‘I have to, Harry, don’t you see?’ She reached for him, but he flinched backwards. ‘There’ll be no more life on this planet within twenty years. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’ She nodded at Cronin. ‘So has he. But we can change it if we’re willing to make the right sacrifices.’
‘The past can’t be changed; that’s what you’ve been drumming into me.’
Amy removed a pill from her pocket. ‘Not with these, no. I need stronger, healthier brain tissue, something with uncontaminated DNA. Using babies might do it.’ She gazed across at her victims. ‘I need enough to change your present to prevent my future. To prevent humanity’s terrible future.’
He stared at Adler. ‘Is she one of your experiments?’
‘Rose got too close to the sun, but Operation Cerebrum proved useful in that respect. Her memories of what she did for me will only linger in her head like butterflies drifting in the wind.’
Harry gathered his thoughts. ‘You came here from 2070?’
Her smile unnerved and excited him. ‘That’s correct.’
‘So, even with the war, you and the world must have been aware that time travel was real, of the work Adler, Hazell, and Cohen had done.’
‘Ah, yes, the greatest of temporal paradoxes. I knew time travel existed before I accidentally discovered how it works, and then went back in time to reveal it to the people who claimed they’d created it before I discovered it.’ She laughed out loud. ‘I think I need some of that Cerebrum juice to heal my aching brain after all that.’
‘You know what I mean, Amy. You were aware of Adler and the others before you travelled back to hand them your time travel pills.’
‘Yes, the Crucial Three are famous twenty years from now, but mainly because they all disappear from history in 2050.’
‘What?’ Harry said.
Amy touched Rose’s head again.
Then Adler vanished.
‘I thought it might have happened sooner, but I guess the injection worked slower because of her sleeping mind.’
He rushed to the empty table. ‘What have you done?’
‘I do what’s necessary. I needed Rose and the others to get you to me, and because history says they all disappeared this year, that had to be done as well. So I wiped all their minds and sent them to different time zones. I’m sure they’ll be fine.’
He resisted the urge to strangle her. Instead, he looked at Cronin.
‘You’re forgetting there’s still another time traveller out there who can undo all your plans.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Another… oh, you mean Ellie.’ That laugh unnerved him again. ‘I thought she would be the one to give everything away, but I guess your love – or lust – really was blind.’
Harry’s legs ached. ‘Ellie is in on this as well?’
‘Sort of,’ Amy said. ‘You didn’t recognise her?’
‘What?’ He stumbled forward.
Amy caught his arm. ‘You don’t know who she is?’
‘Lily?’ he said. ‘It was you who stole Lily from us?’
She let go of him. ‘God, no. Do you think I’m a monster, Harry? I never stole your sister from time. I don’t know what happened to her, but we can check together once we sort this out.’
‘Then… who?’
Amy tapped the side of her head. ‘Those memories still haven’t returned. I thought they would have by now.’ She glanced at Cronin. ‘I’ve had to rely on the Captain’s account of what you did at Pompeii.’
Harry stumbled from the table. ‘Ellie is…?’
‘The younger me, yes.’ She gazed deep into his eyes. ‘I assumed you’d see the resemblance when you met her, even with the twenty years difference.’
‘Why… why did you bring her into this?’
She laughed. ‘Who wouldn’t want to go back in time and meet the teenage version of themselves? Not that I met her – I only observed from a distance and let Rose and the others deal with Ellie, because trying to explain to her who I was would have been too complex at that stage in her life. And anyway, Harry, wouldn’t you say the person you are now is completely different from who you were at nineteen?’
He dug his nails into his skin. ‘I don’t know if you’re lying to me again or not. Why do you have different names?’
‘Amy is my middle name and Croft my married name.’
Harry gazed at her. ‘In the future – in your present – did you remember what Ellie, you, did here with me and the others?’ The paradoxical nature of it all fried his senses.
‘No,’ Amy said. ‘Cronin wiped all of Ellie’s memories with the TA before she left here.’
The blood trickled across his palm. ‘Did you kill Chuck?’
She shook her head. ‘No, that was Rose. I’m not sure why she did it. Perhaps the solution I injected into her hippocampus, neocortex and amygdala tipped her sanity over the edge.’
He watched Cronin cradling the weapon in his arms.
‘What happens now, Amy?’
She went to him and grabbed his hands. Her touch excited and repulsed him at the same time. When he gazed into her eyes, he only saw suffering.
‘That’s up to you, Harry. We can take the next step and improve the time travel solution. Then we’ll rescue Chuck, change the future and save humanity.’
‘And stop your murder?’
‘Yes.’
He continued to hold her as he stared at the bodies strapped to the tables.
‘How do you do it?’
She let go of him and he remembered how close they’d been in his flat.
‘Come, I’ll show you.’
Amy dragged him to the nearest table. His legs told him to flee, but his brain wouldn’t let him.
And Cronin has that rifle.
She let go of him and grabbed a scalpel from a tray next to the homeless man.
He saw the man’s eyes flicker into life. ‘He’s still awake, Amy.’
