‘Are they all down?’ asked Dalton.
The scientist nodded.
‘Interesting. I believe what we need now could be referred to as a reverse exorcism. Lieutenant Mallary, please be so good as to shoot Mr Bergson.’
‘But —’
The next words never left his lips as a bullet ripped through his chest.
Bergson was thrown back over the perimeter and out of what was left of linear time, falling in slow motion as he toppled backwards, his arms flailing in the air.
Dalton stepped forward and brought his ring hand up towards the body. The talisman was glowing brightly now, and he felt the power racing along its timeline as a connection was made to its deep past.
He saw a distortion in the space around Bergson, as the outline of a fearsome looking creature solidified around him, enveloping him with its phantom limbs.
46
Augurs
[Citadel, Maelstrom.]
They waited at the gates of what Brother Valient called the ‘Citadel’. It was a massive tower fortress made up of twelve tiers, each one stacked on top of the other, getting progressively smaller with each level until the final stage was nothing more than a spire.
Josh leaned on Caitlin, who was still dripping wet with seawater. She shivered and put her arm around him to pull him close. Their escape had been a narrow one, and both of them could still hear the screams of the passengers on the lower decks. It was a harrowing sound, filled with desperation and fear.
‘You okay?’ she whispered.
Josh nodded. ‘Remind me about this next time I decide to go looking for my dad.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
‘You nearly died.’
She put her head on his shoulder. ‘My dad used to say “only worry about the ones you don’t walk away from”.’
‘I don’t think Fermi is my father,’ Josh said thoughtfully. ‘He didn’t seem to know who I was.’
‘Not at that point, no, but we’d jumped back three hundred years, and you can’t be sure that he wasn’t in the future.’
‘I don’t think I want him to be. He looked like he was pretty messed up.’
‘Well, he’s got something to do with it. That device he stuck in your leg was definitely for extracting your DNA. Maybe he had samples from other people?’
‘Great, so I’m a test tube baby!’
‘Does it really matter who your parents are? It’s not like you can change it. They told me mine were dead for eight years, and now they look more like my older brother and sister.’
‘Is it weird to have them back?’
Caitlin sighed. ‘It’s weird that they’re the same age as when they disappeared. It’s like it never happened.’
Josh thought about his mother and the life she was living now. He never wanted her to experience the pain of the world he’d known, although it was sad to think they would never talk again, never spend another evening shouting stupid answers at university challenge.
This was better, he told himself, even if it was all a little crazy.
‘Who is he?’ he whispered, watching Valient as he spoke to the guards, a pair of heavily armoured giants standing before a vicious-looking portcullis.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Caitlin whispered back. ‘Mum mentioned something about Augurs. They’re like a secret department dedicated to studying the Eschaton Cascade.’
‘You’ve got a secret department for everything,’ he joked.
‘I guess we do,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘You spend so long being part of it that you start to think it’s normal.’
Josh looked around at the enormous cavern. It was like the inside of a hollowed-out asteroid. ‘Don’t you think this place feels a bit like the maelstrom?’
Caitlin shivered again. ‘A little.’
Valient had finished his negotiations with the guards and was beckoning them to join him.
‘Can you walk?’ she asked.
Josh tentatively put his weight on his injured leg and grunted. Valient had given him some kind of medicine when they first arrived, and the pain-numbing effect was better than a jug of tequila.
Caitlin held his hand as they walked over to the gate.
‘Paradox,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘Please be so kind as to place your hand upon the Eschaton.’ He pointed at the set of metal disks in the middle of the portcullis.
There were twelve concentric rings, each one made from a different kind of metal. At the centre was carved the Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail.
Josh shrugged at Caitlin and put his hand on the snake’s head.
He felt history turn under his fingers as the twelve timelines unfolded. The dials began to rotate independently of each other, back and forth, searching for their respective positions.
Josh could see the various chronologies weaving over and through each other, events branching and connecting simultaneously, making it impossible to focus on any one in particular. He allowed them to flow through him, glimpsing moments from each, but never enough to make any sense of what he was seeing. A ring locked into position with a click, then another, and like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, the pieces snapped into place.
When the final inner ring stopped moving, he heard Valient gasp. ‘The twelfth!’
Josh took his hand away from the dial. He felt the familiar tingling sensation along his arm and pulling back the sleeve he found the fractal tattoo had returned.
The rings of the gate receded into the door, and the bolts withdrew.
‘I cannot accompany you,’ Valient said, bowing reverentially. ‘I am an eleventh, and your path belongs to the twelfth.’
The gate parted, and a long corridor stretched out before them. It was colonnaded, like something from a Venetian palace.
The guards snapped to attention as he and Caitlin passed them, and Josh realised that the Ouroboros on their breastplates were zeros.
47
Nihil
Dalton was alone.
He had no idea where the rest of his team had gone or whether they were still alive. He’d lost count of the places and events he’d used to try to escape the Djinn, and wherever he went, it seemed to know exactly how to find him — no matter which direction he chose.
