Ouroboros 3: Repeat (3 page)

He spent the next hour studying it thoroughly, looking for any differences.

There were none.

It was a perfect match for the file he remembered.

It did not mention any incidences that he could pinpoint as evidencing a varying timeline.

Just the same old garbage.

Soon enough Carson pushed back, pushing out a frustrated sigh as he did.

He just didn’t know what to do.

There was no clear path forward. He felt trapped, broken, defeated.

With that one word ringing in his mind, he struck out again with his fist, yet there was nothing to hit.

So he simply flailed wildly in the air, until finally Carson collapsed.

Right down to his knees.

And there he remained, considering the carpet as he considered one awful, terrible possibility.

.
 . . .

What if he was wrong?

What if Cadet Nida Harper really had died three weeks ago, and Carson was suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome?

‘
No,’ he tried desperately as he shook his head, the move so pronounced he strained his neck muscles. ‘No,’ he cried again at his empty room, his voice echoing off the walls.

He wasn’t breaking down. This wasn’t him losing his sanity.

This was the world losing its mind.

He brought his knees up and crumpled his head against them.

He had never felt so weak.

And it was in stark contrast to how strong he had seemed back in the past on Vex. In his armour, with his scanner and gun, he had felt like a god. Nothing the Vex had thrown at him could damage him. He had just streamed past them, as if they were nothing more substantial than steam.

Yet right now, he was at his lowest.

Though he was back at the Galactic Coalition Academy, and he had access to the galaxy’s greatest technology, he did not feel strong.

He felt pathetically and completely weak.

And lost.

Terribly lost.

Flopping onto his back, he closed his eyes and considered the darkness that enshrouded him.

Though he wanted to hold onto hope. He couldn’t.

It was slipping away with every second and every minute and every hour.

The longer he remained in this time, the more he knew, instinctively, that he would begin to believe she really was dead.

Resting there, it didn’t take long to fall asleep. His weary and emotional-wracked body was so fatigued, it took barely seconds to drift off.

And when he did, he dreamt.

Of her.

Cadet Nida Harper

This was hell, complete and total hell.

She couldn’t get through to him. She couldn’t reach him. All she could do was lie on that cold slab of a bed, her neck craned to the side as she stared at him. Occasionally she would try to whisper his name, but she could barely move her stiff and unyielding lips.

She had never felt colder in her life. The sensations that currently ran through her had no parallel, no comparison. The frozen chill that encased her was so extreme it felt as if her mind would shut down from the pain. Yet it couldn’t, because they wouldn’t let it.

Again another one of those shadowy figures walked into the room. They weren’t shadowy because they were encased in some kind of energy or were ethereal beings; they had no substantial form because something terribly strange was happening to Nida’s mind.

She kept entering fitful visions, falling in and out and up and down.

Yet in moments like these, where she opened her eyes and stared across at Carson, she tried to still her mind, she tried to focus her concentration.

She had no idea how long she had been here. Hours, days, weeks?

Time had just meshed into this unending struggle.

He was lying flat on his back, an untold number of medical devices locked around his body. But worse than that—worse than the cold, silver machines—were his eyes. They were wide open and staring unblinkingly at the ceiling above.

He hadn’t whispered a word to her, not once. And neither had he made a noise. If it weren’t for the slight up and down movement of his chest, she would have thought he was dead.

But she held onto the fact he was breathing—she held onto it as if it was the only fact that remained worthwhile in the whole universe.

She whispered his name in her mind, but again couldn’t push the words out of her cracked lips.

All too soon, another one of those visions assaulted her. It came thundering into her brain like a bull, ramming away her sensations, and untethering her from the scene around.

Soon a new one began to drift upon her, transposing itself onto the room with its cold metal beds and insubstantial figures.

The room that morphed in its place before her eyes was one she recognised. For it was her own. Back at the Galactic Coalition Academy.

Her room, her bed, her picture of her parents on her bedside table.

She recognised everything. And more than that, the overwhelming sense she got as she stood there was that it was
hers
.

It was familiar.

Yet that could not erase what she had just seen.

Carson on a bed with his dead eyes staring upwards.

She crumpled her hands over her face, suddenly capable of movement as the vision became dreamlike. She was no longer aware of being tied down on that cold bed; instead, she could move freely around the room.

She didn’t though.

