Anachronist Read online

  THE INFINITY ENGINES SERIES

  BOOK I

  Andrew Hastie

  Contents

  ANACHRONIST

  1. Go Faster

  2. Community Service

  3. 1944

  4. Returned

  5. The Flat

  6. No Telly Eddy

  7. Caitlin

  8. Hospital

  9. Lenin

  10. Cars

  11. Friends

  12. The Gig

  13. Necropolis

  14. The Colonel

  15. Wolf's Lair

  16. About My Dad

  17. Training

  18. The First Lesson

  19. Cabinets of Curiosities

  20. Fenians

  21. The River

  22. A Better Life

  23. Second Lesson

  24. The Palace

  25. Lost Treasure of the Bourbons

  26. Lenin's Plan

  27. Another Colonel

  28. Others

  29. Chapter House

  30. Library

  31. First Millenial

  32. Captain's Table

  33. Dalton's Spy

  34. Dracul

  35. Lost

  36. Consequences

  37. Exile

  38. At the Colonel’s House

  39. The Heist

  40. The Professor

  41. Find the Colonel

  42. The Copernicans

  43. The Antiquarians

  44. Lenin and the Professor

  45. Antikythera

  46. Fates

  47. Selephin

  48. Dawn

  49. The Fight

  50. Bedlam

  51. Private Hospital

  52. The Text

  53. Orval

  54. Contact

  55. Clockmaker

  56. The Plan

  57. Splitting Up

  58. NCP

  59. Gossy

  60. Bad Odds

  61. Hiding Guns

  62. Meeting

  63. Showdown

  64. Lenin Recovered

  65. Awakening

  66. Star Chamber

  67. Initiation

  68. Golden Hour

  69. Retirement

  70. Paradox

  71. Art of War

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © Andrew Hastie 2017

  This edition published by Here be Dragons Limited 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-9164747-1-0

  The right of Andrew Hastie to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  5.0

  To my beautiful wife and daughters, thanks for putting up with my obsession.

  To Steve and all the things you never got to do.

  A x

  1

  Go Faster

  [London, UK. Date: 2011]

  They were racing at over a 100mph, weaving through the traffic like it was standing still. Everything was a blur except for the car in front. He focused on nothing else but overtaking it. In the passenger seat next to him, someone was shouting, ‘FASTER! GO FASTER. YOU CAN TAKE HIM!’ and he knew that he could. He cranked up the volume on the stereo.

  You won’t see it coming

  The power builds inside

  Motion taking over

  Josh felt his pulse racing to the beat as he dropped down into fourth gear and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The steering wheel juddered slightly as he veered too close to the central reservation; he fed the wheel back through his hands and knifed between a car and a lorry that were going so slowly they might as well have been parked.

  Gossy was in a Porsche in front, driving like a demon. Josh watched him swerve round another slow driver and had to brake and dodge just to avoid slamming into the back of him.

  ‘PUSH IT! HE’S GOING TO BEAT US!’ screamed the passenger.

  Moving out into the night

  Taking on the world

  At the speed of light

  Up ahead Josh knew the road would narrow into two lanes. He had one chance to overtake his friend before the traffic became too congested to race.

  Then Gossy took the next bend too wide, and Josh saw his opportunity and took it. His friend anticipated the move and pulled across to block him, but Josh wasn’t about to back off, and their bumpers connected.

  Time slowed as he watched his friend’s car swerve into the central reservation. The speed of the impact caused the car to take off and spin end over end into the oncoming traffic. Glass and metal cascaded across the tarmac as it collided with other vehicles, reducing it to a battered metal shell.

  ‘Josh!’ screamed his passenger.

  He looked back at the road ahead to see the rear end of a lorry rushing towards them. His feet pumped the brakes, but the car was moving too fast. It skidded, and Josh felt the seat belt bite into his shoulder as he lost control. The last thing he saw was the time on the dashboard — 12:24.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ said a voice somewhere beyond the darkness and the pain.

  2

  Community Service

  [London, UK. Date: 2016]

  Two schoolboys sat on a bench watching the brightly coloured ‘Community Payback’ team cut back the overgrown bushes on the other side of the park. The boys should have been well on their way to school by now, but had taken a detour so they could have a quick smoke and watch the local gangsters being punished.

  Matt, who was the younger of the two at twelve, was fascinated by the older boys, some of whom had stripped off their jackets and T-shirts to show off their muscles and gang tattoos: each had a different collection of designs, but all of them had a black skull over their heart.

  ‘So are they really dangerous?’ he asked James, his older brother.

