Chapter Fifteen – Time Warp
(Thanks for r+ring the last chapter! JSR, GGs, Goji, etc, are not © me. Camilla and Koji are, sort of (although Koji's name is © NT13)).
Cold.
So cold she knew there was nothing. She was nothing.
***
No.
Something.
Hand slamming down on a control panel. Her hand? Was it? Did she even have hands now? A click as a button was pressed. A subtle change in the humming around her. Someone screaming.
***
Darkness.
She blinked, blinked again.
Cold. So cold.
And far away, a small square of light, a slide photo, tiny buildings like charred sticks against a minuscule white sky.
She squinted at it.
It was bigger now, normal photo sized.
Now a painting.
Now a movie screen.
And now rushing up, to fill her vision.
She closed her eyes as it reached her.
But no impact. At last she opened them again. The sky lay above her, colourless like dead skin.
She didn't know where she was. But she was somewhere at least.
Silent, so silent it rang in her ears.
She sat up, felt frozen ground brush her hands, stared at them. They were hers. She tried to move them, and watched as the fingers twitched.
Where was she? Who was she?
She looked around. The ground was frozen, muddy, stretching away from her. Those buildings loomed. And it was still so quiet. There was no one else around.
"Hello?" she called.
Only an echo.
She reached out to push herself up on a twisted railing.
Somehow she missed, and sprawled onto the ground. She tried again, and the same thing happened.
Wait.
She held up her hand, and brought it down towards the railing.
And then she screamed. Screamed and screamed until black rushed over her eyes again and the cold came back and swallowed her.
***
"Gum? Are you okay?"
Her own voice, talking to…
…her…
"Yeah…" She saw herself, gazing down at her, long blonde hair flicked round her face by the icy breeze…identical face…eyes containing all the thoughts and feelings and ideas she'd ever had…
Falling into herself…
She closed her eyes.
"I think you're freaking her out," another voice said. Tab's voice. "Gum? Past Gum? Come on, wake up."
"I am awake."
That was what she wanted to say, but her voice slurred and she could only mutter it.
"Why is she here anyway?" her future self asked.
"I'll try and explain later…when I got an idea myself…" Tab sighed. She heard footsteps crunching on the ground she was lying on. Cold ground. Frozen mud. Yes, she remembered that.
"Gum," Tab said, "look at me."
She forced her eyes open, and the chilly white light hit them, pounding the back of her skull.
Tab was leaning over her, looking worried. She sat up a little, and saw the other GGs, standing around her.
"What's going on?" she said.
"I think…" Tab said. "Now don't freak out on me – I think we're ghosts."
"What?"
"We don't exist any more. We're out of time."
Gum leapt to her feet, ignoring the throbbing in her skull. "But – but if we're ghosts, that means we're – we're –"
"Dead. Yeah."
Hadn't her hand passed through a railing? Hadn't that happened? What the hell had happened?
Well, she knew one thing.
"This isn't happening," she said at last. She paced the ground, the fear making it too hard to keep still. "This can't be happening! I'm not a ghost! We all look alive, don't we?"
"Yeah. But you just walked through a railing," Slate said. He was standing with Piranha, who was carrying Mari.
Gum stared down at the railing, which was buckled and scorched, and then at her feet.
Then she stepped back a little.
Neither her feet nor the railing went transparent. It was just they didn't seem to touch each other.
Just like before.
"Oh, shit…" Gum felt her ribs tighten around her lungs. She struggled for breath, her vision wobbling. It hadn't been a dream. It hadn't been a dream…
"Don't panic," Tab said, putting his hands on her shoulders. "We're all here. I think you might have saved us from being deleted for good."
"How?"
"I think you pressed a button that said…I don't know…erase them from time, but store them…let them stay in the world…but cos they're deleted, they'll be ghosts, as they don't exist any more."
"What, all of that on one tiny button?"
"You know what I mean. We're still in the time machine's memory."
