The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  ‘Is that blood?’ said Kara incredulously.

  ‘Do not worry,’ said Malcolm. ‘It is not my own.’

  ‘That was not the thing that worried me,’ said Kara, bewildered that he would assume that.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t just jump into a previous restart and kill a version of us for those?’ asked Hal, already knowing the answer.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Malcolm defensively. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he added, neglecting to mention that obviously he had to jump slightly further into the future and reach the Restart Point to access The White Lodge first, before making his way back to them, using their vibrant, blue energy signature as an anchor to get back.

  Hal sighed in relief.

  ‘Then, where the hell did you get them from?’ said Kara.

  Malcolm explained how he had chosen a very specific, and ultimately inconsequential restart.

  Their 56th restart to be precise. The day Hal and Kara had accidentally punched a hole through time itself, causing reality to rupture and releasing hundreds of versions of themselves into the world. Some from alternate timelines that never solidified past the point of hypothetical probability. He had come up with the idea following all their talk about Time Echoes.

  ‘How do we not remember that?’ Hal said to Kara.

  ‘Once I located suitable…candidates,’ Malcolm explained, ‘far away from the prying eyes of those that may be watching, it was merely a matter of incapacitating them. Before finally–’

  ‘Stealing our clothes?!’ said Hal, shuddering at the thought. ‘What if they were versions of us from the future you idiot!’ he added angrily.

  Malcolm shrugged.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ said the universe-bending garment thief, almost sheepishly. ‘For you to be wearing these costumes in the future, that is. Much more likely they were from an alternate timeline that refused to take.’

  ‘Unlikely?’ balked Kara. ‘We’re literally about to wear these costumes again in our current future!’

  ‘Kara’s right,’ said Hal anxiously. ‘Maybe now the only way for us to stay alive is not to put them on?’

  ‘You guys are the worst time travellers in the history of ever,’ said Fearne.

  ‘Regrettably, I could not obtain Kara’s glasses,’ said Malcolm, ignoring their concerns and feeling confident it had been a well-calculated risk. Though he said it in a way that implied he had let them all down, and that the plan was surely now a complete wash-out that they should abandon immediately.

  Kara chuckled.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Hal, shaking his head and smiling in disbelief.

  ‘I know, it is indeed a shame…’ said Malcolm with false sadness. ‘But perhaps this will make you understand that this course is one that we simply cannot follow after all.’

  ‘No, not that,’ said Hal, raising a hand to silence him. ‘Show ’em Kar’.’

  Kara slowly retrieved the black-rimmed glasses and magnifying glass from her jacket pocket.

  ‘How?’ said Malcolm, seemingly offering up a genuine compliment amidst his awe at the unveiling of the impossible objects.

  ‘I had them on me at the coffee shop,’ said Kara, looking down at the spectacles with fondness. ‘Before we phased out.’

  ‘But that would imply that you retained some memory of your time here? In the present. The future. The future-present that is…’

  Kara knew what Malcolm was getting at.

  If any of them had any remaining doubts that this plan was meant to be, the fact that Kara had brought such a crucial piece of her disguise all the way from the future without even knowing she would need to, surely did the trick in terms of eradicating them.

  Now they had the threads for what came next, it was time to set events in motion and attempt their boldest mission yet;

  It would be one thing trying to catch themselves a Dark Restarter. Of that, they were certain.

  But it would be another thing entirely negotiating a truce with one.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  To Catch a Killer

  180th Restart – Saturday, August 25th, 2018, 12:47pm

  The plan was, at best, ambitious. At worst, it was a sure-fire way to get one of them killed.

  With Hal and Kara dressed as they were at the time of the barbecue on their first ever Saturday at Fir Lodge, they could pass for exact duplicates of their past-selves. The tricky part would be luring the Dark Restarter to the party. Then there would just be the small, easy-peasy matter of getting close enough to restrain him.

