Issac looks at the clock which reads 10:00 P.M. he then anxiously looks at Bill who is enjoying his favorite show. He seems to be quite relaxed, unfazed by the end which is approaching. His calmness makes Issac even more anxious. He looks at him and then at the clock again, finally his patience runs out and he screams, “Why the fuck are you so relaxed? Aren’t you scared of dying? Aren’t you scared of not existing anymore?”

Bill startles a bit and looks at Issac. He can see that he is distressed and is in sweat. He casually turns off the holo-screen and takes a deep breath, “Well, I was scared…for a few days, you know when they told us that our universe is invalid. I wanted to kill myself, and I’m not lying. Then…I put myself in the Overseer’s shoes and my life looked like paradise in comparison. So yeah…I guess you can say that…I have come to terms with the inevitable future…or should I say the inevitable tomorrow?”

Suddenly, they hear a knock at the door. Bill takes his plasma gun out and approaches the door cautiously. He asks, “Whose there?” and after a while she answers, “It’s me Mary. Open the door!” Bill throws his gun on the sofa and opens the door to let Mary inside.

She looks at them and smiles, “Well…I see Bill is relaxed, but Issac…you seem to be troubled. Am I reading your face correctly?” she asks in a soft tone. “I don’t know…I think…I think the Overseer is wrong about me. I can’t be the one to fix this. Look at my life, I have always been the one to fuck things up not fix them. You know that my wife died but did I ever tell you how she died…”

Before he could speak anything else; the Overseer teleports with Anna and David interrupting him. They look at Anna and David with the Overseer and are surprised. “So…are these two going to be trouble?” Bill asked with concern. The Overseer laughed and removed his mask, “No, they aren’t…I just showed them a solid reason why we must end this cycle, why the black hole must be born.” Anna goes to her mother and hugs her tightly. Mary kisses her daughter and looks at David, “I hope you two have accepted your fate…our fate.”

The Overseer looks at all of them and says, “Ah, the gangs all here.” He takes out an old instant camera and asks them to get ready for a photo. Issac stands with Bill, Anna stands with Mary and David and they pose for the picture. A flash blinds them and then a whirring sound comes from the camera. The Overseer shakes the photo and then shows it to them.

“Everyone looks lovely! I…I am going to miss you guys. Tomorrow I will not exist, but at least I’ll be out of this loop, out of this life… free of this guilt I have been carrying for so long.” his voice quivers as he says those words. Everyone looks at him with sadness and then he gives the picture to Issac, “Take it Issac and keep it with you always, Time may fade our faces but…promise me you will never forget about us!”

Issac takes the picture from his hands and starts to tremble, he clenches his teeth and tears start flowing from his eyes. Bill consoles Issac while David goes to the Overseer. After a few moments the Overseer operates his enhancer and just before teleporting says, “Mary wait for my signal…before coming to the facility and…Bill…I think…I think you should go back to Elena and the kids. They would love to spend their last moments with their father.”

He vanishes in an instant and Bill looks at Mary in confusion, “I don’t have an enhancer…how will I…” before he could finish, she takes out an enhancer from her bag and gives it to Bill. He takes it from her and quickly wears it on his wrist. He looks at them and says with a heavy heart, “It was fun…you know…risking our asses for a mysterious man…in hopes of averting the trashy ending of our stories…but little did we know…the end was already decided before the beginning!”

Bill says his goodbyes and teleports back to P: 210. Only Mary, Issac, David and Anna are left at the safe house. Issac gets up from his chair and grabs three bottles of Hawk’s Beer from the refrigerator. He gives one to David who accepts it and they both take slow gulps from the bottle. “So where did the Overseer take you guys?” Issac asks casually.

David smirks and replies, “A really fucked up place, a world where he, Mary, Anna, Bill everyone is dead, and me…well I am a legless man with an artificial back-bone. If I ever wanted to imagine a truly fucked up world, that place would be the definition of it. Anyway, I rather not talk about that place.”

Mary looks at him with concern and says, “Yeah, you better not get into the details of that world. Our situation is already too grim.” David nods and takes a big gulp from the bottle. She looks at Issac and asks, “So, Issac, you were going to tell us how your wife died. I would like to know, if it’s alright with you to share. It’s just…just…something I have been curious about ever since I came to know that my discovery was connected to that event.”

Issac listens to her while his mouth is firmly stuck to the beer bottle. He drinks the whole bottle in a single gulp and nods to her.

“There is a time in our lives when we feel invincible. A time when we are so happy, nothing bad can happen to us. It can be a good job, a dream car or in my case finding the love of my life. I think, Anna and David will agree with me. I still remember the day I met her for the first time, she was dressed in a black gown, her eyes troubled and her face…so…radiant. When we married, my priorities changed. I had only her in my mind. Keeping her safe, I didn’t care if I had to leave my job as a detective to do this. Little did I know, it was me who was a hazard to her and not my job!”

