Eschaton

by Andrew Hastie

  As he felt the floor beneath his feet fall away and the noose tighten he prayed that Bentley knew what he was doing.

  Dalton admired the ring. There was something about the way the gold glimmered, even out of the sunlight — as if it were internally powered, but only when it was against his skin.

  He’d taken to wearing leather gloves after the “accident” when his father had lost his temper and plunged his hand into a boiling pot. The fingers of his left hand had been badly scalded, withering the skin like an old man. Those that saw it never quite managed to hide their pity and he couldn’t stand that — he wanted to be strong and respected, even feared. The gloves had given him that, and more besides — as a seer he hated physical contact with others, as the slightest touch meant catching moments of their pathetic lives, and no matter how hard he tried to block them out, they were always an anathema to him.

  He’d taken off his left glove and pushed the ring onto his gnarled finger. It slipped over the scars with ease, as if expanding to glide over the swollen joints. Once in place he felt it contract, fixing itself tight against the skin.

  Then the healing began.

  Dalton watched in surprise as the layers of scar tissue smoothed out, returning his hand to the youthful version it should have been. Vitality returned to his fingers, and when he compared it with his right hand, they were both the same.

  He was whole once more, or at least as whole as he could ever be — thanks to his father.

  When his father had lay dying, shot by his own gun, Dalton had taken great delight in entering his degrading timeline. He made himself witness the moments of his past brutality as they vanished into the dark void, hoping that he would find some kind of closure as they died. The scars of his childhood refused to heal, and nothing changed except for the singular feeling of dread and despair that he experienced at the end of his father’s timeline, one that had intrigued him ever since. The impression that there was something beyond the veil.

  His father was an angry man, who seemed to blame his only son for all the things that were wrong with his life. Dalton had borne the brunt of his inadequacies for sixteen years, suffering in silence, pretending this was somehow normal family life — and his mother stood by and let it happen.

  Until the hunting accident.

  On that day in 11.817 they had been stalking wild boar through the forests of the lower Rhine. It was something Dalton got to do once a year, on his birthday, and every year his father had promised that one day he would have his own gun.

  And on his sixteenth birthday, in keeping with the long family tradition, he got one.

  It was a Purdey, a fine, sporting shotgun, chased in silver with the family crest inscribed into the stock. There was nothing to compare with the feeling of carrying his own weapon through the thick, resinous pines of the valley. It was as if he’d finally been accepted by his father, that the feeling of being a failure could now be laid to rest.

  The shot was a simple one, and it should have been a clean kill.

  But Dalton clipped the boar, and the second shot was off by a mile. He tried to blame the gun, but the look on his father’s face as he shouldered his own weapon left little doubt as to how he felt.

  The grand old boar turned towards them and charged.

  It was a fearsome beast, at least 90 kilos and with tusks as long as Dalton’s forearm. As it crashed through the undergrowth towards them, his father calmly took aim, waiting for the shot.

  Dalton reloaded his rifle quickly and raised it, sighting on the beast as it thundered down the trail towards them. He didn’t want his father to think he was weak — he still had time to take the shot.

  His father was shouting something at him, telling him to move to higher ground or climb a tree. Dalton always remembered that moment as the first and last time he had ever heard his father try to protect him.

  He emptied the first barrel into his father’s back and, as he fell, the second shot went into the boar.

  Both lay dying at his feet as he broke his gun and let the cartridges fly out into the bush.

  The wild pig panted hoarsely. Dalton could hear the blood filling its lungs with every breath, and gave it a merciful death with a carefully placed knife between the ribs.

  His father was shown no such favour.

  Kneeling down beside him, Dalton carefully removed the rifle from his grip, and as bright red blood bubbled up out of his father’s mouth, he grasped his hand.

  ‘Papa,’ he whispered into his ear, ‘I will never forgive you.’

  Then Dalton let his mind descend into the last moments of his father’s timeline.

  24

  Rescue

  [London. Date: Present day]

  Sim came up last. He wasn’t the strongest of swimmers and the drop had taken him deeper than he’d estimated, leaving him gasping for air when he surfaced.

  Turning around he saw the others already swimming towards the side, where Bentley was standing holding a large bundle of towels.

  ‘You took your time,’ said the beaming red-headed boy, putting down the towel and grabbing hold of Sim’s hand.

  Sim could still feel the graze of the rope against his neck and shivered at the thought of what might have happened if Bentley had got it wrong.

  They had landed in the baths in the basement of the Chapter House. Bentley had hooked up a series of apertures in the trapdoors the night before the execution.

  Sim wished he could have seen the faces of the god-fearing crowds as the bodies disappeared from the nooses. He could imagine all kinds of legends being born from that day, and made a mental note to look up the Chelmsford witch trials when he got the chance.

  It was a terrible thing to have to put his family through, but warning them meant there was always a chance Dalton would’ve found out. Sim had based his predictions on Dalton’s obsession for the talisman overriding his usual paranoia. He calculated that the sight of the ring would distract him enough, and of course Sim had counted on the probability that he would never hold up his side of the deal.

