Fractured: The Fracpocalypse Book 1 Read online

  Chapter 4 – Future

  “I’m Grace Arthur reporting live from Westminster Bridge. Emergency services are out in force today after a suspected terror attack in the streets of London. It is believed to have started with a shoot-out in an abandoned house a few minutes from here. Witnesses saw a black van pulling away at speed, dangerously driving toward Westminster Bridge, where it then exploded. Witnesses say they were shooting out of the window at people walking on the streets. Fifteen innocent people have been confirmed dead, along with another twenty-three injured. There are no traces of the attackers. Police are baffled by the lack of bodies from the exploded vehicle.”

  ***

  Brendan Forrest, now an eighty-three-year-old grey-haired man, sat on an oversized black leather office chair. Age lines and wrinkles covered his forehead and surrounded his eyes. He held his silver beard and pulled his shaking hand through the wiry thinning hair, eyes glaring at the wall of monitors at the adjacent end of his office.

  With his rage building, he took his hand and smashed it down onto the desk, stood up, and threw the remote at the cream-panelled wall, scattering the batteries and cover across the grey marble floor.

  “We have access to the—” Brendan coughed violently into his hand, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his mouth. “We have access to the entirety of history. Send one man to his death! Somehow he’s popping up throughout time itself.” With both fists pressed on the desk, knuckles turning white, he shouted through gritted teeth, “Clean this fucking mess up now, Henry!”

  Henry stood like stone near the oversized doorway, arms at his sides, face calm. “Sir, he shifts in a way we have never seen before.”

  “I don’t give a fuck how he shifts or what excuses you can make! I didn’t take you in and set up multimillion-pound companies to put up with your failings.” Brendan coughed again, this time into his handkerchief, his face turning red with strain. “You have the means, Henry; now end it. Or I’ll end you!”

  Henry bowed his head. “Yes, sir,” he said and walked out of the office.

  The office phone burst to life, startling Brendan. He reached over the end of the desk and snatched it up. “What!”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we need you down in the antimatter lab. There are miscalculations we need you to check over.”

  Brendan grunted. “Million-pound companies, and I still have to check everything! Fine, I’ll be down soon.” He slammed the phone back onto the holder.

  He grabbed his walking stick, shuffled around the desk, and proceeded slowly towards the door. The bustle of busy office life penetrated the oak wood. This operation was massive and quite literally a hundred years in the making. After the incident in 2018, Brendan had ended up at the end of time, the end of the world. It was horrific. Within fifty years, there would be absolutely nothing left. Time ironically was running out for Brendan and the world. He knew he had to save it no matter what, and it was a project he had had teams working on for a long time.

  The corridor outside his office was a long and narrow expanse of bodies bustling in and out of rooms. Phones screeching, chatter at ridiculous levels. Every step he took, another person would burst out of another identical white-walled room. They were filled with computers, whiteboards, and hundreds of people scouring the internet for historical news articles, picking and choosing which ones to feed to Brendan’s office. He could have his insubordinate staff tell him, but he liked to see the newsfeeds—they made it seem more real—and after the time he’d spent at the end, Brendan much needed the reality after the messed-up shit he’d seen there.

  The end of the corridor housed two identical elevators. As Brendan approached, the one on the left ground open, bringing him out of his thoughts. He nudged past two workers. He didn’t know their names, didn’t even care. All that mattered now was to save humanity, to save all the naive, weak humans who had no idea what was coming. As he turned around to face the doors, he pressed B1. By the time he leant against the mirrored back wall, he was utterly breathless. Reaching over to his right, he hooked his walking stick onto the railing and rubbed both hands onto each eye. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. No longer did he recognise the ambitious young man he once was. He’d spent twenty of the last forty years in hell, barely surviving, and the rest contagiously trying to fix everything.

  The journey to B1 took a few minutes. A young doctor tried to scramble in on the twelfth floor and was quickly swatted away like a bug by Forrest. Eventually, the doors opened with their signature ding. Brendan met doctors frantically running about like worker ants without a purpose. On his way through more whitewashed corridors, he couldn’t hide his distaste for the commotion.

