“And it looks like it’s gonna be another scorcher,” said the man on the radio, “with highs in the low 90s as we move into the weekend, no end in sight for this freak heat wave. Tomorrow will be a day of somber remembrance for some, as it will be 27 years to the day since the fateful battle which left the world’s premier superhero team–” The man in the driver’s seat turned the radio dial, silencing the announcer. His companion in the passenger seat spoke up.

  “You ever… you know, regret any of these jobs?”

  “Job’s a job. We don’t do it, the Department just sends someone else…” The radio dial arrived at a station pying R&B. The man in the driver’s seat nodded approvingly. “Mmm… Here we go. You like Marvin Gaye, R?”

  “Marvin Gaye’s alright.”

  “Alright?!” responded the driver incredulously. “Shit. Remind me to get you a ticket for his Sexual Healing Tour next time you have some PTO.”

  “Alright,” Agent R replied casually. “Regrets, though, E. You gotta have some… Or at least, like… a job that still bothers you.”

  “Well, there was one,” Agent E replied. “It was the Oswald job. As in Lee Harvey.”

  “Oswald?” said R, incredulously. “I don’t follow.”

  “Well, after our guy got his face blown off trying to correct JFK, they sent me in to mop up Oswald, since Jack Ruby wasn’t gonna do it. And… well, you know what Bobby Kennedy did after that.”

  “Yeah… Wonder why the Department didn’t send someone to clean up Z.”

  “Witnesses already saw him on the grassy knoll. Damage was done. Proof positive of a conspiracy to murder the president. So the papers said. His brother had a lot of people killed after that. Some bad, sure. But a lot of good people, too. You know Malcolm X was one of ‘em?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, Bobby’s guys got to him about six months before it was supposed to go down.”

  “And where was Sirhan Sirhan during all of this?”

  “Where do you think? Dead in a ditch somewhere. He made the list.”

  “Department didn’t send someone to correct Bobby after Sirhan bought it?”

  “After what happened to Z? Department was paranoid about getting anywhere near the Kennedys.”

  “So,” R inquired, “You feel guilty about Oswald because of what Bobby did?”

  “Oswald’s testimony could have proved he was acting alone. Maybe defused some of Bobby’s paranoia. Sometimes I feel like by pulling the trigger on Oswald, I pulled the trigger on everyone Bobby had killed.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people fucked up, E. But that ain’t on you. It’s nobody’s fault. I mean, who could have predicted some star-spangled asshole falling out the fucking sky onto the hood of Kennedy’s limo, catching our bullets, and sering our man in the face?”

  “What about you, then?” asked Agent E. “What’s your biggest regret?”

  “Mine would have to be… the st time they stuck me on Hitler Detail.”

  “Hitler Detail?” E ughed. “I didn’t know they still put people on that.”

  “Hey, don’t fuckin’ ugh, man,” groaned R. “Shit was actually really sad.”

  “Alright, alright. I won’t ugh. Let’s hear it.”

  “So, I’m in Berlin in 1940. Standard patrol, and the order comes down to waste some clock-jockey who’s about to appear in my neighborhood. Normal stuff. Snuff the guy, history goes on as normal.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  “Problem was, when I got to where the target was supposed to appear, I was ready to bag some mad scientist or time-traveling commando. But all I saw was this kid. She couldn’t have been more than 15, 16 years old. Had to be her first time-jump.”

  “And no muscle around? Kid was all alone?”

  “Nobody else there. And let me tell you, as shitty as it felt pulling the trigger on a kid, that’s nothing compared to how it felt when I went to confirm the kill and I saw what she had around her neck. Fucking Star of David.”

  “So?”

  “So, here I am, in Berlin, in 1940, killing a Jewish kid to maintain the status quo in the Third Reich, because I had my fucking orders.”

  “Shit. You put it like that… Damn.”

  “Yeah. Fortunately I got to take it out on an officer when he caught me standing over the body.”

  “Yeah, sometimes the universe gives back.”

  “You’d think a German officer would be a bit more punctual, though. Had to wait around for like 30 minutes for him to show up.” Agent E burst into raucous ughter while a smile came to R’s face.

  “Whew,” excimed E after a minute. “I ain’t had a good ugh like that in a minute.”

  “Real story, by the way.”

  “Yeah, well… don’t go tellin’ it around the office. Our supervisor’s gonna have your ass if she finds out.”

  “Eh, what’s she gonna do?” replied R, dismissively. “It was just one Nazi asshole dead before his time. So she gives me a couple weeks probation and some extra paperwork. Big deal.”

  “You know, ?’s old partner used to say the same shit.”

  “I’m not goin’ deviant, E,” interrupted R.

  “Just sayin’. Happened to him, it could sure as shit happen to you.”

  “Yeah, alright. Hold on…” Agent R spotted a thin young man with red hair, walking out of the apartment complex across the lot. “Is that our guy?”

