Chapter 10: Side Story – Futures Past (Pt. 2)

Something out here was...Odd. With a capital O. Where there should have been sounds of gunshots and scampering footsteps, there was only an eerie silence.

I slunk to the sides, hugging the wall close as I proceeded forward, entering the storage compound, littered with towering pallets upon pallets of paper products.

Crisscrossing across the maze of pallets, I reached the edge of the storeroom and carefully peeked into the small clearing in front of the offices.

"There they are... " I said spotting my teammates when I noticed something.

They are frozen. Unmoving like statues.

That's not normal.

Sliding back behing a pallet, I looked out the other end to see two men squatting behind a wall on the other end of the room, also frozen.

It was almost as if time had stopped moving. Something only a time-space manipulation user like Hiro Nakamura or Peter Petrelli could do. But why would they?

They had no hand in this part of the plot.

Besides, if they had stopped time, I would have frozen too. I'm not immune to time stop shenanigans. Yet.

Which rules out time manipulation.

But then, could be illusions?

Matt Parkman's dad, Maury Parkman was a telepath who could forcefully freeze people by trapping them in their own minds.

But that was unlikely too.

Maury had an insane range when it came to mind reading. In the show, he put the clairvoyant, Molly Walker in a coma from miles away. There was no way he didn't find me in the facility.

The other option was that I was the one trapped and this was my cage.

But then if I was the one trapped in an illusion, why would I be trapped here, instead if say an illusion of my room at home.

So that wasn't possible either.

Which presented the last and most horrifying possibility.

This was factor heretofore unknown to me, falling completely outside my plans.

A shiver tan down my spine and I tiptoed over to nearby window, attempting to escape, when I noticed the final nail in my coffin.

Outside the window, covering the whole facility in a shimmering dome stood a forcefield.

Fine then I'll just portal out!

I pulled out my portal gun and shot at a nearby wall. Only for nothing to happen.

"Oh no.nonononono." I muttered in horror. Whoever did this knows. About me. About the gun. About all of it.

Which can only mean...

I spun around, raising my hand in a kata, smashing it into the man standing behind me.

In futility.

"Ow!" I cried. My chop had met an iron wall of resistance, as the offender came into view, holding a laser gun to my head.

It was me. From what I can only assume was the future.

"What the actual fuck is your arm made of?!" I quipped, clutching my bruising arm, as I stepped back.

He looked at me, confused, raising an eyebrow.

"You're not scared?" He asked.

"No. Why?"

"Why? What do you mean why? I-i ... don't you see the... I'm here to kill you dammit! Don't you feel anything about it? Fear, anxiety, ...fuck, maybe even regret?" He shouted, flustered, "And you ask why? Why? I ..fuck!" He stomped his foot on the ground.

"I should be the one asking why? Why did you become this way? When did you abandon your humanity for power? When did your greed supercede your respect for freedom? When....no, why did you become a monster?!" He asked, tearing up.

"Look bud, listen. You look like you're under a lot of stress here. So why don't you just take a deep breath, okay.

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Just do a one two, breathe in, breathe out." I suggested, reaching for my laser pistol.

"Don't you fucking dare..." He said, jerking his gun at me.

"Okay, okay." I said, raising my hands above my head, "Not pulling out the laser pistol. Just ... let's not get violent. No need for violence, right. We're both the same people, right? Let's not kill each oth-"

"Don't you fucking compare me to yourself you sick son of a bitch! What you did to me... after what you did to my world!" He screamed, shaking.

Man that's some serious trauma right there.

What did I even do?

"Hey, hey, you're um... probably from the future, yes.....uh what are you, a parallel version or doppelganger.."

".. clone." he sniffled, wiping his tears.

"Right clone. Yes. See, whatever future me did, it's not me okay. Future me is probably an idiot. He must have made a mistake or something. We are all human right...we all make mistake-"

"He crashed a world ship into my planet! Trapped me in a fucking escape proof cage! Turned me into an avant garde piece of art! Billions died on that world.....who knows how many more quadrillions on others."

"In a infinite multiverse, with uncountable lives at stake every second. Don't sweat it. Just find an alternate world, you fucking bleeding heart hippie." I snapped. His stupidity was just ticking me off.

"It's not the same...never the same!

You haven't lived through the devastation you leave in your wake! The dead lining the streets, children eating their siblings to survive....it was hell on earth!  He ... you must be stopped."

"Then why haven't you killed me yet? Just one shot, right here, on my temples, and it'd all be over. End this cycle of misery. So tell me bud, why haven't you done it already. You're strong enough, I'm weak, at your mercy. And yet here I am alive, and there you are.....impotent." I whispered in his ears.

"I will....I..." He said, when I cut him off.

"Look. If you were going to kill me, you would have already done it. But you haven't. You won't.

Because you know what that means. What it means to end this cycle. You kill me, you are never born and trapped, you never grow to this, you never exist. A classic time paradox. Worse than death, a non-existence." I mocked, "And you are too much of a pussy to do it. Because you're afraid. Afraid of dying. Of fading away into the unknown. Whatever will happen to poor old you?!"

"I'm.. I'm not!" He cried, raising the gun with shaky hands.

"Oh really?! Because that's not what I see. I see a man who has something to lose, a man not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve his goal. And I know why that is too.

Because deep down you know what it takes to survive in the multiverse. You know it's exactly what you would have done if you had had the opportunity. You and me, we're not so different.

The fact of the matter is simple. You value your life more than revenge, so stop wasting the both of our time and go back home, like a good boy before I kill myself and trap you in a time paradox." I threatened.

"Tch!" He spat, turning around.

Walking some distance away from me, he stood at attention, and muttered something, before clicking a button his belt.

Suddenly the world appeared to mirror itself splitting apart into a thousand shards before slamming together as one, something that gave me a splitting headache as two different memories clashed in my head.

The clone began the vanish into a glitch as he turned to look at me one final time, raising a middle finger at me.

"Fuck you!" He mouthed as he disappeared.

"Fuck me yourself, you coward!" I shouted.

This motherfucker....he used a timeline splitter to play backup before confronting me? Two timelines, one where he confronted me and one where he did not.

What a pussy!

Didn't even have the courage to face me head on.

I'm not a damn closure machine. Settle for therapy to deal with your trauma like the rest of us.

And you know what, just for that I'll definitely trap him in that escape proof cage. Fucker deserved it!

As I massaged my temples, the surroundings unfroze as the shimmer of the forcefield outside dissipated.

The firefight behind me resumed.

I pulled out my laser pistol and ducked behind the pallets again.

Here we go. Back to our scheduled story.

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