The Pages of Time

by Damian Knight

  * * * * *

  Lewis woke up in the back of a moving van with the hood already secured over his head. Someone was slumped against his shoulder, breathing heavily. Judging by the smell of beer, Lewis reasoned it was his dad. Not wanting to get shocked again, he sat as still as he could manage.

  With only the thick, itchy material in front of his eyes, there was no way of telling where they were or how long it had been since they’d been kidnapped. Eventually the van turned onto bumpy, rutted ground before slowing to a stop a minute or so later. Lewis heard the back doors open and felt a gust cold air blow in. The hood was ripped from his head and he found himself blinking at the face of the man with grey hair and stubble.

  Lewis’s father stirred, lifting his hooded head from Lewis’s shoulder. ‘Where am I? And why can’t I see?’

  ‘Get up,’ the man said, slicing the cable ties around Lewis’s wrists. ‘They’re ready for you.’

  ‘Where’re you taking us?’ Lewis asked.

  The man punched him hard in the face.

  Lewis came to again as he was being dragged into a lift. His parents were bundled in after him, but there was no sign of Connor. The man with grey hair placed his hand over a black plate, which pulsed green, and then pressed the lowest of three buttons set on the wall.

  The doors closed and, a few seconds later, reopened onto a large, rectangular space that was several centimetres deep in water. Standing just in front of the lift, but facing away, were Eva; a large, middle-aged man with his hands on his head; a man in black overalls pointing a machine gun at them and an old woman with frizzy, unnaturally coloured hair, who Lewis realised must be Lara McHayden.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, turning to them with a menacing grin. ‘Please do join us.’

  The man with grey hair pulled out a pistol and prodded him in the back with the barrel. ‘Move!’

  Lewis stepped out of the lift, followed by his parents, and saw Sam standing halfway down the room between two parallel counters that ran its entire length. On the other side of the right-hand counter was another man in black overalls, also holding a machine gun.

  ‘Lewis,’ Sam called, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘Having the time of my life,’ Lewis called back.

  The man with grey hair grunted and shoved him forwards until he was in line with Eva and the man with his hands on his head, whom Lewis now remembered seeing at Matthew’s funeral.

  McHayden clapped her hands together. ‘How marvellous, I do so love a reunion! Mr Clarke, would you care to do the honours?’

  Clarke, he of the electric shock baton, took a step forward and raised the gun so the barrel was an inch from the back of Lewis’s head. ‘Any last words?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lewis said. ‘I have a letter from Isaac.’

  McHayden’s grin faltered. ‘Excuse me?’

  There was a click-clack noise behind Lewis’s head as Clarke cocked his gun.

  ‘Wait-wait-wait!’ McHayden flapped at Clarke with both hands, like a kitten batting a ball of wool. Clarke sighed and lowered the gun. McHayden turned back to Lewis. ‘Who told you to say that?’

  ‘Isaac. I met him this evening, just before your friend here broke into my house, zapped me and then shoved me in the back of a van.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ McHayden said. ‘Isaac is dead.’

  ‘No. In need of a bath and a haircut, maybe, but very much alive.’ Lewis reached into his pocket, pulled out the envelope that the tramp had given him and offered it to McHayden. ‘Here, see for yourself if you don’t believe me.’

  There was a stunned silence as the rest of the group struggled to make sense of what was happening and collectively failed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lewis’s father asked.

  ‘Saving the day,’ Lewis said.

  McHayden stared at him with unveiled hatred, then snatched the envelope from his hand and turned to Clarke. ‘Why wasn’t he searched?’

  Clarke frowned. ‘It, er, didn’t seem necessary.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, must I think of everything myself?’ She clawed greedily at the seal, ripped it open and pulled out the letter inside.

  8

  My Dearest Lara,

  I know I can never expect your forgiveness, but I ask that you trust in me all the same. Doubtless you have pieced together much of what happened all those years ago, but you have never had my reasons for leaving. Please believe that I did what I had to because it was the only way to protect you.

