Closure

22nd October, 1983

Dirty glasses, locals and smoke smeared McMally’s bar, an unsavoury backstreet pub lost in the drizzle of the city. An echo of “China Girl” bled out of a grubby old Duke Box and black rain lashed hard against the steamy windows.

Mr Hitcher sat in the shadows within a haze of cigarette smoke. The seasoned Death Collector’s crumpled brown suit and fag burnt yellow fingers gave him an instantly dishevelled and haunting look. Dirt stuck to him like glue. He knocked back a cheap scotch, shook off the burn and glanced over at the locals gathered around the bar.

Suddenly, a stack of empty glasses started to rattle.

Something... or someone... was coming.

Calmly, Hitcher got to his feet and reached inside his trench coat with both hands. He drew two semi-automatic pistols.

BOOM!

The building shook like an etch-a-sketch. A fist of blazing fire punched through the front window and sprayed glass everywhere. The locals scattered and jumped, terrified by the sudden explosion outside. One threw himself onto the ground to hide from the daggers of glass that shot towards him and covered his head, “Jesus, fuck!”

The scorching fireball seeped back to form a humanoid shape that crashed through the shattering window and bounced over a row of tables like a flipped automobile – smashing and crashing onto the ground - and then tumbling into a roll. It was a young man, a quarter of a century old, but more so in the eyes.

Hitcher blocked his chaotic path with his boot and turned to face the petrified locals, all off their stools and cowering for cover, and thrust one gun towards them. He locked the other gun on the confused youngster and then shot a look back at the locals, “Get back to your drinks.”

They stalled, scared out their wits. “What the hell is going on?”

Hitcher had no time for answers, “Sit the fuck down!”

They sat!

The young man, meanwhile, had no idea what the hell was going on. The violent trip he’d just taken back through time had wiped his memory. That was one of the many consequences of illegal time travel. He muttered and groaned, trying to speak. Hitcher looked down at him and sighed. Resting the gun on his chest, Hitcher grabbed a syringe from inside his jacket and jabbed the needle into the youngster’s neck – injecting him with a black, metallic serum that rebooted memories.

As the serum tunnelled into his bloodstream, the young time traveller started to freak out – kicking and jerking his body. Hitcher grabbed the gun and looked into his eyes, “Jason Finn - murder witness - twenty second of October, nineteen eighty three!”

Suddenly, Jason’s brown eyes dilated, as his memory was violently crow-barred back into his head. He yelled and grabbed at Hitcher, who pulled away and took out a prototype Wiper Bomb; a tube-like device, and snapped it. The broken tube activated and shone a dirty, blood red. Hitcher stood up and dropped the tube. It ignited on impact with the ground and bleached the room with a blinding flash of light.

Whoosh!

Cigarette smoke wrapped around the two time travellers, now sat at a back table, away from the hustle and bustle. Jason glanced around the bar and noted it was back to how it was before the explosion. He was a cocky looking kid. He had a glint of death in his eyes and oozed ‘maverick’. Sparking up a smoke, he picked up a Wiper Bomb and waited for Hitcher to fill in the blanks. He did. “They’re called wiper bombs. Takers are using them to heal the cuts we make in history... Erase the damage... The bloodshed... But they only repair fixed time.”

“Example?” asked Jason, blowing out smoke.

“Let me draw you a diagram!” Hitcher sighed, got to his feet and took a deep breath. He hated doing this shit. Drawing his pistol, he thrust it towards one of the locals sat at the bar with his back to him and squeezed the trigger.

BLAM!

The bullet tore a chunk out of the back of the local’s skull and threw him over the bar in a dust of bloody smoke!

Chaos!

Hitcher holstered his gun, then snatched the Wiper Bomb out of Jason’s hand and snapped it. He threw a sorry look at the local he shot and released the tube. It hit the floor and a blast of fierce light shrouded the room. Whoosh!

The glimmer of light pulled back the last few seconds of chaos like a tape rewinding and deleted the moment Hitcher fired the gun, before rattling time forwards again at high speed to catch up with the present. Broken time had been repaired.

It was as if the last five seconds had never happened, but Jason had witnessed the gun attack. Hitcher looked again at the man he’d shot, now back on his stool, drinking his pint, then returned to his seat. Jason looked at Hitcher and smirked, “Gotta be said, good fucking example!”

Hitcher took out another Wiper Bomb and offered it to Jason, “From here on in you cover your tracks. If you break fixed time, detonate that thing. If not, we’re all fucking history. Got it?”

