The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  “I’m pretty much certain of it,” thought Hal, transmitting his response to Kara. “Which means you, me and Fearne were already there when our past selves met with Alex and Rach’ the first time around.’

  “Isn’t that crazy?” thought Kara. “The thought of us three being there, and past-us having no idea? Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “It kind of gives me a headache, to be honest,’ thought Fearne, causing the collective of Restarters to chuckle in unison.

  ‘What are you three doing?’ said Malcolm suspiciously, like a teacher walking in on some naughty school children.

  It was becoming an increasing occurrence for him, and he didn’t enjoy it.

  They broke the connection, their eyelids fluttering until eventually re-joining the relative present.

  ‘Practising,’ replied Fearne, being intentionally obtuse in the hope it would piss Malcolm off.

  ‘Practising what?’ asked Malcolm, in a tone that made her realise she had succeeded.

  Having dropped Rachel and Alex back into Hal and Kara’s 52nd restart, the three of them had decided to find a quiet place to practice sharing their thoughts through a sustained connection of their out-of-phase bodies. It had been slow going, but with Fearne’s grief over Peter as an emotional anchor, and Kara’s seemingly innate affinity with generating a mental link, they had both pulled Hal along for the ride and successfully set up a rudimentary three-way communication network.

  ‘A three way,’ said Hal, without thinking.

  ‘Annnd you’re banned from using words,’ joked Kara.

  ‘Could’ve worded that better,’ agreed Hal.

  They were preparing for their next attempt to send Malcolm into the future, to glean whatever he could in the hope it would provide them with valuable insight into the world that was being generated by their meddling.

  A concept that seemed all the more possible now they were armed with Alex and Rachel’s idea to use The White Lodge as a sort of back door out of the bubble they were trapped in. They didn’t know if their plan would work, but if it did, they knew Malcolm would need as much information as possible to get to a point of personal interest to them all.

  Hal explained his reasoning that it would take Malcolm hours to reach their Sunday-selves by car, let alone on foot, and with no way of knowing which way to go he’d just be wandering the Earth aimlessly like some kind of post-Winter-Soldier Steve Rogers.

  ‘So if we can generate enough…Restarter energy feedback, if we focus everything we’ve got, I can literally give you the memories of how to get to my house!’

  Malcolm recoiled, utterly surprised by Hal’s willingness to impart such personal information. Of course, had Malcolm wanted to find Hal in the present, he would’ve been able to do so a number of ways. Stalking, mainly.

  It was, after all, amazing how much his previous works of art were willing to share across a multitude of platforms. Details they freely spewed out across the internet. But still, the gesture was not lost on him.

  ‘You…trust me enough to impart such details?’ said Malcolm, almost giving Hal a chance to back out, as if he were protecting him from himself.

  ‘Don’t go all teary-eyed on me Malc’,’ said Hal, rolling his eyes. ‘I’m not going to be inviting you around for dinner when this is all done. But yes. I trust you. We need you. I’m putting all my cards on the table.’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Hal,’ said Fearne. ‘I mean you’re literally about to tell a serial killer where you live. Where Jess lives!’ she added, reminding him of his unsuspecting fiancée.

  “The convincer,” thought Hal. “Trying to talk them all out of it.” He had to hand it to her, it was perfectly delivered.

  ‘Here,’ said Hal retrieving his wallet from his trusty backpack of treasures. ‘Take this.’

  Hal passed Malcolm a small rectangular piece of salmon-coloured plastic.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this,’ said Malcolm, staring at the driving licence.

  ‘Well, you can start by reading it,’ said Hal. ‘So you can learn my address, dumb ass. In case the fog tries to mess with your head. And you’d better take this too,’ he added, removing his gun from its holster and handing it to Malcolm.

  Malcolm was about to ask what use he could possibly have for a pellet gun, when Kara answered the question for him.