  One poor young female doctor was scurrying in front of Brendan’s path, heading toward another lab on the left, when he swatted at her with his stick. “Out of my way.” She stumbled to the floor, paperwork scattering everywhere like sweets from a burst piñata.

  “Sorry, Doctor… I… I…” Bursting into tears, she attempted to gather the paperwork.

  Brendan continued to the end of the corridor with a snort of disgust, other doctors now giving him a wide berth. Eventually, he made it to the blast doors at the end, slowly bashing in the code one number at a time with his index finger. The metal doors burst open.

  “Where is Dr Ashbury?” No one seemed to hear him. He took his stick and smashed it hard three times against the transparent Perspex whiteboard. “Dr Ashbury NOW!”

  The lab was a massive circular chamber. The outer sphere was raised and organised with computers all overlooking the centre like a stadium. Directly at the front, a set of five steps led down to the lower sphere, which contained a proton pulsing machine similar to his early work. However, a much smaller hermetically sealed chamber was in the centre with only one single metal door. Dr Ashbury came running around the side of the computers in the upper sphere.

  “Dr Forrest, my apologies. It’s a bit frantic down here—”

  “Yes, yes, I see that,” Brendan interrupted. “Now tell me why you called me down here.”

  Dr Ashbury, startled by the interruption, lost her train of thought. “Doctor, erm, sorry, look, you need to come and see the readings.” She turned around and headed toward one of the larger computer set-ups. “The calculations for reversing the proton pulsing have started to fluctuate every time we introduce the antimatter.”

  Brendan’s glaring was making Dr Ashbury feel incredibly uncomfortable. Brendan gritted his teeth.

  “Forget the damn calculations.” The hoarseness his voice took on caused him to cough and splutter. After wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, he stared at Dr Ashbury with his cold stone-like eyes. “Dr… you have wasted my time.” He turned and headed back through the blast doors. “Run the simulations, alter the necessary power, and run it again.” He reached out for the number pad and tapped in the code again. The blast doors hissed open. “Do not call me again until the simulation works. I hired you to finish this. Best in the field, they said.” Stepping through the blast doors, he turned to face Dr Ashbury. “Don’t make me regret hiring you.”

  Dr Ashbury’s face dropped with an ashen sheen, and the blast doors sealed shut, ending the conversation.

  Slowly he proceeded with the long stroll back to the elevator, this time not a single person in sight. “Finally learning, I see,” he said with a grunt. He pressed the call button and waited for the elevator. At the top, he was met by his red-faced assistant. “Decided to show up, I see.” She was a dark-haired, brown-eyed, petite little thing with absolutely no bite or drive, a trait that Brendan found disgusting.

  “I’m sorry, si—” She barely managed a stutter due to the excessive shaking.

  “Get out now,” Brendan interrupted with a snarl. “You’re fired.”

  The young assistant burst into tears and ran the opposite way down the corridor. Brendan couldn’t help but chuckle, a malevolent snigger more like, “Good riddance!” With that delightful encounter over, he finally reach
ed his office and placed down his stick. As he sat back down on his chair, he snatched up the phone and speed-dialled number 1.

  “Sir,” came Henry’s voice.

  “Updates! And only good news.”

  There was a second of silence until Henry spoke. “Sir, we may have tracked Drake’s signature. We think he’s at the end.”

  Brendan’s pursed, cracked lips curled up into a vicious smile. “That is good news. I doubt Mr Osborn will make it back from there.” His manic laughter filled the office.

  Chapter 5 – End

  As Drake fractured through time, his body crackled with the electricity that flowed through him, the familiar feeling of every cell in his body being fit back together like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. For reasons he was not quite sure why, but he could stay partially focused on everything around him as he was ripped through time. His sight was still a pure midnight black, but he could hear and feel more than usual. It felt like he was in the water, no, not in water. The motion of water. Like floating as the waves were coming in and crashing to shore. Bobbing up and down, back and forth. He attempted to tune in to the sounds around him. The most dominant sound was electricity crackling constantly. But beneath that, there was more, and he tried to focus on a faint whooshing/whirring. Strangely it was a mixture of mechanical and something else he could not quite place, but he recognised the sound.

