‘No, Commander,’ Youssef spoke into his com patch. ‘It was an experiment that we completely underrated. Although it has answered a good few questions.’
‘Do you need anything from me, sir?’ McFadden asked.
‘Can you deploy a containment field around the stricken area? Also, I’m going to need another Hadron Collider in lab, erm, let me think…’ He rolled his eyes as he mapped out the labs in his head. ‘In lab eight. It’s more or less the right size, and I need to get back up there asap. Are there any casualties, apart from the obvious?’
‘No further injuries or fatalities recorded sir,’ Amanda spoke from the crowd of displaced scientists.
‘Fantastic! Well, Commander, thank you for your hospitality. I’m sorry that it was only a fleeting visit, but could you send us back up please?’
‘Doing it right now, sir. I hope the experiment is a success.’
‘It may not look that way, Commander, but I think it has been.’
He felt himself falling and dissolving again, before reappearing, to his relief, in a corridor outside the containment field of OP One.
The massive breach was like a mouth to Hell; the clear space beyond was like staring into the Abyss. From where he stood, he had an unhindered view of the night sky above them, with a view of Earth below. It was beautiful, mesmerising, and dangerous.
As he regarded the damage, he did some quick calculations in his head. He estimated that the Higgs Storm had magnified by, at least, twenty times. ‘All this from one apple sent back one hour, for five minutes. Imagine what ten one-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound women, sent back a few hundred years, for one year could produce.’
He shuddered at the thought.
He watched as the others began to reappear around him. ‘Jacqueline,’ he shouted as his colleague appeared next to the shimmering hole in the bulkhead. She jumped back, startled at the gaping maw before her. ‘That’s how they’re getting the extra Storm they need. They’re going to bring the women back, and a huge amount of Higgs Storm will follow. I need you and the rest of the team in my personal room, immediately.’
‘Sir,’ Amanda cut in. ‘Your personal room no longer exists.’
‘Oh, right, erm, are there any conference rooms still existing?’
Amanda replied with a small smile. ‘Yes, sir, room two on the second floor.’
Youssef nodded. ‘Room two it is. Amanda, send a crew to Lab eight to install the equipment that is being teleported there by McFadden. Get hold of Farley too. I’m going to need his skills with the plan I’m formulating.’
30.
London. 1888
AARON KOSMINSKI WAS home, but he couldn’t settle. He had absolutely no intention of cutting anyone’s hair today. There were bigger issues rushing through his head, and the concentration needed to style a gentleman’s hair wasn’t flowing for him. So, he closed the barber’s shop and went out. He was dressed for a warm August afternoon and ready for some revelling on this bank holiday evening.
Even though it was still early, the people in and around the pubs of Spitalfields were already drunk, and most of them were either looking for a fight, another drink, or someone to engage in lewd sexual practices with. Most people that was, except him. He was not looking for any of these things.
He was looking for murder!
All he wanted was to rid his beloved city of the ten witches that had infested it. He fancied he might start his business this very evening. He knew that for most of the day, Martha would be in the company of men. Businessmen, soldiers, sailors, policemen; but very soon she would be in the company of him, and he would be the last of them… forever.
He hoped tonight that he might get a chance to use his, specially purchased, new toy. He had seen it in a window of the curiosity shop opposite his barber’s, and it had called to him. It was an obsidian cane with a silver handle. When the handle was tugged, it produced a long, sharp rapier blade. The instant he saw it, he knew that he had to have it, to use on the witches, along with his trusted razorblade.
As darkness drew across the city, feeling like a real dandy with his cane, he’d followed Martha into a bar called The White Swan in Aldgate. All day there had been men passing through the pub, making suggestions towards the women, Martha included. Most of them she laughed off, others she took advantage of. Right now, she was in the company of another woman. This one he didn’t recognise. He guessed that she might just be another guttersnipe, another product of this godforsaken city, but not a witch. They were whispering to each other conspiratorially, and their interests lay in two soldiers who were drunk at the bar.
He watched as the soldiers made their way over to the women, who marvelled as they flashed their cash to them. It was obvious they were all thinking there would be more to this dalliance. Sipping at his brew, he pretended to be drunk, like the other foolish revellers in this den of iniquity, but all the while his dark eyes never left Martha and her flirting and seducing.
After maybe an hour of this horseplay, or should that be whore’s play, he thought with a humourless chuff, all four members of the party left together, and less than two minutes later, he followed, ignoring the salacious, glowering looks of other women in the bar.
One grabbed him as he left. ‘Ello, love,’ she drooled. ‘You wantin’ some company to warm your cold bed, eh?’
Without even looking at her, he flicked her off her arm and stormed past.
‘Alright, you old wanker, spit on yer then!’ she shouted, hocking up a mouthful of phlegm and spitting it in his direction. She missed but laughed anyway. Tomorrow she would be telling tales of the strange man with the expensive cape and odd walking stick.
