by Darrell Pitt
But he would be as old as a dinosaur if he had fought World War Two. Or dead. Or a ghost. And ghosts weren’t real. Were they?
A faint light came from a skylight at the far end of the corridor.
‘I’m a superhero,’ Dan murmured. ‘Some old ghost isn’t going to scare me.’
He focused on a piece of steel pipe in the debris. It flew into his hand and he followed the corridor to a T-intersection. The voice was louder. On both sides of the corridor were cells, locked and empty, containing rotting bunks.
Dan sniffed. The smell down here was bad. Really bad. The mold had taken over years ago. It probably should have been the only living thing down here.
The sound had stopped.
Dan listened to the silence. Now he wasn’t sure what was more unnerving; the voice or its absence. He swallowed hard as he tightly gripped the metal pipe. It felt slippery.
‘Dan?’
Ferdy’s voice shattered the silence.
‘Yes! Ferdy!’ Dan said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Ferdy had not heard from you for some time. It seemed prudent to check on your condition.’
‘My condition is...fine. I’m investigating something down here.’
‘Ferdy has some new information regarding the time ship.’
‘What is it?’
‘The Liter8tor picked up a transmission when the ship first arrived. The systems dismissed it as interference, but Ferdy has been able to determine it to be an encoded message.’
‘And it says...?’
‘Ferdy has been unable to determine its meaning.’
‘You’ve got the most incredible brain in the universe and you can’t decode it?’
‘Ferdy is as surprised as you, friend Dan. Ferdy is possibly the most intelligent being to ever exist—’
‘And the most modest.’
‘—and yet the code is so advanced that even Ferdy is perplexed.’ He paused. ‘It can be solved, but only by knowing the correct encryption key.’
It all sounded very odd to Dan, but now the whispering had started again. Someone was speaking in English. It sounded like they were reading. Dan signed off and listened hard.
The skylight in the roof was broken, with vines growing into the building. The corridor led to darkness in one direction, the other to a single cell where the roof had caved in.
Dan headed in this direction, the sound growing louder. By the time he reached the end, he could make out a huge hole in the ceiling. The rubble below had formed a natural staircase into the cell. Vines and palm fronds covered the rubble.
A small boy was curled up on the moldy bunk with a book clasped firmly in his hand. Lowering it, he stared at Dan in amazement.
‘I’m Henry,’ the boy said. ‘What are you?’
Chapter Thirteen
The resistance had been busy. I realized this the instant we entered the heart of the base, a huge underground chamber the size of a football field. A thousand people lived there in a makeshift shanty town, lit by banks of fluorescent lights set into the ceiling.
‘We didn’t build this, but we had to fix it up,’ Mr. Brown explained.
‘What is this place?’ Ebony asked.
‘We think it started off as a naturally occurring cavern,’ Mr. Brown said. ‘Then it looks like the government set it up as an underground shelter in case of nuclear attack.’ He added, ‘That must have been during the cold war.’
‘And the Agency doesn’t know about it?’ I asked.
‘We made certain all references to it were removed from Agency computers,’ he said, smiling grimly. ‘Like I said before, friends in high places.’
We crossed the cavern and I was reminded of the compound in Las Vegas where we had been situated. I felt a tinge of loss. They hadn’t been great times, but they hadn’t been that bad either. You don’t appreciate what you’ve got till you don’t have it anymore.
‘There isn’t anywhere else you can hide?’ I asked. Being anywhere near a major city seemed a bad idea.
‘There probably are, but they don’t hold a thousand people.’
‘Why is James Price so intent on destroying the planet?’
‘He wasn’t always like this,’ Old Axel spoke up. ‘People welcomed his inventions in the beginning. They made life easier. He eventually became a techno hero. He seemed harmless enough, so the government gave him more power.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Under that geeky exterior was a psychotic interior. Price was willing to take terrible risks in the name of science.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t say. It would—’
‘Contaminate the time line. Yeah, I know.’
We entered another railway tunnel, colder here, the light weaker. I didn’t notice the door at the end until we were almost on it. The next room was shaped like a huge cylinder and well lit. Pieces of machinery lay everywhere. Men with welding torches huddled around a vessel in the center. Power leads ran from it to a generator.
They were trying to disguise the ship, but I would have been blind to not recognize it.
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ I said.
Liber8tor.
The years had not been kind to our old ship. The Tagaar warship had obviously been through a lot of battles. Sections of the hull, not disguised with new plating, were scarred and damaged. One support leg looked like it had been completely replaced.
A thought occurred to me. ‘Ferdy. Is he still—’
‘Long gone,’ Old Axel said. ‘Price had him purged from the Agency computers years ago.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t ask.’
Ferdy. It was terrible, but I had not spared a thought for him since our arrival. So he was dead. Again. I wondered about James Price. Could killing one man really change the future of world history?
‘What are you doing to Liber8tor?’ Ebony asked.
‘We’re getting her ready for our mission. The old girl is not what she was, but she’s still able to get past Agency radar and into orbit.’
‘Orbit?’
He nodded. ‘The Agency’s main research facility—Olympus—is in orbit. We have access codes that’ll get us past security.’
