Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  It glistens ruddy gold in the flashlight’s beam. Deep, intricate shadows etch a tree, a garden, figures around it. The detail is astounding, each leaf carefully carved, each vein upon each leaf. I could lose myself in that picture.

  “There’s an inscription.” Aiko points.

  I examine the tiny text running around the scabbard’s edge. I expect a Cyrillic alphabet but it’s in a Roman one. Not that that helps me.

  “Eiecitque Adam et conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae,” I read. Whether it sounds like that’s what I’ve read or not, I’m not sure.

  “I think that’s Latin,” Aiko says.

  “You understand it?”

  “A few words.” She squints at the sword. “Vitae is life, definitely.”

  I nod. Even I got that one.

  “Erm, cherubin, I think, refers to…” She squints even harder, puzzled. “Angels?” She shrugs. “Which would mean Adam could well be the biblical Adam. That matches up with where it says paradisum.”

  “I don’t remember Adam having a sword.” I probably would have paid more attention in Sunday School if he had had one, though.

  “No, but the cherubs do if memory serves.” She nods to herself. “The warriors of heaven armed with swords of fire or some such.”

  “Swords of what?” My eyebrows soar along with my hopes.

  Aiko’s mouth makes a little “o.” “You don’t think?” she says.

  I wrap my hand around the sword’s handle. “Only one way to find out.”

  Aiko looks at the crates. “There’s a lot of wood in here.”

  But I’m beyond caring about silly things like fire safety. This could be a flaming sword dammit. After all the crap I’ve put up with, I at the very least deserve a flaming sword. I tear the scabbard away.

  And of course there is no flame. Just a dull steel blade reflecting Aiko’s flashlight.

  And then… A shimmer.

  “Was that…?” I hardly dare hope.

  And then flame. A great gout of it consuming the blade, billowing up to the ceiling. Aiko shrieks and leaps back, crashing into boxes. I yell too, almost drop the bloody thing, but somehow I keep hold of it in a mad fumble of numb fingers. The flame has settled to a steady burn, writhing up the blade to the tip where it spills away into nothingness.

  “Holy shit.” Aiko stares. “That is the single most fucking cool thing I have ever seen.”

  I’m grinning like a child. I look at her. “This totally makes up for the fanny pack, doesn’t it?”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Ground floor

  “No freaking way!” Jasmine leaps up as we enter the room. She tears across the space between us and stares, mouth open, at the sword.

  It is, seriously, my favorite thing ever.

  “That is so totally badass.” She’s holding the sides of her head as if trying to contain the awesome before her. “Can I touch it?” Jasmine asks. “Can I? Can I? Please.”

  “Sure.” I let her take it. She wields it above her head with wild abandon, leaving a fiery contrail in her wake.

  “We’re all going to die,” Malcolm comments mildly from where he’s sitting, field stripping a pistol. He looks notably less full of girlish excitement.

  “Man,” Jasmine says, still dancing in lethal circles, “and I thought it was exciting when we found our Russians in the personnel files.”

  Which stops me for a moment. “Wait… we… we did… what?”

  I stare over at Devon who is looking rather smug. “Well,” she says, “as previously mentioned, the whole self-trumpeting is not my preferred musical genre, but we’ve got them I think. Thought I’d let you have your moment with the sword, first. Didn’t want to be the raincloud over that parade. I prefer to be associated with skinnier metaphorical images than rainclouds anyway. Of course, sometimes it’s unavoidable. And well,” she pats her hips, “not exactly like I’m going to hide behind Kate Moss any day soon, is it?”

  I smile. “Kate Moss was never my type anyway.”

  Devon’s eyes immediately flick to Aiko.

  That’s going to be trouble. I just know it is.

  But… There is still no time to really deal with that. Or work out how to deal with it. We just found our Russians. “Show them to me,” I say to her. “The files. Please.”

