Hexad: The Factory (Time Travel Thriller) Book 1 (20 page)

There was a severe problem though: they'd already met Hector and Laffer right at the end of it all for both of the men. They'd killed Laffer and Hector killed himself, and by then it was too late. But that wasn't true, said Cray, as in Cray's timeline he'd got the Hexads, gone forward and there were still people, so it wasn't like Hector had ruined everything at the same time, at least not until Cray had gone forward and started the whole thing off. So all they had to do was go back to just before everything went wrong in the timeline that Dale and Amanda had experienced.

Cray had asked if that made any sense, but Dale just groaned, turned over and tried to go back to sleep. The precious unconsciousness eluded him totally. He tried to just shut down for a while, just to let his brain catch up with events and maybe even put things in some kind of order — wishful thinking, he knew. After tossing and turning he finally gave in and sat up, head feeling thick like a feather pillow, stuffing coming out of his ears, and he looked at the surprisingly calm Amanda, amazed she could be so composed after all that had happened to her, and what she was thinking of doing.

She's resolute. She's also building up to something, I know that look.

Dale waited for her to speak. He could see her start and stop numerous times, trying to say words that she really didn't want to say. Dale wondered just how bad it was going to be.

Finally she spoke. "There is only one way to stop this." Amanda nodded to herself, confirming in her own mind the truth of her words. "We have to go kill all the other Amandas. If he can't get them then there is no Hexad."

"You can't be serious?"

"Look, this is me we are talking about. I don't like it any more than you do, in fact I bloody hate the idea, but no Amandas means no Hexads, and if we kill them all then that's it, no Hexads."

"Which means..."

"Which means we won't really have killed me."

"This is stupid." Dale stood and shuffled nervously from one foot to another. "So far everything has led to us having to do our best to ensure that events happen, now you are talking about murder on a mass scale."

"Come here," said Amanda, beckoning to Dale with a finger. "You too Cray, you know about how they work, right?" Cray just nodded, sadness and sympathy radiating from him. It seemed that even Cray had a heart after all. "Hold on."

Dale and Cray held on to Amanda and she set her Hexad. She turned to Dale and said, "You not going to make the noise?"

"It doesn't seem appropriate, not if we are going where I think we are."

Amanda smiled weakly. "Please? For me?"