I nodded at the new panels. ‘What’s with the disguise?’
Mr. Brown spoke up. ‘It’s highly unlikely that anyone is actually going to look out an Olympus window, but if they do they should see something that looks like an Agency vessel. Kind of.’
‘And who’s the pilot?’ I asked.
‘I am,’ Mr. Brown said. ‘For this you get the best.’
I felt a little better about the mission. He led us to quarters that looked more like a cell than a residence, but as least they were clean, containing two bunk beds and a bench. Meals arrived a few minutes later, stew made of a fine meat. Mr. Brown said it was rabbit, but I kept thinking about the rats I’d seen in the upper tunnels.
I ate it anyway.
Mr. Brown stopped at the door just before he left. ‘It’s nice to see you again,’ he said, his eyes misting over. ‘It’s so good to see you young...and strong and healthy. I’ve missed the old days. I’ve missed them a lot.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘For everything.’
Nodding, he pulled the door shut behind him. I turned off the light as we climbed into our bunks and stared at the black ceiling. ‘It’s been quite a day,’ I said. We woke up this morning in the present and now we were forty years in the future. ‘And the worst part is that I’m a douche bag.’
‘You’re not a douche bag,’ Ebony said. ‘Your future self is, but...I mean...’
‘I get your drift. I think.’
‘You’re not like him at all. But this is a different world. I can see why he...you...want James Price dead.’ She sighed. ‘What should we do?’
‘About what?’
‘About James Price.’
I had already been through this once. I had been given the choice to sentence the Russian Premier to an equally terrible fate—and I hadn’t been abl
e to pull the trigger. But this was worse. The fate of the entire human race could depend on us.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
But Ebony didn’t answer. She was already asleep.
Chapter Fourteen
What are you? Dan thought. What sort of question is that?
‘Uh, hello,’ Dan said, flustered. ‘What am I? I’m a boy like you.’
‘I’m a boy like you,’ Henry said.
‘How did you get here?’ Dan asked.
‘How did you get here?’
He’s just repeating everything I say, Dan thought.
‘I arrived in a plane,’ he said.
‘I arrived in a plane.’
‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Dan asked. ‘Are you here with your family? Or are you alone?’
‘Alone.’ Henry looked at the ceiling. ‘That is day.’
It was worse than having a conversation with Ferdy. At least Ferdy made sense. Maybe Henry suffered from an intellectual disability. But how did he get here? Were there others with him? Dan tapped his communicator.
‘Ferdy? I’ve found a boy in the basement of the building.’ The only reply was a long squeal of static. ‘Can you hear me, Ferdy?’
Nothing. There was a problem with reception. Dan pretended to examine the cell lock.
‘I think this is broken,’ he said, gripping it in his hand, but focusing on the metal. It snapped open. ‘At least I can get you out of there. Where are your parents?’
‘No parents.’ Henry’s voice was soft. He had wide, brown eyes and black hair, and wore trousers, black shoes and a white open necked shirt. He was surprisingly clean considering the state of the cell. ‘My name is Henry.’
‘I’m Dan.’
‘Dan.’
Dan’s eyes followed the trail of debris leading to the opening. Thick jungle surrounded the top.
‘Will you follow me?’ Dan asked.
The boy regarded Dan uncertainly for a moment before trailing him outside. A fresh breeze pushed back Dan’s hair. It was cooler. Maybe the weather was changing.
Henry still held the book.
‘Is that good?’ Dan asked.
‘Reading.’
‘Is it good?’
‘Good.’
Dan sighed. This was a terribly one sided conversation. Still, at least Henry seemed able to read. Dan glanced at the cover of the novel. Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Hardly a bedtime story, but maybe it was the only book he owned.
Activating his communicator, this time Ferdy’s voice came back loud and clear. He explained finding Henry. ‘Are there any records of shipwrecks in this area?’ he asked.
‘A sailing ship called the Morning Star went missing in this area ten years ago.’
‘Who was on board?’
‘A family of four. John and Carla Benson and their boys Phillip and Charles.’
Dan turned to Henry. ‘Do the names Charles and Phillip mean anything to you?’ he asked, gently.
Henry shook his head.
‘Ferdy, how old were those boys?’
‘Charles was seven. Phillip was two.’
Phillip could really be Henry, but why wouldn’t he know his own name?
Henry pointed towards the coast. ‘Ship,’ he said. ‘Beach.’
Dan led the boy towards the beach along an overgrown path. A bird cried out and went crashing through the trees. Stepping onto the sand, Dan felt both relief and sadness. He was glad to be free of the jungle, but he wished the others were here.
The beach curved for miles in both directions. This island could have been a Mecca for tourists except it was a long way from anywhere. A white and angular shape poked from the jungle—the stern of a boat.
Drawing near, Dan saw it was a sailing vessel about thirty feet in length. Once it was a beautiful ship, but now its mast was gone and half of the vessel lay buried in the sand.
Dan wiped grime off the stern.
‘Morning Star,’ he read. ‘Henry, is this your ship?’
The boy stared at him blankly.
