by Sean McMahon
‘Okay, first off Malc’,’ said Hal, ‘you're banned from using those words for the duration of our time here. Second of all, that's swell Fearne, but clearly that's not an option for Kara and I!’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Kara. ‘I think we'll just take the long way around and charge ourselves the old-fashioned way, thanks. Ya know, without the need for a cigarette afterwards.’
‘Man, I could really go for a cigarette right now,’ said Hal casually.
They all stared at him.
‘Not for that reason!’ he said, as the motivation behind their questioning glares sunk in. ‘Get your heads out of the gutter guys!’
Everyone but Malcolm laughed.
‘If it would expedite the process…’ began Malcolm, apparently weighing up the potential usefulness of such a tryst. His words generating a face-palm from both Hal and Kara.
‘Malcolm,’ said Hal, ‘you're benched, mate. Go sit over there and think about what you've done.’
*
After twenty hours straight of receiving an onslaught from Future Malcolm, Hal knew for certain that he would be aching all over, were he not out-of-phase with the physical world.
Malcolm was reluctant to merge into the timeline that his past-self was occupying until the four of them were ready, but Hal had finally convinced their guide that enough was enough. He argued that they had learned all they could about their new status quo for the time being, and that spending any more time going over old ground would become wasted time, once the fog grabbed hold and started draining the finer details of their memories.
Reluctantly, Malcolm agreed, on the understanding that they would revisit their training when they had the free time to do so, and they split off into groups preparing for the journey ahead.
Malcolm was sitting, legs crossed, in the middle of the road far away from the others, watching the last rays of sunlight retreat into the horizon above the trees either side of him, as Peter appeared behind him.
Despite not hearing any footsteps, Malcolm grinned at the road ahead, not needing to turn around.
‘Something on your mind, Peter?’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘Occupational hazard,’ said Malcolm, his words an icy reminder that sneaking up on the man would be nigh on impossible.
‘I wanted to ask you–’ began Peter.
‘How are you feeling?’ said Malcolm, cutting him off.
‘What?’ the question coming from a man like Malcolm. confusing him. Peter stared at the back of the killer’s head, trying to look through the thick black hair as if it would hold answers as to the meaning of the question.
‘It must be hard,’ said Malcolm, still facing away from the Restarter, ‘Trying to get your friends to understand why you did what you did to them?’
‘They’ll understand eventually,’ said Peter, shifting uncomfortably, and attempting to kick a stone, which traitorously refused to budge under his out-of-phase foot.
‘You had no choice but to betray them Peter,’ said Malcolm, turning his head around and making eye contact with him. ‘It was you or them. There’s not a single person on Earth that wouldn’t have done the same.’
Peter’s head was lowered, the late evening shadows shrouding his chin beneath his golfing cap.
‘Yeah. Except Hal and Kara. They never would have done that. They would have found another way. They always find another way.’
‘They talk a good game,’ conceded Malcolm, his voice soft and reassuring, ‘but had their plan to stop my heart failed, what would they have resorted to then? How far would they have truly gone when they ran out of options like you and Fearne did?’
The silence drifted between the two men until, finally, Malcolm broke it.
‘What did you come here to ask me?’
‘The knife,’ said Peter. ‘Where exactly did you say it appears on a fresh repeat? Restart,’ he corrected.
‘I didn’t. For what it’s worth, I prefer “Repeats”, by the way. Far more concise.’
‘Where does it appear, Malcolm?’
‘You wouldn’t be planning on doing something stupid, would you Peter?’
‘Are you going to tell me or not?’ said Peter, raising his gaze and meeting Malcolm’s, a grim look of seriousness etched across his attractive face.
Malcolm shrugged, then gave Peter what he wanted.
‘Basement. Right-hand side of the room. Between the staircase and the worktable.’
‘Thanks.’
And with that Peter left the man in peace.
