Ending Two, Part 6 (or Part 82)
Michael watched Devon Lansing as he seethed in the aftermath of the dressing down Tom had given him. At 17, Lansing was two years older than his younger self was, and he knew from his own timeline that the kid's violent behavior would escalate over the next few years, ending in a gunfight between him and law enforcement when he was cornered. His rap sheet was filled with charges of violence and in a just system he would've been dealt with and disposed of before he could ruin so many lives.
He stayed out of sight as he followed Lansing to another area of the orphanage, recognizing the familiar room the guy entered. He stayed back, out of sight, as the kid ordered the other boys outside, warning them to stay away until he said they could come back. The rooms were set up to hold six to eight children each and he had hated the lack of privacy and the constant noise associated with the dormitory style living conditions. Luckily, he hadn't roomed with Lansing, but it hadn't stopped the older boy from coming into his room and beating the shit out of him every chance he got.
He moved closer, listening as Lansing consulted with the 16-year-old who had followed him faithfully, doing anything he was told to do. Mason Reynolds hadn't liked Lansing, but in exchange for being his lackey the older boy had provided protection. Reynolds had been a coward, but he was the one who had passed along the message and lured another teenager out into the yard that night. It was during that fight that Reynolds had gone to find Tom, to tell him about the fight and get him out on the yard.
Lansing and Reynolds had gotten away with murder the first time around because they had disappeared after knifing the director and leaving him to die on the yard. He had gone looking for them a couple of years after joining the Company and had been disappointed to learn their early deaths would prevent him from exacting revenge. Reynolds had died of a drug overdose like the coward he was, alone in some filthy alley, and no one had mourned his passing.
He listened as they made their plan and he slipped into the room, closing the door and locking it as he leaned back against it. He could make a phone call, leave an anonymous tip for the local police department, but it wouldn't prevent Tom's death. The cops could show up, they might arrest Lansing for possession of a weapon and intent, but it wouldn't stop him from coming after Tom again. He would just wait and sneak up on him at some other time. The two boys stopped talking and turned to look at him.
"Who the fuck are you?" Lansing demanded.
Michael smirked as he watched the teenager pull himself to his full height, knowing it was an intimidation ploy. When Michael had been 12 years old Lansing had intimidated the hell out of him but he had never let the prick know it. Even at 15 years old, when Lansing was still kicking his ass on a regular basis he had never let it show. Looking at him through the eyes of a 25-year-old man gave him a different view though. "Change of plans, boys."
The boys exchanged a look and while Lansing laughed outright, his companion's laughter was forced and nervous as he stared at the dangerous looking man watching them.
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Nine-year-old Isabel Evans sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes as she looked around in confusion. She looked across the room at her sleeping brother and called his name, keeping her voice at a whisper. "Max!" She waited a few seconds and called him again. "Max, wake up!" She rolled her eyes and got up, stumbling over to his bed and flopping down on it to shake him. "Max!"
"Wha'?" he mumbled sleepily.
"I had a really weird dream."
"You always have weird dreams, Izzy." He tried to roll over so he could go back to sleep but she grabbed onto his shoulder and held him still. He sighed in resignation and folded his pillow in half and rested the side of his head on it as he stared at her balefully. "What was it?"
"I don't know. There was a man who was kinda scary." She bit her bottom lip. "But I think he's kinda sad too."
"Did you see him before?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Did he do somethin' to you in the dream?"
"No, he just looked scary. I don't know why I was dreaming about someone I don't know, Max."
"Maybe you just went into someone's dream by accident."
"But how if I've never seen him before?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I don't know."
She sighed and lay down beside him. "I wish we could tell Mom and Dad, Max."
"I know, Izzy, but we can't. They can't ever know we're different."
"Yeah, I know." She nodded. "Can I sleep over here?" She settled down and closed her eyes when he nodded in agreement. "It felt like I knew him," she said after a while."
"Who?" he mumbled, already half-asleep again.
"The man in the dream," she whispered.
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Michael dropped the picture of the Evans' children when he felt… a presence. There was no other way to describe it. He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around the darkened living room. He had waited until well after dark to break into the comfortable home and he had paused in the living room to glance over the family photographs. He had picked up one of Max and Isabel to memorize what they looked like and after several moments of studying the picture he had felt that presence in his head.
He wasn't sure what could explain the experience. "Probably somethin' alien-related," he muttered under his breath as he bent over to retrieve the picture frame. He resituated it on the mantle and shook off the momentary sensations of fear and curiosity he had felt as he held it. He wandered around the house, looking for something that would let him know where the family had gone on their vacation. He paused in the doorway of one of the bedrooms, easily identifying it as Isabel's room even though he didn't know her. Even as a child the room was in perfect order, everything displayed with a precision he could appreciate.
The next bedroom down the hall was messy, toys and books scattered around haphazardly. The bed was poorly made and clothes were strewn everywhere. This room belonged to Max, he decided. It was definitely a boy's room. Nothing in either of the children's bedrooms gave him a clue about their whereabouts. Not that he had expected to find anything. It was curiosity that had him checking their rooms out.
He left the rooms the way he had found them and continued on his way, searching for an office or maybe just a desk in one of the rooms. They had to have a central place where they wrote out the monthly bills, planned vacations, and figured out everything else that went into planning their daily lives. In the kitchen he found a postcard stuck to the refrigerator door with a note written in a shaky scrawl that mentioned seeing the family soon. He moved the magnet and glanced at the postmark before turning the card over and looking at a panoramic view of a sandy beach and the ocean with sailboats dotting the background.
