The Clockwork Series

August 5, Wednesday

Richard turned on the TV.

And he bolted to his car.

The news report on television he saw just a minute ago resonated in his mind as he drove hastily to the wreckage of Woodville Theatre:

“Citizens report various paranormal activity in the vicinity of Woodville Theatre – from UFO’s to ghosts. Some say they are spirits of those who have died in the mysterious explosion just a few days ago. Others say it is just a prank. For updates, stay tuned to BNC, the Boomerang News Chan—”

Richard parked his car some distance away from the site and walked, wearing a cap and a pair of sunglasses. He noticed something strange about the wreckage, even at a distance. No people? If that’s a prank, it sure isn’t working. But if something IS going on . . .

The wreckage grew closer as he walked, and three minutes later, he had arrived. The immensity of the damage was unimaginable. All that was left of the sparkling masterpiece were concrete blocks of concrete the size of watermelons, desks and sometimes cars. Glass shards were scattered across the rubble, reflecting the sun’s intensifying rays like diamonds in the rocks. It still sparkles.

Richard wasted no time waiting. He began traversing over mountains of concrete in a hope to find a piece of evidence or a paranormal event. He found many other objects in the wreckage: burnt wigs, warped toothbrushes, tattered costumes and a wide variety of instruments. A bone.

At the other side of the property, a twenty-nine year old woman stood by - with a videocamera.

Richard halted as something peculiar appeared in his vision. Papers were scattered all around him, both burnt and spared, but this particular piece had something to it. A glow? A G-wave match?

Either way, it wasn’t supposed to be there.

He ran to it, grateful for the daily running he had done in the past – before the dreams began. It was then that he realised that the dreams were gone. That’s strange. Does that mean I’m doing the right thing? There was only one way to find out. I will find out where this leads me, where it ends. I will avenge AJ’s death. There’s no longer any other way to live this life. It’s the will of the universe.

Richard examined the paper. It was photo paper, still relatively undamaged and rigid. He picked it up and examined what was printed on it, and for that single moment, he could’ve sworn his heart stopped.

It was a picture of him.

But it wasn’t him per se. The figure of him in the image looked more mature, like he was older somehow. It’s the same version of me I saw in the dream . . . how could I be getting visions of myself? The picture’s very existence transcends the rules of time and space. Unless . . .

Impossible.

Suddenly, like a black cloth was just draped over him, Richard’s surroundings became black. An image flashed into view: a red suit that looked something like a space suit, hung in an enclosed glass cabinet. As his vision moved closer, he saw four letters etched into a plate in front of the suit: “NACT”.

Then the image disappeared into black once more. Richard heard a voice. He remembered that voice, disturbingly similar to his own. The one from the dream! It said repeatedly, “Mine . . . mine . . . mine . . . mine . . .”

An image appeared before him once more, this time a cold damp room, lit by a three incandescent bulbs. Its walls seemed to be built with pure stone. At its centre was a cylindrical platform that was made of the same material as the walls and floor; it seemed to have had grown from the ground itself.

“Mine . . . mine . . . mine . . .”

At the centre of the table appeared an unmarked book, its binding consisting entirely of black leather. Its pages were brownish yellow from age and a single black ribbon bookmark hung off the bottom edge of the book.

"MINE!"

Richard’s eyes began to water as a whirlwind suddenly blew around him. His vision blurred, the image in his mind completely disappearing into a pastel of colours.

He opened his eyes.

Three things happened. His eyes had not watered. The picture was gone. And he had somehow teleported – right next to the watching woman. Her gaze was locked on him in astonishment and horror, lips tight together.

Then she screamed, “It’s Richard Pri—”

***

In an office building across the street, a sniper was watching. He saw a familiar looking man, although he could not place his identity. He crouched and peered into the scope of his sniper rifle, aligning the black cross with the man’s head, obscured by a cap.

Then something strange happened. The man had disappeared. The sniper rubbed his eyes and looked again. The man was gone. And then he appeared once more, this time beside a woman with a video camera. The woman screamed, “It’s Richard Pri—”

A million thoughts deluged the sniper’s mind. So THAT’S who he is. But isn’t he dead?

But there was no hesitation. He had orders to kill him earlier, and now he was going to make sure this man stayed dead. He peered into the scope once more and pulled the trigger.

***

A cloud of dust suddenly erupted as a bullet plummeted into a concrete slab. Richard knew what that meant: he had been discovered.

Shit! Richard snatched her video camera and gripped her shoulder with his hand. “Come with me,” demanded Richard. “NOW.”

