Gacha God: The Inherent Benefits of Time Travel (ch. 7) (Patreon)

I stood in my Cave of Wonders and realized that I needed to take inventory, because it went from completely empty to being a goddamn mess over the course of… well, a day, but several dozen timelines. There were just piles of weapons tossed around haphazardly, no method of sorting to organize them. So, it was time to take inventory in preparation for my next adventure of ripping off a gang. Or a couple of gangs. Or maybe all of them. I’m not particularly picky.

To start with -- I had two hundred and thirty-three comic books, a hundred fiction novels, and sixty-six non-fiction. They were neatly arranged on a few bookshelves that I had brought into the Cave of Wonders. I read a lot on account that staring at my phone screen watching youtube videos for hours on end hurt my eyes and killed my battery. I had a duffle bag next to the shelves that contained additional sets of clothes, including the ones that I wore as Audacity.

The rest of the cave was a cluster fuck. Sorting through it revealed that I had fifty of the thin alien rifles and twenty-five of the larger ones. A hundred of the purple glowing rocks that the aliens used to power their speeder things and as grenades. A pretty decent arsenal. In terms of human equipment, I had twenty pistols that ranged from 9mm to a 44 Remington Magnum, and one desert eagle. Thirty-three assault rifles. And one M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun with several thousand rounds.

That last one seemed like a bit much, but still pretty cool.

The real stars were my glowing blue cube -- always a pleasure to look at -- and my scepter, which was propped up on the outcropping that I set the Tesseract on. My ATs were kept with my clothes while my yoyo remained on my finger, attached by the silver ring. The Ultra Divine Water, however, was kept with the five doses of the drug that Peter had created. Each one was taken from a past me that I murdered to ride out the effects and to secure my place in the timeline.

“Each dose is a gamble,” I reflected on what Tony had said, leaving the Cave of Wonders to toss myself onto a bed in an apartment I found. Taking a single cup full of the Divine Water had essentially doubled my strength and endurance. By my calculations, there were about sixteen cups worth of Divine Water left in the urn. I could only imagine where I would end up by the end of drinking all of it. But, for now…

I grabbed a syringe that was filled with a murky-colored fluid. Squirting out a little, I grabbed a rubber strap and tied it around my arm before mainlining the substance. Tossing the syringe to the side, I then went to the cup of Divine Water that I had prepared for this and knocked it back. It tasted like normal water, I thought, and not for the first time. It might have been tap water to my knowledge.

Then the burning sensation in my gut started when the water settled in my stomach. I groaned, feeling the feeling of fire spread up to my chest, traveling through my veins, and it felt like an open flame had replaced my heart. I laid back, a hand on the Time-Turner just in case I needed it. I already prepared a note for past-me when he came to the same conclusion -- basically telling him if he was still alive, then the Divine Water was a bad idea. Leaving me to lay where I was, staring up at the ceiling while sweat poured off of me.

During the first hour, there was only the sensation of fire flowing through my veins. My sweat stank and it wasn’t a mistake I was going to repeat because it had soaked through my clothes last time. This time, the blankets and sheets quickly began to stick to me when they were soaked through. I couldn’t move, I could hardly blink, I could only lay there and wait for the clock to tick down.

The second hour was more manageable, but everything still felt pretty terrible. The burning sensation lessened and I could make fumbling movements, like grab a water bottle to make sure I didn’t die of dehydration. The third was when my limbs felt like they had some semblance of strength and coordination greater than a newborn baby. The fourth is when the fire lessened to the point I could move around.

By the fifth hour, I was left exhausted, but alive. My entire body felt like a massive pulled muscle, completely sapped of its strength. It was only then that I flipped my Time-Turner five times, winding back the clock, but unlike most of the time when I used it, there was no past me that formed. That was because we occupied the same space, so I just overwrote the past-me entirely. At least, that’s what I figured was happening. Not entirely sure, really.

The only other quirk of time fuckery was that the Time Turner couldn’t work in the Cave of Wonders. Just like how I couldn’t dupe items, my items seemed to be timelocked. Sadly.

I laid still for another hour, just recovering from the experience. Ended up falling asleep for three hours in the process. But, once I woke up, I felt the strength in me as I stood up. My muscles were heavily defined and pronounced, not quite bodybuilder levels of buff, but my body looked like it might as well have been chiseled from marble. I would take the time to admire myself, but I could smell myself -- there was an imprint of brownish-black sweat on the bed that I had been laying on. It smelled like shit, and I had to smell worse.

