E.N.D.A.Y.S. (7 page)

'It's...'
she started, glancing over the readings trickling in from Darvish at a snail's pace.
'It's fluctuating, it's not stable, but it's not
un
stable.'

“Not a fucking answer, Kali.” Hayes spat back, as he watched Darvish almost frozen in time, moving fractions of an inch every second as he approached the box. “I want to shoot the fucking thing.”

'Give him another minute...'
she said. 'Well,
give him another five minutes... He's almost there.'

Hayes pulled up scans in his lens, layering all the data that was being accrued by his senses, that wasn't within the visible spectrum. A wash of lines and pulses hovered over his sight, spectroscopes and radiation detectors, metameters and analysis graphs.

Darvish looked back over his shoulder at Hayes, who was moving erratically, ten times faster than normal speed, then with the next step, twenty times faster. The time dilation was increasing every moment he got closer to the box.

Darvish could hear beeping from the device, it was intermittent, but increasing in pace. The blue and red flashes in unison with the tones, faster and faster, until the light and the tones were a solid hum of sound and colour.

“Shit.” he said, turning on his heel and running back towards the mouth of the alley. But it was too late. It had been activated.

A pillar of light burst forth from the device, but rather than tentacles of light forming for a jump, the light was sucked straight back in to the tear in reality. Hayes watched from outside the bubble as the light crawled out of the box, the machinery that lay inside beginning to launch itself across the alley. “What's happening?!” he asked, raising his gun again.

'I...'
Kali watched the feed from Darvish's lens as the light encroached towards him, fingers arcing out from the box as its contents burst out. Then the light and components stopped moving in mid-air and started making their way back to their point of origin.
'It's...'
She watched in horror.

Darvish slowly tilted his head down as the light was pulled back into itself. He looked to his hands, as they contorted against his will, stretching towards the light, pulled along as the blinding rays disappeared into their point of origin, revealing a rough rip in the fabric of reality. The edges of the tear waved as if each were flags in the wind, matter sucked deep into the meta.

'It's a singularity...'
she said.

“How do we stop it?” Hayes asked, putting the gun back into the holster, standing impotently at the mouth of the alley behind the rippling surface of the breach. He felt a knot in his throat as he watched his colleague fight helplessly against the pull of the vortex. His fingers were already at the event horizon, bones of his hands ripped apart at the molecular level to dust, then smaller than dust. The skin tearing as his wrists and arms followed their digits, blood coalescing around him, painting the path the rest of his body would follow. “I said what can we fucking do, Kali!” Hayes shouted.

'I don't know... I... I've never see anything like this before...'

The cobblestones and buildings surrounding the alley were beginning to be sucked into the mouth of the singularity, atom by atom. Tornadoes of brick particles dancing through the air from either side, to join the infinitely disseminating molecules of Darvish. When the brickwork was sucked through, the pipework was next, then the foundations. Hayes took a step back and looked at the buildings on either side. They were beginning to subside towards the rift.

“Give me some fucking options! Now!” he shouted.

'Ok. Give me a second... this is fucking  unprecedented, so give me a fucking moment to process it.'

“These buildings are going to collapse, people are about to
fucking
die, and more will fucking die if we don't close this thing.

'Fine, fucking fine.'
Kali shouted back.
'Shoot the fucker!'

“For real?” Hayes asked, taken aback.

'Explosive rounds. This thing wants energy, let's give it fucking energy. How many guns do you have?'

Hayes glanced at the holsters, 'IV' marked on their chrome clips. “Four a piece.”

'Everything you've got. All at once.'

“If that's what the lady wants...” Hayes let a smile crawl up his cheek as he activated both holsters and pulled a gun from each. As he did so, he activated the functions in his lens to control the antigrav grips of the rest of the weapons held in the holsters' pocket dimensions. Raising the weapons in his grasp, six further guns pulled themselves out of the shimmer of the pocket dimension. Hayes targeted the hole in reality with his lens.

“Centre mass?” he asked Kali, waiting for confirmation of the target.

'Edges. We want to seal this thing up while we feed it.'

“You're the boss.” he said. Realigning the targets for each of the eight weapons at his disposal, and firing.