  Dalton was too much of a coward to stay and witness their deaths. Though his speech had been slightly shorter than Sim had estimated, he’d built in a contingency. Dalton had to believe they were being executed, which meant leaving just enough time between his exit and the hanging.

  Dalton’s threat had appeared on the back of Sim’s hand a few hours after Derado had left him with Bentley, which was timely, since neither of them could agree on the best way to rescue his family.

  Bentley explained how he could create almost any kind of temporal device, including a breacher, and punch a hole into another part of time. The problem they faced was that Sim’s family were being held in the Protectorate’s high-security unit, a prison buried deep below their headquarters that was shielded by an array of temporal defences. Other than the Parabolic Chamber, there was no way in or out of their cell without alerting the guards.

  ‘Their timelines are off-limits,’ said Bentley, lying on the roof of the building opposite and studying the Protectorate building with a pair of modified binoculars. Looking through them, Sim felt immediately ill, like he did with most lensing equipment, but what he did catch was the lack of temporal variance in the building itself. While everything around it changed and fluctuated, their headquarters stood unchanging.

  They’d gone back fifty years before the Protectorate had acquired the building. Bentley called it a ‘safe distance’, but Sim wasn’t convinced and kept looking over his shoulder.

  ‘I just need to get an idea of the structure,’ Bentley explained as they walked down the fire escape and down onto Lexington Avenue.

  The Chrysler building was a grand, art-deco skyscraper that dominated the east side of midtown Manhattan.

  ‘Steel,’ Bentley moaned as they walked past the entrance, ‘not my favourite material. It acts like a Faraday cage, bloody impossible to breach. They knew what they were doing when they chose this building.’

  Sim suddenly felt a
pain lance through his hand and looked down to see the date ‘11.645’ appear in white scar tissue across the back of it.

  ‘What the —’ swore Bentley as he caught sight of the wound. ‘Someone wants to get your attention.’

  ‘Dalton,’ said Sim, rubbing the scar with his thumb. It was at least seven or eight years old. Dalton had gone back into his timeline and carved it onto his younger self. It was called a ‘cicatrix’, and was a serious violation of one of their basic laws — interfering in another’s timeline.

  ‘What’s so important about that date?’

  Sim knew the moment he saw it. ‘Witch trials.’

  His mother and father were engaged in a serious conversation, so Sim dumped his wet clothes and went to sit with Lyra and Phileas. They both looked as if they were still in shock and Bentley had given them hot drinks which were slowly cooling, untouched in their hands.

  ‘What did you give him?’ asked Phileas.

  ‘A talisman. A kind of ancient vestige.’

  ‘One that can command the Djinn,’ warned Lyra, still shivering.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sim, taking a steaming mug of hot chocolate from Bentley, ‘but first he has to create a breach and all the known ones are being guarded by Dreadnoughts. The only way he can reach the Djinn is to create one, and he can’t do that without the help of the Draconians.’

  Lyra didn’t look convinced. ‘How long before he works out how to do that?’

  Sim shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  His parents walked over to join them.

  His mother gathered Sim up in her arms and hugged him tightly. ‘Well done, my brave boy. I knew you would find a way,’ she whispered into his ear.

  It took Sim half-an-hour to explain how he and Bentley had planned their rescue. There were many questions, especially from his father, who was fascinated by what Bentley had done with the trapdoors.

  When he’d finished, his mother stood up and smoothed down her dress, which seemed to have dried out remarkably quickly.

  ‘Darlings, your father and I have decided that we should seek sanctuary with the Draconians until this nonsense resolves itself. Bentley has generously offered to escort us back to the lighthouse.’

  It felt like they were running away to Sim, and his mother could see he was confused.

  ‘This is not the end my brave one,’ she added, stroking his cheek. ‘The resistance will take many forms, but we must regroup and have time to formulate a strategy.’

  Sim smiled weakly. His mother was right, as always. They’d been taken by surprise and to react too quickly could end in disaster.

  Bentley strode over to them. ‘We have to go, Madam.’

  Alixia nodded and pulled all of her children to her. ‘Be safe my little ones.’

  Sim realised then that she wasn’t coming with them.

  25

  Futures

  Josh woke to find that they were in some kind of operating theatre, surrounded by clinical steel devices and medical equipment.

  He tried to move his arms, but they felt like lead weights. His head was the only thing that wasn’t strapped down, and when he turned it he saw Caitlin strapped onto a white table beside him.

  Her eyes were wild and the veins stood out in her neck as she tried desperately to move away from the needle-like probes that were hovering next to her temples.

  ‘It will be less painful if you don’t struggle.’ The voice of the professor sounded odd coming from the expressionless face of Lenin. ‘I have added a mild sedative to compensate for the anxiety.’

  A band of light scanned along her body, creating a holographic model of her internal physiology in increasing levels of detail above her.