  She hands them to me one by one. “Ivan Spilenski,” she says. It’s the tall bastard from the British Museum. The ringleader. “Joseph Punin.” She hands me the next and it’s the round little man from Trafalgar Square. “Urve Potia.” A third file. Proto-Lenin. “Ekaterina Kropkin.” The angular blond with Terminator-eyes. “Natasha Wiloski.” The woman Winston trod on.

  “It’s them,” I say. “We were right. Totally right. About everything.” I’m staggered by it. The monumentality of my vindication. I could take this to Shaw now. I could show her this. I could rub it in Coleman’s face.

  Except… Do I want to take it back to MI37? Can I trust them not to dismiss this? Not to screw it up?

  I glance over my shoulder at Aiko. It’s an unconscious move.

  “The files are cross-referenced,” Devon says. “Some stuff we have, some I don’t think we do yet. More exploring for you, you lucky devil.” Another quick glance at Aiko. “Or maybe you enjoy it.”

  I’m not touching that with a ten-foot barge pole. “What do we have already?” seems like the quickest way to change the subject.

  “Well, here in personnel there are a few more files.” She hands me a stack more. The first five I don’t recognize. One name stands out, though. Katerina. The woman who scoped out Big Ben. She looks more Asian than Russian to my untrained eye.

  Then one I do recognize. “Leo.” The teleporter who almost killed me at Trafalgar Square. “Leo Malkin,” his file says.

  I stare at that face. The bastard. He doesn’t look happy here either, his straw-blond hair combed down from a severe part on the left of his scalp. The sort of cheekbones I wish I had. Good-looking and bent on world destruction. I am totally justified in hating him.

  But as I stare at the photo, an oddity strikes me. “How old are these photos?” I ask.

  Devon shrugs. “I… I guess they must pre-date the explosion here. So, thirty years at least.”

  “None of them look like they’ve aged a day. Leo here should be in his sixties, maybe pushing seventy.” I scan the file for something that resembles a birth date. “Holy crap,” I say, “this guy was born in 1947.” That’s impossible.

  “They’ve been affected.” Aiko has come over. She peers over my shoulder to get a look at the photo. “They must have been here when the blast happened.”

  “But they look…” And then I think about how they actually look. And they have changed a little, all of them. Bits and pieces encased in metal. “You’re right,” I breathe. And then it starts to make sense. Why they’re referencing “the West” and the “USSR.” “They’re from the eighties,” I say. “They’re time travelers.”

  No wonder they want to turn back the clock. Thrown from their nation’s supposed moment of triumph into a future where Russia has capitulated to capitalism and America is the world’s lone superpower.

  What’s more, they’re living proof that intradimensional magic is possible.

  “So.” Devon stands back a little. “Is that it? Can we go home?” I notice her look towards the ceiling where the sound of dripping water is louder.

  I could rub this in Coleman’s face.

  Could I…?

  And still, is that the point of this? Do we need MI37? Do I want us to need them?

  And I have to try to rise above all that. I have to try and think of the big picture. Of all the lives, not just some of them.

  “Is it enough?” I ask Devon. “Can we find them based on this information?”

  “I…” Devon’s brow creases. And it’s written plainly on her face, what answer she wants to give. It’s the answer I want her to give. “Maybe…” sh
e says. “It’s all in Cyrillic though, and I only know three words in Russian, and they all mean beer. And that’s in spite of a state education system that thinks giving you a pitiful understanding of French is enough of a concession to cries of xenophobia. Still the numbers are helpful…” She shrugs desperately. As if she thinks a solution will settle there if she can only get them right. “I don’t know. I… I don’t think so.”

  I look at the date on my watch. Three days until the deadline. And everyone’s looking at me. No one wants to be here. Everyone’s thinking about Nikolai.

  God, why did I ever fret about Felicity trying to undermine my role as field lead again?

  “We stay,” I say. “More research. Make sure we get what we need.” I look at the disappointed faces. “This is the best and only opportunity we’re going to get.”

  They nod slowly, one by one. Devon last of all.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Pripyat, Ukraine. October 15th. Two days to go.