Her smile didn’t warm his heart this time, instead turning it into a slab of ice.
‘They have to be, Harry. The brain needs to be stimulated as I cut into it and remove the tissue.’
‘Stimulated?’
‘Fear, Harry. The synapses that produce fear are essential for creating the chemical I require.’
She took the scalpel and sliced it across the man’s scalp. Harry’s instincts were screaming at him to stop her, but Cronin’s gun kept him frozen to the spot.
Blood seeped out of the skull, with the man unable to move his head because a vice-like structure secured it. Harry watched the man scream with his eyes. He opened his lips, but nothing came out.
‘You removed his tongue?’
Amy ripped the scalp from the silently screaming man and dropped it into a bucket at her feet.
‘It makes things easier. Early on, Jack and I discovered that covering the mouth wasn’t helpful because the patient would bite through the tongue when the pain became too much. Then they’d pass out and there would be no more fear and we’d have to start the procedure all over again.’
Harry glanced at Cronin, calculating if he could grab the weapon from him and end this horror show once and for all.
But he had to keep her distracted.
‘How many of these procedures have you done?’
Amy stopped slicing into the man’s skull. ‘One brain produces one pill.’
She’s done this hundreds of times. Maybe thousands.
‘Did the Crucial Three know about this?’
She shook her head. ‘No. They kept badgering me to tell them the secret, but I wouldn’t. I don’t believe they would have been able to deal with this.’
Amy removed a piece of skull and moved the scalpel to the brain.
‘And you think I can?’
She nodded. ‘I do, Harry. That’s why I brought you into this. I can’t save humanity by myself. But, with your experience in the army, especially during Operation Cerebrum, and your involvement with the police, I believe you have the perfect mentality for this.’ Amy pointed the bloody scalpel at him. ‘Your reaction here – or the lack of it – proves I was right.’
She returned to the procedure, removed a small part of the brain and held it up so Harry could see it.
‘We can get as many infants and young children as we need. Kids go missing all the time and there are plenty of them homeless in this city. With the babies, we might have to visit some of the more remote places on the planet, so we don’t attract too much attention.’ She placed the brain tissue into a glass tube. ‘But I’ll harvest these brains first, so we have enough pills to move to the next stage.’
He stood there, transfixed by horror, his hands deep into his pockets. Then he turned from her and buried his head in his fingers. He didn’t move, but felt the rifle barrel pushed into the back of his neck.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Cronin said.
Harry waited for him to squeeze the trigger, knowing the bullet would be a blessed relief.
And it would prevent what he knew was coming next.
‘But I do,’ Amy said. ‘So leave him and check on the others.’
Harry felt the gun pulled from his neck and she grabbed his hand.
He turned around to face her. ‘Others?’
She smiled again, but it meant nothing to him now.
‘Yes, we have more subjects in the basement.’
An abyss of despair and terror surged through him. ‘Children?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No. You and I will lead that process. Then, once we have the stronger chemicals for the pills, we’ll travel back and you’ll stop my murder. It may take a few attempts before we get it right, but I’m convinced we will.’
‘Who do you think killed you?’
‘It has to be Rose during one of her manic periods.’ She laughed. ‘It’s ironic, really. The injections I gave her alerted her brain so much, it drove her to kill me. Or perhaps she got sick of me refusing to reveal my secrets and she’d had enough.’
He dragged a smile from somewhere deep inside his shrivelled heart, leant forward and kissed her. Amy’s arms were around him, squeezing the life from Harry as he found the back of her throat. Then he released the pills from the side of his mouth and swallowed his own.
I hope I get this right.
They disappeared together.
There were no Doors of Perception for him, only his feet landing on the spot he’d seen many times before. But this time, he had a wide-screen view and not the limited one he’d had while watching that CCTV footage.
The river shimmered in front of him and the moonlight bounced off its dark surface.
Amy’s laugh was of shock, not of joy.
‘You? It was you all along?’ He turned to peer into her sparkling eyes. ‘You’re my murderer, Harry?’
‘I don’t have to be, Amy. We can change everything now, right here, the two of us. All you have to do is promise you won’t hurt anybody else.’
She put her hands on the railings. He watched her do it, seeing it from a new angle now, different from what he’d observed on the video when it was impossible to see who she was talking to off-screen.
And he knew what was coming next.
It was me all along.
‘I can’t, Harry, you know that. The fate of humanity rests on my shoulders, on our shoulders. Are you prepared to sacrifice the future of humanity to save a few people here and now?’
He thought about arguing with her, but realised it was pointless.
The past can’t be changed.
He moved forward and put his hands on her, knowing they would be the only part of him visible on the CCTV.
Then he pushed her off the bridge and into the river.
As he heard her body hit the water, he took another pill.
Harry appeared outside the factory sixty seconds after he’d left. Once more, he’d bypassed the Doors of Perception, wondering if he’d see them again or if he’d evolved past that stage. Then he removed his phone and called Caroline Diaz.
Once he knew the police were on their way, he checked the pills in his pocket: he had four remaining.
Enough for what he needed to do next.