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Rollerskater: Time

Jump to: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII

This instalment contains moderate blood and scenes some readers may find disturbing.

The train carriage into Liverpool Street was almost completely empty.

She sat in an aisle seat facing forwards on the right-hand side of the carriage, with three seats in front of her facing backwards. The train shot past stations, fields and bridges. It was one of a few direct trains, with only a few stops along the way, but nobody so far had boarded the carriage. She had made sure of that. Ontologically manipulate the carriage in such a way that people avoided it, ignored it. Create unpleasant smells, wet seats, a general feeling of unease, anything to remove intruders from the carriage. Even the ticket inspector had walked right past her. Just as well. Her feet – clad in white rollerskates – were up on the backward-facing seats in front of her, which the signs explicitly told her not to do. But she had little time for signs.

On the seat next to her was a discarded copy of the Metro. She picked it up and leafed through it. The usual headlines and news stories; political scandals, kidnappings, murders, lottery numbers, car accidents, weather forecasts, wars, terrorist incidents, missed connections. She found it amusing that human beings were preoccupied to the point of obsession with notions of “law and order”, and yet here was a newspaper, as mundane as any other, as chaotic and bewildering as any hurricane.

She opened a page on celebrity gossip. A famous actress had been spotted getting out of a car with a famous singer. A judge on a television talent show had opened up about their struggles with depression. Another famous singer had been seen wearing a scandalously low-cut dress at a party. She didn’t know most of the names. She turned the page, and there was a full-page advertisement for a diet soft drink, showing a young black woman with curly hair, enjoying a conversation with some friends. A very familiar young woman come to think of it. Where had she seen her before – oh, no.

The young woman in the picture began to move. She stepped toward the frame until she was life-size, and then she proceeded to climb, feet-first, out of the newspaper, landing in the lap of her now very-annoyed acquaintance.

“Hiiiii, K-Os,” she said.

She wore an A-line dress patterned with a repeating texture of the Tube map, and on her feet, which were sticking out into the aisle, were a pair of white socks, and a pair of Dr. Martens shoes, both of which had a platform sole. Her name was Harriet-Rebecca West, but she was better known by another name.

“Hi, Harri-Bec,” K-Os said. “I hate it when you do that.”

Harri-Bec put her left arm around K-Os’s shoulder. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I like doing it.”

“What are you doing here?” K-Os asked, slightly annoyed by the intrusion.

“Well, I noticed that you had entered the boundaries of the M25 and I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Harri-Bec said, pouting. “Is that so wrong?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” K-Os said.

She paused for a moment, then snapped, “Get off me!”

Harri-Bec rolled off K-Os’s lap, into the empty seat to her right. “I see someone’s in a bad mood today.”

“I’ve been in a bad mood for weeks,” K-Os said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “A guy came after me a few weeks ago after a party. He was able to ontologically manipulate shadows. The guy was carrying umbric.”

“Sounds bad,” Harri-Bec said. “What happened to him?”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course I want to know.”

K-Os looked at the ceiling, then at the floor. She sighed.

“He got blood on my skates,” K-Os said.

Harri-Bec gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh my God…”

“Yeah,” K-Os said, quietly. “I’m trying to get to The Lucky Devil. I need to talk to someone.”

“I think I know where that is,” Harri-Bec said.

“It doesn’t have a fixed ontological point in space,” K-Os said. “The only constant is that it’s always somewhere within the psychic boundary of London. Last time I was here it was on Baker Street. I hear rumours it’s somewhere in Notting Hill at the moment.”

“I can get you there fast, for sure,” Harri-Bec said.

“It’s fine, honestly,” K-Os said.

“No, no,” Harri-Bec said, drawing her hand up to her forehead in mock-salute. “I insist! This sounds serious, and I want to do my part!” She stood up, and the Tube maps on her dress began to move, highlighting a route. “We’ll get the Central line and – hmm – I suppose we could get off at Notting Hill Gate or Holland Park.”

K-Os rolled her eyes. “Alright, fine.”

“Yay!” Harri-Bec exclaimed, clapping with delight. “I promise, this will be fun!”

The train flew past another station, and Harri-Bec led K-Os to the gangway at the end of the carriage, where there was a toilet. Harri-Bec put her hand on the door handle. K-Os wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t need to use the toilet,” she said, indignantly.

“No, no, I learned a new trick,” Harri-Bec said, grinning.

“It’s not what I think, is it?”

Harri-Bec opened the door.

The door did not lead to a toilet. They stepped through it, and suddenly, all motion ceased. They were no longer on a moving train on its way into Liverpool Street. They were in—

“A Tube station?” K-Os said, looking around her. The door closed behind them, revealing itself to be a slatted door, presumably intended for some form of ventilation.

“The westbound Central line platform at Liverpool Street, to be exact,” Harri-Bec said. “Pretty cool trick, innit?”

“Yeah,” K-Os said. She hadn’t been due into Liverpool Street for another half an hour. “You couldn’t do that last time I saw you.”

“I’ve been practising,” Harri-Bec said, with a sort of childish shyness. “I-I can only do it on connecting trains, though. If the trains don’t connect on the map, then I can’t do it…”

“I’m impressed,” K-Os said, reassuringly.

As always at Liverpool Street, a small crowd had amassed on the platform, and a few looked up from their smartphones and WHSmith novels to give the pair a funny look, as neither of them in any way resembled Transport for London staff members. From the other end of the station, there came the skree-reek-reek of a Tube train pulling in, and amnesia set in. The two of them boarded the train and headed westward.