  “This is insane.” Devon looks up from the papers she’s poring over. “Utterly mad.”

  Lying in a discarded government building less than a mile from the epicenter of the Chernobyl explosion, it takes me a moment to realize she means the papers she’s holding.

  “Science that defies the laws of reality often seems to go that way,” I say.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “It’s more that these groundbreaking experimental thaumato-scientists could not carry the remainder from one division to the next to save their own lives. Literally.” She shakes her head. “No wonder they blew the place up.”

  She’s been going through papers since before sunup. The Cyrillic still baffles her, but apparently most of this is math.

  “It’s all here,” she says. “It’s pretty transparent even, once you understand some of the underlying concepts. But the math is horrendous.”

  “Their electronics are pretty solid.” Jasmine, lying on her stomach, looks up from a circuit diagram. How a seventeen-year-old runaway became so familiar with such diagrams I’m not sure I want to know. I worry that Malcolm may have been involved.

  “Does any of this help us?” I ask her. “Does it get us closer to finding them?” I don’t mean to be an arsehole but I’m starting to feel the time crunch.

  “Well, not directly,” Devon says.

  I take a calming breath before I do an impersonation of Felicity losing her shit.

  “What it might tell us,” Devon carries on oblivious, “is why we’re seeing these particles of residual disturbed time and space.”

  And that does actually sound important. Because without those particles all we have to worry about are the Russians destroying history. Which, while not a total win for us, is significantly better than them destroying all of creation. I’d take it.

  “Could you do anything about it?”

  Devon’s eyebrows go up. “I hadn’t really…” She blinks a few times. “I really don’t know, truth be told. Maybe. Doesn’t look so hard. Like skiing. Just point yourself downhill and go. But, of course, all sorts of potential for limb loss just waiting to leap out at you.”

  “It doesn’t look so hard?” Working with Clyde has taught me to navigate these conversational waters and to cling to the seemingly relevant.

  “Did I say that?” Devon looks a little panicked.

  “Totally.” Jasmine looks up from her diagrams to nod assent.

  “Bugger,” Devon curses. “Well, I mean, it’s largely about electromagnetic forces. But there’s some stuff to do with electronic representations of syllabic constructs which I’m a lot fuzzier on.”

  “Is that what this is for?” Jasmine looks up again. I just thought they were messing about with speakers. She taps the circuit diagram.

  “Oh.” Devon shrugs, and for a moment the memory of having this sort of conversation with Clyde is almost overwhelming.

  What is he up to now? What is Felicity doing?

  “Well, I suppose, if I redo the math to work out the discrepancies in their initial calculations, then figure out how to do it all backwards, then feed it into their syllabic algorithm, which seems essentially sound…” She drifts off into mumbling for a few minutes.

  “It depends,” she says finally.

  “On what?”

  “How willing Jasmine is to sacrifice her headphones in the name of dubious science.”

  Jasmine clutches the massive tin cans still strapped to her ears. “I’m warning you,” she says, “I’ve got a gun.”

  Two hours later

  Even though we’ve swept it thoroughly, the pitch blackness of δ-4 is still unsettling. Aiko and I shuffle back towards the stairs, let our flashlights explore every cracked floor tile, every inch of mold. The degradation is worse down here. Half the filing cabinets are rusted shut. Those I could open were usually filled with rotten mush, or had been bored through by rodents long before I arrived.

  At least I hope it was rodents. There’s really no telling down here.

  We reach the stairwell and I look down. Nothing but pitch black oblivion. “How deep do you reckon?” I ask.

  Aiko flicks her flashlight down. It illuminates a few more flights, a few more landings, then darkness swallows the beam. “Depends how many flights it takes to get all the way to hell.”

  For a minute I let my fingers play on the hilt of my flaming sword. I’ve threaded the scabbard through the strap of Malcolm’s fanny pack. It is not—nor will it ever be—my fanny pack.