Fifteen raucous explosions rang out from each of the guns over the course of six seconds, a deafening blast surrounding Hayes, sending tinnitus through his head. The street sounds replaced by a silent, soft whine as he watched the rounds fly off towards the tear, slowing with every moment they neared. He took control of the antigrav grips, sending them back into the holster, followed by the two weapons in his hands. There was nothing more he could do but wait.

He watched the scans, field of vision littered with analysis, graphs and frequencies, monitoring every iota of data coming from the rippling bubble of spacetime ahead of him.

“Come on... work, you fucker.”

Something crashed at his feet, another something smashing on his head. Hayes wiped the blood out of his eyes and sent the nanos to repair the damage as he looked up. The two buildings at either side of the alley were careening towards one another, their rooftops meeting as the singularity was pulling them inwards. Chimneys and roof tiles cascaded street-wards. He took a step back to avoid any further injury.

Zooming in his lens, he watched as the rounds continued their path towards the rift at a snail's pace.

“Come on, blow the fuck up already...” he said.

'Give it a second...'
Kali said, watching from what was left of Darvish's feed. His rib cage was ahead of him, internal organs pirouetting around the bones, all being pulled apart as they careened towards oblivion. She could see the explosive rounds coming in to Darvish's field of view.

“We have impact!” said Hayes, watching the early glimmers of an explosion, as the first round met with the edge of the tear, then a second, a third. The initial explosions were just sucked into the hole, but as the remainders of the hundred and twenty rounds launched themselves at the fissure, it was slower to react, slower to absorb the energy.

'I think it's working...'
Kali said.

“Think, or know?” Hayes asked, as he watched the explosions retain more force with each that burst out.

Kali continued to monitor Darvish's feed as the rift began to close in on itself, fractures at the edges closing, time steadily getting faster and faster, coming closer and closer to normal speed. Darvish was finally free of its gravitational pull, the remnants of his body hung in the air for a few moments, before falling to the ground. Hayes stepped towards the rippling surface of the anomaly as it began to recede, pulling back in on itself to the centre of the alley.

“I think we did it!” he said, staying a few feet back from the surface of the bubble, stepping closer and closer to the rift as the last of the explosions rang out, the sound almost travelling at normal speed.

'Oh no...' Kali
said.

“
'Oh no'
?” he said “Don't give me fucking
'oh no
'!” he stopped following the bubble, filling his field of view with every possible scan, watching in horror at the undefined energy build up he was monitoring. He started stepping back out of the alleyway. It was gaining more and more power with every passing second. He turned to run, tried to shout at Kali to evacuate the nearby population. But it was too late.

A wave of energy burst out from the centre of the bubble. Hayes briefly glancing over his shoulder as it started ripping through the buildings on either side of the alley. The pulse was encroaching on him with every step, he could feel it on his heels.

The wind was knocked out of him from behind, kidneys pummelled to mush, back cracked and contorted at every vertebrae. He realised he was still trying to run, but there was no ground beneath his feet.

Hayes flew across the road, followed by remnants of the buildings that used to stand on either side of the alley that used to exist. He bounced off the pavement, leaving a trail of bone and blood that slowly crawled towards his body, as he crumpled in a lifeless heap.

15 hours to the end of the world.

“What the fuck?” Kali shouted, as she lost contact with Hayes. The last transmission that came through was a feed from his lens. She played it back, watching the explosion from the singularity, the image obscured by energy spikes, graphs reading levels higher than she had ever seen before.

“What the actual, genuine fuck?” she said, frantically gesturing at the screen, trying to find Hayes, trying to get a signal to or from him, trying to find the reality on the grid.

She felt a lump in her throat. Wondered if this was all her fault, if this was what the judges wanted Hayes
unprepared
for, if they knew this was going to happen.

Knowing it was unprecedented for an op to call a judge, her fingers were stiff, reluctant to do so, but she fought past the anxiety. She needed to know what the fuck was going on.

“Kali.” Phillips said, reclining back in his chair, casually.

“Sir, Hayes has... Darvish is...” she couldn't put what she saw into words.

“I've been monitoring the feeds.” Philips said. “I am aware of the situation.”