Luckily, my Golden Beetle had flown into an apartment that was left unlocked. In Hell’s Kitchen. If they didn’t want me coming in and stealing a shower, then they should have locked their doors like everyone else. Seriously, it's like they wanted me to come inside. Heading to the bathroom, I flipped on the shower and went about cleaning myself.

One shower later that left me smelling of roses and lemons, I felt refreshed. My clothes felt like a bit of a tight fit, though. And I think I was taller? It was a little difficult to say, but I’m sure I would find out exactly how much my body changed with a second dose soon enough. “That stuff is the mother of all steroids,” I muttered, heading out of a modest apartment. Wasn’t great, but there sure were a lot of worse apartments in the area.

My phone rang, and I saw it was Ned. “Sebastian speaking,” I said, heading down some stairs with the phone in one ear.

“Sebastian! So, uh, you know what we talked about?” Ned asked, speaking in a low whisper as if someone was going to overhear him. Not sure why he bothered. The NSA definitely was listening in. If not Shield.

“Hard to forget. Make any progress on your end?” I asked him, thinking it would have been pretty fast. I had no real way of telling how good of a hacker Ned was, but he apparently got into Shield, so that was something.

“Uh, no. The opposite, really. Well, not the opposite -- that would mean they hacked into me. Basically, I was calling to ask you to see if you knew… how I would start hacking into the Russian Mafia?” Ned asked me as I reached the bottom of the stairs, making me pause on the last step.

“Huh,” I muttered, taking the last step and leaving the apartment building. That was an issue that I didn’t anticipate. “I have no clue,” I admitted to him without missing a beat.

“Seriously?” Ned asked, sounding disappointed and I checked the clock. It was twelve-fifteen in the afternoon. Midday.

“It’s not like I brush elbows with gangsters and members of the mob,” I pointed out to him. I was a bit of a nomad. As much as the term applied when I stayed in the same city for the past year. Each part of New York was its own beast. I did know up in Harlem, a major league gangster named Cottonmouth was bumping off his competition. But, the rest of New York was a mixed bag.

Some gangs slapped their tags on their territory liberally, making sure everyone and their mother knew exactly who it belonged to. They postured and flexed to scare any other gang off and to beat people down to the point they wouldn’t bother trying to push back. Others, not so much. In this day and age, being smart about organized crime was every bit as important as having the biggest guns and numbers. And as technology advanced, making it more difficult to get away with crime, the smart play was to go quiet. That way the Man wouldn’t know that there had been a crime at all, thus no reason to look.

“To my knowledge, Hell’s Kitchen is divided up in a clusterfuck. Some parts belong to the Italians, some to the Russians -- I think we have Yakuza too, for some weird reason. Then there’s the normal hodgepodge of major gangs like the Bloods or Crips. Below all of that, you have the street-level punks. But, you only learn about that stuff by dealing with them directly or being a native,” I told Ned. It wasn’t like the Russian Mob would have conveniently placed signs marking out their territory. If they did, then they wouldn’t have been as established as they were.

“Okay… so how do we start?” Ned asked me, and that was the question. I pursed my lips, striding down the street. “I thought I was just going to, like, hack into their mainframe or something and find their offshore accounts to drain. But, I don’t even know what I should be looking for. Or who.” That was an issue.

“Eh, I’ll just find a member of the mob and shake him down for some names,” I decided. I had a feeling that this was going to be another of those long days. The ones that involved dozens of timelines where I was steadily mapping out an entire organization. Which led me to a thought. “I think we should probably take them down. Completely,” I decided.

There was a beat of silence from Ned, “That sounds so cool. We’re going to take down the Russian Mob? That’s so cool.” That's why I liked Ned. The guy was the textbook definition of a best friend -- completely down for anything at the drop of a hat.

“Might as well. It’d be a huge pain in the ass if they decided to chase after us because we took their money. Better deal with them all now so we don't have to deal with them later." Pretty iron tight logic, really. I didn't think the Russians would be able to trace it back to me, but they might be able to. Like if Shield or one of the other alphabet agencies eventually found me, my name could get out there, the Russians would discover it was me, and they could go on and do something extremely stupid like coming after me, Peter, or Ned.

No. Better deal with it now before it could become a problem later. "I'll give you a call when I find something out," I promised Ned before I headed into a bookstore. Ending the call, I was greeted by the scent of old books and paper. The store looked like it hadn't gotten a customer in the past decade. I grabbed a blank journal and paid for it with the same stolen cash that I had lifted from Midtown along with a pen. I cracked it open before making a tally to mark the timeline, then the time checkpoint that we would be using.

