E.N.D.A.Y.S. (9 page)

'Tell me what the fuck is happening.'
she insisted.

“'Nother voice in my head.” he explained. “Senior Asshat of this shithole, who's soon to have an unfortunately brief embrace with a bullet.”

'Maybe ask him what the fuck is going on before you shoot him...'
Kali said.

“Yeah, let me just write that down in case I forget.” he shot back.

'If you're quite done talking to yourself,'
Campbell said.
'Do please be so kind as to take a left up ahead.'

Hayes pulled up the map and looked at the path he was being led down. It was away from the source of the magnetic fields.

“Oh, sure.” said Hayes. “Just gimme a second to run some errands, and I'll head right back over for your ambush...” he took a right at the end of the corridor, following the fields, rather than the instructions.

'Mister Hayes, I assure you there is
no
ambush
waiting for you. Have you not noticed the corridors have been cleared?'
Hayes had noticed, and it was making him wonder how much of his escape had been orchestrated.

“All the better to riddle some poor fuck with holes without other casualties.” Hayes said, turning another corner, the fields gaining in strength with every further step forward.

'I did this in an attempt to discourage you from shooting any of my staff. And the two weapons you  you appear to have ahead of you, tell me I made the correct call.'

“I ain't gonna shoot no-one who don't shoot first.”

'Was that a double or triple negative?'
Kali asked, feeling like an observer at this moment, rather than operator.

“Triple.” Hayes said.

'So, you
are
going to shoot someone if they
don't
shoot at you?'

Hayes stopped at a set of double doors that appeared to be the source of the magnetic fields, and thought about what she said. Then he thought about what he said, and tried to make sense of his original statement. “Shut up.” he blurted, reaching for the biometric scanner at the door. It refused him access.

'Mister Hayes,'
Campbell interjected.
'If you'd be so kind as to turn around and follow my instructions?'

“Ain't gonna happen.” Hayes said. “I'm not the best at being told what to do.”

'Fucking understatement...'
Kali said, watching as he tried to gain access to the room again, the scanner still rejecting his biometric profile.
'It's not working, Hayes, let me have a go.'

“Knock yourself out.” he said, as she gestured at the screen, sending new orders through to his nanos. “It'd be a nice change, someone else being knocked out...” he grumbled.

'Let go of the guns and put a hand to each door.
' she instructed. He relinquished grip of the weapons and they hung in the air, flanking him from the sides as he placed his palms on the doors.
'Redirect strength, turn your mods to eleven, I'm estimating this is going to require at least twenty-five pounds per square inch to do some damage.'

“Yeah, yeah. Enough talk, let's do this.”

She concentrated the nanos in his extremities, encouraging them to build magnetic fields to lock his hands to the doors and feet to the floor.
'Now.'
she instructed. Hayes wrenched his hands apart, a crack forming between the doors as he heaved them apart an inch, then two.
'Keep going...'
she said.

“You... keep fucking... going.” he spat, through gritted teeth and heavy breaths as he put every ounce of strength into pulling the doors apart. Three inches, then four.

'Pulling nanos from your right foot.'
she said, freeing his foot, so he could place it in the gap of the door. Five inches, then six.
'Almost there...'
she said, as the door was pulled seven inches apart, then eight.
'Left foot.'
she said, as he shoved his other foot in the path of the door, balancing precariously with his feet ahead of him. The door's lock buckled under the pressure he was exerting, and gave in to the force, his fingers coming free of the surface as they slid into the walls. Hayes caught his balance and his breath, then lost the latter almost instantly.

“What the fuck?” he said. The sentiment was mirrored by Kali. Ahead of them was a small cylindrical room with a domed ceiling and concave floor.

'Is that a jump bay?'
she asked, as he inspected it.

“A rudimentary one...” he said. “No room for more than maybe five or so at a time...”

'That's fucking impossible.'
Kali said.

'Mister Hayes.'
said Campbell.
'If you're quite done breaking and entering, and damaging my property, would you please be so kind as to turn back down the corridor?'

“Damn right.” said Hayes, backing out of the room, grabbing his weapons from mid-air and settling into a strut back on Campbell's path. “You got a lot of fucking questions to answer.”

'And I will do my best to answer them, I assure you.'
Campbell
said.
'Take a right up ahead, please.'

Hayes followed the instructions and came to a set of double doors, twice as wide as those for the jump bay, each emblazoned with a seal. Two concentric circles, the inner circle split five ways by a pointed star, a symbol at the centre of each segment. The door opened of its own accord before Hayes had a chance to read the words engraved in-between the two circles.

