The Amber Rooms sb-3

by Ian Hocking

  En route, Saskia and David connect. She tells him her story, and makes clear her determination to take her own life should her past mind, that of a murderous criminal, take over. David warms to Saskia but knows that a return to Britain means jail. He threatens to use his electronic companion, a credit-card-sized computer called Ego, to take over Saskia’s brain chip and effectively switch her off. Saskia’s hand is forced. Reluctantly, she helps him escape the American authorities upon landing and they go on the run, destination Nevada and Project Déjà Vu. David doesn’t know why he has to go there, but the same mysterious woman who helped him escape custody after the bombing of the lab has, cryptically, instructed him to do so.

  Jennifer surprises both David and Saskia by asking them to follow her into the research centre. Then David reveals what he has known since meeting Saskia on the aeroplane to the US: that the woman who helped him escape from custody in Scotland was Saskia Brandt herself. Saskia is incredulous at first. She cannot believe that there is an older version of herself walking around the world of 2023. It has echoes of her first case as a Kommissarin: the mastermind of the crime under investigation has turned out to be herself.

  Their conversation is halted by the appearance of John Hartfield, the co-owner of the research station. He wants to use Project Déjà Vu to travel backwards in time and force his younger self to accept an antidote to the experimental medical treatment that cured his cancer but re-shaped his mind. For Hartfield, the world of 2023 can go to hell. Hartfield escapes by doing the one thing that Saskia fears most: he sends a wireless command that deactivates her brain chip. As Hartfield flees, Saskia feels her conscious self as an FIB agent evaporate and the half-remembered life of Ute, the murderer within Saskia, overwhelm her.

  Saskia experiences a waking dream in which she recalls the rape and attempted murder of a woman called Ute Schlesinger by a cabal of sexual predators in Cologne. The woman plans her revenge and takes it, killing them all. Saskia comes to understand that Ute is not a woman to be feared; she is a survivor. That instinct that Saskia has always felt inside her was not criminal intent. It was courage.

  She understands that the only way to stop Hartfield is to surrender herself to the identity of Saskia Brandt once more. Again the courage. When she opens her eyes, it is Saskia who looks out. Hartfield has beaten them to the time machine, however, and left for 2003. Saskia understands that she will need to follow him back in time. In one sense, it is an escape from her indentured employment with the FIB. In another sense, it is a trap: she will become her future self, the woman who helped David escape. Just like her recruitment into the FIB, it is a choice without choice.

  David and Jennifer help Saskia return to the research centre in rural Scotland in the autumn of 2003, the day it was first bombed. Saskia is half an hour ahead of Hartfield. But at the time he is due to arrive, there is an underground explosion. The only explanation can be that the time machine changed Hartfield’s destination and time and used his mass to trigger a detonation. Who changed the time machine’s settings? Again, it is the person that Saskia has been pursuing all along: her future self. Saskia escapes from the burning research centre uninjured and slips away from the authorities to start a new life in 2003, free of the FIB but not free of her destiny, and still with questions about herself. If her body is Ute Schlesinger, who is her mind? And who can she trust to help her if she needs it? In her pocket, she discovers a list of major upcoming sports events and their outcomes written by David Proctor. She smiles at this small human connection and then walks into anonymity.

  Summary of Flashback, Saskia Brandt Book Two

  In 2003, German passenger plane DFU323 crashes in the Bavarian National Forest on a routine flight between Berlin and Milan. Its last transmission: the co-pilot shouting the letters, “S, T, E, N, D, E, C.” As the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents team flies in, the media focus on a startling coincidence between the fate of DFU323 and the ‘Star Dust’, a Santiago-bound plane that crashed into the Andes in August 1947 minutes after confirming its landing time. Its last signal: the letters S, T, E, N, D, E, C.

  One of DFU323’s passengers is Saskia Dorfer, alias Brandt, a loner millionaire living in Berlin. The last person to see her alive was English runaway Jem Shaw, who has been exploiting Saskia’s kindness in order to discover the secret of her unbeatable gambling system. Jem is numbed by the news of the crash. In Saskia’s apartment, Jem discovers a futuristic credit-card-sized computer called Ego. It tells her that Saskia might still be alive because she is protected by a time paradox. Jem heads immediately for the crash site in Bavaria. She is pursued by an mysterious, elderly American known as Cory.

  In a flashback, we return to Cory’s youth in Buenos Aires, 1947. He is a time traveller on a mission to find the killer of Professor David Proctor. He has been sent by David Proctor’s daughter Jennifer. Cory’s only advantages are the i-Core — an infusion of medical nanomachines in his blood — and the Smart Matter, which can mimic any simple machine (key, gun, grapnel) at will.

