by A. J. Roe
It was unfair that the weight of the single most important decision in human history now hung on his shoulders. “Imagine I did agree,” Rick said almost inaudibly, “How exactly would you get me out alive?”
“I have a plan.”
He listened intently as Thyos explained her proposal to get him off this godforsaken mountain. Rick’s thoughts drifted to Ellie, he finally had a chance to make things right, to make a better world for her, the only caveat was that it would almost certainly have to be one without him in. The alternative was to do as Thyos asked, sell his soul and gain everything he’d ever desired. Either way, it was no decision to be taken lightly.
Pulling himself to his feet, Rick could feel the eyes on the back of his head, as they watched on in silent judgement. Yuriko went to call out to him but her words trailed off. Thyos’s warm voice whispered softly in his head, “It is time. Now we finish this.”
43
“Well?” Sota said, “Heard enough?”
Rick shivered, the buzz of energy that had accompanied his anger was quickly giving way to the freezing temperatures. He avoided Yuriko’s line of sight and turned to face his enemy.
“Yes.” A sense of confidence swelled in Rick’s chest. Whatever happened next, needed to happen and there was nothing he could do to change that.
The look of determination on Sota’s face told him things between them were never going to end easily. The gangster’s right hand rested on the handle of his sword, his left on the grip of his Glock.
“Now it's your turn to listen,” Rick said. “This is how things are going to go.”
“You’re in no position to make requests.”
“This isn’t a request.”
Sota snorted in contempt but Rick continued anyway. “You and your men are going to get back into the helicopter and head home, taking that with you.” He nodded towards the duffel bag loaded with plastic explosives that was still sitting beside the vehicle.
Rick had seen at least two dozen houses as they dropped through the valley, there were likely many more than that. Hundreds of innocent men, women and children would perish in avalanches and rockfalls if Sota set it off. Not to mention every single one of them up on the plateau.
“When I know Yuriko and I are safe. I’ll destroy the relic and leave. Thyos has less than ten minutes left before she expires for good, your sister can back me up on this.”
“It’s true,” she said.
“Do you really think I’m so foolish that I‘ll just take your word for it?” Sota replied. His expression was cold and hard, but there was an unmistakable glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Besides, you and I still have unfinished business.” He flexed his shoulders as if preparing for a second round of their fight.
Rick shook his head in mock disappointment. He slid the smartphone he’d taken from the van out of his pocket. “You're going to do it because it's the only way any of us leave this mountain alive.”
The display flickered to life at the tap of a finger. It was hard to make out the figures in the glaring sunlight but unmistakably, a seven-digit number was pre-entered on the screen. Meanwhile, Rick’s thumb hovered over a big green ‘call’ symbol in the centre.
Sota’s eyes flicked towards the bomb, as he realised that he’d been forced into a stalemate.
“What’s the point of having an all-seeing demigod on my side if I don’t make use of it once in a while?”
With his jaw clenched and the veins on his neck swelling, Sota spoke. “I’m willing to die for my cause. Are you?”
Smiling through a mouthful of bloody teeth Rick replied. “I’ve cheated death enough times in the past week to know when my luck has run out. But you’ve won either way, she now has less than nine minutes to live. The only choice to make is if you want your entire family’s bloodline to end here and here too or not. All you have to do is swallow your pride and walk away.”
Sota’s fingers were slowly adjusting to a fighting position on his sword. Would he be fast enough to remove Rick’s hand before his thumb could move a quarter of an inch? The thought of finding out was not one to be relished.
For a second, the pair locked eyes, a cold stare, willing one another to make the first move. Finally, Rick spoke again.
“I’m sorry I killed your friend, I truly am. Neither you or I chose to be part of this battle, but like it or not, we’re on the same side. Let me help you.”
Yuriko placed a shaking hand on her brother’s shoulder. “He’s right. You have a chance to make things right for all of us. This is what our father would have wanted.”
Sota's fingers tapped nervously on the handle of the sword at his side. “If I was to agree, I’d need to see you destroy the relic first. One false move and I’ll blow your head from your shoulders.” He smiled, obviously enjoying the thought, then turned to his sister. “You’re coming with me too. I need assurance that he doesn’t just blow us up the second we’re out of range.”
Yuriko looked studied Rick’s face, hoping she knew him as well as she thought. He broke eye contact, sorry that things between them would have to end this way. “You have a deal,” he said.
Led by the closest two of her brother’s men, Yuriko moved fast, climbing up into the chopper. Once they were inside, Sota backed away too, his gun drawn and his eyes locked on Rick.
The rotor blades were already picking up speed and the low thud-thud became a singular roar as they reached full pace. Sota perched on the open side of the vehicle, his feet hanging over the edge and his other hand wrapped on a u-shaped bar at the door. The man with the broken nose passed him the scoped high-calibre rifle and he clicked the safety catch off, holding it across his lap.