*

Socks got back to campus on the 16th of January, a couple of days before classes would resume, though, in his mind, it was the 24th of January. The gulf had widened, and he had taken to near-obsessive checking of calendars and clocks. His parents had decided to drive him back, feeling, quite rightly, that they could not let their son travel on the railways unaccompanied while in this state. He had refused to talk about anything that had taken place in the week before the breakup, and they had started to worry about his mental state and whether he ought to be pulled out of university entirely.

He knew that he was reliving days over and over again, and it was only by some unknown mechanism that each successive loop would break. He had lived two days three times, and two more days just once, and had no way of telling which day would loop and which wouldn’t. He arrived at campus in the painful knowledge that he could well wake up the following morning back at home.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright, son?” his father said, concern lining his face. He spoke with a Sheffield accent that had softened somewhat since the move further south.

“I think it’s just stress getting to me,” Socks said, trying to conceal his anxiety. “I’m just worried about my uni work.”

“Mm,” his father said, nodding. “Listen, son – there’s no shame in taking a year out. What d’they call it these days? Er – intermitting. I had a few friends who did that at university, and a few of them ended up getting good degrees. You should at least consider it, son. I know the loans are different now, but you’ll never pay them back before they’re written off anyway—”

“I’ll think about it, Dad,” Socks said.

His father nodded, a little defeated. “Right you are, son,” he said.

His mother had entered the room then. She had given her son a worried look. Her Trinidadian accent was still there, but, as with his father, it had faded over the last forty years of life in England.

“Take good care of yourself, Stephen,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his cheek. “And we’re only a phone call away if you need us. Remember that.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Socks said. His parents looked at each other, then back to him, and then both left his room. On her way out, his mother had looked back at him, anxiously, as if to say something, then continued on her way.

He hated to worry them like this. What had his experience with K-Os done to him? Was it trauma, he thought, or something else? His mind kept drifting back to those rollerskates, and his blood on the rollerskates, and how the following morning, they had been clean, as though never tarnished. It seemed crazy, but could there be a connection there? He knew he had to talk to K-Os, but she had explicitly told him to stay away from her. So, it looked like, at least for now, he was on his own.

He found himself walking to campus. He knew the bar would be open. He could get dinner and something to drink, something to calm his shuddering nerves.

The bar was well-worn, with windows made of wired glass that had, he presumed, not been replaced since at least the 1970s. It served the standard carbohydrate-heavy fare so favoured by students: Burgers and chips, bacon sandwiches, pizzas, nachos. He ordered a chicken burger with onion rings and chips, and a pint of beer, which he escorted to a table, along with his table number. He sipped the beer. All he could think was that there was a possibility that he might drink this exact glass of beer again, and eat this same chicken burger again, maybe three or four times, before the loop broke. The very idea was enough to drive him mad.

As he sat, waiting for his food, he heard a familiar sound.

Rollerskates on a hard floor.

He turned to the bar to see (or perhaps confirm his suspicions of) who it was.

K-Os.

K-Os ordered something from the bar, then turned around. She smiled at him, somewhat uncharacteristically.

“K—” he said, stammering. “K-Os?”

“Hey!” K-Os said, as the barman handed her a pint of beer. She skated over to Socks’s table. “How are you?”

“I’m…” Socks began, changing his mind. “Not…great.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” K-Os said, her smile fading.

This is weird. Why is she being so friendly? She told me to stay away from her.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, actually,” Socks said. “But you told me to stay away.”

“Oh, did I?”

“Yes. A few weeks ago, after…” He made a ‘you-know-what’ gesture. “…you said, ‘Socks, stay away from me.’”

K-Os’s smile dipped a bit more, then brightened up again. “Oh, I was just in a bad mood. I’m better now.”

Socks was taken aback. This is seriously weird.

“You getting dinner?” K-Os said.

“Y-yeah,” Socks said. “Are – are you?”

“Of course,” K-Os said, smiling again, holding up her own table number.

Something’s not right here.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” K-Os asked.

“Not at all,” Socks said, uncertainly.

K-Os placed her table number on the table and went to hop on the seat. She suddenly lost her balance, skidding on the skates and grabbing the table, spilling both hers and Socks’s beers.

“Shit!” she said. “I’m sorry! Someone must have left an ice cube on the ground.”

“It’s okay,” Socks said. “I want to keep my mind clear anyway. That’s why you don’t drink, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” K-Os said. “Of course!”

Socks nodded, and a waitress wearing a Student Union uniform came over carrying a platter, on which were some plastic dishes, covered in scratches from years of abuse from cutlery. He picked up a chip and ate it.

K-Os began to talk about how her Christmas holiday had been, but Socks’s mind was far away by that point.

Something’s up with her, he thought. I’m going to find out what.

*

They found the public house named The Lucky Devil on Clarendon Road, on the corner adjoining Clarendon Cross. It was immediately recognisable – the sign was black with red serif letters reading “THE LUCKY DEVIL”, and next to that was a small logo of a smirking red demon with horns. As K-Os had said, The Lucky Devil had no fixed point in space. Since at least the 18th century, the pub had moved at random, wedging itself into different parts of London’s geography. Nobody was quite sure by what mechanism the pub travelled. It simply appeared and disappeared – lengthening streets and squeezing buildings apart if necessary to manifest, but when it left, it would be as though it were never there. It had, as far as anyone was aware, never caused any disruptions to the post or journey times. It was as inconspicuous as any of London’s other three thousand pubs.

