Extremity, page 12
After three cars had stopped, I saw the lorry coming down the tunnel.
“There it is,” Grossman almost fucking shouted in my ear.
“Shut up,” I whispered, pulling him back into the darkness. I lifted my gun, pulling it close to me.
The lorry slowed down and stopped. I squinted, making out two figures sitting in the front, but it was too dark to see if they were men or women. Already, the others were arguing and shouting at one another by our blockade. One man was saying he was going to break into the car and move it himself.
I tensed, getting ready to move round to the back.
The door on the passenger side opened, and my heart stopped as Dmitri Yegorov himself stepped out and onto the pavement.
DC Mark Cochrane: My head hits the ground with a thump, and I can feel the blood pouring out of my nose. Again. My fucking nose. I mean, seriously. My face is never going to look the same ever again.
I fumble for my gun, but it’s not there.
I look up. He’s holding it in his hand.
How is he that quick? How is anyone that quick?
Just as he lifts the weapon, a stone Buddha flies across the room and smashes directly into his head with an almighty crack.
He collapses to the floor and Lilja appears right next to me.
“Get up,” she mutters. “Where’s my gun?”
I try to say, He’s got it, but with my nose it comes out like heshmmglurgl.
Lilja lifts up her rifle and turns to where his body fell. But he’s not there anymore. He’s already gone.
“Shit,” she mutters. “Three minutes.”
“What?”
“The lorry gets here in three fucking minutes.”
“Oh.”
She shakes her head, exasperated, and starts walking through the furniture shop, rifle up, checking doors and corners.
I follow, but without a weapon I feel utterly useless. I bring my fists up in front of me, but I feel so completely stupid that I have to put them down again. Jesus Christ.
As I turn around, I see him—like looking in an impossible mirror—step out from behind a cupboard with my gun held high.
“FUCK!” is all I manage, and he fires. I throw myself at the floor and the shot goes wide. Lilja swings around and takes aim, firing twice.
The first bullet hits his shoulder and he grunts, jerking back. The second hits his hand, sending the gun clattering to the floor. Other than that, the bullets seem to barely hurt him.
Lilja darts at him, but he’s too quick.
As she gets close, he leaps up onto one of the desks and rips down a ceiling fan—it goes tumbling straight towards her head.
She rolls out of the way, but he’s already back on top of her—he moves so fast—the cord from the fan tight in his hands as he wraps it around her neck.
“Fuck,” I say, again, pointlessly. She grapples with him, but he’s too strong. She chokes and splutters, her arms flailing. And all I can think is that he’s killing her. I’m killing her. That’s what my face looks like killing someone. It’s terrifying.
DCI John Grossman: Oh, shit.
That’s literally all I thought in that moment.
Yegorov was there. The man himself, dressed in his snappy tailored suit. The mastermind, right in the middle of all of this.
She hadn’t killed him yet. This was five years in the past.
I turned to look at Julia, because I suddenly had absolutely no idea what she was going to do.
Julia Torgrimsen: Four and a half years. Before the indictment and the trial, before I strangled him, before Anna.
Before Anna.
Before he got her pregnant, before I tried to cover it up, before she killed herself.
She was still alive, somewhere in this world. She still had hope. She still thought I was going to get her out.
And then it hit me:
I still could.
DCI John Grossman: Yegorov walked towards our blockade, slowly, cautiously, trying to work out the cause of the disturbance. And just as I was trying to think of something meaningful to say, like It’s okay, Julia, or This must be hard for you, she took two steps forward and raised her pistol in the air, aiming directly for him.
DC Mark Cochrane: As I’m just fucking standing there, watching her getting choked out, this giant wave of anger washes over me. Anger at my own incompetence, my own fucking uselessness, at being confronted by the fact that whatever image of myself I have, at every stage of this journey I’ve been nothing but a hindrance.
I’m a loser.
The realisation bubbles inside of me and turns into an unspeakable fury at everything and everyone. Screaming, I run at the two of them.
The other Mark sees me running and tugs Lilja around like a human shield between us. I don’t give a shit. Grabbing a small wooden desk, I hurl it at the two of them. Pencils go flying. Paper litters the air.
They’re both knocked to the floor, but Lilja’s free of the cord. She rolls over, coughing, hands at her throat. Mark—the other Mark—is already on his feet.
But I’ve got a stapler in my hand, and I slam it into his face.
His head jerks back, blood spurting out of his nose, and I laugh.
“Fucking hurts, doesn’t it?” I scream, triumphant, just for a moment, then his fist punches straight into my throat.
I gasp, gurgling, but another blow is already coming. Fist upon fist—my stomach, my chest, my face.
I stumble back, falling onto my back, but he follows. I close my eyes, my hands go up to protect myself, but it’s no use. He’s a bulldozer. A force of nature.
Gunshots explode across the room. I open my bloody eyes to see that thing’s body bucking and shaking as bullets burst through him. Lilja’s on her knees, holding her rifle, firing until her magazine goes empty.
He doesn’t go down. He doesn’t go down.
But he is seriously injured. He’s shaking. He can barely stand.
Holding the blood that’s pouring out of him, he stumbles backwards and runs, disappearing around a corner.
