It was not the first time Fleming had awoken tied to a chair, held captive by the enemy. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in bondage, either. The fact that they were both happening at once was new, though.

“Why is this a box tie?” He mumbled as he awoke.

“I was the only one who knew how to tie someone to a chair,” Harley said. “And I, well, I have a very particular set of interests.”

“Understandable,” Fleming said. “Now, what do you want from me?”

“Oh we just want you to stay tied to a chair, mostly,” Harley said. “For about...the next three hours.”

Something had interfered with Dr. Khaitan’s particle accelerator on the previous loop. The looper team had been scouring the labs for a reason why, and Agent Fleming was now the most likely suspect, by virtue of very clearly saying he wanted to interfere with Dr. Khaitan’s experiment.

“Just...tied to a chair.”

“Yes.”

“No torture? Not going to try and execute me?”

“No. Why would we do that?”

“You’re helping a madman build a superweapon, excuse me if I don’t have a high opinion of you.”

Harley looked up at Hawke.

“Hawke, are you helping a madman build a superweapon?”

“No. Are you?”

“Not today, at least,” Harley said.

“So what the hell is he talking about?’

Agent Fleming rolled his eyes. Of all possible varieties of lackeys, hapless lackeys were the worst. Punching them always left a bad taste in your mouth. Or in your knuckles. Fleming’s hands still hurt from punching Kim earlier.

“I don’t know, let me call Lee just to be sure,” Harley said. She then pulled out her phone to do just that. “Hey, Lee, is Dr. Khaitan one of the school’s mad scientists?”

The relatively unregulated environment of the Einstein-Odinson campus gave them more leeway to make bold scientific advances and take risks, but it also attracted a small number of ne’er-do-wells seeking to use the school as a haven for illicit research. The faculty kept an eye on them, but the loopers still had to thwart a doomsday device at least once every few years. Lee and Harley had stopped one in their first year, so she felt like it was a little soon for another mad scientist, but there was always a chance.

“No, dear, Dr. Khaitan’s just one of the regular scientists,” Lee said. “Relatively speaking.”

“Are you sure, because boxers guy is all on about us helping madmen and him saving the world.”

“I’m certain, Harley, the school puts all the mad scientists on the ninth level,” Lee said. “Dr. Khaitan’s lab is on the fifth.”

“Alright, well, one of you two is lying and it’s probably not my best friend, so-”

Harley was just about to turn around and face Agent Fleming when she heard a very loud, very wooden clunk. She turned a little further and saw Agent Fleming face down on the floor, still tied to the floor, but now upside-down.

“This rope is tied much tighter than I expected,” Fleming mumbled. He’d been trying to execute a backflip that would get him out of bondage and back on his feet. It had not worked.

“Yeah, this brazilian chick I sleep with is super into- Not the point,” Harley said. “Anyway. Have fun. Hope you like the smell of floor.”

“Could you at least put me upright again?”

Harley shrugged. Fleming had punched Kim right in the trachea, which would’ve really hurt had she not been a robot. She didn’t feel much need to be kind to someone who’d tried to hurt her friends. Hawke was slightly more forgiving.

“Alright, hold still,” he said. He walked up to the chair and tried to pivot it from the back. Fleming got his face dragged along the floor for a bit, as that approach did not work.

“Just try to grab the leg and pivot a little, I’ll shift when you push,” Fleming said. Hawke moved around to the indicated position. “No, other leg, over there.”

Once Hawke was in place, he gave a mighty push, and for his efforts he was rewarded with a boot to the neck. Fleming couldn’t kick hard enough to hurt Hawke here, but he had other tricks afoot.

“There’s a poisoned blade in the toe of my boot,” Fleming said, trying very hard to enunciate when half his mouth was being squished into the floor. Hawke gasped.

“Like in Kingsmen?”

“I- Yes, exactly like in Kingsmen,” Fleming admitted. “It’s where we got the idea. Would you like to hear an idea?”

“I untie you or you poison my friend?” Harley said, hazarding a guess.

“Yes. In short,” Fleming said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Harley said. Hawke was already starting to sweat. “Keep your weird poison foot-knife to yourself.”

Harley walked around the back of the chair and starting undoing her elaborate knots. While she worked, Fleming tried his best to keep his foot steady. He was actually kind of surprised this was working. After fistfighting the apparently indestructible woman earlier that day, he was starting to worry all these mooks were invulnerable. They were apparently not, as Hawke feared the knife enough to be trembling. Fleming didn’t know Hawke was just a natural trembler.

As he got untied, Fleming withdrew the knife-boot from Hawke’s neck and righted himself. He took a step away from Harley and Hawke and eyed them both -more so Harley.

“It’s unfortunate you’ve ended up on the wrong side of this fight,” Fleming said. “You’d be a valuable asset, with those-”

“Are you hitting on me?” Harley said, with evident disgust. “What are you, like, seventy?”