  He let his focus wander as his dissected body floated in an unwelcome abyss; there was more he could hear. Again he tried to tune in to it, a faint moaning, or was it crying? He pushed harder to focus. Drake could feel his eyes buzzing around in their sockets, frantically searching for nothing. Then he caught it. It was screaming, pure anguish, pure terror. Not only that, though, he recognised the raspy tones underneath it. Why? Who? His mind awoke with immediate force, and several things happened at once. It was Fergus. He was screaming. This realisation made Drake aware that he was holding something. He strained with every fibre of his brain to see, and with a rush of pure sense, his eyesight flashed back. He saw he was holding Fergus’s hand, his eyes and mouth wide, still screaming. Drake could see fractures popping up all around him. Some he could see through, others not. Staring at the first one, he had to double take. He was confident he could see dinosaurs. Another fracture and another look, and he saw men and women dancing clad in ’50s attire. The subsequent fracture came at them with such speed he saw nothing through it. With a blinding light, it collided with them. Drake shielded his eyes with his free hand, and within seconds they burst through onto a dry, muddy surface. They both landed heavily and rolled into a tangle of limbs, crashing down a hill.

  When Drake felt like he was tumbling towards his feet, he dug in his heels and held onto Fergus tight. They slid for half a meter, tearing up two long stretches of mud. As they came to a stop, Drake pushed Fergus off and lay back down, closing his eyes. “That’s the roughest bloody landing I’ve ever had.” Drake opened his eyes and couldn’t believe what he saw. A dusty orange glow engulfed the sky and everything around him. High up toward the dark orange clouds, lightning struck and flitted across the sky. He sat up and took in his surroundings, which were utterly barren. There wasn’t even any grass, only dry mud. He stuck a hand behind him and turned a little further to look around him, and it was all the same that way. However, there were decrepit-looking buildings, mostly fallen apart, sitting atop rubble smothering the ground.

  Drake hauled himself to his feet and ran a hand through his hair, still looking around in wonder. Fergus, who still hadn’t come to, groaned.

  “Shit, Fergus.” Drake leant over him and checked out the visible areas for injury. He had a nice bump on his head, but other than that, he seemed fine. “Fergus, bud, you alright?” He used his right thumb and index finger to lift his eyelid.

  “Aye, a wee bit peaky, mate.”

  Drake stood back up. “You’ll be alright in a minute. Took a few for my first shift to ease off, too.” He took a few steps and decided to head back up the hill. “You’re going to want to see where we are. It’s beautiful and horrible. I can’t explain it.”

  “I’ll be right with ya.” Fergus bundled himself onto all fours and fought the urge to be sick. “Think I’d have preferred being blown up.”

  Drake laughed hard. He was a good thirty meters back up the hill and almost at the top. “Oh, shit. Yeah, Ferg, I may have to agree with you on that one.”

  From the top of the hill, he could see it all, nothing but destruction. Everything, every remnant of humanity, was gone. He could see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, well, what was left of them, anyway. Big Ben’s whole top half was missing as if it had been felled like an overgrown tree. The Houses of Parliament had their two ends intact. Every single piece in the middle was completely missing or a wasteland of rocks. The same went for every other human-made structure for as far as he could see. Fergus finally stumbled up behind Drake and saw the destruction.

  “On wee nicknames now, are we?” Fergus reached to the top, stood by Drake and looked out. “Well, fuck me, any idea when we are?”

  Drake turned to look at Fergus. “Not a clue, but it’s not good.” They both spent the next few minutes in silence, completely entranced by it all.

  Fergus was the first to break their trance. “Right, time-boy, what’s the plan?”

  Drake snickered and looked at Fergus and threw his hands in the air. “Not a damn clue. You’re the scientist.”

