The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) (23 page)

“Tall One will tell Gary where is prisoner? Luna Gajos,” Gary said, sitting down, giving the Tall One his best death stare.
 

The Tall One recoiled onto his back and climbed to his feet.

“What the …?” he said. “You … can talk? I’m dying, right. Hallucinating? I’m in the hospital. No, I’m still in the seventies? No, this is just an acid flashback. Jesus, I’ve seen some stuff in the past, but this really does take the biscuit. Oh my God. Thank God, the children are probably okay. I’m just hallucinating that some evil man with red glasses killed them. Shame about Connor, though that kid deserved something. Perhaps not a killing. Maybe that’s a step too far. Maybe. But definitely a good kicking. Which is weird for me to say because I was the one who was bullied in school, but here I am advocating a bit of bullying. Just a tad. So anyway, kitty, tell me, where am I really?”

Gary’s eyes widened. Tall One was a fool.
 

“Tall One is not having acid flashback. Tall One is simple. Tall One must tell Gary soon so he can go and save Luna.”

The Tall One shook his head. He scratched at his beard, now unsure of what he believed to be true.

“Interesting,” he said, trying to compose himself. “Regardless of the state of my mind … and regardless of talking cats, killer men, and acid flashbacks … the prisoner woman, is, as far as I know, in the questioning room.” He nodded now. Affirming. Trying to make heads and tails of the truth. Fact and fiction.

“Idiot Tall One will take Gary or else.”

“One thing I’ve figured out over the years, my dear Cheshire cat,” he said, waving his finger around, “is that you should never try to halt the experience. You should allow yourself to feel the experience. All resistance should be let go, and free thought must be allowed to flow and flourish.”

Gary stared at the Tall One like he might claw his beard off.

“What is Tall One saying?” he said.

“Of course, kitty. I’ll take you to the questioning room. Let’s go.”

Nisha Bhatia

Nisha held her hand to Darpal’s mouth as he cried. As if she might stop the inevitable. The shattered glass fragments were all around them. Dr Warwick had tucked himself away in the far corner. And Luna was still handcuffed to the table. Her chains clanged against the metal surface as she lifted her hands to her face. Well, as near to her face as she could get them.
 

They all waited, expecting whatever was on the other side to burst through the glass. To explode through and unleash havoc on them, but there was nothing.
 

Luna’s chains became still. Darpal stymied his sobs. The faint crumbling of the glass. Tiny fragments falling away and hitting the ceramic floor.
 

They waited, holding their breath until—

“Hello in there,” a voice said. A male’s voice. Broken. Charred. Like an old man speaking through fire. More specks of glass fell to the floor. “How are we all doing?”
 

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Dr Warwick looked to the ceiling.
 

“Very rude to ignore somebody when they’re talking to you, isn’t it?” he said. “I thought humans were a polite species, especially those of Anglo descent? The last time I was here, a boy, dark-haired with mud on his face, stole something of mine. Nothing important. A leather bound package of food or something. I think he believed it to contain some of your English money within. After he stole it and scampered off down one of those cobbled streets, his bare feet slapping the stone floor as he went, you know what he said?”
 

Still quiet.

“He said ‘I beg your pardon ,sir’. Imagine that?” The man chuckled. “A polite burglar. You know, I’ve been all over the Galactic Community, and even to some of those loose non-Community planets, and this is the only planet where you would be apologised to as you’re being robbed. I let that boy live. He, along with the planet, had earned my respect. You see, Earth holds a special place in my heart, and it does for the rest of the Community. It’s one of the reasons I’m here. I’m here
because
we admire you so greatly. So do not think that I enjoy being a part of such a destructive force.”
 

Something tapped against the other side of the glass now. A fingertip, against the delicate surface. Soft enough to tickle a flower. Still, more glass fell to the floor. In the harsh light on the ceiling the specks of glass sparkled.

“I’m here, simply to do my job. And sometimes, as I’m sure you’re well aware, jobs can become messy. Now, if you would be so kind …”

More tapping and more of the glass fell away, enough now to reveal the face behind. The light in the room reflected in red. The smiling mouth beneath the sagging skin.
 

