The Next Together

by Lauren James

  “The Russians,” she said, startled. She felt like they were each having a different conversation.

  Slowly, he asked, “Katherine, what year is it?”

  “The year of our Lord seventeen hundred, five and forty.”

  The thing – the man – stared at her in shock and then began to laugh, a weak sound that ended with him coughing. She watched in confused dismay, until he recovered enough to explain.

  “Let us start from the beginning.” He held out his hand.

  She shook it reluctantly.

  “Hello, Katherine Finchley. My name is Matthew Galloway, and I come from the year eighteen fifty-four. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Crimea, Ukraine, 1854

  Matthew leant against the wall of the outhouse, gasping for breath, his eyes closed. It was almost quiet inside the building, which provided a small haven in the middle of the battle. Katy scarcely noticed. She was still trying to reconcile the Matthew beside her with the one in her memories – to unite the two versions of him that she’d known.

  “Tell me what you remember?” she asked eventually.

  He considered her for a moment. “I was a servant in your house during the Jacobite rebellion. You were spying on me again. We helped to improve the city’s defences, and when the Rebels attacked, the soldiers panicked and wanted to surrender. There was a vote, and an argument and I was shot. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “So you don’t remember coming back?”

  He stared at her, uncomprehendingly.

  “After you died, you woke again, fully healed,” Katy said slowly, remembering what had happened in Carlisle, all those years ago and in another lifetime. It was strange, remembering things from a century ago that hadn’t happened to her. But the memories were all crystal clear and too vivid to be anything but real, even if she didn’t understand how that was possible.

  “What do you mean?” Matthew asked. “I woke up healed? How?”

  “You – he, the other Matthew – said he came from the future. We decided you must have been brought back by a witch, but we were just guessing. Neither of us had any idea what could have happened. I still don’t.” She tried to think what else he’d said, and suddenly it clicked. “You came from now! I remember you saying you’d been reporting on a war against the Russians. That’s now. It must be a battle that’s going to happen.”

  “I travel through time,” Matthew repeated. “At some point during this war, I go back into the past.”

  “Yes. You said that your … that – I died. In the war. I die.” She swallowed. She had watched Matthew mourn some other version of herself, and at the time it had been sad, in a surreal kind of way. But now she knew that he had been mourning her, Katy. She was going to die, and Matthew was going to be left all alone, until he went back to 1745, pulled to another person who had been left alone. “That’s why you went back – because I lost my Matthew back then, and you lost me now.”

  Katy was going to die. Neither of them knew what to say for a moment.

  “What else can you remember?” he asked. “We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You have to remember. What else did he say?”

  “I don’t know!” she said. “It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “You have to try, Katy. You’re going to die, otherwise.”

  She growled, annoyed at herself. “I can’t remember all of those details. Why can’t you remember it happening? I don’t understand.”

  “It hasn’t happened to me yet. It’s still in my future.”

  She paused for a moment. “Maybe it’s a good thing you can’t remember that life,” she admitted. “It didn’t go well.”

  He looked at her, terror in his eyes. “How can it get any worse than this?”

  “Trust me,” she said. “It can.” She took a deep breath and then asked, “Does all this mean you’re forgiving me now?”

  “I suppose it does.” He didn’t seem pleased about it.

  “I know it doesn’t make much difference at this point, but I’m sorry. I regretted my decision to spy on you almost as soon as I met you, and I hated myself more and more every day. I’m sorry I made you trust me when I was lying to you.” She moved her foot back and forth, digging an arc into the dusty soil. “I did – I do – like you, Matthew.”

  “I thought that was a trick too – a way to get more information out of me.”

  “No! I wouldn’t… That wasn’t what I was doing at all.”

  “Well, I get that now,” he said grumpily. “The fact that we were … friends in another life makes that clear. There is obviously something between us. We are clearly meant to be together.”

  She paused, awestruck by what he was saying. She couldn’t process it, but she knew it to be true. “Good,” she said in relief. “I definitely wouldn’t want you to think that I was pretending to like you, because I really do – like you. More than I should.”

  “Are you only saying that because you’re afraid you’re going to die?”

  She regarded him carefully. “Just because this would have taken longer, that doesn’t make it any less true. I love you.” She blinked. She hadn’t meant to say that.

  Matthew froze. His lips parted slightly, and for a moment she thought he was angry, but then he broke into a radiant smile. Without another word, he pulled her towards him, gentle and cautious. She let him, watching him with wonder.

  He leant close to her, his eyes dropping to her lips. “I love you too.” She could feel his breath on her face. “I forgive you.”

  She used his lapels to pull him down so she could kiss him squarely on the mouth.

  > First objective achieved in time-landscape 1854

  “Finally,” he groaned, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I keep remembering what your mouth tastes like and I’ve been desperate to see if it’s the same now.”