Rick waited until they lifted off from the ground before he dared to move from the spot, his feet felt like lead. “Deftly done my friend, very convincing,” Thyos said, “Now, just do exactly as I say and the next step will be simple.”
“Okay.” His side was still in agony from the kicks he’d taken and his face felt enormous and disfigured as the winds of the helicopter beat down upon him. None of this mattered anymore. There was just one job left to do.
Rick shifted his weight towards the edge of the plateau he had ascended just a half hour earlier. He thought back to the thin layer of snow on top hiding the hard stone beneath and wondered how deep the caverns went.
Fifty feet above, Sota lined up the scope of the sniper rifle and prepared to take his shot. Rick lifted the relic up before his eyes, wondering how something so small and so simple could be so vastly important.
“Thyos?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you got left?”
“Four minutes, six seconds. You must move immediately. If I power down now, I will not have the energy to restart.”
“Perfect.”
“What? Wai-”
-Rick slammed his entire body weight down behind the relic, plunging it through a layer of snow and down into the stone below. The blade shattered like glass, exploding outwards into hundreds of black-tinted metallic shards.
With the handle still clasped tight in his bloody palm, Rick approached the edge. A few fractured spikes remained but there was no buzz of static or words in his head.
With every bit of energy his aching arms could muster, he flung the remains into the abyss. The handle spun like a boomerang, seeming to float momentarily on the vast sea of white before dropping through the clouds below.
Rick fell to his knees, pressing his forehead against the mountainside. A flood of relief engulfed his system, tears swelled in the corners of his eyes and began to flow. Here, in absolute isolation, probably as far from another living soul as he would ever be, Rick could finally let it out.
All the sorrows and regrets that had built up over the course of a lifetime, were dragged to the surface, brought to a head by the trauma and final relief of the past week. For a long while, he simply cried.
44
Nestled between the foothills of Mount Kailash and the endless pl
ains of the Tibetan Plateau, sits Dachin. A lonely village that makes its living accommodating disciples that come from across the world to venerate the great mountain. Approaching from the west, it is virtually impossible to see behind the rising landscape. From the eastern side of the mountain, it’s just as hard to miss.
Today, on the dusty road that sat at the village limits, a small crowd had gathered around the stranger as he approached. The man was beaten and battered, barely managing to limp along the dirt road that accessed the small town.
The villagers on the outskirts came out offering food, water and aid as they did with the monks that came each morning in the time-honoured Buddhist tradition of begging for alms. They were used to the many pilgrims and tourists who came through their town each year to visit the Holy Land, hoping to gain karmic merit or pray for absolution.
Rick was half-carried the last mile by a pair of farmers and spent the next day in the local hospital. It was a long, grey stone building that was practically deserted.
They put him on a drip for dehydration and fed him bowls of thick rice and yak-milk soup, which despite the occasional curdled sour lump, was delicious.
The doctor, an aging Tibetan man with rough calloused hands, deliberately tried to avoid asking Rick how he had ended up here and in this state. Instead he cleaned and stitched the cuts that littered his patient’s body and dosed him up with half a cupful of powerful antibiotics.
The next morning, rather than wait around to get arrested, Rick slipped out of the hospital and worked his way through the narrow streets of the village. He had no idea how he was going to get home, the only thing he had on him was a small wad of wet cash that had been in his pocket when the plane went down. He thumbed the red bills, emblazoned with portraits of Chairman Mao and digits reading ‘One hundred’ in the corner—what this equated to in local currency he had no idea.
Fortunately, when he found what looked like some kind of dilapidated bus station, the half-toothless man in the parking lot seemed happy enough to take just one of the bills and hand Rick a paper ticket before using a mixture of hand signals and Chinese to tell him to wait there.
Half an hour later, he was bundled into the back of a grey transit van that someone had haphazardly bolted a bunch of mismatched car seats into and rolled forwards into the vast, green and brown emptiness of Tibet.
Beginning the first step in what would be a very long journey, Rick now felt the slightest ray of hope. By now, Thyos would be powered down permanently and no one ever needed to know what lay inside the mountain. The relic was gone, and although beaten and battered, somehow both he and Yuriko had survived.
Although there was no straightforward answer to what was coming in the days, weeks and months ahead, it seemed like the imminent threat had quietened, for now at least.
Rick dared to wonder if he might actually have the chance to see Ellie’s face again, if he would be able to watch her grow into a young woman or even walk her down the aisle many years from now. He suppressed his excitement for now and kept reminding himself that he was still both a wanted criminal and a very long way from home.
45
Four days later Rick found himself standing on the doorstep of the British embassy amid the dusty mayhem that is the streets of Kathmandu. It had taken all of the last of his money and a lot of pleading to get to the Nepalese capital city.
Through broken English and a handful of notes, Rick had somehow managed to convince the driver of the beaten-up, old bus to let him hide under a pile of fruit boxes and dusty old sheets in the rear of the vehicle as they pulled up to the border checkpoint. Rick had silently listened in as the guard asked a few routine questions then circled the vehicle, probably taking cursory glances in through the rear windows.