She instantly crumpled to her knees, drawing them close to her chest as she tucked her chin down. Rocking back and forth, she didn’t say anything.

The scene around her, the dream, was unlike anything she had ever witnessed. It was perfect in every detail. And the way she could move her body was so real. It was very much as if she wasn’t in a dream and rather in some kind of encasing holographic simulation.

‘What’s happening?’ She whispered again. ‘What is happening?’ She said, even more desperation making her voice little more than a continuous hiss.

Though she wanted to stay on her floor and rock back and forth, she didn’t get the chance.

She never got the chance.

There was a knock on her door, and before she could say anything, Alicia walked in.
‘What are you doing on the floor, are you alright?’ Fake concern stretched Alicia’s face.

Nida didn’t even look up.

Because she had faced the same scene before.

This exact scene, and if not the same down to every detail, then unnervingly similar.

Over and over again.

She would wake up in her own bed, or on board the Orion, or in some other part of the Galactic Coalition Academy. And people would tell her she was fine, that she’d just had an accident. That there was something wrong with the entity, but they were doing tests.

With her help, they’d find out the problem.

They’d track down the entity. They’d free it.

Yet not once did they mention the Vex of the past, neither did they account for where Carson was.

They just wanted to know about the entity.

It was insane.

It was insane.

The last thing she remembered that made any sense was standing atop that roof and pulling Carson towards her as she forcefully opened the time gate. She remembered that immense energy crackling over her, surging within, pushing through her body and expanding it with true power.

She remembered holding his hand in hers. She could still feel how it had felt as his fingers closed tightly around her own.

In fact, as she sat there and completely ignored Alicia, she pumped her hand back and forth, holding onto that memory.

‘
Hey, Nida, it’s okay,’ Alicia began, walking into the room and flopping down beside Nida. She stretched out an arm, furling it around Nida’s shoulders. If Nida hadn’t known better, it would have appeared as if Alicia was truly being compassionate.

But Nida did know better.

‘You can’t fool me,’ Nida whimpered, her voice little more than a modulated breath. ‘I know this is some kind of simulation. I remember being on that hospital bed. You can’t fool me,’ she said again. ‘Now let us go. Let Carson go,’ she added, her voice breaking with so much emotion it felt as if it would tear right through her heart.

‘
You’re confused, Nida; you were injured, remember? You just had a reaction to some of the drugs the doctors gave you. Everything will be okay,’ she cooed reassuringly.

Nida didn’t react.

There was no point in engaging with the simulation.

Because that’s what it was, right?

The more she went through it, the more she experienced the flawless details combined with the strange behaviour of her so-called friends and colleagues, the more she understood that fact.

Someone was trying to manipulate her.

For what purpose, she didn’t know.

In fact, she hardly knew anything at all.

But that did not stop her from whispering his name. ‘Just give him back. Stop this, whatever you want, we won’t give it to you.
Stop this
,’ she pleaded.

Alicia didn’t move her arm from around Nida’s shoulders.
‘You’re confused,’ she said in an endlessly soft tone that appeared to slash through Nida’s worry.

But Nida would not be reassured.

‘Whatever you want, we won’t give it to you,’ Nida began to weep, tears trailing down her cheeks, collecting over her chin, and pooling down her neck. The sensation of it was perfect. The way they dashed upon her high collar felt exactly as if it were real.

Yet it wasn’t.

She held onto that fact.

And as she did, she pumped her left hand back and forth. It was not at the memory of the entity’s power; it was the memory of Carson’s touch.

As she held onto that, the feeling of Alicia by her side began to wane. It just drifted away, and suddenly intermingled back in with a sense of the cold medical table below her.

In a snap, her room disappeared. No more bed, no more photo of her family, no more soft carpet.

Just the nightmare she really was enduring.

She turned her head again, using what little strength she had to stare over at Carson.

No matter how many times she filtered in and out of those visions, he didn’t seem to shift. He would always be staring up at the ceiling with those dead eyes.

She whispered his name, and this time it managed to filter out of her throat. She fought against the drugs that had been pumped into her system. She fought against everything until she felt her ragged breath push from her throat,
‘Carson,’ she said with every scrap of strength she had. Though the word did not carry, it carried through her.

It shook her, and as it did, it crumbled through the fear, the anxiety, the surprise, the desperation. It reached down to that fragment of resolve she still possessed, and clutched hold of it.

She
clutched hold of it.

She would fight this, whatever it was.

