TimeRipper

by D E McCluskey

  He looked at his friend for a moment before frantically pressing buttons on his portal. ‘I’m losing them. Millwood’s slug has entered into the time-stream, but I don’t know where they are.’

  ~~~~

  London. 1888

  Abberline watched, helpless, as Carrie viciously attacked herself with the beam. He could see the slug evading it with ease, but one stroke got lucky. She must have nicked the corner of it, and Abberline noticed the purple glow dim. ‘What’s happening at your end?’ he shouted, hoping his communicator was still working.

  ‘We’re trying to boost the signal, what’s going on there?’ asked the male voice from the other end. Vincent thought it must have been Kevin.

  ‘She’s attempting to remove her own slug. I can’t move to stop her. I feel like I’m glued to the floor or something.’

  ‘You’re caught in a temporal flux similar to the one you experienced at the start of your mission.’

  ‘Brilliant…’ Abberline replied.

  ~~~~

  Orbital Platform One. 2288

  ‘I’m losing Carrie’s signal completely,’ Youssef shouted over the noise of the collider. ‘It’s going, going…’ He sighed and banged his head against the portal screen. He turned, shaking his head. ‘It’s gone.’ he said, stepping away from the console. His hair was plastered to his face as tears of sweat trickled down his cheeks. ‘I don’t have them on my portal anymore. Wherever they’ve gone, they’re stuck there.’

  Jacqueline and Kevin were silent as they watched their leader’s misery.

  She turned and punched in a few commands on her own portal, trying some backdoors that she knew about, some she had even programmed in herself, but it was all to no avail. She could see nothing from either Carrie or Vincent in any of the records.

  The silence hung in the room like a physical presence.

  After a few moments, Youssef broke it. ‘The mission was a success, relatively speaking,’ he said in a heavy voice with his head hanging low. ‘We got most of the devices back, thanks to you and to Vincent.’ The last words were directed towards Jacqueline.

  She picked up her backpack and opened it. She removed seven flattened metallic pieces and threw them to the floor. ‘Seven there, plus the two within the prisoners. That gives us nine out of ten.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’ Kevin asked a little unsure, his gaze flicking between Youssef and Jacqueline.

  ‘It means that, theoretically, she has the means to return to our time, and if she does, she could still produce Higgs Storm. She still has the potential to target an EA facility or a densely populated area. I guess we’ll just all have to monitor for temporal activity for the rest of our lives.’ Youssef walked over to Jacqueline and wrapped his arms around her, giving her a fatherly kiss on her forehead. She nodded, accepting the show of emotion. He then clapped Kevin on the back before slowly walking out of the room.

  72.

  London. 1888

  Three-thirty a.m., on the morning of February 25th, eighteen-eighty-eight, the doors of the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary were barged open and three men blustered inside, shouting and hollering. All three of them were covered in blood. They were carrying a bundle of clothing between them; the bundle was leaving behind a dripping trail of thick red liquid.

  ‘Someone come quickly, somebody help,’ one of the men shouted as the bloodied arm of a woman lolled out of the sheets she was being carried in.

  ‘I think she’s dying,’ another man shouted.

  Two doctors made their way, lazily, out of the rest room where they had been drinking and playing cards.

  ‘Get her onto this table,’ one of them shouted as he directed the men towards a long table in the centre of the room.

  The other doctor began removing all the objects from the table and placing them onto the floor. Rolling his eyes, he turned towards the room they had just come from and bellowed. ‘We’ve got another casualty. It looks like I’m going to need some bandages and some alcohol for the wounds.’

  The woman was unceremoniously dumped onto the table as the second doctor, now armed with the supplies, arrived. He put the bandages to one side and took a long swig from the alcohol bottle. ‘They look like knife wounds,’ he said, stating the obvious. He then looked towards the three bloodied men who were standing to one side, not really knowing what to do. ‘Where did you find this woman?’ he asked.

