There was a knock at the door.
Jack frowned. No one ever knocked on his door.
As the only one left who could exercise freewill, it had to be Tally.
Jack quickly opened the door.
Two large Filipino gentlemen stood there, wearing the bright red waist jackets of Security. Jack didn’t understand what had brought them there. What had changed?
“Yes,” Jack said. “Can I help you?”
“Could you come with us, please, sir?” It wasn’t a question; it was an order.
Jack closed the door slightly, bracing his foot behind it to keep it still. “I’m sorry? What is this about?”
The man on the left, identical to his colleague in every way except for a wispy black beard, answered the question. “We’ve received reports that you assaulted a member of staff during the early hours of this morning. We need you to come and answer some questions for us, please.”
Jack balked. “That’s impossible. Whom am I supposed to have hurt?”
“Please, sir, if you could just cooperate.”
“Cooperate, my arse. I haven’t done anything.”
The two men tried to barge through into Jack’s cabin, but he held the door firm with his foot. The man on the right reached out to grab him but received a punch in the face for his efforts. Jack had been hoping to move past the violence of the past couple of weeks but it didn’t look like he was going to get the choice. He threw an overhand right at the remaining security guard and sent him to the floor to join his partner.
Then he ran – where the hell to, he did not know. He was in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and there was nowhere he could go that would be free of security’s reach. There was a chance he could take them all down, but that was only if the team of guards was small. For all Jack knew there could be a hundred members of security.
He took the elevator up to the Broadway Deck and hurried through the jewellery store and onto the balcony of the theatre in the room beyond. There was a couple drinking at the bar, but nobody else around. Jack considered sitting down in the corner and lying low, but it was too out in the open to remain undetected. He was at a total loss and close to panic. As a police officer, he was far happier being the pursuer than the pursued.
Who the hell had accused him of assault?
The answer dawned on Jack quickly. There was only one person who could have accused him, someone with a habit for making false allegations.
What the hell was Tally playing at?
Jack heard concerned voices coming from outside of the lounge’s main doors and decided it was time to get moving again. He headed out of the rear exit and entered the Lido Deck, knowing it would lead out past the 24-hour restaurant and out to the pool area. Once he got there, he would run out of ship and there’d be no place left to run.
As it turned out, Jack wasn’t even able to get that far. Spread out throughout the pool area was half-a-dozen security guards. They spotted Jack the moment he stepped out into the sunlight, and then came at him in unison. Jack held his hands up and decided there was no point in fighting them. At least by allowing himself to face charges, he would get the full lowdown on what exactly he’d been accused of. Hopefully he would also learn who had accused him.
Although he already had a pretty good idea.
***
Security took Jack down to the brig. He’d been there before; only this time they placed him in a small interview room instead of a cell. Walking in to meet him was Captain Marangakis. The man did not look happy.
“Captain,” Jack acknowledged with a small nod.
Marangakis did not take a seat at the table, but stood behind one of the chairs opposite. The man liked to remain in positions of authority, always looking down. “Are you Mr Jack Wardsley?”
“I am.”
“I’ve been informed that you’ve been accused of some pretty despicable behaviour aboard my ship.”
Jack leant forward across the desk. “I haven’t hurt anyone. Whoever has told you otherwise is a liar.”
Marangakis took a seat, yanking back a chair and dropping himself down with such force that it must have hurt. “The accusation has been made by a member of my crew. I see no reason why she would lie.”
“It’s a she, then?”
“I’m sure you know very well. You’ll be placed in the brig and handed over to the French authorities as soon as we make port.”
Jack laughed. “And when the fuck will that be? I’d love to know.”
The captain seemed confused, which was hardly surprising. “We’ll be there in a little over twelve hours. I’d be in no hurry if I were you.”
“We’ll see,” Jack said. “Do you want to show me to my room?”
The captain nodded to a guard standing by the door and the burly man went to take Jack by the arm.
“There’s no need to get grabby,” he said. “I’ll play nicely.”
He accompanied the guard to the cell next door and allowed himself to be locked inside. It was probably the safest place to be, anyway. Once the infected became violent they would wreak havoc on every area of the ship, but they wouldn’t be able to get inside the brig. After what had happened to Donovan, Jack was starting to worry that the spell was wearing off and that if the infected were to rip him apart, he might not get put back together again. Despite how much his life sucked, he didn’t want to die when he was so close to answers.
The guard left Jack to sit and contemplate his fate. His previous life of walking the streets as a policeman by day and drinking himself into a stupor by night, now seemed like a distant memory; a fuzzy recollection of a vivid dream. It would once have seemed impossible to think it, but Jack was actually starting to miss the life he had all but lost. Given the chance, he would make more of it then he had. Perhaps that was something positive to come out of this hell.
Jack lay down on the room’s uncomfortable cot and closed his eyes.
