by TheTimeTrust, The Eurostar and T5
The offices of MBL Consulting, Inc.:
The room was silent as Kit Piper sat before the group, which included Tobias Christopher, Danny Hearn, Naecken, Marv Velo, Pete Glover, and Shirley Francis. Mick Harrison, Lance Lorenzo, and Sam Dawson were still off on a case, as Pete told the others.
"I'm at a loss for words, folks," said Kit, who was uncharacteristically quiet. He found it hard to speak with this lump in his throat. "I... I never knew Sonja Ljzavet very well, and as you all know, we never saw eye-to-eye on this consulting business. She saw it as both a sell-out and like a dangerous red flag being waved in front of an angry bull. In the past month she hardly spoke two words to me, despite my efforts to befriend her. She was... a strong woman."
Velo waited for a moment, and then spoke up himself. "None of us really knew her all that well, not even Shirley, who spent the more time with her than any of us. She was the most private of us all, which was why I guess she chose the topmost floor that was also the farthest away from the rest of us. There seemed to be some kind of fire driving her on. It was an admirable quality in her. Uh... that's all I have to say."
The room fell quiet again. This was a very uncomfortable situation, since this was the second member of their little team who had died, but the fact was that she had not simply died or sacrificed her life, but had been murdered.
Tobias and Velo had immediately left the building in search of her murderer, but the assassin had covered his or her tracks too well. It was readily apparent that this was the work of a professional.
A question arose in each of their minds, then: Were any of them going to be next?
"Uh, well... if nobody else has anything they'd like to say, then I guess we can call this meeting to an end," said Kit. "Doc has been in touch with the Russian government, and we've agreed to ship Sonja's body out immediately. And we'll be holding a memorial service in Sonja's honor as soon as the other guys get back from their mission."
An hour later, after the impromptu meeting held in the MBL Consulting office, Pete went for a walk. He did not know why, but he just had to go for a walk. He had seen many of his friends die in the thirty-plus years he had been on this planet, his mother the first of them. She had been murdered, too, while Pete and his father were on tour with the circus. The killer was never found. His father passed away when Pete was in his teens, and Pete ended up with nothing, since as a circus family they were not able to carry around much in the way of possessions, and the family had no home. Pete had relatives in Newfoundland, where he had gone to school for a few years as a child, but they were strangers to him. He was one of the carny folk, and they could never understand that. He had tried working at a couple of ordinary jobs, but he had been fired from every one of them. Finally, he had taken to the open road.
On the open road, Pete found that he was able to travel with little restriction. He just seemed to fit in wherever he lived. He had no problems with sleeping wherever he could find room and eating whatever he could find in a particular day. And he soon got used to going without either food or shelter much of the time. Sure, it was a hard life in some ways, but he had traveled to more places and seen more things than most people had seen in their entire lives. It was the way he wanted it.
A dog trotted up to Pete, then, taking him out of his reverie. "Well, how ye doin', little fella?" The dog happily wagged its tail and eagerly allowed itself to be petted. Pete started walking again, and the dog followed him. Dogs had always seemed to like Pete. He smelled really good and interesting to them, for one thing, but it was mostly because dogs considered Pete an honorary canine. He was one of them.
Another dog trotted up to Pete just then as he walked. Then two more came. And another. And several more. In short order, a large pack of friendly dogs kept following Pete as he walked through Puerta Mibela, all wagging their tails as they went.
Pete just smiled. He really was the luckiest man on earth.
Naecken suddenly left the complex. He was somehow more eerie than usual, and since the battle with the demon and the death of Sonja, he had not said a word. Nobody saw him leaving the building.
After three hours, he returned. Marv Velo, as always, appeared behind him without being noticed. The hands of the tall, dark, horned being were glowing slightly blue, a thing Velo never saw before. He would have asked Naecken where he had been but did not want to be too inquisitive. Everyone was entitled to his own secrets.
Although he did not express his curiosity, Naecken responded, as if the thoughts of Marv Velo were as loud as Pete's voice. "It was not right what happened. It was somehow my fault. I correct it. Now I need to sleep."
Naecken's headaches were back, and this time they seemed to pulse through his mind. Lying on his bed, he vaguely recognized the voices of Danny and Tobias. They wanted something. They had some questions about a girl, and where he had been.
He ignored their buzzing noises and curled up his legs and slept. Someone touched him, but it did not matter. Darkness welcomed him, and he fell asleep.
Thirty minutes later, from Puerta Mibela Obituary came a call. Sonja Ljzavet's coffin was empty.
In a cafeteria in Paris, the Giorgio unit sat and sipped his cafe au lait with a satisfied smile. His masters would be so pleased with him. It had taken him months of tracking to find her bio-signature, but now the mission was over, and a vacation for two weeks was to be his award.
He unfolded a newspaper and started to read. A shadow loomed over him, and he looked up. He dropped his cafe au lait in surprise.
It was a perfect copy of himself.
"Hello, Giorgio. I don't know why you are here, but I can't allow any other downstream versions of myself to roam about here."
The gun in his hand was equipped with a silencer, so nobody at the cafe noticed the young man who walked past them. They did notice a man suddenly falling face first into his mushroom and cheese croissant.