  Meanwhile, in 2003, Jem makes it to the Bavarian National Forest and discovers that a retired ranger pulled Saskia alive from the wreckage of the aeroplane and took her to his cabin. But no sooner has Jem found Saskia than she dies of her terrible injuries. Cory arrives next and, knowing that Saskia has information critical to his mission, injects her with i-Core. The nanomachines begin repairing her body and she returns to life.

  Jem overpowers Cory and forces him to tell them his mission, which has lasted for more than half a century. In explanation, he tells them of the crash of aeroplane Star Dust:

  In Buenos Aires, 1947, the young Cory has tracked Proctor’s killer, Patrick Harkes, to the airport in Morón, from where he believes Harkes will flee to Santiago. Cory smuggles himself onto the plane, but when it takes off, he discovers that the killer is not aboard. Harkes has set a trap for him. The Star Dust is a doomed aeroplane and Harkes knew it. Over the Andes, Cory forces the radio operator to send the code S, T, E, N, D, E, C, which he knows will be reported in a newspaper, and thus read later by Jennifer Proctor. He then bails out and watches the aeroplane crash into Mount Tupungato.

  Back in 2003, Saskia responds with the story of what happened on board flight DFU323. She had noticed Cory in a Berlin crowd and decided to follow him because of his anachronistic electromagnetic signature. On board the flight, she is surprised to find Jennifer Proctor. Jennifer has changed; she is a broken woman and prepared to sacrifice all the passengers to execute her father’s murderer. Harkes and Saskia join forces against Jennifer and Cory. Saskia steals Jennifer’s time travel device, a bracelet, but Cory is sucked from the aircraft along with Harkes. The fuselage is irretrievably damaged. In the last moments of the flight, Saskia tries unsuccessfully to land the aircraft along the Danube. Instead, it pitches into the Bavarian National Forest.

  As Saskia finishes the story in the ranger’s cabin, Cory breaks free of his bonds using his Smart Matter. Saskia stays his hand by trying to convince him that he has been used. Jennifer had confessed to Saskia that Cory’s whole identity is a fabrication custom-made by Jennifer to ensure that Cory would follow through with his mission over the years, much as Saskia’s identity was created by her old employer, the Förderatives Investigationsbüro (FIB). Cory is almost convinced, but decides to kill them…until Jem finally makes Cory understand that memories can be false. She tells her own story, in which the false memory of incest drove her from England into the arms of a criminal, and an elaborate con-job whose target was Saskia Brandt. Cory drops his gun and walks away.

  Some time later, Saskia has traced Cory to Berlin and cracked the code behind ‘S, T, E, N, D, E, C’. She now knows that Cory’s personality, created by Jennifer Proctor, is based on a poem called Richard Cory. Saskia believes that, like the eponymous character, Cory wants to commit suicide following the completion of his mission. Her research suggests that Cory tried to kill himself in 1948 with a shotgun slug through the mouth. She goes alone to the Berlin TV Tower and finds C
ory waiting. They both realise that the i-Core repaired his skull but did not rebuild his brain; did not restore him with the identity of the person he once was. Like Saskia, he is a digital ghost. The two share a moment of affinity. Neither is surprised when Cory jumps from the tower. His Smart Matter is left behind; it tries to replace the left hand she lost in the crash, but Saskia pushes it away, afraid for her humanity. She knows that a remnant of the i-Core is still inside her—that’s enough.

  In the final scene at an abandoned lakeside house in Germany, Saskia, who has never fully recovered from her injuries, has reduced her bodyweight in an attempt to match Jennifer Proctor for mass. She believes that, if the match in mass is correct, she will be able to use the stolen time bracelet to return to 2023, and home, realising Cory’s dream and her own. In 2003, she has found only alienation. Jem appears and pleads with Saskia to stay. Saskia shakes her head. She has forgiven Jem for the attempt to romance her millions, but she wishes to leave. She uses the time bracelet and vanishes. On the table near the door Jem finds the list of upcoming sporting fixtures and their outcomes written by David Proctor. It is Saskia’s unbeatable gambling system. Jem smiles, but ruefully.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2012 by Ian Hocking

  http://ianhocking.com

  http://twitter.com/ian_hocking

  Unless otherwise stated, this story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Ian Hocking has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  Line-edited and proofread by Olivia Wood of TextMender.com.

  Cover design support by Toby James Creative.

  Published by Writer as a Stranger

  Version 98723445

  FB2 document info

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  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 28.8.2013

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