  Michael came back that last week we were together, the day before we left for Christmas with my parents. He threatened to go public about Tetradyamide unless I gave him more of the drug, which would have kicked up such a hornets’ nest that I agreed. That was obviously a monumental mistake, but at the time I only had the faintest notion of how powerful the drug could be.

  Michael found me again on the evening of New Year’s Eve. He was a changed person, like nothing I’ve ever seen. He had a gun and said he would kill me unless I gave him the formula for Tetradyamide, so I brought him back to my office at Bereck & Hertz. While there I was able to knock him unconscious and then destroy as much of my research as possible before running from California.

  I didn’t realise back then that I would be running for the rest of my life, but you have seen what Michael has become. He knows about your work, and it is now only a matter of time before he finds out about the boy. God only knows what he will do then.

  I urge you to reconsider the path you have chosen, if only for the memory of the love we once shared. You must terminate the Tempus Project and destroy your work on Tetradyamide before it is too late.

  Yours forever,

  Isaac

  9

  Nothing Lewis had said made much sense to Sam, but if he was stalling for time it seemed to be working. Eventually McHayden looked up from the letter. The features of her face softened and, for a moment, Sam could make out the young woman he’d seen in a black and white photograph hanging on the wall of her office.

  Slowly, a single teardrop trickled down her cheek.

  ‘All those years,’ she said, lowering the letter and wiping the tear away with the back of her other hand. ‘I…I had no idea.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Sam said.

  McHayden stared at him. Behind her half-moon spectacles, her eyes were filled with the deepest sadness and regret that he’d ever seen.

  Clarke cleared his throat. ‘Your instructions, ma’am?’

  McHayden’s face gradually hardened. As Sam watched on, the last remnants of the young woman she had once been died before his eyes, leaving only the spiky shell that had crystallized around her over the years. She scrunched the letter into a ball and dropped it into the water by her feet, where it bobbed for a moment before soaking through and sinking under.

  ‘This changes nothing,’ she said.

  10

  Sam saw Lewis reach into his pocket again. Lewis pulled out a glass vial, twisted around and threw it at Sam.

  ‘Here, catch!’

  For a second nobody moved as every pair of eyes fixed on the tiny cylinder rotating through the air. It reached the summit of its arc and, as if in slow motion, began to fall.

  ‘Catch it, you idiot!’ Lewis yelled.

  At last Sam dived forwards, springing off his toes, his body almost horizontal, his hand outstretched.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  11

  The machine gun roared again and straight away Sam knew he was hit. Pain tore into his thigh like a rabid dog, a burning, gnawing thing that shut out all thought of the object Lewis had thrown. He was flung back against the counter and bounced onto the floor, where he lay for a second, soaking wet and winded, his body gripped by shock. The pain was the worst he’d ever known, a concentrated spear of fire in his left thigh.

  Somehow he managed to pull himself into a seated position with his back against the cold, wet metal of the counter. The trouser leg three inches above his left knee was a mesh of re
d. Behind the opposite counter the guard raised his gun again. Sam met his gaze and saw his own fear reflected back. There was no question the guard would fire again.

  Sam closed his eyes.

  12

  Sam waited for the end to come as blood pumped out of his leg, thick and fast. When it finally did, a single gunshot rang out, not the rapid burst of machine gun fire he’d expected. He opened his eyes to find that he wasn’t dead.

  The guard tumbled forward over the counter, a grey, blood-streaked sludge oozing from the top of his head. McHayden was silhouetted by light from the lift, Clarke’s pistol directed at the dead guard.

  ‘I need the boy alive,’ she said.

  Clarke stared back with a glazed expression. He’d probably never had his gun taken from him before. ‘And the others?’ he asked.

  ‘Kill them. Kill them now.’

  As the remaining guard cocked his weapon, Doug spun around and grabbed it. Eva and Lewis’s mum both screamed. Doug and the guard grappled, pulling the gun back and forth between them in a desperate tug of war. Clarke threw himself at Doug, but before he got there, Justin, Lewis’s dad, tripped him and he fell sideways through the open doors of the lift.

