The date. The time. The timeline. The mask. The fucker was here.

The gun cocked.

“I jumped through twenty-six timelines to get to you.”

“One would have sufficed, Möbius.”

The bugger didn’t even turn around. And he knew my name.

He is good. He is very good.

“I need to know why?”

He ignored my question. “You should have killed me when you had a chance.” Bugger wasn’t even scared.

At Temporal Opus, we need to know. I tried again.

“Why did you kill those 25 people?”

He chuckled. An ice-cold laugh in the face of death that would have made a hardened Temporal Agent piss in his pants. “People? Those retrievers didn’t tell you anything, huh? These were not just random ‘people’ Mobius. Here–” He tossed a bundle of photos over to me. Bloody faces of 25 ‘people’ floated in air on the photos. Despite the brutal way they were murdered, there was clearly one theme to it. B… But… It couldn’t be…

“They are all me! What the…!”

“Yes. They are all Mobius. Twenty-five Möbiuses who thought they had me because their retrievers told them so.”

 All twenty-five of me killed by him.

“Am I the twenty-sixth?”

“Nope. I am.” The fucker turned around. He wasn’t even making sense anymore. “You see—” he came closer… I could feel his breath… his eyes staring intently into mine… “—I am Möbius too.”

The mask came off. A mirror came up. A horrendous mirror that showed you a murderous version of yourself.

“I am the twenty-sixth.” He repeated, the man with my face, “I am just tired of this killing. You must complete the job now.”

His right hand reached for the overcoat pockets. A shot was fired impulsively… from my gun. His body fell to the ground and papers from his hands fell to the floor.

CONFIDENTIAL

Mission Details

Target: Agent Möbius #137

Timeline: UNKNOWN

Cause: Rogue agent. Catastrophic imploding timelines and collapsing multi-Universes

Mission: Eliminate Agent Möbius (all timelines).

BRIEFING ENDS

I see it now. Temporal agency couldn’t pin-point the exact timeline of the rogue one. All of us need to be eliminated to be sure. I wept near the twenty-sixth. His sacrifice will not go in vain.

I gathered the twenty-five photos, added another one.

And then, I donned his mask. Off to the twenty-seventh.