The Infinity Engines Books 1-3

by Andrew Hastie

  ‘You’ve got a secret department for everything,’ he joked.

  ‘I guess we do,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘You spend so long being part of it that you start to think it’s normal.’

  Josh looked around at the enormous cavern. It was like the inside of a hollowed-out asteroid. ‘Don’t you think this place feels a bit like the maelstrom?’

  Caitlin shivered again. ‘A little.’

  Valient had finished his negotiations with the guards and was beckoning them to join him.

  ‘Can you walk?’ she asked.

  Josh tentatively put his weight on his injured leg and grunted. Valient had given him some kind of medicine when they first arrived, and the pain-numbing effect was better than a jug of tequila.

  Caitlin held his hand as they walked over to the gate.

  ‘Paradox,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘Please be so kind as to place your hand upon the Eschaton.’ He pointed at the set of metal disks in the middle of the portcullis.

  There were twelve concentric rings, each one made from a different kind of metal. At the centre was carved the Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail.

  Josh shrugged at Caitlin and put his hand on the snake’s head.

  He felt history turn under his fingers as the twelve timelines unfolded. The dials began to rotate independently of each other, back and forth, searching for their respective positions.

  Josh could see the various chronologies weaving over and through each other, events branching and connecting simultaneously, making it impossible to focus on any one in particular. He allowed them to flow through him, glimpsing moments from each, but never enough to make any sense of what he was seeing. A ring locked into position with a click, then another, and like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, the pieces snapped into place.

  When the final inner ring stopped moving, he heard Valient gasp. ‘The twelfth!’

  Josh took his hand away from the dial. He felt the familiar tingling sensation along his arm and pulling back the sleeve he found the fractal tattoo had returned.

  The rings of the gate receded into the door, and the bolts withdrew.

  ‘I cannot accompany you,’ Valient said, bowing reverentially. ‘I am an eleventh, and your path belongs to the twelfth.’

  The gate parted, and a long corridor stretched out before them. It was colonnaded, like something from a Venetian palace.

  The guards snapped to attention as he and Caitlin passed them, and Josh realised that the Ouroboros on their breastplates were zeros.

  47

  Nihil

  Dalton was alone.

  He had no idea where the rest of his team had gone or whether they were still alive. He’d lost count of the places and events he’d used to try to escape the Djinn, and wherever he went, it seemed to know exactly how to find him — no matter which direction he chose.

  The ring had been useless against it. Whatever it was, nothing he commanded the Djinn to do had worked, and their weapons had no effect — it had been a disaster.

  At first, the summoning seemed to have worked flawlessly. Bergson’s body had convulsed as the Djinn had entered through his mouth and his limbs had flailed around as though it were putting on a new suit, but it had assumed control of the host quickly, and Dalton was sure that, just like the Wyrrm, Solomon’s ring would command it.

  And for a while, it seemed to be under his control.

  While his men trained their guns on it, Dalton had raised his hand and felt the power intensify as he walked towards it.

  The Djinn didn’t seem to notice his approach. It was too busy studying its new body, flexing its fingers and examining the muscles of its arms.

  ‘Tell me your name, demon,’ he commanded, feeling the energy flow through him.

  Bergson’s face twisted grotesquely as it raised its dark eyes towards him. Dalton thought he saw something move beneath the skin, a ripple of flesh as it slithered down into his neck.

  With stilted steps, Bergson began to walk towards him.

  The scientist’s jaw opened slackly, and a terrible sound issued from the dark maw.

  ‘I. Am. Nihil.’

  Dalton smiled and pointed the ring directly at the Djinn. ‘Nihil, I bind you to me.’

  Thin figures materialised in the air around Bergson; spectral beings conjured up from the ring’s past.

  There was a hiss from deep within its throat.

  Dalton had no idea what the beings were and tried desperately to search for a way to control them, but they stood as if awaiting a command he didn’t know.

  ‘What. Is. Your. Wish. Master?’ the creature uttered in broken English, extending its arms towards him. The veins were shot through with black ink.

  Dalton hesitated. There were so many things he had imagined would be possible with their power: eternal life, control of time, the obliteration of his enemies.

  He was still contemplating his options when Mallary collapsed.

  His lieutenant was kneeling on the floor coughing up a thick, dark liquid, or to be more precise; he seemed to be inhaling it.

  ‘Get up Mallary!’ ordered Dalton.

  But Mallary wasn’t listening, and his body was beginning to shake. The veins in his neck were darkening as he struggled for breath.

  Dalton looked at the others who were staring transfixed at the Djinn, their guns lowered.

  ‘Be on your guard!’ barked Dalton, looking at their blank faces. They all seemed to be in a trance.

  He turned back to Bergson, and the creature had gained more control of its host’s body.

  ‘Your wish master?’ it repeated with a leering grin and a mocking bow.

  Dalton raised the ring again, but the ghosts and the feeling of power were fading.

  ‘Release my men.’

  Bergson raised his hand and let it drop.

