by Ian Hocking
The woman’s bright smile faded. ‘Yes, sure.’
She disappeared through the staff door and returned with an espresso cup of water. ‘I’ll have the cup back when you’re finished.’
Ute took two deep breaths, drank the water, and dropped the cup. She swayed. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Perhaps some more water…’ Ute said. She fell into the woman’s arms, leaving her no choice but to steer her into the back room. Ute’s downcast eyes saw linoleum and cleaning buckets. She smelled fresh coffee. The woman dropped her on a chair in a small kitchen. Ute heard the running of a tap, and it was then that she withdrew her stun gun.
The woman turned. She held a mug of fresh water in each hand. When she saw the gun and Ute’s cold eyes, she let the mugs drop. They bounced on the tiles. ‘You own the shop?’ Ute asked.
‘Yes,’ the woman said. She was tearful but her anger kept her alert. ‘What do you want? The takings? We have only been open a few minutes.’
Ute put a finger to her lips. ‘What I have to do today has nothing to do with you or your shop. I need to get into those offices.’ She pointed at the ceiling. ‘How?’
Ute noticed the highlights in the woman’s brown hair, her tan, and the red bandana that was tucked fashionably into the collar of her blouse. Her badge read Sabine Schlesinger. ‘The fire escape.’
‘No,’ Ute said. She pictured her journey that morning, before sunrise, when she had stolen up those iron steps in bare feet, attached the padlock, and felt it click home.
‘There is another way. Out of here, turn left. There’s an interior fire door that opens onto a corridor. Go up the stairs. You realise I must call the police.’
‘Of course,’ Ute said. She did not lower the stun gun. ‘Please do not follow me. This is for your own safety. Evacuate the shop.’
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Evacuate the shop.’
She walked backwards from the room. In the tiny corridor, there was nobody. She checked on Sabine. Still there.
Ute turned and ran through the fire door, closing it behind her. The corridor was empty. At one end was the door with the lock that she had superglued before entering the shop. She checked its handle. Immovable.
Her one problem was the connecting door. It had a push-down bar on both sides. She had to act quickly.
She removed her shoes and walked up the stairs.
~
There was an interior door on the first landing. The handle turned. It was a cheap door with a cardboard filling that could not be barricaded.
For a second time, she stepped inside.
The empty office space was huge. The air was stuffy with sunlight. There were sheets of paper, old mugs, filing cabinets, chairs and sheets of plastic.
In the centre were scores of mannequins. Faces blank. Gender-neutral bodies naked and dusty. They hadn’t moved.
Immediately to her left was a walled office. It had an open doorway but no windows. Nearby was the fire-escape that she had padlocked earlier that morning. She came closer. She felt dust on her bare feet. She heard snores.
Inside, it was dull and hot. She counted six sleeping men. They were lying, two half-dressed, four naked, overlapping by foot and hand. Ute had once been afraid of these men. Now she was disgusted. There was a syringe-littered table in one corner. In another, a television and a games console. There was a duvet in the centre. The stench of sweat and semen was nauseating. She did not care who they were. She did not care why they lived this way.
Ute took the can of lighter fluid from her bag. She squirted it onto the duvet. It was a good feeling. She was pissing on these men. Next, she took a match and flicked it into the centre. The duvet erupted. Benthic smoke poured outward in a carpet, making for the door. She did not hurry to withdraw her stun gun. Humans cannot smell while they are asleep. She had checked.
She saw the moustached man who had led her from the club. He was middle-aged and balding, but Ute had always preferred older men. He had drugged her Martini. Later, he had injected her with something as she crouched to re-tie her shoe — scopolamine and morphine, a doctor had told her later. Life had become hazy and slow. Her resistance had fallen away. For passers-by she was a drunk. The man waved them on with a laugh.
She fired the gun. Two darts flew out and embedded in his thigh muscle. They connected to the stun gun with strong, insulated cables. The darts had barbs. They could not be extracted without ripping. There was a second trigger to activate the charge. Quickly, she fired darts into all of the men.
