Caitlin put her hand in his and squeezed it.
‘Well, looks like Josh brought his girlfriend,’ teased Lenin. ‘When this is over, darling, we’re going to party, yeah?’ he added with a lecherous wink.
Josh squeezed back as if to say it was going to be OK.
They wheeled his mother on to the stage next to Lenin. She was dressed in a surgical gown with a threadbare blanket thrown over her legs. Josh could see there was still a cannula in her arm where there should’ve been an IV drip attached.
‘So, Josh man, where’s the cash?’
Josh placed a small Gladstone bag on the floor in front of him. It was one of the colonel’s, like the one from the Fenian bombing. They’d stuffed the bag full of old notes — Caitlin had gone to a ‘collector’ who wouldn’t mind loaning them a few thousand.
‘The interesting thing about loose notes is that they always looks a lot more than there really is,’ she’d said handing him the bag. She’d liked parts of his plan, but had had some suggestions of her own. Before he could argue, she was back with the cash. Josh had to laugh at the idea of someone who ‘collected’ cash — in any other situation they would have been called ‘rich’ or ‘loaded’, but in Caitlin’s world they were simply a curator of currency. He made a mental note to ask her more about that particular division of the Order later.
‘Bring him,’ barked Lenin.
Gossy went down and picked up the bag, holding it up to feel the weight. Josh could tell from his expression that he was impressed. The Victorian case looked odd in Gossy’s hands, out of place next to his ripped jeans. Josh felt hands grab his arms and push him towards the front.
Lenin threw away the joint and opened the bag. He smiled at what he saw inside and began to pull notes out and throw them at his crew, who immediately forgot themselves and began scrabbling around on the floor for the fluttering notes.
‘The power of money,’ said Lenin smugly. He pulled out another fistful and flung it into Josh’s face. ‘You sure it’s all here, Joshy?’
Josh stood directly below him, trying to look unimpressed. He was slowly counting down the seconds in his head.
Lenin nodded to Gossy and dropped the bag.
‘Sorry, Crash. You did fine, but there’s a man who pays better.’
The members of the Ghost Squad were busy chasing notes and squabbling over who should have the bigger share when another crew arrived. These were mean-looking men, mercenaries, ex-military types with hard eyes and crew cuts.
Josh leapt on to the stage as Lenin pulled a gun.
‘Don’t —’ was all Lenin managed to say before Josh grabbed him and hit the button on the tachyon. They both disappeared from the stage.
Lenin and Josh appeared in the empty hall seven years earlier. The equipment laid out ready for a new game. Josh looked up and caught the gun he had thrown earlier as it came down.
They stood, silently pointing guns at each other. Lenin was naked except for his tattoos, Josh was shocked at how emaciated he’d become. His ribs were showing and the track marks on his arms were raised and sore. Lenin’s eyes flicked nervously around the room looking for any sign of his crew, trying to process where and when he was.
‘Put it down, Len. It’s just between us now.’
Lenin’s hand was shaking a little, and his fingers flexed on the handle of the gun as if to get a better grip.
‘How the —’
‘Shoot me and you’ll never get back.’
‘How about I shoot you anyway and work that out later?’
‘No. You’re not giving the orders any more. You aren’t the boss of me,’ growled Josh pointing his gun at Lenin’s chest.
‘Whoa, suddenly someone grew a pair!’
‘Just telling it like it is.’
‘Go on, then,’ Lenin said, lowering his weapon and opening his arms out. ‘Let’s see if you’ve really got the balls.’
Josh stood his ground. The barrel of the gun didn’t waiver.
‘You’re a pussy, Josh, always have been. Just remember who pulled you out of the car.’
Josh thought of all the times he’d heard this from Lenin, the debt of which he’d reminded of so many times. He knew now it had all been a lie — their entire relationship for the last five years had been based on that one day, the day he’d nearly died, when the colonel had pulled them both out of the car and Lenin had taken the credit.
