Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times)

by Mark Lawrence

  Fifteen minutes later I heard him coming, clomping along where Rust had slunk fox-like, a killer seeking prey. I heard the pause as my younger self registered the two bags, then went past my door to investigate.

  ‘I wouldn’t.’ I stepped out of the office behind him, causing him to freeze and squeak in fright.

  ‘Steady,’ I said. ‘It’s only me.’

  ‘Jesus, fuck!’ He clutched his chest. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping. I arrived before you and disabled the alarms from the outside.’

  Anger battled relief across Young Nick’s slightly spotty face. ‘If you were going to come here anyway, what do you need us for?’

  I offered a version of the old explanation: this was the way it had happened, so this was what had to happen. We moved on to discuss the matter of the severed head, and that naturally led on to the alarming fact that Ian Rust had graduated to murder and was already in the building.

  ‘That psycho’s in the building?’ With commendable bravery, Young Nick started to head back in.

  ‘Whoa.’ I grabbed his arm. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To stop him!’ He tried to shake off my grip. ‘Mia’s on her own in there. And the others.’

  ‘This is what happens. Mia survives.’

  ‘What?’ Nick shook his head. ‘You said you don’t remember this. I’m supposed to wipe my memory.’

  ‘I don’t remember it happening, but I remember the aftermath. I’ve lived with it for more than half my life. I never asked about it, but some facts can’t be avoided.’ Actually, I knew a lot more than that, but I needed him to save Mia, whatever the cost, even if that meant lying to myself.

  ‘The aftermath?’ He was still trying to break free.

  ‘This is the Tower of Tricks. There’s no escape without sacrifice. There’s a price to pay.’ I let him go. Jean Arnot was the price, and no matter what the logic was it hurt as much to trade him for Mia as it had when I first realised that he was dead.

  ‘Tell me what you know!’ Young Nick raged. He was scared for all of them. I could see it in his face.

  ‘I know that this way you can bring Mia back. Return her past to her and give her a future. I know that one day, that will mean more to you than everything. Anything.’ That, at least, was a truth I could share with him.

  ‘At what cost?’ He had hold of my coat in both hands. ‘At what cost?’ His bike lamp fell to the floor, shadows spinning crazily.

  ‘You lose friends here, Nick. I lose friends. And I’ve had twenty-five years to mourn that fact. There’s blood on my hands. Whatever I do, there’s blood on my hands.’ Even now I wanted another way.

  ‘Who? Who do I lose?’ He slammed me back against the wall.

  ‘Does—’ I’d bitten my tongue and tasted blood on my lips. ‘Does it matter? Would . . . Would it change what you do?’

  ‘I . . . No! I’m not losing any of them. Tell me how to stop it!’

  ‘You can’t stop it.’ He couldn’t. I couldn’t. ‘It’s the sacrifice. It’s what she costs us. Her life saved. Others lost. One or many? Elton set you the puzzle already. And you ran from it. Ask me again how to stop it and I might tell you. But then you’d have to decide. I could tell you where to find Rust. One word. One word.’

  ‘I . . .’ Indecision twisted his face.

  ‘Or let it play out. As it already has played out. Let my past be your future. And save Mia.’

  ‘Mia.’ He released his hold on me. I could see he loved her. I loved her more now, though. I was ready to go down there and let Rust attack me with that machete. And if that required manipulating this boy into playing his part, then so be it.

  ‘I don’t know what you do, Nick,’ I lied. ‘I don’t remember this conversation. I remember the next week. I remember the shit I had to deal with. The bodies that needed to go into the ground. None of this is good. None of it can be. But it happened.’

  ‘I can’t play this game. I’m sorry.’ Young Nick stepped away, bent and picked up the light. ‘I need to unstick the future, jump us on to another timeline. We all need a chance. I can’t walk your path. I’m sorry.’ He glanced down the dark corridor. ‘Your Mia is old. Forty. She’s lived a life . . .’

  I bowed my head. ‘How easily the young sacrifice the old. When you get to forty, it won’t seem quite so clear-cut. Believe me. But . . . Well, just remember that you told me the old were a price worth paying.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ He frowned, though, as if realising that he had.

