The White Rabbit Chronicles - Part II

The inside of Alpha Sphere quaked and the lights were snuffed out. A heavy darkness smothered the fighting. The loose dogs who had a few minutes ago been safely leashed had gone rabid again, and were resisting Director Sainne’s very humane attempts to put them down. Now someone had lost all their marbles and was knocking the great golf-ball that once was the nerve center Time Peace off its struts.

By all means, the sophisticated Director thought to himself. Have it your way.

“Aim and fire, gents,” he instructed to his honor guard. Lickety-split, before they could holler back or the emergency lights could flutter to life, he swung himself into the open.

Blind as bats and spitting mad, the former Time Peace desk jockeys had no hope of striking him down without a whole heap of luck. But as for his pets…

Sainne thumbed his favorite toy. The Talhesian torture device burst into brilliance, dimming the feeble rays of the backup bulbs until they were all but a shimmer in the ether. The silver orb’s open maw spat out a spotlight so intense it paralyzed the first man it landed on.

But in a flash, he was history. A rattle of gunfire and a Pollock in red later and he dropped. Sainne flicked his wrist and painted the next target in the bleaching glare. Soon after, he was Swiss cheese, too.

But the other side wasn’t out of it yet. The light had staggered them, but the beat marched on and they started gunning for the lighthouse in the void. Sainne twisted and stretched, his long arm dangling out like a crane as he lunged out of the way. Hefting his body to one side, he twisted the orb again. Poised like a dancer spinning his partner under his arm, he lit up his next victim as their bullets whizzed by, far from his vitals.

One, two, three, four. And that was that. The last man had tried to scramble out of the corridor’s confines, but he didn’t have a chance. Sainne’s light found him, and so did his men’s bullets. Sainne clicked the blinding beam off and tucked away his toy.

“Now, then Captain, we have something of a change of plans,” Sainne drawled without facing the man. He had pulled himself straight again, flicking specks from his tunic like this had been just another day’s work. “It seems some of these scurrying rats just cut the power here, no doubt crippling their most secure time gates. Of course, you will be dispatching someone to verify such an outcome, but I have an additional task for you.”

And Sainne grinned the grin he gave when he needed to keep down bile.

“Bring me an engineer. Alive.”

***

White Rabbit didn’t so much as twitch. She was sprawled out in the muck on the side of the big road bound for Alpha Sphere, cheek mashed into the concrete. But it wasn’t the grime that was taking up her brain-space. It was the voice that echoed from behind and above her. The voice of Commander Fia Florentine.

No, scratch that. It was War Marshall Fia Florentine now. White Rabbit naturally slotted her into the old second-in-command position, but the game had changed. She had ascended to the throne a while ago, but it still didn’t jive with Rabbit. Trying to warm up to her was like trying to cuddle up to barbed wire.

And now Florentine had a piece pointed at the base of Rabbit’s skull, if her words and tone were anything to go by.

“Identify yourself,” the former commander barked.

“Omega Four-Eighteen,” White Rabbit reported tonelessly. Clipped and to the point. The only avenue that didn’t end in a sudden stop with Florentine.

“You have ten seconds to account for yourself,” she rapped.

“The Phoenix took control, put me in the back seat, but I was watching the whole time. He’s dead, I’m free, and I just stopped Sainne from looping back to save his boss,” Rabbit spilled in a hurry, dropping decorum to make haste.

In the stillness, time itself seemed to stretch. A mere half-beat becoming an infinite expanse.

When Fia Florentine’s voice hit White Rabbit’s eardrums, it was barely audible over the thunder of her heart.

“Okay Eighteen,” she said carefully. Each syllable danced on her tongue, cut and measured. There was still steel lacing her voice, but the words rolled out slowly. Delivered with intent. “Either that’s true, or this is phase two of the game, and you just tried to decapitate our command structure. Now I have a war to salvage, and you’re not the asset I need.”

“One is dead,” Rabbit sputtered hastily. “She bit it when she ran into some of ‘our’ people. People out from under any command structure.”