  ‘White’s Row, sir,’ the first man answered—he had removed his cap and was now wringing it in his hands. ‘I swear, we were working away on some of the windows, on account of them falling out, you see, and then there was a blinding light and a load of wind.’

  ‘Then this purple smoke appeared leaving this gal lying there, all covered in blood like. I swear on me daughter’s life, she was not there one moment and then was the next. We wasted no time getting her here, I can tell yer,’ he continued.

  ‘Did you see who made the wounds?’ the second doctor asked while examining the woman.

  All three men shook their heads, none of them wanting to be any more involved than they already were.

  The second doctor was sniffing the men who had brought her in. ‘What’s her name? Does anyone know?’ he asked, his voice sounding a little blurry.

  ‘We think her name might be Millwood. At least I think that’s what she said. It sounded like Annie or Carrie or something like that,’ the third man answered, as he continued wringing his cloth cap before him.

  ‘Right, I’ll need to clean these wounds,’ the doctor shouted, dismissing the men and directing his shout at the woman on the table. ‘Miss Millwood, you’ll feel a sting, but that’s a good thing. It’ll be the alcohol cleansing your wounds.’ He looked up at the other doctor, who was taking another drink from the bottle. ‘Do you think she might be able to get some of that?’

  The second doctor poured some of the brown liquid onto the woman’s lower abdomen, and to everyone’s surprise, she screamed, sitting up, aggravating her existing wounds, causing them to bleed harder.

  Eventually, the two doctors were able to pacify her. They managed to get the stricken woman to lie back down on the table and were able to stem her bleeding while simultaneously feeding her laudanum to ease the pain.

  Eventually, Carrie Millwood slept.

  73.

  A FEW WEEKS after the appearance of the mysterious woman in White’s Row, another bright light and purple wind heralded the arrival of a confused and disorientated Abberline. When the wind died, taking the white light with it, he fell onto his knees and vomited. The maelstrom he had just traversed made him sick to his stomach. He tried to stand, but was unsuccessful, his head was reeling from the ordeal. His eyesight was blurred and all he could hear was a loud whining noise drilling in his head.

  The cramps in the pit of his stomach felt like they were tearing him apart. As he continued to retch, nothing came out.

  Two men wearing work clothes ran to his aid. ‘Mister, are you all right? Can you hear me?’

  He tried to talk but couldn’t form any words.

  ‘He’s hot, so bleeding hot,’ a voice said as rough hands grabbed him.

  Sweat was dripping from his brow. He lifted his hand to his face, but it looked distorted and grotesque in his blurred vision.

  ‘You’re coming with us, mate,’ came another voice from God only knew where. ‘We’re gonna get you to the hospital sharpish, I can tell ya that for nuthin’.’

  He felt hands underneath his armpits. As they lifted him off the floor, searing pain coursed through his flesh where he was manhandled. There was a strange sensation of being dragged. For how long, or how far, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t even tell in what direction he was being taken. He felt himself hoisted onto a cart and driven away.

  He could make out a blue sky. The heat of the day felt like it was cracking his skin. He could feel his flesh blistering and peeling from his face.

  ‘We found this fella on the floor in Whites Row. He doesn’t look in a good way,�
� a voice above him spoke.

  ‘We’re gonna leave him here with you, as we don’t want any of what he’s got, that’s for sure,’ another voice, from somewhere he couldn’t see, filtered in through the whining in his head.

  There was more agonising pain as the rough hands grabbed him again, then stars in his eyes as he was dumped onto a hard-stone floor.

  ‘Get this man into a bed, straight away,’ someone shouted as he was dragged again somewhere else. His protests of torture were ignored as his clothes were cut from him. Everywhere anything touched his skin, it felt like it was sinking through his flesh and wrapping itself around his bones.

  ‘Laudanum… get me laudanum, now! Make it a big shot.’

  A bottle was shoved into his face.

  ‘Here, have yourself some of this,’ a male voice growled. ‘It’ll stop you from feeling anything, for at least the next few hours.’