‘You didn’t save me, though, did you, Len?’
Lenin’s eyes narrowed, and Josh caught the slightest flicker of guilt.
‘You saying I didn’t? You were totally out of it — I should have left you there to burn.’
‘No,’ said Josh, ‘you see I went back — that’s what I do now. I saw what happened. I saw the guy who pulled us both out of the car when everyone else stood back and watched.’
‘Bullshit. You’re seconds away from being a dead man,’ threatened Lenin, bringing the gun back up.
Josh couldn’t hold back any more. ‘You made me think you saved my life! What kind of friend does that? Acting like you owned me. Like I owed you — and I believed you, feeling like it was all my fault! I would have gone on believing you until I found out I could do this,’ he said, waving the gun at the gym. ‘I went back there, I saw what happened and now this is all I need to totally screw up your life. Whereas this,’ he said, waving the gun, ‘doesn’t solve anything.’ He put the gun away and stepped closer to Lenin once more.
He held the tachyon in Lenin’s face. ‘Watch.’
Josh pressed the rewind, and they both disappeared.
Caitlin and Sim were holding their own against the rest of the room. In the chaos, the Ghost Squad had turned on the mercenaries, and it was hard to see who was winning.
She had done her best not to maim or injure anyone too badly. The weapons that she and Sim were using were deadly: but could be used to incapacitate an opponent rather than kill them. The Ghost Squad were easier targets than the mercenaries who were all skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
Josh reappeared with Lenin a few seconds after he’d left. Gossy couldn’t quite work out what was going on, but Lenin was naked and still holding a gun, which was weird and dangerous, to say the least.
Josh went to his mother while Lenin blinked and looked around as if he’d just woken up. His nakedness went unnoticed in the chaos.
Gossy took a long look at the carnage unfolding around them: bullets, swords and blood were flying in all directions. His gaze met Lenin’s and seemed to come to the same conclusion. He picked up the bag of money. It was time to get the hell out of there.
Lenin looked over at Josh and raised his gun. Gossy shouted a warning as he fired. Josh turned at the sound, causing the bullet to miss him and it hit his mother instead.
A red stain flowered on her surgical gown just below the shoulder. Josh screamed at Lenin and turned on him his eyes burning with tears.
‘You —’
Lenin’s eyes were wild as he raised the gun again.
‘Josh!’ shouted Caitlin from the middle of the fracas. ‘Rewind!’
Somehow he heard her voice through the noise of the battle and remembered the tachyon. He closed his hand over it and went back two minutes.
[<<]
The hall reset, and he was back in front of Lenin. As before, Lenin nodded to Gossy and dropped the bag.
‘Sorry, Crash, you did fine, but the man pays better.’
This time, Josh dived to the piano and grabbed the gun from its hiding place. As he rolled and brought the weapon up to fire, he saw Caitlin running across the room towards him. Lenin was raising his gun and Josh knew he would only have one chance to stop him. He fired and felt the pistol’s recoil kick back into his arm. The bullet hit Lenin in the leg, knocked him off balance and he fired wide.
Josh saw Caitlin fall. At first, he thought she’d tripped, but when he got closer he saw the blood on her neck and knew where Lenin’s bullet had gone.
He hit the rewind again.
[<<]
‘Sorry, Crash. You did fine, but the man pays better.’
He had less than ten seconds to make a choice. This time, he jumped straight at Lenin before he could pull the gun, before the military burst in.
He was about the same size as Lenin and knew that he could take him in a fair fight, but Lenin never did anything fairly, and as Josh took him down he felt a cold, sharp pain in his side — Lenin had stabbed him.
Gossy was shouting at Lenin as Josh rolled over on his side and saw the wound, it was not deep, but the blood was pouring out of it. He pressed a hand to the cut and raised himself up on one arm.
Lenin was staring at him, the knife in one hand and the gun in the other.
