DAY FIVE 12:44PM

Hide and Go 

The Father stood up and smoothed his slacks. "I can't wait here any longer. I have to warn them."

Max glanced over the edge of the rooftop, looking for the glint of light reflecting off a scope. Listening past the wind for a gunshot. So he would know which direction to shoot back when the reverend took a bullet. 

Nothing happened. Max exhaled, then stood up beside Donnelly. "That was really stupid."

"It's been over an hour since the last sign of them." 

Max frowned at him. "I told you, they're hunters, they're patient."

The reverend turned away, back toward the stairwell leading down into the brownstone. Max grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him back. "How dare you !?" Donnelly shouted. 

Max shoved the barrel of Joy under the reverend's chin. "And I told you, you've been compromised already. If they wanted to hit the Rave, or the Diner, they would have already."

The Father took a deep breath, looked at Max's eyes, the way they flickered between steel and tears, dusk and fireworks. Mother had been right about him, he was transdimensional, like Mayganne and Luger, Hank and Johannesberg, and the rest. But there was something different about him too. 

Max lowered the gun. "Look, I know how important your team is to you... I had a team once too. I know you'd risk anything to protect them. They're the only thing that feels real when everything else can change so suddenly, so completely..."

Father Donnelly nodded. Max reversed Joy in his hand and offered it to the reverend. "Well, right now we're each other's team." 

The Father's hand was shaking as he took the pistol. "Okay... What's the plan?"

"I need an occult shop," Max said.

DAY FIVE 5:22AM

Knight Takes Pawn

Father Alfred Donnelly awoke to the sound of a knock on the door. He got up and slipped into a bathrobe and made his way through his home. Well, his home for now, until a shift occurred and things changed again, sometimes drastically, sometimes in little minute details. But for now this was his home, he thought. All the while the knocking insisted. 

He glanced at the clock and noticed how early the time was and that he was due to get out of bed in another hour anyways.

Knocking again sounding louder and with a hint of urgency. It couldn't be Mayganne or Luger since they would sneak through the back. 

"I'm coming," he stated out loud. He was used to vagrants and homeless people knocking on the door at all times in the morning, either looking to give a confession, or a place to hide from the cold. Not matter how many shifts he had been through this was one of the remaining residues in all of the versions.

He saw through the frosted glass beside the door that there were maybe three or four of them, their figures distorted but he could make out their outline. 

As his hands reached for the locks a voice from the shadows scared the hell out of him.

"I wouldn't if I were you, padre," Max said in a low voice as he stepped out of the shadows. 

"Max?" Father Donnelly was still in a state of shock. Fear also snuck in there and it was like he was a rabbit cornered by a crafty fox. "What's going on?"

"It seems you got a wolf in your flock," Max said as he stepped past the reverend and looked through the tinted panes beside the door. "Those men at the door are a LEGACY cell team." 

"LEGACY?" Father Donnelly repeated, his mind racing over the words as if they held a specific meaning. He knew it should but he couldn't find the information he needed. "How do you know?"

"Call it a hunch," Max said. The pounding on the door got louder and seemed more urgent now. Max reached down and unzipped his jacket. Pain & Joy were ready and waiting. "You can let them in now if you want. We'll talk later since there's much to chat about."