Out on the street, he cursed the old wretch who had grabbed him, as the slight delay had lost him his mark. The street was almost as busy as the pub had been. There must have been some ships in the docks, as it was littered with sailors, all of them out for a good time and to spend their bounty on whatever they could get. He liked this fact, as when they found Martha’s body tomorrow morning, no doubt one of them would get the blame for it, and he would be free to move on to his next victim.
With his fists clenching in his thin leather gloves, he turned the corner onto Commercial Street, leading towards the marketplace. That was when he saw them. The small group had stopped and were talking. He stopped himself, pretended to show interest in a shop window while glancing secretive looks over at them. After a short exchange, they paired off and split up. Martha disappeared up an alleyway that led to George’s Yard, where she had been living. The other two, the woman he didn’t recognise as one of the ten, went in the opposite direction, passing him by, but ignoring him completely.
This was his chance. Fate had brought her to him, and now he would take her.
He followed Martha and the soldier up the alley, listening to them giggle and laugh, before stopping in the shadows of the yard. He watched as the soldier showed her a purse and jingled it, then begin to kiss and grab at her.
With a deft flick of her arms, she was behind him. The drunken soldier didn’t have a clue what was happening. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and Kosminski watched as the poor, unsuspecting man silently began to thrash, and kick, before falling limp to the wet cobblestone street. A dazed look of desperation haunted his face.
After a few moments, he fell still.
She released him, and his dead body crumpled to the floor. With a deft look around her, she bent down and retrieved his full purse.
Kosminski saw this as his window of opportunity. He unsheathed the rapier blade concealed within his new cane and readied himself for the attack. A euphoria was coursing through him, and his senses felt hyper aware. Blood was pumping, and his stomach was churning, in a delightful way. He felt like he could do anything.
He felt God-like!
He moved forwards out from the shadows; the handle of his blade gripped tight in his leather gloved hand. That was when he saw something, something that caused him to halt his activity.
&nbs
p; There was someone at the other end of the alleyway.
Martha had noticed him too.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked, there was real alarm in her voice. ‘What do you mean by lurking in the shadows back there?’
‘I’ve come to stop you, Tabram,’ the figure whispered.
Kosminski slunk back into the shadows and watched as, whoever it was produced something out of the folds of his cloak. From his distance, and in the shadows, the object looked like a ball with a short nozzle and a glowing blue light at the end of it. As he revealed it to Martha, the light it produced illuminated the man’s face, and for the first time, Kosminski saw his likeness.
He had thick black hair and a heavy moustache. There was something about him that looked odd, like he shouldn’t be here; like he was a man out of place in this world.
There was also a familiarity about him, and it took a few moments for Kosminski to recognise what it was. He’s one of them, he thought. The horror of the situation dawned on him. A male version, and that device he’s holding must be an instrument of his witchcraft.
He flattened himself against the wall that was shading him and re-sheathed his weapon. He watched the proceedings with interest. As the man advanced on Martha, he assumed she would run away, back down the alley towards him, shouting and screaming. But she didn’t. She surprised him by standing her ground, staring the man down. He noticed that she wasn’t just looking at him, she seemed focused on the sphere he was holding too.
As Kosminski watched, his curiosity piqued when he realised that she was not standing still. Her body was twitching, as if something—some unseen force—was stopping her from moving.
As the mystery man scrutinised the yard for witnesses, Kosminski pressed himself deeper into the shadows to avoid detection. It was a successful manoeuvre, the man obviously didn’t see him, as he began to advance upon the stricken woman. He pressed something on the sphere, and there was an audible whirring sound. The light on the end of the nozzle turned green, and a strange illumination issued from it. He pointed the light at Martha, and her body was instantly bathed in the eerie green light.
Within the light, he saw a bright purple blip that appeared to be moving around her body. The only part of her that was free to move was her head. As she looked down towards her own body, she said something Kosminski couldn’t hear, then the mystery man delved his free hand into the folds of his cloak and produced another strange object. Again, it was a small hand-held device, and although he had never seen one in real life, Kosminski thought it looked like a gun. Only it wasn’t realistic, it looked like a child’s toy.
It was cumbersome in his hands, and it was glowing red at the end of its double barrels. There were two levers at the top that the man activated with his thumbs, and Kosminski was able to see, due mainly to the glow of the strange lights, that it was trigger activated.
The mystery man’s face showed little emotion as he pointed the weapon. A red light beamed from it into the green glow, where it began to pursue the purple dot around Martha’s body. It was a cat and mouse chase for a few moments until a pinging noise broke the silence of the scene. The red beam had locked onto the purple blip. The man pressed another trigger, and the beam flashed thicker for a moment.
Kosminski couldn’t believe what he was watching as the light tore through Martha’s flesh, like a hot knife through butter.
Her face screamed. Her mouth was open wide, as were her eyes, but no noise came forth.
The blip had not, as he had first thought, been caught in the intense beam, it was still moving. The man shot another ray from the gun, then another, and another. The beams were literarily ripping the woman apart. But still the purple signal avoided them. As the light tore the woman’s flesh, her eyes rolled back into her head, and Kosminski could tell she was close to losing consciousness. He couldn’t understand how she was still on her feet, as the beams continued to cut deeper and deeper into her body.
