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Thank you very much Chris, I hope my dyslexia with p's and b's didn't annoy you too much.

PROLOGUE

“Syracuse is ready to see you,” a secretary wearing a black long dress said, and gestured Doctor Guy Baker to step behind the oak double-doors that stood ominously behind her desk. Doctor Baker looked like an ordinary man going to a business-meeting, but he was far from ordinary, as his title of chief scientist told. Neither was he an ordinary scientist, but something far more sinister, some would probably have thought his business was malign.
“Thanks,” Baker replied. He stood up and checked his tie for the last time, while he thought about how he was going to present the case to his scary and mysterious employer. ‘You just be cool about the accident, and don’t talk about the boy. Yes, as far as he needs to know, the boy is as dead as the old fellow.’
Cold sweat poured down on his back as he stepped through the doors to the lavishly furnished office. The whole atmospheres made Baker remember times that, he had spent on his private school principal’s office explaining his mishaps. Even the Greek statues and the pottery on the pedestals made it look all so much the same.
‘Oh ****’, he thought, as he saw the company that was standing next to the Syracuse desk. Although the man competed in the blackness with the secretary, his skull-like, long face made Baker feel as if the Death itself was present in the room. ‘This is definitely not good. I bet he already knows.’
Baker quickly touched his right jacket pocket to check that a small hold-out pistol was still there, as his gaze wandered around room searching for the escape routes. There was none, unless he wanted to try to jump from the third floor to a certain death. Then again, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Baker gulped loudly as he stopped next to the chair in the front of the Syracuse desk. Syracuse was a shipping merchant, an old school Greek aristocrat and his business, as far as Baker knew, went all the way back to the days when the Aristotle had been alive. He even looked like Aristotle itself, but instead of hiding his rough figure in toga, his tailored silk-suit just enhanced his majestic presence. It made Baker to feel as if the man himself was a King, and the man next on his right was his executioner. However, even if he was, it didn’t explain his interest on the gene-manipulation, but then again the time was year 1980, and as far as Baker knew, he and his team were the only one conducting research in that field, by using methods that had to come from the future.
“Sit and explain yourself,” Syracuse demanded. His grasping voice made Baker to shiver and think how he could escape from the situation that he was in, but there was no other choice. He had to do it.
“I rather stand, if you don’t mind…”
“Suit yourself, but please do enlighten me on what happened in the hospital.”
Baker took off his glasses to swipe steam off from them, as he started to tell his story. “Sir…” he stopped for a moment to think if sir was good enough. “ Everything went according the plan until there was a accident that made the CORE device act weirdly. Our chief engineer believes that the device itself caused it…” He placed his glasses back on his nose, took out a small white metal case from his left pocket, and carefully placed it on the table. “Sir that is all the data that we managed to salvage from the magnetic tapes after the central computers crashed. The chief engineer said that a battery backup could have solved that problem…” He watched Syracuse picking up the case and sliding it open to reveal a flat-screen LCD display that was unheard off in 1980’s England. “As you can see the data clearly shows the injection and beginning of the transaction, but there is no data that shows the agent itself is working…”
Baker stopped for a couple seconds to think what he was going to say next, but the pause was enough Syracuse. He slammed his hand on the desk with such a force that Guy felt his heart jumping on his throat, as Syracuse spat out. “LIES…” He jerked his head towards the Baker, and said in Greek. “Niko, skotose ton!” Then he raised from his chair, flipped open a hidden panel on his desk and shouted. “WHERE’S THE BOY?”
Baker panicked as he heard bolts slamming on behind him. He stared at Niko, who was approaching him like a knife fighter. His legs danced on a floor like a cat approaching prey, and his claw was a long blade that gleamed in his hand. Baker’s hand went into his pocket, but he was already too late. Niko had already moved behind him, and placed his blade on Baker’s throat and hissed in his ear, “Try it, and you’ll be dead as dead as Miss Johnson. Where’s the boy?”
‘Shit’ Baker thought as he froze his movements. ‘Shit, ****, **** …’ He felt Niko switching blades on his throat, and then taking out the pistol from his pocket.
“You murdering conspirator,” Syracuse growled from behind the desk.
“If you kill me, you will never find the boy,” Baker heard his mouth saying at the same time as the plan played in his head. “He is well hidden and you never…”
“Niko, skistou to lemo,” Syracuse sighed and sat down.
Guy felt the blade cutting his throat, and as he felt his life escaping, he thought the boy. He would be safe. Nobody knew who he was, and where he was. The dead-man switch would trigger certain death to his crew and then Syracuse would never have his precious boy.

