by M. G. Harris
“They’re wrong about you, aren’t they? You’re not badlands. And I know you’re not one of the Caps.” The kid backs off, then turns and starts to trot briskly away. I catch up and fall in beside him.
“I’m Harry,” the kid says, casually. “What’s your name?”
“Josh,” I reply.
“All right, Josh, you need to come with me.”
I notice that the arrows are carried in a small backpack. There was only one more. Lucky for me, this kid is a sharpshooter.
Harry doesn’t offer the Bracelet back to me, but stashes it away, then tucks Sandy’s rifle under a free arm. Since I’ve just been rescued it seems ungrateful to argue. Just the same, I’m already contemplating how I’m going to persuade this tough little kid to give it back. I keep trying to get a good look at Harry’s face under the hoody but every time I make eye contact for even a second, the skinny kid glances away.
We start to jog over the field until we come to the Wolvercote bypass. For a couple of moments I just stand, listening to the silence. Somehow, even more than the relatively deserted, tiny village of Wytham and the empty skies, the silence of this road is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen so far.
Harry crosses the dual carriageway without even bothering to look. I find it impossible to do the same. We head towards Godstow and Port Meadow. The fields near the River Isis stand empty, ploughed into furrows, but around here, unlike the fields next to Wytham, there’s nothing growing.
We enter Jericho through the allotments. Harry murmurs, “Walk where I walk. It’s all booby traps around here.”
I follow the instruction, wondering who laid the traps. I guess it must be Harry’s group – who I’m guessing must be the Caps.
When we reach the primary school I’m transfixed by heaps of rotting garbage, supermarket bags piled high, split open and decomposing at the base, the flick of rats’ tails as they crawl amongst the grime. The tarmac is stained with liquid runoff that dried long ago.
I pass between them, holding my breath. Then I notice the state of the buildings. Like the playground, they’re badly overgrown. Metre-high saplings poke through the concrete. The grassy part of the playground has gone to seed, a knee-high meadow of wildflowers and weeds. As we approach the bridge over the canal, there’s a metallic click. Less than ten metres away, emerging from behind bramble and elderberry bushes, a teenage boy stands, very precisely aiming a rifle at me. He can’t be older than fourteen, a mop of greasy black hair flopping over his forehead.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says when he sees his friend. “A’ight, Harry. What you got there? We taking them prisoner now?”
“He’s not a chippenpin, fool.”
The teenager looks surprised. “What, then?”
“I dunno. Need to take him to see the chief.”
The boy emits a low wolf whistle. “Nice-lookin’ bit of kit there, Harry. You went all the way into the CZ to get another rifle?”
Harry keeps walking. “Better stay at your post, Zak.”
Zak stays put, rifle slung across his shoulders as he watches Harry with undisguised admiration. I continue at Harry’s side, into the new housing estate nearby, through deserted streets lined with wrecked cars, all the way to a crescent of tall townhouses. Two more teenagers stand guard by the door, rifles dangling from their shoulders. When they see me approaching with their friend behind, they perk up.
“You got one?” They sound impressed.
“Get the chief,” is all Harry says.
One boy goes inside and comes out a couple of minutes later. He’s followed by a tall, muscular Afro-Caribbean guy, light-brown skin, dressed in Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a yellow sleeveless Brazil T-shirt. His hair is bleached blond and cropped close to his skull. He’s fully gangsta, mean-looking too.
Yet there’s no mistaking the face of my old friend Tyler Marks.
Tyler’s eyes look different, and I realize why. They’re blue. I’ve finally got used to seeing my own face with strange blue eyes staring back at me. It’s different when it’s someone else’s face.
A blue-eyed Tyler, all grown up.
It’s pretty obvious that Tyler recognizes me.
“Wait a minute, I know you. You’re Josh Garcia.”
I begin to grin with relief. But Tyler frowns. “Man, you haven’t changed a bit since I last saw you, apart from the eyes. They must have you blue-bloods on some serious health regime.”
Harry turns, incredulous. “He’s a blue-blood. . .?”
“Josh Garcia, yeah, he’s a blue-blood all right; he was made the same time as me.”