The interior was made of dark wood and was dimly lit with incandescent bulbs. At first glance it might have seemed like any other old pub, except for a vague sense of unease given off by the interior, the sort of fear instilled by abandoned hospitals and so-called “haunted mansions”.

“Good afternoon, Padraig,” K-Os said, skating in to the pub. The pub had a series of publicans, going all the way back to the 18th century. Each publican of The Lucky Devil had a sort of symbiotic relationship to the pub; always travelling with it. Some even said that the publicans were not human at all, merely projections of the pub’s ontological space, who acted as the pub’s mouthpiece. Nevertheless, they looked and sounded as human as any other, and so nobody saw fit to question them.

Behind the bar stood a tall, portly man with long hair and a beard. He wore brown Aviator sunglasses and wore a grease-stained Metallica T-shirt under a similarly dirty apron. He spoke in a gruff Dublin accent.

“I’ve told ye once, I’ve told ye a t’ousand times, only my mudder calls me Padraig. You can call me Paddy.”

“Wow, this place is old,” Harri-Bec said, inspecting one of the light fittings with fascination. K-Os rolled her eyes at her charge.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Paddy said, reaching a hairy arm over the bar to shake.

Harri-Bec walked over and took it, shaking it. “I’m Harri-Bec,” she said, cheerfully.

“Nice to meet you, Harri-Bec. And what do you do?”

“Well,” Harri-Bec said, shyly. “I’m the Spirit of London Transport. I know all there is to know about the city.” She looked around at the pub. “Well, almost all there is to know, anyway.”

Paddy nodded, seeming genuinely impressed. “And what can I get the lovely ladies? A nice Irish stout, perhaps? An IPA? Or perhaps a pilsner? Or a fruit cider? Some wine? We have a wide selection here at The Lucky Devil.”

“We’re here for information,” K-Os said, tersely. “I need to know if the pub has heard anything recently.”

Paddy nodded and smiled with yellow teeth. “The pub hears a lot of things,” he said.

“A few weeks ago, I was attacked while walking back to my flat,” K-Os said. “The guy was an umbric user and had the power to manipulate shadows. I’ve got a feeling that they’re after—”

“Say no more,” Paddy said. “These walls have ears, you know. And when you were attacked, were you alone?”

K-Os shifted uneasily. “No,” she said. “I was…”

“You were with a human,” Paddy said. “How much did he see?”

“Quite a lot,” K-Os admitted. “His…” Her voice dropped low, and she sighed. “His blood got on my rollerskates.”

“I see,” Paddy said, gravely. “I’m assuming you—”

“Told him to stay away from me? Of course I did, Padraig. The guy’s lucky he survived the encounter at all.”

Paddy thought for a moment. “Yeah, the pub’s heard some things about that incident, I think.”

He walked over to a tap. It had a circular white logo on it, featuring a stylised question mark, and the words “Information – Stout 4.2%”. He grabbed a clear pint glass and poured out the dark beer, sliding it across the bar to K-Os.

“All the information you need is in that glass,” he said. “But it comes at a price.”

“I know,” K-Os said, grabbing the glass. She winced on contact with the glass.

“What’s wrong?” Harri-Bec asked.

“They don’t call this place The Lucky Devil for nothing,” K-Os said, looking at her hand, which was bleeding from thousands of tiny holes. Harri-Bec covered her mouth.

Steeling herself, K-Os grabbed the glass again, and the glass turned red. Harri-Bec’s eyes were wide with shock.

“Ev’ryt’ing has a price,” Padraig said. “Now, drink up.”

K-Os took the glass in her bleeding hand and drank the entire pint without blinking. Her mind was filled with voices and faces the pub had seen, conversations that had taken place within its walls in hushed tones, while quaffing with calloused hands every beverage on tap, she could hear every bell signifying last orders, see every shoe that had walked this hardwood floor, women laughing, men crying, and a fist-fight in the toilets…

She tossed the glass at the wall, where it exploded into a thousand tiny fragments. Harri-Bec yelped.

“Keep the change,” K-Os said, shuddering.

“Pleasure doin’ business with ye,” Padraig said, laughing.

As they exited the pub, Harri-Bec looked back to see the glass melt into a puddle of blood that was soon soaked into the floorboards. Paddy issued her a friendly wave, and they walked outside.

K-Os held her hand and was hissing and gasping in pain. Her hand looked as though it was covered in tiny paper cuts.

“That stings like a bastard,” K-Os said.

“What was that?” Harri-Bec said. She swayed a little, holding her head and steadying against a parking sign for balance. “I feel dizzy.”

“The Lucky Devil is a haven for the corrupt and malignant,” K-Os said. “The spirit of the place is affected by its patronage. Even the glasses are made out of umbric. Damn it.”

She reached into her messenger bag and pulled out a small, pink, rectangular object that appeared to be made of silicone rubber. Immediately, her injured hand turned to liquid, reforming moments later with no cuts.

“Wow,” Harri-Bec said. “You couldn’t do that before.”

“I’ve been practising,” K-Os said, wearily. She shook her head, and Harri-Bec watched as a snowfall of tiny violet hairs fell away from K-Os’s head, one for every cut on her hand. Ev’ry’t’ing has a price.

