Forum

[talien]

True to his word, Hammer argued vehemently to have Fiona given a COCKTAIL. For a little while it looked like she might be given the 9mm retirement plan, but ultimately Sprague prevailed. It was easier to have at least one witness alive; if everyone died, it would look like ABC was covering up something, and Majestic didn’t need more GNN reporters snooping around.

Hammer, decontaminated and showered, took a look at himself in the mirror.

Maybe Fiona was right. Maybe he was becoming a cold bastard. But then, he did what he had to do. To protect everybody. People like his grandma in Manhattan.

His grandmother lived a life Hammer wanted her to maintain. It made him happy, thinking of her smiling at him from her porch, standing in the sunlight.

It was a fiction, of course. He knew that. But fiction was what counted as life for most people. The truth was ugly and violent. It killed Blade. And it would kill him one day too, if the package he had sent himself from the future was any indication.

In the mirror he looked tired, older. The job aged him. Gray streaks were sprouting at his sideburns. Hammer left the decision to pluck or dye them or do nothing at all to another day.

Hammer opened the medicine cabinet and popped some aspirin. Another day. He had killed the Karotechia sorcerer, Whitcher, just as his future self had indicated. But the other parts – the scar on his thumb, the woman with the tattoo – hadn’t yet come true.

Or did it?

Hammer closed the medicine cabinet mirror and looked at himself again. Didn’t Jim-Bean say something about not dating any Asian chicks? What did he mean?

“That is one useful symbol,” he remembered Fiona saying as she watched Archive display the Elder Sign.

“Oh no,” said Hammer. He reached for his cistron.

The possibilities spun in his mind. It was a paradox, that the sight of Fiona’s own tattoo caused her to get that tattoo. Was that even possible?

But if he was trying to keep his fragile future together, follow some sort of script, fix things that weren’t meant to be broken in the timeline…simply dumping her off in a hospital was a bad idea.

He pulled up a news report. His stomach clenched. Fiona was missing.

GNN reported that one of the interns at the hospital, John Mackey, was assaulted by three skinheads. A doctor, Kevin Shapiro, got the blue panel van’s license plate.

“Damn it!” shouted Hammer into his cistron. “Jim-Bean, Archive, Guppy, meet me at the car. Fiona’s been kidnapped.”

They split up. Hammer and Guppy went to the hospital, Jim-Bean and Archive tracked down the car.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, Fiona was long gone.

Hammer scoured the room for evidence. There was ample hair, fiber, and fingerprint evidence – Fiona put up a fight.

Guppy plugged the data into his cistron. The prints popped up immediately.

“They’re all members of the Bear Flag Republic, a white separatist movement,” said Guppy. “All of them have criminal records in the state of California. I’ve got their addresses.”

“Skinheads.” Hammer shook his head. “Won’t matter, by the time they return it will be too late for Fiona. What about the car?”

“We found it on the side of the road,” said Jim-Bean over the comm. “They switched vehicles to a van.”

“Can you track them?”

There was a pause. “Yeah. Fortunately they were looking at GPS in the car. I got a good look at their location. It’s off of State Road 12.”

Hammer was already out the door. “I’ll meet you there.”