The Final Job

42 was good at his job. In fact, he was the best. Working for The Agency certainly beat any typical nine-to-five, not that many of them existed in the year 2381. The Agency was an organised society tasked with ensuring the best outcome for humanity, sending agents back in time to trim any errors and tie off loose ends. Whether this meant eliminating tyrannical dictators, tipping the scales of the stock market, or inspiring world-altering innovations, The Agency ensured that humanity would out-survive our sun. But in his recent years, 42 had begun to feel a longing for something more; for something that The Agency did not account for.

Entering through the office door, 42 met with 1, the first agent and head director of The Agency. “Ah, 42,” 1 said, “please, take a seat.”

“Thank you for meeting with me director.”

“The pleasure is all mine 42. I always have time for my best agent.” 1 smiled, his moustache brushing against the lip of his glass. “What is it you’d like to discuss?”

“As you know, I’ve spent over three centuries working for The Agency and—”

“I recall your first day here back in 2027,” 1 interrupted. “Who would’ve thought that bright-eyed, down on his luck 24-year-old would end up sitting in my office. And you haven’t aged a day since!” 42’s nervous laugh was lost in 1’s hearty chortle.

“Yes, of course. But as I was saying, I’ve devoted my life to The Agency. I’ve been just about everywhere and seen everything. The fall of the Berlin wall. The invention of the first locomotive. The beauty of Cleopatra.”

“A beauty she was, wasn’t she,” 1 commented. He swirled the crystal glass in the air, bringing the Malört to his mouth.

“I want to retire,” 42 said. 1 choked more on the news than the bitter liquor in his hand. “There’s only so many people you can kill before you get tired.”

Setting the glass down with a clunk, 1 shifted awkwardly in his chair and rested his elbows on the desk. He sighed heavily.

“The Agency,” 1 said through a croaky voice, “has never had an agent, let alone a contractor, retire before. What would that even look like?”

“I was thinking 2034 after the war is long over. A house by the lake just east of a small town in Canada. It’s been far too long for me to pick up where I’d left off, so I’d live out my days there until time does what it does best.”

42’s smile faded as the air froze between them, thickened by another heavy sigh from 1. After a moment of contemplation, 1 looked up from his hands.

“We’re gonna miss you kid,” 1 said, a wide smile appearing on his cheeks. “I’ll take care of it for you. Consider it done.”

“Thank you, director. I really—"

“But before you go, I need you to finish one final contact for me.”

“I suppose retirement can wait for one more job.” 42 said, getting up from his chair to leave. “I’ll grab it from 96 and—”

“No, no, no,” 1 said, holding up his hand. “This one is straight from me.”

42 sat down at the edge of his seat, now eager for his final job. The last time he received a contract from the director, the British empire fell soon after.

“This target will be responsible for the deaths of millions,” 1 said, sliding a digital file across his desk. “We need him taken care of.”

“Consider it done,” 42 replied, looking through the hologram at the director.

“That’s my boy. For the future!” 1 bellowed, shaking 42’s hand.

“For the future.”

~

In all his time working for The Agency, 42 had never had a contract with so few details. No name, no identifying photo, no physical descriptors. Only an address, a time, and a DNA scanner to ensure the job was done right. Setting his watch to the given time and clicking the crown in place, his vision pixelated and blurred as matter phased in and out around him.

Regaining his bearings, 42 found himself in front of an apartment block. He was certainly not going to miss the disorientating feeling of travelling to his contract destinations. It was one thing to move through space but moving through time was a whole other story.

It was 2am on the 29th of January 2007. A brisk summer wind licked at his jacket, whirling the dead leaves around his feet. The building’s modular façade was slightly dilapidated, turning pale grey in the moonlight. Each apartment butted up against another, built for space preservation rather than comfort. Grappling to the balcony railing, he climbed up to the third floor against the sidewall.

The two apartments below held eerily similar scenes: lonely inhabitants slumped on the couch surrounded by half-empty pizza boxes and soft drink cans. Their television screens reflected against their glazed-over eyes, hypnotised into a zombie-like state of being. Caught up in their soap operas and drama shows, 42 snuck past them without so much as a glance.

After picking the lock of the glass sliding door, he entered the small apartment, finding himself in an open plan living and dining room. A myriad of plastic children’s toys littered the floor, polka dotting the blue shag carpet. A worn charcoal grey couch sat in the middle of the room, sandwiched by a dining table and a small flatscreen television. The scent of eucalyptus and lemon clung to the air faintly, emanating from the coffee table riddled with small chips and mug stains.

Despite the scuffed and warping floorboards, 42 passed the kitchen without a sound and made his way towards the first bedroom. Paint peeled in the cornices of the hallway and the crown moulding lifted from the eggshell-white wall. He stared at a picture frame just shy of the door, holding a photo of a man and a woman. They were pretending to hold Tower of Pisa, their hands not quite matching up with the leaning building behind them.

