by T Hodden
“And,” he said solemnly, “she took something with out paying.”
Ted helpfully handed over a few Euros for the jar of apple dessert. The security manager gave a friendly sigh and a kindly look came to his eyes.
“She is well?”
“She is troubled. Lost.” I said. “She has no memory where she is from.”
“Or who she was running from?” The security manager stared into my eyes. “I have seen few people as terrified as that. Back when I was in the police I saw it two or three times. In the eyes of children who could not comprehend the... Evils that adults can do.” He paused for a second. “I am glad she found help, but there is nothing more we can tell you.”
“May I look around?” I asked.
“Of course.” He said and gestured his consent. The bears needed no more telling. They dashed out to search for clues around the store and its environs. I walked around the aisles trying to work out where Tears and her bear had been when they vanished. I found the bar code machine first, then I stepped away and looked down at the floor. There was a patch in the flooring that was a shade paler than the surface around it. It was a perfect circle in the pattern, large enough for an adult and a bear to crouch in. I knelt down. The marked area was a millimetre shallower than the flat floor. The plastic surface had bubbled as though baked by an intense heat.
I looked up. At the end of the aisle a man dressed in drab grey track clothes, who appeared to have a blurred swirl instead of a face. Next to him was a muscular woman with the hood of her sweatshirt up and her own swirl where her face would be. Nobody else seemed to have noticed her. If they had, then I hoped they would have noticed the long, deadly, silenced pistol she was holding.
I stepped away. There was a sharp zinging sound as a bullet whistled past my ear, followed by a dull crack as a jar on the shelf exploded. I ran, sprinting down the aisle and diving into the next as another bullet whistled close by me. I ducked into the chiller compartment and into cover. In an instant the bears were around me.
“So, do we happen to have a plan for this?” Ted asked.
“For being shot at? No.” I whispered in a hiss. “Run?”
“Who are they exactly?” Wendy asked, shaking her hat of letters.
“Let's ask that one when we get somewhere safe.” I snapped at her, still in a whisper. The Faceless woman rounded the end of the aisle and raised her gun. Her partner was trying to block the other end of the aisle. Acting on one accord the bears and me vaulted onto the freezer cabinets and over the shelves to the next aisle.
“Well we can't outrun bullets forever!” Ted said.
“We wont have to.” Gwyn was staring to the front of the store. To the display with the sporty little car that shone so beautifully. “I think I might have an idea!”
“Ah!” Ginger beamed. “A job for THE GINGER FLAME!” He scampered ahead. Me and Ted stared at each other for a second, before the thumping of silenced bullets into plastic jars of preserved fruit drove us to sprint after the flailing mass of paws that was ploughing towards the display.
“Go!” I screamed at the bears. “Go!”
A few seconds later we were hurtling out of the store and into the car park at breakneck speed. We bounced down the exit ramp and onto the main road with a shriek of engines pushing their limits and the squeal of tyres on the black top. I glanced in the rear view mirror to see our Faceless foes exploding from the hypermarket behind the wheel of the sports car.
“I wish I had thought of that!” Gwyn shouted from the luggage box over the back wheel as I pushed the one hundred and twenty five cubic centimetres of engine for all they worth. The Vespa LX reared up into a wheelie as we bounced off the road and into one of the narrow alleyways between the industrial lots on the outskirts of the town. Wendy was in the luggage box with Gwyn, Ted and Ginger were sharing the back seat. We had borrowed the scooter ruthlessly, yanking the messenger from his seat, tipping out the few parcels he was meant to be delivering and riding off in a blink of an eye. There had been many cries of “Je suis desole,” from the bears, and promises to bring it back when we were less likely to be killed.
Now I was hoping that heading down into the depths of the town, the maze of medieval roads and winding passages would mean we could drive where the car would not. But the grinding of brakes and metal rubbing against brickwork suggested I was wrong. Our pursuers had taken a wing mirror off their car and left some of the paint on the edge of the building as they forced their way into the alley. I pulled the throttle as far as it would go and screeched round a hard corner to a narrow stepped footpath I knew the car could not follow us down.
“Aaaargh!” Went three of my companions.
“Weeee!” Went Ginger.
“Hold on!” I shouted, biting my tongue as we bounced down the steps in a shuddering cascade of noise and bruises. As we emerged out into a street of tall timbre framed buildings clad with wooden icons of many saints, I glanced up the street. The Faceless were ignoring the pedestrians in the street as they raced towards us. They had taken a longer route, but were driving faster and with less concern for their safety or anybody else. I pointed the moped away from them and sped off as fast as I could, taking a short cut across a small square with a fountain to cut a corner. It was not enough, the car was gaining and one of the Faceless was leaning out with their gun.
“Was the station left or right?” I asked.
“Left!” Ted and Ginger shouted.
“Right!” Gwyn and Wendy screamed.
The left road was steeper and had a number of skips and dumpsters blocking the road. Worse for driving I thought, swinging that way. The car screeched to a halt. The woman in grey fired off a few shots in our direction. There was a pain in my back and my left arm went limp. I clung to the handlebars and kept us upright as we skidded into the road and through the traffic. The car swung out a little way behind us. It blared its horn as it picked up speed and came down on us at ramming speed.
