Entrapment, p.26
Entrapment, page 26
He hadn’t left me much alternative. He held the security token. I couldn’t follow him if I wanted to. I might as well follow Evie White. As long as she didn’t see me, I could learn something useful, something that might help me, something that I could use. I knew I couldn’t directly help myself once I’d arrived, once the loop had started. But maybe I could nudge, maybe I could steer things. All of this was about that woman, about stopping her ascent to power.
I set off in the direction that Evie had gone and, after a few paces, broke into a gentle jog. Once I reached the corner myself, I stopped and peered around. I’d caught up some ground on her, so from there I concentrated on trying to make as little noise as possible, adopting some kind of tiptoed shuffle.
It was probably fine. She seemed intent on where she was headed. I would be unlucky if she turned around now.
She went around another corner, this time to the right, and suddenly I couldn’t see her anymore. I wasn’t going to panic. I knew what the tunnels were like in Research, and the probability was that I’d reach the corner, look around and see her halfway down the next, long, featureless corridor.
Still, I didn’t enjoy taking the risk that I might lose her and, besides, this was my chance to make up some ground. I hurried to the corner and, again, peered around.
There was no one there. Of course. I had lost her.
The corridor did, indeed, disappear off into the distance, as expected. But the more I stared at it, the more I realised that there hadn’t been enough time for her to have reached the end and turned another corner, not even if she’d broken into a run the moment I lost sight of her.
That had to mean that she had disappeared into a lab. I glanced up at the wall. The ever reliable plan told me I was in Zoological Research. I knew this zone. Those labs were big, built to hold all kinds of species, large and small, with huge cages in the middle, surrounded by benches, and computer terminals, and protective screens to shield the observers of the experiments that went on. Some of which could get very messy. I scuttled down the corridor to the first door.
It was open, giving me a clear view of what was inside. There was, as expected, an enormous cage, in which was what appeared to be an elephant. It had a silver metal dish strapped to its head, from which came a variety of antennae and cables. More wires were attached to its flank, its belly and back, and all four of its feet. Its trunk was wrapped in a gold material, with the most complex wiring spiralling off that. It looked sad and sedated. I couldn’t imagine why it was there.
It couldn’t be an elephant, though. It had to be some kind of experiment gone wrong. It was an ugly thing.
I took a couple of steps inside. Beyond the not-elephant, at a bank of screens, hunched a familiar figure. Evie Chaguartay.
I should have been expecting her, but there was still something wrong. This was Evie Chaguartay, after she’d offloaded her husband and reclaimed her name. My Evie Chaguartay, the one I knew and loathed.
That’s not who I followed up the corridor, not who I saw come into this room. That was Evie White. Younger, seemingly more innocent, less tainted, although only because no one knew what she was planning.
Evie Chaguartay looked up and smiled at me or… Not at me. She was smiling at someone to the left of me.
I followed her gaze. There was Evie White, stood behind me. Between us was a gun that she was holding and pointing at my head.
‘Is this him?’ asked Evie White.
‘It’s him,’ replied Evie Chaguartay. ‘Hello, Estrel.’
‘It seems that you’ve been expecting me?’ I said.
I could see the tremor in Evie White’s gun hand amplifying down the barrel in my face. I was pretty confident that she would not fire it. Not this version of her, anyway, not yet.
‘I could see you coming,’ said Evie Chaguartay, tapping the screen in front of her. ‘A mile off. Evie here knew you were behind her. She brought you here for a reason.’
‘So much for the element of surprise…’
This wasn’t good, though. Not only was I expected, they’d drawn me here. I wondered where Lek was, if he’d find me. This was the problem with him only sharing part of his plan. When he wasn’t around, I had to make my part up as I went along.
‘I assume you’re surprised, though.’ She stepped back from the consoles and spread her arms wide.
‘I was only expecting there to be one of you. That is correct.’