  I pulled back my right sleeve. ‘I don’t have a scar here.’ I drew a finger across the back of my wrist.

  ‘What?’ Young Nick looked bemused.

  ‘I don’t have a scar here. If you did . . . then you couldn’t be me. Could you?’ I covered my wrist with my sleeve again, not wanting him to notice the make-up covering my tattoo. ‘I remember that three people die here tonight. Do it your way and maybe it will be more. Maybe fewer.’ I met his gaze, narrowing my eyes against the light. Simon had told me Nick had found a knife during his search and that’s how he cut the back of his wrist. ‘It’s in your pocket,’ I guessed.

  Young Nick reached into his coat pocket and took out a Stanley knife, setting the small blade to the back of his left wrist. The trick had worked. I still had that scar on my left wrist. It was the natural one to cut if you were right-handed. He would slice the skin and think himself free of me, no longer bound to become me.

  ‘Think about it,’ I cautioned.

  ‘No time.’ He made the cut, blood welling up immediately.

  ‘Restaurant,’ I told him. My one-word kill, like the D&D spell.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘That’s the killing word. That’s where you’ll find Rust and remake the future.’ I didn’t feel bad about the lie. I had done it to myself. Besides, things still might go wrong. I was manoeuvring the pieces but there were no guarantees.

  Young Nick hurried away, eager to do the right thing on a night where there were no right things. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Why should I?’ I called after him. ‘It’s not my future any more.’ Let him think he was on his own.

  He looked back from the corner. ‘It still matters!’

  ‘To you, maybe.’ The truth was that every decision split the world’s timeline and I only truly had enough compassion to care about mine, the versions of me and Mia and all the rest that I knew and remembered. ‘That was the solution to your other problem, too, you know,’ I shouted after him.

  ‘What? What was?’

  ‘In the Tower of Tricks. Someone had to die. You should have used Power Word Kill on the old man. Everything would have gone away. One old man dead.’

  ‘Come on!’ he hollered, and the sounds of his running feet faded into the distance.

  With Young Nick dispatched to do his duty, unburdened of the idea that nothing he did would matter, I set off down the fire escape as fast as I could, pausing only to take the grisly hammer from Rust’s bag.

  I re-entered the building by the side door on the ground floor and hurried to the kitchens at the rear of the restaurant, unlocking any doors that were locked. I thought that Rust would already be there, having killed Mr Arnot, and perhaps Mia would unwittingly come in later and be captured; but as I snuck into the unlit back of the seating area I could see nothing. There was nobody sitting at the table where Rust should be.

  I didn’t dare go further into the room. Instead I locked the door behind me and crouched behind the rearmost table. I set my holdall beside me and waited. It seemed to be a night of waiting. I checked my watch. Checked it again. My legs were starting to ache by the time I heard Rust and Mia approaching, him snarling directions, her swearing and gasping in pain as her arm was twisted up behind her.

  The doors banged open and he thrust her ahead of him, slapping the blade of his machete at the lights. The row closest to the entrance flickered into life. Mia cried out again as Rust tightened his hold, jerking her arm higher behind her
back, and despite the insanity lancing from the black beads of Rust’s eyes and the twenty-four inches of bloody steel in his hand, it still took considerable effort for me not to just rush him. Instead I kept my place and waited for him to settle. I continued checking my watch, for no good reason. Nerves, I guess.

  Simon had reported that Young Nick said Demus rose from the shadows behind Rust and hit him with something heavy. A fire extinguisher, he thought. I had my fire extinguisher ready. I’d even taken a few practice swings. The hammer hung from my belt, ready for the coup de grâce.

  I watched as Rust sat himself at the expected table with Mia in front of him, his blade against her throat.

  ‘Now, let’s just wait and see who turns up.’ He sounded mildly amused. ‘What were you searching for, Mia? Breaking and entering isn’t Hayes’s style. And why this place? It’s just offices.’

  ‘Electronics.’ Mia swallowed past the pressure of the blade. ‘They make electronics here.’

  Rust was quiet for a moment, chewing on that one. ‘And?’