“Well, that’s one way to get rid of split ends,” Harri-Bec said. K-Os shot her a glare. “Sorry.”

“The good news is, I have a few leads,” K-Os said.

“And the bad news?” Harri-Bec said.

“They’re looking for me,” K-Os said, beginning to skate back down Clarendon Road, towards Holland Park Tube station.

The sun had already begun to set.

*

Socks and K-Os left the bar at around eleven in the evening.

K-Os skated alongside Socks. Socks had said almost nothing to K-Os all evening. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t feel comfortable sharing his recent experiences with her when she was behaving like this. She continued to talk at length about the course and what she thought of people, occasionally stopping to ask Socks to remind her what people were called – Daisy, Max and so on.

They skated out of the campus boundaries, back towards Socks’s flat. Despite how she had spoken to him weeks ago, she had insisted now on visiting his flat. She was being friendly in a way that, with any other person, would be normal after a drink or two, but in K-Os was absolutely unsettling. There was something wrong with her, for sure, but Socks couldn’t put his finger on it.

They reached Socks’s block of flats and pressed the button to call the lift.

“Sorry,” Socks said. “The lift’s really slow.”

“That’s okay,” K-Os said.

The lift slowly hummed down.

It reached the ground floor, and they stepped in. Socks pressed the button for his floor, and the doors took a few seconds to close – a few too many seconds, generally speaking. The lift was heroically slow, and prone to breaking down, which it did near-constantly, despite persistent complaints.

It creaked its way up the shaft.

“How was your Christmas?” K-Os asked. “I’m sorry, I’ve talked about myself all night.”

“It was okay,” Socks said. “How was your Christmas?”

“It was great,” K-Os said. “I got all kinds of nice things.”

“Oh, really?” Socks said. “Like what?”

“Oh, you know. New clothes. A nice new watch, a bit like the one you’re wearing. Oh, a new music player.”

“You listen to music?”

“Oh yes! All sorts of music. Hip-hop, pop, punk, metal, you know.”

Socks unlocked the door to his flat, which was a communal arrangement with two other people, both of whom were still away. K-Os followed him in. On entering the flat, immediately to the left was a communal kitchen with a fridge, a microwave, a kettle, and a basic oven and stove, and a living area, with a sofa and television, connected to which were a couple of games consoles.

“Ooh, a TV!” K-Os said. “I don’t own a television. What do you use it for?”

“Netflix and games, mostly,” Socks said. He reached for a drawer and opened it up.

“What kind of games do you play?”

“First-person shooters and battle royale, mostly,” Socks said. He reached into the drawer.

“Ah. I’m more of a Mario girl, myself.”

“I’m sure you are,” Socks said.

With a sudden whipping motion, he drew his hand out of the drawer. In his hand, he held a chef’s knife. He pointed it at K-Os.

K-Os looked at the blade with some fear and shock. “Wh-what are you doing, Socks?”

“Drop the act,” Socks said. “Who – or what – are you?”

Suddenly, a change came over K-Os’s face. She began to resemble her true self.

“Oh, well done,” she said. “So, you’re not as stupid as you look.”

Socks carefully circled around her.

“What gave it away?” the K-Os-Thing said. “Was it the fact that I can’t skate in these ridiculous things?”

“No,” Socks said. He was shaking, slightly. “It was the fact that K-Os is nowhere near that friendly. And you really think I haven’t heard of cold-reading before?”

“I should have known better to underestimate you,” the K-Os-Thing said, laughing. “Yes, you’ve figured it out. What a smart boy. A real pity that it won’t save you.”

The K-Os-Thing leapt forward and, too fast for Socks to meaningfully react, it slapped the blade out of Socks’s hand. It fell to the floor with a clatter. Then it held Socks against the wall by his throat. Its face dissolved away to reveal a head clad in a green, silk-like material, with a single eye-hole, through which Socks could see an eye, peering at him, green and fierce. The body, too, melted away, revealing that of a thin, gaunt woman with an olive-green evening gown on, patterned and embroided with jewels. Her fingernails were jade green.

“I had wanted to make this a quiet, painless death,” the masked woman said, curiously unmuffled behind the fabric. “Until you got smart, of course. You’ll pay for what you did to Tanizaki.”

“T-Tanizaki?” Socks choked. “Th-the shadow guy?”

“Yes, we’re quite aware of what your friend did to him,” the masked woman said. “And how did she do that? By using your blood. After I’ve killed you, I will take your form, and trust me, as much as this hurts, it’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do to her.”

*

The Tube train was busy at this time of the evening. It thundered through the tunnels, passing stations as it went: Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch, Bond Street, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn. It had already been quite busy when they’d got on at Holland Park, but now the carriage was heaving with passengers. K-Os and Harri-Bec were seated together.

“The trains are always so busy,” Harri-Bec said, sadly. The sound of the wheels on the tracks was very loud, and K-Os had to strain to hear her. “It seems silly, but I can feel the strain this puts on the network, you know. Every day, from six in the morning to half past nine, and then again at four o’clock until seven p.m.…It’s like a migraine that never goes away.”

“That sounds hard,” K-Os said.

“It’s like every bus, train, rail and road is screaming,” Harri-Bec said, rubbing her temples. “And only I can hear it.”

“That’s the responsibility you take, psychically intertwining your being with external structures,” K-Os said. “You realise that most of what holds architecture and infrastructure together is just stress.”