“Sixty-nine,” Fleming mumbled.

“Hah! Nice,” Harley said. Fleming rolled his eyes. “But seriously, no. I’m not into old men. Though if your agency has any secret agent MILF’s you can send them my way.”

Fleming stared at Harley for a few seconds. She showed no signs she had been joking.

“No. And please stay out of my way.”

“We won’t,” Harley said with a smile.

----------------------------------------

“Seven, this school is a madhouse, and I have no idea how you survived it,” Fleming said to his earpiece.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I take it mission complete, then?”

“Absolutely the fuck not, I don’t even know where I am. I got knocked out by an invincible Asian woman and tied to a chair by some kind of hyper-competent nymphomaniac.”

“Sounds like the Einstein-Odinson,” Seven said. As Fleming’s cover had already been blown three different ways, maintaining radio silence was no longer necessary.

“Find me this mad scientist and get me the hell off this island so I can nuke it from orbit,” Fleming demanded.

“Calm down, Fleming. You should find a floor number by every door. They’re marked two-blank-blank, so the thirtieth room on the second floor would be two-three-zero, for example.”

Fleming looked at the nearest door.

“Seven, there’s not a number in sight.”

“Look at the very top, Fleming, at the highest point of the circular door.”

“Seven, the doors are fucking square.”

Seven fell silent. Fleming waited not so patiently for a response.

“It’s possible they’ve changed the layout since I was last there,” Seven admitted. “In 1962.”

Fleming almost offered a witty retort on instinct, but it fell flat before it ever reached his lips. He took a deep breath and stared at the doors that were now square instead of circular.

“Are we getting old, Seven?”

“Please contemplate mortality after you’ve saved the world, Fleming,” Seven scolded. Fleming nodded to himself and got moving again.

----------------------------------------

It took Fleming the better part of an hour to retrace his steps through the labyrinthine laboratories (though fifteen minutes of that hour were spent trying to seduce a college student into helping him -unsuccessfully). As soon as he was back in front of the door to Khaitan’s lab, Fleming put a hand on the heavy metal gateway and took a deep breath.

“Seven, can you scan the lab or something and see what sort of horseshit is waiting for me this time?”

“Not from the outside,” Seven said. “I’d say use your wrist-scanner, but…”

That had already failed once today, so Fleming didn’t feel like trying again. They were running out of time now, so he had no choice but to open the door and face the music. A mad scientist needed to be stopped, and Fleming had to stop him. The world was at stake. He slammed the doors open, ready to face anything.

“Oh, hi,” Vell said.

Of all the nonsense people he’d met today, Vell was probably Fleming’s favorite. He managed to take his sudden appearance in stride.

“You’re the one that saved me from the alien slimeball.”

“Her name is Gertie,” Vell corrected. “And if I’d known you were going to put a poisoned foot-knife to my friend’s throat, I, well, I might’ve let her nibble on you a little.”

“Of course. Get out of my way, kid, I have a world to save.”

“So do I,” Vell said. “From you.”

As the time of the previous loops apocalypse grew closer, and Agent Fleming grew more and more meddlesome, it became apparent he had been the cause of the catastrophic failure on the first loop. Vell had set himself up as one of the last lines of defense -in his own, odd sort of way.

“What do I need to tell you to get you to stop?”

Fleming stared blankly at him.

“You’re going to talk to me?”

“That’s the plan,” Vell said.

“You don’t know kung fu? Don’t have a gun anywhere?”

“Not right now,” Vell said.

“No hat with sawblades in it?”

“I am very clearly not wearing a hat,” Vell said, pointing to his bare head.

“Right. No other articles of clothing with sawblades in them?”

“No. You’re the one with knives in your shoes.”

Fleming couldn’t argue with that, so he argued with something else.

“There’s nothing you can say to me that’ll change the facts, kid,” Fleming said. “You seem reasonable enough, but if you can’t figure out you’re working for a madman on your own, you’re not worth talking to.”

Vell let out a very deep sigh and rubbed his temples.

“Dr. Khaitan?”

Across the laboratory, the slumbering scientist picked his head off his desk and wiped a small puddle of drool off the book he’d fallen asleep on.

“Huh? What? Do you need something, Dell?”

“Vell. And I just wanted to know if you’re planning on destroying the world with that machine you’re building here.”

“Oh ho, no, I sure hope not,” Dr. Khaitan said. “Just gathering some data on subatomic particles. Got to understand the building blocks of the universe, you know?”

Vell pointed at Dr. Khaitan and shrugged. The ball was in Fleming’s court now.

“Our intelligence indicates he’s mentally unstable,” Fleming said.

“He’s got ADHD,” Vell snapped.

“I’ve got pills for that, though,” Khaitan popped up. “And an excellent psychologist. Do you want his business card?”

