarre's smile widened and he squeezed a little harder. Gydeon gasped again.
"I'm not asking you to do much, now, am I? Considering all I've done for you in the past, it's not exactly much to ask for." The squeeze increased briefly... then lessened. Lavarre's smile became more paternal. "Now I know you have doubts, worries... I know you're unsure of your future. But who isn't?" he laughed. Then his face became more serious. "We all know what happens to a Kid who becomes... too old. Starts to slow up, starts to think more rather than react. Thinking is fine when the situation requires it, but if you think too much..." he squeezed hard again. "Do you get my drift?"
"I do."
"Good..." he purred, and released his grip, passing back the sunglasses. He took a breath, looking as if he were about to make a monumental decision, then: "I'll make you a deal, Gydeon. Do this job, this little simple job, and we're quits. You go your way, I'll go mine. How about it?" he grinned again.
"Oh yeah?" said Gydeon disbelievingly, rubbing his arm and sliding his shades back on.
"Oh yeah! Listen, you've more than served me admirably in the past. I'm very proud of what you've achieved, no really! And it's only fair that, if you really want to put our relationship behind you, and get on with whatever life you choose to pursue, I let you do it." He put on a highly magnanimous expression, which didn't fool Gydeon for a moment.
Gydeon looked at him levelly. "Your word on that? No sudden visitations, no reprisals?" He knew what happened to a Kid that got too old as well. He remembered only too well what happened to Denny, the guy he replaced.
He was the one that did it to him.
Lavarre crossed both forefingers over the left side of his chest and pulled them across to the right side. "Cross my hearts. Word as a gentleman!" Lavarre sighed and closed his eyes briefly at the look of disbelief etched across Gydeon's face. "Honestly, Gydeon. Do this one job and we're through. No reprisals, nothing. I'll even help you secure a new life, if you want. It's in my power."
"That won't be necessary," he replied coldly.
Lavarre nodded slowly. So he did have a plan worked out, he thought. "Good. Well then!" he clapped his hands together, acting as though their argument had never happened, and indicated to the Leap room. "Shall we? You have your target?"
Gydeon sighed, and nodded reluctantly, pulling the crumpled picture from his pocket. He flicked a quick glance at the face on it. Poor bastard. "One last time," he intoned.
"Yes," Lavarre smiled, almost wistfully. "Last time pays for all."
Hand on shoulder, Lavarre guided him into the Leap room and closed the door behind them.
SOMEONE OTHER
It was just my luck, the woman thought sourly as she wrapped her kimono around her and stomped downstairs, to have the first decent night's sleep in ages ruined by such a stupid thing. As she got nearer the kitchen, she could still hear the screen door banging in the warm night breeze. Trust that useless article upstairs not to close it properly, she thought. She should have kicked him out of bed and made him do it instead. She asked him especially as well. "Did you remember to close the screen door properly?" "Yes dear, of course I did..." She shook her head. Blokes...
She shut and latched the door firmly, but as she turned to march back to bed her eye caught on something bright stuck to the door of the fridge and she froze. "Crukking hell..." she breathed. "He wouldn't..."
She tore the note off and studied it. She recognised the handwriting instantly, bold bright purple strokes on fluorescent yellow. Very eye-catching. And she thought their relationship had gone beyond him leaving her little errands to do. "You devious little git!" she hissed. Every instinct told her to twist it into a ball and hurl it in the bin, no, better yet, twist it into a ball, seek him out, and stuff it down his throat.
'Dear Dorothee,' the note began. She knew something was up by the way he was using her new name and not her old 'Ace' nickname he'd known her as back in the old days. 'Normally you understand I wouldn't dream of asking this of you, but' - oh yeah, there was always a 'but'- 'perhaps you remember a little incident a short while ago...'
But she continued reading, and her anger changed course. "One of them again! Who have they picked on this time..."
When she'd finished reading, she folded the note up and popped into her kimono pocket, then went upstairs to change.
Times' Vigilante had another wrong to right.
***
The man sitting on the steps of the Civil War memorial in the centre of the small green park in the middle of the little Alabama town's main street. He stood out like a sore thumb. A tall, broad shouldered handsome black man with a natty short dreadlocks hairstyle and an immaculately cut silver-grey shark-skin suit, sat easily on the lower steps with long powerful legs splayed out, idly glancing at a copy of the local paper.
He's making no attempt to blend in whatsoever, she thought, and looked down at her own apparel. At least she'd made the effort, with blue jeans and chequered plaid red work shirt and white sneakers. Her bike and the Time Hopper she'd used to travel back this far were stowed carefully in a quiet and deserted garage on the edge of the town. She looked every inch a typical small town Southern State North American youngster, circa 1966. The date on the calendar on the wall and at the top of the paper she was pretending to browse confirmed the date he'd written on the note he'd left on the fridge. No biker leathers this time. Even her shades were vintage Raybans, admittedly with a few novel attachments to enhance their viewing facility. She'd always wanted a pair of those x-ray specs she'd seen advertised in the comics as a kid, though after frequent use she'd discovered by and large that there was very little people had that was worth looking at. She stopped just short of a broad brimmed straw hat and a length of tall grass sticking out the side of her mouth. Norman Rockwell eat your heart out.