"Where are we, anyway?" Gum stared round again, noting more details this time. They were standing in a bare open space, surrounded by shells of burnt-out buildings. The ground had once been covered in tarmac, but much of the tarmac had been torn up, leaving only a few freckly patches.
Forming a rough square were other scorched railings, like the one Gum had walked through. A bus skeleton lay on its side a few feet away, surrounded by slivers of broken glass.
It was still cold.
And it was still completely silent.
No Jet Set Radio. Just static.
"Yes…" Tab shuffled his feet. "That's the bit I'm worried about, too."
"Can't you see?" Mew said. She stood with her arms wrapped around her body, goose pimples rising on her skin. "This is Shibuya bus terminal."
"What?" the other GGs yelled.
"I ought to know. I've been catching a bus here for the last five years. Look. The railings. The bus wreck. That's where the bridge would be. There's the café…" She pointed to one of the burnt-out shop fronts. "This is Shibuya all right."
"But – but – but what's happened?" Cube said.
"Cube – you're talking again?" Gum said.
Cube shrugged. "My head's like a fucking fireworks display. If I close my eyes, I get hit with about ten different pasts and they're all equally shit. I'd rather speak."
"I think I figured it."
They turned to look at Beat.
"We don't exist. Right?"
"Right," everyone chorused.
"So we never were the GGs. Right?"
"Right."
"And what are the GGs famous for?"
"Treading on everyone's toes," Yo-Yo muttered.
Gum tried to keep her mind on the situation, and not on how nice Yo-Yo was to look at. Dammit, why was he so cute?
"Apart from that."
"Savin' the city from Goji's giant rhino," Combo said.
There was a long pause, while eleven pairs of eyes took in the emptiness around them, and Mari buried her face in her mother's shoulder.
"You don't think…" Future Gum stopped.
"Yeah. I do." Beat sighed. "We didn't save the world, and this is what happened."
"So what are we gonna do?" Future Gum asked.
"Well…uh…Tab, what're we gonna do?"
"Hmm?" Tab, who had been studying the horizon, turned. "Oh. In the short term, or as a major plan?"
"Both."
"Our major plan should be getting ourselves reanimated as living beings. No objections? Good. So in the short term we should hunt for Rokkaku towers, seeing as that's where all the shit is emanating from."
"But what if it's not here any more?" Mew asked.
"Oh, I don't think that's a problem. Look behind you."
They turned.
Gum felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, tingling her skin. If this was a movie, they'd have that rising orchestra music when the good guys confront the bad guy's absolutely humungous spaceship/city/tower base.
An enormous skyscraper stood over the city, dotted with tiny white windows. If Gum squinted, she could just made out the Rokkaku symbol on the front.
Rokkaku Towers – the one they were familiar with – had been big. This building was – well, it was just too big to comprehend.
"I'm scared," Mew said.
"Tell me about it," Tab said. "Come on. Let's start walking."
***
Cube walked alone.
She was trying to focus on external things. The hard ground. The echoing every sound made. The cold.
Because if she didn't – if she thought for a moment –
"No…no, please, stop it, no…"
She remembered her and Garam going to join the Skulls. And she remembered going on her own, and going out with Saburo ever since because she didn't have a boyfriend, and what he'd done to her, and how she'd let him…
Wrists held above her head…
She remembered Combo finding her in Benten-cho, and she remembered lying there alone till daybreak and getting picked up by the cops then…
Truncheons breaking her face…
She remembered coming to Tokyo-to and joining the GGs, and she remembered staying in Grind City because there was no one anywhere else to help them…
Shards of record, broken, scattered across the floor…
Coin died. Saburo stopped her calling out. And she was always, always alone.
"Cube?"
She looked round. Garam was coming towards her.
"Look, I'm sorry…I mean, I thought you got my message."
"What message?"
"I told Saburo to tell you to meet me in the factory yard the night I quit."
"You – you didn't just leave me?"
