Same Self Read online

  “So, let’s say I went back to yesterday, and took a pair of scissors to your hair while you were eating. You would know of it when it happened, but what happens if I jumped back to the present?”

  Kara’s cheeks reddened and she giggled. “Well, I wouldn’t notice anything until the moment you did your horrible deed in the past, and then … in a blink of an eye, I would have a bad hair day and would have no idea that something was awry. I would have been led to believe that that was what always happened during that dreadful lunch break yesterday.” She rested her head on her hand. “Regardless, I would be coming to you for an explanation.”

  Todd couldn’t help but smile. It was good to see her in high spirits; it was the first time he had seen her smile since they had met.

  “That’s interesting,” he said, looking into her gorgeous eyes.

  Before he knew it, he realized he had been staring for a little longer than intended. He quickly changed the subject. “So, what do you people do for fun up here?”

  Her face turned back to its usual rigidity. “Honestly, besides the occasional get-togethers we have out in the rec room, our work is our life.”

  “Rec room?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.

  She looked surprised. “I thought you had been given the grand tour already?”

  “Me too,” Todd said.

  She jumped up and led Todd downstairs. The workstations were dark and the R&D lab had already been locked up. They strolled down the hall towards the front entrance. Kara walked beside him, zipping up her thick blue coat. Todd had finally decided the flight suit was a little too “POW” for him and had started wearing some of York’s clothes. It came as no surprise that they were a perfect fit. He wore a dark, long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his forearms and black hiking pants. The jacket he threw on was commonly used for HALO and HAHO operations. He zipped it up while Kara pulled a white beanie hat on and opened the door. The wind rushed in and bit his cheeks.

  “It’s in the warehouse. Come on,” she said as she strode out into the painful cold.

  Todd followed close behind. It was too cold to even bother looking up for the Northern Lights. He stayed directly beside her petite figure as she did her best not to slip on the uneven surface. As they neared the warehouse, a gust of wind howled in from the darkness and hit them from the side. Todd kept his feet under him and grabbed Kara around the waist before she was swept off her feet. He thought he heard her say “Thank you” as she reached up and straightened her fur hood. He let go of her as soon as he knew she was stable and headed for the door. He punched in the code “1911” and the door slid open. The two pushed inside and Todd quickly closed the door.

  Kara pulled off her beanie and ruffled her hair. Todd looked around the warehouse. He had been here a hundred times in the past two weeks and yet he’d never thought of checking out what was in the room to the right of the entrance. He had just been far too preoccupied by all the weapons and the weights to ever bother looking into what he had assumed was a room full of cleaning supplies.

  Kara opened the door and called on the lights. The room lit up to reveal a fully stocked bar on the far wall. Blue lights ran along the glass shelves stacked with bottles of liquor. The bar itself was a rich, dark-stained wood that that stretched across the entire far side of the room. A few circular wood tables were set out in the middle of the room. On the right side was a blue felt pool table, and a circular poker table stood on the left. On each wall was a sixty-inch transparent television.

  “Whoa!” Todd said, taking in the room.

  Kara giggled. “Why didn’t Kevin show you this place earlier?”

  “Yeah, what the hell?” Todd grunted. “This place is awesome.”

  Kara walked over to the bar and sat down on one of the stools. Todd headed behind the bar as if he were going to ask her what she’d have. He looked at the massive amount of alcohol that stood on the shelves like a shrine. He thought back to his early days with the Unit, when the guys would get together after an Op and talk shop at the local bar.

  Todd grabbed a bottle of Makers Mark from the shelf and dropped a few cubes of ice into one of the small glasses below the bar. Kara seemed to be daydreaming as he poured the bourbon. “Want some?” he asked, holding up the bottle.

  “No thank you,” she said softly.

  Todd screwed the cap back on and put the bottle back on the shelf. “Don’t drink?” he asked as he took a sip.

  Kara smiled. “Only on special occasions.”

  “Me too, that’s why I’m drinking.”

  She looked at him curiously. “This is a special occasion?”

  “Sure,” he said as he set the glass down. “I mean, we’re alive, aren’t we? Hell, I know I’m supposed to be dead right now. Kevin lost three pounds this week, and I’m point two seconds closer to beating Bohden’s time with the quick draw.” He smiled as he took another swig of bourbon. “What else could you ask for? Except for maybe some warm weather every once in a while.”

  Kara was amused by his optimism. She sat in front of him, brushing her hair back behind her ear, lost in thought. He could tell that something was on her mind, something that she had been dwelling on since they had first met. He wasn’t about to get nosy, but he found it irritating how hard it was to hold a conversation with her.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head slowly “No … I just … sometimes I wonder.”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if what we’re doing here is right. Part of me believes in our mission, part of me questions whether we should control the fate of millions of people’s lives.”

  Todd looked at the cubes of ice floating in the glass. “And what does the other part of you think?”

  She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. “That some things were just meant to be.”

  Todd thought about this for a moment. He mostly agreed that fate was set and what happened in this world was always meant to happen, and was always going to happen. Then again, his same-self had altered the future by killing Kennedy. Perhaps his notion of fate would be changed, as he soon would have first-hand experience in altering what people believed as fate.