Bewildered, Harry says, “But Ty, they were about to kill him. He doesn’t have a chippenpin. I think you’re mixing him up with someone else.”
“What is a ‘chippenpin’?” I ask, butting in.
“Oh, and I almost forgot, he was wearing this. That chippenpin leader seemed to think it was interesting.” Harry pulls out the Bracelet of Itzamna. Tyler regards it blankly.
I shrug, trying to make light of it. Better that they don’t realize I’m sweating at being separated from the Bracelet. Tyler saunters over to me. His eyes bore into mine.
“Jewellery, Josh. . .?” Tyler glances at Harry. “Where did you find him?”
“There was this aeroplane, Ty. But it was completely silent. Like a UFO. It landed in the woods! Then he comes walking out of the trees like nothing happened.”
“Can I just ask, though, what is this ‘chippenpin’. . .?”
Tyler shoots me an angry look. “D’I ask you to talk? No. See, Harry here is giving me this crazy story, yeah? So I got to listen. Now Josh, answer me this and nothin’ else. Did you come out of a UFO?”
I hold steady under Tyler’s suspicious gaze. “Not a UFO; a Muwan. You know, I told you about them.”
He frowns. “A Muwan?”
“From Ek Naab, remember?”
“Bro, you’re makin’ no sense.”
I pause as his words sink in. “You don’t remember about the Ix Codex and 2012 and Ek Naab and all that?”
Tyler holds up a finger. “You’re trying to play your blue-blood mind games. Just stop. I mean it.”
Numb with shock, I close my mouth. Tyler doesn’t remember any of it. He didn’t recognize the Bracelet of Itzamna, even though I’m pretty sure I showed it to him.
This isn’t the Tyler I knew, at all. And from there, it’s a short step to the next bone-shaking realization.
This isn’t my future. It’s the future of an alternate reality.
I make myself focus back in on what Tyler is saying to Harry. “Then what happened?”
Harry replies, “Then the chippenpins were all over him. Like I said, they were about to kill him.”
“Until Harry came along,” I say.
Tyler looks downright murderous. “You talk when I tell you to and not unless, you get me?” He lifts his right arm to reveal a tiny scar in the middle. “See this scar? Everyone inside the Controlled Zone has one. You say you don’t. But Josh Garcia was made a blue-blood, same as me; he’s a chippenpin. All the blue-bloods are.”
In my head, the sound of the word falls apart into three neat pieces. Chippenpin – chip and pin. Like the chips that get swiped in credit cards. I put my hand up tentatively and cough.
Tyler glares. “Blue-bloods can mess with people’s minds, do weird stuff with their voice. So. Don’t. Talk. Got that?”
Before the bemused eyes of Harry and the two rifle-toting teenage guards, Tyler grabs my arm and steers me into the house, through a narrow corridor and into a living room that extends into the kitchen. The house is tidy but there are signs of grime on the stripped pine wood floorboards and a black leather upholstered tub chair. There’s a wooden dining table. Tyler backs on to it, sits on the table and indicates that I should sit in the tub chair.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, I can talk now, can I?”
Tyler looks scornful. “We’re alone now. I ain’t got no hip33. And you know blue-bloo
ds can’t affect other blue-bloods. . .”
“What’s a blue-blood?”
His mouth stays open.
“I’m not who you think I am. I mean, I am Josh Garcia, but . . . I’m from. . .” I take a deep breath. “A different time. Like, you know, a time traveller. I’m Josh from the past, from before the 2012 thing. So I don’t know what a blue-blood is. Or the Controlled Zone, or a chippenpin, or . . . what did you say . . . hip3?”
Tyler looks dumbstruck. “Hip33,” he mumbles. “Proper name is hypnoticin . . . it’s a drug. They inject blue-bloods with it, and it enhances some latent power of suggestion. Bottom line, it lets blue-bloods control people. . .” His voice trails off. With utter incredulity he adds, “Did you say . . . a time traveller?”
Hypnoticin, the drug Martineau injected into me to give me hypnotic powers over the warrior who was about to cut my throat with a knife; the Sect of Huracan’s mind-control drug, developed by one of their leaders, Melissa DiCanio at Chaldexx BioPharmaceuticals.