  ‘Interesting,’ observed Lenin, studying the hologram. ‘She’s quite normal — no sign of temporal degradation. Whatever genetic abnormality allows you to move through time will be a vast improvement on the Lenin model.’ He tapped an icon and the needles began to move inwards.

  The white-coated Lenin turned towards Josh. ‘So, I wonder what we’ll discover within your biology?’

  A vicious array of sharp instruments descended from the ceiling and Josh struggled against his own bindings, but the clamps held fast.

  ‘What do you want?’ Josh shouted.

  ‘You’re the first visitors to have returned from one of my experiments. There’s a great deal I can learn from the effects of the time dilation — and I’m always interested in upgrading my hosts.’

  Josh realised then that Fermi had no idea about his mother; for whatever reason it hadn’t happened yet.

  Lenin initiated the same scan on Josh. ‘I’m especially interested in what it does to the structure of the brain.’

  Josh felt a warm band of energy move along his body as Fermi studied the results. He seemed unimpressed with what he saw, which Josh took as a positive until the needles in the unit deployed.

  26

  Founder

  [Date: -654,000,000]

  It had been a while since the founder had walked the timelines and the aching in his joints reminded him exactly how long it had been. He knew all the old paths well enough — the ancient ways that others had forgotten — but there was still something to be said for actually traversing them.

  He was tired and cold, as there’d been no time to prepare for this journey and his robes were thin, letting the icy winds cut through them like a knife.

  It had taken two days to travel here, taking diversions to ensure that no one would be able to follow his path, especially Ravana and her pack of wolves. He’d selected the most obscure routes through history, sometimes doubling back on himself just to conceal his destination.

  Bumping against his hip in a small leather bag was the Infinity Engine. He gripped the strap with both hands as he began the descent down the snow-covered ridge and into the white valley beyond.

  The Marinoan Ice-Age was one of the only places he knew where the device would be safe. A blank space in the map of the continuum. No one could navigate accurately through the millions of years of glaciation without a suitable vestige and an object that could be used to reach this far back was extremely rare. There were still a few talismans of his own that he kept earmarked for just such an occasion and he tried to find some comfort in the fact that he’d never had to use one until now.

  His boots made deep impressions in the snow as he reached the bottom of the valley. It was a long, deep cut between the mountains, covered in a glistening blanket of purest white. The place he sought was at the northern end of the defile and half way up the mountain, somewhere that could only be reached by foot, and without snowshoes it would be hard going. The drifts were already coming over his knees and he hadn’t reached the worst of it yet.

  The founder put down the bag and blew on his hands, the air from his breath creating clouds of ice crystals as it froze. The earth at this time was a truly barren, inhospitable place, and he marvelled at the fact life had managed to survive this period at all.

  Taking the old locket out of his cloak he sat down upon a rock and read the inscription.

  ‘The future belongs to the dreamers.’

  His wife had given it to him on the day they were married; it was the only thing left from that life and it always made him smile. It was also his personal key, with a limited range of no more than a few years either side of a very special location. Opening up its history he felt time slide under his fingers, flowing back to the moment he first arrived in this world — the day he stepped into this timeline.

  27

  E.R.D

  [Blair Street Vaults, Edinburgh. Date: 11.788]

  Walking through the underground vaults of his Eschaton Research Department, Dalton could feel the power of the ring pulsing against his palm. It was calling to him, inviting him to open its chronology, but he resisted, knowing that once he succumbed there would be no going back.

  His mother was too busy with the council to take any notice of what he was really doing with his research. Everyone involved h
ad been instructed that their work was classified top secret, kept apart from the other Protectorate departments to reduce the chances of escalating the crisis, or at least that was the lie they chose to believe.

  The research department was established after the Augurs revealed that the first three crises of the cascade had taken place. Using the power of the Eschaton Martial Act, Dalton immediately sequestered every expert on the Djinn and the maelstrom that he could find within the Order.

  He had no time for the Augurs. They were a superstitious group who treated the Eschaton Cascade like it was some kind of religious doctrine. A secretive sect that dressed in long robes like monks and refused to answer any of his questions regarding the crises — something that Dalton hoped would give him a better idea of how to enter the maelstrom.

  They were all so mysterious and enigmatic, with an annoying air of those who knew all the secrets but refused to tell.

  Now Dalton had over a hundred officers at his disposal and most of them were handpicked for their specialist skills and abilities, many for their knowledge of the chaos realm.

  Ever since the interrogation of Jones and his revelations about the future, Dalton had become determined to find a way into the maelstrom. The prophecy had been correct about one thing; the Nemesis was a bringer of change, and he finally knew what his destiny was to be. The version of the timeline Jones had seen was out there somewhere, waiting for him. All he needed to do was find a way to reach it, and for that he needed the power of the Djinn.

  His intelligence reports were clear that there was no chance of leaving through any of the existing breaches. Every one of them was under Draconian control, and since they had annexed themselves from the Order, they were not responding to any of the Protectorate directives. Dalton had considered attacking one of their positions, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible reason that would satisfy his mother.