Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  ‘So he won’t die then?’

  Isaac looked down at Michael again. Not only had the man stolen his career, his reputation and his chances of happiness with the woman he loved, but he had also brought Isaac back from beyond the grave only so that he could torture him to death all over again. If anyone deserved to die, it was Michael Humboldt.

  Isaac flicked the safety catch, when, out of the corner of his eye, he spied Bruno charging toward him like a linebacker attempting a sack. Before he could fire the bullet Michael so richly deserved, the big man had piled into him. The gun went off as they crumpled to the floor. There was a deafening crack, and the next thing Isaac knew Bruno was slumped over him like a felled tree.

  His broken fingers screaming with pain, he heaved Michael’s bodyguard up and scrambled out from under him. Bruno sagged lifelessly back to the floor. Miraculously the gun was still in Isaac’s hand, and a quick glance down revealed a smudge of smeared blood on the front of his pullover. He looked up again just as Sebastian hit a circular red button on the wall beside the door. Almost immediately the blare of sirens filled the lab.

  ‘What have you done?’ he asked, pointing the gun at Sebastian.

  Sebastian threw the exercise book down and thrust both hands in the air, his chin quivering. ‘Don’t shoot, I’ll do whatever you say!’

  ‘It’s a panic alarm,’ Donna explained, calmly stepping forward. ‘In a few minutes the place will be swarming with armed guards.’

  Isaac gulped and turned back to Michael. A trickle of sweat rolled down his temple and into the bristles of his beard. All he needed to do was pull the trigger and the game of cat and mouse would be over for good. But although he had just shot Bruno, to kill an unconscious man in cold blood was a very different matter.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ Donna implored, and grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘He might have the power to undo his mistakes, Dr Barclay, but you don’t. Kill him and you’ll always regret it.’

  ‘What choice do I have? You said yourself there’ll be guards here any minute. Let him live and I’ll only be back at square one.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t have to be like that,’ she said. ‘I know the codes to the doors, remember? There’s a way out, but we don’t have much time.’

  Isaac cast a final glance at Michael Humboldt, his disappointment tinged with a relief. ‘All right,’ he said, and lowered the gun. ‘But you and Sebastian are coming with me until we’re long shot of this place. After that, I suggest you find yourselves a new master.’

  Chapter II

  Harsh Realities

  1

  November 1916

  The man came around to the sensation of cold water lapping against his thighs. He spluttered, expelling a trickle of brine from the corner of his mouth, and opened his eyes. For a moment his vision swam before settling into focus. He was lying on his front, one cheek pressed to the damp sand of a beach that curved away and out of sight under an overcast sky.

  Where was he, and what had happened?

  He searched his memory for answers and found none. But before he could consider the implications of this alarming fact, another wave broke over his legs, driving the air from his lungs in a silent gasp. He heaved himself up onto all fours and, shivering so violently he could hear his teeth chattering, began crawling away from the water’s edge. His body ached all over, and after a few clumsy yards he collapsed exhausted to the sand once more, where he lay flat on his back, sucking in shallow, rasping breaths.

  To his left the beach tapered away to the horizon, and ended with a rocky spit of land jutting out into the sea on his right. There were plenty of gulls about, but not another person as far as the eye could see. Glancing down, he noticed that he was wearing a pair of grey oilskin trousers beneath his sodden undershirt and only one boot. What had become of his coat, hat and the other boot, assuming he had ever possessed such things, was a mystery.

  He wracked his brain for his name, or even a single recollection upon which he could pin his identity, but again came up empty-handed. Before waking up on this beach a minute ago there was…simply nothing. His knowledge of language aside, he was, to all extents and purposes, newborn: a man with no history. But as this was perplexing as this was, it was equally inconsequential at present, as without warmth and shelter he would soon freeze to death.

  Suddenly he felt the disconcerting sensation of being watched, and turned to see a girl, probably no more than six or seven years old, staring down at him from the top of the beach where the sand ran to a light shingle.