“I know,” Harri-Bec said. “I’m just very new at this.”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” K-Os said.

Harri-Bec smiled.

Without warning, the train screeched to a halt in the tunnel between Chancery Lane and St Paul’s. People in the carriage screamed, thrown off their feet by the forcible braking.

“What was that?!” K-Os exclaimed, turning to see Harri-Bec, who had a look of horror on her face.

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, no, no…”

“What?” K-Os said. “What is it, Harri?”

“I didn’t know that would happen!” Harri-Bec said, tears forming in her eyes. “I didn’t know—”

There was a horrible crashing sound, somewhere further down the train, and people screamed. The lights flickered on and off.

The train began to rock back and forth violently.

“What the hell—” K-Os exclaimed, before a window behind her suddenly shattered.

Around them, commuters were screaming in horror.

“Look! Outside!” a woman exclaimed. “What – what is that?!”

There was something by the doors.

Suddenly, something pierced the door, and K-Os stood up, straining to see it over the petrified crowd.

It was shiny, red and black, and appeared to be made of a material like chitin. A few moments later, something else shattered the window. A few moments passed, and then the doors were wrenched open.

“Oh my God!” a man cried. “Oh my God!”

It crawled on to the train.

It was a hideous creature, about the size of a man. It had the legs of a spider or a crab, encased in red and black chitin, and the body of a rat, with a long, thin, wormlike tail. Its head was that of a pigeon, oversized and goggle-eyed. The creature rotated its head, looking around at the passengers, now unable to move or believe what they were seeing.

“I’m sorry!” Harri-Bec sobbed.

K-Os wheeled around and grabbed Harri-Bec by the shoulders.

“What is that thing?” she asked.

Harri-Bec couldn’t answer. She continued sobbing uncontrollably.

The creature opened its beak and screamed: Skre-e-e-e-e-e-aaaaarrrggghhhh!

In the back of K-Os’s mind, she noted that the creature’s call was not unlike the sound of a Central line train on the tracks. But she was less focused on that, for the moment. For the creature now began menacing passengers, already packed in like sardines, who had backed up against the front and back of the carriage, unable to think or say anything.

K-Os pushed her way through the crowd, as the creature began spinning around, looking hungrily at the passengers.

“Harri-Bec,” she said. “You need to figure out a way to fix this.”

“I can’t!” Harri-Bec said. “I’m new at this!”

“You need to try!” K-Os said, skating towards the creature and preparing to fight it.

She didn’t know what the beast was, but what she did know was that it was ugly, and that its body appeared to be infused with some sort of umbric – she had to find some way to get it off the train without it touching her.

The Tube carriage was a confined space and people were already beginning to hyperventilate. If any of them collapsed, the creature would set upon them and tear them to pieces with its spiked legs. She had to think fast—

“GANGWAY!” K-Os screamed, leaping over the creature, and skating towards the end of the carriage.

Passengers did their best to move out of the way, one even helpfully opening the door at the end of the carriage for her.

The passengers in the next carriage only had a split second to see a violet-haired woman in rollerskates come hurtling towards them and went flying out of the way as the door crashed open. K-Os looked behind her to see the creature in hot pursuit, and behind that was Harri-Bec, sobbing and apologising.

She had no choice. She had to keep going until she reached the back end of the train. She could only hope that Harri-Bec would know what to do when they got there.

*

The masked woman was reaching for the knife, now, her long, lithe arms easily able to grab it while still holding him. He could not see her face but imagined the hideous grin she must be pulling underneath that mask. She picked up the knife and held it up, so it glinted in the fluorescent light.

“There’s no point in wasting good umbric on a normal like you,” the masked woman hissed. “Stainless steel will suffice.”

Socks found himself unable to scream. Was this his Hell now? To be doomed to relive his murder over and over again, for eternity? Perhaps he had died in that confrontation with Tanizaki, the shadow-man, and his punishment was to be a sort of temporal Sisyphus, doomed to forever live the same horrible day again and again…

He was so preoccupied with the thought that he scarcely noticed when the knife suddenly plunged downward, and it had entered his chest.

And then there was light.

He blinked a few times, and for a moment he saw a fractal tessellation, infinite, beautiful and terrifying in its complexity, stretching out behind and in front of him, forever—

And he was falling, and suddenly the tessellation bent around him and went through him in a way he couldn’t quite put into words, and then he was back in the kitchen with the K-Os-Thing.

“Ooh, a TV!” the K-Os-Thing said. “I don’t own a television. What do you use it f—wait.”

She turned and looked at him.

“What – what did you just do?”

“I don’t know,” Socks said.

She lunged at him once again, grasping for the knife—

There was another flash, and now they were in the lift, still travelling their way up.

“How was your Christmas?” the K-Os-Thing asked, and then looked around her. She transformed back into the masked woman. She became angry. “What are you doing?!”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know,” Socks said, again.

“You bastard,” the masked woman said. “You’re no normal!”

She tried to throw a punch at him, and yet again, there was a flash, and now they were in the street leading to Socks’s house.

“So,” the masked woman said, walking around him. “What’s your power?”

“What power? What are you talking about?” Socks said.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Socks. You’ve got some sort of ability, and you’re using it to stop me from killing you, aren’t you?”

“Not voluntarily…”

“Aren’t you?!” the masked woman shrieked.

She reached into her dress, producing a long, thin needlepoint dagger. It was made of black crystal, just like Tanizaki’s knife.