  ‘Yeah. They’re part of Ghost Squad — see the tattoo over the heart?’ answered James, taking a quick drag on the cigarette. He coughed as the smoke hit the back of his throat. Fighting back the urge to throw up, he passed the butt to Matt.

  ‘One of them’s a killer.’

  ‘Which one?’ whispered Matt, carefully studying each of the gang in turn as he took a drag on the cigarette.

  James nodded towards a tall boy with blond hair who was working slightly apart from the others. He was hacking away at a bush with a machete as if it were his worst enemy.

  ‘The loner. His name’s Josh, but they call him “Crash” because he killed a kid with a car he stole.’

  ‘Did he go to prison?’

  ‘No. Lenin sorted it.’ James tried to sound as if he knew the leader of the Ghost Squad personally. ‘They’re both from the Bevin estate. They’ve known each other all their lives.’

  Matt threw the cigarette on the ground and stamped it out under the sole of his shoe.

  ‘I don’t want to end up like that,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘It’s all about choices, bro.’ James stood too, picking up his school bag. ‘Just remember that next time you’re thinking of bunking off.’

  The loner had got his machete stuck in the trunk of the bush. He left it there while he took a drink. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he looked around the park.

  ‘I think we should go,�
�� said Matt nervously.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Time was running out for Joshua Jones.

  He’d had five days to pay back Lenin, his mum’s dealer, and had wasted four of them cutting back bushes in Churchill Park. There was nothing left to sell other than the TV, which was the only thing that kept his housebound mother from going insane.

  Josh tried to free the machete from the trunk of the stupid bush, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like that with his life right now — nothing was going right for him. He just needed a break, for fate or destiny or whatever it was that kept giving him the shitty end of the stick — to just look the other way and deal out some good luck. He’d spent the last few days trying to think of a scheme that would make him a quick £3,000, but his options were limited: cars, bikes, phones — they were all risky, and he couldn’t afford to get caught again. This was his ‘last life’, as his offender manager had pointed out: the next offence would end up with him getting locked up for real — prison time — and he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his mum on her own, not in her condition.

  A month ago he had been caught in someone’s shed. It was supposed to have been a quick job, a couple of mountain bikes worth at least £2,000 each. It had been a stupid, spur-of-the-moment thing, which his mate Billy had said they could split fifty-fifty. But Josh should have known better than to trust Billy; he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box and hadn’t scoped it out properly. There’d been a dog, a big one, and it had taken a chunk of Billy’s backside and trapped Josh inside the shed until the police arrived.

  He could tell the owners weren’t that impressed when they discovered he was on first-name terms with the cops who showed up.

  At least they knew not to call his mum.

  The blade refused to budge.

  The morning sun had reached his end of the park, and it was getting warm — sweat had begun to trickle down his back. The kit they issued for community work was too cold in winter and too hot in summer, but he wasn’t about to take his top off like the others — he had his reasons, and the lack of tattoos was only one of them.

  Josh gave up and stood back to review his work. The bush was definitely winning. It showed little evidence of his attempts to tame it while he was covered in scratches. Turning round, he saw that the other members of the crew were all sitting on the grass, smoking and playing with their phones. There was a mixture of newbies and old-timers — mostly from Lenin’s gang — all paying for some stupid mistake. Josh had been here many times; he didn’t try to make friends or swap stories any more — he just kept his head down and let his reputation do the work for him.

  Their supervisor, Mr Bell, or ‘Bell-end’ as they all liked to call him, was talking to one of the yummy mummies over by the kids’ playground. It was a beautiful autumn morning, and Churchill Park was filling up with young families enjoying the last of the good weather. The Salvation Army was out tidying up the flowerbeds around the war memorial in preparation for VE Day, which seemed a bit pointless. After seventy years he doubted there would be many actual veterans left to turn out for it.

  It was an old Victorian square; a park surrounded on three sides by large houses, the kind of homes his mother dreamed of — beautiful old three-storey townhouses with big bay windows, spacious rooms and long gardens. A far cry from the fifth-floor flat the council had given them.

  Still, he knew this park well — it had been one of his favourite routes to school. He’d explored every part of it: where the gaps in the railings were for a quick exit, the hidden places where the junkies left their stashes of used needles and the dense shrubberies that made perfect hideouts for when you wanted to bunk off lessons, which was ironically the main reason the council had ordered them to be chopped back.

  It also happened to overlook the road where the local crazy man lived.