He awoke a few hours later to the sound of screams and chaos, the noise of passengers being torn apart. The eyebleeders were doing their thing, as punctual as ever. Jack closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Day 236
Security took Jack away again, citing the same allegation.
Day 245
For over a week, the ship’s guards had come to arrest Jack, and every day he had gone with them peacefully. His intention was to see how long Tally – if she were in fact responsible – would keep it up. It appeared, however, that she was content to have him detained indefinitely. For some reason she wanted his movements aboard the ship restricted.
But why?
Day 246
Jack got out of bed quickly and hurried to get dressed. He selected some jeans and a white t-shirt from deep within his luggage, along with a baseball cap. He hoped the change of clothing would allow him to move undetected by whoever it was making accusations about him.
He slipped on his trainers and rushed out of his cabin. It had only been a matter of minutes since he’d awoken but it was quick enough to get out of there before the security goons came for him. How long he could evade them, he did not know, but hopefully it would give him some time to find Tally and ask her some pretty serious questions.
He took the elevator down to the cargo bay, intending to make sure that Donovan was truly dead, but also planning to give the area a more thorough search to see if he could find anything helpful.
The cloying smell crept over him immediately, fingering at his nostrils. The odour was death. Jack had come across it many times before, mostly at the homes of lonely pensioners left to perish in their ice-cold flats. It was the smell of a corpse settling into the fabric of its surroundings.
Donovan still lay dead at the back of the cargo area and had now started to decompose. His flesh was waxy and mottled and his lips had started to fall away from his gums, leaving behind a sneer. The stink coming off of him was putrescence mixed with faeces and it made Jack’s eyes water. He stepped over the body and examined the metal walkway bey
ond. There was nothing noteworthy he could see, but from the way Donovan’s body was angled it seemed that he had been doing something with one of the metal footlockers. When Jack tried to open the nearest one he found that it was locked, so he searched Donovan’s pockets, cringing at the feeling of the gelatinous flesh beneath the clothing, and eventually found a set of keys in the man’s breast pocket.
Jack tried the keys one after another until he found one that fitted the nearest footlocker. The lid was heavy and he had to use both hands to lift it up. Once it was open, Jack couldn’t believe his eyes.
The crate was full of grenades, packed into a bed of foam. They looked like standard NATO-issue HE grenades, and when Jack checked the other footlockers, he found that they too were full of explosives and, in several cases, assault rifles and side arms.
Whether or not Donovan was a bad person, or just a man doing his job, nothing good ever came from giving people guns. If these weapons were to reach Tunisia, they would most certainly result in people’s deaths.
But did the guns have anything to do with the virus?
Jack’s head began to ache again. It was time for a drink. Time to think things through.
***
Jack chose to visit the Voyager’s Lounge. It was obvious that security was searching everywhere for him, and out of all of the places onboard, this was one of the quietest. So far Jack’s low-key disguise had managed to keep him undetected. He’d even managed to walk right past a guard on the Promenade Deck. It was likely that his accuser had described the clothing Jack he usually wore – red t-shirt and khaki shorts – and not the clothes he was actually now wearing.
Jack had been in the Voyager’s Lounge for a couple of hours and had downed enough whisky to make his body feel warm and content. He had made good use of the peace and calm to think about what his next move was, and somehow the whisky helped. It was now pretty clear that the only person who truly had the answers he needed was the elusive pathwalker. Jack still had no idea who it was – or even what it was – but he was going to make it his main priority from now on to find out. It was something easier said than done, though, especially with security on his back each day. There was even a chance that Tally had made up the whole story about pathwalkers just to mess with him.
Joma turned up for his shift, signifying that evening had arrived. Jack went up to order another drink an, thankfully, it didn’t seem that the friendly bartender knew that Jack was wanted for arrest.
“What can Joma get you, sir?” he asked happily.
“I think I fancy a pint, please.”
Joma nodded. This time he didn’t offer to pour the drink on the house. Obviously, he didn’t recognise Jack with the baseball cap on. He stepped in front of the lager tap and began to pour the frothy draught into a spotless pint glass. It was then that Jack noticed something a little weird.
“What happened to your hand, Joma?”
Joma looked down at the wound on his hand and tried to dismiss it as nothing. “Joma burn himself in kitchen.”
Jack looked closer. “Looks bad. Is that…is that wax?”
“No, is just cream for burn, Mr Jack.”
The wound on Joma’s hand was red-raw mixed with a spotty patch of gleaming white substance. It looked exactly like a burn caused by molten wax. Jack stared at Joma and noticed something else. The man had aged at least ten years since the day they’d first met. Joma was no longer around forty – he looked over fifty. And when he had called him ‘Mr Jack’ he made it clear he remembered Jack – so why no offer of a free pint this time?
Jack’s eyes went wide. “You’re the pathwalker.”
Joma seemed struck by an invisible blow. It seemed like an appropriate reaction for someone who had just had their cover blown.