  “Is it?” She pulled his lip into her mouth. He let out a guttural sound deep in his chest, and she swallowed the noise, making him melt into her. She shuddered, overwhelmed with the sensation.

  They kissed heatedly – not at all like a soft first kiss, but greedily, as if they knew that they might not get another chance. Katy lost herself against him as she re-learned what would pull a groan from his throat and what made him smile. She ran her tongue across the ridge at the top of his mouth, making him grin against her and break the kiss.

  He said in a deep, raw voice, “It’s exactly the same,” and for a second she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Kissing you.”

  “You too,” she replied weakly, running a finger along the wing of his collarbone. He curled his hand tightly around her fingers, like he was scared she would leave him.

  “I’m going to marry you,” Matthew said. “When this war is over, we’re going to get married. We’re going to buy a farm in the countryside and start a family and never have to do anything like this again.”

  “You said that before,” she joked. “A century ago.”

  “It’s still what I want more than anything. I’m going to marry you one day.”

  “Is that your proposal?” she replied, teasing him to hide the happiness that was twisting in her stomach. “So romantic.”

  He began to reply, but she muffled the words with a warm, deep kiss.

  “Katherine, will you marry me?” he asked when she eventually let him pull away, his voice softly serious, the words pressed against her cheek.

  “I will,” she agreed, and pulled him back into the kiss.

  CHAPTER 25

  Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-160

  CENTRAL SCIENCE LABORATORIES, WEST MIDLANDS, ENGLAND, 2039

  The video they’d found on the memory card from 2019 ended, leaving Matthew’s words reverberating through Kate’s mind: I love you. In every life. I love you. I love you so much. She touched her face and found it wet and tearstained. She’d forgotten for a moment that they were watching a video. It had felt like they were about to be killed
themselves – that it was their blood covering the walls.

  “Matt, can we get out of here? I can’t be in this room. Please.”

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go back to your office,” he said against her hair.

  She nodded, searching for his hand and holding it like a lifeline.

  Once inside Katherine’s office, they sat down against the wall, trying to decide what to do next. Kate couldn’t stop herself from listening for the sound of footfalls, expecting guards to chase them even now.

  When she tried to speak, her voice came out in a croak. She cleared her throat. “Katherine and Matthew destroyed the bacteria. They destroyed it and stopped it being used in the war. They saved the world!”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “They did it. It’s over.”

  Kate sighed. He didn’t understand. “Matt, it’s not over. Nowhere near. They’ve had twenty years to make it again.”

  “Shit! That’s why this building has been in quarantine all this time. So that CSL could work on it in secret.”

  “We need to destroy it,” she said, reluctant and terrified. “Again.”

  > Subjects in time-landscape 2039 will be in danger if their actions continue

  > Intervention recommended

  >> Intervention denied

  Carlisle, England, 1745

  “How can you be from the future? That’s not possible. It’s witchcraft, and witchcraft isn’t real,” Katherine said. She was exasperated. They had been having the same conversation since Matthew had revealed that he was from the year 1854.

  “I think we have evidence that it must be,” he replied, quietly.

  “Why should I believe you, anyway?” she said, suddenly angry. “You could be making all this up.”

  “I’m not, Katy.”

  Katherine flinched. “Don’t call me that.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry.”

  She picked at a callus on the palm of her hand.

  “I promise I’m not lying to you,” Matthew said. “I’m from the future.” She didn’t look up, and he carried on talking, voice slow, almost inaudible. “The English and French armies have been fighting the Russians. When I left, we had won the first battle. Before a rocket killed all of our leaders, we were probably going to win the war. I can’t see how that is going to happen now.”

  “Rocket?” she asked in a soft, unsure voice.

  “That’s what was happening when I came here. The first battle was over, and we had won. We were in the encampment. The commanders were having a meeting to discuss their next tactics, and the Russians had managed to shoot a rocket from the river, into their tent. I saw it happen. I tried to help, to rescue them, but I was too late. Their tent caught fire, and everyone died.” As he rubbed his hand through his hair, he looked like a real person mourning his friends, not the monster she’d imagined he was at all.

  “All of the generals died,” Matthew continued. “My friend George was killed. We – we don’t have anyone else to lead the army. There is no one in the English or French armies who has been trained – no one who has experience in war. Everyone in charge was in that tent, and now they are all dead, because I was too slow. I couldn’t save them, or Katy.”

  “Katy? What happened to her?”

  “She had died earlier that day. In the battle by the river. She was shot. I couldn’t save her either.”

  They were both silent.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry that you had to live through that.”

  He nodded.

  She ran through the situation in her head, trying to rationalize it. “So, someone, some … witch? Some witch noticed that in seventeen forty-five a man called Matthew Galloway dies. They find an ancestor of his in eighteen fifty-four who has just lost his … friend and who looks startingly similar and has the same name. An extraordinary coincidence. They decide the best thing to do is to bring them together, ignoring the laws of the universe, logic and morality.”