  ‘Hello,’ he called, and clambered to his feet. ‘Are your mother or father with you?’

  The girl, who was holding a child’s fishing net in her mittened hand, frowned and called back, ‘Woher kommst du?’

  The question Where did you come from? immediately formed in the man’s head: she was speaking German.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Ich weiß es nicht. Kannst du helfen?’

  2

  Present Day

  Christmas Day came and went, and Sam’s mum was discharged from hospital on Boxing Day. Still suffering from Post Traumatic Amnesia, she arrived home as angry and bewildered as she was in the timeline Sam had altered at the Tempus Research Facility on Christmas Eve. Her constant questioning about his dad only sharpened Sam’s sense of loss, but by now he understood that his ability to manipulate time was a result of the injury he’d sustained in the plane crash that had torn his family apart. There was no way of returning to the time before his coma, which meant there was nothing he could do to bring his dad back or return his mum to the person she had once been.

  The new timeline Sam found himself occupying differed in several key respects. By reversing his decision to alert Inspector Hinds to the Thames House bombing, he had replaced his recruitment to the Tempus Project with a reality in which he had no memory of the events since the day of his father’s funeral, the crossroads at which the two timelines had split.

  It quickly became apparent that Sam had continued taking his epilepsy medication without Dr McHayden’s intervention. There was an alarm on Chrissie’s phone that went off twice a day, at which point she would bring him a little triangular pill along with a glass of water to wash it down. On top of the unwelcome side effects, Sam had no intention of taking medicine for a condition he didn’t have, but with his sister watching over him like a hawk, he had little choice but to revert to the tactic of hiding the pills under his tongue and then flushing them down the toilet when she wasn’t looking.

  His relief at seeing Chrissie alive, well and expecting his unborn niece or nephew was tempered by the knowledge that, somewhere out there, the families of the hundred and twenty-nine people killed in the Thames House bombing were passing the holidays without their loved ones. He tried to push the thought to the back of his mind, but the image of Dr McHayden staring out from behind her half-moon spectacles kept resurfacing, a repeated stab of guilt that refused to stay buried for long.

  Worse still, by allowing the Thames House bombing to take place, Sam had, in effect, created a reality in which Esteban Haufner, the person who had also sabotaged Flight 0368, was still out there, walking about as a free man. It was almost impossible to get through a day without hearing some mention of Haufner, now labelled ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ by most of the press. The hunt had intensified in the weeks since the atrocity but had so far turned up next to nothing, which led Sam’s thoughts back to Michael Humboldt, the man who, according to Lanthorpe and Phelps, had turned Haufner in the first place. Although he could no longer remember the exact coordinates, it occurred to Sam that he knew where Humboldt would be in mid-January – the Atacama Desert, Chile – but this information was as good as useless to him, since if he went to the authorities he could end up alerting them to his ability once again, which he couldn’t risk after everything that had happened before Christmas.

  And then there was Eva. Sam tried calling Doug’s landline on Boxing Day, but the phone just rang and rang. He tried three tim
es the following day and, he estimated, close to twenty the day after, each with the same result.

  You just need to come and find me, Eva had said as they’d stood facing one another in the basement laboratory of the Tempus Research Facility, water splashing down from the sprinklers above, so a few days later he visited Doug’s flat in person.

  The lights were off and the blinds were closed, and when Sam pressed the intercom button nobody answered. Just as he was about to give up, a man let himself out of the building, giving him enough time to catch the front door before it swung closed. Sam slipped in and climbed the stairs, finding himself on the third-floor landing outside the door to Doug’s flat, just a few metres from where Steele had shot his sister. Except that hadn’t really happened, not in this timeline, where Sam had never even set foot in the building before.

  Without holding much hope, he knocked and took a step back.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a voice behind him asked.

  He turned to see a woman standing in the doorway of the flat opposite. She had curlers in her hair and an overweight ginger cat nestled in her arms.