“If you could just pass me the boy we can all get along with our lives.”
 

Darpal shook in Nisha’s hands. She could feel the terror attacking his system. The man was looking directly at him, through her.
 

“I’ll kill you if you try,” Nisha said. The words felt ridiculous coming from her mouth. Thoughts of alcohol came to her. That thick taste of red wine coating her tongue. She felt the travel-bottle of vodka against her chest. She longed for it. To forget about this whole thing, to bury her head.

“Oh really?” the man said, his smile wider than ever.
 

“Yes,” Nisha said. “I’ll fucking cut your throat if you lay a finger on this boy.” As she spoke the words empowered her. “I’ll rip out your fucking eyes.” She stood up, leaving her hand behind her, resting on Darpal’s head.
 

“Marvellous,” the man said. “Just marvellous.”

With that, he punched the glass. With one blow the panel erupted into shards that splashed into the room. Dr Warwick screamed from his safe corner. Luna turned her head away and Nisha covered her face with her free hand. The reflective shards lay on the ground, surrounding them all. Nisha saw a sharp tooth, about the size of her hand, by Luna’s chair.
 

With an unnaturally smooth precision, the man placed his boot on the frame of the broken window and stepped over it and into the room. His smile remaining as he walked.
 

“Okay,” he said. His expression was one of a lunatic. It was distorted. The skin didn’t look like his own. It wasn’t his. He was wearing it. Borrowing it. The teeth beneath his wrinkled lips were many and sharp. He looked to Dr Warwick first, and then to Luna, and then to Nisha. “Okay dear, let’s see you do your worst.”
 

He wasn’t holding any weapons. His hands were bare and exposed. They were twitching slightly. He held them away from his body like he was walking through a field of barley. He passed Luna and ran his fingers through her hair and she cried. She shook in her seat. Tears ran down her face as he licked his pale lips and pulled the copper hair through his fingers.
 

With each step, the glass cracked and popped beneath his black boots. He was wearing a sleek skin-tight suit that covered him beneath that giant trench coat covered in gadgets and lights and a gun of some kind. With each step, Nisha felt herself harden like petrified wood. She would stand before him. She would not let him kill the child. Even if it killed her.
 

Another step and her left hand, still on Darpal’s head, began to shake. His head fell from her hand. She didn’t want to turn around. She kept her eyes on those lenses on his eyes. Red glass that looked like it was bonded to his skin, seared in flesh. Holding him inside that baggy pile of skin.

He stopped as he stood before Nisha, smiling, unmoving.
 

“I do admire the human spirit,” he whispered to her. His breath tickled her nose. “Even if it is mostly wasted in vain.”
 

He lifted his hands to Nisha’s suit jacket, holding them outwards. He then moved his hands to her stomach. They twitched against her and his smile fell.

“A little one? No, there was a little one. Not anymore. No, you couldn’t carry him. Unfit. A broken womb.”
 

Nisha felt herself stiffening up even more. She felt the salty tears fall into her mouth. Behind her, Darpal was shaking. She had to stand tall.

The man ran his hands up and over her breasts.
 

“You know,” he said, lowering his voice to little more than his breath, “on my planet, females who are unable to carry offspring are deemed unworthy. Nowadays, they’re simply looked down upon but there was a time…”
 

He lifted his hands around to the back of her head. His warm sticky fingers entangled in her thick black hair.

“… Oh yes, there was a time, when the females who were unable, were simply closed up, sealed, removed from existence. It was always their choice too. You see, the shame was so great, they asked for it. No, they begged for it.”

As he massaged the back of her head with his left hand he moved his right hand to her face. He ran the back of his fingers against her cheek, dipping them in her tears. He lifted the moist digits to his mouth and licked them, revealing his slender tongue, narrow and long.
 

“You should be grateful,” he said, “for I am doing you a favour.”
 

As he flipped his hand over, it twitched with more vigour than before. Flittering in the air. He slowly moved it towards her face.
 