  McHayden turned towards them, lifted Clarke’s pistol and fired two shots into the ceiling above their heads. The group froze in mid-struggle, looking like stone soldiers in a war statue. A small cloud of dust drifted down from the plaster and settled in their hair.

  ‘That’s enough,’ McHayden said. ‘The next shot won’t be a warning.’

  With Doug and the guard at a stalemate, McHayden was now the only person with a gun. Sam glanced back at the dead guard. Blood and brains spilled over the edge of the counter, dripping onto the floor, but the guard’s fingers remained closed around the grip of his machine gun. Sam was beginning to feel light-headed from blood loss. There was no way he could stand, let alone walk, so he swung his legs to the side and sprawled forwards on his elbows. Although the opposite counter was only a couple of metres away, he had to drag his whole weight with his arms. Every inch was agony, but somehow he managed to close the gap, leaving a trail of bloody water in his wake.

  He glanced back just in time to see Clarke emerge from the lift with a curved blade in his hand. With a graceful flick of the wrist, Clarke drove it to the hilt into Doug’s neck. Blood sprayed in a jet over Clarke’s suit. Doug made a gurgling noise, released the guard’s gun and toppled backwards as Clarke pulled the knife out. Eva screamed again and collapsed next to her father, but Clarke yanked her away and slapped her face. Free again, the remaining guard trained his gun on Lewis and his parents. There were only seconds left for Sam to save them.

  His fingers squelching in brains, he pulled himself up on the edge of the counter until he was lying over the guard’s body, his weight supported on his good leg. With trembling hands he tried to bend the dead fingers back and jiggle the gun free.

  ‘So, still have some fight left in you?’ McHayden said, striding between the counters.

  Sam managed to prise the last of the guard’s fingers open and pulled the gun to his chest. It only moved a few inches; the strap was still looped around the man’s shoulder. McHayden reached Sam as he fought to unhook the strap and dug the barrel of Clarke’s pistol into the bullet wound in his leg. Sam shrieked in agony, dropped the machine gun and, as his standing leg folded beneath him, slid to the floor.

  ‘Get up,’ McHayden said. ‘Get up so that you can watch your friends die.’

  Sam stared at the floor. Nothing had worked. As a last act of defiance he would at least refuse to watch her kill them. Then he saw something bobbing in the water. It was the glass container that Lewis had thrown.

  McHayden sneered and then looked over her shoulder to Clarke. ‘Bring the others here,’ she said. ‘I want him to see this.’

  Sam grabbed the container and rolled onto his back. A bar of thick, silvery liquid wavered inside, sealed under a red screw cap. As Clarke shoved Eva, Lewis and Lewis’s parents into view, Sam propped himself up on his elbow, bit the cap and twisted.

  McHayden turned back, her sneer vanishing when she saw what he was holding. She aimed the pistol at him again. ‘Put it down, Sam.’

  ‘Or what, you’ll kill my friends?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to stop that now, but I’d rather kill you myself than lose you. Don’t push me, dear boy. I’ll shoot if I must.’

  ‘Do what you have to,’ Sam said, and raised the container to his lips.

  13

  Another gunshot echoed through the lab. Sam’s right hand, the hand that had held the container, disintegrated before his eyes. The pain was so acute that he was no longer aware of the wound to his leg. His thumb was still intact, as was his index finger, but in place of the palm there was a fleshy, gaping hole littered with shards of bone and broken glass. Sam’s little finger dangled by a flap of skin and the two middle fingers were missing altogether. He gasped and clutched his wrist with his remaining hand to stem the pumping blood.

  ‘Get him something for that,’ McHayden said to Clarke. ‘I don’t want him dying from blood loss.’

  Clarke took a handkerchief from his pocket, knelt beside Sam and cinched it at his wrist. The flow of blood instantly slowed.

  McHayden dropped to her haunches to inspect Clarke’s work, the pistol drooping lazily from her fingers. ‘So, my dear boy, it seems we have reached the end of this particular adventure.’

