by Darrell Pitt
Children were leaving for school. A young mother walked up the street holding hands with son. She glanced at me curiously. Maybe they didn’t see too many strangers on this street. I forced a friendly smile, but my stomach was turning over with tension. I had already faced a dilemma like this; I had come very close to using a weapon on the Russian Premier that would have consigned him to a fate worse than death.
This time I would be killing someone. Committing the act of murder. Snuffing out their life forever. I supposed there were people I had killed in battle, but that was unavoidable. They had wanted to kill me and so I had defended myself.
This was a completely different thing. This was premeditated murder.
But was it so different? I knew what the future held; James Price would be responsible for the deaths of billions of people. He was one person. One life. One man’s life couldn’t be balanced against all the others.
Could it?
Except, he hadn’t actually committed any crimes. As far as I knew, he was an innocent man. I was judging him prior to doing anything and finding him guilty. Except he was guilty. That future would unfold if he wasn’t stopped now.
My head ached, the stress at the back of my neck like a tightly coiled snake. I wandered up and down the street.
This was ridiculous. This was one person’s life. That was all.
But wasn’t everyone’s life important? Maybe James Price could be spoken to. Reasoned with. Maybe if the future were revealed to him he would change his ways.
Maybe.
Or maybe it would make things worse. Maybe my warning would give him even more impetus, make him more ruthless than ever. Maybe my warning was actually part of the future we had seen. A warning from me might show him what was possible, spurring him on to become that future monster.
There was really only one way to make certain that future did not happen.
James Price had to die.
A car meandered up the street. I was about a dozen houses away from James Price’s residence as it slowed and turned into his driveway. By the time he climbed from the vehicle I was waiting across the road.
There was no mistaking him. He was James Price, the same man who had visited us in the cells, albeit forty years younger. He looked remarkably ordinary. Nothing like the monster who had threatened to lock us away for life. He grabbed some groceries from the back seat of his car before disappearing into the house.
The house sat silently in the street.
I leapt up into the air, climbing about a hundred feet. My heart was thudding inside my chest. There was another reason for killing James Price. A future with him in it would drive Brodie and Chad closer together.
Lifting my hands towards the sky, the clouds parted and I gathered the wind to me. Since awaking with my powers, the wind had been my friend. Now that I had lost Brodie and the others, it was my only friend.
I built it into a massive sledgehammer of force, a battering ram of kinetic energy that longed to be released.
I tried to think of James Price, but all I could think of was Brodie and Chad and everything they were and everything they would become. Screaming, I brought the wind down like a mighty hammer, leveling the house to the ground.
Chapter Forty-Two
I flew without seeing.
After reducing the house to scrap, I remained above it, peering at the destruction I had created. Nothing moved in the rubble. Nothing lived. A fire started and began to consume the remains like an angry predator. The police and the fire brigade arrived. An officer produced a gun, shouted something at me and started shooting.
I soared away, not caring if I lived or died.
I had killed a man. I had taken a human life. I had committed the crime of premeditated murder. I had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.
The wind pulled against my face and I flew on until I sighted open parkland. I fell into a quiet corner of the field and lay peering at the sky. I had killed James Price, but I had also killed myself. In delivering justice to him, I had condemned myself to a lifetime of punishment. I had lost my girlfriend, driven my friends away and now I had committed murder.
I wept.
When I next looked up, I saw the Liber8tor coming in to land. My dulled mind could not work out how they had found me. The hatch opened and Ebony stepped out. She ran over, dragging me to my feet. Shouting came from behind. Shots rang out. She pulled me inside Liber8tor.
I was dead. All I needed now was to be buried.
At some point in this unrelenting nightmare, I passed out. Awaking, I found myself slumped in a seat in the galley. Ebony and Dan were sitting at the table talking. They stopped when they saw my open eyes.
‘You’re onboard Liber8tor,’ Ebony said.
I nodded.
‘Do you remember what happened?’ Dan asked. ‘Do you remember...what you did?’
I started weeping.
‘Axel.’ Ferdy’s voice rang out from the intercom. ‘There are always possibilities. There is always hope.’
‘There’s no hope for me,’ I said. ‘I might have saved billions of lives, but I murdered someone in cold blood to do it.’ A sudden thought occurred to me. ‘Where are we? Are you taking me to the police?’
‘No,’ Ebony said, gently. ‘We have a mystery on our hands and we’re going off to solve it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘An encrypted message was sent when the time machine first appeared over the island,’ Ferdy explained. ‘Ferdy was unable to break the code.’
I tried to make sense of all this. Ferdy had one of the most incredible brains on the planet, maybe the most incredible. ‘It must have been a difficult code,’ I said.
‘It is almost impossible to create a code that Ferdy cannot break.’
‘So how did you do it?’
‘Axel was able to supply information to Ferdy that provided the key.’
This was making less sense with every passing second. I wanted to go back to sleep.
‘I provided the key?’ I said. ‘What did I do?’
‘Ferdy had already applied several billion possible keys to the code without success,’ he said. ‘Finally Ferdy applied a triple stacked cipher, using James Price’s home address as the key.’