She pulled the trigger.
The bodies twitched and rolled.
She remembered that, at the conclusion of the ordeal, the moustached man had injected her again. He had put an avuncular arm across her shoulders and led her to the Rhine. One last injection: the rest of the syringe. A gentle push and she fell.
Callused arms had found her in that cold, empty hell, and heaved her onto a barge. Shouted words in a language she did not understand. Wiped hair and muck from her mouth. Shone light in her eyes. Injected her.
She pulled the trigger again. This time the groans were louder, angrier. Eyes sought her. They were monstrous but pathetic. She realised that they would never be as strong as her. She had returned. Her revenge knew no bounds.
She pulled the trigger a third time. Bodies convulsed. The smoke grew soupy. One of the men tugged at a barb in his chest. Ute watched the flesh draw to a peak. It would not rip. Finally, the man collapsed in the smoke.
The duvets burned blue-green. She watched the flame.
Someone grabbed her ankle and Ute screamed. She pulled the trigger again and the hand tensed. It fell and lay flaccid on her foot.
With each pull of the trigger, she imagined herself raping them, firing into them, inching them towards the edge of an abyss with each dirty push.
‘This,’ she shouted, ‘is what it feels like when you’re fucked.’
Behind the burning duvets, a woman rose. She wore only her underwear and a T-shirt. She shimmered through Ute’s tears.
Ute cursed her stupidity. She reached forward to help the victim from the room. She would have a straightforward escape through the door to the staircase and, from there, through the perfume shop to freedom.
The woman grabbed Ute’s throat and pushed hard. Ute dropped the stun gun and they broke through the door. In sudden daylight, the woman’s eyes seemed more animal than human. A cat’s eyes. The eyes were familiar; she had been present at Ute’s rape. She had looked on.
Ute tripped but the woman followed her down. They slid over the floor. Rolled once. Ute felt the world darken. Above them, the ceiling was on fire. Plastic embers began to fall. Still the world darkened.
They knocked into the mannequins. The dolls were heavy and one struck the woman’s forehead. Her grip relaxed momentarily. Ute took a breath before it was re-established. She had come here to kill her attackers. She would not be satisfied with all but one of them.
Inside her shoulder bag, she found the canister of lighter fluid. She jammed the can into her attacker’s mouth and twisted savagely. The thin metal tore and Ute pulled it free. She did not wait. She sawed at her throat with the metal’s edge. The skin opened. The woman’s grip relaxed and her cat eyes glazed. She bucked and slithered away. Ute grabbed her ankle. The woman yelled. She jammed the cold ball of her foot into Ute’s throat.
The pain stopped time. When finally she moved, she could see only the expressionless mannequins and their hard, plastic fingers. They seemed to mob her. They were dead and they wanted her dead too. From the gaps between one mannequin and the next, there issued only smoke, not air. She screamed.
The nightmare inside the nightmare.
She pushed against something. It was the lid of a coffin. Cracks appeared. The darkness was no longer absolute. She saw her simple funeral clothes in the bloody light. She understood that she was in the furnace of a crematorium. No, she thought. This memory is false. I survived
the fire. She drew breath to scream again. She would escape her coffin now, oh yes, into a fire that might let her linger, let her relish the last few moments of life with a height of sensation she had never known. The crackling flames. Smoke. Distant organ music. The murmur of David Proctor thanking the priest for a lovely service. Saskia would have wanted it that way.
No. It didn’t end like this. It can’t end like this.
Saskia.
The hawk that returned.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Snick.
Ute opened her eyes. The gun had misfired, and she let it slip, dead, to the ground. Memories crowded her. She remembered her first kiss. It had been on tiptoe behind the local supermarket. She saw the face of her best friend at school, Katrin, and some fellow schoolchildren, and the faces of her foster parents. Spending hours learning to hula hoop. A school trip to France. Dinner for One on New Year’s Eve. Her foster mother’s name was Fride. They had lived in Cologne. Her Uncle Manni had once saved her from drowning. He had died within the year from skin cancer.
