Viper had assumed that they were going to tie James Kramer up and beat the hell out of him, but that was not the case. James had taken a liking to Hacker and was actually talking to him freely.
“You improved your father's invisibility material.”
James nodded, he passed Hacker his notepad, which was filled with detailed sketches and wild equations. Hacker looked through the book, and found the page he was looking for, the design for the invisibility material that had been used to coat the Russian missiles.
“It's radar resistant, infrared can't see it and it's invisible to the naked eye. It's beautiful.”
Scorpio stepped in, “it's disgusting. That material will kill millions of people.” She waited, expecting to have a response of horror from James but instead he simply said.
“So, you're from the future.”
Hacker nodded.
“And we've come to stop you from selling that design to the Russians.”
“Why would I sell it to the Russians?”
“I don't know, maybe they gave you more money for it.”
James shook his head. “You don't get it. My dad always put me down, said I would never be anything as good as he had been. He said he had contributed to science, to the world but that I never would do that. I guess that hate clouded his view of his creation, you see the Russians, they had the final piece of the puzzle. They had the pattern he needed, but he refused to see it.”
Hacker was listening intently to this, “It's said that they've been working on the right pattern for over a hundred years, ever since the Cold War.”
“The Cold War?” Viper asked.
“A war where neither of the aggressor countries attack each other directly, it was in the 1960s, if I'm not mistaken, American and Russia.”
“I remember reading about that,” Scorpio added, “America drove back Soviet troops and then left the... Vietnamese, wasn't it, to it.”
Hacker shook his head, “history has a way of being written by the victor, but that war didn't really have a winner. The US pushed Soviet forces back but then the Soviets did the same and then the US go again. In the end the country was split in half, and, as you know, still is.” He turned to James, and urged him to go on.
“My dad hated the Russians so much, ever since mum left. She was deported back to Ukraine twenty or so years ago, the Russians control that area now, there was a lot of violence at the time, she was one of the casualties in the take over of Kiev.”
“I'm sorry,” was the instant response from Scorpio.
“I was only one then so, you know,” he wafted his hand back and forth, “no emotional connection. Never knew her. But my father's view of me fuelled my desire to perfect his work, to make it so much better than what his work ever was. If I could do that then I would die happy. And I've almost done it too. They are designing a new power source in South Korea that would be capable of powering the shielding for the material.”
“You need a power source?”
“Of course, without it the material would just rust, or burn up, or something like that, I don't know yet but it was one of the reasons that my father couldn't get his design to work for anything over a metre squared, but with a protective shield over it you can have it as big as you want, even, you know to cover a missile.” His eyes sparkled as the ideas churned in his mind, “and the burning of the rocket fuel, that could power the device itself, it all works out.”
Viper swung his fist back but Scorpio stopped him, “James, you can not go through with this, whatever you do you mustn't sell this design to the Russians.”
Hacker butted in, “what do you mean, the Russians had the correct pattern?” Scorpio and Viper looked lost, they had forgotten about that.
“They do,” James simply said.
“You said they have the correct pattern but your father didn't use it. James, have you used it.”
James smirked, “that's why I'm not selling it. I'm co-making it, my designs, their pattern.”
Viper smacked James round the face with his fist. James collapsed to the floor.
“Oh pure American.” James continued, “thinking violence solves everything. It will soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“I'm finishing my father's work, for my mother. For the Russians. He loved her, you know, but he abused her so badly some days she didn't go to sleep at the end of days because she was already unconscious. Do you know how angry that makes me,” his voice was now a bellow, “do you know!”
“He didn't kill her though, James, that was-”
“The Russians put her out of her misery. I found a box of letters from my mother sent from Ukraine. Unopened. She had started new, said that he needed to seek God, that he was broken. She was happy there. For the first time in a very long time. My father, needs to drink his own poison, and I get off ten million richer. They'll be here any minute, so... it's been nice talking but I have a plane to Moscow to catch.”
Viper hit him again, harder this time, knocking him out. And that was the moment that the door to the room swung open and four men walked in, saw the trio standing over James, added two and two together and reaching into their jackets pulled out four Makarov pistols.
Viper dived to the side behind the stage, as did Scorpio dragging Hacker with her as she went. The first gunshot exploded into the room, shattering the benign, Hacker heard it whiz past his ear and then again as it buried itself into the far wall with a thud, spraying plasterboard everywhere. More gun shots, here and there as the Russian men scampered to find some cover.
Viper reached behind his back and pulled out his weapon from his invisible backpack, Scorpio looked over, “the General said not to use our weapons.”
“Well-” another bullet whistled by, “I'm not going to run and fight these guys with my fists am I!”
Scorpio nodded and retrieved her weapon from her backpack as well, “I'll cover you try and get a vantage point on them.” And with that she turned and fired off a few bullets, switched modes and her gun fired off a wave of energy, a sonar pulse, she glanced down at her screen as the wave bounced back, “four hostiles, down the back of the seats.” She flicked off the sonar and fired a few more bullets just as Viper dived behind the first row of chairs.
Scorpio reached into her bag, pulled out a canister, tore out the tab to it and tossed it towards the the position of the men. There was a buzz as beams of red light shot out from the grenade, then two beeps as two of the Russians were highlighted by the lasers.
