Living in the Loop: Life #11 – the Unabomber
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.
1-1
It was a rather dark and stormy night, and everyone was screaming. The parachutist was screaming because he was about to be eaten by a Pteranodon, the flying reptile was screaming because it was about to have its new meal and Ange...
Well, Angelika "Ange" Finch was not screaming, actually. Rather, she put down her night vision goggles/binoculars combo and pressed a button on a remote-operating device.
The next moment the rooftop from which the screams were coming erupted in a Semtex explosion. The screaming stopped; in fact, by the time that the firemen have arrived, the only sounds were the crackles of the flames...
1-2
Angelika's day was shaping according to schedule. Last night's events have clearly didn't affect Evan's actions today one bit; he was still late to this very important meeting, and she-
"Hey, Ange!"
- had intercepted without really seeking to do so.
"Evan," Angelika replied calmly, before switching her attention to the other man. "Do I know you?"
"Ange, that's Mac – the firearms specialist I was telling you about," Evan brightly replied, seemingly ignoring the fact that the other two people were eyeing each other, subconsciously taking each other's stock if it came to a fight...and that was worrisome for Ange. Not for Evan - whatever course the current history would take, he would always remain Evan, something that she realized to her sorry (and almost immediately afterwards – disdain) several lifetime loops ago.
It is here that some clarification is probably in order. It began about ten lifetimes ago, when Angelika Finch discovered that after she died she always came back several years in the past before becoming Cross Photonics' CFO; the actual date of her death didn't count, and neither did the manner of her passing.
After spending several lifetimes in trying to fix Evan's dinosaur-related problem (she always returned to late to actually save Brooke), and basically getting killed by Mac in one of them, Ange said "Screw him and Evan that brought him to Vancouver in the first place!" and spent several other lifetimes joining the Israeli army, eventually becoming a commando in the force.
Honestly, after juggling dinosaurs, chronologically displaced giant beetles and scorpions, mammal-like reptiles, flightless birds and who knows what else, serving in Special Forces was a breeze, and given the fact that Angelika's ancestry was Middle Eastern, she quickly acquired a fair amount of the local languages and knowledge, and that included "balsama".
Apparently, while she was helping Evan and others save perfect strangers from prehistoric monsters (and with a rather mottled rate of success, too), a kibbutz in Israel had discovered some sort of an ancient secret that regarded a very potent, very interesting, very long-forgotten perfume and was actually working on a plan to introduce it to the rest of the modern world. Fair enough. And Ange, who after befriended Toby in few lifetimes, began to appreciate the more feminine aspects of a woman's lives even more, so after she died in the last time loop, promptly went and sought them out in this one and became their sponsor. Soon her investment would pay off, and she would launch a coup and buy Evan out of Cross Photonics, basically. Few lifetimes ago she would not even think about this, of course, or at least would feel bad about it, but not anymore. Evan did not really care about Cross Photonics, pure and simple, and Ange did, so why would she care about Evan Cross?..
"Guys? You have been eyeing each other for a long time," Evan's joking voice broke through Angelika's reverie. "This isn't love at first sight, is it?"
"No," Angelika quickly replied and left – she had much more than a coup on her hand for today, after all.
1-3
The door was flung open by a powerful kick. "Freeze! NCIS!" yelled the woman on the right.
"Hm," Angelika let the KA-BAR remain stuck in the table. After all, she was not through with this loop just yet. "And who are you?"
"Angelika 'Ange' Finch, you are under arrest for multiple charges of manslaughter," the woman continued, while her partner kept his gun on her – Ange pouted. Her military training had obviously included firearms, including the Galil, but her best proficiency was in explosives...followed by close-quarters combat, as the female NCIS agent discovered, when Ange used the ABIR system to break her arm and send her flying into the wall.
"Tony-y-y-y!" the agent yelled as Ange ripped her blade out of the table just as –
BANG
- She was shot. The bullet went into her left lung, punching a BIG hole in her torso, but the male agent was fairing little better – Ange's blade had pinned him to a wall through the throat...
