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He’d seen it done a million times in movies and the guy always went down. Always.
Rat-face Number Two didn’t go down. He just leered.
Ashoka charged. The two tumbled into a pile of rubbish and knocked over a bucket of compost. Ashoka pushed the rat-face down into a bag of rotting, stinking onions as he scrambled to his feet.
Claws, hot and sharper than razors, tore open the back of his coat and sliced his skin. But he was too full of fear and adrenaline to feel the pain, and was up and running a second later, stumbling out of the alleyway.
“Run, Ash, run!” Jackie laughed.
What am I doing? What am I doing?
He’d never been in a fight before and this was for real – life and death. His heart was pounding violently in his chest and his boots beat the pavement, the heavy impact echoing like a drum in the night. He was only a few hundred metres from his front door, but suddenly the alleyways through the estate turned into a labyrinth. He ran down one and came out into a small enclosed green, empty but for a pair of swings and a see-saw. He stared at the blank, unlit windows of the apartments that overlooked it.
“Help!” He raced past the swings, throwing them behind him in a desperate attempt to stop Jackie. She moved on all fours and bounded over them. How is that possible?
Lights came on in the estate around him, but he didn’t dare stop to call for help. One swipe of those claws and she’d have his head for a football. He ran on, down into another narrow gap between the apartment blocks—
—and crashed straight into the rat-faces, who grabbed him. Ashoka wrestled and punched but couldn’t get free.
“Hold him,” Jackie ordered. She panted and her tongue hung red and loose from her wide jaw. The rat-faces twisted Ashoka’s arms behind his back until they felt as if they’d break.
“What do you want? I don’t even know you!” Ash shouted. This was insane.
Jackie looked him over, coming so close he could smell her breath. Worse than a dead dog’s guts. “No, but I know you.” Jackie stroked his face with the back of her nail. “And I’m here to make sure you never do.” Then she turned her hand and dragged her fingers through his shirt. The cloth ripped open and she drew three thin, bleeding lines down his chest. She pulled his shirt wide open and peered at his skin. Her nail pressed against his belly. “No scar.” She grabbed his left hand and stared at his thumb. “Interesting.”
She flexed her fingers and the nails struck like a butcher’s blades. “Hold him still. I don’t want his blood on my suit.”
“Please …” begged Ashoka.
A steel scream rang out right in his ear and Ashoka cried out as blood showered over his head.
The rat-face gripping his right arm wobbled and Ashoka turned towards him to see blood vomiting from his severed neck. The head was still spinning in the air and Ashoka stared at the wide, surprised expression on his face, his mouth a perfect ‘O’.
A moment later another figure appeared to the left, a long triangular blade of bright, sharp steel shining in its right fist. The rat-face who still had a head dropped Ashoka and drew out a pistol. It wasn’t some cool Desert Eagle or Walther PPK, it was an ancient gunpowder thing from a hundred years ago. But the barrel was huge, and in the narrow alleyway he couldn’t miss. The flint burst a bright flash of powder, and then thunder exploded from the barrel opening, filling the entire alleyway with acrid gun smoke.
The bullet sparked on the steel blade as the figure swatted it aside, the lead ball rebounding to tear a chunk of brick off the wall.
He swatted a bullet,thought Ashoka. That’s not possible.
The rat-face stared as the shadow rammed his right fist, and the steel triangular blade, into his chest so hard that he came off his feet. A second fountain of blood sprayed out as the tip of gore-coated metal tore through the rat-face’s back. He scrabbled, and screamed a scream that should have shattered all the glass nearby, and almost did the same to Ashoka’s eardrums. Then the figure, a boy in a hoodie, tossed the dead rat-face aside and stepped past Ashoka, his attention on Jackie alone. The boy’s fingers tightened around the steel dagger in his fist.
A katar. An Indian punch dagger. Ashoka hadn’t seen one since—
“Jackie,” said the boy in the hoodie.
“It’s true. You’re here,” Jackie snarled, edging away. She looked from Ashoka to the boy and back again. Then she threw back her head and screamed with demonic laughter and with two bounds vanished into the night.
“Are you all right?” asked the boy, turning to Ashoka.
