Tempus: The Phoenix Man

by Matt Hilton

  ‘I’m not sure…’ Fox dithered over the controls. ‘Sir, the venting system would release any impurities into the atmosphere above the facility.’

  ‘There’s an entire world out there,’ Semple said. ‘Even if there are some harmful particles they’ll be spread far and wide, the risk is negligible.’

  ‘We can’t know that…’

  Semple cut Fox off with a stern look. ‘Vent it, I said. I want Johnston alive.’

  Heller raised her hand to the technician. ‘Once you’re done with that, George, step it back by two notches.’

  Kwolek screamed a warning just as Rembrandt heard something clatter at his feet, and recognised the smooth spherical device as a grenade. He experienced a strange sense of detachment from his surroundings. He knew that his life could be counted in split seconds, but he was unable to feel anything other than a trickle of disappointment.

  Then he was engulfed in a pulsating wave of light and in that searing instant felt his body atomized.

  Though it felt as if his entire being had dissolved, Rembrandt found he was aware.

  He was nothing, or he was something as miniscule as a cloud of subatomic particles, because it was as if the corridor around him expanded to the magnitude of the universe in one blinding instant. Then his surroundings had gone and it was as though each of those tiny particles of his being were dispersed to all the far flung corners of space. He was in a lightless vacuum, a place where sight, noise, touch, smell and even the sensation of volition meant nothing. Yet the sensation was momentary, or it lasted to infinity, he couldn’t tell, and then it was as if two colossal palms gathered all the sundry parts of him together and clapped. He felt the rebinding of his mind, body and spirit like an implosion, the collapsing of a dying star.

  Rembrandt staggered and went to his knees.

  His visor was misted, and beyond it everything was a pinkish hue.

  Pain flared from his ankles to his knees.

  No not pain. Agony.

  He understood that the frag grenade had failed to kill him, but he dreaded what he’d find when he looked down at his legs. In his world, a crippled man would not last long. He’d rather he was dead than be limbless.

  Yet look he must.

  He had to check the damage, then make sure he could crawl the fuck to safety before another fragmentation grenade was lobbed at him. Second time he wouldn’t be as lucky.

  He couldn’t hear a thing. No gunfire, no shouting, no scream of warning from Kwolek or anyone else. His deafness must be an effect of being in close proximity to the explosion.

  He struggled to turn, to check where the scavengers were. He clutched for his rifle that he’d dropped as he collapsed. His questing palms fell on a corpse. He could tell that it wore a jumpsuit and armour just like his. Had one of the others trying to save him had given their lives in the blast? He patted the body, checking for life, readying to drag it away to cover. Who’d died for him? Bowlam, Walker, Kwolek? It had to be one or the other because Ox had been too far away.

  His gloves were torn and his hands were slick with blood. He could feel morsels of blasted flesh adhering to his skin. Gaping wounds peppered the corpse. His would-be saviour had taken the full brunt of the detonation.

  Goddamnit! First Jamal Dhand, now who?

  He scrubbed at his visor, found a clear spot and angled his head to look down at the dead body.

  The other’s visor had been split open and he peered in at the dead face.

  It was bloody, raw, the bottom jaw torn off at an angle by flying shrapnel, but Rembrandt recognised the visage.

  He reared back, and an animal-like scream tore from his throat.

  It was the face of Chief James Rembrandt. It was his face.

  He staggered away from the unholy sight, finding that his legs bore nicks from which tinkled small shards of metal, but he was otherwise unharmed. In body at least, because his mind was at tipping point.

  He realised that he could hear. The silence had been because there was no gunfire, no shouting, and no screams of warning from Kwolek. He could hear the rustle of his clothing, the slap of his boot soles through gore, his ragged breathing, as he sucked hard at the respirator in an effort to pull oxygen to his lungs.

  And he could hear his scream.

  But of it all he could make little sense.

  Is this hell?