Slowly opening the door, 42 brought up the DNA scanner on his watch and scanned the bedroom, pausing a moment before the dial lit up with the words “NO DNA MATCH RECOGNISED”. Confused, he checked again, only to find that the result remained unchanged. He shut the door silently, letting the latch gently reconnect with the strike plate.

Turning around, 42 was greeted by a sign on the other bedroom door, scribbled in messy handwriting. Red crayon spelt the name “Barry” on a piece of paper, with a backwards letter ‘a’ and a capital letter ‘y’. In his time at The Agency, few contracts were adolescents, and even fewer were children.

42 scrunched his brow, mulling over his retirement. Agents were not permitted to question the orders of The Agency or the details of their contracts. But something felt off this time. Taking the brass handle, he creaked open the door and peered inside, scanning the room with his watch. The words “DNA MATCH CONFIRMED” shone dimly from the dial. With wide eyes, he shut off the scanner.

“For the future,” 42 whispered, and he entered the second bedroom.

~

Slightly smaller than the other, the bedroom walls were covered in children’s drawings and polaroid photos, flapping quietly under the silently ticking ceiling fan. A warm breeze blew through the open window, pushing the curtains in and out like a pair of lungs. Books, plastic toys, and building blocks sat on top of a dresser and between shelves. In the corner of the room, opposite the window, a little boy slept quietly on a single-sized bed. Splayed out like a starfish, the boy’s chest rose and fell gently, creasing and un-creasing the bedsheet draped over his torso. Much like his room, the boy’s green flannelette pyjamas were splotched with different types of dinosaurs.

As 42 unsheathed the knife by his side, the boy stirred in his sleep, turning over to lay face down. From the corner of his eye, 42 noticed something: an eerily similar trio of lilac-coloured birthmarks above the boy’s right ankle, each one equally spaced from the other two. In all his time working for The Agency, he had never seen another birthmark so similar to his own. Unless—

A bullet whizzed through the open window, puncturing 42’s thigh and lightly scraping the boy’s ear. He fell to the floor, collapsing in the rectangle of moonlight projected through the window and leaking blood onto the roadmap rug. A wave of pain rippled through his hip and down his leg, burning through every tendon and muscle fibre. Beside him, the boy slept silently, undeterred by the small drops of blood leaking onto his pillow.

“I knew you wouldn’t go through with it,” a voice said in his ear. 42 dragged himself out of the moonlight, using a bookshelf for cover. That voice. It was familiar. Too familiar.

“28?” he asked, applying pressure to his gunshot wound.

“Hello 42,” she said. “You miss me?” Despite the slight crackle over the earpiece, a hatred sat underneath her voice, coming through as clear as if she were next to him.

The bullet had just missed 42’s femoral artery, but blood began seeping through the wound. Padding his hand around for something to maintain pressure, he grabbed a baby blanket from a drawer and tied it over his thigh.

“Have you lost your mind?” 42 snapped.

“A little birdie told me you were thinking of retiring, and 1 wanted to make sure it was permanent. The Agency can’t let their precious 42,” she spat his name at him, “mess up the grand timeline. You know all about leaving no loose ends.”

“1 said he’d take care of it for me.” 42 peeked around the corner of the bookshelf, hiding again to miss a stray bullet.

“More like he’d have you taken care of. He had his suspicions the second you asked to see him. And I couldn’t have volunteered faster for the job. I won’t let you get in my way again.”

42 tilted a toy mirror with his foot, seeing that 28 had positioned herself on the roof of the apartment complex across the street. Set up with her signature silenced sniper, she hid just shy of the moonlight near a cluster of air conditioning units.

“What do you mean again?” 42 asked, lowering his voice as not to wake the boy still sleeping soundly in his bed.

“What do you think happened to 35 and 36?”

“You killed the twins?!” He clenched his jaw and fought back tears, keeping them captive under his eyes. The twins had trained 42 when he first joined The Agency. For over seven decades, they taught him the ins and outs of contract killing, often bringing him along to test his skills. They were the closest thing he had to a family, leaving him broken for years after their sudden disappearance.

28 chuckled, a devilish smile parting her cheeks. “It had to be done,” she said. “The Agency has never let anyone retire and they sure as hell aren’t going to change that for you. And I won’t even need to bat an eye when I return to The Agency because you wouldn’t have even made it to 5 years old.”

42 looked at the bed as she confirmed his thoughts. He was the final contract.

“No one will remember you even existed. And I will be the best agent The Agency has ever seen…” Her voice droned on as 28 revelled in her glorious future.

42 caught the hilt of the blade with the tip of his finger, narrowly missing another bullet.

