NCIS: Meet and Greet

Tom had been hunting Felix for four weeks in an attempt to prevent him from attempting to murder Connie. He wasn’t having too much luck, so he decided to change tactic and find a location to lock him up in once and for all. Now that he was having luck with.

He targeted his Portal to the location in which he had found a suitable location. He then stepped through the swirling white vortex into his destination.

Once through the portal, he began moving through the derelict town, slowly growing more and more confused as to why his computer thought it was a good location for him to lock up Felix. As he ventured North of his initial location, he found that the state of the various houses slowly got worse and worse and worse until they were just empty shells, then broken shells, and then finally just coal black ashes.

            “What happened here?” he wondered aloud.

            “That depends, what do you think happened here?” came a male voice from behind him. He spun around, forming his sword as he went, before holding it up in the air ready for anything. “Oh put it away,” the boy waved. “We’re not enemies.”

            “Who are you?” Tom asked trying to make out the kid, who was shrouded in smoke.

            “You know who I am,” the boy replied cryptically. “That is why you’re here. You want answers but can’t find them within your own little world.”

            “Who are you?” Tom repeated with a snarl as he split his sword into two, one-handed swords. “I’m warning you. You better tell me who you are.”

            “Stop being so hostile,” the boy advised. “You don’t actually know where you are either. Do you do everything your computer tells you to do?”

            “No. Wait. How do you know that?” Tom asked.

            “Because you are here,” the boy explained. “The only reason you would be here is if you were told to be here because you wanted something.”

            “Who are you?” Tom asked again with far less force, the situation making him increasingly uneasy. “And how do you know so much about me?”

            “Look around,” the boy gestured. “This is what happens when a prototype doesn’t work as planned. This entire town was eradicated because of one miscalculation. Now look at the area around you. Looks familiar doesn’t it.”

            “Very,” Tom agreed. “This is Highweek! But how is that possible? I stepped through it and I didn’t receive any warning that Highweek had been attacked…”

            “This has been burning for weeks,” the boy stated solemnly. “So much hope. All of it lost in a matter of seconds; through one bad choice; one oversight…”

            “Did you cause this?” Tom barked.

            “No,” the boy replied.

            “Then why do you sound like you did?” he questioned.

            “Because, believe it or not,” the boy sighed. “I’m still human.”

            “Who caused this?” Tom snarled.

            “Does it matter?” the boy snapped. “He died with the rest of them. Actually, he was the first one to die.”

            “You seem to know a lot about it,” Tom noted. “You were here, so why didn’t you burn with them?”

            “I wasn’t here. I was in my own world, crashing my Time Machine into a hospital,” the boy lied.

            “’Your world’?” Tom asked quizzically.

            “You said it yourself,” the boy asked, the smoke obscuring his face getting deeper. “You were on one side, Highweek was fine, on the other it had been burning for weeks.”

            “Two Highweeks…”

            “You wanted somewhere to lock up Felix?” the boy asked. “So your computer gave you this place, a world where an entire town was burnt and is now available to be built upon. An area big enough for that inescapable prison you want to build for him. But we both know that he can escape it.”

            “So why would it send me here?”

            “Because he may be able to escape the prison, but he can’t get back to where he came from,” the boy explained, taking a step forwards out of the haze to reveal himself.

            “But you’re me…” Tom noted, all of the confidence drained out of his voice as he became even less in control of the situation.

            “Welcome to Universe 08,” the boy explained.

            “Universe 08?” Tom asked. “Why would my Portal bring me here?”

            “To help you realise what you have forgotten,” the boy smiled. “Felix feels hurt, and he is taking that out on the people he sees as responsible.”

            “Yeah, I guessed that,” Tom scowled.

            “You know he cares for Emma?”

            “What?”

            “He’s still the same person. He won’t actually do anything that could result in her dying,” the boy explained, his unnatural green eyes unnerving Tom. “Penny mimics Felix, including his feelings. Faye will kill anyone because she is insane. But other than that…”

            “Penny’s unconscious, Faye is dead,” Tom stated as his brain winced at the memory of the fights that led to those outcomes.”

            “And yet you still lost?”

            “Mum killed Maddi,” Tom explained.

            “Ah…They weren’t taken out of the equation in time,” the boy noted.

            “Now, Who are you? And how do you know everything about me?”

            “Because I watched you and your Universe. I learnt the basic ropes that I needed to know to help you,” the boy asked.

            “How can you help me?”

            “By just saying, don’t trust the tech, don’t trust other opinions of people you know. Trust your instincts. Track down Felix’s base and you’ll realised that I’m right. He isn’t a monster. You killed two of the monsters in that Universe; the third is yours to deal with as you see fit. The other two are just broken. And they need fixing,” the boy explained.

            “Why do you keeping talking about my world like the same thing is happening in yours?”

            “Because Felix is a serial killer in my world, Faye doesn’t like to be rejected, Penny and Felix were driven insane by attempted mind control. And Jackie and Geoff: They are locked away, deep beneath the Earth,” the boy expanded. “Trust me. Find Felix and you’ll find what you are looking for…”

            “Why should I trust you?” Tom quizzed.

            “Man you ask a lot of questions,” the boy moaned. “How about because if I was going to kill you I would have done already; now put the swords away.”

Tom complied willingly, the sound of his look a-like making him feel unusually calm. Behind the counterpart, he could see the swirling white vortex he had come through as it illuminated the smouldering ruins.

            “Go home,” the boy stated simply. “Protect Connie and bring the terrorists to their knees before they do something that that’ll rock your world to its core.”

Tom complied by hastily making his way back to his entrance point and disappearing into it, leaving the burnt Highweek and weird look a-like behind like a bad dream. Once through the Portal he shut it down and set Universe 08 to a blocked location that cannot be accessed through the use of his Portal.