And she would save them both.

Carson Blake

He awoke on the floor of his apartment, and as he pushed himself up, he saw sunlight streaming in through the large windows to his side. He stared at it. Stared at the city.

It was perfect.

Everything around him was real.

Every detail was right. Nothing was out of place. Yet how could Nida be gone? How could she be dead?

He brought his fingers up, pushed them into his brow, and shook his head.

Christ, none of this made any sense.

Or maybe it did.

Once again, that mutinous thought crept up on him.

Maybe he really was stressed, overcome, broken. Perhaps Nida really had died in his arms three weeks ago, and he was currently enduring a psychiatric episode because of it.

It was such a strange thing to doubt his own sanity.

He’d always been a confident and capable man. Sometimes too confident, in fact. His years as the head of the Force had taught him to mollify that arrogant streak into something more worthwhile. The ability to lead, the ability to figure out what to do in compromising situations.

Well right now, he lost that ability. It simply fell away from him as if it crumbled into nothing more than dust by his feet.

There was nothing to clutch hold of. Because with the indecision that came along with questioning his memory, every other faculty he had developed in his time as a lieutenant went with it.

Feeling some sorrowful mixture of confusion, despair, and guilt, he pushed himself up.

He took a moment to stand in the middle of his room, and then he turned slowly on the spot.

He half expected her to knock on his door. To come rushing out from the kitchen, or to rise from the couch, smiling at him.

She didn’t.

Because she wasn’t here.

She was dead.

He swallowed hard, shaking his head.

She was dead, he thought again, as if he were playing with the possibility.

It wasn’t a game though; he didn’t get any pleasure whatsoever out of contemplating that fact. He was simply trying to fathom what had really occurred, trying to come up with the most reasonable sounding conclusion. Did it make more sense to think he had somehow travelled into the past with Cadet Nida Harper, or that he had lost his mind over failing to save her?

It was an impossible sounding scenario, and it made his back itch with a cold sweat just to think of it. Yet he didn’t
 . . . 
couldn’t
deny the obvious conclusion.

Before his supposed trip to Remus 12, Carson had been sure that time travel was impossible. Because of course it was impossible. It was nonsensical and fanciful. Time wasn’t a river you could simply paddle backwards through. It wasn’t some path upon which you could pick your direction. It was an inherent and non-divisible part of space.

You couldn’t go backwards.

But you could lose your mind.

You could face some trauma so great that it shattered your sense of self, leaving whatever remains of your ego to concoct some story to force it all to make sense.

He clenched his teeth, closing his eyes tightly, not caring that a single tear streaked down his cheek. Eventually he brought up his hand, and he wiped it off.

‘I won’t forget her,’ he suddenly told himself, the words bubbling up from inside him.

It was spontaneous, it was raw, and it was powerful. His eyes snapped open, and he suddenly stared at the view with a new perspective.

‘I’m going to find you,’ he told it, staring past the clouds, staring past the city, and looking up into the heavens above. Though he couldn’t see the stars, he knew they were there, and with the same instinct, he knew she was there too.

He wasn’t mad. He hadn’t imagined her.

She was alive.

Just as that conclusion rang through him, shaking away his indecision, the door chimed from behind him.

He spun on his foot as fast as he could, but not fast enough to stop the door from unlocking. Instead, it simply pulled open as none other than Travis and Admiral Forest walked in to see him.

He stood back in surprise.
‘What?’ He began.

‘
Something has come up,’ the Admiral snapped, her face uncharacteristically drawn with fear. Her cheeks were pallid, her eyes open wide, and her jaw set at a determined yet fragile angle.

Travis shook his head, clapping a hand over his mouth, his surprise evident.
‘Carson, we need you.’

Carson shook his head again.

This was happening too fast. To go from considering Nida’s fate to having two people barge in on him was too much to handle.

‘
We received a report a few minutes ago,’ the Admiral said ominously.

The way she said it and what she said were enough to reach right inside Carson and to make him pay attention. He stood stiffer, his back lengthening as his arms dropped by his sides.
‘What’s going on?’ He asked instinctively, his heart pounding in his chest.

He tried to hold onto his determination to find Nida
 . . . but it just . . . it just melted away.

As the situation heated up, it was as if smoke clogged his mind. It pushed away his resolve, making it insubstantial, until he stood there in front of the Admiral and Travis, his confusion claiming him.

