We’re almost back at the abandoned factory before I trust myself to speak again. We’ve trudged along the tunnel in utter silence. Tabitha has stalked well ahead of the main group; Clyde, far behind. Felicity has a thousand yard stare. I fear it’s going to leave a crater when she crashes back to earth.
But I can’t keep my incredulity bottled up any more. “Me?” I say. “Us? He accused us? Friedrich was right there going through the A to Z how of Volk had screwed us all over, and his takeaway message is that we’re to blame?”
Getting it off my chest doesn’t even really make me feel better.
“What the hell else was he supposed to do?” Felicity’s words fly out like a lash. I almost wince at the blow.
“What?” I manage.
“We made the goddamn bomb in front of them. Friedrich has been searching for it, and it didn’t exist until we made it for him. Us. Of course he goddamn blames us. We’re to blame.” Red spots mar her cheeks. Her gaze stabs violently around the group. Tabitha. Clyde. And then lingering on Hannah. Hannah whose report will, without a doubt, damn us.
And finally Felicity’s gaze comes to rest on me.
“This was meant to sort everything out. This goddamn bomb is meant to kill you.”
She says it as if it’s somehow my fault.
“I was the one person saying maybe we should hold off and double check,” I protest. “That was me.”
For not the first time in the world, the technically accurate answer is not the correct one. But what should I do? Tell her it’s going to be OK? I haven’t had the luxury of that conviction for a long time. Tell her that the universe is probably going to end before Hannah has a chance to sink us? I can’t say I’m wholly convinced that would help.
While I try to figure it out, Felicity’s rage moves on. “And you damn two,” she says, simultaneously trying to cast her ire both to the front and the back of the group. “You bloody attest to me that you have this sorted out. And then this? Because Tabitha’s goddamn panty liner is dry a few days too long? That’s why the world is ending?”
Jesus. I’m not even convinced Kayla would go that far. Maybe this is what the inevitability of death is. The joy of living without consequences. Short-term solutions are suddenly applicable to every problem.
“I know.”
It’s not the response I expected. It’s not even the person I expected to respond. It’s Tabitha, standing at the front of the group. Not bristling with rage. Not ready for the fight. But small, and bitter, and wretched. And I would have thought that if any of us wanted the world to end it would be her.
But her confession, whatever motivates it, seems to take the wind out of Felicity’s sails. Her rage sags.
“Let’s just get out of here. Work out what the hell we do next.”
Kayla uppercuts the substantial amount of machinery that blocks our exit out of the way, and slowly we drag ourselves out of the bowels of our defeat.
Felicity was uninterested in giving the other members of MI37 a lift back to Oxford. Instead, they ride with Kayla. Which must be fun. Not that sitting, staring at the rain hitting the windscreen, and listening to some interminable dirge on Radio Three is actually a barrel of giggling schoolchildren.
Finally, thankfully, Felicity punches the stereo off. In fact, she punches it so hard the little LCD display cracks. She doesn’t seem to care.
It strikes me that this is the moment when the boyfriend says something comforting.
“It’s going to be—” I start.
“If you say ‘all right’ you’re going the same way as the stereo.”
I nod. “Fair point.”
Tires thrum. Rain drums. I start to miss the radio.
“We need a plan,” I say finally. “We just need to work out how to move forward. That’ll put things in perspective.”
“In perspective?” There’s a hollow shock in Felicity’s voice. “You’re going to die.”
Well, that’s one way to derail a conversation. Just deliver a punch to my keenest fears as directly and harshly as possible.
“Yeah,” I manage eventually. “The whole it-being-prophesied-by-the-universe-in-a-way-that-is-so-profound-it-echoes-forward-in-time thing sort of brought that home to me.”
Ahead of us, a stream of braking cars paints the rain running down the windscreen a violent crimson.
“But… But… But…” Felicity is unusually hesitant. I look up from my hands in my lap, realize she’s crying. Tears run down her face, pulling her mascara south.
The cracks in me, in my head, my heart, go just a little deeper.
“But we were meant to fix it,” she says. “Like we always do. And everything we did… everything we went through… Except it’s still going to happen. It’s still going to fucking happen.”
“Yeah,” I nod. And I should have more than that, but I don’t. I am hollow. And in the absence of words I should reach out to her, comfort her. But I can’t even do that. I am paralyzed by the weight of it.
“There’s no way to move forward,” she says, utterly desolate, utterly remorseless in her grief. “It’s all pointless.”
The cars continue to brake. We grind to a slow, slow halt. She sits there, like a paper doll the world has crushed up and thrown away.