  “Sure looks like him,” answered E, as his companion retrieved two handguns from the glove box and handed one to him. “Looks shorter in person, though.”

  Agent R retrieved a silencer from his inside breast pocket and screwed it onto his gun. “Alright,” he said, briefly checking his watch. “Let’s make this fast. We got two hours before the nearest Door closes. I know a diner in this neighborhood that makes the best waffles you’ve ever had. Let’s take ‘im out and go get some breakfast before we head back to the Department.”

  “Hold it,” admonished E. “Let’s do this job clean, alright? No civilian casualties. And quiet so the capes don’t show up.”

  “Clean and quiet. I can dig it.” Agent R opened his door and stepped out, using the door to steady his arm as he aimed his gun at the red-haired man’s head.

  “Really? You’re gonna do him from right here?”

  “I can make the shot.”

  “That’s a hundred feet. You’ll never make it.”

  A silenced gunshot rang out, and the red-haired man began sprinting down the sidewalk, fleeing in a panic from the spot as the bullet embedded itself in the wall behind him.

  “I told you,” announced Agent E in a singsong voice.

  “Shut up and get after him,” barked his companion, already sprinting after their quarry. Agent R leveled his arm and let off two more shots, one of which completely missed the fleeing man, the other striking something out of his left hand as he brought it up to his ear.

  A long-haired man in a bck suit chased the terrified Charlie Sincir down the sidewalk. Bullets whizzed by all around him as he approached the corner. He had no idea who this man was or why he was shooting at him on a public street in broad daylight. No sooner had it occurred to him to call the police than he felt a jolt in his hand as a bullet shattered his cell phone to pieces. Now his only hope was to get around the corner and hope there was a good pce for him to hide.

  Before Charlie could even reach the corner, a pale green 1974 Chevrolet Nova jumped the curb and stopped just short of crashing into the wall ahead of him, blocking his path as the driver, also in a bck suit, began shooting at him, somehow just barely missing him as he continued sprinting forward. As if on instinct, Charlie jumped and slid across the hood of the car, making it to the corner and almost tripping as he rounded it.

  “How the fuck did he do that?” shouted Agent E incredulously, as R ran up to the car. “I thought Intel said this guy wasn’t a cape!”

  “He’s not,” responded Agent R, out of breath, as he opened the passenger door and slid into the car.

  “That looked like some fucking cape shit to me, R!”

  “Chill, E,” grumbled R as E backed away from the wall and off the curb and rounded the corner, scanning for Sincir. “It’s just adrenaline. You know, like when scared moms lift cars off their kids.”

  “Wasn’t no fucking adrenaline rush, R! I miss every shot on an approaching target, then the tiny motherfucker vaults over this car like a goddamn Olympic hurdler? He’s a fucking superhero and you know it!” There was no sign of Sincir out in the open.

  “Damn it. He could be in any one of these buildings, man,” compined R. “We’re fucked!”

  “Not yet, we’re not,” replied E, as he put the car in park. “Little bastard’s ear was bleeding. Guess your aim ain’t as shit as I thought. We follow the blood, we nail the motherfucker. And maybe we still got time to get those waffles to go.”

  As Charlie crouched in his hiding spot, he felt warm liquid running down his neck. Dabbing it with his fingers, he realized that the shrapnel from when the guy had shot his cell phone earlier had left him bleeding. It was no longer safe for Charlie to stay in one pce. The bus stop was just up the block. If he moved fast and stayed out of sight, maybe he could get on a bus and lose them for good.

  Charlie took a chance and poked his head out from behind the alley wall, just in time to see the two men go into a convenience store next to the alley. Time to move. Charlie sprinted up the block, his mind racing. He wasn’t anyone important. Not by a long-shot. He wrote mystery comics for a third-rate publisher. Who are these guys, he thought. Are they from a rival publisher? Here to steal his manuscript? Obsessive fans? Who would kill a guy over the first draft script for a fucking three-dolr comic book? Charlie instinctively gripped the strap of his backpack, which he’d been carrying through this whole pursuit.

  Nobody else was there when Charlie arrived at the bus stop. He rifled through his wallet. Twenty, ten, ten, five, one, another five. He checked his pockets. Two dimes. A nickel. Three pennies. Bus fare was what? A dolr and change? Closer to two? Shit. I’ll just give the driver the five and tell him to keep it, he decided. He couldn’t afford the dey that messing around with change would cost him. If they saw him getting on the bus, he was a dead man.

  Agents E and R exited the convenience store and turned right. Next up was the alley. As a bus drove by, Agent R spotted a few drops of blood on the ground behind some trash cans. “Hey, E. He was definitely here.”