Malcolm turned his head back to face the road ahead. Having traversed it so many times, he knew exactly where it led to, and he’d never felt more satisfied.
Raising his hand to the exact spot where Kara had shot him, Malcolm pressed firmly against his chest. The buttons of his shirt had naturally repaired themselves, his restarted body miraculously healed, but he held onto the memory of the damage it had caused.
He was glad that the blood on his shirt had also vanished, following the restart after the shooting – there was a surprising amount of it for such a small ball-bearing – otherwise he would have needed to continue wearing his apron to conceal it. He knew that would have drawn suspicion at some point.
Thankfully, not one of them suspected that the Restarted weapon had caused him any harm at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Time Traveller’s Knife
R.I Timestamp Error: Recalculating…
System Error. Timestamp Failure.
Not wishing to find out what happened to them if they allowed the next restart to swoop in, they agreed it best to leave before time came looking to reclaim them.
This time around, Malcolm had taken Peter and Fearne through the barrier to The White Lodge first. Giving the alternate Fir Lodge a wide berth, they eventually caught sight of their quarry; a curling red energy that flowed forwards, complimented by inexplicable black wisps, which flowed backwards against the flow of redness, shimmering sporadically, as if holding its own unique element of self-perpetuated fuel.
It was a sinister looking electricity, seemingly being siphoned from an unseen and altogether darker dimension. A central nervous system floating lazily towards a goal only Malcolm knew for sure.
‘So, what do we do?’ said Peter nervously. ‘We don’t want to just appear right next to him, do we?’
‘Indeed,’ said Malcolm. ‘Once through, I’ll slow down time for the three of us. If we’re lucky, a few seconds for us will be like an hour for him. Plenty of time for us to forge some distance between him.’
‘You can do that?’ said Fearne, not really buying it.
‘It’s no different from jumping ahead within a restart,’ said Malcolm, his certainty instilling unexpected reassurance within Peter and Fearne’s minds. ‘I’ll just need to concentrate, and I’ll need you to give me a boost. Do not let go of me until I say.’
‘If you say so,’ said Peter.
Malcolm extended his elbows, as if he were about to perform a ridiculous chicken dance, and they interlocked their arms. Without fanfare, Malcolm reached deep within the swirling red tendons of his past self, fishing for something substantial to latch onto, until he eventually found the anchor he was looking for.
‘Here we go,’ he said, as the sound of swooshing air filled their eardrums, the whiteness of their surroundings falling away, slowly replaced by colours of a far more vibrant variety.
With a violent hiss, the air around them was sucked away, and the three of them were greeted by the sight of a duplicated Malcolm. The Malcolm of their past.
The Dark Restarter.
Future Malcolm concentrated, and the Restarters either side of him felt a slight vibration, as Future Malcolm drained all the power he could from them. To Peter and Fearne, it didn’t feel all that different than the sensation of connecting with a Restarter, with one exception; the sparks generated by the trio’s contact felt as if they were being drawn towards each other, rather than the usual experien
ce of being repelled from one another.
*
The Dark Restarter span around, certain he had been approached by someone. Which was impossible, considering he was out-of-phase with everyone and everything.
Nevertheless, he knew he was being watched. He had a gift for sensing things like that. Something of a vocational necessity, thanks to his lifestyle choices.
He stared out at the open road in front of him, the afternoon sun lighting up the path before him. Entirely unremarkable in every conceivable way.
His eyes narrowed, as if searching for a tell-tale shimmer, a flicker of blue, perhaps…anything to indicate that an unwanted rat-catcher of orange secretary were utilising some form of trickery to hide themselves from him.
But there was nothing he needed to be concerned about. He smiled, then relaxed the muscles around his eyes, before turning back to the task at hand. He had an errand to run. The same errand he ran every Friday afternoon. One that began at precisely 12:01pm. Today was no different.
*
‘He’s leaving,’ said Fearne, no longer feeling the need to wince, as if doing so granted her some form of ridiculously illogical invisibility. ‘It’s working!’