As Angelika's world was fading from red to black, and she was musing to herself that dying by a bullet sucked, the last words she heard were "Tony...Tony..."from the remaining NCIS agent
1-4
Tracy Drake was old and prone to ruminations, i.e. – to thinking. About himself and his life, certainly, but also about others.
Evan Cross... When it came to theories that boy was crazier than a pack of weasels with sledgehammers, but he was well intentioned. He certainly offered to pay for Tracy's operation without any hesitation and there laid the problem.
Tracy was old, but he was also proud and liked to think that he had values and intelligence - intelligence enough to find out, for example, that Evan's position in supposedly his company was far less secure than the younger man realized, and that if he paid for Tracy's operation it just might destroy it altogether.
On top of that was the fact that Tracy was, well, old. There was a significantly large chance that despite the operation he might die all the same and maybe during the operation, even, leaving Evan Cross in the lurch. Tracy hated leaving anyone in a lurch, and he did not like the possibility of living the rest of his life as a bed-bound invalid even more. Consequently, this was why he was stalking through one of the park's building, armed with a one-time tranquilizer gun hunting something that had killed at least one person before...
...and he had no idea what it looked like, either. He really was suicidal. Wonderful.
Abruptly, the light from Tracy's flashlight illuminated a slumbering person, apparently a hobo that snuck in for a nap.
"Hey, buddy, wake up! Did you see anyone or anything...?" Tracy nudged the other man with his foot, inadvertedly flipping him over... and setting of another one of Angelika's more ingenious explosive traps.
...When the firemen arrived the second time, this time followed by Vancouver's finest and the bomb department, the Utahraptor was long gone. Its protofeathers were singed, and its snout was bloodied, but it was quite alive otherwise. Fully operational too.
And in its cold, reptilian mind, it was also quite ready to kill whoever that had stolen its prey.
1-5
If Ange's encounter with Mac Randall today had been completely accidental, then her encounter with Connor Temple was fully on purpose. She had a large debt towards Mr. Secret A.R.C. Agent man, and intended to pay it back, fully, hence – the meeting.
"Uh, hello!" Connor said faux-brightly. He was a formidable man, just not taken well by surprises, and this time it seemed that Angelika did have the upper hand.
"Hello!" she innocently replied. "What are you doing here, exactly?"
"Oh, you know, I'm with the Internet company... yes, the Internet company... we've been getting many calls about the Internet being slow... you know..."
"Does it have something to do with magnetic interference, perhaps?" Ange asked, carefully looking into Connor's eyes, seeking, almost desperately, that flicker of awareness, indicating that this was not his first time loop either...
"Er... well, yes, yes it is," Connor replied, sounding rather desperate himself. "That is exactly what is wrong with them. Why are you looking at me like that, Ms.-"
"Tell me, do you believe that our lives are being run by one or several gods with a rather sadistic sense of humour, causing us to relieve our lives over and over again, like some overlarge groundhog day?" Angelika innocently asked, as she moved subtly closer to the Englishman, still gazing askance into his eyes.
"...I have no idea what you're talking about," Connor started to reply, but never finished as Angelika ran him through – with a blade. This part of Cross Photonics building was practically abandoned – this had suited Connor's purpose initially, but it had suited Angelika's purpose just as well.
"You don't," Angelika softly replied as life faded in Connor's eyes. "Well, sucks to be you, then."
And then she took a deep breath and dragged Connor away to hack him into pieces and give him a proper burial.
1-6
"And this is the participant in the internal exchange program – Ms. Finch," the superior (James Lester?) said in a bored way before turning to leave. "Ms. Finch, this is Connor Temple. Have fun working with him."
And he was gone.
Very carefully, Angelika looked at the Englishman who always had been there when things would go wrong in all of her timeline loops.
"Tell me, do you believe that our lives are being run by one or several gods with a rather sadistic sense of humour, causing us to relieve our lives over and over again, like some overlarge groundhog day?" she innocently asked, as she moved subtly closer to the Englishman, still gazing askance into his eyes.
"Yes," Connor replied, and Angelika realized with a start that Mr. Temple had been in this time and place before, not unlike herself. "And I'm thinking that we can start our talk with this. Angie, you weren't in the army before, was you?"