Richard tightly seized the woman’s wrist and released her shoulder. They then ran to his car a block away, as quickly as possible. A series of bullets followed behind them, almost catching up to them as they detoured behind a building into an alley. They emerged back onto the street, the Honda Civic before them.

“Get in the car,” Richard said, pulling open the door to the passenger’s seat. He jammed the key in and started the car, driving on full speed back to the lab.

***

The sniper swore as he missed his last opportunity. On instinct, he reached for his radio and squeezed the talk button. “Target Richard Prince is alive. Call for backup immediately, and use any force necessary. But be discreet.”

***

“Wha—”

“You already know my name,” said Richard. “You know who I am. We will talk when we get to a safe place.” The car sped faster – towards the main NACT compound.

“But—”

“Quiet. It’s the only safe way in. They shouldn’t be able to detect us if we’re quick enough.”

Richard’s car plunged into the NACT building’s underground parking, practically flying down the ramp. He manoeuvred through a maze of vehicles at lightning speed. The woman knew she wasn’t allowed to speak but what Richard was doing was mad. He was headed right into a wall.

The woman screamed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DO YOU WANT TO KILL US BOTH OR SOM—” English accent.

The car whizzed through the wall and entered a tunnel, lights flicking on in front of them and dying behind as they progressed. The car slowed and they emerged in a small garage.

“Follow me,” Richard said as he exited the car. The woman followed him to a small, well-lit room. There were no creature comforts here: just four steel chairs and an old television set. I should’ve fixed up this room. At least the TV’s coloured. “Sit,” he said.

They sat. “What’s your name?”

“Kate Kelley,” she said.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher at Woodville University. I teach quantum physics.”

Richard stopped to think, then said, “Quantum physics . . . I see we share the same line of thinking.” He cleared his throat. “Well Ms. Kelley, because of current circumstances, namely that I was proclaimed dead and my property and I are now being hunted down by NACT, which you should very well know, I can only offer you two options. One is to help me, be my assistant, and swear to keep everything you know about me and what I’m trying to find out secret. The other is death.”

There was a silence.

Richard had already suffered from the death of one woman, and he did not want to have another one die, this time by his hand. But if Kate did not want to accept his offer, it left him no choice. She would be captured by NACT and be forced to reveal what she knew. And then if she didn’t tell . . .

“I fear that something is terribly wrong with the universal plane we are currently on,” said Richard. “But then again it might just be in my head. Nevertheless, the NACT are after me, and now they’re also after you because what I know and what I’m about to find out are worth killing for. Please make your choice now Ms. Kelley. Will you help me?” He pulled out a gun.

Kate’s face had become red, her eyes collecting tears. “I . . . I just want to go home. I need to get out of here. I just want to go home . . . please!”

Clink. The gun was ready to fire.

“If that is the case then I cannot let you live,” Richard said raising the pistol. His voice shook. “For your own sake.”

“Alright! Alright!” Kate said between fits of sobs.

Richard sighed in relief that he did not have to kill an innocent soul today. His heart still brimmed with hatred for what had happened to AJ. It was the guilty that he was after. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Kate to wipe her tears. “I’m sorry. Let’s go home and discuss things.”

By the time Richard reached his house there was only one thing on his mind: food. It was two in the afternoon and he was starving, stomach just begging to be filled. But what he found was something more stomach wrenching than hunger.

His house was gone.

The house had been turned into a scorched empty lot, with nothing left but a pile of rubble and ash, just like Richard’s lab.

Richard quickly sped away. Right now he was numb from the pain of losing his home. “Your place,” said Richard. “Where is it?”

“28 Clay street,” Kate said, gaining some confidence. The Civic made a hard turn to the right and sped along the empty residential road, the engine roaring like a racer. Then out of nowhere, a motorbike emerged, a powerful rocket on wheels. “Richard, we have company.”

They continued at the same heart thumping pace down the one lane road. They were approaching a dead end, this time for real. There were no detours, no side streets or overpasses. No holograms. The turn to Clay street was a kilometre behind them.

There was no way out.

Kate braced for impact with the wall while Richard held steady at the wheel, face knotted with concentration. Exactly five seconds before impact, Richard slammed the brakes. There was a deafening sound, and smoke rose outside the side windows. The car skidded, turning a full five hundred and forty degrees. The motorbike was too late to realise what had happened. As the driver hit the breaks at a hundred fifty kilometres an hour, the heavy chassis of the bike was thrown in front of the wheels, tossing the driver into the air. The bike skidded on its side and exploded as it made impact with the concrete wall.

