Q Report: The Assassination of Brian
It started with the phone call. The ring echoed through my modest office like the tolling of a funeral bell. How she got my number, I didn’t know. Finding me was supposed to be impossible—or as close to it as a man could get without stepping into the wilderness permanently. But then, the world is small, and Minnesota is smaller. She had graduated with my brother, and that slim connection was enough to breach my defenses.
“Agent Q,” said the voice on the other end. The widow’s voice was sharp, trembling but steady, as if grief and rage had forged it into a weapon. “You’re the only one who can do this.”
“I’m retired,” I replied, leaning back in my chair, the old leather creaking like tired bones. The room was dim, lit only by the pale glow of the snow outside.
“Bullshit.” Her tone sliced through the cold air. “You don’t retire from the Time Force. You just hide. And you’re not hiding very well.”
I sighed, letting the silence between us stretch until it grew unbearable. “Why not the NYPD? The FBI? Someone who’s got a badge?”
“Because I don’t trust them.” The widow’s voice cracked, her grief slipping through. “This isn’t some random murder. This was a professional hit. The kind of thing that slips through cracks unless you know where to look. And you—”
I could feel her anger burn through the line. “You owe me. You owe my family.”
She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t like it, but she wasn’t wrong. “I’ll need details,” I said finally. “And a plane ticket. First class.”
In Flight
By the time the plane was slicing through the freezing stratosphere, I had the briefing memorized. CEO. Two sons. A calculated hit outside the Hilton Midtown. The assassin, a ghost.
But it wasn’t the facts that gnawed at me. It was the reaction. I scrolled through social media, each flick of my thumb pulling me deeper into the black hole of public sentiment. #EatTheRich was trending, alongside gleeful hashtags like #JusticeForHealthcare and the truly vile #RotInHellBrian.
The memes were worse. Smirking caricatures, jokes about premiums, triumphant declarations that karma had come calling. It wasn’t just anger. It was joy. Erect nipples in the moonlight glee.
I stared at the screen, sick to my core. Around 40,000 people die each year because they don’t have insurance. That cruelty is systemic, not individual, but the world has confused the two. Brian wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t a villain either. He was a man. A father. A human.
Dying is awful enough without people dancing on your grave. Every death celebrated, every human reduced to a punchline, normalizes inhumanity. It makes us smaller. Crueler. We lose a piece of ourselves every time we forget the humanity of others.
I closed the apps and looked out the window. New York loomed below, a vast, glittering beast, pulsing with life and death and every weird act in between.
Landing
The Hotel Beacon on the Upper West Side was an old haunt. I booked the smallest room they had, dropped my bag, and went out into the night. The city wrapped around me like a familiar shroud.
My first stop was Grey’s Papaya. The “recession special” had saved me more times than I could count during my years in the city—a hot dog and papaya juice, cheap enough to keep you moving.
Fueled and focused, I headed to my storage locker. Inside, under a pile of old props, was the broadsword I’d stolen from acting school 23 years ago. It still had the weight of purpose. I slipped it into the scabbard sewn into my trench coat—a relic from another life. It was ridiculous, sure, but it worked.
The night unfolded in a rhythm I knew well. Malachy’s for a pint. Stand Up New York to scan the room. The Dead Poet for whispers between sips of whiskey. Each place offered fragments—sightings of a figure on an electric bike, a face that disappeared when you blinked. The trail was faint, but it was there.
Times Square
The trail led south, to Times Square, humanity’s shrine to its contradictions. Towers of light screamed about Broadway shows, sneakers, and salvation in equal measure. Tourists posed with costumed characters, a magician tried to break Houdini’s record in a box of ice, and an animatronic Pikachu danced beside a half-naked cowboy strumming a guitar.
Beneath the chaos, I felt the city’s pulse. It was alive, raw, and loud, but there was a shadow beneath the noise. A man had been murdered nearby, and the city hadn’t yet processed it.
At the Hilton, the scene of the crime, I let my instincts take over. Systems theory, criminology, and a little voodoo guided me through the site. Blood spatters told stories. Scuff marks whispered of a struggle. The assassin was precise, yes, but precision leaves its own kind of mess.
By the time I left, I had a plan—and a suit. A contact in The Heights had a bulletproof three-piece ready for me. He handed it over with a grin that suggested he was Lin-Manuel Miranda moonlighting as a smuggler.
The Park
My gambit on Good Morning America had been risky. Al Roker owed me a favor for getting him clean years ago, and he’d delivered. The assassin had taken the bait, their pride too strong to resist.
We met near Belvedere Castle. The park was silent, the world holding its breath.
The assassin struck first, bullets sparking against my suit. The impact knocked me back, pain searing through my chest. Bulletproof didn’t mean painless.
I returned fire with my revolver—not to kill, but to drive them into cover. It gave me the second I needed to close the distance with my broadsword.
They were ready. Their wakizashi sang as it met my blade. It was steel against steel, a symphony of violence that spilled onto the stage of Shakespeare in the Park. Cast members of Macbeth scattered, their lines forgotten in the chaos.
“You can’t fight fate!” one actor shouted, the words eerily fitting as our blades clashed again and again.
In the end, their gun ran dry. I disarmed them, then let my rage flow. It was brutal, efficient, final.
The Timeclone
The face beneath the mask was my own.
Timeclone #47. Another splinter of me, sent through the years to serve a purpose that had long since blurred.
“You could’ve been anything,” I said, the weight of my exhaustion heavy in my voice. “But you chose this.”
They didn’t answer. They never do.
Handing them over to the NYPD felt hollow. The system was broken, malfunctioning in ways we no longer even noticed. Distrust of experts, conspiracy theories, and a society perpetually at war with itself had made monsters of us all.
Donald Trump’s founding of the Time Force had been a last-ditch effort to save us, and it had worked—at least temporarily. But the cracks were showing.
Return to Minnesota
The flight home was quiet. As the plane descended, the frozen lakes and endless forests of Minnesota came into view, bathed in the fiery hues of sunrise. Oranges and reds argued across the horizon, their brilliance reflected off the pristine, snow-covered land below.
This was my sanctuary, a reminder that even in a fractured world, beauty still existed.
I stared out the window, letting the sight soothe my fractured mind. The battle was over, but the war continued.
As long as there were shadows, I would hunt them. And as long as there was light, I would hold onto it with everything I had.
End of Report
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