“I’ve always wanted to kill you, ever since you stole Franz from me. He was my contract, my kill. But you just had to intervene.” 28 looked away from her scope, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath in, savouring the moment. “But that’s all a distant memory now. Soon you’ll be gone, and everything will be right with the world. Well… my world at least. And that’s all that matters. What do you have to say about that?”

Her question was met with silence.

“What? Did I scare you silent?” She tapped her earpiece, thinking his cries for mercy were muffled by an overhead plane. But no response came through. Returning her eye to her scope, she scanned the room again to find no trace of 42.

“You miss me?” 42 said, appearing from behind and holding a knife to her throat.

The wind whirled through the street; the rustle of the trees filling the silence between them.

“You know,” 28 said, tilting the rifle, “I could just finish the job myself.” Following the barrel, 42 saw the gun pointed at the boy in the bedroom. “And then it will be like you never even existed—”

“One problem with that,” 42 interrupted. “It takes about 3.14 seconds for the timeline to readjust, which is more than enough time to…” he caressed her neck with the side of the blade, catching on the goosebumps that rippled across her skin.

“You fool,” she spat, “you’d still be dead.”

“Yes, but you’d always be second best.” 42’s words echoed in 28’s head, her eyes widening as he played with her ego. “Never number one. Always runner up. And better yet, always second to me.”

28 gritted her teeth, pulsing the vein by her temple and clenching her jaw. Despite speaking over 30 languages fluently, she could not find the right words to bite back at him.

“But you could always go back to The Agency,” 42 continued, “and you’ll never see me again.”

“They’ll never believe me,” 28 said. “You know how thorough they are.”

“Perhaps you can convince them,” he replied, untying the blood-stained baby blanket around his thigh, and handing it to her. “I’m sure you’re smart enough.”

28 rolled her eyes, knowing he was right.

“For the future,” 42 whispered. Before she could make a decision or another snide remark, he reached around 28, turned the dial on her watch and clicked in the crown. With a blur of dim light, she was sent back to The Agency. Undoing the clasp of his own watch, he laid it next to him and stabbed it with his blade. It was over. He was free from The Agency. 42 slumped down on the roof, laying on his back and staring at the stars.

A shot of pain ran through 42’s thigh and up his torso. Struggling to his feet, he limped his way down the building and back to the small apartment where his final job still slept. Taking the elevator up, he picked the lock of the front door and re-entered the apartment, careful not to make a sound despite his injury.

Quietly rummaging through a kitchen drawer, 42 found a Band-Aid and headed to the boy’s room. Peaking around the door, he limped his way to the boy’s side, seeing his ear had stopped bleeding.

~

The boy woke slowly, turning to find a strange man slumped against his bedside table. He stared at 42 with wide eyes, rubbing them with the back of his knuckle as he adjusted to the darkness.

“Hey there,” 42 said, his breathing heavy and his eyes dropping. “I’m guessing your name is Barry?”

The boy nodded, still silent.

“Oh. Okay. Good name.” 42 coughed, his throat catching on the pain.

“What’s your name?” Barry asked, confused by the stranger by his bed.

“My name?” 42 paused, not quite knowing what to tell his younger self. “My name is 42.”

“Four two?” Barry said. “That’s a funny name, mister.”

“Yes. I suppose it is.” He laughed softly, wondering how this would change the timeline. “I’m— I’m you from the future.”

“Okay,” Barry said, unphased. 42 expected more of a response but was met with a beat of silence.

“Okay. Here’s a Band-Aid for your ear.” Leaning over, he put the Band-Aid across Barry’s ear, covering up the small cut. “You must have… scratched it… in your sleep.”

“Thank you, mister four two.”

42 looked at Barry, staring into his own blue irises.

“I need to go,” 42 said, “but you can’t tell anyone that I was here, okay?”

“What about mummy and daddy?”

“Not even mummy and daddy,” 42 said, realising now that his parents were just across the hall. “I need you to promise me that it will be our little secret.”

Barry hesitated, then nodded his head and held out his pinkie finger.

“I pinkie promise.” 42 linked his pinkie with Barry’s, bobbing their hands up and down three times. A weak smile bloomed on his lips, mirrored by the still sleepy boy in dinosaur pyjamas.

Heaving himself onto his feet, 42 limped over to the door.

“Bye mister four two,” Barry said, his hand a blur in the darkness as he waved.

“Goodbye, Barry.” 42 left Barry’s room and stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking at the photo of the man and woman again. He smiled. “Goodbye, mum and dad.” Letting the latch quietly return to the strike plate, he left the apartment to the hum of the fridge and the wind-creaked floorboards.

Making his way down to the street, he thought about The Agency. He knew 28 would delight in the role of the top agent now that he was supposedly dead. But if anyone ever did come looking, he knew only he could protect Barry.

42 stood in the middle of the quiet road, looking back at the small apartment building. Instead of saying goodbye to each other, agents would say “for the future”. But now that he was no longer a contract killer, he wondered what indeed the future would hold for him.