  ‘They want something special for a project. Him and the other brainiac. The fat one.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  A distant bang cut him off. A door being opened at speed. Now the sound of someone approaching at a run.

  Young Nick clattered through the restaurant doors, bicycle lamp in hand, and came to a stop under the entrance lights, taking in the scene with horror. He spotted Mr Arnot lying among the chairs, then looked across to where Rust sat with Mia.

  ‘Little. Nicky. Hayes.’ Rust put a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. ‘Come to play?’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Young Nick gasped.

  Rust shrugged. ‘If I kill all the witnesses, what has anyone got on me but rumours? People say I don’t know where to stop. I say, if you never stop, they’ll never catch you.’ He moved the machete higher until the cutting edge pressed up under Mia’s chin. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to show up, Nick. I wanted you to see her die.’

  ‘Don’t. You don’t have to do this!’ Nick stepped closer.

  ‘You mistake me. I want to do it,’ Rust said.

  I’d seen the same sickness in his brother, though buried a little deeper.

  ‘Just don’t.’ Nick took another step. Five yards and half a dozen chairs separated them.

  I edged forward on knees and one hand, holding the fire extinguisher close with the other, trying not to make a sound. I realised that the face of my watch was still lit up but lacked a free hand to turn it off. I just had to hope Rust didn’t somehow spot it and screw everything up. Even if I got to him, I wasn’t sure how this would work. If I hit Rust with the extinguisher Mia’s neck could easily be sliced open.

  ‘You’ve got a choice, Nick,’ Rust said, his amusement growing. ‘You can go back and turn on the main lights so you get a better view. That way, she gets to live sixty seconds longer. Or you can say no, and I’ll do it now.’

  ‘I . . .’ Nick stood, agonised with indecision. ‘Wait! I’ll do it.’ He started to edge back towards the doors.

  ‘Quicker!’ Rust pressed the flat of the machete blade to Mia’s neck, making her cry out. ‘Mia’s dying for you to see her better.’

  Nick was making quite a racket pushing chairs aside as he retreated towards the light switches. The noise covered my approach. I was close now, almost within striking range, but terrified to do it in case Rust cut Mia’s throat as he collapsed.

  Nick reached the switches and set his hand against them. ‘Lower the blade.’

  I stood right behind Rust now, extinguisher at the ready.

  ‘Really? You’re trying to give me order—’

  I swung and hit him with all my might. Either he somehow managed to duck and take only a glancing blow or ‘all my might’ wasn’t very mighty, because instead of collapsing into a boneless heap he hit the floor and rolled away, still clutching his blade.

  At that point all the lights went on, leaving me blinking for a moment while chairs went clattering over on all sides. My vision returned just in time to see Rust staggering towards me, machete in hand, blood streaming down his forehead and murder in his eyes.

  That’s when I shot him with the taser I’d made a week earlier in my workshop. Blinded by the lights, Nick wouldn’t see what I’d done. I pulled the hammer from my belt and threw myself on Rust as the surge of current died. The bastard still managed to hold on to his weapon even as his muscles spasmed and jerked, but a swift hammer blow to his hand saw him let go. I kicked the machete off among the fallen chairs as we went down together.

  Even with Rust disarmed and still twitching from the taser, it took only a moment on the floor wrestling him to know that he was going to kill me within a matter of seconds. I’d had a small number of kinda-fights in my school days and on those occasions I had been a mix of scared and angry as I struggled with my opponent, but never in doubt that I stood at least a chance. Fighting with Rust was like being attacked by a savage dog, or a bear. There was an unmanning animal ferocity to him, and a blind strength of the sort that comes from rage rather than muscle mass. The sort that lets mothers lift cars off their children. Rust had that same strength of desire a mother has to save her baby, but in him it was a desire to hurt, maim and kill.

  For a few horrifying moments I struggled to keep his thumbs from my eye sockets, then suddenly he was being pulled away from me, Nick hauling on his arm.

  I took my chance and swung the hammer, landing the blow on the side of his head with a wet crunch.

  This time he went limp, falling away with Nick, leaving me on the floor clutching a bloody hammer.