  ‘You’re heading into Uncharted Time,’ said Kara, just like they had rehearsed, smiling at how cool that sounded. It was classic Hal. ‘You may even run into other Restarters out there. Stuck in other time-bubbles of their own. Better to have it as a deterrent and not need it…’

  ‘…Than need it, and not have it,’ said Hal, finishing her sentence. ‘Okay, now that this Secret Santa is done with, I need to show you exactly how to get to my place.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait until we’ve made changes?’ said Malcolm, almost suspiciously.

  ‘Well, obviously,’ said Fearne. ‘But we might as well figure out how to do this in preparation for when we actually need you to do some actual recon.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Malcolm. ‘Proceed.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kara, ‘just empty your mind. Fearne is going to give you a boost of emotion, Hal’s going to project his thoughts into your mind and I’m…’

  ‘Kara’s the powerhouse,’ said Hal simply, his words causing Kara to blush.

  ‘This is just my thing,’ said Kara.

  Gripping each other’s hands, the energy crackled between them angrily, as if it knew what they were attempting and was extremely agitated by it.

  ‘Okay Fearne,’ said Kara. ‘Time to drop the needle. Show him how you feel.’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Fearne, finally getting to the part of the plan that had led to her agreeing in the first place, as the killer’s unique ability to soak up restarter energy like a sponge suddenly became his undoing, her eyes lighting up and unleashing a landslide of raw, pure emotion directly into Malcolm’s cerebral cortex.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  What’s Mine is Yours

  187th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 2018

  Soul crushing agony hit him like a landslide, as he relived the moments when his boyfriend and future husband was toyed with by the maniac wearing his own face. The unbridled glee in the killer’s eyes made Malcolm feel sick to his stomach as he was assaulted by a blast of sheer shame. The realisation that he was powerless to prevent any of it sunk deep into the ocean of his heart, colliding angrily with the seabed of his hopes and dreams.

  They had such plans, Peter and he.

  They were going to move in together in just a few short months.

  Build a family.

  Probably get a cat or something.

  And now, here he was, faced with the inescapable fact that none of that would come to be.

  That he would never again feel the sensation of Peter’s fingers running through his hair, or the feel of his kiss as–

  ‘Enough,’ barked Malcolm, jerking violently as he attempted to pull away from the Restarters that had commandeered his mind.

  But Fearne wasn’t done with him yet, refusing to yield in the slightest, her grip tightening, throwing more and more of her own memories and feelings at him until a voice broke through the electrical crackle that filled all of their eardrums.

  ‘Dial it back, Fearne,’ said Hal. Not scolding her, but clearly equally overwhelmed by the power of her mind; unfiltered emotions that were bleeding into their own and tricking all of them into thinking they were experiencing their own thoughts and recollections instead of the true instigator.

  Kara, Hal and Malcolm all gasped in unison as she released them from the psychological bombardment, as if a tap had been turned off, and they were all permitted once again to think independently, though still very much connected.

  ‘That was…’ began Kara

  ‘…intense,’ wheezed Hal.

  There was no other word for it.

  ‘Righty oh,’ said Hal, shaking off the residua
l aftershocks of losing a lover that was not his own. ‘Time to check your memory inbox for the thought email I’m about to wing your way.’

  Hal focused his mind on his driveway, imagining that he was approaching the front porch as his car keys jangled by his side. The key slid into the lock as if it were magnetised, and then he was inside his home.

  His dog Shelby greeted him, delighted that her dad had returned. Early, it seemed, given her over-excited reaction. Usually, Hal would have flipped on the kettle and prepared himself a coffee, but this was an exercise in data duplication, designed solely to give Malcolm the lay of the land, and Hal proceeded onwards down his short hallway to his modest living room, before scanning the area, allowing himself to drink in every last detail.

  Malcolm looked at the slightly messy lounge area, feeling oddly at home, before leaning down to stroke Shelby, who he now knew wasn’t over-excited because he had returned home early, but rather this was always how she reacted, regardless of time.

  As Malcolm stared at the magnolia coloured walls of his home, his eyes rested on the mantlepiece of a wood burning fire, adorned with photographs of his fiancée…

  “Jessica,” he thought, smiling warmly.