Ashoka blinked and tried to wipe away the blood that covered his face. He thought he’d swallowed some. He swayed, his legs suddenly as solid as jelly.
“He’s going to fall,” said the boy.
Someone helped to support Ashoka: a girl of about fifteen or sixteen, dressed in a close-fitting suit of black-green. “I’ve got you,” she said. Despite the darkness she wore shades, so all Ashoka could see was the reflection of his own petrified face.
“Let’s get away from here,” said the boy. “And bring him.”
“I only live—”
“I know where you live,” the boy snapped. “Now come on.”
The girl steadied Ashoka. Then she picked up a long steel coil off the ground. The weapon had a sword hilt, but instead of a single blade there were four razor-sharp steel strips.
“An urumi,” said Ashoka. “The serpent sword. That’s … cool.”
He looked down at the now headless corpse of the first rat-face. She’d done it with the urumi. He could see the open arteries and the spine and neatly sliced muscle of the neck stump.
“Oh, God.” Ashoka tried to hold it down, but bile flooded to the top of his throat. Then came straight out over the ground and his shoes. His stomach spasmed and bitter vomit poured out again and again.
The boy in the hoodie sighed. “Pathetic.”
The girl was patting Ashoka’s back. “Oh, please. You were just the same when I first met you.”
“Was not.” The boy sounded petulant. “Have you quite finished?”
“Yes. Yes, I have.” Then Ashoka saw the second rat-face, torso slick with black blood and white bone jutting from the gaping hole where his chest must once have been.
“No. No, I haven’t.” He vomited some more.
Once the vomiting was all done and he’d downed a bottle of water, Ashoka was eventually able to walk again, and he followed the boy and girl out of the estate. I could run, he thought, but something told him he wouldn’t get very far.
“What’s going on?” Ashoka demanded. “Has the world gone bat-loony? Why were those people trying to kill me? Who were those people?”
The boy hurried Ashoka across the road, his face still hidden in the deep shadow of his hood. “Last question first. Those aren’t people. They’re rakshasas.”
Ashoka scoffed. “Indian demons? Yeah, right.”
“You don’t have to believe me.”
“Thanks. I won’t.”
“But you should.”
Ashoka paused. “You were at the woods today, weren’t you? Have you been following me?”
“That’s right. I knew Jackie would make her move sooner or later.”
“Who are you?” Ashoka said, suddenly filled with a dreadful anticipation. A small part of his subconscious didn’t want to know. There was something terrible and familiar about the boy.
The girl nodded. “Tell him.”
The boy took off his hood. A pair of dark eyes gazed back at Ashoka. Eyes he knew. The boy’s face was gaunt, but smooth and brown like his and his hair was the same as Ashoka’s, maybe longer than he wore his and more dishevelled than his mum would allow. The boy smiled, and it was a smile Ashoka could mirror, perfectly. He struggled to breathe. “Who are you?” he whispered, even though he knew.
The boy’s smile softened. “I am Ash Mistry.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_5e8091af-6ec3-5d5e-8e41-4bd1bd05a16e)
“Sit down,” said the girl.
Ashoka took a seat in his kitchen, his back against the wall, staring at the other boy.
The other Ash Mistry.
Weird did not begin to describe what it felt like to be face to face with himself. The boy had all his mannerisms – the way he pulled his hair from his forehead, the way he stood and tilted his head as he thought. But there were differences. The most obvious was that this other Ash was as sleek as a dagger and the way he moved was almost scary. He had a confidence that Ashoka lacked. Ashoka shuffled through life, a bit wary, a bit timid. This guy wasn’t just in charge of the situation – he owned it.
“This is too weird,” he said, and not for the first time. “How can you be me?”
“Check the house, Parvati,” ordered Ash, “and get him some clean clothes.” The girl nodded and left the two of them alone.
“There’s no one here,” said Ashoka. “Mum and Dad have taken Lucky to a gymnastics competition.” But he glanced at the clock. They should have been back by now.
“As soon as they return we all leave.”
“Leave?”
Ash checked out the window. “He’ll come after you. After everyone. We can’t stay here.”