The room inside was taller than the corridor. Three storeys taller, and full of activity. At either side of the room, wrought iron spiral staircases went up three floors of ancient looking steel walkways. Each packed full of people at workstations, doors leading off to adjacent glass boxes that seemed to function as offices or briefing rooms. Larger, less populated workstations littered the ground floor of the hub. At the far wall, opposite the door, giant screens illuminated the room, monitoring cameras secreted in the corridors. At the centre, a large image of a feed of Hayes's back at the door. They had been watching him this whole time. Above the screens hung a wide LED panel, a timer ticking down the seconds, with just over six hours left to go.

“Mister Hayes.” said a voice to his side. He turned, weapons finding a target in their sights. A tall, thin man in his sixties looked down at him. Greyscale hair sitting neatly in a side parting, darker undulations of grey giving the impression that the greys might once have been black. Clear, bright green eyes shone out from deep, withered sockets of a face etched and desaturated by time.  “I'd like to welcome to ENDAYS.” he said, with a warm smile. “Now if you don't mind putting those remarkable weapons of yours away, I believe we have a lot to talk about.”

Hayes looked Campbell up and down with suspicion. He had been captured before. Tortured, held hostage, and worse. But he had sure as hell never been allowed to roam free around an enemy compound, let alone be welcomed in such a fashion. “Fucking understatement of the year.”

6 hours to the end of the world.

Hayes had been sitting opposite Campbell for five minutes in complete silence. The room was a cube of glass to the far right of the hub, the large red LEDs of the clock ticking down were reflected across all the walls. Built to be certain that the countdown was visible from every angle inside. Campbell sat on the other side of a metal desk, a screen hanging in the air between the two, hovering inches above a foot-thick maglev strip that allowed it to be turned, swivelled, pushed back and forth. Hayes sat with his weapons drawn, held steadfastly in his lap, Campbell targeted, locked, should there be a reason to paint the walls of the cube as a Pollock of brain, blood and bone fragments.

'Don't be an arse.'
Kali instructed, knowing he was probably about to be an arse.

“Nice place y'got here.” Hayes said, his tone thick with rancour and wry intent. “Security could do with an upgrade...”

Campbell smiled coldly, measuring up the man who sat across from him. “So I gather.” he said. “Or, perhaps we left your toy within reach, and allowed you to roam freely, as a test?” the older man queried, his eyebrows raising, furrowing ripples of skin towards his hairline.

“A test, huh?” Hayes asked, smile still lingering on his lips. “So what, I'm a prisoner? A lab rat running round your little maze?”

“Oh, not at all.”

“So, you won't mind if I just up and leave...” he said, rising to his feet.

“Actually, I would.” Campbell said, waiting a moment to gauge Hayes's reaction, then motioning with his eyes for him to return to his seat before continuing. “You are by no means a prisoner, but I cannot allow you back onto the streets at this present moment.”

“Kinda sounds like I'm a prisoner.” Hayes shot back. He thought for a moment, as the silence rose once again, then realised something was very wrong. “How do you know my name?” he asked.

“We overheard you and your colleague speaking to one another.” Campbell said.

“That's a really boring answer.” Hayes said. “I was hoping for something a little more, y'know, technical or espionagey.”

“Alas, some truths are more mundane than others.”

“Speaking of which...” Hayes said, quickly being interrupted by Kali.

'Don't you
dare
call them backward. Don't call them mundies, don't call them Neanderthals or hicks or... any other fucking name. You hear me?'

“You're a mundane world, at least on paper.” he chuckled to himself. Paper was in frequent use by mundane worlds. “What's with, y'know, not being mundane.”

“We maintain a tight grip on what technologies are allowed out for... public consumption.” Campbell said. “That might be why your superiors are assumedly under the impression that we are, how would you put it, 'backward mundy Neanderthal hicks'?” he said, quoting Kali.

“The fuck?” Hayes said, Kali echoing the words back to him.

“Kali, is it?” Campbell asked, turning his head, gesturing for Hayes to observe an earpiece in his left ear.

'… Yes..?'
she said, nervously.

“My name is Theodore Campbell, I gather you've been listening to our conversation thusfar?”

'This is so fucking weird...'
she said to herself, forgetting he could hear her.
'Yes sir, Mister Campbell, yes I have.'
she sputtered, correcting course.

“I believe you have not had a chance to explain to Mister Hayes the gravity of our situation.”

'I tried...'
she said.
'But as you've probably gathered, he's a pig-headed ballbag, who doesn't pay attention half the time.'

“Hey, I'm right here!” Hayes said, the words ignored by both Campbell and Kali.

“Would you please reiterate to him the
finer points
, I doubt he will accept them coming from me.”

'Sure, uh, ok.  Let me put this into simple terms...'

“I am not a fucking pre-schooler, Kali.” Hayes shouted, his eyes darting upwards, as if she were actually standing nearby. “And you don't take orders from him!.

'I don't take orders from you either, numbfuck.'
she said, throwing waves of feedback reverberating under his skull.
'Shut up and listen. Ok?'

He did as he was told, not audibly responding,  but giving a finger to himself. As she saw it in the lens, Kali rewarded him another burst of electric screams.

