Murphy watched as a mimic leapt past him and ripped the head off a soldier. He stepped back out of the range of the dark red spray from the man’s jugular, and surveyed the chaotic scene that surrounded him.

The spread of mimics had reached the main city of Mercy. White hairless, tailless, blind monkey-like things bared their several rows of sharp teeth. They had once been lurkers of only the darkest crevices. Now they now walked boldly in broad daylight. Their murky white eyes gazed unseeingly into the bright light.

Firestarters from the armed forces sent their flames forth, melting the tarmac beneath the mimic’s feet, but the mimics just walked on, right through the fire. A few remaining citizens tripped over their feet as they fled from their apartments. Mimics picked off the stragglers with ease.

Murphy walked slowly through all this mess unafraid. This wasn’t the first time he had lived through this scene. Murphy could have told them that if they walked slower and more silently then the mimics would find it harder to sense them. But their panic covered up his own soft footsteps and this wouldn’t be the last time he’d walk this particular road either.

Some soldiers yelled at him to, “Get out of here!” but Murphy ignored them all, and the soldiers were too focused on the mimics surrounding them to pursue the issue any further. Murphy had bigger things to worry about. The mimics were part of the problem, but this moment here wasn’t important. It was just part of a pattern that Murphy needed to buck. Not this round though. It was too late for these people. Maybe next time, but for that he needed information. He needed to find out how it had all begun.

Murphy disappeared down a side alleyway. He found the 23rd brick exactly five feet up and he tapped four times. Or at least he would have, but just as he was about to tap for the forth time, the wall disappeared. Murphy stood still for a moment. Before him lay impenetrable darkness. He had no idea what lay before him. He took a step forward.

The darkness vanished and the wall sealed up. He found himself standing in a narrow room. The walls were lined with bottles and books and scrolls and jewellery, even a shrunken head or two. To his left a sleek black rifle hung on some wall hooks.

“It’s telescopic,” a voice said. “Are you looking to buy one?”

Murphy shook his head and looked around for where the voice came from. He could not identify it. The voice was neutral, neither old nor young, neither masculine nor feminine, but he knew who it belonged to.

“More’s the pity.” In the corner of the room and a tiny desk, almost child-sized crouched a man in a red robe. He materialised as he leaned forward in a way that made it seem like all he’d done was move into the light. His deep set eyes were lined with dark eyeliner. On his forehead, formed as part of his skull were two pointed horns.

It marked him as a shapeshifter, a particularly good one. It was a clever shape to assume, given the sorts of wares the man dealt in, especially in a city such as this. No person who stepped foot inside this store could have any confusion about which side of the law they walked. But Murphy was not here to buy things. He wanted information.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d turn up,” the man said.

That gave Murphy pause. Had his assessment of the man’s powers been inaccurate or had someone else told him? Truthfully it did not matter too much but Murphy appreciated novelty and mystery where he could find it. He did not ask. He was sure he would find out one day and he didn’t want to ruin the surprise. It was also possible he would forget about it before he found out. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d had a jump that had properly erased his memory. Perhaps he was overdue for one, perhaps not. He didn’t actually know how frequently they happened or if full memory erasure was even possible for him. He had started over young a few times at least, with little memory, but a lot of it had returned as he had aged and it had been awhile now since he’d been properly young. Whether that was decades or centuries he wasn’t sure. Indeed, right now it seemed almost impossible that he’d see those days again because the damn world kept ending.

He was stuck. He knew several things now that would end this particular loop and keep the world going down some new and interesting path he had yet to observe. The only problem was he could never quite seem to be able to jump far enough back to undo them. It didn’t help that some of the things were quite simply before his time anyway, and so it seemed he was stuck reliving the end of the world over and over until he figured out how to slice through this Gordian Knot within the very short infinite amount of time he had. It was some consolation at least that it never seemed to end in quite the same way. Sometimes the humans invaded from the old world with their nukes, sometimes the immortal mimics erupted out of the earth to eat everyone. There had been many many zombie outbreaks, also seemingly immortal. Murphy had at least figured out why that was now. And then sometimes he just woke up, back in the past, in his slightly younger body, a different set of clothes, and nothing saved but for his memories. He wasn’t sure how the world ended when that happened and he was starting to worry he’d never get to watch the film Little Miss Sunshine again, which was destined to come out less than a year after then end of the world.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He placed a piece of paper on the man’s desk. On it were some hand drawn symbols. “Do you recognise these?” Murphy asked.