  He found it odd that he had to search for her name. And even stranger that he had referred to her by her full name, which felt wrong on the tongue. “Jess,” he thought, correcting himself, and feeling pleased that it felt truer.

  Suddenly, the room began to shrink, as if Malcolm were being lifted by a grappling hook, torn away from his home, pulled up through the roof, a sound of electricity pulling him away from what he now knew was a fabricated construct, and back into temporal purgatory.

  ‘So,’ said Hal, his throat unusually hoarse and somewhat despondent. ‘That’s my place. You get all that?’

  Malcolm found himself needing to take a moment, having to shake off the feeling that he had been in his own home, not Hal’s. An unexpected side-effect to sharing memories via the medium of crude telepathy, he wagered.

  ‘I did,’ said Malcolm. But a building alone did not a map make. ‘But I still have no idea how to get there?’

  ‘Dammit Hal,’ said Kara, realising the reason Hal hadn’t imparted the most pertinent of information was that he simply couldn’t get anywhere at all without a bloody sat-nav. ‘Everybody link arms.’

  Hal literally had no idea how to get back to his house from Norfolk.

  Kara imagined driving over the boundary line of the Pentney Lakes, towards the nearest motorway, and then quickly navigated herself back in her mind’s eye on how to reach their home town.

  To Malcolm, it was as if he were watching a memory in fast-forward, until the connection between them was once again severed.

  ‘Okay,’ said Malcolm. ‘I am ready.’

  ‘Be careful with that,’ said Hal, still not sounding like himself, but looking down at the gun he had given Malcolm all the same. ‘I want it back.’

  Malcolm grinned, retrieved Hal’s driving licence from his pocket, and read over the details once more for good measure.

  ‘Well,’ said Malcolm, ‘let’s attempt a house call shall we. Would you like me to say hello to Jess for you?’ he added.

  Hal, uncharacteristically, said nothing. And without so much as a razor-sharp quip or a wave of the broadsword of banter, he merely walked away.

  ‘What’s with him?’ asked Fearne, worrying if perhaps she had been the cause, having somehow broken his spirit. Her target had been Malcolm, but in her eagerness to cause the killer pain, and perhaps in the hope of shedding some of her own by jettisoning the dead weight lodged firmly in her broken heart, she felt almost guilty.

  Kara shrugged. ‘I…don’t know.’

  ‘And need I remind you,’ said Malcolm sourly, utterly oblivious to Harold’s quietness, ‘try not to cross the boundary line whilst we attempt this fool’s errand. On the off chance it leads anywhere but back here, I have no desire to get trapped in a nexus realm between time.’

  Admittedly, they hadn’t even thought about that.

  Kara was about to pretend they had, by offering some words of comfort, but Malcolm disappeared before she could do so, like a crack of the whip, presumably well on his way to The White Lodge.

  ‘Are we sure this was a good idea,’ said Fearne.

  Assuming Malcolm could even make it to Hal’s home, they had just willingly given a serial killer enough personal information for Malcolm to set up a bank account in Hal’s name.

  Fearne noticed that Kara was smiling, and she suddenly felt incredibly irritated.

  ‘Relax,’ said Kara. ‘We know what we’re doing.’

  Fearne bristled. ‘Maybe you could let me in on it?’ all but spitting the words. ‘For once. Assuming it’s okay to join your little secret time travel club?’

  ‘It was never about sending him to Sunday,’ said Hal, who had taken a seat on a nearby log.

  ‘What?’ said Fearne. ‘But that’s all you’ve been going on about since we got here. “Sunday is the key. Future events will tell us how to beat this thing,” blah bloody blah.’

  ‘That’s not how I sound,’ said Hal, not so much dismissively as he was exhausted by her seemingly unquenchable desire to pick a fight with him. ‘You said it yourself,’ he continued, looking decidedly shaken up. ‘What point would that serve? We’ll just restart anyway, and it’ll all get wiped. There’s nothing to gain from glimpsing a future that hasn’t set yet.’