Richard stepped on the gas.

As they arrived at the house, he hoped that they had gotten away fast enough for NACT not to be able to track their location by the location of the downed motorbike. They entered the grey bungalow and had a quick seat and meal at the dining table.

Richard had discovered that Kate knew her symbology. Their conversation was quick. In light of what just happened, Richard knew NACT was tracking them down at that very moment. Probably I.D.-ing Kate’s face by now.

“So these dreams of yours,” she said, leaning forward. “Do they occur repeatedly?”

“Sometimes.” Richard gulped down a bite of sandwich as he leaned back.

“Do they stop?”

“They just did, actually. It’s like . . . when I found the G-waves using the scanner, the dreams just disappeared.”

“How about the visions?”

“Just started.”

Kate sipped some water from her glass and said, “Whoever of whatever is trying to contact you is not only sending you a message.”

“Then what?”

“It’s sending you on a mission. First, it used your subconscious – your dreams – to show get you started on your quest. When you did something right, it switched to a more direct form of communication.”

“Visions.”

“Unfortunately, you can’t stop it. You will have to pull though with the mission.”

Richard finished his bread. “I don’t have to. I want to.”

“What?”

“Nevermind what I said. Tell me the vision's message. We’re going to follow it.”

Kate closed her eyes in thought. The vision made no sense to her . . . unless the images implied something else, but that didn’t make any sense either. Then her thoughts shifted to the word “mine”. All this while she had assumed that “mine” was referring to the possessive form of the word. But what if it didn’t . . .

“I got it.”

“Spill it.”

“We couldn’t interpret your vision because we were looking at all the aspects of the vision at once, but we didn’t look at the only thing we could actually interpret. Whoever it is who sent you the vision gave you only one possible aspect for interpretation.”

“Which is?”

“The word ‘mine’.” Kate smiled.

Richard suddenly realised what she had meant. “The word. It refers to a mine. Like a coal mine.”

“Exactly.”

“I know where to go. Follow.”

“Where?”

“The abandoned coal mine outside town!”

Kate’s mouth gaped open. “You’re bloody mad!”

Half a minute later, they were on a two hour journey in Kate’s Porsche to . . . “Nowhere,” said Kate. “We’re going to the middle of nowhere.”

“Nowhere?” inquired Richard. “Like a black hole?”

“Yes, like a black hole.”

“You’re gonna die.”

“You wouldn’t want that.”

“Why?”

“My knowledge might leak out somewhere else in the universe. Then NACT would find out.”

“Good point.”

***

A kilometre behind them, a man followed them on a BMW motorbike. He wore black pants and a tight black long sleeve shirt. A black mask covered his head.

The backup. The assassin.

***

When they arrived at the coalmine, they encountered a set of buildings placed before a backdrop of towering mountains of earth. The compound was nestled in a naturally carved out space, sheer cliffs and rock faces behind it.

The gates of the mine were open, and they entered without objection. By that time it was 4 p.m.

Richard remembered this mine. It was closed down in the year 2000, and nobody knew why. A couple of rumours began to spread about the mine, but a year after, the rumours died out and the place remained abandoned for eight years.

Until now.

Richard followed signs reading “Mine entrance” and ended up in front of a single floor building. The mine elevator must be inside. They entered the building and found what they had expected: an elevator fashioned in the likeness of a cage. It was rusted, but still functional.

Richard and Kate boarded the cage, the doors sliding shut with a bang. Richard noticed something just before they descended. He could’ve sworn he saw a figure move by the building’s door. Just the door’s shadow.

They descended.

As they dropped lower, the light from above diminished until only a ribbon or so of light shone through. Then the elevator halted. The doors opened to a solid rock wall.

“Shit,” said Kate. “Did that just happen?”

“Yep.”

Kate sighed in exasperation. “Well then nevermind black holes. We are going to die here, in a dark place in the middle of nowhe—” Kate heard a loud clang from above. Then it was silent once more.

Richard tapped the wall before them. “We are in a black hole,” he said. “And there’s a way to escape to another place, like a wormhole, for example.”

“How the bloody hell are we supposed to get out of here in a broken—”

Richard had punched the thin wall. It collapsed, revealing a secret passageway behind it. “This is the mission given to me. I’m finding out what’s in there.”

They stepped off the elevator, and it rose back to the top unusually fast. Guess it wasn’t broken.

Kate looked back a moment, suddenly realising that they had no way out of the mine in case of an emergency. She shuddered.