“Prepare to repel boarders!” Wendy screamed. “Fish! Do something!”
I glanced around. There was a mall. I aimed at the front doors, swung up on the back wheel to take the steps and held on tight. The doors of the mall shattered in a hail of glass as we ploughed through and I lost it. The tyre on the back wheel gave out and we entered a long grinding skid before I felt the floor coming up to meet us and we slid sideways through the mall. The car followed us through the shattered doors and came to a jarring halt as it slammed into the pillars and crumpled into a heap of twisted metal.
I did not wait to see if they got out or not. I grabbed the nearest paw and staggered to my feet. Everything was a little muffled and the world seemed to pitch around me. Wendy looked up at me.
“We all alive?” I asked.
The bears were definitely alive. They can take a lot more rough and tumble than a human. Ginger was even pretty excited.
“Move!” I shouted and started to run away, before the police swarmed over the mall and I got locked away. I managed to stay on my feet as we ran through the nearest shop, out of the fire exit at the back and down into an alley way. Then I slumped against a tram stop, threw up and collapsed in a heap. My adrenaline level was falling. I was aware of the pain in my back. The blood flowing from me. I was giddy and weak. “Did I get shot?” I asked nobody specific. Ted looked at me, his eyes wide in concern. He was nodding.
I tried to stand but was too weak. Something cold and hard, that felt remarkably like the business end of a silenced pistol pressed behind my ear. The bears had all put their paws in the air. I looked up at the Faceless woman towered over me.
“We Are The Horizon.” She spoke like her sentences had been stitched together from off cuts. Each word inflected as though it was trimmed from the start of a different recording. It had an unnatural bass.
“Oh.” I said, trying to find my feet. But she landed a punch on my face that sent me tumbling into the darkness. It was neither as quick or painless as the movies would have you believe. It was more l
ike my senses switching off one by one until there nothing but the cold and lonely darkness around me.
*
At some point the darkness became a dream. Stitched together from memories of the worst night of my life. I was on the stage at the Half Penny theatre, at the end of Eternity Pier. Doreen Grey was trapped in the magic circle, the one that evaporated her away. I touched the edge of the circle, feeling the solid barrier in the shimmering air repel me. But the figure in the circle was she shade, the ghost of a ghost that haunted any mirror I looked in. Out of focus, but... Well strong enough to reach my dreams. A little less ethereal than she had been.
“I will save you.” I told the shade. “I know your name was Hope. Saying it made you stronger. If I can find your names I can use you as a spark to light the fire. Bring the rest of you back. Or help you move on and find peace.”
She stared at me.
“I will try every name in the phone book, or census, or dictionary until I know your surname.”
She shook her head. Angry.
“Hope is your name? It's beautiful.” But to me she would always be Doreen.
She punched at the barrier in frustration.
“Hope is your surname?” I asked.
She nodded.
“So I still have half a book of forenames to try.”
She nodded again. She held up a hand to mime something but she looked exhausted. It must have taken everything she had to reach my dream.
“I will find you.” I told her again. “I l-”
The real world crashed into my head as a bucket of cold water was poured over me. I coughed on some of the water and tried, instinctively to cover my face. My hands did not get very far, the cuffs on my wrist clunked against the metal frame of a chair. I blinked my eyes open and quickly took in my surroundings. I was in a small room, a cell, with painted metal walls, the chair I was cuffed to against one wall, a bench on which Gwyn, Ginger, Ted and Wendy all sat hanging from the other. It looked like it was meant to be the bed too. The room was small, the air was dry, and the floor was vibrating. Somebody had glued my gunshot wound together and covered it with a field dressing. Probably the same somebody who was trying to slap me awake. She was one of the Faceless, but she no longer lived up to that description. What ever had been making her face indistinct and stopped people looking at her directly was turned off. She was tall, slender, pink eyed and white haired. She was a little older, wore a little more experience on her skin and a few more scars, but there was something unmistakable about the face. Which was odd, because her companion, the man, had the same look. A little flattened, and with a beard, a few more masculine touches, but they could be twins.
They wore the face of Tears.
“Captive is awake.” The Man said. “Good.”
“Interrogation of the bears has proven fruitless.” The Woman said. “You will answer our questions. Or we will harm the bears.”
“Don't tell them Fish!” Ted said, as though surprised at his own bravery.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked evenly.
“No physical harm was caused. Only questions were asked.” The man said. “In accordance with new orders.” As he approached me I could see he had a bar code tattooed onto his wrist like Tear. He lifted my head so I had to look in his pink eyes. They were full of malice. “We will not show such mercy now. We are the Horizon.”
“Okay.” I smiled. “So what am I meant to tell you?”
“You will explain in detail the strategy of resistance you will employ during the invasion.” The woman spoke as though I should know what she means. She stared at me.
“What invasion?” I asked blankly.
“That is what I said!” Gwyn piped in. “Great minds eh?”