  “It is impossible. How, why, and who did it.”

  “Don’t forget ‘when’. She – or he – could be from eighteen fifty-four or seventeen forty-five or even the year nineteen hundred for all we know, however far off that sounds.”

  “If it is possible … just if … then I’d like to know why they care. What’s so special about us that they can mess with magic like that?” Matthew tried to stand up then, but he was dizzy and fell back onto the bed. “Help me up, please. I need to move around. I feel very unwell.”

  “Perhaps you should rest.”

  He insisted that he would stand, so she helped him up. The redness extended all over his skin, and he felt hot, dangerously so, when she ran a hand over his arm.

  His hair was standing on end from his nervous messing and she had to stifle the impulse to flatten it down. This wasn’t her Matthew. She might know him in another life, but for now he was practically a stranger. She didn’t know anything about how he lived or what kind of a person he was. The things she loved about her Matthew could be completely different in this man. Even worse, what if she wasn’t the same Katherine he knew? What if he didn’t like this version of her?

  Matthew pulled away from her to support himself on her dressing table. He tugged at his shirt.

  “My skin itches,” he explained. “My clothes are scratchy.”

  Katherine tried to hide her concern by making a joke. “Are you a delicate flower?”

  Unexpectedly, his face dropped and a crease spread across his forehead. He almost looked like he was going to cry.

  Katherine pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sorry. I just… I miss Katy.”

  Katherine dropped her hand awkwardly. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said eventually.

  He nodded.

  “Does it make it worse…? That I look like her, I mean.”

  He took a long time to reply. “No. I think it helps. It makes me think of the happy memories, rather than the sad ones. She was wonderful, and she made me laugh so much. She wouldn’t want me to cry over her. She’d probably tease me incessantly about it if she were here.”

  “I can tease you incessantly about it if it helps.”

  The resultant smile was watery, but it was a start. “Perhaps later. I’m not sure I could handle that at the moment.”

  > Subject allocation “MATTHEW” in time-landscape 1745 has still not recovered from the transfer

  CHAPTER 26

  Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-160

  Crimea, Ukraine, 1854

  “You told me that the rebellion of seventeen forty-five was successful,” Katy said suddenly. They were sitting leaning against each other inside the outhouse. “The second Matthew said that the uprising ended in a Jacobite victory. In his … world, plane of existence – whatever you want to call it – Carlisle surrendered to the Rebels and they marched on through England. Charlie won the right to rule Scotland and so it had been an independent country since seventeen forty-five, but you said that it was awful. There was a huge famine and half the population of Scotland died because there wasn’t any work and hardly any food. You – he – said that their king kept trying to invade England. He refused to support England in this war.”

  “But … that’s not what happened. I know my history. That’s definitely not what happened. The Jacobites were defeated.”

  Katy shrugged. “That’s just what the second Matthew said. I don’t think I’ve remembered it wrong.”

  “So he is from a place where the Jacobites won? Some kind of different version of history?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But, Katy!” He sounded so relieved that she looked up in surprise. “That means that it doesn’t happen! If Matthew Two wasn’t from this world, then none of the things that happened to him will happen to me, and I won’t get sent back. You won’t die!”

  “Matthew, the Scots being independent probably won’t make a difference to how this war goes.”

  “How do you know that?
It might make all the difference in the world! If the Scots weren’t fighting with us, we’d have fewer soldiers. They have a truce with France, so France might not have fought either. And that man who saved us at the river was a Highlander. If he hadn’t been there, we would have been killed! Already things have happened in new ways because of that one difference.”

  “What are you saying? That all of history changed because of a single uprising? That if one little siege – the siege of Carlisle over a hundred years ago – had gone differently, it would have changed the outcome of everything that came after?” She stopped talking. She needed to think. Matthew began to speak but she shushed him quiet. “It was you – us,” she said eventually. “We changed the outcome of the siege. Durand might have surrendered if we hadn’t been there. You made him promise that he wouldn’t.”

  “No. That … we can’t… This isn’t real. You can’t possibly be suggesting that us just being there changed the whole course of history!”

  “I think it might have,” she admitted, “although it sounds awfully big-headed. But it makes sense. Maybe we weren’t in Carlisle in this other world, so Durand surrendered straight away and the Rebels carried on their invasion of England. Maybe they managed to get to London before the English army had a chance to get there to stop them.”

  “So, in our world we delayed the surrender of Carlisle long enough for the army to be mustered to defend England?” he asked, a little sceptically. “So that meant the Jacobites didn’t win and Scotland remained a part of Britain.”

  “Exactly.”

  He threw his hands up in exaggerated disbelief. “But that’s ridiculous. We aren’t… We didn’t know any of that would happen. It was all just chance!”