  A month after my final battle with Ian Rust, an illusionist named David Copperfield would walk through the Great Wall of China before a live audience standing on both sides and on top of it. I don’t know how he did it, but it was pretty clever. I’m sure, though, that like many great illusions, it relies on the fact that we are all somewhat less clever than we think we are, and far, far less observant than we think we are.

  A famous experiment has a man in a gorilla suit walk across the stage before an audience without any attempt to conceal himself. And because the performer on stage is focusing the audience’s attention, almost nobody sat there watching actually notices that a man in a gorilla suit has ambled through the action.

  I mention all this to explain why I had thought my plan could work.

  Nick let Rust drop and ran to help Mia, who was on her knees amid fallen chairs, clutching her neck with crimson hands. My Mia in 2011 still had the scar from that shallow cut: a thin white seam, only visible when she tanned. A reminder of the day she had her throat sliced by a murderer.

  ‘Mia?’ Nick reached for her.

  ‘I’m OK. I think . . .’

  Meanwhile I was unfolding the hilt and four inches of blade that were hinged to a stiff rectangle of plastic under my shirt, moulded to my abdomen just beneath my ribs. That plate was secured by a band that ran around my torso and also anchored a similar plate on my back from which I hurriedly unfolded four bloody inches of ‘emerging’ machete blade.

  The blood bags under my shirt had burst during the fight so all I had to do was pull open my jacket to expose the gore.

  Things had to happen as they had happened. But how had they happened? All that was certain was that I remembered things, and others had told me things. As long as that still happened then I had kept to the rules. The timeline didn’t have to fork. The memories Young Nick stored from Young Mia would still be on the memory stick I’d left with my Mia in 2011.

  I didn’t need Rust to stick a machete through me. I needed Nick to see that he had and to tell the others. And as the Tower of Tricks had taught me long ago, the eyes can be deceived. People can be deceived. A lie can be used for good ends as well as bad. An illusion that is never dispelled is a reality all of its own.

  I put a blood capsule in my mouth and bit down on it, letting the gore run down my chin. ‘You’ll have a . . . lovely scar.’ I coughed to get their
attention.

  Nick turned to me, horrified. ‘Are you . . . OK?’

  ‘Three people die here tonight. Like I said.’ I looked pointedly at the hilt of the machete jutting from my side.

  ‘Shit.’ Nick saw it for the first time. ‘Look, don’t move. I’m calling an ambulance!’

  I caught his wrist. ‘Don’t. It’s not you that calls them.’

  He tried to pull free. ‘Enough with that! I changed things. Remember? This isn’t your time any more. I’m not even you.’ And he showed me his left wrist, sticky with blood from the cut he made earlier.

  I showed him the same scar on my own wrist, feigning growing weakness. ‘You can always fool yourself, Nick.’ I really hoped so, anyway. ‘I showed you my right wrist before. You cut your left one. It’s the natural way to do it. Three people will die here. Just like I remember.’

  ‘But . . . you said I’d lose a friend.’

  I nodded towards the body lying by the serving area. It still hurt me after all these years. ‘Jean Arnot. You said you were prepared to sacrifice someone “old” for someone young. Elton never forgives you for it. I’m sorry. You lose a friend. It’s silly. We were just kids, and I haven’t seen him for longer than you’ve been alive . . . but I still miss him.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mia said.

  I was about to give her a speech about having come back here to die for her out of love, but I noticed the taser wires dangling from her hand.

  I gave an exaggerated cry of pain to distract her, but the damn girl followed the wires, thin wires that she shouldn’t have been able to see lying there on the ground in the first place. She followed them under the chair and when she emerged it wasn’t the taser that she had in her hand. It was Rust’s machete.

  ‘Two of them?’ she asked.

  ‘Dying . . .’ I whispered, and then convulsed in what I hoped looked like agony. Unfortunately, the handle and blade section jutting from my abdomen hadn’t locked in place as it should have when I unfolded it, and it chose that moment to fall over, folding back against my body. ‘Shit,’ I said, and sat up. ‘Fuck it!’