Do-over

The first time I killed Michael Dorn, I was mistaken. The second time, I had no other choice.

That's the trouble with time travel, you see. It's not like when you're playing a game with a couple of your buddies from school and you screw up, and you can just yell, "Do-over!" and it all goes away.

I wish it was. But it's not.

I'm a cop, and I'm proud of the fact that I did the whole "protect and serve" thing for eighteen years without ever firing my gun.

Until that August night at Depot 23-B underneath Wickham Street. We'd been tracking Michael Dorn for three weeks and we were sure, I mean totally and completely sure, he was heading to the subway station to take possession of some heavy duty explosives.

We had Dorn pegged as a rogue sleeper agent. We'd intercepted a coded transmission that seemed to say he'd been activated and all our intel lead us to Depot 23-B that night.

I went down those steps with gun drawn, and - I won't lie - I was pumped up, ready for anything. These hybrid terrorists were nothing to fool around with and I, for one, was ready to punch a hole right through him if he even looked like he was going for one of those sick neutrino-guns they all carried.

We'd quietly thinned out the usual rush hour crowd and just about everyone on the platform was a cop in disguise, most of them packing heat. But it was my operation, and my call to make.

So I waited, and I watched my guy stand there waiting for the train.

He watched the first train come and go, and he seemed to be getting more and more nervous. The second one came and went, and he started really bugging out: pacing back and forth, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

I was getting a little nervous myself. If he didn't take possession of the stuff, we had nothing concrete to nail him with. We needed him to make a move.

Finally, the third train came, and sure enough, a black guy in a dark suede jacket came off the train, strode across the platform and dropped a suitcase off not five feet from where Dorn stood looking around.

It was a textbook dropoff, and I knew we had him.

Until he turned the other way, and started walking.

He took three or four steps, with a platform full of plain-clothes cops staring with their jaws on their chests, then he suddenly whipped around and shoved his right hand under his jacket like he was reaching for something fast.

The universe stopped for a millisecond.

I leveled my gun and squeezed off three rounds just like I'd been practicing for my whole career: two in the head, one in the chest. Kill shots. No second chances.

He went down like a lead weight and the universe started up again.

I was being congratulated, clapped on the back by guys I knew and respected, when one of them decided to take a look at Michael Dorn.

His inner jacket pocket contained one train ticket, dated for that night, for a train bound for Depot 23-C. And nothing else.

No neutrino gun. No incriminating evidence of any kind. The suitcase contained a newspaper and a date book. It's owner told us later that day that he had set it down without thinking about it as he was looking around for a bathroom.

Bottom line: it looked like I shot an unarmed man for no other reason than that he realized he was on the wrong platform right at the moment my trigger-finger was itching the worst.

To make a long story short, I spent the next few weeks in and out of hearings and interviews where the IA spooks tried to figure out what the hell happened. When it all panned out, I wasn't charged, but I was on leave for a while because I wasn't handling it really well inside.

I couldn't get Michael Dorn's face out of my mind. In the moment just before I pulled the trigger. The shocked look when he saw the gun. The surprise turning to a cringe of fear before everything stopped for good.

I couldn't sleep. I had no appetite. I felt nervous all the time, like someone was watching over my shoulder every minute.

Finally, I went to the Institute and I plunked down just about every dime I had to buy a trip back in time.

I don't understand the science, so don't even ask. All I know is this: if you've got the cash, and I mean a boat load of cash, you can buy yourself a trip to anywhere you want to go in the past.

Rich folks use it like a unique vacation because they can set it up so no one can see you once you get there. I guess it's like living inside a historical movie for however long you're there.

But, for my purposes, I didn't pay extra for the protection and I signed all the waivers that said if I got myself hurt or killed, I wouldn't sue the pants off the Institute or anything. And they set it up so they could keep a close eye on me and drag me back if I did anything outside their rules.

So I went back, and I talked myself out of shooting Michael Dorn.

Sounds strange, maybe, but after almost twenty years on the force, I've seen enough craziness. When I answered my front door and found me standing there with a warning about the sting we had set up for the next night, I took it in stride and I called the whole thing off.

The future me, the murderer, came back to my own time satisfied that I'd done the right thing. It had cost my whole savings and a good chunk of my retirement, but Michael Dorn was still alive.

Which is why I was surprised to find him on the front page of the paper the next morning, under the headline: Hybrid Terror Suspect in Custody. The article went on to describe the carnage that had resulted when Michael Dorn had set off a dirty bomb in the middle of a crowded stock market trading floor the day after I had decided to call off my sting operation.

1452 people dead. And that's just the ones they'd managed to identify so far. Not counting the potentially thousands who were exposed to the weak but dangerous levels of radiation from the blast before the evacuation was finished.

A lot of my fellow cops went down that day. Fire fighters and paramedics too. A lot of innocent people.

So, I did the only thing I could do.

I broke into the Institute and I used my gun to force a technician who was working late to send me through the machine.

I went back in time again and I stopped myself from talking myself out of killing Michael Dorn. And, when the time came, I watched it happen from behind a column on the platform at Depot 23-B.

When I came back to my own time, of course, the technician had called my buddies and they carted me away in cuffs.

You see, the law hasn't quite caught up with the technology just yet.

There's no legal way to account for committing a crime to prevent a worse crime. What I did was kill an unarmed, innocent man who hadn't yet even been officially implicated in any criminal activity.

And, with the Institute technician as the prosecution's witness, the jury heard how I went back and made damn sure he died.

But, because he did, no one but me had any recollection of the dirty bomb or the thousands of innocent people Michael Dorn hurt or killed. It never happened here.

I'm scheduled to head into the gas chamber tomorrow night at midnight. So, you see, there's no real do-over.