Evie White’s gun was dropping now, enough for me to feel comfortable taking my eyes off her, not enough for me to go for my own gun. Yet.
‘I can’t place you.’
It was true. This version of Evie Chaguartay was definitely older, definitely from the future, just like me. But there was something about her I didn’t recognise.
A different edge, a new sprinkling of ruthlessness. She’d lost something more. She’d been through something I didn’t know about. Did that mean she was from my future, too? I did some quick calculations. She was from my future; we were both in the past. There was a paradox risk somewhere, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it quickly enough.
Regardless, if she was here, then something was wrong. If she was from any time later than a couple of weeks away, certainly if she was from later than I was, then something had gone wrong. I was here to fix things, make it so that my former self would prevent her living to look like this.
If she was here, did that mean that I’d already failed?
‘No, Estrel,’ she said with a pained smile. ‘I know you, but you don’t know me, not like this. I came after you. Set off later, arrived earlier. I’m here to stop you.’
‘Not me, though. Obviously.’
I relaxed a little more. Evie White had dropped all pretence of being about to shoot me, and if Evie Chaguartay was from my future, then that afforded me a certain amount of protection. I’d done my sums now. She carried the risk.
‘You’re here to stop original Estrel,’ I asserted. ‘You’re early.’
She shook her head and laughed. I wondered why. If she was from my future, then I was protected from her. But she wasn’t protected from me.
She actually did seem to be amused by something, but I couldn’t imagine what it was. She was vulnerable. Maybe it was just a smokescreen. I didn’t think it mattered. I pulled my gun from the back of my waistband.
‘No, Estrel, I’m here to stop you,’ she said.
I took three strides back and brought my gun forward. I flicked back and forth between the two Evies. I had them both covered. It didn’t matter what she said. I had the upper hand.
‘You should probably drop that,’ I said to Evie White.
Her gun fell to the floor with a clatter. She backed away from it, nervously. I didn’t remember her being as meek as this. I first met her on the day she started her rise to power, but it was hard to imagine someone who couldn’t hold a gun with conviction masterminding a bombing campaign that incited an uprising.
I looked at her older self. Had this version of Evie cowed her earlier self so much, and if she had, what was that doing to the timeline? Had her mere presence here changed things already?
I wasn’t supposed to make direct contact with myself when I arrived. Both Lek and Venn had been very clear about that. I was developing a bad feeling about this whole situation, and I already had one of those. I thought I knew why Lek hauled me out of bed.
‘You’re not carrying anything?’ I checked.
‘I’m not,’ said Evie Chaguartay, almost regretfully. ‘But that’s not what’s important now.’
‘Not important?’ It was my turn to laugh. ‘I can’t kill her, not without corrupting the timeline, which I’ve been firmly warned not to do. But you? You come after me. There’s no paradox in my killing you.’
‘And yet you’re not pulling the trigger. You have questions.’
Damn her. I did have questions. I wanted to ask Venn. I wanted to ask Lek. I wanted to ask someone I trusted. But they weren’t here.
‘If you’re here…’ I began.
I stopped. Dozens of questions hung in the air, floating between us.
‘That’s the one,’ Evie grinned.
I hated her more in this moment than I’d ever hated her before, and I’d hated her plenty. I gritted my teeth and squeezed the gun in my two hands, my finger itching towards the trigger. I knew she was trying to seed doubts in my mind. I knew she was stalling for time. I knew I was going to let her.
‘You’re not dead,’ I snarled. ‘I came back here to make sure I killed you. It doesn’t work, does it? The loop. I trap myself for nothing?’
‘No, you didn’t kill me.’ Evie’s voice was gentle, mocking me. ‘Give yourself some credit, Estrel. It’s easier said than done.’
Everything is easier said than done. Mouse said that to me, once. “Everything is easier said than done, except love”…
‘You want to try me?’ I moved my finger to the trigger.