‘And he solved it,’ Dan said. ‘But there’s more.’
‘The code was extremely complex,’ Ferdy said. ‘Only someone more intelligent than Ferdy would have been able to create it.’
I glanced from Ebony to Dan. ‘So who made the code?’
‘Ferdy,’ Ferdy said.
‘Ferdy?’ I repeated. ‘How—’
‘Ferdy’s future self made the code,’ Ferdy explained. ‘He sent it to the past so that we could solve it.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What did the message say?’
‘That’s the mystery,’ Ebony said. ‘You should come to the bridge.’
‘Okay.’
Dan gripped my arm. ‘Chad and Brodie are there,’ he said. ‘They’re not looking for any trouble.’
Neither was I. The anger was gone. I still felt a powerful sense of betrayal, but I was finished with fighting—for now. On the bridge, we found Brodie and Chad at their consoles. As they gave me a nod, I noticed Chad had a blackened eye and a bruised chin. Despite everything, I felt good about it.
Brodie continued. ‘The message gave us the location of an old coal mine in Kentucky,’ she said. ‘We’re almost there now.’
I didn’t see how this would affect anything. James Price was dead and nothing was going to make him un-dead. ‘We’re not being pursued?’
‘We had some Agency forces following, but we lost them a few hours back,’ Chad said.
‘We are now at the location,’ Ferdy announced. ‘Mine seventy-seven is directly below us.’
‘Mine seventy-seven?’ I said.
‘That’s where the message directed us,’ Ebony said.
Dan took over the helm and landed the ship. We were high in the mountains. The air was fresh and clean.
The events of the last few days seemed like a bad memory. Except I couldn’t rid myself of the image of James Price’s home. The pile of rubble burning beneath me kept appearing in my mind’s eye.
‘There it is,’ Brodie pointed.
The entrance to the old mine shaft was hidden behind a wall of kudzu, an invasive weed. Pulling the growth away revealed old boards and warning signs. They looked ancient. I doubted anyone had been here in years.
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere,’ Chad said. ‘Why would a future version of Ferdy send us here?’
No-one had any idea. Brodie reached up and removed some boards. Within seconds, she had created a gap large enough to climb through. Chad went first and created illumination for us. The rest of us followed close behind.
The mine had a stale, wet smell to it. Footprints were in the dirt, but faded almost beyond recognition. It was probably decades old from when the mine was abandoned. I eyed the ceiling. The supports looked ready to collapse at any moment.
We continued for another fifty feet before the glimmer of something bright stood out in the darkness. We stopped in amazement. This made no sense at all. A time machine shouldn’t be sitting in this disused mine tunnel.
And yet here it was.
Chapter Forty-Three
‘Why is this here?’ Dan asked.
Only one person could have sent a time machine to this location.
‘Ferdy,’ Brodie said. ‘This was Ferdy’s doing.’
‘This must be another test machines from an early experiment,’ Ebony said.
My gut told me she was right. ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Why send us another time machine?’
‘Ferdy must have foreseen these events,’ Chad said. ‘Our trip to the future. Then our return to the past.’
Brodie said to me, ‘And you killing James Price.’
The machine was obviously another early model, but smaller than the others. It had no wings so it seemed unlikely it could be used for flight. It looked more like an old diving bell.
Opening the door, I peered inside. A dim light illuminated the interior. Within lay the control panel, a single seat—and something more than disturbing.
A small pile of bones. By the look of them, a human foot.
‘Old Axel said some of these ships left quite unexpectedly,’ Brodie grimaced.
‘That’s unexpected, all right,’ I said, peering about the interior. ‘Obviously Ferdy was determined to send it to us. Why?’
‘Maybe that’s why,’ Ebony said, pointing at a bag. ‘Aren’t they temporal resonators?’
They were. In fact, there was a tool kit and a cup of dried coffee as well as the bag. A workman had been doing some work; the control panel was ajar as if it had not been screwed back into place properly. The bag contained two temporal resonators. Future Ferdy sent the time ship on its way to a time and place where it would not be found by anyone—except us.
‘So the idea is for us to use the time machine,’ I said slowly.
‘And we can come back,’ Chad said. ‘There’s another temporal resonator to bring us home.’
It all seemed very strange, but then I knew there could only be one reason for this. ‘Ferdy wanted us to see the future,’ I said. ‘Now that I’ve changed history, he wanted us to see the results.’
‘That makes sense,’ Ebony said.
So I climbed into the seat and warmed up the machine. This was definitely an earlier model. I set the time machine for the current date forty years in the future. We slammed the hatch shut, remembering too late that we had not discarded the human bones. Everyone tried not to look at them. I started the machine, the ship shuddered and the familiar black pools flowed past.
A shape appeared. It wasn’t the familiar blue strip of sky we had seen before. Instead it was just another circle of blackness. It grew larger and larger. The time machine lurched again and shook badly for another minute before it finally grew still.
We had arrived.
‘We’re there,’ Brodie said.
‘Or here,’ Ebony said. ‘Depending on how you look at it.’