  Sam looked up at her, his jaw clenched. The glass container, his last chance, was gone. There was nothing else he could say or do.

  Suddenly he saw McHayden’s face ripple, the wrinkles moving like waves over a body of water. Her skin was tinged a bright shade of orange, which gave way to yellow, then green. The walls of the lab shimmered and sparkled as though millions of diamonds were embedded in their surfaces. A surge of euphoria swept through him. Sam felt stronger than he had in his whole life. The wound in his thigh was nothing but a vague itch, his hand a minor graze.

  He sprang to his feet. McHayden recoiled with the disgusted grimace of someone who’s just taken a long swig of off milk.

  ‘I have one surprise left,’ he said.

  She stared at him blankly.

  Sam raised his ruined hand. Planted in the wound was a slender dome of glass, under which a small reservoir of the silvery liquid remained. Whatever was in the vial now flowed through him, infused in his blood. It felt like Tetradyamide, only much, much stronger.

  ‘Oh,’ McHayden said.

  ‘Yes, my dear girl. Oh.’

  The image before Sam froze and then retreated, dropping away like a pebble down a well. Above, below and to either side were countless other images, each laid out in rows like an infinite deck of cards spread across an endless table. Instead of seeing the pages of time strung in a linear sequence like the pages of a book, Sam now saw the true nature of things. There was no order and there was no book. Time itself was the illusion. Below him, he saw the innumerable possibilities stemming from every possible action in his life since the crash. Most of these worlds were similar to his own, but some were so different as to be almost unrecognisable. All, however, were just as real as each other, preserved for eternity in a static plain of existence. There was no free will, because in some alternative reality every outcome from every possible choice he could have made would be played out, again and again and again. All Sam had to do was decide which reality he chose to experience.

  In that moment of clarity, he knew what he must do. He scanned the pages beneath him, searching for the fork in the road at which everything had gone wrong. It came straight away, his mind focusing on a single significant moment where a different choice would have changed everything that had happened since, and then tunnelling down on it as the other pages – or cards as he now saw them – blurred away at the edges of his vision.

  And in an instant, Sam was on a bench outside the church in his grandparents’ village. Lewis was standing next to him in the baggy suit he
’d borrowed for the occasion, an expression of concern mixed with annoyance on his face. In his intact right hand, Sam was holding Lewis’s mobile phone.

  He blinked and the image gained motion. A cold, damp wind blew, whipping at the panels of his suit. He glanced about. A man and a woman in paramedic uniforms were standing to the other side. The man had a stringy ponytail and sideburns, the woman podgy cheeks and an upturned nose.

  ‘If you’ll just let us examine you first then you can make as many phone calls as you like,’ the woman said.

  The phone in Sam’s hand was ringing, as though he’d just dialled a number and pressed call. He held it to his ear. After another ring someone answered.

  ‘Hello,’ the voice said. ‘This is Inspector Frances Hinds.’

  Sam looked past Lewis and up the hill to the church. The big oak doors eased open and Chrissie stepped out. The sight of her brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Chrissie called. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Inspector Hinds asked.

  Without saying a word, Sam hung up.

  Chapter VIII

  After Effects

  1

  Sam was on his back in the dark, drenched in a cold sweat. He gasped for air and, raising his right hand in front of his face, wiggled his fingers. It felt as though they were all present and accounted for. Instinctively he reached for his bedside table and, to his immense relief, hit the switch on the base of the lamp. He saw that he was in his own bed, but had kicked the duvet to the floor.

  It was the feeling of waking from the most terrible nightmare to find that none of it had been real. He climbed out of bed, then crept from his room, up the stairs and knocked gently on his sister’s door.

  There was no answer. A swell of panic filled him. He knocked again, this time banging with all his might.

  Suddenly he heard footsteps crossing the floor on the other side. The door opened and Chrissie stared at him, her eyes puffy and her hair tangled. Before she could say anything, Sam threw his arms around her and hugged her as tightly as he could.