  He had died, the proof was right there before him. His corpse was torn to shreds. In fact, as he swung his head side to side, he saw that there were body parts scattered all over the place, strewn all about the magnesium white walls and white floor. He stumbled again as he saw another head lying to one side of the corpse. It was a mangled, twisted, bloody wreck, yet he still recognised the portion of forehead, eyes and nose that had not been torn apart. They were his forehead, his eyes, his nose….he screamed again, and threw himself against a wall.

  Am I dead and being shown the proof as some form of devilish torture? Am I in hell?

  Rembrandt didn’t believe in hell. He didn’t believe in heaven. He didn’t believe in the supernatural or the divine. In his thinking, what kind of benevolent god would allow the suffering humanity had endured since the bombs dropped? And yet, what other explanation was there?

  He tore off his helmet and visor, stripped the breathing apparatus away and threw them from him. He caught the coppery stench of blood, the gag-inducing stench of opened torsos and his own shit. He tasted - for the first time in as long as he could recall - fresh air, unburdened by the carcinogenic dust that made living on the planet surface intolerable.

  This is not hell!

  How could it be?

  He looked again at the proof. Yes, this had to be hell, because there was no other plausible explanation for what he looked upon. There were various versions of his torn corpse scattered about the cylindrical white room, from the first, which bore the horrendous wounds he’d expect of one who’d stood on a grenade, to shapes less recognisable as being parts of a human body, to mere scattered chunks of flesh that steamed with residual heat. Here was the undeniable evidence that at least five different versions of his being had been ripped to pieces by the fragmentation of the grenade.

  No way could he think straight when he was surrounded by so many parts of his exploded self. He propped himself against the curving wall, palms squeaking as they fought for purchase on the slick surface. He bent at the waist and threw up. Vomit splashed the floor between his feet. Another fragment of grenade metal tinkled from his leg, expelled from a shallow wound on a flow of blood. And Rembrandt suddenly understood what had been evading him: each of those corpses was as he would have been during each increment of the grenade explosion, each subsequent corpse more ravaged as the copper filament and steel fragments did their terrible work on him. In his present form, he suffered the wounds a millisecond following detonation.

  He slumped to his knees. He couldn’t care less that he knelt in his own sick or in blood spilt from his other selves. He screamed a wordless scream.

  ‘We could go for one last try,’ Doctor Heller said. ‘His mind’s broken, I’m not sure he’ll be of any use to us in this fragile state.’

  Semple shook his head. ‘And what would you do with him? We can’t have two of the same person running around, can we?’

  ‘We could have him humanely euthanized,’ Heller offered. She held up a fist, extended two fingers and mimed shooting the subject.

  Semple grunted. ‘Major Coombs was right; you are a cold-hearted bitch, Elizabeth.’

  ‘I was joking, but then it is why you chose me for this job, Terrence. Who else but a doctor would tolerate such cruelty to another human being without losing her lunch?’

  Semple sighed. He studied the weeping wretch on the other side of the glass, and shook his head slowly. ‘We can’t take the chance we’d miss him if we tried again. A second either side and he could have been in a different place altogether. I for one can’t risk grabbing only part of him. Imagine what would happen if we cut him in two and left
the other half behind.’

  ‘Bloody,’ Heller agreed.

  ‘Not only that, but it could mean he fell dead before his ordained time: who knows what kind of disastrous effect that could have on both our dimensions.’

  ‘Who knows what it might mean having snatched him from death at any time?’ Heller countered. ‘We’re playing in the dark here, Terrence. For all we know we could be causing more damage than we already have.’

  At her final remark Semple pinched his lips together, and he glanced over at the frowning tech, George Fox. Only minutes ago the tech had reported a further disturbing reading that had shown up on one of the computers he was monitoring. Semple regretted giving the knee-jerk order to purge the atmosphere by venting the chamber. In hindsight, he knew that his rushed decision was ill conceived and would likely come back to bite him on the arse. He studied again the figure in the jump chamber. The man was at a state of collapse, but at least he wasn’t choking to death. ‘Well, what’s done is done, and there’s no changing it now. We go ahead with the plan.’ He turned to the two giant men standing at the ready in front of the entrance to the jump chamber. ‘Bring him out. Need I tell you to be careful? He looks as if he has endured a tough thirteen years where he was, I suggest you treat him the way you would the most difficult patients you handled as guards at Broadmoor Hospital.’