‘We have no idea,’ Travis cut in before the Admiral could say anything. ‘But we need you,’ he added, his voice pitching up and down.

‘
He’s right,’ the Admiral agreed with a low nod, yet one that did not extinguish the fear playing in her eyes, ‘we need you. And I need to know that I can rely on you,’ she suddenly added as she took a step back and lifted her head, her gaze darting up and down as she surveyed Carson in full. ‘I need Carson Blake back. The leader of the Force.’

Though his heart still pounded in his chest, and his ears were ringing, he forced himself to nod.

His training took over. His years of being a lieutenant, his lifetime of serving the Galactic Coalition Academy. ‘What’s going on?’ He stammered.

And he blinked. Rapidly. He tried to force the confusion from his mind; he tried to focus.

He tried to hold onto his determination to find Nida, his suspicion that she couldn’t be dead, that it was a mistake. That the scene around him was a mistake, that it was broken, that it was
wrong.

Yet as soon as he thought of that, the fog descended further through his mind, confusing him even more.

The Admiral stepped forward too, her gaze suddenly blazing and her movements snapped and quick. ‘Carson Blake, we need you,’ she repeated, her tone so loud and forthright that it could not be ignored.

It distracted him from his thoughts and worries. Again, it appeared to reach deep inside
him and conjure up his years of training, pushing away his resolve until he nodded automatically.

He was a lieutenant in the Galactic Coalition Academy, and he had a duty to his Admiral, he remembered. Yet for the briefest of moments, the memory did not feel like his. It felt alien. Implanted. A fake.

Yet, once again, as soon as that mutinous thought arose, it was banished by a quick move of the Admiral, and an even quicker spike in the confusion claiming his mind.

‘
At 0:800 we received a report detailing an attack on 10 United Galactic Coalition worlds,’ the Admiral said gravely.

Carson’s once stiffly held hands opened with surprise, his fingers jerking open as he held them crooked against his legs.
‘What?’ His pounding heart now beat even faster. So fast, in fact, it felt as if it would burst, taking his chest with it.

The harder it beat, the more serious the situation felt. And the more serious the situation felt, the more he forgot about Nida. The more his doubts just washed away with the pressure building within.

‘There is no time to discuss this. We need you in the operation centre now. We have to organise a counter-attack.
Now,
’ the Admiral snapped sternly as Carson rocked back on his feet.

‘
We need you,’ Travis said again, his voice dipping low with emotion.

Despite the situation, Carson still shook his head.

Despite the fact the Admiral and his best friend had just told him something terrible was happening to his beloved United Galactic Coalition, he somehow held onto her name.

To Nida.

To his determination to find her.

To his need to find out what was going on.

And just in that moment, as he remembered her name, something strange happened.

He could swear he heard her calling out to him.

A whispered, croaked ‘Carson’ vibrating through the air around him.

His eyes shot wide open as he suddenly turned around the room.

‘Carson,’ Travis snapped, ‘what is it?’

With a beating heart and panting breath, Carson shifted his head from side to side, as if he thought she would miraculously materialise right out of the air.

But she didn’t.

And he didn’t hear it again.

‘Carson Blake, this is serious. We need to know that we can rely on you. Can we rely on you? Can the Galactic Coalition Academy rely on you?’ Admiral Forest barked, her voice dipping low with authority.

It got his attention, because it was designed to get his attention.

He turned back to her, clapping a hand on his mouth as he tried to push back his confusion, as he tried to make sense of his experiences.

But no matter how hard he tried, no sense was forthcoming. Instead the Admiral snapped her request again, and Carson found himself nodding. Because he had to. That was his job, right? Despite how strange the situation was, he couldn’t forget his job, right? Even if he had somehow changed the timeline, he couldn’t forget the Galactic Coalition Academy.

Could he?

Before Carson could question anything, before he could think, before he could investigate that whispered name, he found the Admiral and Travis leading him forward, out of his apartment, and down towards the Academy grounds.

What happened next happened quickly. They took him into the operation centre, and set him to work. There was no time for distraction, there was no time to stand there and think.

Just action.

And the fog, all encompassing and all pervading. It owned him completely. It seeped into every last corner of his mind, cancelling out his questions and whispering in his ear that she was dead.

Gone.

If she was gone, he had to hold onto what he had left. The United Galactic Coalition. He had to protect it.

Because that was all that mattered now.