“It was December 11th and it was very cold. The winds were howling and the ocean tides were strong. I had just received a big promotion, from Detective to Head of Department. When I got the promotion letter everyone at the headquarters asked for a party, boy’s night out as we say. You know get drunk, play silly games and win silly prizes. One drink led to another and soon the guys couldn’t recognize each other. I took a few drinks too, nothing I couldn’t handle but I was still a little intoxicated. We decided to call it a night; I paid the bartender and took a cab to my apartment.”

“As soon as the cab dropped me, I looked at my balcony down from the road and started shouting like an idiot, “Mary…my love…I am the happiest man in the world…hell…I am the king of the world!” I only had a few drinks I remember everything that happened. She came out to the balcony and shouted, “Issac…did you drink? I told you not to drink! What’s with all this happy talk? Did you win the lottery or something?”

“I told her that it was a surprise and if she wanted to know she has to come down to the road and take me back with her, “I’m drowning my princess, the water is too high, come down and save your fair prince. Where art thou Mary?” I shouted. I was so fucking silly that night.

“She started to chuckle and replied, “Oh! Issac I don’t know if I should be mad at you or laugh at you. You look so adorable when you are drunk. I also have a surprise for you, let me come down and take you upstairs!”

“She came down on the road and held my hand to take me upstairs, but I stumbled and fell down and she fell with me. We both started to laugh and she said, “Now we are both drowning. I swear Issac; you’ll have to sleep on the road if you ever touch a drink again for the rest of your life!” She held me up but I was too heavy for her to drag, she started to struggle holding me up.”

“And then it happened a moment locked in my head. The moment time slowed down for me. A black van approaching out of nowhere, the headlights were turned off. It was heading towards me but Mary…she saw the van and she looked at me with wide open eyes. She gasped and quickly pushed me to the side but in doing so came in front of the van herself. I saw the van hit her before my head hit the curb and I passed out.”

“When I woke up, it was chaos inside my head. The injury from the curb, the bright sun and the hangover were drilling my brain. I stood up and shook my head to clear my vision and suddenly I remembered something, her eyes, and the fear in them, ‘where art thou Mary’. I looked to my left and saw her body on the ground. A shrill noise inside my ear deafened me, I went to her body and shook her. She…she wasn’t opening her eyes. Her heart…it was…it was stopped. Her hands were cold, she was…gone. I shouted and screamed in agony, I cried but it was of no use! The air was suffocating, my hands trembled and my brain stopped working.”

“A few minutes later, paramedics arrived. Police cars followed soon, the world was silent for me. My eyes were fixed at her body as they put her in a stretcher and covered her body. Her autopsy revealed that she was 4 days pregnant… that was her surprise for me. I had not only killed my wife, I had also murdered our unborn child.”

“I was numb, silent and broken. Jeff helped me through most of the proceedings. Tom and I were never close, he didn’t want his daughter to marry me. He was scared that my profession would endanger her and on that day the little amount of feelings he had for me died as well. I remember putting her coffin in the ground, but in truth I was putting myself with her too. The old Issac Wolfe also died with her that night.”

Tears flowed from Issac’s eyes and he started sobbing. Mary got up to console him, while David and Anna held each other’s hand and looked at him with tears in their eyes. Issac wiped away his tears, gathered up some courage and continued, “We take so many things we have in life for granted, but when they are taken away from us. Only then we realize the importance of what we have lost, I lost my family and myself. From that day, I gave up on myself. It wasn’t worth living anymore.”

“A week had passed and I never left my apartment. Her books, the side of the bed she slept on, her clothes. They didn’t give me a moment’s peace. Her memories kept playing in my head, her black hair, and her radiant face; she was glued to my mind and soul. Even after dying, she was still there inside me. Jeff came to visit and was shocked when he saw my apartment. It was a complete mess, he asked me if I wanted to help with Mary’s case. We still needed to find the driver. Perhaps solving her case would grant me some peace I thought.”

“I took the case and made it the purpose of my life. We went back and analyzed the van. It was badly damaged, after hitting her, it crashed into a store. The forensic team stripped the van for evidence but they didn’t find anything of value. No hair, no fingerprints on the steering wheel. It seemed as if the person driving the van was a ghost. We searched the database for the number plates and found out that it was reported missing. We followed up on this and interrogated the owner. I got out of bounds and injured him during the interrogation; as a result I was taken off the case.”

“I requested the chief to put me back on but he said I was lucky to even hold my badge after the interrogation room bust up. So I decided to investigate privately, Jeff obviously had my back and kept me in the loop. After months of trying, the case was going nowhere, no suspects, and no clues. It was just a wild goose chase. The case was unsolved and was closed and this was the most humiliating thing for me. I couldn’t even solve my wife’s hit and run case, I was such a loser. How the hell was I a good detective?”

“Having failed to solve the case I attempted to kill myself many times but never succeeded. I realized dying in an instant was too good for an asshole like me.”