‘I don’t think you understand. You could kill me, of course you could. You even killed her, once or twice, I’m sure of it…’
She motioned towards her younger self. I glanced over. She looked baffled by the entire conversation. I wondered how much she knew, if that would help to keep things on track, continuity-wise, if she didn’t know why she was involved, what the grand plan was.
‘…but he couldn’t go through with it.’
Evie Chaguartay finished talking.
‘Who?’ I asked the question, but I knew the answer.
‘Him, Estrel Mark One. He couldn’t do it. Millions of iterations. He fell in love, he fell down vertical shafts, he blew himself up with Resistance munitions. He did everything you asked of him. He ignored every word you said. But never, not once, could he bring himself to kill me.’
That didn’t make any sense. That was knowledge that she shouldn’t have. It was knowledge that no one would ever have, not even me. Once I satisfied the conditions of the loop, that was it. That would become the main timeline. I’d blink out of existence. Everything else would collapse and no one would know what we’d done.
Venn didn’t even that she, herself, would know if it had worked. Once she’d created the conditions for it to happen, the plan was that she would step back and leave me to initiate the loop alone. That removed the paradox risk. That’s what she thought.
It made sense as far as I understood it, but could Venn have been wrong? Everything was unravelling in front of me and the only answers I was going to get were from the woman in front of me.
I had to know.
‘How do you know all this? Those timelines, they don’t exist anymore. There’s no way you could know about any of this.’
‘I know I’m still alive,’ she said. ‘And besides, it’s not as simple as that, Estrel. You really don’t understand what you’re messing with here, do you? Nothing is ever completely erased. It leaves a mark. I can see what you tried to do. Your tracks are still there, in the sands of time.’
‘The sands of time?’
This all sounded very mystical and unlikely. And yet she knew. I didn’t manage to kill her, but the loop must have worked. It must have had some effect. One she didn’t like. She’d come back to fix something, to change something. Something I did.
‘It’s a fucking metaphor. Good grief, you’re hard work. It worked, OK? Your plan worked. I never rose to power. You stopped me. I rotted in jail for trying to blow up the city.’
Relief flooded through my body. It took all of my concentration to keep the gun pointing at her. Tears filled my eyes. It worked. I did it. I didn’t kill her, but I stopped her. That was better, wasn’t it? I never wanted a murder on my conscience.
But I didn’t kill her. Now here she was.
I hadn’t stopped her.
I had to stop her now.
Except…
‘You seem awfully keen to tell me all of this?’ I said.
I could feel myself getting twitchy. There was something else going on. Does it matter? Should I just kill her now? I glanced back to Evie White, swung my gun back in her direction.
‘You don’t need to worry about her,’ sighed Evie Chaguartay. ‘She’s not going to shoot you. Any more than your younger self was willing to kill her. Honestly, you’re like children!’
I swung my gun back to Evie Chaguartay.
‘But you’re not her. And I’m not him. And I don’t believe you’d let anything, even something as cataclysmic as corrupting the timeline, get in the way of you getting what you want.’
‘I don’t think you want to do that, though.’ Evie threw a switch on the console in front of her. ‘I don’t think you want to kill me.’
Damn her. She saw me now.
Electricity surged through the bars of the cage in the middle of the room. In a moment, all I could hear was a hum that caused all the hairs up the back of my neck to quiver to attention. Lightning flashes arced between terminals, over the back of the beast, who seemed agitated but remained silent.
A pulse of energy radiated out from the cage. The air fizzled and sparked, and everything slowed down, just for a moment. Something significant was happening. I opened my mouth to speak. It took an age.
‘Oh, but I do,’ I said, eventually.
I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I couldn’t let it continue. I still didn’t want to kill her. I knew I had to.
The air in the lab settled, and the normal flow of time reasserted itself.
‘No, you don’t,’ Evie said, firmly. ‘Think about it. If you kill me now, then this is when I die.’
‘Seems obvious to me. And perfectly acceptable.’