The ring had been useless against it. Whatever it was, nothing he commanded the Djinn to do had worked, and their weapons had no effect — it had been a disaster.
At first, the summoning seemed to have worked flawlessly. Bergson’s body had convulsed as the Djinn had entered through his mouth and his limbs had flailed around as though it were putting on a new suit, but it had assumed control of the host quickly, and Dalton was sure that, just like the Wyrrm, Solomon’s ring would command it.
And for a while, it seemed to be under his control.
While his men trained their guns on it, Dalton had raised his hand and felt the power intensify as he walked towards it.
The Djinn didn’t seem to notice his approach. It was too busy studying its new body, flexing its fingers and examining the muscles of its arms.
‘Tell me your name, demon,’ he commanded, feeling the energy flow through him.
Bergson’s face twisted grotesquely as it raised its dark eyes towards him. Dalton thought he saw something move beneath the skin, a ripple of flesh as it slithered down into his neck.
With stilted steps, Bergson began to walk towards him.
The scientist’s jaw opened slackly, and a terrible sound issued from the dark maw.
‘I. Am. Nihil.’
Dalton smiled and pointed the ring directly at the Djinn. ‘Nihil, I bind you to me.’
Thin figures materialised in the air around Bergson; spectral beings conjured up from the ring’s past.
There was a hiss from deep within its throat.
Dalton had no idea what the beings were and tried desperately to search for a way to control them, but they stood as if awaiting a command he didn’t know.
‘What. Is. Your. Wish. Master?’ the creature uttered i
n broken English, extending its arms towards him. The veins were shot through with black ink.
Dalton hesitated. There were so many things he had imagined would be possible with their power: eternal life, control of time, the obliteration of his enemies.
He was still contemplating his options when Mallary collapsed.
His lieutenant was kneeling on the floor coughing up a thick, dark liquid, or to be more precise; he seemed to be inhaling it.
‘Get up Mallary!’ ordered Dalton.
But Mallary wasn’t listening, and his body was beginning to shake. The veins in his neck were darkening as he struggled for breath.
Dalton looked at the others who were staring transfixed at the Djinn, their guns lowered.
‘Be on your guard!’ barked Dalton, looking at their blank faces. They all seemed to be in a trance.
He turned back to Bergson, and the creature had gained more control of its host’s body.
‘Your wish master?’ it repeated with a leering grin and a mocking bow.
Dalton raised the ring again, but the ghosts and the feeling of power were fading.
‘Release my men.’
Bergson raised his hand and let it drop.
The rest of Dalton’s team fell to the ground like someone had cut the strings holding them up. He gave up on the ring and picked up one of their rifles and levelled it at the creature.
‘Show me infinity,’ he demanded.
Dalton watched the bullets leave the gun and fly towards their target. They moved through the air in slow motion as the final remnants of time ebbed away from the stasis field.
Forged from the metals of deadly weapons — each round had killed many times before — Dalton wanted to make sure they carried a payload of pain that could put down even the toughest Djinn.
But every one of them stopped before they reached the creature, hanging in the air as it swatted them away like flies.
When the fallen men around him began to raise themselves awkwardly off the floor, he knew the mission was a disaster. Mallary was the first to stand, his eyes turning dark as another Djinn took possession of his body.
He dropped the gun and drew his sword. Dalton was surrounded by a host of infected men which only the talisman seemed to be holding back.
Bergson’s Djinn was struggling to remain within the confines of its host body. The skin was darkening and cracking as it stepped forward towards him.
‘Who are you?’ it asked in a whispered hiss.
Dalton held up the ring, feeling the power slipping between his fingers.
‘Nihil, I command you to obey me.’
The creature appeared to smile, the skin stretching until it split and the sharp bone of a jaw broke through, Bergson’s face tearing in half as something alien emerged from his body.
‘Behold! I am reborn!’ it screamed as it sloughed off Bergson’s body like a coat, its new skin like the carapace of a beetle, black and shiny.
Dalton dropped his sword and knelt down, his hands searching for anything he could use to jump out of the moment.
He’d tried to lose himself in the chaos. Just as Daedalus had described, ‘wandering the lost paths of forgotten worlds’. He remembered thinking how amazing that sounded when he’d first read it, but in reality, it was tiring and filled with dangers of its own.
Running from one unstable world to the next, Dalton could find little in the way of refuge: avoiding falling buildings, violent storms and a hundred other kinds of danger and always with the sounds of the Djinn on his trail.
He cursed his ambition. He should have spent more time looking for the second book. Eddington had lied to him; the talisman was useless without the knowledge of how to wield it, making it nothing more than a relic from a bygone era.
Nihil was not a normal kind of Djinn, not what he was expecting at all.
He tried to take off the ring but it was stuck fast, and as he struggled with it twelve dark shapes appeared around him.