"Don't call me Angie!" Angelika instinctively snapped, before exhaling. "But yes, you're right. I wasn't."
1-7
"...And that," Ange mused, as she sat in her office, "had been a beginning of a surprisingly good relationship. Pity that it ended with Connor Temple being even a bigger ass than I thought that he would be. Ah well. You won't be raising any trouble this time..." and she flipped the still defunct time anomaly detector of Evan's once again. "Now what should I do with this-"
The phone rang. Angelika took a deeper than expected breath and picked up. "Evan? Listen-"
"Ms. Finch? This is Lt. Leeds from, um, Vancouver PD-"
"What?" Angelika's eyes budged. This really was Kenneth Leeds, but she seriously doubted that he had switched from the military to police in this loop. More likely it was some sort of a cover-up, and that meant... Angelika gulped.
"Ms. Finch? Are you still here?"
"Lieutenant? Is something wrong with Evan? He and his people went to the park..." Angelika trailed away.
"...Yes. They were working with Ms. Weir, an animal control specialist. It, um, went horribly wrong."
"How wrong? Where are they? Where they are?!" Angelika began to babble.
"At the morgue..."
Angelika released the phone receiver – Leeds continued to mumble something in it – and looked at the list. The flying reptile – check. The raptor – check?
"Oh dear," Angelika spoke without really utilizing her vocal cords. "Apparently I didn't get the raptor." She picked the phone back up. "Where are they?" she asked as steely as she could. "I still need to see them."
1-8
The wheelchair was rolled in. Even if Angelika was not handcuffed to it hand and foot, it would still be unlikely that she would escape, not from the federal jail. Strangely, Ziva David, the NCIS-Mossad agent, was waiting for her.
"Yes?" Angelika deemed the other woman worthy of acknowledgement. "What do you want?"
"Why?" Ziva asked simply. "Why did you do-"
"What I have done?" Angelika shrugged. "Because our lives are being run by one or several gods with a rather sadistic sense of humour, causing us to relieve our lives over and over again, like some overlarge groundhog day. I tried to do the right thing, and it did not do squat. So, for the next several time lines I'm doing the wrong thing instead."
"Of course, first it was time travel, now it is Groundhog Day. You no longer disgust me, Finch, but your superiors did. Clearly, your mental state-"
"David," Angelika interrupted the younger woman. "The time travel is a part of the Groundhog Day situation, pay attention!"
"No," Ziva shook her head. "We're done. I am sorry that you have to die, but perhaps it is the best solution. Good-bye, Angelika Finch."
"Yes, yes," Angelika indolently replied, as she began to be rolled down the hall once again for the lethal injection. "Don't worry – I just may look you up in one of my future time lines. You probably won't remember this, though..."
1-9
The funeral for Evan Cross, Mac Randall and the others was a private one, done, appropriately, on a cold, rainy day. There were few people attending their burial, save for Toby's blonde ex-girlfriend (Natalie), who was more than upset about the loss of her supposed ex, lieutenant Leeds, who still pretended to be a cop, and who was more than slightly morose about the whole experience, and Angelika, who was so devastated (supposedly) that her face was nothing more than a blank mask.
Inside, however, Angelika was a whirl of emotion and self-aimed questions.
I never wanted Evan dead, did I? Mac Randall – yes, sure, especially considering that he did try to kill me when he assumed that I was going to betray Evan, which I so totally was going, but that is besides the point, is it? They are all dead, even Toby, who was quite fun when I had her under control... oh well. Maybe in the next time loop this tragedy will be avoided...or not...
As Angelika sat in her pew, struggling with her internal thoughts, the last words of the hymn – "The day thou giveth, Lord, has endeth" – rang in the church.
1-10
The utahraptor sniffed at the glowing ball of strange-colored light. It smelled funny, with just a promise of new prey. As the rather intelligent dinosaur stood there, wondering as to whether or not it should charge at this strange object, its mate called from further down the slope – the iguanodon herd has finally arrived.
That changed the situation completely. With nary a thought for the glowing ball, the utahraptor whirled around and raced down the slope.
End Life #11