He nodded at Jack and seemed defeated. “I think we should go somewhere and talk.”
“No shit,” Jack said.
***
In a backroom behind the Voyager Lounge bar, Jack took a seat in stunned silence on a small leather sofa. Joma tipped away the pint he’d poured Jack and went and got him something stronger.
He handed over the new, smaller glass and took a seat on the couch beside Jack. “You’re a whisky man, right?”
“You should know by now. You’ve served me enough times.”
Joma shrugged. “You haven’t been by for a while.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, cutting straight to the point.
“I think you know,” was Joma’s reply, no longer speaking in the third-person.
“I haven’t got a clue about anything. All I know is that some kind of flu gets loose onboard every night and kills everyone. Every single night, over and over and over again. Oh, yeah, and not to forget that there’s a small arsenal of weapons in the cargo bay, and someone keeps accusing me of rape – most likely someone who I thought was my friend.”
Joma smiled and actually seemed to find Jack’s frustrations amusing. He raised one palm as if wanting to summon calm upon them both. “I apologise for the turmoil I have brought down on you, Jack, but I assure you that it was very necessary. It was only meant to be you who was conscious of the true reality, but there is a gypsy onboard that I did not know about.”
“You mean Tally?”
Joma nodded. “Usually I would be able to sense her kind, but she is not an avid follower of her own ancestry – it made her spiritual aura…diluted. If she was a regular practitioner of the magiks then I would have sensed her immediately.”
Jack frowned. “Is Tally some sort of witch?”
Joma shook his head and laughed. “No, no. She is just from a people blessed with a natural resistance to magic. Her ancestors were probably close to what you call witches, but their methods are all but lost now. I have come across very few Romany that truly remember their old ways.”
Jack rubbed at his forehead and sighed. Things were getting into mumbo jumbo territory again and he didn’t want his natural cynicism to kick in and cloud his ability to listen carefully. “What about Donovan?” he asked.
“You mean the American man running around the ship like a drunken cowboy?”
“Yeah, until somebody murdered him.”
Joma’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows lowered.
“You didn’t know? I found him dead yesterday in the cargo hold.”
Joma nodded as if something had clicked into place. “The lower deck of the ship was outside the range of my spell. The hull of the ship is stuck in time, but the cargo area within is a vacuum where time exists as normal. There was not supposed to be anyone down there, but it would appear this…Donovan…was an unfortunate stowaway.”
“He was transporting weapons and cash to Tunisia to bribe the Government on behalf of Black Remedy.”
Joma shrugged. “Such things do not surprise nor concern me. They are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. What is more worrying is that somebody killed this man in the hold. The only possible suspect is-”
“Tally. I’ve already started to come to terms with that.”
“It could be no one else. If there were another onboard outside of the spell, I would know of it. Other than you, she is the only one.”
Jack sipped his whisky and looked down at the carpet. He still couldn’t fathom why Tally would murder Donovan. He couldn’t imagine the petite, beautiful girl committing such a brutal crime, and understood no reason why.
“Why is she doing this, Joma? Killing Donovan and trying to set me up so I have to go into hiding? I don’t see what she has to gain.”
“I see many things, Jack, but unfortunately I cannot see a person’s motivations for what they do. Perhaps she seeks to stop you from succeeding in your task.”
“Task? What task? If I am here for a reason, I would really like to know it. Why you didn’t just come find me on day one and tell me.”
“That would have been against the rules. A person cursed with the ability to see across the pathways is forbidden from taking direct action to change future events
. I must let them play out, but you are not bound by those same rules. You can change things, Jack.”
“You’re saying you can’t get involved, but you can stop time?”
“Not stopping time-“
“Yeah, yeah, resetting it. I know.”
“By resetting the day, I am not directly altering events. I am just allowing the possibility for them to play out differently. You are the X factor that will decide where the future will lead.”
Jack stood up and stretched his legs. The backroom was tiny and featured only the sofa and a side table, so he walked up to the wall and rested his forehead against it. “Why me?”
“Because you’re alone.”
Jack turned back around. “What?”
“If you had a family onboard, you would not be willing to do the things you have done to find answers. You would have been focused only on their safety. Slowly, over time, you would have become broken by their inability to break free of the spell.”
“So the only reason I’m in this hell is because my life was already a tragic mess?”
“In a way, yes, but I also sensed that you were a protector – someone who values human life.”
Jack sniggered. “Shows what you know. I killed a bunch of people before I cam aboard this shop.”
Joma nodded. “I know this, Jack. When a man takes a life it colours his soul. I saw death on you the moment you boarded. Did they deserve it?”
Jack didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then that proves you are a man willing to do what is necessary and what is right. My assessment of you was correct from the very beginning.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Joma stood up and walked over to Jack, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Save the world, my friend. That is what you are supposed to do. How, exactly, I do not know, but once you find a way, all will become clear.”
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