The mine was dead silent, the clammer of chistles from years ago totally absent. Lights buzzed on one by one as they passed, illuminating their path. "God, this is creepy," said Kate.

"Welcome to my world - since six days ago."

The tunnel began to widen exponentially, and they plunged into darkness. Three incandescent bulbs glowed to life. The chambre was revealed.

"This is it!" said Richard, excitedly examining his surroundings. "It's exactly what I saw." His eyes shifted to the central platform, and on it was a book. The book.

Richard drew closer to his target, creeping, as if he didn't want it to know he was there. It was right before him now, and he peered down on it. It was an unassuming book, with no fancy designs or imposing lettering, yet it had a formidable aura that drew Richard closer. He reached forward to touch the book . . .

"Richard, someone's coming," whispered Kate.

"Quick," said Richard, pointing to the boulders at the rear of the chamber. “Behind those.” They quietly ran and took cover. Richard peeked through a space in between the rocks, just enough for him to have a clear view of what was going on.

There was not one but two intruders. They looked young, in their early twenties. College students? Their faces were partially obscured by baseball caps but easily recognisable up front. One of them approached the book, looking around cautiously. Then his hands hovered over it . . .

Shit, he’s going to steal it.

The kid swiftly grabbed the book and slid it into his jacket, in one swift motion. Then the two intruders ran out as quickly as they came in.

Richard stood and ran, shouting, “Hey, come back here!” He was keeping pace with them, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to catch up to them on time. The two intruders did not bother to look back, wanting to bring their prize away from the mine as quickly as possible. Richard stopped.

A minute later Kate appeared behind him. “Let’s leave,” Kate said flatly, sighing. “It's late and I’ve had enough. I don’t know what this book is. We can come back tomorrow.”

Richard nodded, and they began walking. He knew that book was valuable, and he had to get his hands on it no matter what. But that wasn’t the only set of vibes he felt in the mine. There was something more here – other than the book. Was there someone else in the mine? Something else?

As they walked, the lights behind them fizzled and died, and the tunnel began to narrow once more, but in the distance, Richard noticed something he had not seen before. There was a light, a light coming from a crack in the wall. He drew closer to it, and Kate followed, wondering what he had seen. Then she saw it as well.

“It leads somewhere,” Richard said. The passageway in the wall had been obscured by another wall, so the opening could only be seen on the way out.

Suddenly all the lights went out. Except for the one inside the passageway. It glowed vibrantly, beckoning them to enter. Richard felt a fear only matched by the dark room in his dream. It all came back to him: the fire, the blood, AJ.

But he remained unphased. He was determined to find out what lay beyond the entrance.

“I’m not going in there,” Kate said. “You go, Indiana Jones, but I stay.”

Richard shrugged. He took a deep breath and stepped into the passageway and was immediately greeted by a bodily shock, a sensation of body and soul being ripped apart from each other. His head was in excruciating pain. He watched as the bright light of the room shrank slowly into a minuscule speck of intense brightness, the only light in the now pitch-black chamber. A gale began to blow, seemingly from within the speck of light.

Then the speck exploded.

The explosion formed a flat shockwave of light that seemed to stop in mid-air. The halo of light began to rotate faster and faster until it was sucked to the centre of the dark rotating disc and disappeared. The gale blew stronger now as something formed at the centre of the dark room.

A black hole.

And then there was a voice, deep and commanding, that said, “Return the book. Return the book now!”

Richard was not intimidated. “I don’t have it.”

The gale blew harder. Richard was almost shaken off-balance. “RETURN IT!”

“What is in the book?” Richard asked in a firmer voice.

The winds slowed, but still blew steady. “The book holds countless treasures,” the voice said. “Treasures that man of your time should not know about! The book holds secrets of the past and future, time and space. It can save the world or destroy it. It can give life and take life. An imbalance had begun, even before the book was stolen, and now it will become much worse.”

Suddenly, among the dark walls of the chamber and the gusting winds, something became clear to Richard. He knew now what to do. He knew that he needed to hunt down that book and take it, and he would save the world. But that was not his only motivation. He knew that he needed to learn what was inside the book, understand its power. He thought of AJ. No, he wasn't just going to save the world.

He was going to use the book for his revenge.

“Return the book!” the black hole commanded, “before time runs out.”

It added, “Literally.”

Outside, a large arm wrapped around Kate’s abdomen, a knife touching her throat. She heard the assassin’s silent whisper, “Baby bye bye bye.”