And so began my hunt for the Russian Mafia.

"Hey, you," I spoke up, going to a random pedestrian that was walking down the street, latte in hand, and half ready to flee the moment I spoke up. "I'm looking for the Russian Mafia. Could you tell me where they are?"

…

The neat thing about the mafia? They had ears everywhere. Spy networks were a lot less involved than people tended to think. Sure, you had real spies in the world, swearing allegiance to one group while holding another in their hearts. Those were Spies, capital S. But those were rare. To my knowledge, at least. Took training and a belief in the cause and so on and most people didn't have that in them. No, spy networks were more… mercenary, I suppose the easiest way to describe it.

People who had information, who understood the value of it, would want a payday for it. A group -- the Mafia, the government, a corporation, it didn't really matter, would make themselves available to pay for the information. Maybe they would keep someone on retainer if they were in an important enough position. But, most people weren't in important positions. Homeless people were probably the easiest to work because if it meant a decent meal and a leg up to make tomorrow easier, they'd kick in doors to be the first one to spill news that they thought someone would pay for.

Such as the teenager asking literally everyone he saw on the street if they knew where he could find the Russian Mafia.

Very conveniently, I didn't need to find them. They found me. "Is there a reason you have been looking for the Mafia?" I heard from behind me in what probably was the thickest Russian accent that had ever existed. Glancing over my shoulder, letting another random civilian that I had been accosting for information slip away, I saw it come from a man decked out in Adidas track wear.

He was accompanied by another man wearing a tank top with a leather jacket and tracksuit pants. Both of them had a couple of mean mugs -- unshaven cheeks, a few scars, crooked noses that told me they were used to having them broken, and hard eyes. I turned around to face them both, squaring my shoulders.

"I need a loan," I told them bluntly, mostly to get it out of the way. It'd be easier if they invited me into the front door the first go around -- I could get names, and maybe find where they keep the money, so I would have more points to reference the next go around.

That got a smirk out of one of them, "A little young to be borrowing money, yeah?"

"We all gotta start sometime. I'm just getting an early start," I shot back. "Look, I need a loan. The kind that I'm not going to get from a big bank on account that I'm 'legally a minor' and other shit. I doubt that the mafia's going to have those kinds of hangups, so you tell me, Igor -- am I wasting my time or not?" I asked them, stepping forward and puffing out my chest. No fear. But, that's not what they would see.

Standing up to gangsters wasn't normal. Only two people really did it. The ones that weren't afraid, or the ones that were trying to seem like they weren't. The latter was far more common than the former. Enough so that the newly dubbed Igor offered a faintly amused smirk before he glanced at his partner, who offered an amused shrug.

Igor leaned forward, his nose nearly touching mine, "I believe we could be of help to you…"

"Sebastian," I told him my name.

He gave a rotten smile that spoke nothing but ill intent, "Sebastian. Please, follow us," he instructed before he stepped back, gesturing to the single most nondescript car I had ever seen. I felt like I was going to forget about it even as I looked at it. Interesting. Offering a nod, I followed them into the car and got into the back seat with the other Igor seated next to me. "How much do you wish to borrow from us, Sebastian?"

"A hundred thousand," I answered, tossing out a number. That made the second Igor look surprised.

"And what are you going to do with a hundred thousand dollars?" The first Igor questioned as he started up the car and joined the flow of traffic.

"I was thinking I was just going to roll around it naked. Make it rain. If I could get it all in singles, that'd be great," I responded. I was expecting a rebuke, but when second Igor reached to his side and pulled out a pistol, I thought that was a bit much for a joke. I looked down at the pistol, then up to second Igor, my expression not so much as twitching. "The safety is on. You should probably flick it off if you're trying to scare me."

"Ha!" First Igor laughed from the front seat, "You don't scare easily, Sebastian. This is good news for you. Truth is, we do not care what you intend to do with the money so long as we see a return on it. You being a minor is a complication to that, but arrangements can be made," First Igor stated.

That caught my attention. "Sounds like I'm getting the loan, then?" I questioned.

"That is not for me to decide," First Igor replied. "We are simple delivery men," he added when we came to a stop. Second Igor put his gun away, but he kept a close eye on me when I got out of the car in front of a gym. I glanced down the road to see that we were on the corner of 43rd and 10th. Still in Hell's Kitchen territory. Couldn’t tell what the gym was called given that it was written in Russian. Might as well be scribbles to me.