"No." Garam kicked at the ground. His toe sank through the frozen mud.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes more. Cube glanced up at the huge Rokkaku building above them, and gulped.
"Did he…" Garam stopped. "Did you…did you want…"
"Is this about Saburo?"
"Yeah. You cheated on me with him. Didn't you."
"Yes." Cube heard tears rise up in her voice.
"Oh, man."
"I'm sorry," Cube said.
"Me too."
I didn't want him, she wished she could say. He hurt me.
But that would sound stupid. It wasn't my fault.
She'd encouraged him, hadn't she?
"So, I guess we're…we're breaking up, then," she said.
"Yeah."
Cube wanted to say something meaningful, something that would break through the shields Garam seemed to have put up around himself, but she couldn't think what. So she just shrugged, and said, "I'm sorry."
"That's okay. Hey, Cube?"
"Yeah?"
"Let's tell Past Gum to tell past us not to go join the Skulls."
Cube nodded, and watched Garam walk away.
***
"The only good thing about hopping forward five years before was that the city hadn't changed," Past Gum muttered.
"Hey, chill," Yo-Yo said. "We'll fix this. Make it all like it was before."
"You really think we'll be able to?" Future Gum said from Yo-Yo's other side.
"We're the GGs. We always win."
"We're also dead," Past Gum said.
"Meh. Okay, there is that. But come on. We'll find a solution. Just like I've found a solution to the whole problem of there being two of you."
"Huh?" both Gums said.
"Duh. Threesome!"
Past Gum smiled at Future Gum, and then they each raised a hand and smacked Yo-Yo across the head.
"You haven't matured one bit in five years, have you?" Past Gum said.
"Nope. But look on the bright side. When Past Gum gets back to her time zone –"
"If."
"Whatever…if she does, then, she can start going out with past me. And then that'll leave me and Future Gum to – uh – commit to each other."
"Wow, you said the C-word," Future Gum said. "I still haven't said if I want a boyfriend or not. There's the snoring…"
"The belching…" Past Gum said.
"The getting drunk and going out and coming back in at three a.m. singing Grace And Glory…"
"The going to strip clubs and saying you thought it was a library…"
"The –"
Yo-Yo grabbed Future Gum's shoulders and kissed her hard on the lips. Then he turned to Past Gum and did the same thing.
"There," he said. "Zip it, please."
Past Gum felt her heart rate speed up into one long blur, and grinned.
***
"Hey, Cube?"
Combo swallowed as he hurried up to her.
"Yeah?"
"Look – uh, you know that night, whenever it was cos time don't really have much meaning any more, anyway, uh, I upset you…"
"Yeah?" She didn't look at him.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't've done that to you, and…I'm sorry, okay?"
Cube turned. She was smiling.
"Thank you," she said, and hugged him.
Combo forced his arms to remain at his sides as her smooth skin brushed his neck.
"Look," she said. "At the moment I don't want any…you know. Any, well, guy and girl stuff. I mean…"
"I think I get it."
"If you were just my friend, then maybe…well, we could see how it went. If we get alive again, of course."
Combo swallowed. This whole not-being-alive thing was freaking him out. They were still here, right?
But dead. Ghosts.
He shivered, and said, "I know. I mean, I get it. Friends?"
"Friends."
Cube put her hand in his.
"Cube," he said. "You scared?"
"About the ghost thing? No. Not really. I'm scared of all the possibilities in my head. But maybe being a ghost is better for me." Her face hardened. "All I do is hurt."
"You being a ghost is only good if I'm a ghost. Otherwise it's shit."
Cube smiled. "If you say so."
"Why've you got all these pasts in your head? I ain't got them. I don't think, anyway."
Cube shrugged. "They all suck. So they've all warped me. I guess." She stared up at the empty sky.
"I want to go back," she said. "I want to go back and not do what I did. I wish I hadn't done it."
Combo ran his fingers over the bones of her hand. "I know," he said. "But we got a chance to change some things. Maybe you'll get lucky."