  “Either way … you’re still alive, Kara.”

  Kara smiled. She picked up his glass of bourbon, finished it off, and set it back down in front of him. Surprised by this, he smiled and refilled his glass.

  Todd and Kara talked an hour longer, mostly about the other students and life at the facility. Eventually they headed back. Todd stopped at the entrance to the break room as Kara paused before heading down the hall to the stairs.

  “Thank you … for talking with me,” she said.

  “No problem, Kara, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  He turned and entered the room, and the door closed behind him. Kara stood in the hall for a moment. She wanted to talk more, but she didn’t want to hinder him from getting his rest before the big day tomorrow. She walked down the hall and went up to her room.

  Todd sat down on his bed, looking out the window at the flakes of snow rushing past. He picked up York’s journal and began reading where he had left off.

  July 18, 1967

  The bodies of young American soldiers lay in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I had done. I kept telling myself that it was either them or me. I had never run into this problem before during my time travel operations. I was usually too far behind enemy lines to even see “friendly forces.” I thought about getting hold of their PRC 77 radio and using it to call in a mass casualty, but my thoughts turned to Suong. I sprinted up the steep ridge, using trees and plants to pull myself up. When I reached the top, I could see the black smoke rising from the heap of burning hooches. “Oh God, Suong!” I thought.

  I ran as fast as I could through the rice paddies that lay on the outskirts of the village. When I finally reached it, I felt a sickening feeling in my gut as I looked at the mutilated bodies of men, women, and children who lay in the dirt. I couldn’t help myself, I beg
an to panic as I flipped over the bodies of dead little girls, trying to find Suong. I searched every small body that lay blackened by flames and riddled with bullets. My heart pounded in my chest as I looked at each one’s lifeless face. I started searching the insides of the hooches, and when I came to the last hooch, my heart felt like it stopped. I walked inside what was left of the small house and saw her long hair tangled around her. She had not been burned nor had she been shot. Her clothes had been ripped apart and her head had been smashed by either a boot or by the stock of a weapon.

  As I grasped what had happened, I began to feel a level of anger and hatred that I had never felt before. These animals, these fucking savages who were supposed to be protecting these people, had massacred the entire village, and had had their way with an eight-year-old girl. My hands began to shake. My breathing became sporadic and my body trembled with anger. This innocent little girl, whom I had taken care of, had been given a second chance at life, and then cheated out of it by these pieces of shit who called themselves soldiers. I would make them pay.

  I looked at the MTX. Even with all its power, there was no way I could go back just twenty minutes so that I might save her. There was no way Albrecht would allow such a thing … not for one irrelevant life. Plus, it would be practically suicidal to attack them like this. It was mid-day, and there were nearly thirty of them. I understood the strict rules regarding time travel. My personal feelings could not get in the way of the fate of mankind. I searched the village and found a large group of footprints that led back into the jungle. Like a ghost, I crept along the trail. The footprints were widely spaced and deep, and the trail was wide and had broken through massive amounts of vegetation. This meant that it was most likely a heavy infantry platoon. They were no doubt sloppy, poorly trained, and there was a good chance that over half of them were draftees and didn’t want to be here in the first place. This was good for me. I would wait until night, until they let down their guard for a few hours of sleep. They would most likely leave a guy from each element awake on watch while the others slept, so they would be the first to go.

  I finally found them several hundred meters in, and I stalked their patrol until nightfall. I knelt behind some thick plants and watched through my visor in infrared as their bodies slowly began to cool down as they started to settle in for the night. They left four guys awake on the outskirts of their little patrol base in small sandbag bunkers which they had made a few hours earlier. I watched them for an hour, and at the top of the hour, the men in the bunkers would leave and grab somebody else to take their shift. It was a key vulnerable moment when they were waking up the next watch. I waited for the top of the next hour, and right on cue, the four individuals left the bunkers and walked over to the mass of men sleeping under small ponchos in the center. Quietly, I slipped into one of the bunkers and waited for the groggy soldier to take his post. I saw a kid come stumbling over. He put his metal helmet on and carried his M16A1 under his arm.

  I knelt with my back against the sandbags as he stopped only inches from me. I didn’t move a muscle. He stood there for nearly thirty minutes until he decided to take a seat on a steel ammunition box. I was so close, I could see his eyelids begin to shut. It took me the next ten minutes to slowly move my hand to my lower back and pull my knife out without making a sound. Once I could feel the sleek polymer grip in my hand, I brought it up to my hip. These sick fucks didn’t deserve the luxury of modern weaponry. A bullet was far too civilized for them. They were going to suffer a slow horrible death, every last one of them.

  I waited for him to drift off once more, and I grabbed him, placing my left hand over his mouth. I plunged the knife into the back of his neck. I then rotated the blade laterally and drove the knife out the front of his throat. His body squirmed and flailed and blood poured out from his almost decapitated head. I dropped him and looked back at the three others who were awake. I made my way over to each one and gave them a similar outing. Once the four on watch were dead. I snuck into the middle of the masses who lay against their packs. The ones who had left their rifles out of arms reach were left alone. Those who slept with their weapon, I killed in their sleep by severing their spinal column. The rest, I decided to have a little fun with. I wanted them to experience what it was like to be overpowered, to have no control over what came next.