  But Agent E wasn’t listening. He looked out of the alleyway, his eyes following the bus–the side of which bore an advertisement for the new History Channel docu-series based on Minuteman’s autobiography–as it pulled up to the bus stop. Time slowed down in his mind as he recalled what happened with Agent Q when the higher-ups began to suspect he was beginning to go deviant. He and his partner were told to rendezvous with Agents B and X in Whitechapel in 1888 for a special assignment.

  ? and B were the only ones to come back from that mission. Casualties during what the many in the Department jokingly referred to as an “exit interview” weren’t exactly uncommon, but to date, this was the only time in Department history when a deviant had managed to slip away using a stolen Pocketwatch, in this case, X’s. A recovery team tracked the former Agent Q to somewhere in the te 1990s, where X’s Pocketwatch eventually turned up destroyed in ‘99. But with the amount of damage it had sustained, its user could have nded anywhere within that temporal ballpark. That destroyed Pocketwatch could have been sitting there for years before the recovery team found it, leaving him plenty of time to slip away.

  In this situation, the blood trail E and his partner were following was much like the Pocketwatch’s built-in tracker. They could follow Sincir anywhere as long as he was still leaving a trail. And Sincir must have also realized that. So what would be his next logical move? Agent E began walking up the sidewalk toward the bus shelter–which was pstered in ads for Blue Moon Jewelers and Midas Technologies’ mPhone–slowly at first, but gradually breaking into a jog. He began sprinting and fired off three shots at the bus, trying to hit the tires, as Sincir hurried out from under the cover of the shelter and onto the bus. Agent R, having heard the shots, ran up to his side.

  “Shit!” yelled Agent E, furiously kicking over a nearby newspaper vending machine, “Motherfucker! We gotta stop that bus!”

  “You want me to bring the car around?” asked Agent R.

  “Fuck no. Nobody drives my car but me. I’ll get the Chevy, you find something else and cut ‘em off.”

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  “S-some guys in bck suits just started ch-chasing and shooting at me on Second Avenue,” the shaken Charlie said into the phone he’d borrowed from a fellow passenger, as calmly and clearly as he could manage, “Uh, a white guy with long hair a-and a bck guy with an afro. Th-they were driving a pale green Chevy. From, like, the ‘60s or ‘70s or something. I got on a bus... I think I managed to lose–” Something big crashed into the left side of the bus, pushing the vehicle across the three-way intersection and pinning it to the front of a building on the other side.

  “Sir? Sir, are you still on the line? Sir? The police have been notified. They’re on their way.”

  Agent E pulled up next to the totaled garbage truck, where Agent R sat behind the wheel, holding a napkin over his bloody nose, which had been broken when the airbag went off. He climbed up and knocked on the remarkably intact driver’s side window. Agent R groaned as he cranked the window down.

  “Clean and quiet, huh?” said Agent E, sarcastically.

  “Fuck you,” uttered Agent R in a muffled voice.

  Agent E hopped down from the garbage truck, silently wondering to himself where the hell his partner had managed to find one on such short notice anyway. He walked past the crumpled, punchable face of Minuteman over to the back door of the bus and pried it open. Not much movement inside. Three civilians with mild to fairly serious injuries, but none of them would die before help arrived. The same couldn’t be said for the driver. E scanned the bus, looking for Sincir’s distinctive red hair. He spotted a familiar gray backpack toward the front of the bus and slowly crouched down.

  Charlie’s head throbbed painfully as he pulled himself to his feet after the crash, just in time to see one of the men in bck–the one with the afro–who he recognized as the driver of the pale green Chevy, climbing up onto the garbage truck that had T-boned the bus. Charlie quickly dropped to the floor and slid under a row of seats against the bus’s right side. He attempted to slow his breathing as the high-pitched ringing in his head quieted just enough for him to hear the rear door of the bus being pulled open and someone climbing the stairs inside. The footsteps stopped just short of Charlie’s hiding spot and Charlie closed his eyes and cupped his hand over his mouth, silently praying to anyone who would listen that it would be enough for him to avoid notice.

  Suddenly, Charlie was seized by the ankles and violently dragged from his hiding spot, down the rear stairs and out of the bus. The man in bck released Charlie’s ankles and he tried in vain to cmber to his feet, before again being grabbed, this time by the back of his shirt, and smmed face-first against the side of the bus. The cold metal of a silencer pressed against his left temple.

  Instead of a gunshot, the man in bck issued a pained yell, underscored by the muted sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bone. Hot red liquid spttered against Charlie’s back and the left side of his face as something big ripped the man in bck limb from limb, sinking sharp teeth into soft flesh with the fervor of a starving beast. Within seconds, the pained cries of the man in bck could no longer be heard, as Charlie fled from the monster’s gory meal.

  Briefly taking refuge in an alleyway, Charlie wiped the blood from his face with his shirt sleeve, before a bck-gloved hand forcibly cupped his mouth from the left as he felt a painful prick in the right side of his neck. The world faded into darkness.