Walking around the car, I spared a quick glance at the license plate before following first Igor  with second Igor directly behind me to make sure that I didn’t get any ideas like running. The gym was pretty simple. YMCA had way better facilities. It stunk of BO and air freshener, a number of men working out but every single one of them sat up when we entered, eyes on us. All jacked up to the gills.

The Igors led me to a back office where two men were waiting for us after they frisked me to make sure that I wasn’t wearing a wire. One was an older man -- squarish face in his mid to late forties with dark hair cut short, wearing a simple chain, and he had hard flat eyes. The other man was younger, early twenties. Possibly late teens. He leaned more towards the scrawny side and his hairline showed signs that it was receding already. Still, he squared up, leaning against the wall when I was all but shoved into a chair.

The guy behind the desk didn’t say anything, just staring at me, so I took a moment to look around. It looked cheap -- fake hardwood walls that had no decorations of any kind, the floor was laminate. Easy to pull up and replace in case a blacklight was shone on it and you wanted to hide how much blood had been spilled in this office. The Igors were behind me, standing on the other side of a thin door that was made out of plywood. The cheap and easily breakable kind.

“Do you understand the position that you are in?” The guy behind the counter asked me, his tone flat and even. It sounded like it would intimidate most people.

I pursed my lips, looking at him, “Completely surrounded by people that probably aren’t happy with the fact I was asking for them. This office looks like it gets renovated pretty often to hide all the bloodstains. Oh, and I’m guessing you're one of the bosses for the Russian mob since I doubt that I’m getting the red carpet rolled out for me,” I ventured, interlocking my hands in my lap, idly rolling the ring I had on my finger.

The man across from me grunted, “Good. Why have you called for us then?” He asked me, leaning into his chair, looking right at home. He wasn’t what I thought a proper mobster would look like, but I guess standards had slipped since the forties and fifties. Way back when it was sharp suits and slicked-back hair.

“I need a loan,” I said, sticking with my lie. “A hundred thousand dollars. I was told that if I wanted that kind of money on the down low, I could turn to you.” I said, lying through my teeth. I did notice that Igor three, the one behind the desk, didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the figure. So, that could be promising. Or it could be a stereotypical Russian tough man thing. Not sure.

“And what kind of collateral are you offering in exchange for such a large sum?” He asked me without missing a beat.

I considered it for a moment before I went with my gut. “I got an extra kidney that I’m not using,” I answered. Maybe I should have tried to arrange a gun deal with the alien tech? Eh, I could do that next go around when I had a little more ammo, so to speak. Right now, I needed locations, names, and ideally, where they kept the money.

Igor three pursed his lips in consideration, “Truly, you must be desperate if offering organs is your starting bid.” He remarked, a deadly edge in his tone. I didn’t like him. I could feel it. Him being a gangster didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t like him because of who he was -- someone with power who used it to make themselves feel powerful. That's why he was a loan shark. I’m sure that the money was nice. But, I’m betting for him, seeing people squirm as they offered up what they had, so desperate that they came crawling to him, was better than the money.

“Something like that,” I told him, offering an uncaring shrug. “Do we have a deal?” I asked him and he was silent for a moment at that, seemingly considering it.

“We do,” he decided, and that was way too easy. Way, way, way too easy. “We do not keep such a sum on site. Instead, you will be brought to it.” He said, lying through his teeth, but to an unwitting and desperate fool, it might have sounded like the truth.

“Well, glad that we came to an agreement so easily,” I said, standing up and offering Igor three a pleasant smile. He returned it but it didn’t reach his eyes when he offered a hand to shake. I clasped it, pretending that I didn’t know what was up. Wherever they were taking me, there wouldn’t be money, but it would be another location I could work with. Maybe some kind of torture chamber or something.

“I am as well,” he responded before I was led out. Igor three shared a very pointed look and gave a nod to Igor one and two, who returned the nod. It seems that whatever they decided to do with me was decided before we had even met. Did they want to make an example out of me? Seemed a bit much for bothering random people with questions about the Russian mob.

With the deal struck, I was put back into the car with Igor one and two. “So, where are we going?” I asked, mostly to make conversation. I didn’t expect an answer.

“Dead drop. Money has been taken from our stores and will be taken to where we’re going. We will go with you there, then home to make sure that you aren’t robbed on the way back. Dangerous city we live in,” Igor one responded, lying so well that I almost believed him. Because of that, I figured that the process he just described was real. It just wasn’t being applied to me right now. So, they had a vault. That was interesting. I could work with that. If I was going to rob the mafia, I wanted to take all of their hard assets too -- cash, weapons, drugs, the whole nine yards. Clean them out before sending them away. Either to jail or the morgue. Couldn’t care less which one.

