The familiar, violent wrench of temporal displacement was no less jarring the second time. At forty-three, my body protested more vigorously against being squeezed through the non-euclidean geometry of the fifth dimension. Eleven more years had passed since my last attempt, eleven years spent as a ghost in my own past, watching my younger self tread the same sorrowful path, fueled by my anonymous breadcrumbs of knowledge. He had launched his machine, his first desperate voyage into the unknown, just days ago in this altered timeline. Now, it was my turn. Again.
Capsule Mark 73, my scarred and faithful vessel, shuddered back into reality, materializing once more in a filthy, shadowed alleyway. The temporal display glowed with the all-too-familiar date: First day, third week of July. Six days. Again.
This time, emerging from the capsule felt different. The world outside didn't hold the desperate, fragile hope of my first return, nor the sharp, agonizing clarity of my second. Now, it felt… muted. Resigned. Like watching a play for the third time, knowing every line, every tragic beat, yet still being compelled to step onto the stage. The vibrant hues of life seemed dulled, the sounds of the city distant, as if filtered through a thick, hopeless fog. I was tired, so deeply tired, but a cold, hard core of resolve remained. Heroic sacrifice hadn't worked. Perhaps something less noble would.
My previous preparations – inconspicuous clothing, a desperate plan to be a human shield – felt naive now, almost pathetically optimistic. This time, my objective was starker, uglier.
My first priority, after ensuring the capsule was hidden, was not observation, but acquisition. The city, once a place of cherished memories, was now just a hunting ground. It took me two days of navigating the grittier underbelly of this past I knew so well, using hoarded cash from my janitorial savings and a carefully feigned desperation, but I found what I needed. A pawn shop with a less-than-scrupulous owner, a back alley deal. The weight of the cold, hard steel in my hand was unfamiliar, unpleasant, yet grimly necessary. A handgun. Simple. Brutal.
I spent the remaining days in a dingy, rented room, the gun a heavy presence on the nightstand. I cleaned it. Loaded it. Practiced the feel of it in my grip until it was an extension of my will. There was no elaborate strategy this time, no intricate dance with fate. The plan was brutally straightforward: find the gunman before he found Rina. Intercept him not with my body, but with a bullet of my own.
I replayed the scene in my mind, over and over. The street. The crowd. His unremarkable face. This time, I wouldn't wait for him to draw his weapon. I wouldn't shout a warning. I would be the aggressor. The pre-emptive strike.
There was no illusion of heroism in this. Only a grim, desperate calculation. If time was a fixed loop, if Rina's death was a cornerstone event, then perhaps the only way to alter the outcome was to become an even more disruptive force, to introduce a variable so violent it couldn't be ignored or absorbed into the existing pattern.
The hope that had once burned so brightly within me was now a low, flickering ember, almost extinguished by the winds of repeated failure. But it wasn't entirely out. This was my last, most desperate gamble. Kill or be killed, not in self-defense, but in a pre-emptive act to save the one person who mattered more than my own soul, more than the fabric of spacetime itself. The thought was a cold knot in my stomach, but my resolve was firm. I would become the monster to save the angel.