  Fergus reached over, patted Drake on the back and started at a semi walk-jog down the hill toward the graveyard that was London. Fergus stopped dead in his tracks. “Fuck me! Where’s Chase?” The realisation smacked him straight in the face. He wondered how he hadn’t realised until now.

  “What the? How did we not notice! Too caught up in wherever the hell we are.” Drake ran back up the hill to find the part they’d tumbled down. Fergus was right behind him. They both jogged back down to where Drake had left the gouges. “I can only remember falling here with you, and there’s nowhere he could have gone.”

  Fergus frantically looked around. “Aye, you’re right. It’s barren out here, and I’m sure he would have come out of the shift sick as a dog like I did.”

  Together they looked over every piece of land they could see, and there was nothing, not a tree, not a bush, nothing but the dirt hill. “We gotta find him, Drake!” Fergus started to panic. “CHASE!… CHASE!” His shouts echoed and were met with no reply.

  They decided that the only thing they could do was move on and head towards the destroyed city centre. They had no way of finding Chase and no idea what to do. For a good thirty minutes, they walked in silence, taking in the marvellous and terrifying world around them.

  “So, Drake”—they looked at each other—“might as well finish your story from before.”

  Drake nodded, took a deep breath in, and let it all out in a slow exhale, allowing his shoulders to sag. “Right, yeah, where did we leave off?” He thought for a moment. “Ah yeah, the fracture tearing through my arm!” With a curt nod from Fergus, he continued, “Well, after that, I ran out of the building as fast as I could, practically shit myself. I collapsed on the ground outside, patting my arm like it was on fire. I couldn’t quite believe it all. But nothing happened.” Drake jumped over a large piece of rubble that had fallen from the face of what looked like it might have been a restaurant. “For days after, nothing.” He shrugged. “I went about my life, then one night I was out having a drink, and the bar girl started staring at me, well, at my arm. I noticed, looked down, and there it was glowing blue under my sleeve.”

  “Damn, wonder what was going through the wee lass’s heid.” Fergus laughed.

  “Forget her head. Mine was a mess. I ran out of there, panicking, bolted down the alley immediately as it started to turn red, and then…” Drake clapped his hands together, echoing a clap throughout the demolished buildings. “The rest is history, literally. After a few more of them, I got used to it.”

  A piercing scream interrupted their chatte
r and filled the air around them. Without even thinking, both Drake and Fergus were fists up, scouting their surroundings.

  “What the bloody hell was that?” Fergus climbed up rubble to get a better look down the street. Drake ran past Fergus and quickly looked down the streets to the left and right.

  “It sounded inhuman. Let’s be on our guard.” Fergus jumped down and landed quite heavily, kicking up a lot of dust. They continued walking down the street, this time a lot more aware of their surroundings. They checked every tumbled-down building corner and street crossing.

  “Anyway, I went through too many jumps to count; ended up in the ’50s, the ’00s and many others until I found myself in 2026. That was the first time I was attacked. Two guys rushed me in the street. Luckily I had noticed them following me, so I was ready. I took them out, grabbed their guns, and bolted to a B&B.”

  Fergus was climbing back down from the smashed entrance of a pub, bar still intact, walls not so much. “Flaming heck, Drake, that’s a lot to have taken in.”

  “You’re telling me. Anyway, from there I jumped again and found you. Or you found me.”

  Another shrill scream sounded. It was much closer this time. They agreed in silence to stay quiet from now on and continued their trek. Everything was the same, a dusty orange mess of destruction. The lightning still cracked constantly overhead. They came to a wholly blocked part of the road. It looked like a high-rise block of apartments had collapsed across the whole stretch, completely blocking their progress. Fergus nudged Drake and signalled to take the right-hand street, Drake nodded, and they proceeded with caution. As they continued, Drake couldn’t help but think about where they were. Every shift had taken him to a different place in time that he could recognise. Why was this place so foreign, so brutal and empty? He was shunted out of his thoughts, but another scream this time was followed by at least two more overlapping, all creating an awful cacophony of deep guttural anguish.