Through Your Eyes Read online

18.

  Abby turned out of the room where this Sam had been talking to her. She looked back, and he was gone. How could this person be her Sam, the man she knew so well and loved? They were so different to each other, and yet this Sam was able to move with the device in a way that her Professor Sam had never been able to. What was it that he had, perhaps it was his youth? As odd as it sounded, maybe it was the fact that he had more experience with the device than his older more worldly wise self?

  He had, however, been correct in one respect. Despite him being incredibly irritating and actually, rather juvenile, he was exactly the same Sam she had met that first time. He was a bit of an idiot, but an endearing, instantly loveable idiot. She remembered fondly how he used to refer to himself as a brave idiot! It was just the passage of time and hard work and their professorships that seemed to have clouded her memory of these times. Why was she being so hard on him? Was it because he was the indirect reason her Sam was in grave danger that very second? Why had her Sam so easily dropped everything on the word of a stranger, albeit someone who was another version of himself? She had always tried to teach Sam to have faith in himself and his instincts and ideas, but this business was taking things a bit too far!

  He still annoyed her intensely, and she certainly would not refer to him as Sam, that would be an insult to the memory of her own Sam. So in that brief second, she decided to call him Ian after a particular professor who was equally annoying; she had the misfortune of him teaching her for a year as an undergraduate. He was patronising, rude and incredibly stupid. On second thoughts, the first name was too personal, so she would use his surname, Garlan. It sounded right.

  All she could think about was her own Sam. What would Garlan find when he re-entered the room where he was being held? Was Sam still alive? Was she sending Garlan to his death as well, then where would she be left?

  She had left the building and turned up Framlington Avenue. Nothing had changed since she had last walked up this road, many years ago, on that cold December day, when Sam had introduced her to the great Siris. This guy that Sam had idolised and been talking about for so many years. How they had got together she had no idea, but Siris was Sam's mentor. What she couldn't quite get her head around was that Siris, that old goat, was gone, permanently. As she got closer to the tailor's, she felt chills go down her body such that her hands were trembling. It had been cordoned off by police tape, although, there was no police presence as such. In fact, there was nobody around at all, which seemed a little strange on such a busy London street.

  She took a quick look around, assured herself she wasn't being shadowed, ducked under the tape, and sneaked round the back of the shop. There, in that time honoured and clichéd way, she fumbled under a large flower pot, and found a set of keys, although to be fair, it was more of a dead plant pot. Abby turned the key in the lock of the back door and it fell open. She listened carefully, and crept in quietly and slowly, waiting a few moments for any signs of activity. Nothing.

  The place was a tip. Everything was smashed to smithereens. The only thing that made you think it may have been a tailor's shop was a tape measure on the floor, in a congealed sticky brown, red mass. She heaved when she saw this, trying not to think about the horrific last moments of Siris. But it was impossible, as it was already in her memory bank, as if she had stood there and seen it all unfold before her very eyes. New Sam, or didn't she mean Garlan, had imparted that memory to her whether she wanted it or not. What a harbinger of good tidings he had been. She scolded herself, it was not his fault. He was just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Wrong time. She thought about those words. She remembered what new Sam had told her about their date. A date that had occurred in her timeline with her Sam, but that turned out to be something different in his. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was seriously wrong with Garlan's account. Dream or reality, fiction or figment of his imagination, the memory of this woman that he said was her was wrong.

  She couldn't reason why she felt this so continued with the task in hand. Clothes and books were surrounding the main desk where she knew Siris kept his most important stuff, but she didn't have to clear it, as she saw the torch like viewer on the floor next to a thick matt of congealed blood. She shivered and tentatively picked it up, wiping the blood off it on a shirt nearby. She tried the torch to see if it had survived the onslaught, and breathed a sigh of relief when she realised it was still working.

  Abby took out the device and shone the light over it; the seba was clean with no extra markings around it. So clearly, something had been done to the other device in the future. Somebody had adapted it to their own ends. What were those ends and why had they done it?

  As I returned to Siris' shop I could see her looking around. I looked over the area to ensure we were not being watched, although I could never shake the whispering sounds following me through the ether. As I ended this movement, I could see into the room. Really see. Abby was crouched on the floor looking at the device. The device itself shone brightly like a beacon, and as I got closer to it, I felt the same surge I had before.

  Then I saw something else.

  There was something behind Siris' main desk.

  Something was surging even brighter.

  It was brighter than anything I had ever seen while travelling.

  "You could give me some warning when you arrive like that," she said.

  She jumped as I materialised behind her, tapping her on the shoulder.

  "Sorry, couldn't resist. He's gone. I don't know where, but he's definitely gone. I saw them looking for him. I can only assume your Sam is alive and hopefully safe. The guy, Steve, he really is gone. They gutted him," I spluttered it all out as quickly as I could.

  "Alive. He's alive!" she exclaimed.

  And then she hugged me.

  "Oh my god, why am I celebrating? Poor Steve!"

