Second Strike

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Pain is functionally irrelevant to the doomed.

Pain is an alarm, an early warning signal to the living: Damage has been done to the body, damage that, if not abated, could lead to disability or death. It is the basest of survival mechanisms.

But for the doomed—more precisely, the very soon to be dead—pain is superfluous. It serves no useful purpose.

To Michael Garin, whose timeline was almost at zero, the deep gash on his right shoulder that trailed nearly to his elbow was, therefore, a temporary irritant. The guard, now deceased, who had serendipitously inflicted it had caused little more than a distraction. Garin’s objective remained uncompromised.

A mistake had to be rectified, a mistake that was potentially catastrophic. Garin, moving silently up the stairs toward the lower level of the fuel fabrication facility, M56 submachine gun pressed against the lacerated shoulder, was charged with correcting that mistake. Successive administrations had let the problem fester, hoping that it would resolve itself or that China would assume some measure of control over its lunatic client. But the lunacy grew unabated until it became clear that a crisis was emerging, one that would escalate from peninsular conflict to regional battle to war.

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