Chad eased the door open. Ice broke off the hull as we stepped out. We were still in the mine tunnel. The time machine had moved in time, but not space. Chad created a fire, illuminating the tunnel.
It had felt cold before, but now it was hot. Very hot. I broke into a sweat.
Brodie wiped her face. ‘Why is it so humid?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Dan pointed down at the floor. ‘There’s our footprints.’
He was correct. They were our footprints, but the ground had been wet underfoot when we entered the tunnel. Now it was hard and dry. We made our way up the tunnel and found that someone had long since repaired the boards. A strange crimson light leaked through the cracks between the timbers.
Brodie punched hard at a couple of pieces and we climbed through. It was hot in the tunnel, but even hotter outside. I expected it to be midday. Instead I saw the sun was low in a dull auburn-colored sky. It had just risen.
‘Oh my God,’ Ebony said. ‘What happened?’
Smoke was everywhere. A fire had ripped through here, reducing the forest to gray cinders. It reminded me of the surface of the moon. Breathing was difficult; the air was choked with the smell of burnt plastic.
Liber8tor was gone, obviously retrieved by the Agency at some time in the past. They had not thought to search the mine shaft or we would have seen their footprints.
‘I’m going up to take a look,’ I said.
‘Be careful,’ Brodie said.
I didn’t answer. Leaping into the air, I flew over the landscape. The air was different to anything I’d ever experienced. It was thicker, almost soup-like in its consistency. The terrain appeared the same in every direction, as if devastated by some terrible disaster, a wave of destruction that had burned everything in its path.
Lexington was one of the largest cities in Kentucky. I flew towards it cautiously. The skies in James Price’s world were zealously guarded by the Agency. They might be guarded here too. But the further I flew, the more I saw how completely different this world was. No birds soared through the air. Nothing lived on the ground. No plant life. No animals. No people. It was as if everything had been decimated in one terrible moment.
Reaching the city, I slowly descended to a narrow street. All the buildings were burnt here too as if a fire had raced through. The sun was now a little higher in the sky, but the illumination stayed the same, everything lit by an eerie red glow.
I found a news agency—or what remained of it. The glass door had shattered years before. I stepped through to find most of the interior burnt out. A skeleton lay behind the counter, a melted food container next to it. Whatever had happened here had been sudden; the owner had not had time to flee.
Most of the magazines had been reduced to ashes, but a few piles of newspapers were relatively intact. I pulled away the top charred copies, revealing a headline.
Agency Promises Swift Retaliation with Superweapon
My hands shook as I read the article. It said the Agency government had decided to continue its expansion in response to the ‘terrorist’ activities of the United Nations. Pulling apart another pile of papers, I uncovered a headline that turned my blood cold.
It’s War
A coalition of nations had decided to retaliate against the Agency. Some analysts warned about the use of a new ‘scorched Earth’ weapon currently in development by the Agency. They were concerned it could result in the destruction of all life on the planet.
Dropping the newspapers, I stumbled to the street. How was this possible? I had killed James Price. It should have made the world a better place. Instead, the time line had taken a terrible step in the wrong direction, the end result being global annihilation.
What had gone wrong?
Rounding a corner, I found myself facing a huge billboard. Burnt by the scorching of the planet, enough had survived to make it recognizable. I had already seen the
caption before.
The Agency is your friend
Last time I had seen it, the poster had been emblazoned with the image of the Agency’s leader, James Price. Now I stared at it in disbelief.
‘No,’ I moaned. ‘It’s not possible.’
Falling to my knees in horror, I recognized the Agency’s leader all too well.
Gazing back at me was my own face.
Chapter Forty-Four
How was it possible? How could I have become the leader of the Agency? How could I have been so filled with hatred that I would try to dominate the planet—and then be prepared to destroy it?
But deep in my heart I already knew the answer.
It all had to do with Brodie and Chad, and my sense of betrayal. From that had risen a hatred, not just for them, but for everything the world had to offer. My hatred had destroyed me and the planet.
Had Old Axel been aware of all this? Maybe. He wouldn’t have foreseen the end of the world, but he probably knew I would want revenge on those who had let me down.
My eyes fell to a shape in a nearby doorway. I stumbled over, tenderly picking it up. It was a doll, its face blackened by the blast, its clothing burnt away. I tried to imagine the owner of it, a girl who had loved and cherished it. Her parents must have been worried in those days leading up to the end, but they must have taken solace in the hope that reason would prevail.
They won’t use the weapon, they must have told each other. No-one would be that insane.
I took to the skies again and returned to the mine where I told the others everything I had seen, finishing with the billboard with my face on it.
Most of them looked shocked, but Brodie’s face crumpled into tears. She angrily wiped them away, realizing, I think, that our relationship lay at the heart of this terrible disaster.
‘So the world is doomed,’ Dan said. ‘It’s going to be destroyed in some terrible war.’
‘We have to stop it,’ Ebony said. ‘If we can.’
‘We might be able to,’ Brodie said, angrily wiping away her tears. ‘We know that by changing the past again, we can change the future.’
