Blaze of Glory - Chapter 3
Does destiny choose the person, or does the person choose their destiny?
He's supposed to be just another guy. Just another notch on Brian's belt.
But Justin has other ideas; a whole other master plan that's going to shock Brian about everything he's ever known.
One thing is for sure: whichever road Brian takes, his life is never going to be the same again
Chapter 3:
Justin kept his head down as he walked into the building, but his quick eyes checked all shiny surfaces to note where the cameras and security were at. He knew that it was dangerous to go to the Professor’s lab, but he had been left with no choice. Upon his arrival, Justin had waited at the hideout for half a day. He knew that something was wrong, but he had waited more out of hope than anything else. Half-eaten food, meals on the stove…it was clear that the group had left in a rush…and they hadn’t returned for at least a day by the looks of it. And the place had been wiped clean of any incriminating evidence.
Justin was sorely tempted to immediately head to their emergency location, but he had to follow protocol. His instructions had been crystal clear; were anything to be amiss when he returned, he was supposed to go to the Professor.
He climbed the stairs, measuring the distance. The building was designed in the same hideous look as almost all buildings in the Capitol; in homage to the Great Leader. Everything was glass, glass, and more glass, with shiny brass fittings. The good thing about glass was that it provided egress where there would normally be no exits available, Justin thought. The staircase was wide - too wide to be remotely considered safe - but it certainly looked good from the lobby on the ground floor. The office Justin needed was on the first floor. There had apparently been a time where government offices were all housed within the same buildings; such practices had ceased long before Justin’s time. Everything was outsourced now, and no one knew where they would find an office doing subcontract work for the government.
Justin made his way inside through the double doors - doors and walls alike being glass - and smiled genially at the receptionist. The woman barely acknowledged him. There was a security guard next to her; naturally a man, since women had long been prohibited from entering any of the professions related to security. Nevertheless, he knew that even the receptionist, given the nature of her job, would be trained to not be taken in by compulsion. He noted a few people milling about on the split-level second floor. He would have to get by with his wits. Justin felt inside his pocket for the phaser.
His wits, and his phaser.
“I’m here to deliver some documents,” Justin said, handing over his security pass.
The receptionist didn’t look up, but managed to take his pass and swipe it through her machine in one smooth motion.
She looked up at Justin.
Something was wrong.
“There’s a problem with your pass, we’re going to have to go through the advanced screening.”
Justin nodded without missing a beat. “The retinal scan? Of course.”
“Retinal scans have been temporarily suspended due to infiltration.” The receptionist nodded at the security guard next to her. “We’ll be doing the DNA verification.”
“Ah, okay,” Justin said. In fact, it was anything but okay. His blood turned to water. A DNA verification would highlight the fact that he was a clone in mere seconds, and the jig would be up.
That could not happen.
Involuntarily, Justin’s hand went to his neck, feeling the outline of the capsule that hung on the thin, woven chain, hidden underneath the shirt. The cyanide pill would kill him in seconds, before any torture, before any answers were dragged out of him.
“Just let me tie my shoelace first.”
He wasn't going to give up just yet.
Bending down on one knee, Justin surreptitiously looked around, making note of the situation. Two security guards were now on the second floor, no doubt summoned by his failed pass. There was the first guard, standing a few feet away from him, and then there was the receptionist. Lastly, he noticed a man who had just entered the reception area; he seemed to be a genuine delivery person.
Well, it was now or never.
It took him mere seconds.
From his lower vantage point, Justin pulled out his phaser, firing three rapid shots into the thoracic cavity - or what he hoped was close to the thoracic cavity - of the security guard next to the receptionist. Justin then rolled over to his right, and shot the receptionist’s desk, and rolled over once more.
The receptionist screamed.
The security guard screamed, firing his own weapon.
The delivery person was howling.
The guard’s shot missed him. Justin stood up, firing several shots in the direction of the two security guards on the second floor, and then simultaneously broke into a run while firing at the glass walls behind the receptionist.
The glass might have been shatterproof, but it was no match for Justin’s phaser. Pieces of glass flew in every which direction. Alarms were blaring, and multiple people were screaming simultaneously. It was pandemonium. Justin took another shot, this time to the wall behind the delivery man. That was all he had time for.
He got to the delivery man, grabbed him by the waist, and hurled themselves at the glass wall behind them. Already damaged, the glass gave way. The two of them flew through the air, falling into the lobby below amidst a hail of glass. They fell against a group of people who had been staring open-mouthed at the cacophony coming from the office above them.
Justin knew he had lost his phaser even before his body hit the ground, but he didn’t have time to retrieve it.
The delivery guy hadn’t stopped screaming.
Justin joined him, screaming, but made himself just coherent enough to cause even more panic.
“Oh my goodness! They’re shooting each other up there! RUN! We’re all going to get killed!”
Like lemmings, everyone around him started running, and, combined with drama from mere seconds ago, it didn’t take long for everyone in the lobby to make for the exits. Justin joined the throng, making it into the street outside before the security got to any of them. He paused only to pick up a cap somebody had dropped in the melee. Justin noticed that it was a replica of the vintage red Make America Great Again caps. It was hideous, but it would suit his purpose just fine. Once outside, Justin clamped the cap on his head, and ran with the crowd for a few blocks, before he broke away. All he could do now was make it to the emergency location without getting caught.