“Is this part of the plan?” she stammered. “Is this what you wanted to happen to Hayes? Because I didn't sign up for this...” she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

Kali knew she was speaking insolently to her superior, and if this was a glimpse of how he dealt with inconveniences, was starting to wonder how soon it was before he disposed of the rest of the evidence. On a whim, he could collapse her pocket dimension in around her, leaving her trapped in a void, for eternity.

“Calm down.” he instructed. “This was... unexpected, but certainly not our doing.” his words didn't fill her with confidence. “What matters now is that we regain
control
of the situation. Find a way to make contact with Hayes. Do whatever it takes, whatever system you have to jerry-rig, whatever technology you need from wherever. You are one of the most skilled operators we have. I know you can do this.”

She stared at his old, grey face. His words were intended to boost moral and confidence, but there was something in his tone that didn't sit right. “Yes sir.” she said. “I'll get right on it.”

Kali hung up and pulled up the grid on her screen, a graphical representation of all the dimensions Jump Division had charted. The array was arranged in a three-dimensional cubed structure, 9999 tall, wide and deep. Each placement of each reality in the network gave its grid designation.

Traversing the framework, she came to 9415:5643:7543. Or at least where 7543 should have been. The designation was blank. The dimension was off the grid.

14 hours to the end of the world.

Hayes woke to find everything aching, his contorted back laid flat on a hard plastic surface, a screaming electronic wail echoing around him. He reached to his face and felt raw bone, blood coming away on his fingertips.

“Don't try to move.” said a voice above him.

He tried to look around, but his head was held in place by restraints. Soft foam at his neck restricting him from looking up or down, cold plastic hampering movement side to side. “What's our ETA?”

“Eight minutes.” said a second voice, muffled, talking through a window in another compartment.

Hayes's vision was obscured by the displays of
scopes and meters, readings frozen and distorted. The lens wasn't responding to thought control. He tried to pull up nano functions. They were obviously working hard at healing his injuries, but he wanted a status update. The displays refused to obey his order. “Fucking thing...” he said, slamming his palm against his temple over and over, trying to regain control of the lens.

“Restrain him!” said the voice above. Two sets of hands grabbed his arms and held them down.

“Like fuck...” Hayes spat. Wrenching free of their grasp. He might not have been able to control the nanos, but had enough mods installed to give him greater strength than the mundanes that were attempting to keep him captive. He lifted himself from the surface they had laid him on, vertebrae cracking and clicking themselves into place one by one as he rolled his shoulders back, twisting at the waist to test that the spinal mods were doing their job.

“You should really lie down...” one of his captors said, nervously.

“You should really not try to keep a guy like me hostage...” Hayes shot back, throwing a fist at the blur of a man who stood beyond the displays hovering over his vision. The man crunched against metal, which flung open, his hazy body ricochetting off the tarmac, rolling and bouncing into the distance. A white blur of another vehicle swerved into the wrong lane to avoid the figure ricochetting off the road. There was a shunt, the vehicle holding Hayes stopped moving. He got to his feet as another blur grabbed him, and he threw his attacker into a wall with a reverberating clang. He stepped out from the transport in which he had been held hostage and inspected it. A light yellow vehicle, boxy, stripe of green and lemon checker-board running around the mid-section, 'AMBULANCE' emblazoned on the side.

“Oops...” Hayes said, glancing between the unconscious EMT he had knocked out in the back, and his colleague that had kissed the road farther back. The driver came round the side of the vehicle to investigate, jaw dropping as he saw Hayes standing, having had a broken back only minutes earlier. “I'm really sorry about this...” Hayes said, as he threw a fist into the driver's face, knocking him against the side the the van into blissful unconsciousness.

Hayes looked around. Tried to work out where he was, peering through the distractions of the readouts. “Kali, do you have my position?” He waited for a response, but none came. “Kali?” Are you there? Fucking answer me...” another pause as he tried to make out the buildings that lay beyond the lens display. They looked familiar, insomuch as they all looked the same, but he took that as a sign he had been there before, or at least been to a street that looked like the one he was standing in. He ripped the foam collar from his neck and dropped it to the floor, pivoting his head around, neck cracking as he did so.

“Fucking mundy worlds...” he muttered. “Why don't they make the streets look fucking different?”