The old man looked at them and then he looked right up at Murphy and Murphy could see that his eyes were a milky white just like the creatures outside. “Oh...”

But before Murphy could apologise, the man nodded slowly and replied, “They’re very old.”

Murphy frowned but didn’t question it. Another mystery to add to his collection. “They are. Do you know how they work?”

Another slow nod.

“Do you know how to undo the spell?”

More nods. “It is difficult. If you do it wrong you could destroy the world.”

“Have you looked outside lately?” Murphy asked. “The world’s pretty on it’s way to being destroyed.”

“This’d be bigger, and not just this world.”

“Mmm.” Murphy looked around for a chair but he couldn’t see one. “The mimics will get through to the human world eventually too. And then they’ll either eat their way though that world or the humans will send their nukes right through to us. If you tell me how to reverse the spell, I can stop them getting through.”

The man nodded as if pondering the thought. “Won’t they just pick another Splice hole? Do you intend to close all of them?”

Murphy decided if he had to come back here again he was going to bring a chair. “This one’s special.”

“How?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ve got time.” The man waved a hand and a chair appeared.

It was a simple wooden one but Murphy happily sat in it. Then he glanced toward where he had come in. There was nothing but bricks there, rimmed by purple velvet curtains. The wall kept the outside sounds from bothering them. Murphy appreciated this. It was nice not to have to hear the screams. “With all due respect, I’m not sure anybody has time for this story. Let’s just say that it’s defective due to a large number of very complicated events that I don’t think even I’ve been entirely privy to yet.”

“Ah, you’re a sandman? Or a psychic?”

“The former,” Murphy replied.

“So it’s not really us you’re saving then is it?”

Murphy sighed. This was why he didn’t tell people what he was. Next time he’d tell him he was a psychic. “It’s you, or a version of you, at least as far as I can tell there isn’t much difference.”

“What’s the point in me helping you if it’s not me who you’re saving?”

“If you don’t think it’s you whose life I’m going to impact then what’s the harm in telling me?”

“Well, maybe it will be me?”

Murphy was starting to think that all this guy wanted was a bit of conversation. “I can still pay you know.”

“What good is money if the world’s going to end soon?”

“Wouldn’t you rather go out in comfort? And who knows, maybe it won’t end.”

“Mmm, I suppose.”

“I can give you 600,000 Bismuth.”

For a moment the man almost seemed to stop breathing. Then he blinked. “That’s a lot of money.”

“I won’t be needing it where I’m going.”

The man frowned. “You can’t take it with you?”

“It would be hard to carry all of it.” Murphy didn’t explain that his sort of time travel didn’t let him take things back. But once you’d built a secret stash of riches once, it wasn’t hard to do it again.

The man chuckled. “I suppose it would.”

Murphy set a key down on man’s desk. Tied to the key was a small USB. “This is all you’ll need to access it.”

“Hmm.” The man frowned and reached for the key as if he could see it.

Perhaps the blindness was another part of his shifted form. Or maybe he was an illusionist. He wasn’t a mindwalker. That Murphy was certain of.

“I suppose that’ll do.” The man stretched and then he leaned forward and with milky eyes studied the symbol again. “This was made with blood magic and so that is how it must be unmade. With the same blood.”

“The same blood?”

“Or a relative will do the trick. A descendant.”

“How much blood?”

“However much went in. No more and no less. The rest is simple. But you’ll need the full scripts. Some are on display at the museum on Rosegood Avenue, others are in private collections. People know what they are but they don’t know what they can still do. Most of them don’t have the power. There are five in total.”

The scripts would just be a channel. It was the magic that mattered, and the blood. Still, he would need to get them anyway. Group spells were hard enough without going scriptless. Murphy nodded. “That’s not a problem?”

He stood up to leave. There were other things he still needed to know, but he wouldn’t find them here.

The man spoke after him, “You’ll have to be careful. Some of those old spells were timelocked.”

“Meaning?”

“No second chances.”

Murphy didn’t reply or look back. He walked straight back through the brick wall. It worked just as he had expected. He reached the edge of the alleyway. The street was deadly quiet now. One mimic turned it’s face in his direction and cocked it’s head. Murphy didn’t move. He was trying to remember if there was anything else he needed to do on this timeline.

The mimic started to run towards him.

No, he supposed that was all. Well, time to leave then. He took a pistol from his jacket pocket, put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.