[0]

LONDON 2006, Tom Delay was sitting in the tube, cracking a Su-Doku puzzle in his head. For him, the puzzles were something that could take his always occupied mind away, and let his subconscious mind play. Although mister Delay looked like an ordinary city boy, he was far from being one of them, as his business was identity theft, and the suit was just a costume in role that he had assumed. Nevertheless, there was a one thing making him extraordinary, and it was the dreams that he had from time to time, dreams that showed him the future. However, he didn’t even realise today he was going to be the day when his life was going to change … forever.
There were times when Tom noticed that something was going on. He just did not quite understand what it meant, and most of the time he was just too busy to focus his mind on it.
This time Tom watched his image in the mirror that the dark metro tunnel created on the carriage windows. He had felt something, almost like a nudge hitting his subconscious mind and he saw his image twisting, and next thing that he understood was that he was sitting in an empty, dust-filled carriage, staring at pair of skeletons on opposite seats. As soon as the image had appeared, it disappeared.
‘What the hell,’ Tom thought. ‘Where did that come from? Was there something in the coffee?’ He looked at empty crushed cup he had chucked on the floor. ‘I swear to god that he will pay for it. He will be like others and he’ll have a credit card account or two…’ but it didn’t feel like as he was stoned; the feeling was more sort of sensation that he had after experiencing an deja-vu. Difference was that this it felt so much more powerful, raw … and so realistic.
Tom looked other people down at the carriage, and thought ‘Did they see what I did see’ but it was obvious that they had not experienced anything like that in their mundane lives. Even seeing the dreams that he had seen, seemed to be so rare, if not unique.
“Next station, Holland Park…” the carriage speakers blared.
‘Ah my stop,’ Tom thought as he folded newspaper under his arm, and at that point another nudge in his mind; this time it was far more powerful then the previous one.
Tom saw himself being in a cart moving towards a desolate West End of the London, and towards the tallest and weirdest looking tower, that occupied most of the land that at one point had belonged to the Central Government, and all the banking institutions. It was Tom’s playfield, but it looked so barren and so alien.
When Tom mind returned, he heard announcement from the speakers, “Next station, Shepherds Bush. Mind the gap,” He shook his head and stood up, feeling very strange. ‘There is something going on, I better get out, before I find myself in the last station.’
As the train stopped, Tom rushed out, sat on the first bench, and took a deep breath. The images twisted in his mind, and the sensation felt like the magic mushrooms that he once had tried with his partner. Tom grasped the chair with his fingers, leaned back as he swallowed the dusty air and lost his sense of time. The images were just too overpowering, and it took some time before he was able clear his mind.
When Tom woke up from the nightmarish daydream, he realised that there had been several trains that had stopped and moved on. He looked down the platform and he saw a transport official, on her high visibility vest, looking at him and talking to her radio.
Tom looked in the other direction, and saw a boxed CCTV camera looking at him. ‘I cannot stay here,’ he thought as he forced himself up and walk towards the exit. ‘Not now, I cannot be getting in hospital with three passports in my pocket.’
He smiled to the transport worker and said, “Tummy cramp. I had to sit down for a minute. It’s ok now.” Then he carried away, acting as if he was in hurry to find a toilet, and as he heard woman behind him cracking in her radio, “Bad kebab…” he felt fantastic. Woman had bought his lies.
‘Did I just see a future?’ Tom thought as he jogged up the stairs to the first landing, and took the escalator up to the top. He closed his eyes and relaxed as the wind blew on his face, and the next thing that he understood was the nudge on his feet, he had at the end of the escalators.
“I must be losing some time,” he muttered to himself, as he checked the time from his mobile. “I swear to god that it was much earlier, when I left the office…” He looked up and saw a police officer near the gates watching him, and talking to his radio. Tom quickly slapped his Oyster card on the reader, and moved out from the station to rainy London. He took a free newspaper from a fellow at the exit to shield himself, and started to jog towards Holland Park. There was no point of hailing the black cab on the rush hour London, because his home was just ten minutes away, and it could take much longer to get a cap.
When Tom moved into a subway tunnel on border of Shepherds Bush and Holland Park, he felt a nudge in his mind, this time it wasn’t just one, but a whole series of them. He felt a gust of wind blowing down the tunnel, and starting to swirl around him. The wind picked up everything around him, but left him alone to stand in the eye of the vortex.
Behind the flying rubbish and sudden arches of lightning, he saw the tunnel starting to age, and things moving as if time itself was on fast forward. People suddenly appeared, moved rapidly through the tunnel, but when they moved through him, it shook him to the core, as they didn’t even notice that he was there.
Suddenly it was night, as the time moved forward with an ever-increasing pace, and a few minutes later the sun rose. Tom took out his mobile and saw that the time was passing normally in it. Looking up, days whistled by and became months as the seasons started to change. As suddenly the nature had bloomed at the other end of the tunnel, and the bushes in alleyway started to change colours, finally shedding their leaves when the autumn storms appeared; then he realised winter with its grey clouds had settled in. To Tom the time at the outside seemed to move forward faster, ever faster…
Tom felt his motion sickness coming as he watched the sun and the moon dancing at the end of the tunnel. He felt his legs giving way. In the end he did not care what was happening, he just wanted to get back to his bed, and hide under the thick cover of his duvet. The blackness filled his mind and he collapsed.

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