"If I could save time in a bottle…"
By the bathroom sink, an old Aiwa PX1000 Walkman kept quietly doing its job for its only listener, the thin headphone draped across the back of his neck and down one shoulder blade.
"The first thing that I'd like to do…"
Water droplets beaded on the titanium shell, making the player look heavier, like a slab of reactive armor bolted to Bradley after a white-phosphorus round cooked the street corner black.
How many pounds of TNT does one song carry? He glanced at the monochrome LCD: Time in a Bottle. That was the thought that crossed his mind.
It was trying simultaneously to stitch together the few scraps of free will he had left and to scramble the almond-shaped thing in his skull into pulp with perfectly engineered chords.
He'd learned about that little gadget from a TED Talk. The amygdala. Cute name for something that looked like an undercooked chicken meatball.
"Is to save every day, till eternity passes away…"
He wasn't listening for pleasure. Of course not. The Walkman had come out of a junk closet in this safe-house, headphones still wrapped around an empty metal ammo tin.
What he needed was steady, predictable noise, something loud enough to drown out the random artillery that kept going off inside his head, the phantom impacts that slammed into his body without warning.
The feeling of a steel bat taken full-swing to the ribs, legs locking up, falling, lungs forgetting how to work.
"Just to spend them with you…"
He peeled off the medicated patch on his back, then tugged up the grey T-shirt. Among the healed scars under his ribs he found the new strangeness along the left sternal border.
"If I could make days last forever…"
He could see the capillaries blackening with every heartbeat, spreading like mold across pale skin, a patch the size of half a handprint.
He didn't know what it meant yet. Maybe the bioweapon had finally decided to show its face, putting down roots deep in the carcass.
"If words could make wishes come true…"
Maybe his heart had already quit the day he fell from the oil rig into the sea, burning up in the heat plume before he ever swallowed the first mouthful of crude. A dead engine forced to turn over one last time before the pistons snap.
"I'd save every day like a treasure and then…"
Every morning could be the last, John thought. Rejected by death, cursed to keep breathing. The only thing that will kill me is me. But until the tank runs dry, until the very last drop burns, I will not bend.
Not to them. That's what the training was for.
"Again, I would spend them with you…"
He thumbed STOP. The green progress bar froze.
He pulled off the warbling earbuds, let the shirt fall, hiding the railroad tracks of stitches, the proud scabs, the old scars, and the two dog tags that always hung together like Siamese twins.
He met his own eyes in the mirror.
Then he turned, walked into the gutted living room, dropped to one knee in front of the moving boxes full of reports and after-action folders, and started building his wall again under the mountain sunset bleeding through the picture window.
"Bering Strait, ESTU 317256, three container vessels, 2029."
He pinned the redacted op-summary to the bare wood with a red push-pin.
"Intercept arms dealer 'Zaharov', neutralize illicit autonomous warhead system, acquire intel on Far East oligarch deals."
Photo of Zaharov, nautical charts with transaction routes, pinned beside it.
"First mention of bioweapon NMDA-7 in portal comms. Composition and effects unknown."
Next stack.
"B42 Island Prison, Operation Troy, exfil of burned asset with knowledge of NMDA-7 and 'HushMan' program."
Photo of a grim short-haired woman.
"Zaharov's daughter, Irina. War correspondent. Hated her father. Primary source."
Two drone stills: armor husks littering a battlefield.
"Ural Mountains, raid on abandoned military foundry. Thermostatically controlled canisters relocated, 2030."
He tied string between pins.
"Amsterdam: pursuit of Zaharov's lieutenant, interrogation yielded North Sea island cache, yacht decap strike."
Then desert plateau photos, sand-colored.
"Same year: federal prisoner transport downed on border highlands to cover bioweapon transfer. Domestic containment ops. Declassified traceback."
Mugshot of a mild-looking man in an orange jumpsuit holding his placard like a bored academic.
"Alias 'Clockmaker.' Genius IQ. PhD in neuroscience. Ran the network from inside. Owned key HushMan cutouts."
John drove a pin straight through the forehead on the photo, then ringed him with satellite shots of raid sites.
"Multiple overseas trials of first-gen NMDA-7 'enlightenment' agent to groom HushMan leadership."
He connected the major nodes with string until they formed a noose.
"Campania abandoned bridge district, Casablancan desert fort, Augustus Imperial Hotel, Seongbuk neon alleys, Belleville sewers, East Louis slums… joint task-force takedowns."
He hammered the Clockmaker's pin one last time with his fist.
"Metropolis, skyscraper under construction, hostage siege. 350 meters, rooftop to rooftop. One round, dead center the forehead.2032."
He'd stopped the cornered mastermind, but lost the chance to make him talk.
Next, a smoking shopping mall.
"2033: HushMan retaliatory spectacle. 'Destabilization' campaign against the Fog City. Attempt to flood streets with NMDA, drive population into permanent edge-state, collapse civil order."
String, knots, grim face.
"Second-generation private legions stood up, stockpiling in dead zones, planning global upset through black-market channels."
Last folder from the bottom of the box.
"2034: most HushMan cells neutralized by combined task force. While fleeing, leadership bragged to MI5 they had achieved stable NMDA-7 and were moving to mass production."
John stopped tying the final knot, stared at the wall-wide web, head bowed.
"They claimed the agent would birth a superior decision-making species. Billions of nanites deliver pro-drug, activate only when they meet the implanted trigger system, rewrite NMDA receptor patterning, force new cognitive paradigms, and ramp somatic bioelectric output to feed the overclocked brain."
He pressed a palm to the strange bruise over his heart through the shirt.
"2035 intel: 'Gray Horse' fast-ropes onto derelict North Sea rig to secure bioweapon… but the source was burned, they had military-grade kit waiting, industrial centrifuges… why the hell did the briefing stress that centrifuge?"
His pupils pinned.
"They never wanted us to destroy the weapon. They wanted us inside the kill radius."
"The slide vial wasn't payload. It was a switch. Fabric and skin don't mean shit to those bots."
He sagged against the wall, veins standing out on his forehead.
"Only the survivor gets to be the stable prototype…"
In the shadow he whispered, eyes wide, chest burning.
"They knew exactly what story would sell. PTSD was the perfect cover… they just needed to watch how I reacted. All the bait, the leaks, everything, to turn me into a sleeper right under their noses."
He slapped the wall and staggered back, taking in the entire grey storm of photographs and red string.
John H. Hastings clutched his aching heart, knuckles white in the fabric.
"Step one: make me admit I've become their asset.
Step two: expose 'Patient Zero' to the world, or hold it over me, force silence, turn me into the next controllable HushMan."
He looked up, dazed, and heard a voice behind him.
"Unless we get there first, John."
He spun.
An exact copy of himself, black suit, black shirt, unshaven, sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island. He slid a railed STI 2011 Combat Master across the granite until it stopped just short of the edge, until the muzzle kissed empty air.
"You're almost out of time."
The suited version looked exhausted, knuckles purple and split from endless punching. He gave a tired nod.
"Do what you were born for."
John stared at his own face made strangely, perfectly real. Every scar, every divergence in posture felt too authentic to dismiss as hallucination.
He took one wary step forward.
"What is that?"
The other John met his eyes through damp, unkempt hair, solemn as a knight dubbing another.
"Hunt."