“No matter what abilities you have,” the masked woman said, “You’re still weak to umbric. Now, die!”

She lunged towards him, and Socks jumped out of the way. There was another flash, suddenly they were in the bar. The masked woman crashed through a table, causing onlookers to yelp and scream.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Socks said.

“My God, you’re dense,” the masked woman said, waving the dagger. “You don’t even know that you’re doing it!”

She leapt over a table, moving towards Socks with the dagger.

A drunk man blocked her way.

“Hey, man,” he said. “Back off, alright?”

She struck the man across the face without flinching, sending him careening into the bar. Then she turned to the others.

“Anybody else feel like being a hero?” she said.

Socks’s expression of fear suddenly disappeared, transforming into steely resolve. He clenched his fists.

“Me,” he said.

The masked woman laughed.

“You fucking idiot,” she said, throwing the dagger at him with a powerful overarm swipe.

People in the bar yelled, flinching away.

They heard no cry of pain, no sound of a human body falling to the ground.

Instead, they turned back to see Socks, holding up his left hand, and piercing through the palm of his hand was the dagger.

The masked woman’s expression changed, too.

It changed to a look of abject terror.

“What?” she said. “But – that’s impossible – you should be – you should have—”

“I think I figured it out,” Socks said.

There was a flash of light.

And suddenly, they were back in the kitchen.

“Stainless steel will suffice,” the masked woman said, her hands wrapped firmly around Socks’s neck. Then she realised she wasn’t holding a knife.

And Socks was holding the umbric dagger.

The woman lunged for the dagger – her hand touched it – and there was a flash. It was as though she had never reached for the blade in the first place.

“I don’t know exactly what this is or how I’m doing it,” Socks explained, as the woman tried again to reach for the dagger, only for another flash to move her back. “But I’ve figured it out, I think. The question is, have you?”

“Please,” the masked woman said. “Give me back the dagger. You don’t know how powerful that is. It could kill you…”

“If I give it back to you, will you promise to leave?” Socks said.

“Yes!” the woman said. “Of course!”

“Okay,” Socks said. Reluctantly, he handed the woman the blade.

He turned his back to her. “Now get out of here.”

The woman looked at the blade for a couple of moments, then she laughed.

“You really are an idiot,” she said, lunging for him. “Try catching this!”

There was one, final flash, just before the blade touched Socks’s back, and suddenly, the dagger had left her hand, and it had returned to Socks. He had a very disappointed look on his face.

“Oh dear,” he said. “Bad idea.”

The woman laughed. “I wasn’t really going to—”

Socks took the dagger in his left hand.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

He began to apply minimal force to the blade.

“Don’t do that.”

Tiny cracks, glowing red with embers, started to form.

“Don’t do that!”

The cracks grew wider and wider.

“DON’T DO THA—”

The blade snapped in two.

Almost immediately, the masked woman’s body began burning, her dress bursting into flames, immediately transforming into ash. She made a last, desperate attempt to attack Socks, moving forward to try and put her hands around his throat, but by the time she reached him, her body had begun to crumble away, and the cracks in her flesh glowed red like embers. The mask, too, burned away to reveal a woman’s face, with long black hair and two green eyes, who revealed a desperate sadness.

“Bastard!” the burning woman screamed. “They’ll come for you! They’ll come for you! THEY’LL KILL YOU!”

“I’ll be ready for them,” Socks said.

The burning woman wailed her last. She turned to ash, and the ash vanished. With it, the broken dagger in Socks’s hand also turned into wisps of smoke and ash, and it, too, vanished.

Socks stood in the silent kitchen for a few minutes.

He began to feel dizzy and had to sit down, taking deep breaths. After a few minutes, he felt strong enough to stand up and go back to his room.

“I really need to talk to K-Os,” he said to himself, getting up to leave the room.

The real one, this time. Hopefully.

 

*

 

With a clatter, K-Os crashed into the next carriage.

“Move!” she shouted. “Get out of the way!”

The creature followed her, and commuters screamed in fear.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry,” Harri-Bec said, carefully stepping between the carriages.

By this time the emergency cord had been pulled, though nobody knew if anyone was aware of the incident unfolding in the tunnel. It seemed that the driver had been able to notify station officials of the incident unfolding shortly before the train had been stopped, however, because no other trains had appeared in the tunnel.

K-Os could see it, now, the last carriage. This one was slightly – only very slightly – less busy than the other one. She made a final jump, momentarily losing her footing between the two carriages, righting herself and skating through the end carriage. Commuters yelled in confusion, and K-Os skated to the back end of the carriage. She was now cornered by the creature.

The creature cocked its head pigeonlike at her, looking at her several times through red eyes the size of tennis balls. Once again, it shrieked: skre-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-aaaaaarrrgggghhhh!

The commuters’ faces were a mixture of shock, fear and bewilderment at the surreal scene now unfolding before them. Several had leapt up on the seats.

“Alright,” K-Os said, to Harri-Bec, careful not to make any sudden movements to disturb the creature. “I’ve got a plan. But I’m going to need you to pull yourself together.”

“Wh-what are you thinking?” Harri-Bec said. She was visibly shaking.

K-Os nodded to the door to the driver’s cab. “I’m going to need you to make this door open out into St. Paul’s.”

Harri-Bec shook her head. “Y-you don’t u-understand,” she said. “I-I messed with the connections…that’s how it escaped into o-our world.”