She'd been watching him from the comfort of the ice cream counter in the drugstore across the street for the last hour, and she surmised that everyone else in town was looking at him as well. Though no one had gone near him, at least not since the local cop wandered out to see who the stranger was.
A big old boy with a huge swinging paunch and doughy red face topped by a sweat-stained white Stetson that had seen better days trundled over to the monument in a style that was half John Wayne and half Charlie Chaplain, hitching up pants that were straining under the weight of the thick leather Sam Brown belt and the big old horse pistol in the gun holster strapped to his thigh. He paused by the man, set one leg up on the step and leaned over the man, digging one meaty thumb into the belt. Dorothee watched his lips move, and would have put money on the likelihood that first word he uttered to the black man was "Boy".
The other man did not look up once, not even glance up over the top of his snug-fitting wraparound mirror sunglasses. Instead, after the cop had finished speaking, Dorothee saw the man's lips moving briefly, and he opened his jacket to show him something concealed inside. After he'd finished, the cop went very pale and turned and trundled back, with as much dignity as he could muster, back to his office, where he closed the door firmly and swung his 'open' sign round to 'closed'. After that, even the flies left him alone.
Dorothee grinned. The guy had some style, at least.
The chapel clock started to chime and Dorothee pushed her coffee cup aside and slid off her stool. She tapped the local paper in her hand against her leg as she strolled easily into the park and up to the monument.
As she expected, the man did not look up, though it was hard to tell through those wraparound shades he wore. She guessed he'd already dismissed her as a threat. And why should he? He had style, and confidence too. Too much. Way too much. His mistake, she thought.
"Hi there!" she chirped brightly, in an accent that was part 'Bones' McCoy and part 'Deputy Dawg'. The man probably wouldn't have known the difference between her own accent and the one she was using, but better safe than sorry. "Would y'all have the right time?"
"No," said the man shortly, still intent on his paper.
"Well-ah, wouldya have the date?"
"No." A pause, then he added with a touch of irritation: "Get lost."
"It's on the top of your paper. Would y'all oblige me, sir?"
A minute inclination of his head. "June 17th. Now go away."
"What year? Only, y'see, the reason I ask is, that that little old pistol you got concealed there in your jacket is a Smith & Thorson .88, which isn't due to be made for about another 75 years."
That got the man's attention. He looked up at Dorothee properly for the first time, paper sliding from his grasp as he reached towards his suit for something. Dorothee thrust an arm at his face and waved a finger at him.
"Uh-uh. Hold on there, Cochese." Dorothee realised how silly the accent was making her sound and stopped. "The thing on my wrist pointing at your head is a miniature flechette-thrower, and if you make another move I'll cheerfully redecorate that monument with your brains. Capiche?"
A smile crooked the corners of his mouth. "Very good. I really must be getting old, letting you get the drop on me like this. What have you got, x-ray lenses in those goggles?"
"Yup. And a few other things."
"Very clever, I'm impressed. Who sent you?"
"Funny enough, I was about to ask you the same thing. And being as I do have the drop on you, I think I'm entitled to an answer first."
He shook his head, still smiling. "I don't think so. It would take more than the threat of a sudden violent death to make me give up that information."
Ace crooked her head and gave him an icy smile. "How about a slow, violent death?"
He looked her up and down, smile broadening. "You don't look capable."
"You'd be surprised."
They looked at each other. A long moment passed. Dorothee sighed. She'd long since lost her appetite for the strong-arm stuff. "Okay, then let me tell you why you're here, Mr, er..."
"Make it Gydeon."
"Hi Gydeon. I'm Dorothee. You're here to kill someone, right?"
He considered, then shrugged. "Right."
Ace tugged a photo out of her shirt pocket. It was a picture of a square-jawed dark-haired young man wearing a rather silly cowboy hat. "This man?"
"Correct."
Dorothee looked at the name on the back. "Morton Dill."
Gydeon's brow creased. "Who?"
"Morton Dill. That's who this is."
Gydeon shook his head. "No, no. I'm here for a man named Steven Taylor. May I?" He indicated towards an inside pocket.
"Slow and easy."
Gydeon slowly pulled out a picture of his own. The two men were identical, except that Gydeon's wasn't wearing a cowboy hat.
"Snap!" said Dorothee.
Gydeon pursed his lips. "An unlikely coincidence."
"It happens. Just about everyone has a double."
"I don't believe it." He looked up at Dorothee. "It's a trick."
"It is, but I think the joke is on you. Tell you what, why don't we ask the man himself. He'll be going over to the drugstore for his afternoon sundae about..."
"Now!" continued Gydeon. He'd done his homework too. They looked at each and almost smiled together.
But they didn't.
***
"Excuse me, sir?"
Morton Dill had just spent a long hot afternoon inventorying the dusty stockroom of his father's hardware store and right now he was really looking forward to getting himself a root beer float and maybe seeing if any new comic books were in, when two people stepped in his path. A very serious looking black dude in a sharp city suit and a pretty young gal in blue jeans. Morton blinked at them in surprise, in much the same way as he blinked at everything not connected with his father's store in surprise. "Can I help you two ... folks?" he asked, ever obliging.