‘I told him you’d be easy,’ Lenin shouted. ‘You were supposed to be a pussy! Now I’m going to have to end you.’ He raised the gun to take aim.
Gossy came up behind Lenin and began to wrestle with him for the gun. Lenin dropped the knife and used his free hand to punch Gossy, but he wouldn’t let go, and they bundled across the stage.
Josh got to his feet and picked up the knife. It was a small hunting knife. He remembered Lenin bragging about how many people he’d cut with it. The blade was too short to be fatal. Lenin had never been a killer — a sadist and an egomaniac, yes, but never a killer.
The sound of the gun going off brought Josh’s head up. He saw Gossy had the gun. At first he thought he’d shot Lenin, then Gossy’s legs crumpled, and he collapsed on to his knees. Lenin was injured too, but Gossy had a dark red stain on his back that was spreading fast.
Josh crawled over to Gossy, the pain throbbing in his side. His friend was still holding the gun, but his eyes were glazing over.
‘Hey, Joshman,’ he said weakly. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah. Just a scratch,’ Josh whispered as he tried not to look at the hole in the front of Gossy’s chest. He managed to push himself upright.
‘Couldn’t let him take out my wingman.’ Gossy tried to laugh, but the pain made him cough. There were bubbles of blood in his mouth. He fell forward on to Josh.
Josh held him, trying to think of what he could say. Lenin lay on his side, not moving, and the others hadn’t noticed he was down. He felt the weak panting of Gossy’s breath against his chest as his life slipped away. His blood was all over Josh’s hands. Somewhere in the background noise he heard Caitlin shouting a warning to him as he studied them — he ignored her as his friend’s lifeline spread out before him.
Just like the colonel’s, Gossy’s timeline was an elaborate web of interconnecting events and emotions. He could see and feel every experience that his friend had ever had — his life laid bare — not just crystallised points in time, but snapshots of his consciousness. It was hard to resist. There were so many emotions bombarding him as he immersed himself in Gossy’s history.
There were good times and bad: Josh experienced the elation of his friend’s first skateboard, the pain of the break-up of his parents, the kiss of Marie Withershall — all the little formative moments that went into making him who he was.
Then he came to the crash. There was something strange about the way the lines of time coalesced around the accident. Josh could see other fainter lines ghosting around the node as though it had been repaired. He could see that there were other ways, other paths that Gossy’s life could have taken, and he couldn’t help but explore them.
It was an odd sensation, as if he were looking down from the top of an enormous skyscraper. He could see the many different lines stretching out from the day of the crash — some much longer than others. He saw how Gossy’s life could have simply ended that day, whilst in others he lived — there was even one with a wife and kids. None of them ended in old age. There was something wrong with his heart, a biological time bomb waiting in his future. Josh knew then that Gossy was never meant to make ‘old bones’. Nothing was ever going to change that. Was it better to live a short and happy life or a long and painful one? Josh couldn’t make that choice. Gossy had chosen for him.
In the distance, the darkness was approaching, a numbing void that consumed the timeline as everything was drawn to it. Josh was still deeply embedded, unable to extract himself. The lines around him were burning out to nothing like sparklers on bonfire night.
He stared into the abyss, captivated by the hypnotic patterns of dying futures that coalesced along its edge. As he studied the emptiness that raced towards him, he was sure he could feel something inside the blackness: a malevolent presence watching him silently from the other side. This was what reavers like Lyra found so addictive, he thought. Why they risked everything to get close to death — they wanted to know what was beyond the veil.
He remembered Lyra’s beautiful skin and the scars that she had carved into it, her lingering kiss in the deep waters of the baths and then something she’d said — a word, or more like an idea.
A remembering — a way back.
Gossy had stopped breathing, and his eyes were closed. Josh looked up and found Caitlin and Sim standing over him with weapons drawn and a look of shock on their faces. Around them everything had stopped. It was as though time had been paused. No one was moving; they were like a photograph of a moment.