  She abruptly stopped the hug, and tears instantly flowed down her cheeks. I wanted to hug her again but suddenly felt very awkward. I couldn't reason why she had hugged me of all people, but she was very relieved for that initial split second. Maybe I wasn't that much of an idiot, then?

  She gathered herself and sighed heavily. Then with a deep breath, she started to speak.

  "Ok, Garlan, what now? This new device is clean, so it has been tampered with in the future, probably Stowe's work. This one is the before version, yours is the after version. The rest I don't know, maybe my Sam may?"

  "Garlan?" I asked.

  "It will have to do for now, I am not calling you Sam," she snapped.

  "Fine," I said.

  I didn't want to get into any argument with her.

  I looked around the room and stared at Siris' desk. There were a lot of clothing and books strewn all over it. On one side of it, there was a large crack with tell-tale signs of singe marks from a hot, cutting weapon, searing half of a drawer off. The contents of the drawer lay on the ground in a pile of burning rags.

  "Here, help me. There's something in this desk, I saw it when I was coming to this room, like nothing I've seen before. Siris told me there was some other information I had to find in the room. I think it's a vital part of this puzzle," I told her.

  "What more can we find in this place? Stowe and his henchmen could be here any moment looking for us. They ransacked the place already. Unless... Did you say Siris gave you specific instructions, or was he as vague as he always was?" she asked.

  "He said there was more information here. Something to help me in the future, perhaps," I said.

  We started to remove the rubbish off the desk. Burnt bits of wood and materials. Plastic melted over the wood. The smell of burnt rubber. With a bit of teamwork, we managed to flip the desk upright, and I immediately started to pull the closed, undamaged drawers open. Nothing; they were just the tools of a tailor. Scissors, designs of suits, measuring tape, needles and thread. There were all sorts of shapes and sizes.

  "This is it!" she exclaimed, making me jump. />
  She started to pull the middle drawer open.

  "I'm sure I remember my Sam and Siris discussing the contents of this drawer. I'm certain there's something here."

  I looked at the open drawer. A piece of paper featuring some kind of bizarre tailor's design of some psychedelic clothing. She held it aloft and examined it.

  She said, "I know this is it. But I have never seen one quite like it. What was Siris thinking when he designed this?"

  I looked again and said, "It's a scrap of paper for a suit. He's a tailor, he designs clothing. What has this got to do with anything?"

  "Garlan, have you really learnt nothing. Do you really believe Siris was an actual tailor of garments and clothing? This is not a suit. It's a blueprint. Have a closer look at the markings," she said.

  It was a drawing of a man that looked very familiar. The kind that I think was called a Da Vinci or Vitruvian Man. Its meaning eluded me for the moment, but I had a vague memory of it having something to do with ideal human proportions and geometry. On his body was some kind of recurring marking, and this pattern on him was not a garment.

  It was on his skin.

  He had tiny little patterns all over his torso, arms and legs. I looked even closer, and was able to discern two distinct type of pattern. One was an eye and one was a star. I shivered with fear and expectation. What was she going to tell me now?

  "So what does this prove? Is this strange drawing linked to the patterns on the device?" I asked her.

  She said, "These are the markings my Sam insisted we place on the device, the opening of gates and doorways through time in the past and future, but I never knew where he got the information from. Did he get it from Siris? Was that where he got his inspiration?"

  Her hand was rummaging further in the drawer as she was speaking, so far in fact, that her elbow had disappeared.

  She reminded me of an episode of All Creatures Great and Small.

  She was looking at me, biting her lower lip as she was thinking. I loved that look.

  Then she stopped and shrieked in surprise. I could see from the tensing of her forearm muscles that she had grabbed something from the back of the drawer. I hoped Siris hadn't left a nice present in there for us like a mouse trap, but she didn't look like she was in pain, as she was actually smiling. An unnerving smile that made me feel a little uncomfortable.

  And as she pulled her arm out, in her hand was a velvet pouch.

  She opened the pouch delicately, by pulling on the two black draw strings at the top.

  "Diamonds," I said without thinking.

  So many velvet pouches.

  So many movies.

  "These are not diamonds," she said triumphantly. "I think Siris solved the power problem we were having with the device."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "The closest approximation to their function is a power unit," she replied.

  She scattered the small crystalline objects into her hand. There were hundreds of them in this tiny pouch.

  I looked at them quizzically, wondering what they were made from. Where would I be sticking them? She looked at me and let out a tut and a big sigh, like I really didn't know a thing. She really was even more patronising than poor Siris.

  And then she said, "He's been hoarding all of these for so many years, and he told us that there were only a handful that remained."

  "They're batteries, you moron! Your passport to the universe!"

  19.

  I peeked one eye open. I had already slowed my breathing down as much as I could, and tried to enter into an almost Zen like level of calm and meditation. The pain in my arm was intense from the trauma, but I had to be absolutely still and pretend I was unconscious. By concentrating like this, I had to try and put the pain away, to lock it up in a deep part of my brain, and allow my other emotions to overwhelm my pain receptors. It could have been five seconds, but sitting like this without moving felt like a few agonising hours. The events of the last few hours were unexpected, but I had been strangely unsurprised on a subconscious level. It was almost like I was expecting to receive this visitation, this warning, this information, but from a version of myself? That was a tough one to swallow.