A whole life returned to her. Ute Schmidt’s ghostly passenger—the digital Saskia Brandt—was gone.
She felt David’s breath on her face. Her knowledge of him was once removed. She knew that his words were English but she could not understand him.
‘Your ability to comprehend English, as well other recently-acquired skills, will return in a few minutes,’ said a voice. It spoke flawless German. ‘David just claimed that you are a “bloody idiot”.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Ute.
‘I am Ego, David’s personal computer. But I was once in your possession. I have a message for you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Ute, you must understand that it is a message from Saskia.’
The name stirred something in Ute. It carried a sisterly feeling, one of protection. And one of loss. It was comparable to the death of a twin. ‘The message reads, “Look in the envelope”.’
‘Which envelope?’
‘The one you found in the West Lothian Centre.’
‘I…I remember. But I can’t see to read it.’
A tile of pale light appeared on the floor. It grew brighter until the faces of Jennifer and David appeared. With their concerned expressions, the connection between them and Ute deepened. She accepted they were her friends.
Ute knelt and shrugged off her shoulder bag. As she opened it, she noticed the dark polish on her nails. She did not like the shade. Her long hair cascaded over her face. She found the transparent wallet that contained the white envelope. It was fastened with a metal popper. She opened it and withdrew the envelope. Once white, it was now yellow and spotted with mould. On the front it read: ‘Do not
She ripped the seal and shook out a laminated ID card in the name of Saskia Brandt, FIB. The photo was her, Ute. On the reverse was written one word: ‘Munin.’
‘Munin,’ repeated Ute. ‘David, didn’t Hartfield use that word?’
The professor’s reply was gibberish.
‘I shall act as translator,’ said Ego.
She heard Ego repeating her words in English and, as David and Jennifer replied, Ego gave the German equivalent.
‘Saskia,’ David said, ‘I’m afraid that you have to follow Hartfield. You have no choice.’
Hartfield. The name conjured the image of a business-like man. Beckmann.
‘It’s true,’ said Jennifer. ‘You are destined to follow him. When Hartfield shot at you just now, he fired point-blank but he missed. When you tried to shoot yourself, the gun didn’t fire. It couldn’t fire.’
‘You built a time machine,’ Ute said as the memory returned.
‘Saskia -’
‘My name is Ute,’ she snapped. But even as she spoke, she felt the gap in her mind: a jagged hole shaped like Saskia Brandt, whose body had been dumped at sea, or in building foundations, or fed to pigs. Hartfield was getting away. He had killed another woman to capture her ghost. That ghost wanted revenge.
Revenge was something that Ute understood.
‘Ego,’ she said. ‘Can you reactivate the chip?’
‘No. It requires a password.’
Ute looked once more at the handwritten word on the reverse of her ID card. ‘Try “munin”.’
‘The chip has accepted the password. Your mind construct been reactivated.’
Nothing happened.
David said, ‘Listen, we need to get after him. We don’t know whether he will make it or not. That’s not certain.’
The English made sense.
‘Hör zu—’
‘I understand him,’ said Saskia, her implanted skills returning. She crouched to retrieve the gun. Three bullets remained. ‘Let’s go.’
You will return, the witch had said, as you have returned before.
Chapter Thirty-Four
David felt dizzy. The spacious blackness was reminiscent of the 2003 bombing, although there was no undercurrent of panic. Jennifer led the way through the corridors behind the infra-red eye of Ego, whose exterior displayed a crisp representation of the view ahead. Saskia was in the middle and David was at the rear. Saskia bridged the gap by holding both their hands. David stumbled as Jennifer pushed them against a wall. A guard ambled by with a line of high-spirited personnel.
When they neared the base of the stairwell, the infra-red view on Ego’s screen became dark. They stopped. David whispered, ‘Ego? What’s happening?’
Some words appeared on the screen: ‘System is busy. Please stand by.’