Jason looked at the Wiper Bomb and nodded, “History, fucked... got it!” He then looked at the man Hitcher had shot, “So – what happens if we get shot?”

“We stay dead. We don’t belong to fixed time. We don’t belong to any time. Not anymore.”

“We all have to make sacrifices.”

Hitcher could see the sadness in Jason’s eyes, but said nothing. Picking up a battered rucksack, he slid it across the table to Jason and said, “No action hero shit on this one. You’re here to witness a murder... end of.”

Jason put down the Wiper Bomb and grabbed the rucksack, shooting a look at Hitcher as he did. “You don’t like the way I work, don’t hire me.”

“You were requested. The Collective are under the deluded impression you’re the best there is. Personally, I don’t like the way any of you ‘people’ work... all guns blazing and – noise! You’ve got no rule book, and that’s dangerous... to me and my clients.” He sparked up a fresh smoke and threw Jason a look, “Unfortunately, you’re a necessary evil.”

Jason tried to lighten the mood, “I’ll be on my best behaviour.”

Hitcher wasn’t in the mood for wisecracking, “Don’t fucking humour me! Thanks to gung-ho mavericks like you wreaking havoc, we’ve all been marked for death! Thanks to you, I’ve got to sleep with one eye open.”

“If it wasn’t for gung-ho mavericks like me, you wouldn’t have a trade!” Jason was pissed. “I watch death. That’s what I do. The way it works – consumes lives. It’s unpredictable... hypnotic... addictive! The closer I get to it, the more it keeps me alive.”

“And that’s what scares me to death!”

“This is a risky fucking business, Hitcher. All guns blazing and noise... That’s a necessary evil.”

Hitcher dragged hard on his cigarette and glanced at him, “You’re going to be late for your death.”

Jason knocked back his drink, hooked the rucksack over his shoulder and stood up, “Until next time.”

As he turned to leave, Hitcher snarled, “Finn!” He turned back and Hitcher tossed him the Wiper Bomb. “Don’t change history.”

Jason looked at the tube and cracked a smile, “Nice doing business with you.”

Hitcher watched him leave. He knocked back the drip of whisky he had left and sighed with a pang of guilt in his throat, “It’s not business.”

It was raining hard. Jason stopped in a saturated backstreet and looked around to make sure he was alone. He crouched down and unclipped the rucksack. Delving deep, he pulled out a pistol and magazine. Slotting the magazine into the pistol, he snapped back the slide and loaded the chamber.

He then took out an envelope with HALF NOW scrawled in black pen on the front and glanced at the stack of dirty notes inside. Stuffing the envelope inside his jacket, he dragged a dated electro-binocular camera, known on the street as a Red Eye, out of the bag and clipped it to his belt. Jason checked the time on his watch. Under the clock face was a small countdown window – 05:00:04

He reached inside the rucksack again and pulled out a black and white crime scene photograph of an older man with his head down in a pool of blood; his body had been dumped in a multi-storey car park; the back of his head had been blown open. He studied the photograph and then flipped it over to read the usual suspects written on the back:

VICTIM: HAROLD OAKES

TIME OF DEATH: 23:11 (22/10/1983)

LOCATION: ECHO LANE CAR PARK/LEVEL 6

Pocketing the photograph and binning the empty rucksack, Jason stood up and sighed,

“Let’s wreak havoc.”

Back at McMally’s, Hitcher needed another drink before he made the call. Knocking back a scotch, he took out his Feeder; a small communication device, and keyed in a number. He looked on nervously as he waited for an answer. Finally, it came.

He closed his eyes and sighed, “He’s on his way.” As his eyes opened, tears spilled out. “Now please... let my family go.”

Task Agent Nathan Kesler exhaled smoke and scraped out his cigarette. He was distinctive looking, with one blue and one green eye. In full combat gear and with a glint of necessary edge in his stare, he wasn’t a man to be messed with. He was a TAKER; a specialist POLICE HIT SQUAD AGENT whose solid firearms, black uniform, body plates, stark POLICE emblems and head guard made him look totalitarian and instantly threatening. Clipped to the side of his neck was a deactivated Shifter; an image distorting device. Kesler threw a look over his shoulder at a fellow Taker and nodded at him. The Taker tapped a watch-like device strapped to his arm and vanished in a flash of light, as Kesler returned to his call with Hitcher. “It’s done.” Kesler promptly ended the call, holstered his Feeder and faced his troops, “Get ready, he’s coming.”

The mass of Takers locked and loaded their heavy duty weapons.

The trap had been set.