“Oh,” I say. “Right. That. Yeah. I know what hypnoticin is.”
“S’right, hip33. You’ve used it?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it, could tell by your eyes. They never look naturally blue. You got any here?”
“No.”
Tyler seems disappointed. “Shame. We’ve run out. Next time the EG send a squadron into Jericho, there’ll be nothing I can do to protect my boys.”
“You and your boys, you’re not in the Controlled Zone?”
He shakes his head. “Technically, yes, but we’re not chippenpins. We’re Resistance. Not that there’s many of us left. Doubt they’ll even bother. They think we’re all boys. They won’t bother us, just let us starve to death.”
I’m confused. “You’re not all boys. . .?”
“Harry is a girl; Harriet. And two others. They disguise it pretty well. But they, you know, man, they’re growin’ up. Soon enough we’re gonna have to hide them away completely. And soon after that. . .” He breathes a heavy sigh. “Soon after, we’re gonna run out of food.”
“You can’t grow stuff in the gardens?"
“Some, yeah. But we need protein, Josh. That means animals, fish and that.”
“Or soy?”
“Ha, ha. Soy. You know how to grow that?”
“Why don’t you join the chippenpins?”
He scowls. “I’m a blue-blood, right? So that means I get to be an overseer, makin’ people do stuff they don’t want to do. And all the rest . . . Harry and the other girls have to go to the baby farms, be baby-mothers. The boys got to work the fields all day long. Eat when they tell you to eat, what they tell you to eat, have kids with who they tell you to have kids with. And on top of that, all the weird religion stuff.” Tyler sniggers contemptuously. “‘Summer is a comin’ in’ . . . pffah!”
I can only shrug. “Weird religious stuff. . .?”
“Believe. But you! Listen, bro – seriously – time travel?”
“You think I’m lying?”
He laughs.
“But you said you’re a blue-blood. So can’t you make me tell the truth?”
“If you’re Josh Garcia, I can’t stop you foolin’ with me.”
“Why would I do that? I need your help.”
“If you’re working for the EG, maybe it’s some new way to use hip33. Maybe you’re testing me.”
“Harry already told you, they were about to kill me.”
Tyler hesitates. “She mentioned they was giving you abuse.”
“It doesn’t matter; you don’t need to believe about the time-travel thing. I have proof.”
“Proof? Now you’re talking.”
“Proof – and a way out of here for you and your mates. If you help me.”
For a moment, Tyler peers into my eyes. “Continue. . .”
“Look. Why don’t you pretend like I don’t know anything that’s happened here since 2012?”
“Right, right. So you don’t know about the computers goin’ down and the plague and . . . and the EG taking over and sending away all the people who was sick with the plague, and rounding up all the healthy people and putting RFID chips in everyone’s arms.”
“RFID chip?”
“Radio-frequency identification, on a computer chip. Your name and your number. On a chip, which they can scan. You’re not allowed into the CZ without one. Chippenpin. Don’t let the EG hear you callin’ it that, even though everyone does. The official word is EGRI – Emergency Government Registration Identification.”
I sit back in the tub chair, the weight of Tyler’s words sinking in. “Wow. They’ve got it all sorted. The genetic engineering to make the blue-bloods. The mind-control drug. The chippenpin chips so they know who’s part of their controlled, perfect world. Execution for badlanders caught in CZ territory.”
Tyler’s eyes widen. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorted. And you know what, you’re part of it. Or you will be, Josh Garcia. You’re a blue-blood, aren’t you? The Josh I knew had brown eyes – until he was made a blue-blood. Yours are blue.”
My hands bunch into fists. “Tyler. Can you help me get into the EG’s headquarters here in Oxford?”
He pauses, then laughs. “Now I know you messin’. Why would you do that?”
“I need to get in. If I can find out how they made all this happen, maybe I can go back in time and stop it.”
The smile leaves his face. “What Harry saw in the woods – is that for real a time machine?”
“No.” I stare into my old friend’s face, trying to find the Tyler I once knew. But this guy’s eyes are flat with the ache of loss, the burden of responsibility. I can’t imagine how Tyler managed to keep a group of kids alive during whatever happened after 2012, but however he did it, the experience has hardened him. He’s older too, eighteen years old.