  One of the giant guards held up a contact Taser, and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Governor, he won’t pose a problem to us.’

  Chapter 7

  March 29th 2018

  Undisclosed location, England

  James Rembrandt surfaced from a drug-induced slumber.

  He smacked his mouth, a tongue as thick as an oven mitt probing at his cracked lips. His throat was on fire, as dry as the ever-present ash. His eyelids were gummy, and weighed a ton apiece. He struggled to open them, and managed to ease open his left eye. Stark lights blinded him, and in response he screwed his lids, turning his head away from the source of the beam.

  Something pulled in the side of his neck, and he felt a jolt of pain. In reaction he went to bat the troublesome object from him – a piece of shrapnel? – but found he couldn’t lift his hands. Panic flooded him. He recalled the frantic combat in the catacombs beneath the wreck of the British Museum, and how a fragmentation grenade had landed against his boot heel. Had the explosion dismembered him, torn off his limbs? He fought to open his eyes, dreading what he’d find.

  ‘Lie still,’ an abrupt voice commanded him. ‘If you keep moving about you’re going to injure yourself.’

  Rembrandt had no idea whose voice that was. It was female, but not the voice of Crystal Kwolek. Was it the voice of one of the women scavengers? He unscrewed his eyelids, felt the skin pulling apart like old Cellotape from a Christmas package. Hell! Where had that image surfaced from? There’d been no Christmas, let alone gifts, since before the bombs fell. And he’d had no recollection of the times before the nukes devastated the world. Eyes open and blinking, he was bombarded with swirling colours and the renewed harsh stab of clinical light.

  Rembrandt had proven his courage on too many occasions to list. But now he was terrified, and little wonder. No, not terrified, confused, bewildered, stricken with panic, but he was the type to overwhelm such emotions…usually.

  He cried out wildly, and he thrashed around. He wasn’t paralysed as he’d dreaded, and he could now feel the tingling rush of blood through his extremities. He tried again to lift his hands, to pull free the source of the stinging pain in his neck. His hands would lift barely an inch, and he craned down to check what the impediment was. Straps bound him down. His wrists were cuffed in thick webbing, as were his ankles. More straps held down his thighs, his waist, and his chest. Otherwise he was naked, a cloth draped over his genitals to protect his modesty.

  ‘You must lay still, David, and allow us to treat your wounds. Do not fight us.’

  Rembrandt fought to twist free his right hand, then his left. He kicked his ankles.

  ‘Hold him down,’ the woman said.

  Figures in pale blue suits, with opaque visors, appeared at each of his shoulders. Large hands pressed him down. Rembrandt realised he was supine on some kind of bed. The two figures in blue were orderlies.

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ Rembrandt yelled hoarsely.

  Where on earth was he? This wasn’t the medical bay of The Castle. This wasn’t any place he’d ever been before.

  ‘Believe us, David, this is for your own good.’ The woman was standing towards his left ankle. He couldn’t see her entire face because of the surgical mask she wore, only eyes so dark green they were as solid as emeralds. From beneath her plastic cap a couple of stray red locks poked out. She was holding aloft a syringe, checking for bubbles trapped in the liquid inside it. ‘Don’t fucking touch me with that,’ Rembrandt yelled as she leaned towards his thigh with the needle.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s only to help you relax, David.’

  ‘David? David! Why do you keep on calling me that? Who the fuck is David?’

  Above the surgical mask the woman’s face creased with mild confusion. But the eyes lost none of their hardness.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind me: who the fuck are you? Where am I? What am I doing here?’

  ‘You’re bound to be confused, and you must have dozens of questions, but now isn’t the time for them, David. Sleep now, let me do my job, and everything will be answered when next you wake up.’

  ‘No, don’t drug me again. Get that needle away from me. Mother fucker!’