His question wasn't to be answered, as he heard a squeal of tyres behind him, a thumping of footsteps and crackle of electricity charging through his side. The lens readout fucked up even more, glitches across his vision, as his legs gave in, and he fell to the ground. Hayes tried to look up at his attacker, and was rewarded with a fist to the face, andanother prod of voltage. His hands pulled behind his back, restrained with a strip of plastic that made a
ziiiiip
as the loose ends were locked in on themselves. Then a bag was thrown over his head, obscuring vision yet further.

The abductors lifted him from the street. Hayes tried to woozily keep track of where he was being dragged, as he was thrown in the back of another vehicle. The one trailing the ambulance, he reckoned, there was no time for another one to pull up, he would have heard it. The van's engine grumbled to life, and they were on the move, swerving wildly in the street as they U-turned into the opposite lane, and picked up speed.

“You're not from here.” a voice said, European inflection, tone cold and direct.

“Fucking understatement...” Hayes mumbled, sat uncomfortably on his knees in front of the speaker. He attempted tugging his wrists apart, and smiled to himself as he realised how weak the plastic restraints were, when compared to his mods. 

“Then you do not side with the enders of days, the harbingers of death?” asked the man sitting beyond the bag.

“Ain't got a horse in this race, don't know or give a shit about any of you fucks...” he said, shifting on the floor of the van, testing how far he could move his arms whilst keeping the restraints in-tact.

“Then you have no business interfering with what is to come.” the European said.

“Sure, whatever.” Hayes grunted. “Just want to get healed and get on outta here.”

“That, I'm afraid, is not an option.” the European said. “You have technology that might aid our cause, might save countless lives, and for that, you are precious.”

“Nobody's ever called me
precious
before.” Hayes scoffed, realising he could reach to his weapons, but he'd have to be smart about it. “Listen, I don't know who you are, or why you think electrocuting a guy is a nice way to make an introduction,” he said, stalling as he slowly manoeuvred his hands to the holster clipped at his right hip. “But I'm all for saving lives, it's kinda my thing, y'know?” He brushed his right thumb against the biometric sensor.

“You wish to join our crusade?” the European asked. “To end the enders?”

“That's a real stupid way of putting it,” Hayes said, shifting in place, activating the holster to his left. “But sure, what have I got to lose?

“How do we know we can trust you?” the man asked.

“Now that,” Hayes said, with a smile. “Is the wrong question to ask...”

He wrenched his hands apart, ripping the cuffs open and reached into the holsters, pulling guns from both pocket dimensions, firing indiscriminatingly at wherever he heard sounds of his captors. He knelt down, still firing as the van careened wildly, and braced himself for a mod-assisted leap. Throwing himself backwards with all his strength, he continued shooting at the occupants of the van as he flew through the air. The metal doors crunched as he burst through them, the vehicle howling as it lost its footing on the road. Hayes landed on the tarmac with a thud that reverberated through his entire body, and ripped the bag off his head just in time to watch the van lurching onto the pavement at speed, ploughing into a lampost with a metallic grunt. A pool of diesel started lapping out of the perforated tank, soaking into the road beneath the wreck. Hayes got to his feet and grinned as it caught alight, turning on his heels, and hobbled away.

He always enjoyed walking away from an explosion, even though he was currently adopting more of an injured shuffle, than a walk. After a minute of walking he stopped and turned around, the fire still lapping at the van, no signs of a blast. He hobbled some more, glancing over his shoulder for the eruption, any evidence that a detonation was coming. It was starting to seem like wasn't happening. He was finding this reality's lack of exploding vehicles
very
disappointing.

Left in yet another familiar looking street that was
actually
unfamiliar, he grumbled to himself about the dimension's lack of architectural variety. But there was something up ahead that he recognised. A giant dome in the distance. The looming peak of the Royal Albert Hall. He knew exactly where he needed to go.

Vision still buried behind the display, Hayes headed towards the monolithic building, finding his way round to Kensington Gore, to the cream building they had visited earlier that morning. His palm slammed against the door over and over, resonating deep through the hallways. At the click of the latch, his hand fell to his side. The meek bespectacled brunette staring at him with horror. He had forgotten that his face was still in tatters from the blast and bloody landing.