“At the rate this day is going, yes,” Fleming sighed. “Weren’t you evil laughing earlier?”

“No, I was just regular laughing. My assistant sent me a meme!” Khaitan said. He then held up his phone to show it to Fleming. “Look, the cat’s excited because he gets to have a cheeseburger.!”

Vell sighed heavily.

“Is enjoying outdated memes a crime?”

“What are you talking about, that’s hilarious,” Fleming said. Then he got back on track. “Look, kid, he’s dealing with ballistic particle acceleration, what part of that screams ‘innocent science’ to you?”

“Ballistics is the study of projectiles and their flight,” Vell said. “It’s a valid pursuit in particle physics research. And if his experiment works, he’ll beat companies like Roentgen and Kraid to the punch and keep them from holding a patent on the info.”

“Half of our intelligence committee agrees-”

“Is that ‘intelligence committee’ also a bunch of seventy year old dudes?”

“There’s...I’m only sixty-nine!”

Vell resisted the urge to say “nice”, knowing in his heart he was disappointing Harley.

“Right. Okay. Uh...listen, I understand you’re trying to do the right thing, but you’re sort of just a bunch of old guys unilaterally deciding what’s right and wrong based on the whims of the global elite. And also assassinating people based on those assumptions. The assassinating being the operative problem here.”

“It’d be lovely if all the world’s problems could be solved by a bunch of idealistic young kids asking politely,” Fleming said. “But the world doesn’t work that way.”

“The world doesn’t work your way either,” Vell said. “The biggest threats to everyday people aren’t in volcano lairs or secret labs, they’re in mansions and penthouses. And they’re giving you orders that keep the world safe for them, not for us.”

Vell already knew that Fleming’s mission would end in catastrophic failure, thanks to the time loops, but he would’ve opposed it on principle either way. A completely uninhibited, unaccountable superspy running around to cause havoc and kill people was not a sane solution to any problem.

Well, I’ll hand it to you, you’re the first goon to ever ask me politely,” Fleming said. Vell didn’t bother protesting his status as a goon. “But consider this-”

With a flourish, Fleming drew a pistol from a hidden pocket in his suit. He barely had time to level it in Khaitan’s direction before a shot rang out and a crude metal bullet knocked the weapon out of his hands. Vell, ever the quickdraw, had teleported in his own gun and fired it before Fleming could even take aim.

“Okay then, you consider this,” Vell said. “I am no longer asking politely.”

“Sick line, Vell,” Harley shouted. Fleming stopped looking at his aching gun hand and snapped his head in the direction of her voice.

“Fucking hell, is the bondage woman here?”

“Yep, we all are,” Kim said. She popped out of hiding along with Harley and Lee. “Except Hawke. We let him take a break seeing as you threatened to murder him with your poisoned foot-knife.”

Hawke was high-strung on a good day, and getting threatened with (non-reversible) death made it a very bad day. They had given him a mental health break, considering his would-be killer (and the foot-knife) was still on the loose.

“Speaking of, Vell, you should probably shoot his shoes off too,” Harley said. Vell aimed downwards while Fleming stepped backwards and tried to hide his feet behind a nearby table.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Fleming insisted.

“Who’s joking?” Harley asked. “He’s done it before.”

The sound of Fleming’s brain fizzling could be heard from across the room. His heavily wrinkled face went through a few dozen expressions before settling on indignant resignation.

“Fine, jesus christ,” Fleming said. “I give up. I surrender. That lunatic can destroy the world, as long as he takes all of you bastards with him.”

Fleming threw up his hands in surrender and walked out of the lab, mumbling a stream of curses under his breath the whole time. The loopers watched him go with a mix of pity and disinterest.

“For a secret agent, that guy sure couldn’t roll with the punches very well,” Harley said.

“Yeah. He talked about, like, sawblade hats and had a knife in his shoe but a dude who’s good with revolvers is too much for him, apparently?” Vell said. “What’s the deal with that?”

“I think what ultimately did him in was the realization he was being challenged by actual human beings -”

“And me,” Kim added.

“And Kim,” Lee said. “And not just some cackling supervillain he could easily dehumanize. I imagine that makes it a little harder to justify being a secret assassin for the global elite.”

“What’s that about feet?” Khaitan shouted from across the lab.

“Nothing, Vell’s just super into foot stuff,” Harley shouted back, earning her a slap from Vell. The loopers exited the lab, leaving Dr. Khaitan to his experiments in peace.

“I hope that agent is taking stock of his life,” Lee said. “He didn’t seem all bad. Maybe being a covert operative for the secret interests of world governments seemed like a good idea when he started out. Decades ago.”

“Eh, he retires, they’ll just replace him with a new guy,” Harley said. “Seven to twelve times or so, I’m betting.”

“That’s weirdly specific,” Vell said.

“Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about any more,” Harley said. “You guys want to go get some gyros?”

“Hell yeah.”