phasing back into the British Museum's African Gallery. The last thing Elra saw was the couple holding each other, still as ancient trees in a last embrace, as bulky, jagged silhouettes dashed down the stairs towards them.
The displays slipped back into focus, the lighting changed and Kai reappeared, and Elra's world condensed into being, as if rising from a great depth.
The mask's energy was spent. Elra was left with a feeling of heavy stillness. 'What did I just see?' she asked.
'Another world,' Kai beamed, gazing at her with admiration. 'I don't think anyone, ever, has been able to connect so well with the mask on their first time.'
Elra looked down the gallery, in the direction of the stairs. The emptiness was deafening. ‘Who were they?’
‘Who?’
She stared for a while. It was pointless continuing.
‘Never mind.’
Fifteen
Cali stumbled out of the MRI suite feeling groggy, fragile and generally annoyed. She’d been ringing Elra’s phone all afternoon, to no avail whatsoever. She’d sent her countless texts and left what felt like millions of voice-mail messages. The worst of it was, she was in two minds about whether to tell the authorities about Elra or not, or indeed what to tell them at all. She’d been told the police were going to interview her later that day, but she suspected she could get away with being vague and misdirecting, by virtue of her current condition. I don’t know officer, it all happened so quickly... goodness me, my head hurts.
That wouldn’t fly for long, though. Not after tomorrow, unless Cali feigned a more worrying condition, like total memory loss. One thing that worked in her favor was the timing of when she was knocked out: she could claim she was rendered unconscious as soon as it all started, which wasn’t that far from the truth. In fact, she could claim ignorance about everything: she could pretend she was a humble hanger-on, a gang lackey, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She headed back to her room, sat down hard on the edge of the bed and tried Elra again. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.
Ugh, she wasn’t going to pick up, was she?
Please leave a message after the t - .
Click. Dammit.
But genuinely, what the hell was she going to tell the authorities? From what she’d gathered the situation was being treated as a gang incident: either as an altercation that erupted in-gang, or an attack by a rival group. How they fit the dead woman in strange armor into the picture was anyone’s guess. Would they think she was a member of a weird international criminal syndicate, who came over to exact revenge over some transgression? How would they account for her using a sword/pike/scimitar (or whatever it had been) as a weapon? Ah, but of course, the blade had disappeared as it was swung at her head, as she’d seen with her own eyes, clear as day. So from their perspective, she’d used a colored stick as a weapon, something that Cali’s head wound would play testament too. God, what a mess.
Cali’s real concern, one she didn’t want to give voice to, even inwardly, was that a secretive government division of sorts would take over the investigation, like MI5, the SIS or another group of G-Men. Unfortunately, it was perfectly plausible, given the extraordinary things that just happened. All it would take would be the police to find anomalous residue from the rift, discrepancy in that woman’s DNA, or find that the bloody stick was made of an unknown material, and Cali would spend the rest of her life in a cell at a black site.
On the plus side, they may have an idea as to what the hell happened, although Cali was sure they wouldn’t tell her. Oh god, what was she going to tell her mother? She wondered if the news had spread across the estate by now. It almost certainly had. Multiple murder in Driesdale. You know Barry? Yeah, that dodgy geezer, worked with Mastix’s crew. Murdered, girlfriend too. Didn’t they have a girl? Yeah, not his though. Disappeared, so my mate in the police says.
What a mess. What a bloody, confusing, crazy mess. The universe had really thrown her a curve-ball in this one. She remembered something her Polish grandfather had told her, when he was still alive. The world’s crazy, Califindra. However hard we try, we can never make it sane. You just have to embrace it.
Cali was finding this turn of events particularly hard to embrace. But she was sure of one thing: the answers lied with Elra. Best try ringing her again.
Ring, ring.
Sixteen
Seven thousand kilometers away, a thirty-something year-old woman called Olympia stared out over the baobab-studded savannah towards the mountains in the distance, savoring the setting sun’s warmth on her olive skin. She was sitting on a rocky outcrop about three kilometers from her house, away from the bustle of the town and the influence of other minds.