“Cool,” I responded, my tone aloof as I looked out the window. We were heading to the Hudson River. One of the piers. The dense housing was replaced by warehouses, half of which looked abandoned long before aliens had attacked New York. Some of them looked better than my current building, though. Maybe I should consider moving? Might be nice to have a place to myself without neighbors screaming all of the time.

We came to a stop at the docks -- an unloading area from the looks of it. There were shipping containers lined up and stacked high, one of those crane things to pick them up and put them on trailers for eighteen-wheelers. The space between them was fairly narrow, I noticed, but the loading ramp was clear. Except for a shipping container that was left open with a few guys situated around it.

The car came to a stop and we all got out. Counting the Igor twins, there were six guys. Three acted as guards with weapons, one was a black guy that was trying really hard to pretend that he didn’t have something shoved up his sleeve. He wore a pleasant smile, his hands clasped in front of him and it only grew when we neared, the Igors behind me every step of the way.

I smelled it before I reached the opening and I realized exactly what I would see when I stepped in front of the opening. A group of women were inside, huddled to the back, clinging to each other. They were absolutely filthy, appearing like they had been out clubbing because some of them were wielding high heels defensively. “Human trafficking, huh? So, I’m guessing that I marked a checkbox for some sick freaks fetish? Is it the underage thing or was it my fantastic ass?” I asked, looking to the guy in front of me who now openly wielded the cattle prod that he had up his sleeve.

“Can’t rightly say,” he responded, shrugging his shoulders like it meant nothing to him. “You’re a bit of a last minute addition. We were about to ship this lot off to… somewhere. Guess you’ll find out. So, you gonna step inside the easy way? Or the hard way?” He asked me, pressing the button on his cattle prod, the weapon sparking to life with a cackle. I looked him straight in the eye and he saw it.

The complete absence of fear.

“The hard way,” I told him, the Eye of Cthulhu appearing in my hand before I flung it forward at him. I had only ever used it on aliens and Loki, who was a god. I wasn’t quite sure what the result would be when the yoyo slammed into his chest, but he looked like he was hit by a truck. His ribcage shattered, completely bent inward, while flesh tore. With a flick of my wrist, I sent the yoyo at two of the guards, missing them both, but it didn’t matter.

While the yoyo punched through the metal of the shipping container, the phantom yoyos slammed into the two. Bone shattered on contact, breaking one’s legs while the other took one to the arm and ribs. Bullets rang out as I dove away, flicking the yoyo back as the area I once stood was sprayed. Rolling to my feet, I flicked the yoyo out, hammering the two Igors and taking them out of the fight before whipping my arm to the side and the yoyo slammed directly into the chest of the gunman standing on top of the shipping containers.

My side hurt- “Ah, fuck,” I cursed, realizing that I had gotten shot. My hand went to it, and then my back to find an exit wound. That was annoying. I was going to bleed out twice as fast. Fuck. “Oh, I’m going to make you all suffer in the next timeline,” I swore, approaching Igor one, who clutched his shattered leg that was holding on by loose skin.

“You’re- you’re Audacity,” Igor breathed, sweating bullets. Didn’t look like he was going into shock, though. That was convenient.

“That’s what they call me,” I told him, striding up to him and spinning my yoyo until it swished through the air. “I’ve just been calling you Igor this whole time in my head. You got an actual name?” I asked him, coming to a stop. The man licked his lips.

“Ivan Sidorov,” he answered.

“Ivan,” I repeated. “Actually, you got a wallet on you?” I asked him, feeling blood start to spill down to my waistline. What an absolute pain. Really botched this go around. “An ID?”

“Y-yes?” He said, his one hand going to his pocket. With shaking and fumbling fingers, he handed it to me so I could see how to spell his name. Ov instead of ev. “W-Will you take me to hospital?”

“Hm? Uh, no,” I told him, dashing his hopes. “Nothing personal, but, you know. You did try to sell me and one of your boys shot me,” I told him, knowing that at the very least, Ivan would be a paraplegic. Odds were that he was going to die in short order because of blood loss.

There was no remorse to be found in my heart. It was just like I told MJ’s dad -- Violence was a two-way street with me. You got what you gave. If you were trying to kill me? Then I would put you in the dirt without a second thought. If you came at me armed with a pillow for a good, ol’ fashioned pillow fight? Then I’d get to fluffing my own pillow. Simple as that.