If the emergency location had been compromised…he would have to go back to the bunker and come up with a plan. Justin refused to think that far just yet. For now, his one mission was to get to the emergency location without getting caught. By the time he made it there, it was evening and he was exhausted and weary, having had to hide at every turn, weapon-less, and without an adequate disguise.
“Justin! You’re back!”
“Alex! Oh wow, Jessie, Connor…you’re all here,” Justin said, so relieved that he collapsed onto the floor. “I was so afraid that you guys had been…the bunker was abandoned, and….”
“What the hell happened to you?” Alex asked, brushing away shards of glass from Justin’s hair.
“I waited at the bunker for half a day…I knew something was wrong, the way you had left the place. So I went to the Professor -”
Justin paused, as Connor broke away with a strangled sob. Connor was not normally a man to show weakness.
Slowly, the reality of what had happened started sinking in.
“The Professor’s been…he’s been caught, hasn’t he?” Justin’s voice was flat.
Jessie joined Alex in cleaning Justin up. Nobody spoke for a few minutes.
Finally, Connor broke the silence. “We think so. There’s been no contact from him for…for the last seven days.”
“But it’s worse than that,” Jessie added. “England and China both declared war. Our intel says that the Russian Bloc will probably join them.”
“What? No!” Justin stared at Jessie, aghast. “But…that’s…that wasn’t supposed to happen. We’re not ready! We don’t have enough…enough anything! Why would they declare war NOW? They were supposed to wait until we were strong enough to help!”
“Well, it’s too late now,” Connor said morosely. “They’re going to go nuclear. It’s going to happen. Canada and Mexico have closed the borders. They’re already evacuating. This is it. Everything we’ve fought for…all our plans…this is the end. We’re done.”
“Where are the others? We can’t just…this cannot happen. We have to do something. We must,” Justin said, struggling to keep himself under control. His voice sounded hysterical to his own ears.
“What are you even doing here?” Alex asked. “Why are you back so soon? Unless…did we miscalculate the timing?”
“We clearly miscalculated more than the fucking timing,” Jesse said, “if Justin is back from his mission and we’re on the brink of the end.”
“What happened with Brian Kinney? Why hasn’t it worked?” Connor asked in palpable distress.
“He’s not the right guy! We made a mistake somewhere.” Justin’s head was ready to explode. “I met him, I did everything according to plan…and still…he’s not the guy. He has some kind of memory loss…he couldn’t remember anything I had told him. He’s no hero…he’s no saviour. He didn’t even stand up to me when I had to take the phaser out on one of his friends…he didn’t believe a damn word I said. Zero imagination, zero…just thought I was crazy. Plus, he’s a coward. He can’t fight…he didn’t even try! He’s not our guy.”
“So you just gave up? You just came back?” Alex hollered at him.
“Alex, you need to calm down,” Connor said.
“Calm down? His entire existence ...the only reason Justin is alive was so that we could send him back in time to Brian Kinney…so we could be saved…and this fool just gave up and came back!” Alex was screaming, and Justin tried his best to stay firm, all the while understanding that Alex was squarely blaming him for the present situation.
“I came back so the Professor could tell me what to do! What was I supposed to do back there, stuck with the wrong guy, who probably has some type of memory issue on top of that? How would that have helped anyone here? There must be another Brian Kinney, or another year, or…but how can I figure that out on my own? I had to come back, I had to get help.”
“This is all your fucking fault. You had one job. And now we’re all going to die because -”
“Enough,” Jessie said. “Alex, you’re not helping. At all. We need a plan now. We need to -”
“You need to go back,” Connor said, looking at Justin.
“What?”
“Look, I don’t know what went wrong. But the professor wouldn’t have - he couldn’t - have gotten so much wrong. You were cloned specifically for this purpose. There can’t be a mistake. It has to be the right Brian Kinney. And if it’s not…then it doesn’t matter because we’re all going to probably die anyway. But we can’t get to the Professor now, and we have to believe that he wouldn’t have made a mistake. You have to go back. We’ll do what we can to keep our heads above water at this end, but you have to go back. Just…go back and figure it out. Compel him, if you have to.”
“But…we’re already…things have…” Justin stammered.
“Were you able to create the link between that time and us?”
“I did. That’s the first thing I did. But still…I’m here now, and things have gone from bad to worse. Even if I go back, even if I manage to somehow make Brian Kinney the guy we…it’s now too late here. This…you guys will have to continue down this road because it’s already happening. We didn’t imagine that things would possibly disintegrate so much by the time I got back.”
That gave Connor pause.
“No. Wait. Think,” Jessie said. “If the link is there, and you go back and change things…then we’ll have the future of that; the future that the changes you create result in. Photons will not exist in a paradox; they won’t exist in an inconsistency. The more that future becomes a reality, the more this world disintegrates. At some point, we…that is…this world from the point of inconsistency is going to collapse upon itself and reach event horizon, and that future is going to become the only future there is.”
“And what if Justin fails? What if he fails in getting to Brian Kinney to change things?”
“Then he better get back to us on time, before event horizon gets him.”
“Or he could stay there.”
“I’m not going to stay there,” Justin said. “I know how much help is needed here. I’m coming back. As soon as I get Brian Kinney, hell or high water.”
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