The change she could feel, amplified by the marks that covered the entirety of her shaven head, worried her immensely. This wasn’t just the regular entropic spin of the Earth’s passage through time and space, no. This was more fundamental, a shift in the character of reality. She’d have to confer with the twins, talk it over and see if they could predict its nature.
The threat of violence loomed heavy, she could feel that for sure. A menacing force or feeling, strong and alien, was trying to achieve... something. She just couldn’t tell whether it was in the past, future, or in another universe with close event harmony. Would it manifest itself in this universe? Olympia felt that it already had. The rifts, small slippages, crossed wires, bleed-through from other realities
She knew the London contingent had made contact with that... individual. The source of that rift. An interesting development, one that Olympia was sure had some bearing on this change she was feeling. Especially as the individual was unmarked, and seemed oblivious to her ability. Her control of Knowledge was non-existent, yet her power was unmistakable. There was a connection there, she thought, between this violent change and this unmarked person. For the briefest of moments she felt the connection forming, a clarification, an explanation, but it eluded her. Meaning was evasive. She’d have to talk to the others, maybe even the Iceland contingent, and certainly this individual herself, to gain full clarification. She had a feeling they’d meet soon enough.
Elra. That was her name. Nice name. How are you going to change things, Elra?
The best way Olympia could describe it, in layperson terms, was like a car on a collision course with an invisible object in the middle of the road. Something big was going to happen, but the driver was totally unaware. Well, almost: maybe they would have a split-second intuition, a sixth-sense tingle, but they’d collide with it nonetheless. And the outcome would be entirely dependent what that object was.
Perhaps she should try to determine the nature of the object: that violent, alien force. Yes, that was a good idea. Try to find out what it is, rather than what it would do.
The inevitability of it all scared Olympia. The multiverse didn’t usually work like this: it was usually uncertain, multifarious and changeable. But now something was going to happen, one way or the other. Something big, which could change things forever.
Seventeen
Elra was knackered. Kai had run her all over the city: after her close encounter in the British Museum he’d taken her to see Covent Garden, Leicester Square, then Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall and past Horse Guard's Parade to Westminster, across St. James’ Park to Buckingham Palace, down to Knightsbridge for a quick glimpse at Harrods and then on to South Kensington for a whistle-stop tour of the museums. All walking.
They were now sitting in Hyde Park, near the Royal Albert Hall, while Elra massaged her calves and chafed toes. She was in that comfortable halfway-house between happy contentment and total exhaustion. She’d begun to adopt a curiously un-bothered attitude towards her broader situation, perhaps because of what she’d seen back in the African Gallery. She had experienced a sort of overview effect, as if viewing her life from a great height, and seeing how minutely insignificant it really was: somewhere, some-when, there were people with far bigger problems.
‘The word’s probably
out by now,’ Kai announced, breaking the comfortable silence.
‘The word of what?’
‘What happened. The police may even be looking for you. Thankfully they have no idea you’ve come here: we paid for the tickets in cash.’
Elra was irritated by such mundane annoyances. ‘They’re going to have a hard time explaining what the hell happened, I’m sure I’ll be the least of their worries.’
‘We should probably get back to the hideout soon, anyway. At very least, you should change your hair and the way you dress.’
Elra shot him a look. 'Only I choose what I wear,' she said darkly.
Kai raised his eyebrows. 'I wasn't implying... Oh never mind. I was only thinking practically.'
‘Given the situation, though, I may change my hair. I've always wanted a reason to cut it shorter.'
He seemed enthused by this. 'Brilliant! Also, given your capabilities, I think it'd stop it getting in the way. More functional, you know.'
'My capabilities?'
'You clearly have plenty of talent. And you're unmarked, which is very, very exciting. I can't wait to see what you can do.'
Elra frowned. 'Yes, you said I was 'unmarked' earlier. What does that mean?'
'Well, it has far more significance than I really know, but it basically means you can use Knowledge without marks. Any Knowledge. It's all within
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