Viper poked his head up, gun at the ready, followed one of the two beams and flicking a switch, fired two of his five pre-loaded FMJ bullets through the steps to the stage, there was a yell as a bullet connected and the second silenced the yell.
Then Scorpio brought out a small metallic sphere, and rolled it across the stage, it engaged, motor whirring its sides elongated and it powered towards the other side of the stage. It bounced down the stairs and exploded sending another of the Russians flying, he hit the front row of seats and slumped over them, motionless.
The third Russian poked his head round the side of the chairs and fired off a few shots, splintering pieces of wood around Viper's location. Viper ducked down, one of the bullets skimming Viper's arm. He let out a grimace of pain, swapping his weapon to his other hand.
Then he propped the gun on top of the chairs and fired off a few more shots. “Hacker!” he called out, two more gun shots, “you have anything that could help?”
Hacker's hands were torn away from his ears by Scorpio, “do you have anything that can help us?” Hacker's eyes searched the room as if he could find the answer there, then he nodded, “a stunner.”
“That would work. The other two are behind the chairs.” She pointed to their location as Hacker readied his stunner spike. He inched his way out from his hiding place, arm back, ready to throw. One of the Russians poked their head out, saw the buzzing, sparking spike and shouted to his team mate. Instantly the two men were out and were firing, one at Viper's location and the other at Hacker. In her peripheral vision Scorpio saw James move, then she heard Hacker cry out in pain, she turned, saw the blood spilling from his arm, the spike falling, tumbling to the ground. It hit the floor, spike down and engaged, there was a click and then an explosion of electricity as thousands of volts were sent through the air. Hacker and Scorpio instantly hit the ground convulsing wildly.
The Russians looked at each other, then sprinted in opposite directions, one towards Viper the other to James and helping him up they hurried out of the room with the other man just behind.
Viper finally peeked from behind the seats and saw Hacker and Scorpio still on the ground, they had stopped convulsing and were motionless on the floor. He hurried over to them and put his fingers on both of their necks, no pulse. He looked around desperately for something to help, saw Hacker's backpack and grabbing it, looked through it but found nothing of use. Then he saw the stunner spike still stabbed into the ground. He grabbed it and twisted it, turning the setting from primary strike to secondary, paralysis to stun. Then he stabbed it into Scorpio's chest and sent a wave of electricity surging through her body, her body jumped, she spluttered and coughed and her eyes were flung open. Scorpio was still coughing as Viper let the charge of the spike build up again and then did the same for Hacker, the result was the same.
Scorpio looked around, “we need to get after them. They can't be-”
“They're gone.” Viper said.
He turned to find Hacker tapping away on his laptop, one handed. His face was screwed up, his right arm was limp and hanging by his side. Clumsily he tapped the screen, cursing at the static shock he got from it and then started typing, slowly and inefficiently.
“We need to notify Command.” He said, “they have to be able to do something about this.” He hit the Enter key and sat back, nursing his right arm, “you don't have a Stimpack do you? This is killing me.” He grimaced again.
Scorpio nodded and pulled a syringe from her backpack, pulled off the needle protector and jabbed it into Hacker's arm, making his face screw up even tighter.
“Thanks,” he muttered, as the pain to his arm slowly evaporated. There was a beep as a message from Command came through, it read: try again.
“Try again, is that it?” Scorpio added. “How do we do that? Can we do that?”
Hacker nodded, “nothing really happened-”
“Nothing happened! We almost got killed! Why didn't they tell us about those Russians?”
“How would they know about something which happened hundreds of years in the past exactly?” Hacker placed his laptop back into his backpack and slung it onto his back, then picked up the stunner and flung it towards the back of the room with disgust. “Come on, let's get back to the box, it'll make it easier for Command to extract us.”
“And this time we'll be prepared, right Viper.” But Viper did not answer as he stormed from the room.
The cool down timer was only twenty minutes this time due to the closeness of their time slip. In all they had gone back an two hours. When the timer hit zero they burst from the box, this time they found themselves directly outside the technology block of the college. Together they jogged into the reception area and went straight past the receptionist, “how do you want to do this?” Scorpio asked.
“Our only chance is to kidnap him.” Hacker said. The receptionist was calling after them, asking who they were, what they wanted but the trio did not stop to answer. They burst into MR12, eyes instantly drawn to the front row, to James Kramer. As they made their way over the stage Scorpio took the professor by the arm and despite his protests pushed him into a chair in the front row, then she turned to face Viper. Her eyes widened.
Viper had drawn his weapon and aimed it, right at James Kramer.
Scorpio shouted to stop, just as Viper pulled the trigger. There was a flash, an explosion of noise and James Kramer slumped forward in his seat, his shirt already turning black. Half his head had been blown clean off. And now the screaming started, the running, the crying, the room emptied quicker then before.
Hacker was starring at James Kramer's exposed brain, he turned away and threw up.
Scorpio looked from James to Viper, “what the hell were you thinking?! Kidnap him, that was the plan! Not kill him!” She also turned away, and bent over, hands on knees, “Jesus Christ!”
She turned back and ran a hand through her hair, “what now? Hacker. Hacker! What now?”
Hacker faced Scorpio, he wiped his mouth, “we tell Command the mission is complete.”