I get up, moving to follow, to chase after him, but Lilja grabs me.
“No,” she says. “He doesn’t matter. Look!” I follow her pointed finger to the lorry outside, now arrived, waiting at the lights. The driver has got out and he’s on the phone to someone. “Go. That’s all that matters. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.”
I dash forward, grabbing the key and the USB bomb, and make for the lorry.
Crouching low, I move round the back. No one is looking at me. Everyone’s focused on the lights. I thank whatever gods I can think of that Lilja put suppressors on the guns and that the windows look like they’re double-glazed, or we’d have had the police on us already.
I can do this, I think to myself.
I can do this. I’m not a loser. I can fucking do this.
Quietly as I can, I unlock the lorry door, praying they don’t notice it in the front. Pulling it slightly open, I dart inside.
It’s pitch black. Fumbling for my phone, I turn on the torch, trying to remember exactly how to place this damned bomb that Lilja gave me.
Somehow, I do it.
Miraculously, I’m out of the door before anything goes wrong.
I close the lorry door and run back into the shop. Lilja is still waiting, rifle up, eyeing the periphery for any sign of my evil twin.
“You do it?”
“Yeah,” I manage, breathlessly. “Yes.”
DCI John Grossman: I threw my whole body at her, slamming into her before she could fire. We tumbled, rolling onto the ground.
“Get off me!” she seethed, kicking me away.
“You kill him, and the plan is ruined! Butterfly effect! Remember what Lilja said—when we go back, the other machine won’t be there. None of this will happen!”
“I don’t care!” Her face was red, her eyes wet. I’d never seen her so angry in my life.
“Extinction of the human race, Julia!” I said, getting to my feet, thinking about how I’m going to get her gun off her. “What’s more important than that?”
“He is,” she said, pointing at the distant figure of Yegorov.
I made a leap for her gun, but I was way too wide. The coke was throwing off my reaction times. She slapped me out of the way, kicking my leg out from under me. I slammed onto my back, the impact knocking the wind out of me.
“Don’t do it,” I panted, my voice breathless. “It’s not worth it.”
She didn’t hear me. She was in some world of her own.
Lifting her gun again, she started walking towards Yegorov and I knew that this was it.
This was the end.
DC Mark Cochrane: “Shall we get out of here?” I ask. She smiles, and nods at me.
“You did good work there, Mark,” Lilja says. “Well done.”
And for some reason, despite the fact that I absolutely hate this crazy murderess of a girl, a warmth blossoms inside of me. I did it, and she couldn’t have done it without me.
We both pull our return buttons out of our pockets, holding them in front of us.
“This is it?” I ask. “It’s all over now?”
“As long as Julia did her job,” she replies.
I smile, because of course she did. I’m certain of it. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.
“Let’s go ho—” I start to say, but a figure leaps out from behind a filing cabinet, and slams straight into Lilja.
Him. The other Mark.
I stare, mouth open, as they grapple.
Too late, I realise what they’re grappling for.
Mark gets his finger on her button and presses hard and both of them disappear, like they’ve flickered out of existence.
Oh, fuck, I think.
And then I do the only thing I can.
I press my own button and follow them.
9
DC Mark Cochrane: I reckon I snap back into the present just seconds after Lilja does. She’s still grappling with that thing, the other Mark, and they’re on the floor. Her rifle is still somewhere in the past. So is my gun. It’s an almost equal matchup—his strength and power against her training. He seems to have her pinned down, but she wriggles free and gets in a hard kick at his face.
He staggers back.
“Destroy the machine!” Lilja shouts. “Now.”
“Oh, yeah,” I mutter, turning to look at it. “But how do I—”
“Open the panel at the back,” she replies, but Mark is already closing in. “There’s a—”
She has to dart back to dodge a punch that could crush chests.
I scramble for the back of the machine. There’s a collection of tools on the ground—wrenches and screwdrivers and a bunch of other small pieces I don’t recognise. There’s also a crowbar. Maybe if I smash up the insides enough, it’ll do the trick. Lilja lets out a yelp.
But a thought occurs to me. “If I destroy the machine,” I shout, “can Julia and John make it back?”
“It doesn’t matter!” she screams. “As long as they do their job, it doesn’t matter.”
But they’ll be stuck in the past, I think.
I need to wait. I need to give her more time.
The other Mark has Lilja pinned up against the wall. Gritting my teeth, I pick up the crowbar and enter the fray.
Julia Torgrimsen: I don’t think I was fully in control of my body anymore. Some reptilian part of my brain had stepped in and grabbed me, like a marionette, moving me inexorably forward.
I was going to kill him.
I was going to kill him before he could ruin Anna, before I hid her baby, before she killed herself, and then everything would be okay again.
“Julia!” John groaned from behind me. “Stop.”
I didn’t stop.
I didn’t even consider stopping.
DCI John Grossman: Julia’s probably not going to tell you this bit. I don’t know if it was the coke, or the heat of the moment, but as I watched her about to shoot Yegorov and ruin the entire mission, one thought blazed utterly clear in my mind.