“I need to see your boss.” he said, barging past her.

“Are... are you ok?” she stammered, frozen in position.

“Will be.” he said, already making his way up the stairs.

Arriving at the fourth floor, Hayes pushed the double doors open with all his strength. They squealed in surprise at the force, launching round on their hinges with a howl, bouncing off the walls and whimpering back to slam shut, sealing Hayes in with the professor.

“My God!” said the old man, turning to Hayes. “Are you ok?”

“Why is that
always
everyone's first question when I get been blown up?”

“What... should the first question be..?” the professor inquired.

“Do you want a drink.” Hayes said, smiling with what was left of his lips.

“Of course, one moment...” The professor pulled himself up from the seat at his workstation and entered an adjacent room. Hayes heard him pottering around, clinking and jangling, until returning with a bottle of whisky and a glass. He poured a healthy measure into the glass and presented it to Hayes, who looked at him incredulously until the old man filled the glass to the brim.

Hayes knocked it back, the whisky burning the raw meat that used to be his mouth. “Thank you.” he said. The professor didn't reply, watching in awe as the torn blood vessels around Hayes's mouth started repairing themselves, muscle stitching itself back together, skin slowly rebuilding around the edges of the wounds.

“Amazing.” rasped the old man.

“Yeah. It's a fucking miracle.” Hayes said, rolling his eyes. “Listen, you work with nanotech, right?”

The professor didn't respond, hypnotised by the accelerated healing process.

“Doc?” Hayes clicked his fingers in front of the professor's face. “Need you with me on this...”

“Right, yes.” Parry sputtered, his eyes still transfixed. “What is... Is that what...”

“I'm gonna level with you, kay? I'm not from round here.”

“You're... an alien?!” the professor squeaked, his stare diverting from the wounds to Hayes's eyes.

“What? No. Aliens aren't real. I'm from a alternate dimension.” said Hayes.

“Parallel realities are... real?”

“Alternate, not parallel.” Hayes corrected. “Parallels are near-identical and fucking boring, alternates are way-different, and generally not as
fucking mundane
as this one.”

“Right, yes, of course.” said the old man, scrambling for a pad and pen to note Hayes's statements down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hayes asked.

“I'm, well, you're providing insight into --”

“I'm not here to provide
insight
.” Hayes interjected. “I'm here because I need your help.”

“Oh...” Parry said, confused. “My help? But surely, you have advanced technology. Nanotechnology! What could
I
possibly do..?”

“Something's fucked up. My lens is screwing about, I need --”

“Lens?” the professor inquired.

“Eye implant, gives me thought control over, well, everything.” Hayes explained. “But it's fucked, I need you to talk to my nanos, get them working on fixing it. They'll do the physical stuff on autopilot, but the lens is tech, that's not their job, unless someone
makes it
their job.”

“Right...” Parry said, still wrapping his head around the concept.

“You know nanotech, right?”

“Well... our nanotechnology isn't as... advanced.”

“How not-advanced...?” Hayes asked, sceptically.

“Very?” said Parry, almost embarrassed at having to say so. “Very basic, that is. Nothing along these lines.”

“Fucking great.” Hayes spat.

“But...” the professor started.

“But? I like a but, what have you got?”

“How does your... do your 'nanos', as you call them, do they understand, or might they make use of implants?”

“Like mods?” Hayes asked. “Yeah. I have mods all over the place.”

“And these 'mods', are they built to communicate with the nanos, do they function on their own, or do the nanos interact with them, symbiotically?”

“Both, maybe? I don't fucking know, I'm not a tech.” Hayes grunted. “My job is mostly to shoot bad people and make sure they get shot a second or third time.”

“Right...” said the professor, feeling uneasy, his eyes darting around Hayes's body for a weapon.

“You're not a 'bad people', Doc. I'm not here to shoot you.” Hayes sighed, trying to be reassuring.

Marcus Hayes had never quite been able to master the concept of 'reassurance'. Whereas the majority of human beings were wired for empathy, his empathetic circuits had been conflated by the action movie cliches that were stitched into the fibre of his very being. He was built more for walking away from explosions than telling someone their kitten had died of cancer after a car hit it with feline immunodeficiency virus.