  ‘The Colonel’, as the kids had nicknamed him, lived at no. 42. It was an easy house to spot as the unkempt jungle of a front garden stood out like a festering thumb compared to all the other neatly manicured hedges along the rest of the street. The man was something of a hoarder — his house and gardens were packed with all manner of junk. No one really knew if he was ex-military, but the nickname came from the dark green army greatcoats he would wear in all weathers. He was something of a local legend and his house, an eyesore for his long-suffering neighbours, was an inevitable draw for the local kids when it came to dares.

  Suddenly, as if he’d summoned the old man, the colonel appeared at his front door, his long coat catching on a stack of metal pots and pans and sending them clattering down the steps. His appearance was as disorganised as his house, his hair its usual matted mess and his beard looked like things were living in it. If you met him on the street, you’d think he was homeless, not the owner of a house on one of the most expensive streets in town.

  The colonel muttered to himself as he consulted an old fob watch, shook it and looked up at the sky, like a ship’s navigator checking the position of the sun. He put the watch away, pulled out a tatty old notebook and took a pencil from behind his ear. Licking his finger, he flicked through the book until he found the relevant page and hastily scribbled something onto it. As he closed the book, it seemed to disappear, like a magic trick. Flicking his long scarf over his shoulder, he marched down the steps to the front gate, took a moment to decide which way to go and then marched off down the street with an old lady’s wheeled shopping bag clattering along behind him.

  The front door swung back on its hinges unnoticed by the old man as he disappeared round the corner.

  Josh knew he’d never get a better opportunity; it was too good a chance to pass up. He whistled to the gang sitting on the grass and one of them, the most junior by the look of his tattoos, eventually got up and sauntered over.

  ‘Whatsup, Crash?’

  Josh put his foot against the tree, yanked the blade out and handed it to the kid.

  ‘I need to disappear for five minutes. You need to be me.’ He took off his hi-vis jacket and threw it at the younger boy. ‘Put this on and go work in the bush. Bell-end won’t notice you’re missing.’

  Thirty seconds later, Josh was through the nearest gap in the railings and out onto the street.

  As a kid, he had sat and watched the colonel’s house for hours. It had always fascinated him — not because of the usual playground nonsense about how the old man kept children in the basement or ate the local cats, but because there was something different about it. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly, a kind of feeling that it was special — like a mystery or a secret. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck whenever he walked past it. Other kids had dared to go into the house (the colonel was notorious for forgetting to lock his doors) and reported that it was full of newspapers and smelt of urine; Josh doubted anyone had ever had the guts to venture further than a few steps into the hall.

  Sixty seconds later he was through the front door of No. 42. He closed it gently and let his eyes adjust to the dim light of the hall. The others were wrong about the smell; it was a mixture of mildew, dust and decaying things, like a house that had never been cleaned, or the inside of a tomb.

  His body tingled all over with pins and needles, as if the house were electrified.

  The pale light of the sun failed against the gloom of the hall, turned away like an unwelcome guest. Josh paused to listen for sounds of anyone else in the house, but there were none.

  The hallway was narrower than he expected, stacks of old newspapers were piled up to the ceiling along both sides. As he moved along, he spotted the remnants of old pieces of furniture poking out through the paper. Small manila envelopes with long numbers scrawled on them were tucked in random points along the stacks. There was no doubt that the old man had a problem with throwing stuff away — he was a first-class hoarder. Josh estimated there were literally thousands of editions of The Times crammed along the walls.

  The stairs had received a similar treatment; each step had become another shelf b
rimming with old books, leaving only the smallest of pathways up through the stacks. He had considered trying upstairs — small valuable stuff tended to be kept in bedrooms — but the cluttered staircase would make it slow going and time wasn’t on his side. So instead he continued down the hall towards the back of the house, scanning the cluttered shelves for anything that would fit in his pocket.

  There was something weird about the way old people collected so much stuff. His grandfather used to have a shed at the bottom of his garden packed with jam jars full of various-sized nuts, bolts and bits from old TVs. Josh had never understood what the point of keeping it was — Grandad never used any of them, but he would spend every spare moment in that shed taking something apart and storing the various components in their relevant jars. His nan used to call them his ‘dust collectors’.

  A Welsh dresser had been squeezed into the space under the stairs. Its shelves had been reinforced with large metal nails to hold the weight of all the battered old tins that sat precariously on them. There were square metal boxes with faded images of tea plantations or Bisto gravy logos; each was crammed full of random things. His eye caught the unmistakable glint of gold from the top of one marked ‘Valkyrie 44’. Josh tentatively lifted the golden object, careful not to disturb any of the surrounding clutter. It was a medal from World War II; the writing round the edges looked like German, and it was a heavy, the kind of heavy that spoke of quality. It probably wouldn’t pay off the whole debt, but it would be definitely be enough to get Lenin off his back for a few more weeks.