“For Christ’s sake, Julia,” I said. “Don’t be so fucking selfish.”
Her whole body froze. Turning around, her face seethed with fury. She stormed back towards me, leaning down to look me right in the eyes.
“What?”
“I . . .” I started, but she didn’t give me the chance.
“What the fuck did you say to me? I’m doing this for Anna. I’m doing this for all the girls that died because of him.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not. If we don’t complete this mission, the extinction still happens.” I pushed myself up onto my knees, desperately trying to get through to her. “Listen to me, Julia. You can’t kill him. You kill him and the whole timeline is different. Extinction still happens. If you stop Yegorov now, she still dies. We all do. This doesn’t help anyone. This just absolves you.”
Her mouth set into a hard, thin line. “I don’t care.”
“You’re going to ruin everything. You’re going to destroy the world.”
“I already ruined everything!” she screamed. I winced, hoping that we wouldn’t be heard over the rumble of engines in the tunnel. She didn’t seem to care. “Where do you think I’ve been the past four years, John? What do you think I’ve been doing? I already fucked everything up because of the choices I made, because of the things I did.” She spun to point at the figure of Yegorov off in the distance, now on the phone with someone and shaking his head. “Because of him. Earlier today, I told Mark that you can’t fix something like that. That I couldn’t save Anna. But now I can, John. I can save her.”
“And doom the rest of humanity,” I replied, but she barely heard me.
“I can save her,” she repeated, turning to leave me behind. “Don’t try to stop me.”
DC Mark Cochrane: I swing the crowbar right at his head, and he twists. He catches it, like it’s a pool noodle or something, and twists it away from me.
Great.
But it gives Lilja the opening she needs. Ducking low, she leaps at his waist and tackles him out of the room, tumbling through the door and into Horner’s upstairs flat. I follow, panting, my whole body aching.
Horner is just there. Having somehow freed himself, he’s standing by one of the office seats. He’s making a pot of coffee, the jug under the machine whirring as it slowly fills up.
He’s got a mug in one hand and a gun in the other.
He lifts it up when he sees us, but doesn’t know where to shoot.
Lilja is on top of the other Mark, grappling with him on the floor, and Horner’s watching them, looking from one to the other. She grabs a keyboard from the desk, smashing it into the simulacrum’s head, over and over until it’s a mess of wires.
“Fucking shoot him!” I shout at Horner.
Horner looks to me, then back at the simulacrum, and a sudden realisation spreads across his face. He takes two steps forward, pointing the gun at the two of them grappling on the floor, and fires.
The simulacrum pulls Lilja right in front of him just in time.
The bullet explodes through her chest, a splatter of red spurting out the other side. She falls on top of the other Mark, who pushes her to one side.
Horner shoots again, but the simulacrum isn’t pinned down anymore. He’s too quick. He dodges and rolls to his feet, charging at Horner.
I throw myself at him, but I’m too slow, missing him entirely and rolling across the floor.
Idiot, I think. But there’s nothing I can do.
Before I have time to even think about moving again, the other Mark has closed the distance between him and Horner, slapping the gun out of his hand.
He takes Horner’s head and slams it into the wall.
Again, and again, and again, each one ringing with a sickening crunch.
He must have been dead after the first couple, but the simulacrum keeps going, like a factory machine that doesn’t know how to stop, until all that’s left on top of Horner’s neck is a shattered smudge of brain and bone fragments.
“Oh God,” I mutter, using the table to clamber to my feet. The bile rises in my throat. The other Mark turns to look at me, his face a painting of cold calculation.
Julia Torgrimsen: I was about fifty metres away from him when I decided I was close enough not to miss. Still obscured by the darkness of the tunnel, I pointed my pistol back at Yegorov and put my finger on the trigger.
He turned, clearly annoyed at the holdup, and waved at the driver of the lorry to get out and help him.
It’s no use, I thought. I’ve got you now.
But then the door opened.
The driver got out.
It was me.
And then it all came back to me—I’d been here before, in this tunnel, with this roadblock. I’d forgotten it because it was so inconsequential, so long ago. Yegorov had told me he needed someone he trusted to drive a lorry. I’d never even asked what was in it.
I watched as he lifted a single finger and made a come here gesture, like he was giving orders to a child. And I watched as I did it. Without question, or comment. I walked straight over to him, like a fucking pet being told to heel.
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to shoot myself, for being such a spineless idiot, thinking that I was making my own choices when I was so completely under his control.
And then it hit me: I was still under his control.
Four years of wallowing in my own hatred and self-pity, and all it took was the sight of him to throw every other choice and decision out of the window. There I was, willing to sacrifice the rest of the human race, because of how much control he had over my mind and my body.
This doesn’t help anyone, John had said. This just absolves you.
I thought I was doing this for Anna, for all the people that I hurt, but I wasn’t. I was doing it because nothing had changed. He still owned me.
“Let it go,” John whispered. He was standing right behind me, and his words sent a shiver down my spine. “That’s not you anymore, Julia. You’ve done your penance. Let him go.”
I took a deep breath, the salty taste of my tears dripping into my mouth, and I lowered the gun.
As I turned around, John put his arms up to envelop me in a hug.