“What do you mean?” K-Os said. “Do you know what this thing is?”

The creature lunged towards her, and K-Os split her body in two, flowing around the creature like water.

“Y-yes,” Harri-Bec said, hesitantly. “I-it’s…”

“What? Come on, tell me.”

Harri-Bec took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. “The Central line is one of the busiest lines on the network at peak times,” she explained. “Every day, hundreds of people cram themselves into hot, uncomfortable carriages on their way to work and on their way home from work. In that environment, people become angry, quickly – and it fills the tunnels with all this anger and spite…” She covered her face. “Usually, all that anger stays in the psychic realm, but there’s just so much of it…it’s like a pressure-canister of pure rage…and all it takes is a tiny crack…”

She glanced at the door. “…and it slips into our world…”

K-Os nodded, trying to fend the creature off. “We don’t have another choice.”

“But if I open that door, who knows what else it will release…”

“You’re the Spirit of London Transport,” K-Os said. “With practice and time, you’ll figure it out. I promise. Now, open this door.”

Harri-Bec gave an anxious look, then tried to steel herself. “O-okay,” she said.

She took a running jump, vaulted over the creature and broke the seal on the rear driver’s cab, opening the door and falling through it. The creature scuttled out, following her, and K-Os went to follow her, turning to the terrified commuters and saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll get some help!”

They fell out into St. Paul’s Tube station, on to the westbound platform, where stunned commuters watched as a woman wearing a Tube map-dress fell through the door, pursued by a spider-rat-pigeon, and along with that, K-Os. The creature immediately leapt on to Harri-Bec’s back.

Harri-Bec screamed. “Get it off me!”

There was no room on the platform – nowhere to go, no way of dealing with the creature without endangering hundreds more people. K-Os had to think of a plan quickly.

Just then, there came a sound on the tracks: skree-reek-reek…

“Hey, ugly,” K-Os said, skating over.

The creature turned to her. By this time, commuters on the platform had cleared a space.

Skree-e-e-e-e-e-aaaarrrgghhh…

“Time for you to go back where you came from!” K-Os yelled, charging the creature, as it charged her.

She grabbed the creature in a headlock, then, without thinking, rolled herself off the platform – leaping in front of the oncoming train—

Commuters turned away in shock as the train barrelled its way into the station. Both K-Os and the creature were struck by the train. The creature screamed its last, its body bursting on contact, before being crushed beneath the train’s wheels. Simultaneously, the walls, floors and rails were covered in a substance resembling strawberry milkshake.

“K-Os?” Harri-Bec said. “K-Os!”

She ran down the platform. She could hear the radio chatter in the driver’s cabin.

“One under,” was all she was able to make out. She knew what that meant.

On the other end of the platform, there was a commotion.

A disembodied arm, part of a torso, and a hip had seemingly survived the impact. The pink liquid now covering the front of the train, the rails below, and the walls began to flow up on to the platform. Quickly, a head formed, then another arm, and two legs, on whose feet were a pair of rollerskates.

K-Os sat up, cracking her neck.

“Yep,” she grunted. “Won’t be doing that again any time soon.”

The commuters were giving her a very strange look, one of relief, but also abject fear.

Oh boy, she thought.

Harri-Bec pushed her way through the crowd.

“K-Os?” she said. “K-Os! I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“I’m just glad it didn’t bite one of my arms off,” K-Os said. “Bastard was made almost completely out of umbric. I wouldn’t have been able to grow that back.”

The commuters were now staring at the both of them in shock.

“Do you want to get some practice done?” K-Os asked Harri-Bec.

Harri-Bec turned to look back at the commuters.

“I think you’d better try and fix this,” K-Os said, trying to lift herself up. “Is the creature definitely dead?”

“We only killed a physical manifestation of it,” Harri Bec said, stepping quietly over to a red and blue Tube roundel reading “ST. PAUL’S”, and placing a hand on it. “As long as there are commuters on the trains, it’ll always be there. I guess my job is to keep it from getting out again…”

The roundel began to glow, and there was a flash of light that reverberated through the station and down the tunnels.

Sure enough, the commuters almost immediately forgot what they had witnessed. The train’s doors opened, and people boarded it as normal. The driver forgot immediately, as did everyone in the control room. And the train that had stopped in the tunnel had now been stopped due to a signal fault, and its passengers, too, returned to checking their watches, tutting and looking spitefully at one another…

Harri-Bec’s hand came away from the roundel, and she collapsed, gasping.

“Really takes it out of you, doesn’t it?” K-Os said.

“Yeah,” Harri-Bec said. “Well, I suppose we won’t be getting back to Liverpool Street any time soon…”

“That’s all right,” K-Os said, putting an arm around Harri-Bec and helping her to stand. “I’m sure the buses are running.”

“Y-yes,” Harri-Bec said, wearily. “We could catch the Number 8…”

They made their way over to the escalators, unnoticed by the crowd.

“You know, sometimes the slower route is the better one,” K-Os said.

*

Classes resumed the following Monday, and Socks sat in the lecture theatre, ostensibly waiting for Daisy, but he was clearly waiting for someone else. He looked down at his left hand. There was a scar running across his left palm, which he hadn’t noticed before – he had been preoccupied with other thoughts. In the centre of it was a large puncture-scar, which had mysteriously healed. It resembled a connector blob on a Tube map.