  Doctor Elizabeth Heller withdrew the needle from the subject’s thigh. The drug had an immediate effect on him, and he slumped down, the stress leaving the ligaments of his neck as his head slumped back onto the pillow. She waved the two giants away, now there was no need to restrain her patient.

  Terrence Semple knocked on the observation window he was standing behind, and when the doctor glanced his way, he summoned her outside.

  She shook her head and beckoned that he should enter the surgery room.

  Tentatively he poked his head through the doorway.

  ‘Is it clear?’

  ‘He’s been entirely sanitized; you’ve no fear of any infection.’

  ‘What about residual radioactivity?’

  ‘His protective clothing was externally contaminated, but it had done its job well. He was clean.’ Heller indicated a nearby Geiger counter that clicked slowly and faintly. ‘That’s only the usual ambient radioactivity you can find anywhere. It seems your purging of the chamber worked,’ Heller added, though her tone suggested she considered his decision to vent the chamber unwise, as events since the transvection had borne out. ‘Come in, Terrence. Did you hear what he said?’

  Semple fed his hands into the pockets of his pinstriped suit jacket, leaning against the doorframe. Even with Heller’s reassurances, he still had no wish to approach the subject more closely before he studied the medical reports and atmospheric readings for himself.

  ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know his own name?’

  ‘I feared that his mind might have been damaged by the ordeal he suffered. It’s as I said yesterday: maybe it would be best to euthanize this subject and try bringing back a version of him from a few seconds earlier.’

  ‘No need for that, Doctor.’ Semple leaned forward marginally, studying the minor abrasions on the sleeping man’s lower legs. ‘How are his wounds?’

  ‘Superficial. We jumped him at the point before the detonation grew any momentum, so the wounds are only skin deep. They won’t impede him. It’s his state of mind that might prove our biggest problem.’

  ‘From what I heard he was confused, frightened: all to be expected. Granted, the fact that he seems to be suffering some mild disorientation is worrisome. But a little amnesia might be expected too, under the circumstances. Is there any sign he is suffering a concussion: wouldn’t that explain his confusion?’

  ‘There’s no sign of concu
ssion. Of course, the anesthetic might cause mild amnesia, but I’ve never known a patient to forget their own name as a result of the medication before.’

  Semple pursed his lips around the quandary. ‘Perhaps it’s a result of the transvection itself. Really, we have no clear idea of how the process affects the human mind.’

  Heller didn’t need Semple to explain. That was the purpose of the trial jump, after all, to determine if it was safe. Sadly Henry Chen didn’t survive long enough for any meaningful psychological tests to be conducted. ‘I don’t believe the process is at fault here, Terrence.’ Heller waved the two giant orderlies over once more. ‘Turn him for me, but be careful of the cannula in his throat.’

  The orderlies lifted the sleeping man, and rolled him towards the side where the cannula was attached to a drip, which was feeding him a saline solution. Heller moved around the bed, stationed herself alongside her patient. ‘You’ll have to come closer, Terrence,’ she said. After a pause, Semple took a couple of steps into the room, moving so that he could get an angle on the sleeping figure without approaching too close.

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  ‘Here, here, and here,’ Heller pointed out knotted scar tissue that made a lattice pattern over much of the patient’s back and buttocks. Another scar extended up the back of his neck to his hairline. ‘He suffered some terrible burns. They look to be old. My guess is that he got them as a result of being exposed to acid or some such corrosive liquid.’ She pointed out another scar on the back of his skull, where the hair had failed to regrow. ‘This isn’t a burn. It’s more indicative of blunt force trauma. I’m guessing that the bump he took to his head is more likely the cause for his amnesia than anything else, and possibly coincides with the point at which his tracker-implant went off-line.’

  ‘Does the scar look to be as old as his burns?’

  ‘Hard to say, but I’d wager he received all these scars at much the same time.’ Heller indicated that the orderlies should lay the patient down once more. She pointed out a number of different wounds on his arms and chest. ‘These are more recent, and were probably picked up at different times during an eventful life.’