  Malcolm’s past-self was armed with two knives presumably forged by the God of War himself. On top of that Ares-endorsed nightmare, he also possessed enough rage to fuel a Red Lantern battery. They had made peace with those facts, but after forty minutes of Hal and Kara wandering around trying to look the part, mingling with the party-goers of the past, it became apparent that there was a huge flaw in their plan.

  ‘What if he doesn’t show?’ said Kara, getting antsy.

  ‘He’ll show,’ said Hal, not all that convincingly. ‘He knows his only way out of the time loops is to change something here. He’s tried everything else.

  Kara frowned.

  ‘He’s going to show…’ said Hal.

  *

  It was growing ever closer to 8:15pm and there had been no sign, or so much as even the faintest shimmer of red energy, let alone a fully manifested Dark Restarter. The four of them regrouped, as agreed, in the communal area in the moments before Jerry arrived to whisk whoever was destined for the chopping block this time around off on a merry adventure into death.

  ‘Can’t you just, I dunno, use your Spider-Sense to tell us where he is?’ asked Hal.

  ‘Can you remember where you were a decade ago?’ asked Malcolm sharply, hilariously attempting to hide his massive frame behind a sofa bed. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  Hal knew this. And what was more, even if it did work like that, by changing the flow of Malcolm’s past by deciding to capture him, they had released all manner of flutterby effects into the world around them.

  The whole evening seemed to be playing out a second or two out of sync, throwing them all off their game. Malcolm felt the brunt of it more than the others, as his own memories swirled around in his mind like a Hal and Kara fuelled Escher painting.

  *

  At 8:44pm, just as they were all about to write the whole plan off as little more than a waste of restarted time, the universe seemed to give in.

  And there he stood, at the bottom of the driveway of Fir Lodge, just in view from their new vantage point in the rear garden.

  ‘Yes! Showtime,’ said Hal, nodding to Kara.

  They ran along the side of the building and headed Jerry off before he could make his way fully up the driveway.

  ‘What are you doing here,’ said Hal, walking past The Dark Restarter who had taken position on the far side of the parked cars. Hal kept up the act, pretending he couldn’t see the murderous monster and, instead, approached Jerry. ‘You’re far away from home kid! Kara?!’ he shouted, causing Kara to step out into the cool night air that wasn’t cool to them at all.

  ‘What?’ she replied, cringing internally at what she felt was terrible acting.

  ‘Look! It’s Jerry. Someone needs to take you home, come on boy!’

  Kara acted as if she was torn between remaining at the party and partaking in the proposed errand.

  ‘Can I at least grab my drink first?’ she added irritably, as if she possessed the corporeality to actually lift a glass in her Restarter state.

  The Dark Restarter didn’t seem as if he were sure they were the versions of themselves they were pretending to be, and he took a step towards Kara, raising his blade and reaching out a massive hand towards her shoulder. Kara pretended not to notice, shooting Hal a look.

  If past-Malcolm made contact with her he would know they were in-phase with each other, and the gig would not be so much as up, but thrown off its axis entirely.

  ‘Leav
e the drink,’ said Hal as calmly as he could. ‘Poor little guy is lost.’

  Kara didn’t waste time milking her chance to act her heart out, chucking the few lines of extra dialogue they had rehearsed to the curb, moving quickly away from past-Malcolm’s hungry hand, the stones offering a slight crunch under her feet thanks to the retained charge she had built over the past twelve hours.

  She looked down at her orange shoes, doing her best to ignore the droplet of blood on the tip of her toes and smiling at how much of a convincer that must have been from the perspective of the man bearing down on her.

  And off they went, wondering exactly when this plan would go south and result in a potentially life-threatening failure.

  *

  What surprised them most, however, was that the plan didn’t fail as quickly as they expected. As they made their way to Kevin’s, with Jerry sniffing away at various piles of pine needles, they could tell they were being followed, though neither dared to look back. They had caught the killer’s attention, and just prayed Fearne and their Malcolm would be ready.

  ‘He’s buying it,’ Hal mumbled under his breath.

