“Come to gloat, old man?”
Donell
“Ye were once a better man than this, Phillip.”
“Is that all you’ve come to say?” Jameson sneered. Donell moved into his peripheral. He turned away to his gun bag and reloaded his magazines with more bullets. “Not to beg me to spare lives? To stop? I’ve nearly managed to undo all your work.”
“Ye’re no’ even close.” Donell glanced around the cramped room with its cheap furnishings and stained carpets. Jameson had been living like an animal. Acting like one. It saddened him to see it all come to this when they’d once been so close. “’Twill go on despite what ye’ve done this day.”
Jameson visibly bristled but otherwise carried on with his task. “Then why are you here?”
“To warn ye. They’re coming for ye, lad.” Donell kept his tone even and calm. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the chest of drawers across from the foot of the bed. “I willnae try to stop them. No’ after all ye’ve done.”
“So, what then? You’ve come to watch?” the man taunted him. “See how many I take down before they take me?”
“It willnae matter what ye do, lad. I will see it undone. As I hae many times before,” Donell reminded him. “I will reset the timeline as many times as it takes. Ye willnae win in the end.”
“Then I’ll die in the attempt.” Still Jameson would not look at him. The lengthy section of his comb-over hung down the side of his head, and his tie was askew, his suit rumpled. Hardly the dapper man he’d once known.
Donell wagged his head from side to side, scuffing a booted foot across a black burn in the carpet. “Och, when did ye become such a bitter mon?”
“You know when. I’ll continue to fight until my last breath for it.”
“It disnae need to come to that, lad. Let me take ye away from here.”
“And deposit me somewhere along the way like you did last time we met?” Jameson laughed, bitter. “I’ve been stuck here for twenty years because of you.”
“I did it for the sake of all mankind.”
“You did it to save your own ass!” Jameson finally faced him, fire burning in his eyes. “I’m only here because I tried to stop you. Your arrogance killed my wife!”
“And my own,” Donell reminded him sadly. Defeat sat ill upon him. They’d both lost so much for his quest. They’d both suffered for it. Jameson didn’t see it the same as he. The good of the human race outweighed any personal loss. As painful as it might be, it was true. “Even so, I ken ‘twas the proper thing to do. I’d do it again. Undoing what I hae done might bring Tess back to ye but it would ruin us all.”
The future he’d known, the future he’d come from had been a catastrophe. Man versus machine. Wars that had cost billions of lives and destroyed much of the planet.
Donell’s effort to create a timeline to put an end to the devastation had its own price. Lives saved but others lost in the process. His wife had been one of them. And as a result of her early demise because of the changes he’d made, his beloved child had never even been conceived.
But Donell remembered his daughter, Tess, as an echo of that altered life. Just as Jameson, who’d initially worked side by side with him, retained the memory of Donell’s daughter. Jameson’s wife.
While Donell mourned the loss with all his heart knowing that was how it must be, Jameson had been unable to move on. Determined to undo all they’d done to save the world. Undo the changes Donell had put in place.
Changes that ensured the existence of one woman who would become the savior of a future earth.
Hugh and Claire’s child was just the beginning. From that babe, a better future became possible. He’d seen it. Orchestrated it.
One life saved to birth a new generation of invention needed to prevent tragedy.
One life to make the changes the future world needed to carry on.
One life secured to save the lives of so many.
It was worth the sacrifice he’d made, whether Jameson acknowledged that or not.
Jameson sneered at him. “I knew the moment Mark-Davis came up with a working time portal—primitive as it was—something wasn’t right. No one else was even close to such a breakthrough. I know. I’ve been tracking it all for years. I should have expected from the get-go you had something to do with it. It stinks of you and your fucked up fairy tale mission.”
“’Tis nae fairy tale, lad. We made mistakes. We all did,” Donell tried to change Jameson’s mind again. “We were the ones who made the annihilation of our way of life possible to begin with. We did it. I was the only one who kent we had to fix it. Whatever the cost.”
Jameson chuckled humorlessly. “So, you set me down in the middle of a nightmare I couldn’t escape. Did you think I wouldn’t continue to fight you?”