  Honestly, Hal had no idea how far Future Malcolm would get on his impossible quest, but he doubted it would amount to much more than a long commute back to Restart-Ville. All that mattered was what the killer’s absence would bring them; the solitude the three of them needed to speak in peace and run through–

  ‘So why go to all this trouble?’ said Fearne, interrupting his thoughts.

  During their foray into telepathic espionage, they had imparted to Fearne that the plan was to connect with Malcolm, flooding him with enough Restarter energy to create a link between the four of them. A link that would facilitate providing Malcolm with enough personal information about Hal to make the killer believe their motive was solely about giving him what he needed in the event he managed to breach through into Sunday.

  The key to this being Fearne’s intense emotions towards the loss of Peter, and how that emotional boost would surely expedite the process of allowing the three of them and Malcolm to share their thoughts more succinctly.

  What they hadn’t told Fearne was that Kara could have triggered that without her help, and that what they actually needed was for Fearne to act as a buffer; a distraction brought on by her loss that was so consuming, that it would overwhelm Malcolm. Overload his mind just enough so that they could use his disorientation against him.

  ‘The thing with mind-reading between Restarters,’ said Hal, his voice containing more than a hint of an incoming mic-drop, ‘is that it’s always a two-way street.’

  ‘And once we get out of this mess,’ added Kara, ‘he’s not going to remember any of it anyway.’

  ‘A two-way street?’ said Fearne, starting to understand. ‘Oh my god…you read his mind?!’

  Hal shot her a wink.

  ‘Why thy hell didn’t you tell me?’ asked Fearne, clearly hurt that they didn’t trust her enough to let her in on it.’

  ‘Well, with Malc’ receiving Fearne FM,’ said Kara, ‘we figured what you didn’t know couldn’t be…used against you, I guess.’

  ‘So, you saw how all of this really ends?’ asked Fearne, the excitement building in her voice and overriding her damaged pride. ‘That was…really smart!’

  ‘Don’t seem too surprised!’ joked Hal, feigning hurt feelings, despite his heart clearly not being in it. ‘Yes…and no. I didn’t expect to get drawn in by the whammy you were throwing at the guy. It took me a while to refocus on what I was looking for. By that point I only had time to grab on to the glimmers of his memories.’

  ‘So, what did you see?’ said Fearne, her elatedness palpable
, knowing for certain she was about to be vindicated. That Future Malcolm’s true agenda was surely to destroy them all. Perhaps Hal had even discovered a way to rescue Peter…

  ‘Is he telling the truth?’ added Kara, wanting to know if Malcolm really was as reformed as he claimed to be, her heart sinking as Hal shook his head.

  ‘It’s…hard to describe,’ said Hal, turning to face Kara. ‘It wasn’t as clear as when you and I have shared our thoughts. It was more like…a series of images playing at super-high speed.’

  In truth, it was hard to garner any real opinions on Malcolm one way or the other. He had expected to see fully formed scenes of betrayal, or conversations they were yet to have playing out in their unabridged, unedited entirety.

  The reality was far less fraught with game-changing drama than he had hoped for.

  ‘He’s lying, right?’ said Fearne matter-of-factly, as if all of her concerns were one sentence away from being verified, date stamped, and bagged up for evidence.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Hal, ‘I think he’s on the level. I saw the moments we’d all shared together, only from Malcolm’s point of view. And I felt…I think he feels…’ Hal hesitated. He was about to go as far as saying Malcolm had feelings for them, but that made him feel like a bit of sick was going to rise up in his throat, so he settled on something easier to swallow, keep down and digest. ‘…I think he likes us?’

  ‘What do you mean, likes us?’ said Fearne, the scepticism in her voice borderline tangible, and not for the first time since this nightmare started, feeling like she was drifting further and further away from both Hal and Kara.

  ‘His thoughts seem to dwell on training us. His reasons for doing so…he feels happy when we improve. Like he wants us to be ready for when the time comes to confront his past-self.’