From between the frozen fighters walked a set of dark figures in long sweeping robes, their faces obscured by masks. As they approached, Josh could see their insignia, the clock with no hands — the symbol of the Protectorate. They were searching everyone in the hall, using something in their gloves to scan them. When they reached Josh, their leader made a silent sign to the others.
Josh was sure he saw Phileas and Lyra at the back of the squad, but he had no time to wonder why before the officer’s gloved hand touched his temple and the world vanished.
64
Lenin Recovered
Professor Fermi found Lenin lying on his side. The other members of his gang had fled — their loyalty dissolved at the apparent demise of their leader.
There was another body nearby, still holding the gun. Fermi knelt down beside the boy and checked for a pulse, but found nothing. He could hear Lenin’s laboured breathing and went over to him. He was badly injured, the gunshot wound in his lower abdomen slick with dark blood.
‘Can you hear me?’ Fermi whispered into Lenin’s ear.
Lenin grunted in response.
‘You are going to die unless I call for help, but before I do you are going to tell me what happened.’
Lenin’s eyes opened slightly, and he swore through gritted teeth.
‘We had a deal. You were supposed to deliver me the boy, remember? Now tell me!’ the professor demanded.
Lenin groaned, and through gasps of pain he told the professor what he could remember.
The professor pulled out his phone.
‘Get the medics in here stat,’ he ordered. The words appeared on the screen followed by ‘encrypting’ and then ‘delivered’ underneath it.
He swiped the app away and pulled up the data that his monitors had captured. A series of graphs appeared, overlaid on a video feed of the hall. He sped through the first twenty minutes of the steady sinusoidal shape of usual background gravitational waves until he found the three-minute burst of activity. There was a cluster of lines overlapping each other, like a series of echoes. Each line registered a set of changes except one that started erratically and then went flat for over a minute — either one of his sensors was faulty, or someone had literally stopped time.
The medics arrived and went to work on Lenin. They turned him over on to his back and began to work on his injuries. One gave him CPR while the other unpacked the mobile defibrillator and switched on the charger.
‘Wait!’ said Fermi, as they tore his T-shirt open to place the paddles on his chest.
Fermi stood over them and held out his hand. ‘His watch, if you please.’
The medic stopped his compressions, unstrapped Lenin’s watch from his wrist and handed it to the professor.
‘Now let’s see if my theory was correct.
’
He’d given the digital watch to Lenin before the meeting. It had been synchronised to the nanosecond with his own. He compared the two and as the screens lit up in the harsh red glow of their LEDs he smiled — there was a difference of 0.0000000022 seconds.
Lenin had travelled in time.
65
Awakening
[Bethlem Hospital, London. Date: 11.666]
Josh woke gradually, the sounds of the room seeping into his dream until he surfaced into consciousness.
‘Josh?’ whispered Caitlin. ‘Are you awake?’
‘I am now,’ he replied sleepily.
She was close by, but not in the bed. He felt her weight shift the mattress as she sat down beside him.
When he opened his eyes, Josh realised he had no idea where he was.
The room was panelled in dark wood and sparsely furnished with a few chairs and a wardrobe that could comfortably house a small family. There was a real fire burning in the massive fireplace, and a tapestry of some idyllic hunting scene covered one entire wall. Through the door he could hear the muffled screams of the insane.
‘We’re in Bedlam,’ she said in response to his unasked question.
‘We’re in trouble,’ added Sim, who was sitting in a wing-backed chair by the fire.
‘Your messing around with time alerted the Copernicans. They sent out an entire Protectorate brigade to investigate.’
Josh sat up and absentmindedly scratched at his belly. There was a bandage wrapped round his stomach where Lenin had stabbed him.
‘Try not to scratch it,’ Caitlin said, inspecting the bindings. ‘Doctor Crooke says the wound will take another couple of hours to heal properly.’
Anachronist Page 31