  When I peeked my eye open for the second time, I noticed the first signal that something had happened elsewhere. Woakes had looked away from me, distracted by the information coming from his earpiece, and by the look on his face, something had happened he was not very happy about.

  He was here, he had to be.

  Surely, Abby was safe, and he had taken her away somewhere, away from these madmen. If he hadn’t yet, hopefully this would be happening shortly. Maybe now was my chance to try and get away from them as well, as I had not really thought about the consequences of my actions for myself.

  The contact with my former self had proved that the energy transfer was mutual. However, despite all the years of research, I had not fully understood all the in vivo possibilities. The energy transfer had been so great, that the residual power was enough to fully charge one of the crystals I kept permanently on my person. We didn't have many, and they were only supposed to be used in an absolute emergency. Once used, they were defunct and could never be used again; my old friend Siris had always told us there were only a few of them remaining within our known universe.

  This crystal was permanently implanted under my skin, ready and waiting to be used, and it was certainly undetectable to any scanner.

  Now, with the connection to my former self, I knew what Stowe was up to. His desire for power, a megalomaniac wanting to play a big part in history. What the exact plan was I did not know, but it was abundantly clear we would have to stop him together.

  It was almost like I had a mental link with young Sam, not the fictional telepathy you read about; this was almost like sharing the same mind or mutual consciousness. I thought about the crystal, and what I was going to do to escape this room, as the device I had was now gone. Maybe he was going to come back to help me out of here?

  Woakes turned towards me. Clearly, he had received some message or other from his masters, and it didn't sound like it was good news for me. He walked up to me, re-activating his red laser weapon, the lens flipping over on his eye. A red beam shot out and hit the wall.

  He turned his face to me, giving me a sickly grin.

  He said, "Now, please don't take any of this personally Professor, but I am going to thoroughly enjoy myself! You will feel absolutely everything!"

  He was laughing almost with joy, the sadistic bastard. I took one last look at poor Steve lying in the chair next to me, and realised no amount of meditation would get me out of this predicament.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Abby, waiting for the pain to start, and for me to join my friend Steve. But nothing happened, as I could feel myself feeling light headed and giddy. I opened my eyes and could see Woakes looking at me, but he was shouting at me, his forehead synched up into knots, with a furious gaze. His face started to blur as I could see the familiar golden and green lights appearing all around him.

  And I moved.

  I moved without the device.

  I really had not expected it, but I took the chance, not entirely understanding how I was able to do it. The power from original Sam had been extraordinary. Could it have been because I gave him the second device? Was it because he was younger than me and therefore could wield greater power? Nevertheless, it had been enough to give me one shot at escape, and it had come off, and given me this temporary respite. After all these years of knowing my good pal Chris Stowe, to think that it was jealousy and delusions of grandeur that had driven him to doing this to his friends. But when I thought about it, right from that very first meeting with him and my dear friend Kleinmann, was he really a friend? What was he capable of? What was his future plan?

  Nevertheless, Abby was safe now, and that was the most important thing. I travelled through the realms of space, but realised that without the device, I would not be able to move in time. I just
needed to find an exit point far enough from Novertium to get safe. Instinctively, I stopped and fell through a point in space, and I found myself in an old wooden room, safe from Stowe and his goons. It had been a long time since I had last moved, and the familiar feeling of my guts turning somersaults started up without warning, and I promptly threw up in the middle of the floor like a champ.

  I knew what I had to do. It would be difficult, but I knew I could do it. The second laboratory I had hidden from everyone, including Abby. I couldn't risk someone locating it by extracting that information from her or anyone else under duress. I was right to do so, as we were living through those precise circumstances at that very moment! I would need to construct new technology, I had new ideas, but something was nagging away in my frazzled brain. They had placed their red light over my right face and head, and I was bleeding. I didn't know whether I had suffered a concussion, but I was having problems keeping my train of thought on its rails.

  I would need to get some kind of transport to this laboratory, and get to work as soon as I was fit and healthy. To stop Stowe from his mad plans and more, and hopefully to save Abby once again. I knew that I would be meeting young Sam again, and he would help me. Hopefully, the two of us would provide better odds at overcoming Stowe and his henchmen.

  I very carefully lifted the flap of skin on my arm, and lifted out the small white crystalline object from there. It wasn't that painful, and it came out easily. It was black now, and dead; I would be getting no more use from it.

  I looked out of my safe house and all was quiet. The birds were singing and a cow yawned in the distance. I was in the Peak District, in the district of Edale, in a little village called Hope. It had been a favourite of mine since childhood, and had been the first and best choice of a safe house. The problem was that my laboratory was forty miles away in Manchester. A train would have to suffice.

  I checked my arm, it hurt a lot now. The bleeding had stopped; it was only a superficial wound, although they were usually the most painful! The wound on my face looked worse than it was, so I went to the bathroom and retrieved my emergency first aid kit. I managed to patch myself up as well as I could and put on my jacket, trying to look as normal as possible.