  The rest of Dalton’s team fell to the ground like someone had cut the strings holding them up. He gave up on the ring and picked up one of their rifles and levelled it at the creature.

  ‘Show me infinity,’ he demanded.

  Dalton watched the bullets leave the gun and fly towards their target. They moved through the air in slow motion as the final remnants of time ebbed away from the stasis field.

  Forged from the metals of deadly weapons — each round had killed many times before — Dalton wanted to make sure they carried a payload of pain that could put down even the toughest Djinn.

  But every one of them stopped before they reached the creature, hanging in the air as it swatted them away like flies.

  When the fallen men around him began to raise themselves awkwardly off the floor, he knew the mission was a disaster. Mallary was the first to stand, his eyes turning dark as another Djinn took possession of his body.

  He dropped the gun and drew his sword. Dalton was surrounded by a host of infected men which only the talisman seemed to be holding back.

  Bergson’s Djinn was struggling to remain within the confines of its host body. The skin was darkening and cracking as it stepped forward towards him.

  ‘Who are you?’ it asked in a whispered hiss.

  Dalton held up the ring, feeling the power slipping between his fingers.

  ‘Nihil, I command you to obey me.’

  The creature appeared to smile, the skin stretching until it split and the sharp bone of a jaw broke through, Bergson’s face tearing in half as something alien emerged from his body.

  ‘Behold! I am reborn!’ it screamed as it sloughed off Bergson’s body like a coat, its new skin like the carapace of a beetle, black and shiny.

  Dalton dropped his sword and knelt down, his hands searching for anything he could use to jump out of the moment.

  He’d tried to lose himself in the chaos. Just as Daedalus had described, ‘wandering the lost paths of forgotten worlds’. He remembered thinking how amazing that sounded when he’d first read it, but in reality, it was tiring and filled with dangers of its own.

  Running from one unstable world to the next, Dalton cou
ld find little in the way of refuge: avoiding falling buildings, violent storms and a hundred other kinds of danger and always with the sounds of the Djinn on his trail.

  He cursed his ambition. He should have spent more time looking for the second book. Eddington had lied to him; the talisman was useless without the knowledge of how to wield it, making it nothing more than a relic from a bygone era.

  Nihil was not a normal kind of Djinn, not what he was expecting at all.

  He tried to take off the ring but it was stuck fast, and as he struggled with it twelve dark shapes appeared around him.

  48

  Survivors

  Josh and Caitlin were welcomed by two ageing nuns, who both dressed in white habits with the numerals XII embroidered in gold thread. They followed them to rooms decorated like something from a Moroccan Kasbah, draped in exotically woven tapestries, with a finely carved luxurious bed sitting in the centre covered in velvet cushions. The walls were punctuated with alcoves displaying an eclectic collection of astrological instruments.

  A new set of clothes had been laid out on the bed, and a deep bath sat steaming in the next room.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Josh, who was playing with an antique orrery, spinning the planets around the sun

  ‘The Augur’s headquarters I guess,’ said Caitlin, laying back into the hot water.

  ‘Are we under arrest?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said the Titanic was off-limits.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about him.’

  ‘Valient?’

  ‘Why was he checking the bodies?’

  ‘Because he’s a nutter?’

  She laughed. ‘I think they’re all a bit crazy, but that’s not what I meant.’

  Josh’s memory of the priest was a little messed up by the pain. ‘Maybe he was searching for someone?’

  ‘And who would’ve been on the Titanic that would’ve been of interest to the Augurs?’

  ‘I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘Do you remember the hologram talking about dark matter?’

  ‘The stuff he got from the maelstrom — that kept him alive?’

  ‘Kind of. Dark matter makes up about eighty percent of the universe, except you can’t see it, and astrophysicists believe it’s there because of the effect it has on the observable universe. Anyway, there was a Dutch scientist on the Titanic called Jacobus Kapteyn, whose body was never recovered. He was the first to suggest its existence using stellar velocities.’

  ‘And you think Valient was trying to find him?’

  ‘Not sure, but I bet Fermi did.’

  Josh walked into the bathroom. ‘What does he need a Dutch scientist for?’

  ‘Energy. Fermi’s experiments require a massive amount of power. I think the further back he went the more he needed. He needed Kapteyn to survive so that he could continue his work on dark matter.’

  ‘And that’s got something to do with one of the Eschaton crises?’ he asked, taking off his clothes and stepping into the hot water.

  Caitlin frowned as he took up one end of the tub. ‘Yeah, I think they’re linked somehow.’

  ‘Which one? Valient said he was from the eleventh.’

  She sank lower into the water, entwining her legs with his. ‘I think it’s more like the eighth — the discovery of a terrible power.’

  ‘So, how do we find this Kapteyn bloke?’

  ‘My guess is that Fermi would have moved him to a research institute with other like-minded scientists, like Niels Bohr.’

  ‘But surely the Augurs would have noticed?’

  She nodded. ‘Not if he inadvertently sank a ship full of people to hide what he’d done. The magnetic distortion from a fully functioning timesuit could easily have affected the Titanic’s compasses. Put it on the wrong course.’