“You lot can come out now,” I spoke out loud, going for the other- well, I guess he was Igor one now. Though, upon grabbing his wallet, I learned that his name was Andrei. He didn’t look like an Andrei. “You’re free to go,” I said, spotting one of the girls that had been trapped cautiously leaving the shipping container. When our eyes met, she went still like a deer in headlights. It lasted all of a split second before she sprinted out of the container, leaving the others behind.

That motivated the others to start beating feet, fleeing the container without saying so much a word. From the sounds of it, more than a few of them were crying as they ran away on bare feet. I didn’t expect anything more. They went through a whole ordeal. Hopefully, another me could make sure that they didn’t get scooped up again. For now, though, I focused on getting the IDs from the dead gangsters -- The black guy was Turk Barrett, and the others were Russians, through and through.

I jotted down a note of the shipping container that the girls were in, getting the number and a brief description of it. Blood started to soak into my pants and boxers when I grabbed the automatic rifle that the guards had been using and tossed them into the passenger seat of the car we drove up in. I did find a medical kit in the glove box, which let me apply a bandage. I was still bleeding out, but I wouldn’t have to do it with wet ass.

Putting the car in reverse, I left the docks and retraced the steps to the gym. Thankfully, the sidewalks weren’t too occupied, so traffic was light for me. Blood soaked into the wheel and into the cheap leather of the seat when I pulled up to the gym. My head started to feel fuzzy, but the adrenaline that was leaking out of me was enough to give my mind focus. It was going to suck when the adrenaline fell off, though. Mostly on account that a raised heartbeat would only hasten my bleeding out.

“Here we go,” I muttered to myself, popping the door open with a rifle in hand before I took aim at the front of the gym and started opening fire. The glass shattered into a million pieces immediately, falling to the ground as I walked forward with the gun bucking against my shoulder. I fired in short bursts, taking aim at the men in the gym. It wouldn’t do to blind fire. I didn’t have that much ammo.

For a bunch of gangsters, they did seem underprepared for a sudden gunfight, I found when I dropped thirteen bodies with little difficulty. People were screaming behind me, panicking at the sound of automatic gunfire. Flicking the magazine out as I entered, I then slid a fresh one inside. Taking aim at the office, I blindfired into it -- going high, then low, recalling where the cover would be in the office.

The door was mostly splinters by the time I knocked it down, revealing that I had killed Igor two and Igor three. Well, Igor two was still alive, bleeding out through a few bullet holes in his gut and chest. He was fading fast as he groped for the younger man that had been with him. “Y-y-you,” he rasped out, his eyes hateful when I started digging into his pockets. Igor two was revealed to be Kazan Konchevsky. “Yo-u-”

“If you have some final words, you better get them out fast,” I said, discovering that Igor three was Sergei Konchevsky. A son? Nephew? Eh, didn’t matter.

“You’ll… suffer… for this…,” Kazan rasped out, sounding unfocused. Dying would do that to you.

“No. You’ll be the ones suffering for this,” I told them, straightening up. I took a moment to empty the gun into him, splattering blood over my pants and shoes. Probably not the best idea, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t satisfying. A groan escaped me when I tossed the weapon to the side on the floor and I started heading for the door. My body felt light, telling me that I had lost too much blood already. Maybe my next dose of the Divine Water could fix that because this sucked.

I left the building just as the sirens started, telling me that the cops were responding. I stumbled into a back alley, my legs starting to go a bit stiff. Sucking it up, I forced myself to move down the alley and towards the apartment that I had broken into. It must have been a sign from God, or some other deity because it wasn’t far away. And it had to be divine punishment because I had to make my way up a shit ton of stairs to reach the room that I had been in.

“You better make this right, past me,” I muttered, twisting the time turner. Now, the clock read just before I had left. Opening the door, I heard the shower running, telling me that past-me was inside it. That, and the singing.

Limping into the bedroom where the singing was coming from, I set the journal down along with a pile of the IDs that I had taken. I scribbled out a rough address of the gym before I settled down, my skin going cold and my body felt so light. A hand reached into my pocket, snagging my last cigarette and I fumbled to open the lighter.

The cigarette was soaked through with blood, I realized…

But it tasted sweet all the same.

…

“-how I would start hacking into the Russian Mafia?” Ned asked me as I reached the bottom of the stairs, making me pause on the last step.

I opened the journal that was marked with a future me’s blood that had a number of IDs inside of it.

“I have a few leads.”