I turn my gaze to stare out at the sodden world. “Remember back in September?” I say. “We went to that new Italian place. It was a really sunny day after all that rain so we decided to walk. But it was halfway across Oxford. And then I spilled the meatballs down my shirt. I mean, just completely. I don’t think I could have got more on me if I’d tried. And you would not let us call a cab, despite the fact you were laughing so hard you could barely walk.”
“Yes,” Felicity says, her voice salt-lake-bed flat. “I remember.”
“I was so happy then,” I say. “I remember thinking, this is perfect. I don’t ever want anything to change. I want it to be like this forever.”
Felicity nods. Almost imperceptibly.
“It’s all fucking changed,” I say.
A long silence after that. I don’t really have anything to add. Apparently Felicity doesn’t either. Maybe there is nothing. It’s just a fact. Inevitability.
“You want to know something stupid?” Felicity says as the traffic suddenly lurches back into motion.
I almost manage a smile. “Sure.”
“Tomorrow’s our one-year anniversary.”
Oh Jesus. That is… I don’t know. It is galvanizing enough to make me finally reach out and squeeze her leg. She reaches one hand down from the steering wheel to squeeze my hand back, then replaces it.
“At least we made it that far,” I say. It sounded cooler in my head.
“I just… I just wanted to share my life with you,” Felicity says. She’s still not looking at me. Eyes on the road ahead. “That’s all.”
It is an enormous thing to say. I mean, I knew it, I even reciprocate the feeling. But still. To just state it as if it’s nothing. As if it’s just simple.
“And now all this shit.” She lays on the horn, suddenly and viciously, blaring her way between two cars, forcing her way forward through the traffic.
“I’m just… I’m paralyzed by it,” I say. “I haven’t…” I shake my head. But somehow I need to reciprocate her honesty. “I haven’t even started to pack. I can’t. I can’t see the future.”
Felicity brakes hard. My head snaps forward, body pulling tight against the seat belt.
“You haven’t what?”
There is an edge in Felicity’s voice that was lacking. A sharp edge tearing through the emotional numbness.
Shit. Wrong confession. Too big. I should have gone with the fact that it was me who left the MI37 fridge door open overnight that one time or something.
“It’s just…” I try to explain, but already my ability to hit the right emotional tone has gone. The moment is over. “I mean, the future is fucking terrifying.”
“I asked you about moving in well before that future echo showed up. You told me you were packing well before it showed up. You lied to me.”
Oh crap. We’re establishing a timeline now? This reminds me of the murder investigations I used to run. And I’m not a good enough liar to get away with murder. It’s probably easier if I confess now, beg for leniency.
“This whole job is a death sentence,” I start. “I mean, do you really imagine that a day comes when we get to quietly retire from this and live in a little thatched cottage somewhere in Devon?” OK, maybe that image was a little too specific… “Or do you imagine a poorly attended funeral, the only mourners people almost at the end of their own short trips to an early grave?”
Felicity nods. It doesn’t resemble her agreeing with me so much as it does the clockwork of rage winding up. A pendulum’s unforgiving tick.
“And how long have you felt like this exactly?”
Alarm bells are ringing in my head. It’s a trap!
It’s a trap! Contrary to popular opinion, honesty is not always the best policy. There is definitely a time and a place for a well-placed white lie. Unfortunately in this particular time and place that lie is not as simple as stating that you read online that the door suction on fridges can lessen over time and suggesting a replacement part be ordered. And while the correct piece of conciliatory fiction is probably out there somewhere, I’m buggered if I can find it. Which leaves me with the unpalatable truth.
“Since Scotland,” I say. “The first Uhrwerkmänn. Back in the pub.” And then, because surely a little pathos cannot hurt, “I almost died.”
“That was the day I brought up the whole idea of moving in together!”
I am beginning to think of the timeline as something alive. Some insidious snake conspiring against me.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. My last possible tactic. Full-on apology. “I thought I could deal with this all on my own. But things haven’t exactly been getting better.”
“On your own?” Felicity nods again. She’s still not agreeing with me. “After I pour my heart out to you and ask you to move in with me? To twine your bloody stupid life with mine? Your immediate reaction to this appeal to live a shared life is to keep everything to your bloody self?”
I need to start watching movies with fewer explosions and more talk-y bits. Maybe I could find some examples of what I’m meant to do in these situations.
“I think we got away from the bit where I’m destined to die,” I say. But if I want to rescue this with humor I’m going to have to be a hell of a lot funnier than that.
“You selfish arse.”
Felicity punches the stereo again. The LCD cracks further.
“And now a real treat,” the DJ tells us. “We’ve got a full hour of Gregorian chant coming up.”
“Felicity, I…” I start.
She cranks the volume and drowns me out.