‘Henry, did you come here on this ship?’ Dan persisted. ‘With your brother and your parents?’
The boy said nothing. He looked back into the jungle and, for the first time, an expression of fear twisted his face.
‘Henry, what is it?’
‘There’s a monster,’ he said. ‘It comes out at night.’
‘I can fight off monsters,’ Dan assured him. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
He climbed on board the buried ship. It arrowed into the sand at a thirty degree angle. Some of the ropes that had once been attached to the sail still remained, but they were hopelessly tangled and rotten. Dan found a hatch half way down the deck. He tried moving it by hand. Stuck. He applied his powers and it slid back with a painful screech.
A sound came from below deck.
Dan frowned. It had sounded like the shuffle of feet. ‘I’m a superhero,’ he muttered. ‘I can take on ten villains at once.’
But he still felt afraid.
He climbed into what was once a classy living room, but now it had been wrecked by the elements. It smelt of mildew. A lounge ran along the port side, but the fabric had rotted. A few old magazines lay in a pool of water. Timber peeled from the coffee table in the center.
A hallway led to the bridge, a hole in the hull and jungle beyond. Dan crept towards the stern.
The first room contained four bunk beds. Some old children’s toys were on the floor but, like everything else on board, these were ruined. He continued down the hall until he reached the next room, the door jammed half-open. It seemed that more refuse was scattered across the floor, but then Dan spotted the human skull.
He grimly examined the remains. There were two bodies. Adults by the look of it. Probably the remains of John and Carla Benson. Their ruined clothing was mixed amongst the mishmash pile of bones.
From the stern came another sound. Footfalls on the wooden decking. Dan edged to the doorway. He used his mind to pick up a rusty crossbeam from the floor. Anyone—or anything—had better watch out if they tried to take him down!
I’m a superhero, he told himself. I have amazing powers. I can lift up tons of metal and throw it at bad guys.
I’m Metal Boy, he thought.
He liked the sound of that. Metal Boy.
Henry had mentioned a monster on the island, but monsters weren’t real.
Were they?
He peered into the hallway. He couldn’t see anything, but he was sure he could hear breathing. It couldn’t be Henry. He was still outside and the breathing was too guttural anyway. Dan stepped out cautiously, the piece of metal floating in the air next to him. It was dark here and there was still no sign—
Something crashed into his legs, sending Dan flying. He heard a wild grunting and a squeal. The metal beam fell onto his head. Yelling, he spun about in horror as a hairy, brown creature bolted past him and out of sight.
A pig! That’s all it was. Some sort of wild boar. The creature must have been rooting about in the broken remains of the ship. He remembered hearing that early sailors would often leave pigs on remote islands so there would be fresh meat for them when they later returned.
Dan felt a flush of embarrassment. What sort of superhero was he? A wild pig just scared him half to death! He swallowed hard. Henry probably heard the racket and was wondering what was happening.
He returned to the upper deck, but Henry was gone. Dan crossed to the edge of the water. From here he could see up and down the coast.
‘Henry!’ he called. ‘Where are you?’
Silence. Then the roar of a beast rang out from deep inside the jungle. It wasn’t the snort of a wild boar. It wasn’t like anything that Dan had ever heard in his life. A flock of birds broke cover and sailed away towards the setting sun.
What had Henry told him?
There’s a monster and it comes at night.
Chapter Fifteen
‘There it is,’ Mr. Brown said. �
��Olympus.’
Ebony and I were sitting on Liber8tor’s bridge. It was surprisingly clean although quite different to the Liber8tor we knew. Most of the reptilian Tagaar consoles had been removed and replaced with sleek stainless steel panels, and someone had whitewashed the walls, a strange thing to do to an alien spacecraft, but these were strange times.
Old Axel had gone below to check a shudder in the engines while Mr. Brown controlled the helm. It was strange seeing him there instead of Dan. I wanted to ask him what had happened to Dan and the others over the years, but I was sure he would give the same answer as Old Axel.
It would cause irreparable damage to the space/time continuum.
The space station known as Olympus filled the view screen. Covered in green metal, it was shaped like a giant donut with a one-eighth section cut out. Cannons ringed the circumference. The size of it was hard to determine at first, but then I spotted a ship entering one of the cut ends of the donut. Olympus was massive. Miles across.
‘How on Earth did something like that get built?’ I asked.
‘I can’t say much because it—’
‘I know. Space/time continuum. I get the idea.’
‘Suffice to say, James Price was able to lasso a passing asteroid and transform it with nanites into a space station.
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I wish I were.’
Nanites were tiny machines only a few atoms in size. They were already being used in some basic applications in our time, but it sounded like they had been fully exploited by James Price and the Agency.
Mr. Brown continued. ‘After the station was completed—’
‘Shut up,’ Old Axel said, appearing in the doorway with a box. ‘You know better than to blab.’
Mr. Brown clamped his mouth shut. ‘Just giving them some warning. That’s all.’
‘They less they know the better.’ He glared at me. ‘The things I could say would make your blood boil.’
I stared back. There was a terrible darkness in him, a deep hurt that had twisted him into something unrecognizable. Were we really the same person?