‘But if you do that, then it becomes what happens. It’s written before you - the original you - even arrives here. Nothing you, or he, does can change that anymore. Continuity will prevail. He can’t succeed, he can’t kill me. Because you already did.’
I wasn’t having that.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘That’s not how it works.’
‘It’s not?’ Evie cackled. ‘You’re sure about that? You understand what’s going on here?’
She took a step forward, arms spread wide, her chest thrust forward. She was, I noted, still mostly protected by the bank of equipment in front of her, but a shot to the head was all it would take.
‘Go ahead, take your shot. If you’re prepared to risk being wrong…’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘He didn’t kill you, but we still got out of the loop. Whatever he did, it worked.’
‘Probably,’ shrugged Evie. ‘You won’t know, not for a while. And just imagine if you screwed things up before they even got going. You could have doomed him to fail. But if you want to take that risk…’
I stared at her. I didn’t believe this. She was just trying to confuse me, to stop me from killing her here and now. If I did it, she’d be dead, my mission accomplished. But it wasn’t supposed to be my mission. Not this version of me. I went to pull the trigger, hesitated.
‘I…’
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take the risk. I needed to know what he’d done, what I’d done, to escape the loop if it wasn’t to kill Evie White. I had so many questions. I couldn’t trust her enough to ask her. But if not her, then who?
‘You’re asking the wrong questions,’ said a voice behind me.
It was if he had read my thoughts. He probably had. I turned around.
‘You need to ask her what the elephant is for,’ said Lek.
Both versions of Evie laughed this time. It echoed around the lab, the reflected sound harder, crueller, than that which came out of their mouths.
I looked at Lek. Lek looked at me. Was that a look of incomprehension, or just one of regret? He was an inscrutable as ever. Damn him.
‘It’s Continuity,’ said Evie Chaguartay. ‘The elephant is part of the machine, and the machine gives me Continuity. My Continuity.’
‘That’s not an elephant,’ I said. ‘Why is everybody calling that thing an elephant? There is no such thing as an elephant.’
I struggled to compute what she was saying to me. She kept repeating that word. Continuity. I didn’t understand. So I asked about the elephant.
‘Spoken like a good Ashuanan boy,’ she cackled. ‘But I’m sorry, this is an elephant. We’re making the impossible possible today. I thought it was fitting. Now, all we need is a paradox to fire it up…’
With a smug look on her face, she thought she’d won. I was sure of that. It gripped me tight around the guts, and I reacted with white-hot rage. It surged from inside me, my mind on fire, my nerves ablaze.
I swung my weapon. I needed to act. I knew I couldn’t let her win. Except I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was trying to do.
I looked to Lek. His eyes were desperate. He seemed at a loss himself. I wasn’t used to that. It seemed Evie had, indeed, taken him by surprise as well. I didn’t even know how that was possible.
There was the suggestion of a sound, almost a pop, like we were trapped in a bubble of reality and someone had broken through from the outside. Two more people appeared in the lab.
I only saw one of them.
Mouse. I wanted to go to her, to wrap my arms around her, to feel her against me again. I wanted to kiss her in a dramatic, romantic gesture I knew she’d hate and so I’d never attempt.
She looked straight through me. She didn’t know who I was.
It struck me through the heart, but this wasn’t the time for that. This pain would die, it would disappear the moment we fixed the timeline and everything reverted to the way it should always have been. I would never remember how much this hurt.
I could use this emotion. I should use it, honour what it meant. It was why I was here, to make sure I never felt it again. It meant everything.
It was the machine. The machine was the problem. We could deal with Evie Chaguartay after we’d dealt with the machine. After I’d dealt with the machine. I pointed my gun, took my stance, prepared to fire.
What if I was being rash?
It wasn’t working yet.
“…a paradox to fire it up…”
What if this was an advantage that I could exploit as well? Instead? I didn’t understand what I’d been told. I hadn’t been told anything, really. But if this machine could do what I thought it could…