The attack continued with a frenzy of deep cuts for a short while, he guessed that it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but watching, it felt longer, almost like a lifetime. His hand covered his mouth, he wasn’t sure if it was to stop him from screaming or from vomiting, or maybe both, as he witnessed Martha’s body torn to shreds before his very eyes.
Finally, the red beam caught its purple prey.
He was transfixed now as the blip grew brighter and brighter. His eyes widened in horror, and more than a little perverse voyeurism, as a small glowing ball was removed from Martha’s abdomen and allowed to hover in the air before her, still held in the infernal red beam. As the green light faded, the man reached out and grabbed the floating ball. Martha’s eyes focused on it briefly before her head dropped. Kosminski would have sworn an oath, there and then, that he saw a smile twitch over her mouth before the small spark of life that was left in her eyes slipped away.
Once the glowing ball was in his hand, the sphere opened, and he placed it inside. The green light encasing Martha blinked once, before dissipating, and her body fell to the floor.
She was dead!
Her mutilated corpse lay unmoving on the cold, dark ground, next to the forgotten body of her soldier friend.
The man put both devices away within the folds of his cape. He looked down, once, at the body, before disappearing down the other end of the alley to the yard.
Kosminski couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed. He waited a moment, bathed in the beautiful shadows, before delicately making his way to Martha’s corpse. He gave her leaking body a small nudge with his foot. She was unresponsive.
The depth of mutilation to her flesh sickened him. He raised his hand to his mouth again, this time in an attempt to quell the hot bile he could feel rising in his stomach, then he turned on his heels, and ran.
Even though his mission had been successful—the death of Martha Tabram was confirmed—he felt cheated that it hadn’t been him who had killed her. Also, the violence that had ravaged her body until she died unnerved him.
He was scared, but deeply incensed at the same time.
31.
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Inspector Frank Abberline entered Scotland Yard police station to an excited buzz. He smiled as he watched the confusion, even though deep down he was dreading whatever it was that could cause such a fuss. He made his way through the melee and into his office without asking, and he sighed deeply as he pulled his chair into his desk. He always liked to get his paperwork done early and out of the way of any business that would, inevitably, fall into his lap.
This morning he was not even going to be allowed to load his typewriter.
‘Inspector, oh thank the lord you’re in,’ puffed an out of breath, uniformed officer who had seen him enter. ‘There’s been a murder, murder I tell you. It’s a mess, sir, a bad one, and no mistake.’
Abberline looked up, rolling his eyes. ‘Nothing like a good murder in the morning to make your day that little bit more exciting, eh?’ he asked the officer. ‘So, there’s murder afoot you say! Pray, tell me where and who?’
‘Well, she ain’t got no name yet, sir. We’re getting a sketch done as we speak, but that takes time now, don’t it? We do have one of them photograph thingies sir,’ he said dropping a black and white picture of the victim on his desk. ‘It looks like she was done for up there in Spitalfields. In George’s Yard to be specific. That’s your old stomping ground, off Whitechapel, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Thank you, officer,’ Abberline interjected. ‘I’ll take it from here.’
The relieved looking officer backed out of the office, offering a small salute.
Abberline picked up the photograph and looked at it, making note of the wounds that the woman had sustained. Multiple lacerations and some mutilation. ‘Nasty,’ he hissed as he breathed in through his teeth. He then allowed his eyes to wander up to the woman’s face.
It was the face of a woman he would not forget in a hurry.
He held the photograph out before him and sat dow
n. His thoughts travelled back to his stakeout beneath the bench outside The Ten Bells pub. His mind’s eye cast back to the purple lights, then the murder of the reporter.
‘Officer Bellis,’ he shouted. ‘Could you come back in here, please?’ The same officer who handed him the photograph popped his head around the door.
‘Sir?’
‘Fetch me my hat and my investigating satchel. We’re off to Whitechapel to unravel an enigma.’
‘Sir?’ Officer Bellis stared at him, there was a vacant expression on his face.
‘Get my bag, I’m going out,’ he ordered the uniformed officer, shaking his head.
32.
Orbital Platform One. 2288
‘DID WE MANAGE to scan the apple before the Higgs Storm destroyed everything?’ Youssef asked while sat at a large table in conference room twelve.
‘We did. The scan was set to run automatically when the apple returned, and all information recorded is stored directly to the cloud. I should be able to punch it up here.’ Jacqueline was using her portable portal. She sent the report up to the big screen at the end of the room.
All essential personnel were present. Everyone was still shocked by what had happened in the lab, but Youssef had told them that there would be time enough to grieve for their fallen comrades when the task at hand was complete.
This seemed to focus them.
The screen showed the molecular structure of the apple, with the quantum slug still in situ. ‘We can see that there was no discernible damage to the apple in its journey to the past and back again; but one thing we can tell is that it has aged. It would seem that time passes the same back there as it does here, if that makes any sense to anyone.’
Youssef was nodding.
She gave him a quick glance, as if requesting his permission to continue. ‘So, we know that if these women survived their journey into the past, then they’re living a life there within a similar time structure to us here,’ she concluded.
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