But maybe I can still trust him?
“Harry . . . has the time-travel device,” I tell him, haltingly. “That bracelet – it’s not jewellery; it’s technology. Created by a very ancient civilization. I can use it to get back to 2012. And if I go back with the right kind of information . . . maybe I can prevent all of this.”
Tyler’s lips curl into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Ancient civilization. Well I neva. You can change time?”
“None of this will ever have happened. There’s a plan to protect the earth from the electromagnetic pulse that comes along with the superwave.”
“The superwave, that thing that happened in 2012?”
“Right.”
“So . . . assuming you’re not mad or lyin’, that fixes things how?”
I stall. “For you? I don’t know.”
“Do I just disappear? Or lose all my memories and wake up as another Tyler?”
“Honestly, Ty, I don’t know the answer to that.”
He nods, gives a bitter chuckle, then slides off the table. “You got nothin’ to offer me, bro.”
Slowly, I stand. We’re less than a metre away from each other.
“I do have something to offer you.” I pause. “The thing that Harry saw in the woods.”
“The UFO?”
“In Wytham Woods. I flew here in an aircraft. Very advanced; you’ve never seen anything like it. You could use it to fly out of here. Go somewhere sunny, warm, with plenty of food. Somewhere you and your gang can be free.”
His eyes widen, for a second. “You can show me how to fly it?”
“I can give you a few lessons. But mainly, I can programme it to make trips.”
Tyler looks away, suddenly dazed.
“Think about it, Ty. Pick a place, somewhere you’ve always dreamed of. Somewhere away from all of this.”
“I’d kill someone, you know that,” whispers Tyler, “for a proper chance to escape.” He stares directly into my eyes and I feel a twist in my guts. “Better not be lyin’ to me, bro. Or that someone could be you.”
We make a deal: I’ll take Tyler to the Muwan and teach him to use it in exchange for the r
eturn of the Bracelet of Itzamna and Tyler’s help to get into the EG’s headquarters.
The fact that I’m in an alternate future is a relief, in a way. But how close is this timeline to my own? Tyler knows me but maybe we weren’t good friends. I experienced a similar reality once. It was created when Martineau destroyed most of the Ix Codex.
Have I somehow jumped back into that timeline?
I need to talk to Tyler about what happened in this world’s history. But it’s going to have to wait – for now I can see he’s completely focused on getting the Muwan. It’s a good thing that Harry saw it, I realize, or else I’m really not sure that Tyler would have believed me.
“We’ll go as soon as it’s dark,” Tyler says. “Sundown is in about an hour. It’s just gonna be me, you and Harry.”
“She’s an amazing shot,” I comment.
“Yeah, she was in archery lessons at her school. Now she’s huntin’ rabbits.”
“She got two of their people today,” I warn. “Maybe it’s not safe to take her with us. If we’re caught. . .”
Tyler interrupts. “Harry’s the only chance we’ve got to find anything in them woods, especially in the dark.” In a hollow voice he adds, “If we’re caught, Josh, there will be blood. Not just ours.”
When the sun has almost set we make our way through the streets. Tyler has a dark green, knitted beanie hat pulled over his bleached hair. He and Harry both carry arms; he a rifle, Harry her bow and a backpack of full home-made arrows. They don’t offer me a weapon.
The roads are eerily dark; no street or house lights. Within minutes my eyes adjust to the ambient light. We arrive at the perimeter of Tyler’s territory – or at least that’s what I guess. The path is bordered by the stinking piles of rubbish just like the ones we passed before.
Harry leads us north along the railway tracks, now rusted and thick with weeds and shrubs. In perfect silence we walk as far as the bypass, across into a nearby field, until we reach the river.
A boat comes into view – a punt. I can just make out the figure of a tall black guy standing at the back. Another of Tyler’s gang, waiting for us. He drops a long, metal pole into the water. Tyler grabs one end of the punt and drags it closer. We jump on board, and then we’re gliding down the river again, moving through dark water that occasionally ripples with silver light.