  ‘I’m looking for Doug Bernstein,’ he said.

  The woman scratched the cat behind the ears, causing it to purr loudly. ‘Doug? Sorry, lovie, but I haven’t seen him in almost a month. I water his plants while he’s in the States, you see, and he usually phones to let me know when he’s due back in the country. Would you like me to pass on a message?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said, ‘thanks anyway.’

  He left with McHayden’s warning ringing in his ears: any changes you make in the past could have consequences in the present, and believe me, these might not always work out how you intend. Esteban Haufner was proof enough of that, but what changes had Sam made that meant Eva was no longer staying with Doug over Christmas?

  He shook his head and, feeling more confused than ever, made his way home.

  3

  If Sam was ever going to see Eva again it looked like he would have to take the words ‘come and find me’ literally, so the next day he ransacked his room until he tracked down the slip of paper Doug had given him at the funeral. The mobile number had a UK code and was unavailable when he dialled it, but there was also an email address.

  He spent most of the afternoon going over what he wanted to say, rejecting several drafts before settling on a fairly neutral message enquiring after the family, providing an update on his mum’s condition and asking if Doug wouldn’t mind passing Sam’s email address on to Eva. It felt excruciatingly indirect, but wherever she was, the Eva in this reality had no memory of what had taken place between them, and although she had insisted that it wouldn’t change the way she felt, it definitely complicated the task of approaching her.

  As the days ticked by without a reply, Sam’s despondency grew, along with his sense of bewilderment. Although this was his life – his family, his friends, his house – it was as if it had all been on loan to someone else for the last month. People kept referring to incidents he couldn’t recall, causing him to fluff his lines no matter how hard he tried to play along, and he found himself spending an increasing amount of time alone in his room, reflecting on the events of the December only he could remember.

  What had happened to the Tempus Project in this timeline now that Dr McHayden was dead? And who was Isaac, the mysterious stranger who had saved Sam and his friends on Christmas Eve after giving Lewis a vial of that strange, silvery super-Tetradyamide?

  They were questions to which he had no answers, and, he supposed, never would.

  * * * * *

  On New Year’s Eve, Lewis rang to ask if Sam wanted to come to a party. It was a nice gesture, but Sam declined and spent the evening watching telly with his grandparents. What with everything on his mind, parties didn’t seem all that important anymore, and he didn’t think he’d be good company.

  He was due to belatedly start at Fraser Golding College on Wednesday the following week (that much about this new timeline had remained the same, it seemed), but his mum had an appointment with Dr Wallis, the family GP, the day before, and despite Chrissie’s objection that he didn’t need to, Sam insisted on coming as well.

  Dr Wallis was middle-aged, with thinning red hair. As Sam, Chrissie and their mum stepped into his office, they found him reclining in a chair with a beaded seat cover.

  ‘So, Rebecca,’ Dr Wallis said once they all were seated on the other side of his desk, ‘how have you been since returning home?’

  ‘Where did you get those curtains?’ Sam’s mum said, gazing at the window. ‘They’re atrocious!’

  Chrissie watched her for a moment before turning to Dr Wallis. ‘She’s no better,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I had hoped we might see some improvement by now, but she barely seems able to process new information, and even when she does, it’s gone again five minutes later. And she just seems so angry all the time.’

  ‘I see.’ Dr Wallis tapped away at his keyboard for a few seconds and then turned back, a stress toy in the shape of Kermit the Frog’s head in his hand. ‘And how about her memory of the time before her injury?’

  Sam and Chrissie exchanged an uneasy glance.

  ‘She remembers most of the older stuff,’ Chrissie said, ‘but we try not to talk about the move too much. It just confuses her and, every time we bring it up, one way or another it always leads back to Dad.’