Once Malcolm’s past-self had truly left their field of view, Malcolm instructed the two of them to let go of him, the act pulling the three of them back into true phase with the timeline they had been striving for, and the one the Dark Restarter called home; Timeline Charlie. A point which, for all intents and purposes, now served as the Restarter equivalent of “The Present”. For everyone except Future Malcolm, of course.
Hal and Kara’s 168th Restart.
Peter and Fearne’s 798th Repeat.
The Dark Restarter’s 1,063rd Cerebral Reversion.
And just another day for Future Malcolm, what with him having ceased the arbitrary task of keeping count long ago. Though, if anyone had been able to quantify the combined total of every thirty-three-hour and twelve-hour restart he had endured, it would have been labelled as 7,130 loops in total.
Instructing the two of them to return to Fir Lodge and for them to await further instructions, the Malcolm from their future made his way to the Restart Point, which would lead him back to The White Lodge, and in turn to Hal and Kara.
*
‘All I’m saying is, there’s still the matter of finding enough lemons to begin with,’ said Hal, finishing their conversation.
Malcolm groaned, feeling like he’d just escaped from the confines of a small car after a seven-hour car journey driving in circles around Milton Keynes with the most talkative man on the planet.
Fearne jumped in surprise, given that it had only been eight minutes or so since Malcolm had departed, and the three of them had sprung up right next to her in the rear garden of Fir Lodge.
‘Oh, hey Fearne,’ said Kara chirpily.
‘Oh thank god! Something happened! Wait, how did you get here so quick?’ asked Fearne, utterly confused. ‘I’ve only been here a few minutes.’
‘Really?’ said Hal. ‘That’s cool. It’s been several hours for us. We totally bailed on looking for Swirly-Red See-Through-Malcolm-2.0, and just decided to lock onto you and Pete instead.’
It had been considerably easier to lock-on to two blue echoes in time, with Dark Malcolm proving to be as elusive now as he ever was all that time ago in their initial one-hundred and sixty-five restarts.
‘Where is Peter anyway?’ said Kara, turning on the spot and scanning the area around her.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you!’ said Fearne anxiously. ‘He said something about going to make it right, something about getting a head start? “Taking a piece off the board” were his exact words. I told him not to leave me. That we needed to wait here so you could find us. But he told me to wait here and, and–’
‘Did he say where he was going?’ said Hal, worried by the thought of his friend waltzing around on his own, now that a very real threat was also occupying the same phase in time as them.
‘Nothing!’ said Fearne. ‘I should’ve gone with him, but he told me it was a surprise and…’
‘A piece off the board?’ said Kara. ‘What could he mean by that?’
Malcolm grimaced.
‘What is it,’ said Hal.
‘It’s probably nothing…’ said Malcolm, with a look of uncertainty on his face. ‘But before we left, he was asking me an awful lot of questions about the knife.’
‘What knife?’ said Kara. ‘Not the knife?!’
‘I must admit,’ said Malcolm apologetically, ‘I thought nothing of it. You don’t think he’s…he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and retrieve it, would he?’
‘Why would he do that?!’ exclaimed Hal.
‘Oh, I don’t know Hal,’ said Fearne aggressively. ‘Maybe because you haven’t stopped blaming the two of us for betraying you since you got here?’
‘Are you seriously blaming me right now?’ said Hal incredulously. ‘I wasn’t even occupying the same timeline! And even if I was, I’m not responsible for your damn boyfriend. And if you were so worried, why didn’t you go with him? Like a normal, actual human being?!’
‘Guys,’ said Kara softly.
‘I’m sick of your bullshit, Hal,’ said Fearne, letting rip. ‘The perfect hero, a time travelling superstar that knows everything! Except you don’t know everything! You don’t know how much it kills us to know a decision we made led to you and Kara getting stuck here!’