The gal nodded at her companion and said: "I'm Agent Scully and this my partner Agent Mulder. We're with the FBI. We've been assigned to this area to investigate reports of possible communist infiltration."
Morton's eyes bulged with horror. "Commies? Here! Gee willickers, just wait till I tell pappy!"
"Sir, we're strictly incognito at the moment. We'd be obliged if you kept this to yourself for the time being until our investigations are complete."
"Sure! Sure! Anything to oblige the Effa-B-Eye!"
The gal nodded curtly. "Good. May we see some identification please, sir?"
Morton fumbled in his pocket for his drivers' ID. The black feller took it and studied it carefully. The corners of his mouth flicked up into an inscrutable smile and he turned away.
'Scully' gave him back the ID and grinned at her partner. "Thank you, Mr Dill. You're free to go about your business now."
"Thanks! Thank you!" Morton pumped both Agents hands and started to set off towards the drugstore, when Scully stopped him.
"Remember sir, tell no one we were here."
"You can rely on me!" he declared boldly.
"And sir?"
"Ma'am?"
"Trust no one." Scully patted him on the shoulder, and the two agents disappeared down the street. Morton gaped after them.
"Well if that don't beat it all... commies! Here! Whoo-eee!"
He shook his head with amazement. A durn shame he couldn't tell pappy. A tale almost as good as the one he brought back from his trip to New York that time.
Still shaking his head, Morton Dill went off for his ice cream, mind full of commies, FBI agents... and large blue boxes.
***
"Satisfied?" Dorothee watched Gydeon closely as they slowly walked down the street together.
He took a long slow breath. "I am."
"So you don't need to kill this guy."
He shrugged. "Where's the point?"
"Or his double. What did you say his name was?"
"Steven Taylor."
"Rings a bell. If he's who I think he is, you don't want to go looking for him either." She took his arm and stopped him. "Understand? Someone is looking out for him. Us. And I think you know who I mean."
He nodded. "I do. He really did it right this time. Dropped me right into your lap!" He wondered how he'd done it. Switched photos at the party? The robot by the balcony! He chuckled, and gave her a sideways glance. I wonder if I was the only one to be hoodwinked, he thought. Gydeon was surprised to feel that he didn't care. It wasn't his problem any more.
"With friends like that... like him..." He stopped and looked at her, face serious again. "I knew this was a mistake from the beginning," he said quietly. "This wasn't my idea."
"Want to tell me about it?"
Gydeon regarded her curiously, and looked for a moment as if he were about to, then he barked a short ironic laugh. "Better not. Suffice to say, this was going to be my last job." He paused and thought for a moment. "This is my last job," he said definitely, and took a deep breath. "Time I got on with better things."
Dorothee nodded. "Better than what you're doing now. Killing isn't much of a way to make a living."
He looked at her and smiled - sadly. "You look like you found that out yourself - the hard way."
"That I did."
He laughed again. "Do you want to tell me about it?"
She looked down at her feet and scuffed at the dirt. "Naw... a girl's got to have some secrets, right?"
He smiled back. "Right. Oh well..." He looked at his watch. "Time to go. See you." He raised a hand in farewell and started to walk down the street heading out of town. About halfway down he shimmered and vanished. He didn't look back.
"Not if I see you first!" Dorothee murmured, lowering her own hand, relaxing for the first time that day. She looked up into the blue sky, and beyond. "See, Professor? I don't kill 'em every time..."
With that she went back for her bike, and returned home for a well-earned rest.
So she hoped.
But...
EPILOGUE
Bang, bang, bang ...
"That crukking screen door again!" Dorothee scowled at her partner's sleeping back and angrily jumped out of bed and stomped downstairs.
She went into the kitchen and stopped.
There was another note on the fridge. She tore it off. What now?
'LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!' it screamed in yellow highlighter.
She pivoted, ducked, brought the flechette arm up and fired all in one smooth motion. Even in the dark of the living room she could see the surprise on Gydeon's face at the speed of her actions. It was still on his face when he hit the floor.
Automatically kicking his gun aside just in case, she knelt down and cradled his head in her lap, removing his shades. His eyes were surprisingly brown and liquid and warm. Under different circumstances, she had a feeling they could have been friends.
"Why?" she croaked, voice thickening suddenly.
The blood in his mouth and throat caused him to struggle with his reply. "Told ... you... I... had... something... better... to... do..." His face creased into a painful smile. "You..." he breathed. "Couldn't... go... back... empty... handed... sorry..."
Then he died.
Upstairs, Dorothee heard movement. Finally he'd woken up. She looked back over at the screen door, or at least where it had once been. Gydeon had got one shot off, and the screen door - along with half the kitchen wall - was now so much matchwood lying on the back lawn.
"Better?" She murmured. "Yes. You silly sod. I could have told you that. And you didn't have the edge I had.".
A warm tear fell from her cheek to his, mixed with the blood drying on his still face, and ran slowly down his cheek to land with a wet plop in the centre of the crumpled note she'd taken from the fridge, staining the yellow words with dark crimson.
Next: Killer Instinct