  Dr Wallis nodded and squeezed his Kermit’s head, causing the gel-filled eyes to bulge out and a pink tongue to protrude from its mouth. ‘That’s concerning, and would seem to indicate your mother’s amnesia is severe to very severe.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Depending on how long her condition lasts, her rehabilitation may take months or even years, and there may be permanent damage to her memory and cognitive abilities. I’m afraid it’s possible she may never fully recover.’

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ Chrissie said, leaning forwards.

  ‘Well, there are several new treatments in development, but unfortunately the only thing available on the NHS is cognitive therapy. I’ll place Rebecca on the waiting list, of course, and hope something comes up soon, but at the moment that’s all I can offer.’

  ‘Right,’ Sam said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Before you go, there was something else.’ Dr Wallis gave an awkward chuckle and squeezed Kermit’s head again. ‘As it happens, Sam, you’ve actually saved me from having to call you in separately. The analysis of the blood samples we took last month came back this morning, and has turned up some, um, rather unusual results.’

  ‘Unusual how?’

  ‘We’ve detected abnormalities in the structure of your blood cells.’

  ‘Abnormalities?’ Sam repeated, remembering how Dr McHayden had said something similar in the terrible future he’d prevented. ‘You mean like a disease or something?’

  ‘Whatever it is, you’ve lived your whole life without realising, so I’d try not to worry too much at this stage.’ Dr Wallis gave him a smile that was clearly supposed to be reassuring but failed. ‘Now, if you’d roll up your sleeve, please, I’d like to take some more blood for testing.’

  4

  The next morning Lance and Chrissie drove Sam to Fraser Golding College. It was a bitter, drizzly day on which the sun scarcely seemed to have risen. The snowfall of December had by now melted away, replaced by a fine mist that hung in the air, covering everything it touched in a film of moisture.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Chrissie asked as the ancient Volvo rattled to a stop. ‘You could always come back tomorrow if you’re not feeling up to it.’

  On top of everything else about this new reality, Sam now had to get his head around both the news that his mum might never fully recover and that there might be something wrong with his blood cells. Tempting as the idea of going home was, he’d probably just end up sitting around moping, and he’d done enough of that already.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, and unclipped his s
eatbelt before opening the door. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  The main building of Fraser Golding looked grand in a rundown sort of a way, more like a stately home that had been allowed to fall into disrepair than a sixth-form college. There was a set of turnstiles just inside the entrance, where a campus officer gave him a visitor’s badge and told him to go to the main reception desk. After having his photo taken, Sam was issued a permanent ID badge and his timetable.

  His first lesson was Politics in Room 116. After meeting Lewis outside the cafeteria, they crossed the courtyard to the modern, glass-fronted Sherman Building where the Humanities Department was situated. Sam had always been able to confide in his friend, and however much he wanted to again, he had to remind himself that this was not the same Lewis who had saved all of their lives on Christmas Eve. The person walking beside him had no memory of that night, just as Sam had no memory of the month before.

  ‘This is me,’ Lewis said, stopping outside a door marked 104. ‘You’re a bit quiet today, Sam. You sure you’re feeling all right?’

  Sam ran his fingers through his hair, his fingertips briefly resting on the scar behind his ear. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’m just a bit nervous after everything that’s happened recently.’

  ‘Don’t be. This is a fresh start, right?’ Lewis angled his head towards a wide spiral staircase. ‘Room 116 is on the first floor. Meet you back here after, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Sam said, and started to climb.

  Although feeling fitter than at any time since waking from his coma, he was still breathing heavily by the time he reached the top. Room 116 was at the far end of the corridor. Ignoring his new classmates’ stares, he made his way to a chair near the back, lowered himself into it, closed his eyes and began massaging his temples.

  In spite of everything he had achieved, the sacrifices Sam had made in order to escape a reality in which his sister was dead and he was McHayden’s prisoner were almost too much to bear. Eva was lost to him, a vague acquaintance with no recollection of anything that had happened between them. And however indirectly, Sam was now responsible for the deaths of those killed in the Thames House bombing, and through his inaction had brought Esteban Haufner back to life.