  49

  Virus

  Lord Dee’s expression turned grave as he examined Rufius.

  ‘How long has he been like this?’ he asked Alixia.

  ‘At least two linear days. The Makepieces had the good sense to take him back into the maelstrom to arrest its progression, but I fear it may be too late.’

  The founder nodded and placed the blanket back over the patient.

  ‘I concur. This is no ordinary infection. I’ve not seen the likes of it for centuries.’

  ‘From the maelstrom?’

  ‘Many years ago,’ he said and sighed. ‘There was a case of a young Draconian by the name of Phillips who’d been struck down by a storm-kin during a minor breach in the Minoan. His timeline was nearly entirely corrupted.’

  ‘But you found a cure?’

  Dee shook his head. ‘We were too late. There was nothing left to salvage.’

  ‘So there is no hope?’ Alixia asked despondently.

  A white-gowned nurse appeared with a fresh poultice and applied it to Rufius’ forehead.

  ‘There’s always hope, my dear Alixia. This place was built on that very principle.’

  The sanatorium was housed in the outer wall of the third level of the Citadel. A series of clean, white marble rooms, the hospital was quiet and solemn. A cool breeze swept in through the arched windows that looked out over vistas of Italian valleys. The sound of waves crashing over rocks echoed from the seascape on the opposite side of the chamber.

  ‘What is this place?’ Alixia asked, taking in the different views.

  ‘Somewhere I hoped we would never need,’ the founder said, writing down a list of ingredients for the nurse. ‘Let’s join the others, as I’m sure they will all be asking the same questions.’

  50

  Dissonance

  ‘What would you do if you could go back and change one thing?’ Caitlin asked, pulling his arm around her.

  Josh let the scent of her body fill his senses. His hand was dangerously close to one of her breasts, but he resisted the urge to caress it. There was some unspoken code that signalled when it was okay to do so, and he was pretty sure this was one of those ‘just hold me’ moments.

  ‘Is this a trick question?’

  ‘No. Seriously, what one thing would you change?’

  He could think of a hundred things in a heartbeat, but none of them was quite as important as his mother, which he knew was pointless. No one could change her condition other than Fermi — and that timeline came at too high a price.

  ‘Okay. So what if the colonel never went into the maelstrom? Never wrote the books of the Djinn. I think that one thing would pretty much fix this situation.’

  She scoffed. ‘What if you’d never given the tachyon to Fermi.’

  ‘He stole it,’ Josh corrected.

  ‘Yeah, and changed the course of humanity.’

  Josh went to pull his arm away, but she held onto it tightly.

  ‘You have no idea what it was like,’ he said.

  ‘I do. You were trapped between two worlds. The one you’d grown up in and the new reality of the Order. It happens to us all; it’s a kind of cognitive dissonance.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Holding two opposing concepts in your head at the same time and believing both of them.’

  ‘Like believing England could win the World Cup?’

  She smiled. ‘They have, twice.’

  ‘Once. In 1966, my gran used to go on about it all the time.’

  ‘And 1998, against France.’

  ‘Not in my timeline. That I would remember.’

  She lifted her head up to look at him; her eyes were sleepy. ‘I keep forgetting you’re from an alternate.’

  ‘So what would you do?’ asked Josh, changing the subject before she asked any more questions about her other self.

  This was apparently the question she’d been waiting for. She took her time, chewing her bottom lip and pretending to contemplate the answer.

  ‘Well there are many possibilities that come to mind, but the most likely is that I would have stopped my parents from leaving.’

 
‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Although I’ve no idea how. They were even more stubborn than me, and at ten-years-old, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to convince them.’

  ‘But you can go back any time you want.’

  She sighed. ‘I have, many times, but there’s nothing I can think of that would make them change their mind. I want to believe that they were doing it for me, and the only way to save me was to leave — yet there’s another part that really wants them to admit it was a stupid mistake.’

  He felt her body tense as she turned her head into the pillow, the small shudder in her shoulders as she cried.

  ‘Cat, don’t,’ he whispered, ‘they love you. I’m sure they wouldn’t have done it if there was another way.’

  ‘They left me!’

  ‘At least you had them. I’ve never known my father. Can you imagine what that’s like? To wonder every day who your dad was?’

  ‘No,’ she said sullenly, wiping her eyes.

  ‘None of us had the life we wanted, or deserved, and we get what fate gave us — as my gran used to say. All we can do is make the best of it. Crying over what we never had is just a waste of good tears.’

  ‘She sounds like a very wise woman.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Maybe one day I’ll let you meet her.’

  She turned over and took his face in her hands. ‘Really, you would?’

  ‘Yeah. She’d love you to bits.’

  She kissed him hard on the mouth in a way that signalled this was definitely not a ‘just hold me’ moment.

  51

  Decompression

  Da Recco, Lyra and the Makepieces were all sitting in the central area of level three. The rest of the floor was deserted, a grand spiral staircase in the centre winding up into the higher levels like a nautilus shell.