After defeating the masked woman, he had taken himself to bed. Since then, his abilities had not manifested again, which suggested they were defensive rather than done by force of will. He had spent hours laying awake, trying to figure out how it worked.

Someone walked in wearing a T-shirt featuring the Superman logo. If he had X-ray vision or he was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, that would be so much simpler. He wasn’t even sure what it was he had power over – and, he thought, if I can’t make it happen at will, is that even a power? Or is that just a reflex? He had tried to make notes in a notebook about it, about what his power might be. He had torn page after page out of the notebook, scrawling something else on it each time before changing his mind. Only one word had prevailed through each permutation.

TIME.

He desperately needed to speak to K-Os and find out what was happening to him. He scarcely noticed when Daisy sat down next to him.

“Hey,” Daisy said.

“Hey,” Socks said, distracted.

“How was your Christmas?” Daisy said.

“It was okay,” Socks said, eyes fixed on the front entrance. “Kind of hectic. How was yours?”

“About the same. I got a few nice things.”

“Yeah,” Socks said, non-committally.

“Socks, can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” Socks said.

“What’s going on with you?”

Socks turned and looked at her. She looked concerned.

“Wh…what do you mean?” he asked.

“You’ve been distant lately. I didn’t hear from you all month. And just after that party, you didn’t want to talk to me. Did something happen between you and Kath…K-Os?”

“Oh, I’ve just been busy with essays and things, you know,” Socks said. “I’m sorry.”

Daisy looked uncertain. “Socks, I’m worried about you,” she said. “You aren’t acting like yourself.”

“I’m fine, really,” Socks said. “Everything’s good. Tell you what, why don’t we get dinner at some point, and we can catch up?”

“I’d…” Daisy said, pausing for a moment. “I’d really like that, Stephen.”

Socks looked at her. She pulled a mortified expression. “Socks. Socks, sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Socks said. “It’s just that almost nobody calls me Stephen.”

“Forget it,” Daisy said. She cleared her throat. “Dinner sounds great, Socks. But promise me one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Promise me that from now on, you’ll tell me about whatever’s going on between you and K-Os. I think I deserve to know.”

“Of course,” Socks said. They both looked at the entrance, and K-Os rolled in on her skates.

Neither of them said anything.

*

After the lecture, Socks made an excuse to Daisy, and then went down to follow K-Os. He was struck with a sense of déjà vu, as this was exactly how it had played out when he’d invited her to the party. K-Os was already on her way out, so Socks followed her. She began to skate out of the building.

“K-Os!” he called. “Hey, K-Os!”

K-Os stopped, then turned to look at him.

“I told you to stay away from me,” K-Os said, angrily.

“I know,” Socks replied.

“Well, then, go away.”

“No,” Socks said. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” K-Os said. “Nothing good can come of talking to me. You and I both know this.”

She began to skate away from him. “Leave me alone,” she said.

“K-Os,” Socks said. “We’re past that point. You can’t run away from this.”

“What are you talking about?”

Socks walked up to her. He held out his left palm, with the scar running across it, and the puncture-scar in the centre.

K-Os looked at it. “So what? You caught a blade in your bare hand. You’ll have a scar.”

“No,” Socks said. He looked up at the sky, then at the ground, then at K-Os. “Listen – some things have been happening to me over Christmas.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know for sure, but…something happened to me after my blood got on your skates. Since Christmas I’ve had these…weird things happening to me. I’ve been reliving entire days over and over again.”

K-Os looked down at him. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Socks said. “Listen – this last weekend, I had a visit from someone. She was pretending to be you. She – she tried to kill me with this blade, like the one the shadow guy had.”

K-Os’s fierce gaze wavered slightly. It was the first time Socks had seen K-Os look even slightly worried or scared.

“How did you survive that…?” K-Os asked, as if dreading the answer.

“I was—” Socks began, trying to think of a way to explain. “You know how when you’re writing an essay you use an undo button to fix a mistake? It was like that. I…I moved backwards in time. And…I beat her.”

K-Os was staring very intently at him now.

“H-how?” she said.

“I broke her blade in two with my left hand and she burned away.”

“You – you broke an umbric blade?” K-Os said.

“Y-yes? Is that bad?”

K-Os placed her hands on his shoulders, and that feeling of déjà vu returned.

“Socks,” K-Os said. “If what you’re saying is true, you shouldn’t be able to touch an umbric blade without suffering a severe injury, or even death.”

“That’s what the masked woman said,” Socks replied.

“You say you snapped it in your left hand?”

“Yes,” Socks said.

“Holy shit,” K-Os said, inspecting the scarred palm again.

She looked quite anxious. She turned away from him to think for a moment.

“Is everything okay?” Socks asked.

K-Os paused for a long time. She was trying to find the words for it. Eventually, she surrendered.

“Socks,” she said. “We have to meet again, soon. I’ll explain more, then.”

“Whatever happened to ‘stay away from me’?” Socks said.

“I changed my mind, Socks, okay? Just…try to stay out of trouble until we meet again.”

K-Os exited the scene, and Socks watched her disappear up the path.

He looked back down at his scarred hand.

There were three things going through his mind.

His hand, clutching a blade.

A pair of bloodstained rollerskates.

And the word time, reverberating.

There was a link between all of them. There had to be.

He thought of the masked woman, burning, and the words she had said. They’ll come for you. They’ll kill you.

The last words he had said to her were true.

I’ll be ready for them.

Another time, another place…

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ARC ONE: UMBRIC SPRING
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