“Prove it.” Florentine demanded with the bite of a cornered animal.

“I—” Rabbit faltered. Would Florentine let them backtrack to the bygone Rabbit? Would she still be there?

Bang!

A gunshot snapped the silence into bits. Ice infused Rabbit’s veins. That was it – she was wasted.

Except if she was wasted, how could she be thinking?

“Up and at ‘em, Eighteen,” a familiar but misaligned voice called out.

A jolt ran through Rabbit as she realized that a heap had fallen at her side. It was the lifeless form of Fia Florentine. Even as a disturbance wracked her senses, she locked down the shiver. There was a new player on the scene, and Rabbit was going in cold as ice until the situation was sized up.

She propped herself on one elbow and with a flourish of her snowy locks, craned her head around coquettishly.

Only to meet her own smiling face staring back at her from across the way. The new White Rabbit had eased her gun back, and had the butt propped up on one hip, hand on the other.

“Hold the applause. The appreciation for my impeccable timing will have to wait until after the apocalypse,” she crooned. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

The White Rabbit on the ground cocked an eyebrow as she picked herself up. “You’re not about to break it to me that you’re the real Number One, are ya?” she asked.

“Not today, Eighteen,” the other replied. Neither of the Rabbits fessed up to it, but they each couldn’t stand the other’s voice. The sounds might be perfectly identical to their own, but it didn’t hit their ears the same way when it was coming out of someone else’s mouth.

“I’m Twenty-Six,” she continued. “But who’s counting? Now are we going to pull the collective butts of all Time Peace out of the fire, or what?”

“You’re speaking my language,” Eighteen put down, “but the hair trigger’s not doing us any favors. All the timelines are in a tangle and you just snuffed Florentine. What gives?”

“No time to fuss about the details,” Twenty-Six tossed back. “I heard the buzz—Anarak Creepster’s making a beeline for our rabbit hole.”

“All the more reason we could use some backup.”

“Backup? She was backing you up against a wall the way I saw it.”

White Rabbit was gearing up to shoot back, but Twenty-Six shut her down.

“Did you miss what’s in play? The whole shebang, sister. This timeline’s all burned out, done. But we’re just getting started. That’s what the whole ‘Omega’ pin you’ve got is about. So don’t lose it on me.”

Twenty-Six narrowed her eyes at her sister-in-time.

“You’re not tripping out on me, are you?”

The other Rabbit hoisted herself up and locked eyes with her doppelgänger. But her diamond gaze didn’t reflect the inner roiling the latter’s words had stirred up. She couldn’t tune out the notion that her last trip down a rabbit hole had set her mind off-kilter. All the Omegas were given a talking to about that awful possibility. Even with all the meds a true time traveler got to psych them up for the wild ride, Time Peace couldn’t promise they’d roll on out the other side with a full deck of cards. And definitely not after a second go-around. It was the cost of being the last line of defense. Having your sanity dangle by a thread.

But White Rabbit the First was dead. Someone was getting déjà vu, no getting around it. And everyone else would be left holding the bag.

“I’ve got my head on straighter than anyone else around here,” White Rabbit the Eighteenth said, pulling herself out of the reverie. She projected confidence that she couldn’t quite back up.

“Better be sure. Because we can’t lose. If we do, it’s the end of the line once and for all. So can you do what it takes?”

“I don’t need a pep talk. I need a gun and a straight run to a time gate.”

Eighteen looked back to her handiwork below the Alpha Sphere. Those gates would definitely be down now. Shame. They were the primo rabbit hole makers, always on standby for the Omegas. They’d have to find another, and that could get complicated.

“Well, and maybe a reminder.” Twenty-Six grinned at the other like a cat that got the canary. “It’s not a crime at the end of time.”

***

Three men were strapped to seats in the secondary control room. The myriad of screens were dead black, and the rows of chairs basked in the soft ruby glow of emergency lighting. Walls and desks bore the marks of a shootout, and not everyone inside was moving.