  “God I hate this place,” Aiko says. She shudders slightly. And considering the abandon with which she was pillaging the remaining paperwork five minutes ago, it all seems a little odd. “Gives me the creeps,” she says. And she takes a step towards me.

  Oh. I see.

  I wish I was someone cooler than I am. That I could exchange girls like I do coins.

  Except, then I’d be as big an arsehole as Coleman. So maybe I don’t. But it still doesn’t help me out here and now.

  My awkwardness is rapidly becoming a palpable entity in the stairwell. And I’m the one that feels like the third wheel.

  “Arthur,” Aiko says. She places a hand on the center of my chest. She doesn’t go on.

  “Aiko,” I say. I’m copying her, to be honest. I have no idea what else to say.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Not exactly where I saw this conversation going. She pulls her hand away, steps away. And do I have a growth or something?

  Then I hear it. An ugly wet scraping sound. Something heavy being dragged across the ground. A dull grunt at the end of it all.

  “Seriously, what the hell is that?” Aiko is going for the gun stuffed into the waistband of her pants.

  For one psychotic moment I worry that it is somehow Felicity, enraged and monstrous, coming to slap me for even contemplating a dalliance here.

  That would be… Yeah, that would be insane.

  Slowly, I pull the sword from its scabbard. Flickering yellow light fills the stairwell.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I say. “Really really carefully.”

  “How about we run up the stairs like the bat out of hell itself is on our heels?”

  Which, given all that we’ve seen so far, might actually be what is going on here.

  “Sounds like a plan.” I turn on my heel, toes skidding across the dull cement of the basement floor. But it’s already too late.

  I hear the soft crash of the thing’s body against the stairwell wall. I bunch my knees.

  An enormous weight sledgehammers into my back.

  I sprawl, fling my arms out wide so I don’t impale myself on my sword. I even take the opportunity to grind my jaw against the ground. I spray spittle laced with a side order of blood and pain.

  “Oh sh—” Aiko’s expletive is cut off by the floor.

  I struggle onto my back. Try to look at what’s handing us our arses today.

  I wish I hadn’t.

  It’s like a clipping error in a video game. Three frogs, stacked imprecisely on top of e
ach other, each one seated within the one below. Four legs are planted squarely on the ground, eight wave ungainly in the air. One squat face stares at me. Two more sprout painfully above and behind it, mouths twisted, features distorted.

  It’s roughly the size of an ottoman. Either the footstool or one of the Turkish sultans if he was bent down. Doesn’t matter. Too bloody big for a frog if you ask me.

  “Alright you—” I start, clambering to my feet.

  A tongue whips out of the face staring at me. It’s about the breadth of my arm and the length of my nightmares. I take it full in the face. It feels like being bitch-slapped with a brick wrapped in snot.

  My feet bid farewell to the ground. I arc like an acrobat. I land like a sack of shit.

  I take a break from the fight to stare dazedly at the ceiling waiting for the pain to subside to the point where I can breathe again. As fun as that is, though, there is absolutely no way I am letting something as revolting as a mutant frog eat me. Some sort of killer wolf with fangs and a tail of fire: maybe. But I so do not want to be the guy remembered for getting noshed on by a giant amphibian.

  I roll towards it, which, while it minimizes the threat posed by the tongue, turns out to be a mistake with a flaming sword. Instead of coming up with a swing and a battle cry, it’s more of a hop and a yelp.

  Froggy slams me in the gut with another tongue-slap.

  “Are you—?” I hear Aiko ask over the rush of the breath leaving my lungs. But I have had it with being embarrassed by this thing.

  I lunge breathlessly at the creature, sword stretched out wildly in front of me. It’s not a move of great elegance or finesse, but I’m making up for that by being too close to bloody miss.

  Except I do.

  My sword hits empty air. There’s no frog there. The stairwell is empty.

  I hear something land behind me. I almost have time to turn before—

  Thwack. Something slimy collides with the side of my head. I collide with the wall. I stare groggily at the frog.

  “It teleports?” I ask the world at large. “It bloody teleports?”