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Kara, her voice muffled between equally zipped lips, before putting on the next part of the show. ‘I think he lives this way,’ she added, wincing slightly at how forced the words sounded.

  This was a deal-breaker moment; she was proposing to take Jerry past his house entirely, deeper down the winding road. Something she had never done in any of their prior restarts. A deviation Malcolm would know to be a red flag.

  The statement was designed to maintain the killer’s curiosity. The why of such a change, getting the better of the how.

  The Dark Restarter had stopped behind them, seemingly thrown by the deviation in what was, as far as he knew, a temporal constant. Unbeknown to him, however, was that the considerably more-alive Hal and Kara were all the way back at Fir Lodge. Nice, safe, and getting drunker.

  There were only Restarters here now.

  Time travellers with multiple agendas that neither could predict, all participating in a game so outlandish it didn’t matter who believed what at this point.

  ‘What are you talking about Kar’, pretty sure this is his house?’ said Hal, feigning confusion and gesturing towards Kevin’s cabin. ‘Number fifty-one, you said so yourself, it’s on Jerry’s collar?’

  The curveball.

  ‘Weird,’ said Kara, playing along. ‘I feel like…we’ve done this before…I don’t think…we should go in there,’ she added for extra kick. As if she were experiencing a bout of temporal dysplasia. Intense déjà vu brought on by a Restarter’s meddling.

  She threw in a simulated ice-pick headache for good measure.

  It was Oscar worthy.

  If said Oscars were being awarded by seven-year-olds.

  Hal rolled his eyes. It felt a bit much in his opinion.

  ‘What’s wrong,’ he said, his desire to laugh in her face at her wooden acting counteracted by the fact an actual serial killer was closing in on them. ‘Headache again?’

  ‘Yeah, I keep getting them.’

  She turned her head and stared through the Malcolm of their past and present, perfectly nailing the look of someone who may have just left the oven on at home and needed to know for sure.

  “And the award for best breakout duologue goes to,’ thought Kara.

  “This is worse than Revenge of the Sith,’ thought Hal.

  But he followed her gaze all the same, and saw up-close the cynicism on the killer’s face, realising they needed to wrap up this improv, given that they were dangerously close to over cooking it.

  ‘Uh huh, come on,’ said Hal a little too quickly. ‘Let’s get this done already.’

  He whistled for Jerry, and led the way up the driveway, using the moonlight for guidance just like always, and into Kevin’s home, the door helpfully fully open, rather than being merely ajar.

  That meant Fearne and Malcolm had got here first, and must have been inside.

  *

  Something was off.

  He could feel it.

  The rat-catcher and orange secretary were behaving strangely, making odd deviations from a timeline he had spent years memorising. He had initially suspected this was some kind of trick, but this was definitely them. Their clothes proved that. Malcolm knew the newest incarnations of the self-proclaimed Restarters would not have had access to clothes from a different timeline.

  And yet, as he reached the door of Kevin’s lodge, so much was wrong.

  He had left his physical-self to play out his day just as always today, which meant both Harold and Kara should be gasping their last breaths right now inside the building before him.

  Instead, there was nothing. Not so much as a barking dog.

  If they were inside and alive, why had they stopped talking?

  Kevin was tied up in the basement, but where was the alive version of his own body? Had all of his attempts at manipulating himself finally led to severe consequence? Was he even still on the grounds of the Pentney Lakes? Or merely wandering the woods aimlessly, unable to form thoughts for himself at all.

  Malcolm closed his eyes and focused, searching his memories for this night. Looking for answers his alive-self already possessed. Recollections that would surely filter into his brain at any moment.

  But there was nothing.

  No new memories.

  Just darkness.

  His alive-self must have been somewhere nearby. Had he left the Pentney Lakes he wouldn’t be having these thoughts to begin with.

  But he had to know.

  And so, against his better judgement, the Dark Restarter stepped inside the lodge where the answers he craved resided.

  *

  The room was empty, the radio off, and the basement door wide open.