‘Ego,’ David said, ‘you have no business but ours. Belt up.’
Nothing happened.
‘Should we wait?’ Jennifer asked.
‘We could reset it,’ Saskia suggested.
There was a beep and the infra-red view reappeared. Ego said, ‘Task completed.’
‘What task?’ David demanded.
Ego did not answer.
‘We’ll discuss this later,’ he said to the computer.
They emerged onto the level zero corridor. Ahead of them was an airtight door. Jennifer located a panel and pressed it with her palm. A dazzling bar of light swept beneath her hand. In the brief illumination, David read ‘Project N83261 (Déjà Vu)’.
‘Wait,’ Saskia said. She withdrew Hartfield’s gun and handed Jennifer her shoulder bag. ‘Me first. I have the training.’
The door began to open on a vertical hinge.
~
Saskia ran through the door. She found herself in a well-lit, cylindrical chamber with sparkling walls. The floor had been levelled to form terraces. To her left, higher up, was some kind of control room. To her right, she saw two centrifuges. They were rotating in opposite directions. A short gantry led to the middle terrace, which was a reservoir of sand. She double-checked that there was a round in the chamber of the gun and, holding it both hands, swept her gaze around the immediate area. Hartfield was nowhere to be seen. She hurried along the gantry to a metal boardwalk that ran lengthwise up and down the chamber. There, she crouched behind an equipment crate and strained to hear footsteps above the groaning centrifuges.
Saskia put her finger on the trigger and ran in a zigzag towards the lower terrace. She put her back to the safety baffle. Then she rose on tiptoe and looked into the first centrifuge. The gondola and the operator’s cabin were empty. The second centrifuge was empty too. Both, Saskia realised, were slowing.
Jennifer put a hand on Saskia’s shoulder.
‘Too late. He’s already gone.’
Saskia lowered her gun.
‘So what now?’
Chapter Thirty-Five
They hurried to the control room. It reminded Saskia of a lecture theatre. It had been evacuated, like the rest of Met Four Base, but the telemetry on the transparent screen that overlooked the rest of the chamber was a blaring wall of warnings, diagrams, and flashing numbers.
‘Jennifer,’ said Saskia, ‘is there no way that the machine can bring me back to now—to 2023—if I go?’
&nb
sp; The young scientist looked at her. ‘Let me be absolutely clear: the insertion is a one-way trip. When you come back to 2023, it’ll be by the usual route. Are you having second thoughts?’
‘You sound like I have a choice.’ Saskia tried to smile.
‘Perhaps you do.’
‘Ute Schmidt didn’t have a choice when she was attacked. I, whoever I am, didn’t have a choice when I was killed. What choice does Saskia Brandt have? Klutikov is still out there, in our time, with orders to arrest me. Beckmann still wants me back. From where I stand, 2003 does not sound like a bad option.’ Saskia folded her arms. ‘Perhaps you should brief me on the procedure.’
Jennifer looked as though she might embrace Saskia, but her expression of pity transformed into something more steely as she turned towards the centrifuge.
‘We don’t have much time. There are automated systems designed to alert us to unauthorised use of the machine, and Hartfield’s jump is sure to have triggered them. Security will soon be here. The short version is this: We will accelerate you to a speed of forty metres per second. That’s one hundred and forty-four kilometres per hour.’
‘That is quite acceptable. I have been driven faster.’
David walked down the central aisle towards them. He was pale and sickly. ‘Cars drive in a straight line, dear. This will feel like the mother of all corners.’
‘Dad’s right,’ said Jennifer. ‘You will experience almost four gravities.’
‘What does that feel like?’
‘It’ll hurt. But you’ll be wearing a pressure suit and we’ll release you almost immediately.’
‘Through time?’
Jennifer smiled. ‘Through the wormhole—through time.’
Over the next few minutes, Jennifer patrolled the rows of computer screens. Occasionally, she called to her father and explained, in simple language, aspects of the procedure. Saskia remained at the prow of the control room. She watched the huge arm as it began to turn.