She closed her eyes, waiting for the worst, when she heard the hissing. She opened her eyes and the man fell backwards. Something was on his face. Hissing and swiping at his eyes. It took Nisha a second to realise it was a cat. A fucking big one. A flurry of screaming and violent slashing. A second later and one of the red lenses fell out through the mess and landed on the floor. The man stood on it and crushed it into a fine red powder. He roared as he fell backwards and landed on the metal table. The cat leapt into the air. His back legs turkey-flipped over his head and he landed on some of the glass near to Dr Warwick. He whined as he cut himself.

“You motherfucker,” Luna screamed. Almost by instinct, she wrapped the handcuffs around the man’s throat and pulled on them, the chains disappearing in the pale doughy rolls of his skin. “You fucking child killer!”
 

The man was more concerned with the blood pouring from his eye, though. Oily black blood bubbling through. He writhed around, his hand flittering over the hole where the eyeball should be. There were no eyes under those lenses. Just holes. The tar pumped outwards and fell down his face and onto the table.

Behind her, Darpal was still shaking.
 

“One zero one one one zero zero one one zero—”

Nisha turned to see that he was on the floor, spit foaming around his mouth. She bent down by him and held his head.

“He’s binary fitting,” Dr Warwick called from his corner, still unmoving.
 

“You don’t understand,” the man said, his voice pulled up a key by Luna’s chain. “The children must die.”
 

As the man reached into his coat and fumbled for the gun holstered to his body, Nisha picked up a shard of glass, spun, and leapt at him.
 

“Leave him alone!” She jumped forward and stuck the glass into his middle. It
shunked
into his skin. His hands were still twitching. He was still reaching for the gun. She bent down, picked up another shard of glass and pushed it into his stomach. And then another and pushed it into his chest. She felt the natural resistance of his flesh give way as she punctured him again and again until finally pressing one into his throat, just below Luna’s chains. Her own blood ran down her hand as she forced the shard through the meat hidden in his neck.

His movements stopped and his hands became still. She fell backwards to the floor and burst into a mess of tears. Her hands were dashed with fine lines of red. Dr Warwick sat in the corner, hyperventilating. The cat jumped onto the table as Luna pulled her chains out from his rolls of fat. They both looked down at the killer. Nisha pushed herself back against the wall and held Darpal.

“Darpal, are you okay?” she said as his body contorted in her arms. She tried to hold him still.

“Zero one zero one one zero.”
 

The indigo speck in his eyes was stronger than ever, consuming all of the white.
 

“One zero zero one …” He finally stopped but he still didn’t appear to be lucid.

“Darpal, please!”
 

“Sequence complete,” he said before passing out completely and softening in her hands.
 

For a moment, everyone was quiet. Nisha looked to the others in the room. The cat was now up against Luna, brushing its bum against her head. Its tail flicked upwards.
 

“Darpal!” Nisha screamed again, unsure of how deep he’d fallen.
 

“What did he say?” Dr Warwick called over as he climbed to his feet. He readjusted his top, coughed into his hand and found his composure. The glass crumpled as he walked over with his platform boots. He leant over the corpse of the killer, his finger on his chin as he inspected him. The missing eye and the glass shards sticking out of him. “It’s very curious. Very curious indeed.”

As Nisha pressed Darpal against her body Dr Warwick unlocked Luna’s handcuffs and one of the teachers arrived, bearded and pale as a sheet. He instantly vomited at the sight of a black bubble popping out of the dead killer’s eye socket.

As Luna stood up and rubbed her sore wrists, Dr Warwick opened the door and left the room. A second later and the alarms turned off.
 

Nisha stopped crying when she heard the buzzing coming from the killer’s coat. The vibrating sound of a phone. Luna bent down and reached inside the killer’s trench coat and pulled out a perfect rectangle of glass. The glass vibrated in her hands. She handed it to Dr Warwick and something beeped. The vibrating sound stopped but the glass came to life. A panel of video appeared on the side of it, facing Dr Warwick.

“Greetings,” the man on the video display said. From across the room, Nisha couldn’t make out the man’s appearance, but even on that small square he didn’t look correct. His skin was grey and his eyes were much larger than they should’ve been. “We’ve just received news that the beacon sequence has been fully completed. Is that so?”