48
Survivors
Josh and Caitlin were welcomed by two ageing nuns, who both dressed in white habits with the numerals XII embroidered in gold thread. They followed them to rooms decorated like something from a Moroccan Kasbah, draped in exotically woven tapestries, with a finely carved luxurious bed sitting in the centre covered in velvet cushions. The walls were punctuated with alcoves displaying an eclectic collection of astrological instruments.
A new set of clothes had been laid out on the bed, and a deep bath sat steaming in the next room.
‘What is this place?’ asked Josh, who was playing with an antique orrery, spinning the planets around the sun
‘The Augur’s headquarters I guess,’ said Caitlin, laying back into the hot water.
‘Are we under arrest?’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t know. He said the Titanic was off-limits.’
‘I’ve been thinking about him.’
‘Valient?’
‘Why was he checking the bodies?’
‘Because he’s a nutter?’
She laughed. ‘I think they’re all a bit crazy, but that’s not what I meant.’
Josh’s memory of the priest was a little messed up by the pain. ‘Maybe he was searching for someone?’
‘And who would’ve been on the Titanic that would’ve been of interest to the Augurs?’
‘I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’
‘Do you remember the hologram talking about dark matter?’
‘The stuff he got from the maelstrom — that kept him alive?’
‘Kind of. Dark matter makes up about eighty percent of the universe, except you can’t see it, and astrophysicists believe it’s there because of the effect it has on the observable universe. Anyway, there was a Dutch scientist on the Titanic called Jacobus Kapteyn, whose body was never recovered. He was the first to suggest its existence using stellar velocities.’
‘And you think Valient was trying to find him?’
‘Not sure, but I bet Fermi did.’
Josh walked into the bathroom. ‘What does he need a Dutch scientist for?’
‘Energy. Fermi’s experiments require a massive amount of power. I think the further back he went the more he needed. He needed Kapteyn to survive so that he could continue his work on dark matter.’
‘And that’s got something to do with one of the Eschaton crises?’ he asked, taking off his clothes and stepping into the hot water.
Caitlin frowned as he took up one end of the tub. ‘Yeah, I think they’re linked somehow.’
‘Which one? Valient said he was from the eleventh.’
She sank lower into the water, entwining her legs with his. ‘I think it’s more like the eighth — the discovery of a terrible power.’
‘So, how do we find this Kapteyn bloke?’
‘My guess is that Fermi would have moved him to a research institute with other like-minded scientists, like Niels Bohr.’
‘But surely the Augurs would have noticed?’
She nodded. ‘Not if he inadvertently sank a ship full of people to hide what he’d done. The magnetic distortion from a fully functioning timesuit could easily have affected the Titanic’s compasses. Put it on the wrong course.’
49
Virus
Lord Dee’s expression turned grave as he examined Rufius.
‘How long has he been like this?’ he asked Alixia.
‘At least two linear days. The Makepieces had the good sense to take him back into the maelstrom to arrest its progression, but I fear it may be too late.’
The founder nodded and placed the blanket back over the patient.
‘I concur. This is no ordinary infection. I’ve not seen the likes of it for centuries.’
‘From the maelstrom?’
‘Many years ago,’ he said and sighed. ‘There was a case of a young Draconian by the name of Phillips who’d been struck down by a storm-kin during a minor breach in the Minoan. His timeline was nearly entirely corrupted
.’
‘But you found a cure?’
Dee shook his head. ‘We were too late. There was nothing left to salvage.’
‘So there is no hope?’ Alixia asked despondently.
A white-gowned nurse appeared with a fresh poultice and applied it to Rufius’ forehead.
‘There’s always hope, my dear Alixia. This place was built on that very principle.’
The sanatorium was housed in the outer wall of the third level of the Citadel. A series of clean, white marble rooms, the hospital was quiet and solemn. A cool breeze swept in through the arched windows that looked out over vistas of Italian valleys. The sound of waves crashing over rocks echoed from the seascape on the opposite side of the chamber.
‘What is this place?’ Alixia asked, taking in the different views.
‘Somewhere I hoped we would never need,’ the founder said, writing down a list of ingredients for the nurse. ‘Let’s join the others, as I’m sure they will all be asking the same questions.’
50
Dissonance
‘What would you do if you could go back and change one thing?’ Caitlin asked, pulling his arm around her.
Josh let the scent of her body fill his senses. His hand was dangerously close to one of her breasts, but he resisted the urge to caress it. There was some unspoken code that signalled when it was okay to do so, and he was pretty sure this was one of those ‘just hold me’ moments.
‘Is this a trick question?’
‘No. Seriously, what one thing would you change?’
He could think of a hundred things in a heartbeat, but none of them was quite as important as his mother, which he knew was pointless. No one could change her condition other than Fermi — and that timeline came at too high a price.
‘Okay. So what if the colonel never went into the maelstrom? Never wrote the books of the Djinn. I think that one thing would pretty much fix this situation.’
Eschaton Page 12