"Florida," he murmured as he looked at the Miami written across one corner in bold, garish lettering. Of course there was no address on the back of the postcard though. He frowned down at the signature at the bottom when he saw that there was no name, only a Love Grandma and Grandpa. "Don't make it easy or anything." He put the postcard back and let his gaze wander down over the pictures that were stuck all over the door. Hand-drawn art, colored pictures torn out of coloring books, all signed in crayon in a childish handwriting. Just like with the bedrooms it was easy to identify which of the pictures belonged to Isabel and which to Max.
He started sifting through the drawers in the kitchen and came up empty-handed. He gave the room one more look before heading back down the hall, looking for the parents' bedroom. The information had to be somewhere in the house. He opened the door and glanced around, taking in the room's neat appearance before stepping inside. He went through the nightstand drawers on one side, quickly determining that it was the father's side of the bed as it yielded no useful information. He rounded the bed and pulled the top drawer of the mother's nightstand open, spotting the address book right away. He made a face at the pink cover, decorated with flowers, as he picked it up and flipped it open. He scanned through the names and addresses, searching for the grandparents'. He found the paternal grandparents first but discarded them since they didn't live in Florida. Maternal grandparents wouldn't be as easy to locate since he didn't have the mother's maiden name.
He looked around and huffed in annoyance. Damn, why couldn't this have happened just a few years in the future when personal computers were more common in the family home? He sat on the bed and continued to search through the address book. And why did they have to know so many damn people? He flipped the next page over and smiled to himself when he recognized the handwriting on the envelope tucked between the pages. "Hello, Grandma," he muttered as he stared down at the Miami address.
He ripped a blank page from the back of the book and found a pen so he could copy the address down, shoving it in his pocket when he was finished. Now he had to cross the country and intercept the family before that accident. He paused in the hallway to look at the family pictures lined up on the wall. He knew where the accident happened and he knew when it would happen; he could simply intercept them on the road but now there was a connection with them and he felt the need to make sure they were alright.
He had time to get to Miami and locate them. The family car was gone and since the accident would happen while they were driving back after their vacation he had to assume they were driving their own vehicle. He walked along the hallway, searching the photographs for their car. Not finding one there he moved back to the living room and the picture frames lined up on the mantle. "Of course," he murmured, reaching for one near the back. Max and his father, standing next to a dark blue car. Closer inspection revealed the car in other photographs and he went back to the kitchen, remembering that one of the drawers had contained a neat stack of bills.
He flipped through the stack of papers, noting bills on top and papers most people would consider important at the bottom. He located an insurance bill for the family car and he wrote the information down on the paper with the grandparents' address before shoving it back in his pocket. He carefully put everything back the way he had found it and made one more circuit of the house before he left the way he came.
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Maria's body felt weighed down by gravity, too heavy and sluggish to move. Her eyes were locked on the oncoming truck, the sun behind her glinting brightly off of the chrome grill and making her eyes water. Her feet refused to cooperate as random thoughts assailed her, most of them flying by too fast for her to process them. Flashes of memory, moments frozen in time, snapshots of her life… they hit her with the force of a freight train and her only coherent thought was: Is this the way it ends?
As if from outside of herself she watched as the distance between her and the truck grew smaller and even though her mind was screaming at her to move, her limbs remained stationary. She had come so far. She had achieved so much to get to this point and now that she was back in her universe she had nothing left to fight for. Even if she managed to make it back to her friends, what was waiting for them? Khivar's invasion. Certain death, whether at his hands or the hands of those hunting them. She shoved those thoughts away even as her vision seemed to blur from the burning moisture building up as a result of the glare being reflected back at her.
The driver glanced up from tuning the radio and his eyes widened when he saw a figure directly ahead of him. He squinted, familiar with the tricks the sun could play on the eyes as it reflected off of the asphalt and the desert floor. No one would be out walking in this heat, he was sure of that. The figure shifted and shimmered with the heat rising from the road, disappearing for a moment before suddenly becoming perfectly visible.
He slammed on the brakes, the tires squealing and laying rubber down on the asphalt. The gearshift was shoved into park hard enough to nearly snap the lever off of the steering column and the door was shoved open violently. Of all the stupidity! Some stupid woman driver had probably run out of gas, and now she was out wandering around baking in the afternoon sun. His thoughts were a product of his anger for nearly hitting her and his concern for a woman alone out in the desert.
She heard the tires scream in protest as they skidded against the road and then the sound of a door slamming. Angry footsteps pounded against the pavement and she stared at the booted feet as they approached her. What if he was a cop? Oh, God, if he ran her name he would know immediately that she was wanted. She didn't even know what kind of charges the FBI Special Unit had cooked up, but she knew they were actively looking for them. He was getting closer, she could hear the heavy footfalls and knew he was almost on top of her. Think! her mind screamed at her. You need a cover story and you're running out of time!
"What the hell are you thinkin' walkin' around in the middle of the road?!" he shouted as he reached out and grabbed her arm.
Her eyes widened as she was pulled around to face him directly and her heart dropped again. It couldn't be good to experience that sensation too many times in such a short amount of time.
He dropped her arm and stumbled back a step as he took in the woman staring up at him in disbelief. "Maria?" His confusion quickly gave way to anger as he brought himself up to his full height and his eyes took in the longer hair, the ravaged features in a face flushed from the desert heat. It wasn't possible for her to be standing before him in this condition. Not fifteen minutes ago he had left her peacefully sleeping in their bed. His right hand flew up, fingers splayed wide in a warning for her to stay back. "I don't know who the hell you are," he said, shaking his head against the image being projected. Shapeshifters, Skins, some trickery devised by those hunting them… whoever or whatever this was, it wasn't Maria.
Maria took a stumbling step toward him, her heart shredding when he looked at her with such cold, hard eyes. "Michael…"