"Okay, if you insist." Dale made his time travel noise. "Whoooooooooooooooooosh."

~~~

46 Years Future

"So, are you telling me that my plan is worse than this?" Amanda managed to get her sentence out before the tears began to flow. Dale hugged her tightly and Cray politely stepped aside, looking at the floor not out of embarrassment over the intimate moment, but because like Dale and Amanda he didn't want to look at the room: The Factory. He'd seen it before too, and it was clear that the guilt over the part he played in such a monstrous scene was hanging heavy.

"Hush, it's all right. No, nothing is worse than this. You're right, we'll stop this." Dale stroked Amanda's hair as the quiet tears turned into sobs that shook her whole body, ripping apart Amanda's composure, tearing Dale's heart into a million pieces and flinging them throughout the universes.

Nothing could be worse than this. Nothing.

It was the stuff of nightmares come real, revisited out of a necessity to prove to themselves that the plan Amanda had suggested really was worth the sacrifice they were all going to have to make to see it through. Dale worried for his sanity and that of Amanda's once they began along a route there would be no turning back from.

Scared, that was it. Dale realized he was scared witless and wondered if he even had it in him to kill versions of the woman before him that he loved more than life itself.

Damn, this isn't even her. Not really.

After an embrace that lasted what felt like forever, and Dale felt was a goodbye as much as anything else, Amanda stepped back and dried her tears, setting her face in grim determination, staring around the room just like the others were now doing.

It's like she's daring what went on here to break her; she's showing she is strong.

They were in the most important room by far when it came to Hexad production, The Factory proper, not the fake glitz and glamor closer to the surface, but the real deal. An abomination. This was a room they had both been in once already. Dale couldn't argue with Amanda, not after what they'd seen before, what confronted them now.

They'd jumped to a time when Hector had realized what he'd done, what he had become and what effect it had on the world. When they'd seen the room before it was clear that things had come to a halt: the space was quiet, only the machines making their rhythmic noises, keeping the bodies alive and fed, little more. But it was, and had been, quite clear as to the function of The Factory: this was the secret ingredient that ran all Hexads, the secret guarded so closely by Hector that only a few other people even knew of the room's location, let alone what it contained.

The space was vast, sterile, clinical and warm. Perverse.

Dale took it all in once again. This time he wouldn't flinch or avert his eyes, he owed it to Amanda to take in every detail, imprint it on his mind so he knew exactly why he had to do what they were going to do. They had to ensure, no matter the cost, that such evil was wiped from history: past, present or future. Gone. Eradicated for good.

On the ceiling, receding into the distance between lines of bright strip-lighting, were row after row of tracks, with jointed mechanical arms hanging like robotic preying mantis. Tubes, cables and various bizarre pieces of equipment were hooked up to the bodies, almost like a high-tech abattoir or a bizarre organic production plant. A chicken factory, that was what it was like, a sickening, warped version of a chicken factory.

But this was no production line in the traditional sense, this was a warehouse sized facility for the farming of cerebrospinal fluid, extracted via a lumbar puncture. This fluid that ran through the spinal cord and into the brain was taken out of countless Amandas that were hanging from the metal arms that ended with a form of cradle, resulting in the Amandas being compressed into an upright fetal position, opening up their vertebrae so the needles could slide easily between the lower part of the spine and extract the miracle fluid.

The tracks ran in a circular motion at each end of the room, weaving back and forth on a never-ending cycle that kept the bodies moving while various mechanical exoskeletons manipulated the limbs to keep blood flow regular and stop muscles from atrophying.

It was insanity come real, and that wasn't even the worst of it.

Dotted around the room at regular points were huge machines that Dale could only liken to mechanical milking machines he had marveled at when he and Amanda had visited an educational working farm, one of those places perfect for whiling away a few hours before then sitting and eating a decadent scone oozing out cream and jam. They'd watched as the cows simply walked into the machine when they wanted to be milked and the mechanized unit would do the rest, even give them a scratch while they were milked.

The Amandas had no such luxuries. As the bodies slowly made their way around the room the machines were given various pieces of information about the Amanda before them: body temperature, heart rate, blood work, information on the brainwave patterns, and much more that made no sense to Dale when he got up close to the atrocities. Then it seemed like if all was in order it would, for want of a better word, milk the Amanda.

They stood and watched as an Amanda moved past them, eyes closed, naked and beautiful, hair gone from a patch on her scalp that revealed the clear mark of whatever sick operation was performed to remove any part of the brain that allowed consciousness, leaving behind just a body that was alive but unknowing of its reality, incapable of thought, feeling or emotion. The machine whirred and closed in around the suspended Amanda as she was lowered, then a thick needle slowly sank into her spine just above buttocks that were clearly far from the muscular and pert form they used to be.

It was the same with all the bodies: most were in anything but great shape, the endless rows a history of the time each had spent being nothing more than a lump of meat, it's prize too valuable to allow to be lost. Some bodies were extremely thin, muscles wasted away, hair grown extremely long yet dull and lifeless. Others were fresh and still shone with radiance, tanned and healthy, many of them reflecting the various styles Amanda had over the years, her body changing depending on the physical activities she pursued and the way she wore her hair in countless different timelines in the numerous universes she had been taken from.

What made it worse somehow, made it all the more surreal, was that each Amanda was made-up carefully, hair long, if less than full of vitality, lipstick and even a hint of rouge applied to the cheeks, as if somebody had taken great care to make them presentable, but on many faces the attempt had been mangled, red smears like open wounds running in gashes from her lips to her jaw, clearly where a machine had failed to apply the make-up correctly. It was obscene.

It was a slide show of Amanda at various stages of her life with every possible body composition she would have been likely to have. There were fat Amandas, thin ones, some with scars, others with blemish-free skin that shone but would soon lose its luster, and there were other bodies that had clearly been taken right at the beginning of the horrible farming, little more than skin and bone however well the machines tried to maintain the valuable commodity that was an Amanda.

It went on and on, the machinery moving tirelessly, a sick procession of unknowing Amandas in every conceivable form and state of well-being.

Dale found it hard to imagine the mind of Hector and how he could ever have done such a thing, but he supposed that the man simply had no concern for people, and would do anything to ensure that Hexad production continued. What a shock it must have been when he unraveled the secrets of the Hexad plans only to discover that the fuel was cerebrospinal fluid from the body of a single woman.

Once the discovery was made he'd clearly realized that if he wanted to go into production then he'd need an awful lot of Amandas, so that was exactly what he'd gone about harvesting. He'd probably sent Laffer hurtling through time and space to take Amandas from every possible universe. Dale guessed that Hector somehow diluted the concentration, or maybe the fluid could be made purer somehow, and it was this that allowed some Hexads to give the populace the ability to travel not only through time but to go to different versions of their own universe as well, meaning that time could be changed, acts carried out that had no direct effect on the universe you returned to. It would explain a lot, plus leave many questions unanswered.

But Dale knew that he had traveled through universes without a special Hexad, and without really knowing he felt that if there was a strong connection to the place or person he wanted to see then that was enough to convince the Hexad to jump timelines and allow the exploration of an infinite number of universes. Maybe it was different for him? Because of his connection to Amanda — all of them?

To be honest he didn't really want to think about it, he just knew that with his connection running so deep, she was a part of him after all, he would be able to jump to her in endless places, save her from the fate of The Factory, stop the madness even if it meant putting his own sanity in jeopardy.

Decision Made

46 Years Future

Dale took his time, much as he hated to, but it was too important to not understand it as best he could — their previous visit to what he could only think of now as the milking room had been rushed, hardly able to spare a glance at the macabre lines of live Amanda flesh — back then little had functioned, Hector finally having admitted the heinous crimes and ceasing production. Now it felt like they had all the time in the world, although that wasn't strictly true. There were still people working at the facility, and although only Hector, Laffer and a few select and important personnel were allowed into the room there was still a risk of detection. Dale knew they would have to act soon, yet he couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from the worst crime he could ever imagine, let alone witness.

Huge vats of nutrients bubbled in machines spaced evenly around the room, tubes weaving in and out of the machinery, on and on, countless vats and strange digital devices as well as esoteric looking equipment he had no idea about as to purpose.

Too much, it was too much to take in, so he focused on one Amanda only, trying to see if he could make any sense of it all, knowing he couldn't. Such a violation wasn't worth anything that could possibly be gained: not power, not wealth, not the world. No wonder Hector had ended his own life rather than be confronted with his despicable crimes — Dale knew as soon as he'd seen the room that he would have made Hector suffer terribly for the evil he had committed in the name of power. But what could he have ever done to the man as recompense for this?

The body he was focused on twitched, nerves firing, an automatic reaction to the nutrients flowing from the huge vat of green liquid that went through the abdomen, straight into the stomach. He watched as it flowed in, saw the stomach distend slightly, only so obvious as the body was severely depleted in terms of excess fat and muscle. This Amanda had clearly been like this for some time — the body appeared frail and old, although there were signs that she was still relatively young, maybe even younger than his Amanda. But she had been hanging for years, her hair had grown very long, dull and limp, as lifeless as her body.