Ashoka looked down at his torn shirt. He was still shaking. He walked over to the sink and filled his Yoda mug with water. He rinsed the vomit taste out of his mouth, then splashed his face, closing his eyes and letting the cold water refresh him. “Who’s after me? Why would anyone be after me?”
“Sit back down. Stay away from the window.” Ash’s hand twitched on the hilt of his katar.
Ashoka faced him. “Listen, this is my house and—”
“No, you listen,” snapped Ash. “There are people out there that want to kill you. I am the only one who can keep you alive, but I can only do that if you do exactly as I say. This is not open to discussion.”
Parvati reappeared. “All clear.” She had a bundle of clothes under her arm and a bag over her shoulder. She gave it to Ash. “And I found this.”
“Hey, that’s mine!” Ashoka said.
Ash paused, then held the bag out to Ashoka. “Show me.”
Ashoka unzipped the black canvas bag and drew out his bow.
Matt black with a magnesium-alloy main body, composite limbs with pulleys to increase the power. The bowstring was made of coated steel cables. State of the art. Right now the frame was folded in on itself and the bowstrings wound into the pulleys so the entire weapon was less than half a metre in length. He’d been given it as a present on his last day in India.
Ashoka held the central body and gave the bow a sharp flick.
The two limbs snapped out and locked. The pulleys whirred as the bowstring unreeled and quivered, springing into tension. Fully extended, the bow was just shorter than him.
“You any good with it?” asked Ash.
“Is that important right now?” said Ashoka.
“You’re right, it isn’t.” Ash tapped his watch. “Want to get a move on?”
Ashoka looked at the pile. He didn’t like getting changed in public. He had enough teasing about his weight in the changing rooms. “Do you mind?”
Ash shook his head, turning away. “This is ridiculous. I am you, Ashoka.”
“How can you be? I don’t look like you. I can’t do what you do.”
“I am you, but from a different timeline.”
Ashoka stopped. “A different timeline. Right.” That was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. The other boy frowned, no doubt seeing Ashoka’s disbelief.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” said the other Ash.
“You’re right about that.”
A distant cousin he could have believed, given how similar they looked. Maybe, just maybe a long-lost twin, some bizarre mishap at the hospital when he’d been born.
But different timelines?
“But if we are the same, right down to our fingerprints and DNA,” said Ashoka, “how come you look like that and I look like this? Which is very different. Shouldn’t we be really mega-identical?”
Ash shook his head. “Things happened in my life that never happened in yours. In my world, in my universe, I’ve a sister called Lucky, I live in this house and my mum and dad are the same as yours. But a month ago my timeline ceased to exist and somehow I ended up in yours.”
“What happened?” asked Ashoka, pulling off his bloody, tattered shirt and putting on his Nike T-shirt instead.
“The past was changed. I’ve spent the last five weeks investigating, and as far as I can tell, it changed ten years ago. A person went back in time by a decade and altered his past. So, from that point on, our existences diverged. Your universe took a different route to mine.”
“Just like that?”
Ash nodded. “Just like that. No big flash or bang. I shouldn’t exist here – this is your universe – but I do. I’m here with Parvati because we’re somehow immune to the effects of the Time Spell.”
“Time Spell? Someone cast a spell? This is truly weird.”
Parvati interrupted. “Your lives are different, but your destinies will be the same.”
Ashoka frowned. “Sorry, I don’t understand that.”
Ash rolled his eyes and, looking around, grabbed pen and paper from the kitchen counter. Ashoka watched over his shoulder as Ash began to draw a line. “This is us. We are the same person. We are born, and then, when we are four, something happens.” He drew a thick dot, and two parallel branches emerging from the same line, one above the other, close but separate.
“Year by year we live different lives, me along this top path, Timeline A, you along the bottom one, Timeline B. Then in December I jumped from my timeline to yours.” He did a loop from the top line to the bottom. “Instantly. There was no going backwards or forwards in time, but I left my universe and carried on in yours.”
“And what’s happened to yours?” asked Ashoka.
Ash frowned. “It could be continuing, everyone living their day-to-day lives without me. I simply vanished and the universe continued. Or it could have just …” he bit his lip and Ashoka saw a flicker of anguish “… stopped. Ended. I don’t know.”