“The invasion due to begin with in the next week.” The man said in a slightly patronising tone. He barely resisted the temptation to shake his head in disgust. “For the next thirty six years Eternity is one of the human strongholds that resists the Horizon. Musketeers and Paladins are held at bay by the siege. Magic and Ursine tactics are not understood by the Horizon. You will explain them now. The path of history will be altered.”
“So you are Musketeers?” I smiled. “Musket and Tears. A unit sent to infiltrate us and kill me? Because... Of something I will do in the future, facing a threat I don't understand? Maybe if you told me the tactics you intend to use to defeat us and, er, invade England? The UK? The world? Maybe if you told me your side of the story I might know what I would do?”
“No.” The Woman said. “We are not to disclose our tactics. Bears are known for their ability to escape. They will use that knowledge against us.”
“Then how can I tell you what I might do?” I tried to look ashamed. “Sorry.”
“He is correct.” The woman said coldly. “Kill them all.”
“Ha!” Teddy said sitting up straight. If his paws were not handcuffed behind his back he would have folded his arms triumphantly. “You do not fool me!” He snorted. “If you really could have just travelled back in time and killed us you would not have bothered to bring us here to be questioned! I read the book with the dinosaur hunters, saw that episode of the show about the scary space door, and I saw the films about the killer robots! I know you would just go back in time and kill his mother before he could be born and send history on a new path!”
“Theodore Edison Bear.” Wendy hissed through the side of her mouth. “Stop giving the people with guns that kind of idea!”
“But they can't!” Ted said. “The laws of causality would mean a cascade of changes to the time line beyond their control! If they hurt us and alter the time stream they wont exist to come back and change things!”
The two Faceless agents were looking at each other with a strange expression on their faces.
“The plan is sound.” The male Musketeer said.
“And our agents are protected against the changes of the time stream.” The female agreed.
“We will survive.” The first said.
“We will conquer.” The second agreed.
“Oops.” Ted whispered.
“We will return.” They promised as they left and locked the heavy door behind them. “The interrogation will continue.” The door echoed loudly long after they had gone.
“So they can actually genuinely time travel?” I asked.
The bears nodded.
“How do you think we got here?” Ginger said, if only so he could join in with the conversation.
“So, where are we?” I asked.
“A space station?” Wendy suggested.
“A submarine?” Ted countered.
“I have no idea.” Gwyn admitted. “But it seems like a sealed environment.”
“And it feels like we are moving.” Ginger agreed.
“Right.” I felt around for my cuffs. “Anybody able to pick our cuffs?”
“No.” Ginger said. “But I reckon I could fit through that air vent.”
“If you weren't in your cuffs.” Gwyn added helpfully.
“Well, yeah.” Ginger sighed.
There was an odd popping sound, and a flash of white hot heat. Musket was facing the wall, holding a strange electronic device. He turned slowly to see us and grinned. He ran straight to Wendy and took a large pair of bolt croppers from his backpack. They looked way too large for him to carry with out toppling over. They were just the right size for chopping through the handcuffs that had bound Wendy. As they snapped apart she flexed the life back into her wrists and stood up. She threw herself into a hug that almost squeezed the life out of the silver bear before he was able to push her away and release the others.
“Where did you come from?” Wendy asked.
Musket frowned at her and gestured for her to hold on for just one second. He freed the others then cut my cuffs away. I looked down at him. “So can we get out the way you came in?”
He shook his head and showed me his device. The screen was flashing with a battery warning.
“Out of juice?” I a
sked.
He nodded.
“Okay then.” I crossed to the door to the cell and eased it open. Almost immediately the lights started to flash red and an electronic voice burst out from concealed speakers so that it echoed and reverberated down the narrow corridor on the far side of the door. It had a low ceiling and reminded me of those in a battleship, down to the same drab grey paint.
“Warning!” The automated voice declared. “The Prisoners Are Escaping! The Prisoners Are Escaping! Terminate On Sight!”
“I can't believe they didn't lock the door.” Wendy hissed as she sneaked past me and into the corridor.
“I can't believe they got that actor to voice their computer.” Gwyn said. He tilted his ears at the the nearest speaker, oblivious to any hurry we might be in. “Him from that thing! It is, isn't it?”
“Maybe we can discuss this later.” I said. There were three identical women, in uniform grey tracksuits and carrying pump action shotguns at one end of the corridor. I hurried the bears towards the other end. “Any chance you know where the exit is Musket?” I shoved us down another corridor and pulled the pressure doors closed behind us, spinning the locking handle in the hope of buying us a few seconds. Musket seemed not to be sure if he did or not. He tapped his chin in thought, then waved us towards an elevator. The bears sprinted for it in a hurry.
I stopped. There was a window next to the elevator. It was small, heavily reinforced and dark. I paused and looked through. At first I could only see my reflection, and the out of phase figure who stood over my shoulder. Then I started to make out the murky, silty landscape beyond. The lifeless plain stretched into eternal darkness. An eyeless fish swam past the window, searching for the microscopic prey it fed on.