“I will keep this extremely simple,” Sainne crooned softly. “I need the answer to a simple question, and either one of you will give it to me, or the next group will. You see, we all know that the gates in here wouldn’t be the only ones on standby for rabbit holes. The question is which of your backups is the closest. You have three chances.”

He ambled up to the first man, pulled out his sidearm, and racked the slide.

“Three. Where is the closest rabbit hole?”

The engineer tied to the chair cocked his head up at Sainne, glaring defiantly. Jutting out his chin, he replied, “Beneath your feet.”

Sainne squeezed the trigger and the man slumped back in the chair.

“You know what I’m asking, let’s not play games,” he said calmly to the corpse, and stepped in front of the next captive.

“Two. Where is the closest rabbit hole?”

The next one never said a word.

A gunshot obliterated the intense silence. Sainne sauntered over to the last man.

“One. Where is the closest rabbit hole?”

“And give you a chance to win the war?” the last technician said icily. “That’s the last—”

Bang!

“I’m afraid that is not the question I asked,” Sainne sighed.

Then he calmly removed his pocket watch and found the little dial which would normally wind such a device. He pressed it in, and the whole room vibrated and twisted in a spectral rewind.

The three men were suddenly alive again, but still strapped to their seats, powerless. They exchanged startled glances, their breaths coming in rapid gasps.

“Greetings group two. Now, either one of two things just happened,” Sainne announced, strolling in front of the three of them. “Either you fine engineers had forgotten the basic weapons with which this war has been waged all these meta-times, in which case I am gratified to have been able to remove the burden of such an illusory noble sacrifice from your minds, or you have painfully underestimated the degree to which an arena can be employed to incentivize answers. I suggest you put those exceptional minds to use in understanding the breadth of such possibilities. We have an eternity together in which to explore each and every one.”

But he didn’t even try to clock their reactions. Instead, he pulled out the silver orb once more and studied it fondly.

“And that isn’t even considering the more… arcane implements I have at my disposal,” he whispered. The prisoners caught every syllable.

But Sainne didn’t have to resort to his torture device. A few rounds of questioning later, and he had his answer.

“Perfect,” he declared. “Dispose of them, Captain. We don’t need them giving their comrades advance notice.”

A few gunshots later, and the engineers were still once again.

“The sixth wing, they say,” Sainne mused. “It seems that we are in luck, even if it is a bit of a hike. That means no time to lose, Captain. Take your people and secure that area now.”

The head of the guard rounded up his troops and had them file out of the chamber, breaking through the walls of the arena just outside. But as they tromped through the core of the Alpha Sphere, Sainne suddenly veered away from the pack and down a side corridor.

“Sir?” the Captain prompted.

“Oh, no,” Sainne said, waving him off, “I will meet you there.”

As if to himself, he continued, “Our target is on the far side, and there are two others still active, so this should do nicely.”

And coming to a perfect stop at a seemingly arbitrary spot, he drew his sidearm.

“Go on Captain, I shall be there in but five minutes. Far too much time to waste, but far too little time for you to reach your positions. If you are to do your duty, then, you better be off now, as I will soon be in need of some assistance.”

With a flick of his wrist, he produced a pocket watch, flipping open the lid. His luminous green eyes locked onto the hands, as if the captain was already gone. Sure enough, as soon as Sainne’s gaze landed on the watch, the captain spun on his heel and dashed off, barking at his men to pick up the pace.

For precisely five minutes, Sainne remained fixated on the tiny hands, utterly motionless. And then, when the time was up, he pulled his pistol to his chin and pulled the trigger.

***

On the other side of Iterant Point, at the Sixth Wing, one of the remaining active time gates buried into the side of the great chamber began to spin its interlocking rings. The handful of Time Peace personnel who noticed were baffled, but they were helpless to do anything as they sought refuge from the few Anarakians who hadn’t been cleaned out.

So when the rings came to a halt and revealed Director Sainne, whole and unscathed, they didn’t have a chance to make a move. He brandished his pistol and entered the fray.

…

END TRANSMISSION