‘Guys!’ shouted Kara, punching Hal in the shoulder and shocking him out of whatever comeback he was formulating. ‘Pete needs us right now. If he’s gone to Kevin’s…’
‘The Dark Restarter might reach him before we do!’ said Hal, suddenly realising what was at stake.
The three Restarters set off at a sprint, noticing they were one short.
‘Malcolm! Come on!’
‘My past self cannot know I’m here, Kara,’ said Malcolm. ‘It’s the only advantage we have.’
‘Fine, whatever,’ said Kara angrily. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
*
Peter entered Kevin’s lodge, entirely unaware that the front door shouldn’t have even been open like it was, and made his way deeper inside, his sights set on reaching the basement door.
A familiar tune, which he recognised as “The House of the Rising Sun”, filled Kevin’s living room as he slipped through the gap of the paradoxically ajar basement door, and slowly descended the stairs to the storage area below. Another unacknowledged warning that things were not as they should be.
That the past had been changed.
But he continued onwards, having no way of knowing that was the case.
The Repeater-turned-Restarter scanned the basement, which was surprisingly well lit thanks to the small rectangular window several feet ahead of him, cascading beams of pure sunlight that oddly refused to refract off a notably silver object. Ignoring the shadowy corners of the room, he hopped down the last two steps and pushed off from the wooden banister rail, stopping just short of an incredible sight; an object travelling through time, eternally out of reach to everyone in the universe but him.
A time-traveller’s knife.
An object that could potentially not only turn the tide in their favour in their upcoming confrontation with the Malcolm of their past, but also one that could change the group dynamic for him, Fearne and his friends. He imagined the scene that would surely play out upon his return. Regaling them all with his fool-proof idea on how he had cheated the system.
How by retrieving this weapon before The Dark Restarter could get his hands on it, they would be levelling the playing field. Even if the knife couldn’t hurt them, it was evidently important enough to Malcolm to come back and retrieve it every time he restarted. At least, that’s what Future Malcolm had said; how inconvenient it had been, having to run that errand every thirty-three-hours…
He wondered, briefly, why it was so important to the killer. Maybe it held great sentimental value? Like Negan and his barbed ba
seball bat. Or perhaps he just felt naked without it. Whatever the reason, presenting this to Hal and Kara would show he was sorry. That he could contribute. That there was more to him than the mistakes of his past, and that he was still the friend they remembered. Someone they could trust.
The music continued from the floor above him, his heightened senses thanks to his recent realignment with a new timeline reigniting that box-fresh Restarter feeling.
He smiled, noting that the song he could hear was a suitably badass enough soundtrack to such a defining moment. And for the first time since he had re-joined Hal and Kara, for the first time in years in fact, he truly felt like himself again.
He reached down, allowing the sense of anticipation to get the better of him, as his fingers brushed against the curved hilt of the menacing-looking serrated treasure.
Peter guesstimated that the blade itself was roughly eleven inches in length, well and truly long enough to pass all the way through someone matching his athletic frame. Scanning the length of the blade from hilt to tip, his eyes rested back on the former; which added an additional five-or-so inches in length to the weapon. Made from a sturdy-looking wood that was silky smooth to the touch, divided from the business end by a curved metal hand-guard made of the same material as the blade.
The weapon ended with a stylishly curved pommel that Peter suspected a professional could probably take advantage of when needing an extra bit of leverage, as they pulled the knife out of whatever was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.
Wrapping his hand around it, he picked up the object and brought it closer to his face, resting the sharp end on his fingertips, eager to inspect it. It seemed like an awful lot of fuss for something – in his hands at least – so mundane.
He buckled his swash, swishing it in the air in a diagonal swipe, like a pirate testing the balance of a new sword at the blacksmiths, or wherever it was pirate’s obtained swords. He had about as much knowledge on the specifics of that as he did cares in the world right now, which made it all the more ironic when the sliver of metal, barely longer than an inch, popped out from the inside of his hip.