Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-160
The video they’d found on the memory card from 2019 ended, leaving Matthew’s words reverberating through Kate’s mind: I love you. In every life. I love you. I love you so much. She touched her face and found it wet and tearstained. She’d forgotten for a moment that they were watching a video. It had felt like they were about to be killed themselves – that it was their blood covering the walls.
“Matt, can we get out of here? I can’t be in this room. Please.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go back to your office,” he said against her hair.
She nodded, searching for his hand and holding it like a lifeline.
Once inside Katherine’s office, they sat down against the wall, trying to decide what to do next. Kate couldn’t stop herself from listening for the sound of footfalls, expecting guards to chase them even now.
When she tried to speak, her voice came out in a croak. She cleared her throat. “Katherine and Matthew destroyed the bacteria. They destroyed it and stopped it being used in the war. They saved the world!”
“Yes,” Matt said. “They did it. It’s over.”
Kate sighed. He didn’t understand. “Matt, it’s not over. Nowhere near. They’ve had twenty years to make it again.”
“Shit! That’s why this building has been in quarantine all this time. So that CSL could work on it in secret.”
“We need to destroy it,” she said, reluctant and terrified. “Again.”
> Subjects in time-landscape 2039 will be in danger if their actions continue
> Intervention recommended
>> Intervention denied
“How can you be from the future? That’s not possible. It’s witchcraft, and witchcraft isn’t real,” Katherine said. She was exasperated. They had been having the same conversation since Matthew had revealed that he was from the year 1854.
“I think we have evidence that it must be,” he replied, quietly.
“Why should I believe you, anyway?” she said, suddenly angry. “You could be making all this up.”
“I’m not, Katy.”
Katherine flinched. “Don’t call me that.”
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
She picked at a callus on the palm of her hand.
“I promise I’m not lying to you,” Matthew said. “I’m from the future.” She didn’t look up, and he carried on talking, voice slow, almost inaudible. “The English and French armies have been fighting the Russians. When I left, we had won the first battle. Before a rocket killed all of our leaders, we were probably going to win the war. I can’t see how that is going to happen now.”
“Rocket?” she asked in a soft, unsure voice.
“That’s what was happening when I came here. The first battle was over, and we had won. We were in the encampment. The commanders were having a meeting to discuss their next tactics, and the Russians had managed to shoot a rocket from the river, into their tent. I saw it happen. I tried to help, to rescue them, but I was too late. Their tent caught fire, and everyone died.” As he rubbed his hand through his hair, he looked like a real person mourning his friends, not the monster she’d imagined he was at all.
“All of the generals died,” Matthew continued. “My friend George was killed. We – we don’t have anyone else to lead the army. There is no one in the English or French armies who has been trained – no one who has experience in war. Everyone in charge was in that tent, and now they are all dead, because I was too slow. I couldn’t save them, or Katy.”
“Katy? What happened to her?”
“She had died earlier that day. In the battle by the river. She was shot. I couldn’t save her either.”
They were both silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry that you had to live through that.”
He nodded.
She ran through the situation in her head, trying to rationalize it. “So, someone, some … witch? Some witch noticed that in seventeen forty-five a man called Matthew Galloway dies. They find an ancestor of his in eighteen fifty-four who has just lost his … friend and who looks startingly similar and has the same name. An extraordinary coincidence. They decide the best thing to do is to bring them together, ignoring the laws of the universe, logic and morality.”
“It is impossible. How, why, and who did it.”
“Don’t forget ‘when’. She – or he – could be from eighteen fifty-four or seventeen forty-five or even the year nineteen hundred for all we know, however far off that sounds.”
“If it is possible … just if … then I’d like to know why they care. What’s so special about us that they can mess with magic like that?” Matthew tried to stand up then, but he was dizzy and fell back onto the bed. “Help me up, please. I need to move around. I feel very unwell.”
“Perhaps you should rest.”
He insisted that he would stand, so she helped him up. The redness extended all over his skin, and he felt hot, dangerously so, when she ran a hand over his arm.
His hair was standing on end from his nervous messing and she had to stifle the impulse to flatten it down. This wasn’t her Matthew. She might know him in another life, but for now he was practically a stranger. She didn’t know anything about how he lived or what kind of a person he was. The things she loved about her Matthew could be completely different in this man. Even worse, what if she wasn’t the same Katherine he knew? What if he didn’t like this version of her?
Matthew pulled away from her to support himself on her dressing table. He tugged at his shirt.
“My skin itches,” he explained. “My clothes are scratchy.”
Katherine tried to hide her concern by making a joke. “Are you a delicate flower?”
Unexpectedly, his face dropped and a crease spread across his forehead. He almost looked like he was going to cry.
Katherine pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sorry. I just… I miss Katy.”
Katherine dropped her hand awkwardly. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said eventually.
He nodded.
“Does it make it worse…? That I look like her, I mean.”
He took a long time to reply. “No. I think it helps. It makes me think of the happy memories, rather than the sad ones. She was wonderful, and she made me laugh so much. She wouldn’t want me to cry over her. She’d probably tease me incessantly about it if she were here.”
“I can tease you incessantly about it if it helps.”
The resultant smile was watery, but it was a start. “Perhaps later. I’m not sure I could handle that at the moment.”
> Subject allocation “MATTHEW” in time-landscape 1745 has still not recovered from the transfer