Then they were through. Fortunately, security wasn’t quite as tight up here as it had been on the northern border; he figured the isolated third-world country of Nepal probably didn’t present much of a threat to the military might of China.
Despite being wanted for an ongoing investigation in Japan, Rick learned that there had been no formal charges or requests for his extradition filed so far. The embassy staff helped him contact Sarah and Sanjay letting them both know he was alive. Then, with the help of Sanjay, who transferred them the staggering quantity of money they requested, he was able to get hold of emergency travel documents and find transport home.
The Ambassador, a young upper-class Eton graduate type, warned Rick that he’d probably still be taken into custody upon landing but he didn’t care. Just being alive and back on his home soil would be enough.
✽✽✽
Despite the possibility of prison looming over his head, Rick breathed a sigh of relief when the wheels of the aircraft finally touched down in Heathrow. The whole trip he’d been filled with anxiety, waiting for something to go wrong while answerless questions bounced around in his head.
As predicted Rick was met by a pair of police officers at immigration. They forcibly but politely told him that he was coming in for a few questions.
A full day later, Rick walked out of the Thames Valley Police station, a free man. He’d explained the story (leaving out Thyos of course), how he and Yuriko had fled across to Russia and eventually through Mongolia, to China and finally Nepal. He hadn’t been formally arrested but had been made to sign off on a number of official statements.
The detective, a young woman with sharp features who looked like she was tough enough to eat a bag of gravel for breakfast, went through phases of excitement and interest at the tale. Eventually, she concluded that, “Despite numerous crimes abroad, we have no extradition agreements with China or Japan and will not ship our citizens off to face what are potentially trumped up and inconclusive charges. If they ever build an international case, you may be brought in but for now, you’re free to leave.”
It was a Wednesday morning when Rick finally found himself on Sarah’s doorstep. He knew Ellie would be at school and that he’d have to wait a little longer for the single moment that had got him through the whole ordeal.
Sarah swung the door open. Her eyes bulged in a mixture of anger and surprise then she slammed it back in his face. Rick heard her slump against the interior side. The pair both stayed there in silence for a minute before she spoke. “You’re still there, aren’t you?”
Rick sighed. “Yep. I don’t know what you heard or what happened after we spoke last but we need to talk about it.”
“You mean after you made me pull our daughter out of school, take compassionate leave from work and go into hiding?” Rick could hear Sarah trying and failing to suppress her gasps of anger. “Ellie saw you on TV, they were saying you were wanted for murder! I told her it was a lie but all she knew was that you broke your promise, missed her birthday, then disappeared and that she might never see you again. Now, I know there’s no way you’re a murderer but I honestly can’t believe you’d put us through this!” Sarah sighed. “Actually. Scrap that, I can completely believe it. I bet you already have a thousand excuses ready and waiting, don’t you?”
“No excuses,” Rick said, in a strange way, he’d actually kind of missed her. “I screwed up. But I’m willing to explain if you're willing to listen?”
“Here?” She muttered through the door; her voice choked up.
“Anywhere. I can’t promise you’ll understand what I’m going to tell you but I swear it’ll be the truth.”
“Then you might as well come inside.”
46
“Hold your horses, I’m coming.” Sanjay hobbled up to the door on crutches to appease the banging. The injured academic’s face lit up as he laid eyes on his friend and he limped forwards, giving Rick a tight hug. It was something that in all the years of knowing each other, he’d never seen Sanjay do to anyone.
They went through into the dining room, where Sanjay had been sitting reading some thick tome, still on sick leave. The angry clattering of pans in the nearby kitchen let Rick know that Misha was in there cooking.
> On hearing his voice, she stormed into the dining room, took one look at him and marched out into the hallway without a word, slamming the flimsy wooden door behind her.
The pair then went through into the kitchen and talked over a cup of tea. After explaining for so long that both of their drinks had gone cold, Rick put the kettle back on and Sanjay limped over to pull the milk from the fridge.
“That’s quite the story.” The academic said after hearing the whole saga for the first time. “I suppose it makes sense, there’s been some argument for a while now that there is evidence of a pre-expanded universe.”
“You mean something existed before the big bang?”
“Exactly. One theory is that time itself is cyclical, moving through periods of expansion and collapse, destruction and rebirth. Interestingly, this concept is mirrored in thousands of world religions.”
“So you’re saying that Thyos could be created sometime in the future and that would be in our past?” Rick swallowed a gulp of sweet Earl Grey tea.
“It’s a possibility.” Sanjay patted his friend on the arm and smiled. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Rick nodded, the very thought made his head hurt.
“Anyway,” his friend continued, “What do you think will happen next? To us I mean?”
“I guess we just do everything we can to make things better. Stop destroying our environment and all killing each other. If what Sota said was true, then Thyos was the one that put us on this path long ago and without her influence, maybe humanity isn’t beyond saving yet.”
Sanjay nodded, “That’s all well and good but how can we ever know if it’s worked?”