  As it started to rain, I took all the weapons and set them in one of the bunkers, ensuring that there wasn’t a single firearm accessible to them. Miraculously, none of them woke up as I did this. The rain had picked up and provided me with good sound cover. Once all the remaining soldiers were unarmed, I drew my pistol and fired several shots in the air. The soldiers all sat up quickly and began yelling at each other in confusion. Most of them were on their hands and knees trying to find their guns. One of them, a young kid, crawled right into me. He looked up and saw a shimmering transparent figure drenched with rain. He screamed and started crawling backwards. I stepped towards him and he screamed louder. His comrades began calling to him. I disengaged the cloaking system. The sleek black suit was hard to see at night, but the large dark figure that they saw was enough to cause them to panic. One by one I tackled them and stabbed them multiple times until they stopped squirming. A bigger soldier charged me and delivered a big right hook to my head. His hand cracked into my helmet, causing a brief moment of static in my HUD. He grunted in pain and held his hand. I kicked him in the chest, causing him to fall backwards. I drew my pistol and fired two rounds into his head. I looked up and saw the remaining three soldiers running into the woods. I quickly did a mag exchange and holstered my pistol, then pulled my rifle around and shouldered it. The targeting reticle automatically came to life in my HUD and I put it on the farthest guy. I fired four rounds into his back and he collapsed. I shifted over and did the same to the second.

  The last one continued running deep into the jungle. I slung my rifle and raced after him. He got to a steep hill and started crawling his way up, breathing heavily, clawing at the thick mud. I grabbed his foot and pulled him back down the slippery embankment. He rolled over and looked at me and screamed in horror. I grabbed him by the throat and threw him into a small creek that was at the base of the hill. He splashed into it. As he tried to get up, I tackled him and began punching him in the head repeatedly.

  I remember feeling absolutely nothing as I beat the life out him. He tried to fight back and I would just hit him harder. The hard padded gloves I wore tore his face open with every blow. When he finally was too weak to fight back, I shoved his head into the water and held him there until the bubbles stopped rising to the surface and his body went limp. I let go and his body floated face down in the dark water. I fell back and sat in the creek for a moment. I remember I was breathing so heavily that I ripped my helmet off and gasped for air. I looked up at the night sky that loomed over the dark canopy.

  From that moment, everything changed.

  THE MISSION

  Todd walked into the R&D lab at 0900. He brought with him a notebook to write down important aspects of the mission brief. He had no idea as to what they would have him doing.

  He had been doing research on the era and was starting to wonder if he was going to be tasked with killing someone important from that era. Maybe someone like Theodore Roosevelt, who would be living in New York during that time period. He thought back to what he had read so far in the journal from the previous Todd York. He was having a tough time believing that the man who wrote it was the same man he saw in the mirror every morning. He didn’t necessarily disagree with what he had done in the past, but he wondered if he could actually go through with such things like killing a U.S. President and brutally taking out an entire platoon of U.S. soldiers.

  Albrecht was sitting at his desk with Bohden and the two were conversing quietly when Todd approached them.

  “Good morning, Todd,” Albrecht said.

  Bohden just gave him a nod and stood up. “Alright, let’s get down to business,” he said as he walked out of the
R&D lab.

  Albrecht and Todd followed him down the hall to another large door that was near the stairwell. Bohden entered a code and the door hissed open. The three men stepped inside. The room was almost as big as the R&D lab. A few workstations sat in rows across the room orientated towards a large holographic screen that took up the entire back wall. Displayed was a satellite image of the entire western portion of the United States. Several key personnel manned the stations. D, Kevin, and Kara were sitting in chairs near the front of the room. Next to them were two empty chairs where Todd and Albrecht sat down. Bohden walked up to the screen and tapped it. Latitude and longitude lines appeared on the map, and system data was displayed on the top of the screen.

  Bohden cleared his throat and began. “Okay, Todd, this will be your area of operations.” He tapped the state of Colorado and the screen zoomed in and enhanced.

  Todd sat back in his chair. He couldn’t believe that they were sending him to his home state.

  Bohden tapped the southern portion of Colorado and the screen magnified close enough for roads and buildings to be distinguishable. Todd recognized the area very well. Bohden dragged the image with his fingers and stopped at a city just forty kilometers west of Todd’s hometown of Bayfield. “This is …”

  “Durango,” Todd interrupted.

  “Yes,” Bohden said, appearing slightly irritated by the interruption. “Let’s start from the top. The situation: On the third of last month. Todd York … the first one, that is, was about to insert into the year 2014 to combat ISIS forces in Iraq. At takeoff, he ordered D at gunpoint to fly to the United States.”

  Todd looked at D, who scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

  Bohden continued. “D then piloted the eight-hour flight to the U.S. Once they were over Colorado, York opened the ramp and inserted via freefall somewhere in the vicinity of Durango. The year he inserted was 1887.”