  The contents of the bottle stank, and as the bitter tasting liquid was forced down his burning throat, he thought he was going to vomit it all back up again.

  Thankfully, it somehow managed to stay down. After that, he felt nothing.

  ~~~~

  Orbital Platform One. 2288

  ‘We’ve got him! I can’t believe it. Vincent Clarence’s quantum signal has just flashed up on the portal,’ Kevin said looking at his screen in disbelief.

  ‘Where is he?’ Jacqueline asked anxiously.

  ‘You’ll never believe this, but he’s back where he should have gone originally. Whites Row, London. March twenty-first, eighteen-eighty-eight. How could that be?’ Kevin shook his head in wonder.

  ‘Maybe he’s gone back in time and is now his same younger self,’ she hoped.

  ‘No, I don’t think the paradoxical laws would allow that. Time continues on.’ Youssef stopped dead after speaking his sentence.

  ‘Oh, shit…’ both Kevin and Youssef cursed at the same time.

  ‘What?’ Jacqueline asked, her eyes switching between the two men.

  ‘The paradoxical law! If he’s gone back in time to March twenty-first, eighteen-eighty-eight, that means he already exists in that time.’ Youssef shook his head as he looked at her. ‘That law won’t allow it to happen. It’ll kill him, and soon.’

  ‘Get him back, now,’ she ordered.

  ‘Hold on, we never got around to my ‘Oh Shit’ statement.’ Kevin continued. ‘Carrie Millwood’s there too. I’m tracing his signal, and I’ve inadvertently picked up hers. Its weak, and it looks damaged, but it’s her. For some reason, I can’t lock onto it. It’s disrupting Vincent’s too.’ He was punching commands into his portal keyboard. ‘I can’t lock onto either of them. One of us is going to have to go back and retrieve them.’

  ‘Inject me now, I’m going back for him,’ Jacqueline demanded offering up her arm. Youssef nodded his agreement. ‘I can take out Millwood at the same time.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you to take back. You can’t just waltz in there and slice her open; you’d be arrested before you even touched the slug. You’ll need to take this.’ He handed her a long shaft with a trigger on one end and a nozzle on the other.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘All you need to do is press it against her skin and pull the trigger. It’ll release a tracker that will eventually get to the slug. It might take a few days, as they’re evasive bastards, but it’ll get it in the end, and it will kill it. With any luck, it’ll kill her too. Oh, and there’s a special feature added.’

  Jacqueline looked at the weapon in her hands. She weighed it and gripped it before looking at Kevin with more than a hint of a smile on her face.

  ‘Press this … here!’ he pointed to a small button on one side, a little further away from the min trigger. ‘It releases a bunch of enzymes into her blood stream that are attracted to her cerebral cortex. Once they reach her brain, the bitch will be flooded with the memories of everything that’s happened, or in her time will happen. I wouldn’t want her living, thinking she’s gotten away with anything.’

  Jacqueline smiled as she holstered the weapon. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, it was your team who’ve been working on it. They thought it was a little more humane than our trusty extractor here. Not that she deserves humane, understand. That’s why I got them to add the memory shot.’

  Youssef injected her with a slug and located her on the portal. ‘OK, we’re all set to go. Get back there, do whatever you need to do with that thing to Carrie, get hold of Vincent, and we’ll bring you both right back. You got that?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ she replied as she climbed into the racetrack.

  ‘Firing up the Hadron Collider now,’ Kevin shouted.

  ~~~~

  London. 1888

  ‘Well, we’ve patched up your wounds,’ the doctor in charge of the infirmary said, checking Carrie’s pulse and looking at his pocket watch. ‘Are you sure you want to leave us? You’re a very lucky woman, Annie. I would like you to stay a little longer, until your wounds have completely healed, but we have no reason to keep you in. Are you sure that you don’t know who did this to you? He might still be at large, waiting for you.’

  ‘No doctor,’ she whispered; the wounds in her neck had damaged her vocal cords and it was still painful for her to talk. ‘He was a complete stranger, drunk I presume. I didn’t even get a good look at him.’