'You're off the grid. Off. The fucking. Grid. Do you understand what that means?'

“Yeah.” he said.

'Do you
actually
fucking understand the
severity
of the situation?'
she repeated.
'There's no coming home. I had to jerry rig a fucking solution just to be able to talk to you. The reality you're living on is floating fuck knows where in the meta, spiralling parallels of its own off into the ether, billions of worlds disappearing into nothingness for every particle shifting in a different direction. Do. You. Fucking. Understand?'

Hayes took a moment to take in everything that was said. His eyes roamed the room, darting around, focus lost in middle distance, trying to comprehend the scale of the situation.

“No coming home?”

'Did you stop listening at that point? Billions of people on parallels are ceasing to exist every millisecond that dimension stays wherever the fuck it is.'

“How do we get back on the grid?”

'That's the fucking problem.'
she spat.
'Whatever happened... when we lost Darvish... that device turned the jump point into a singularity, and when it closed with a boom, that kicked you off. We need to know what the fuck it was, who fucking did it for fucking why, and then we can start working on a fix. You get me?'

“Indeed.” said Campbell. “And given that I am certain you are in no way part of the incursion, I suggest a pact of cooperation between you and ourselves.”

Hayes eyed him suspiciously. The suspicion gave way to confusion. “What the fuck is an incursion?”

“Miss Kali, is he being wilfully stupid?”

'This is one of his better days.'
she said.

Campbell sighed. “We're all going to die...” he said, under his breath, sucking in air with a swift inhale, trying to curb his anger. “Mister Hayes, may I be Frank?”

'Don't say 'I thought you were Theodore'.'
Kali said, beating Hayes to his own obvious joke.

“This world of ours is under siege.”

“Ain't my business.” Hayes said. “I  just wanna go home.”

Campbell gritted his teeth, continuing to attempt to hold back his frustration. “As you are well aware, that is not presently an option. We
do
however have the brightest minds of our world
and
beyond, not to mention your own operator working on a solution. But first things first.” Campbell pushed the resentment down, took another deep breath and continued. “Some days, a world is due to end.” he said, a stern expression carved into his face, warning Hayes from replying until he had finished. “Whether that be by technology or magic, alien, biological or interdimensional threat.”

“Wait, Aliens? Magick!?” Hayes interjected, instantly warned to silence by Campbell's cold, sharp stare.

“We are here to make certain that this reality perseveres.” he said, gesturing to the people hard at work in the depths of the hub.

“End Days.” Hayes said, repeating the words Campbell had used when they first met.

“The Establishment for the Neutralisation and Deterrent of Annihilation Yielding Scenarios.”

“You missed out a 'D'.” Hayes said. “Also, that's a really shitty name.” his tone was once again wry, mocking.

Campbell looked to the floor, as if almost embarrassed by the name. “We get that a lot.” he said, in a hushed tone, sucking at his teeth, before looking back up at Hayes. “Unfortunately, our founder was quite adamant about it.”

“Kinda sounds like
you
end the days...” Hayes continued.

“Indeed.”

“You could'a called yourselves the Day-Savers. World-Boom-Stoppers. The Don't-Die-Gang. Anything can be an acronym, y'know.”

“Thank you.” Campbell said, steely. “I'll take that under advisement, and ignore those suggestions completely.”

“Wow, you're kind of a dick...” Hayes said, resulting in a kick of feedback from Kali.

'Play nice.'
she instructed.

“I thought this might go faster if I spoke your language...” Campbell said, a wry smile teasing at the corners of his lips.

“Well, this is nice and all,” said Hayes. “But I'm gonna get on outta here and go back to the jump site, do some scans or something.”

“Mister Hayes, you will do no such thing!” Campbell boomed, rising from his chair to tower over the agent. “The fate of this world is tied directly into your exile status. It might well be that your arrival into our dimension was the very thing that made this entire fuck up possible. Have you ever seen a world burn, Mister Hayes?”

Hayes took a moment, he was taken aback by the passion and fervour of the man standing across from him. “I try to avoid stressful situations.” he said.

“The clock is ticking, Mister Hayes!” Campbell spat, pointing at the LED panel, ticking ever closer towards the five hour mark. “When that clock hits zero, our world
ends
. Your life
ends
. Do you understand the
severity
of the situation? Think about it for a moment, a
fast
fucking moment, and then tell me, will you work with us?” he took a moment to catch his breath, staring unblinkingly at the musclebound moron sat in the chair before him, silent.

Hayes looked over his shoulder at the counter as it decreased with every second he wasted thinking about his decision.

“Well...” said Hayes. “It's not like I've got anything better to be doing...” he scoffed as Campbell collapsed back in his chair, anger pulsating off him in waves. Hayes holstered his weapons, smiling to himself at once again for making a calm, collected man lose his shit. “So, we gonna get started, or what?”