“I needed to suffer and so I found a way. If I kept drinking this poison and smoking these cigarettes, I would eventually die of cancer or some other shit. But for some fucking reason I don’t. So there you have it, the whole story of Issac Wolfe.”

There was dead silence in the room. Everyone looked sad; Anna hesitated a bit and said, “I’m sorry…Issac. Now that I love someone I can understand what her death did to you, but what if you could go back and find the killer or even stop all this from happening? Would you take a chance and change your life?”

Issac smiled and replied, “Do you know what I wanted to do so badly for a long time? When I came here to your world and saw how easy it was for you to just teleport in whatever time you wished, I wanted to…I wanted to steal an enhancer and do all the things you mentioned. But after seeing the Overseer, I guess I learned that…time is something no one should fuck with. Or else…or else you could lose your wife more than once. Life stuck in a loop, with no way out. I can’t imagine the pain I’d feel watching Mary die again and again! That would be true hell for me!”

As he said this Mary felt a faint vibration on her phone and looked at it with concern.

“AT THE FACILITY”

Leaving them all at the safe house the Overseer teleports to the facility and finds Reed waiting for him, standing near the completed normalizer. “Welcome my masked friend, right on time, we have a lot of catching up to do!” he says as he takes him to his office. The Overseer takes a seat and Reed brings his chair close to him. He pours his drink and also fills the glass for the Overseer. He takes a sip from the glass and says, “Come on, have a drink. We are here to celebrate the completion of the Interdimensional Normalizer.”

The Overseer declines and asks, “I heard some Jeffery Jackson came snooping to you. What was that all about?” Reed takes a sip and answers, “Nothing important, he questioned me if the destroyed van found near the blown up facility was mine. I obviously told him ‘No’. I have to hand it to Dorian; he was smart to use an old gasoline van to abduct Hunter, you know the new cars have a black box. It would’ve been really bad for me if the van was modern. The cops would have taken me in for pointless interrogations but I’m glad it didn’t happen! I told them it probably belonged to the terrorists who attacked the facility.”

The Overseer nodded and asked him with concern, “What about Hunter? Do you think he escaped the facility?” Reed got up from his chair and started to talk while casually walking across the room, “Well…he won’t be a problem. I think Dorian killed him and whoever came to rescue him. You see the explosion was not by some terrorists, it was a result of the self-destruct sequence. My team confirmed it when they saw the radius of the explosion. So I guess here is what happened. Hunter got caught, and his accomplices entered the facility trying to get him out. Dorian was maybe… overwhelmed and decided to destroy the whole place. Don’t worry, Hunter couldn’t have escaped…the time to evacuate was only 10 seconds!”

The Overseer says in a grim tone, “I never apologized to you, it was an unforeseen event. I should’ve been more careful!” Reed smiles and says, “I guess it was necessary, in the end the normalizer is build and I don’t even care if that facility blew up!”

The Overseer quickly asks him in excitement, “The normalizer…how long till you turn it on?” Reed looks at him and grins, “You seem to be more excited than me…it must feel unreal finally leaving this strange world and returning to your own home, tell me something…why couldn’t you just use your enhancer and teleport there?”

The Overseer clears his throat and replies, “I may have been the one in my world to discover time travel, but I am a dumb guy…you see I didn’t save my universe’s frequency in my enhancer. When I teleported to your world I…I couldn’t go back, I had to find some way. This world…the people living here…I hated it all. They had familiar faces but they looked at me like strangers, being alone is the worst feeling and so I jumped forward and fortunately discovered your mother working on her chronoton theory.”

“From that day till now…I have been feeding you all scraps from my research, making it all work behind the scenes, waiting for this day to come when the normalizer will open the rifts and then I will be able to find my home!” Reed listened with interest as the Overseer fed him another one of his lies.

Reed sat on his chair again and exclaimed, “You know the name Interdimensional Normalizer is pretty dumb when you hear it for the first time…if I were you I would’ve called it the ‘Rift Opener’ or the ‘Domination Machine’ gives it a more atomic bomb feel!” as soon as he said this he started to laugh like a maniac, spilling his drink on his coat. The Overseer played along and also laughed.

A few moments later the Overseer asked Reed, “Tell me something, what will happen when your mother comes to know about the things you’ve done to get to this point?”

Reed remained silent for a few seconds and then replied confidently, “I’d tell her that I completed what she couldn’t. I’ll make her realize that she gave up the power to be a God amongst men, the power to control time; and now because of your help not only here but in the infinite number of universes. I shall be eternal, ME…Reed Maximus and Time my fucking slave!”

When he finished his drink he got up from his chair and looked at the Overseer, “Let’s go…it’s time to turn it on and…and be the Gods of time!” The Overseer nodded as he got up and discreetly tapped his enhancer.

His signal reached Mary and she looked at her phone’s screen with concern. She took a deep breath and got up from her seat, everyone looked at her and she said in a grim tone, “It’s time…get in my car…let’s…let’s end this!”