  Somehow, she had survived the lacerations to her body, and all she wanted now was to get out of this hospital and somehow get back to twenty-two-eighty-eight. She needed to start everything all over again.

  ‘Nurse, can you arrange for the dismissal of Ms Millwood, please? Get her clothes and any belongings. Thank you so much,’ the doctor called as he took his leave of his patient.

  Carrie smiled at him calling her Annie. The men bringing her in must have misheard her when they asked her name, and she was liking the anonymity her new name gave her.

  She eased herself out of bed and began to shuffle around the room, stretching her legs before she was set free.

  A commotion within the corridor outside her room caught her interest. There were shouts and screams, and she poked her head out of the room to see what was happening.

  What she saw made her heart beat faster.

  A hospital porter was wheeling a man on a gurney along the corridor. The man looked in a bad way as he lay on his back. His arms were wrapped around himself, and he was shaking uncontrollably.

  But this wasn’t what was causing the commotion.

  Something else was happening at the far end of the corridor. Something a lot more interesting, not only to her.

  A bright light was forming, seemingly from out of nowhere, a bright, purple, light that she recognised.

  ‘Nurse,’ she croaked. ‘Nurse, can you get my clothes now, please.’ She wanted to shout as she watched the familiar light grow, but her throat was too tight. ‘Nurse, nurse!’ She turned away from the light and back into the ward, but everyone inside was agog at the phenomenon.

  A small wind whipped around the corridor as a cloud of purple smoke appeared around the light.

  Everyone who could run, did.

  Chaos ensued.

  A young woman stepped out of the smoke. Carrie’s face fell as she recognised her; it was the same one who had hunted down and killed her colleagues.

  She could do nothing but watch as Jacqueline turned towards the man on the gurney. She frowned as the newcomer recognised him; she leaned in and touched his arm...

  That must be Abberline, Carrie thought, as she stepped through the door into the corridor.

  It was moslty deserted now, everyone who could, had left the scene, screaming holy murder and crossing themselves against the unholy spirits that had just arrived from another dimension.

  Carrie stepped into the corridor and Jacqueline turned to face her.

  ~~~~

  Abberline sat slowly up on his gurney. His breathing was laboured, and Jacqueline could see that he was in considerable pain. He was clawin
g at his own skin, ripping strips of it with his fingernails, causing deep, bloody welts to his face.

  ‘Help me,’ he half whispered, half cried to anyone. ‘Help me, I’m burning,’ he croaked.

  ‘Vincent,’ Jacqueline whispered to him as she put her hand on his shoulder. He winced at the touch. The wet gurgle from his mouth echoed through the almost deserted corridor. His eyes opened wide, and she could see that they were clouded with a strange, milky substance.

  ‘Jacqs, is that you?’ he replied, his voice several octaves higher than it should have been for a man of his age.

  ‘Yes, Vincent, it is. I’ll be back for you in a moment, there’s something I need to do first,’ she whispered into his ear. Then, she turned towards the end of the corridor, only to see that Carrie was gone. A door further down the corridor was swinging, and she surmised that she had headed off that way.

  Jacqueline reached the door and looked through it. There was no sign of anyone in the adjacent corridor. Shit, she thought as she realised that Carrie had not gone this way. Bitch double crossed me. She then realised what had just happened. ‘Vincent,’ she whispered sprinting back towards the corridor.

  Carrie was standing next to Vincent’s gurney. She had one hand on his chest and was pushing down on it, all the time not taking her eyes from Jacqueline.

  Vincent was whimpering in agony.

  She had never heard such a horrific, pathetic sound, not even when she was ripping the women to retrieve their slugs. She watched as his body spasmed, as the pain of being touched tore through him.

  ‘You see how much it hurts when it’s someone you care about?’ Carrie asked in a low voice.

  ‘Step away from him now, or I swear…’

  Carrie was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, I don’t have any tech here with me, and I think I’m going to need some of yours.’