  Malcolm’s immediate assessment of the room merely generated more questions. He peered down the staircase, but his eyes wouldn’t adjust, he could only hear what he assumed to be the rat-catcher’s hushed voice emanating from the darkness below.

  As he descended the staircase, he heard a ruffle of material below him and caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a black strap, which wrapped around both of his feet, an unseen force yanking it backwards sharply, causing him to lurch forwards.

  He tried to reach out with his hands to support himself but was rewarded with nothing but the empty expanse of darkness, and little in the way of steadying support.

  The Dark Restarter hit the stairs hard and tumbled all the way down them, his face suddenly smothered by a black sheet that smelled identical to his rubber apron, though he was still wearing his own.

  He reached for one of his knives but realised they were both missing, and growled as he heard the tell-tale ripping of heavy-duty tape, which his assailant wrapped frantically around him, binding his hands and legs.

  Peter’s killer felt himself being hoisted up and thrown down onto a chair, heard more tape being utilised and felt it wrap around his body, before hearing the voice of a young woman.

  ‘We’ve got this, wait for us upstairs.’

  The instruction was followed by loud, slow footsteps which ascended the stairs, a slamming of the basement door sending reverberations that he was unable to fully experience thanks to them passing through the forever-shifting atoms of his now-restricted body.

  His abductors, clearly satisfied their quarry was secure, whipped off the apron, revealing the furious face of a very pissed off Dark Restarter.

  Hal and Kara stared at him smugly.

  ‘Funny meeting you here,’ said Hal, all confidence and zero tact.

  ‘You dare–’ attempted Malcolm.

  ‘Oh, we dare. We dare very much,’ Kara shot back, her tone dense with the disrespect of someone who couldn’t have known how much danger she was in.

  No.

  Worse.

  Someone who didn’t care how much danger she was in.

  ‘How?’ muttered the Malcolm of their past, the word dr
ipping with malice, despite him having a pretty damn concise idea of exactly what had happened.

  He stole a barely perceptible glance towards the floor at the disregarded apron and knew precisely what that meant.

  Hal caught him doing so, and kicked it under a work table.

  ‘This is how this is going to work,’ said Hal. ‘Our good friend Fearne is on the way to the Restart Point so none of this sticks, which means we’ve got very little time to get shit sorted.’

  Malcolm looked down at his taped ankles.

  ‘You think tape alone can hold me? Keep me contained?!’

  ‘I do,’ said Hal. ‘On the basis that it's literally doing that and only that right now.’

  ‘Plus,’ hummed Kara. ‘It’s not any old tape.’

  ‘It’s Restarter tape!’ said Hal gleefully, so glad he had brought it back with them, having wondered if this particular back-pack treasure would ever have had its time to shine on their journey. ‘Patent pending.’

  Malcolm struggled, but was embarrassingly unsuccessful in his attempt to free himself. It seemed that adhesive lined tape from the future was every bit as stubborn as its past and present brethren.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Kara.

  ‘Untie me, and we can talk about all manner of things,’ the man growled, a dark smile flashing beneath laser-focused eyes.

  The Restarters ignored him.

  ‘This thing we’re doing?’ said Kara, ‘Chasing each other across time? It has to stop, Malcolm.’

  ‘How are you even back here?!’ asked Malcolm, seemingly ignoring her too.

  ‘Because,’ said Hal with a heavy sigh. ‘You keep ballsing up time Malc’. You brought us back here by going all 12 Monkeys on us.’

  ‘I did no such thing!’ their prisoner snarled. ‘It was done,’ he added, utterly confused. ‘The golfer took your place, all three of us were free!’

  That surprised them for a moment. Up until now they were certain he had been responsible for their return to the past.

  They shrugged it off, interpreting it as plausible deflection.

  ‘You don’t have to tell us how you brought us back,’ said Kara tiredly. Honestly, it didn’t really matter at this point. ‘But we’re proposing a way out for all of us. Including Peter,’ she added.