"And if we don't?" she said. "If we're stuck as ghosts?"
"Then we walk de earth together."
"You mean it?" Cube stared up at him, eyes fierce. "You won't leave me? If we're stuck here for eternity, you won't leave?"
"You think I'm gonna let a little thing like deletion from time stop me from sticking wid ya? Come on, Cube. You know me better'n that."
"Thanks, Combo." Cube turned to stare up at the Rokkaku building. "I hope you're telling the truth."
***
The GGs clustered around the doorway of the Rokkaku tower.
The old tower had had the wide marble steps up to the glass-fronted door and the intercom and the minimalist porch.
This tower had a barrier checkpoint and a solid steel door twice as high as Combo.
"Someone's paranoid," Mew said.
None of the soldiers around – who wore black armbands with red Rokkaku symbols on – had challenged them or even seemed to notice them. Which was good, Past Gum reflected. In the short term.
In the long term, it was bad. They really didn't exist.
"Can we walk through walls?" Yo-Yo asked as they stared up at the door.
"Let's try." Beat skated forward, towards it.
And disappeared.
"Woah," Garam muttered. "Hey, Beat, you in there?"
Beat stuck his head out of the door. "Yup. It works all right."
"Beat, your head is floating in midair," Future Gum said. "Stop it, you're freaking me out."
"Then get your butt in here!" Beat disappeared back through the door.
Past Gum skated forward. As the door loomed up in front of her, she put her hands out to stop herself crashing –
And they went through, skin tingling.
She stumbled forward into a glaring white hallway.
Beat stood, leaning against a desk lined with what looked like bulletproof glass. Behind the glass sat a receptionist, who looked worryingly hard-bitten. And standing around the room were more Rokkaku soldiers.
"Boy, he is paranoid," Gum whispered as the other GGs piled through the door.
"Gum, you don't need to whisper," Beat said. "We're ghosts, remember? None of them can hear us."
His voice echoed in the hallway – and nobody batted an eyelid.
Gum swallowed.
"Where're we gonna go?" Slate asked. He was carrying Mari now, who was asleep.
"We need to see if they've still got the time machine," Tab said. "If they have, we can…I don't know…see if we can use it."
"How? We can't touch anything."
"Look, we'll work on that," Beat said, pushing himself off the desk. "Now think. If you were an evil genius, where would you keep all your stuff?"
"I don't reckon they're going to give us a guidebook, are they," Mew said.
"And this place is huge," Cube said. "We don't have time to search…"
"Actually, we have all the time in the world," Tab said. "We're not gonna age any more…"
"Shut up!" Mew wailed. "I don't like hearing stuff like that!"
"Calm down," Tab said. "Come on. Let's stick together, and go look."
***
It took an hour before they found anything. An hour of searching floor after floor of laboratories and barracks and offices and machinery. An hour in which everyone started to get increasingly nervous. Maybe they wouldn't be able to get back…
And then they reached the top floor.
Goji was sitting in a wide, wood-panelled office, surrounded by elegant bookcases. He was typing on the computer, his sharp fingers moving surprisingly quickly.
Past Gum caught her breath. He was alive.
She grabbed hold of the distant memory of him…paint-spattered, snarling, eyes glinting behind his glasses like lightning on rain…and that music echoing around them as the storm raged…and his black-and-white figure shrieking as it plummeted towards the ground…
Now he sat, his suit and tie neatly pressed and fitting him exactly, his dark beard and moustache trimmed, face thoughtful as he stared at the screen.
Then he glanced up for a moment, and Gum gasped.
His eyes burned.
"He's still crazy," she said. "Are you positive he can't hear us?"
"How can he?" Beat said. "We're dead."
"Stop saying that!" Mew hissed.
Tab walked round to see what Goji was typing.
"What is it?" Gum asked, keeping her voice low.
"Don't know. Some sort of maths thing. I think."
Gum looked at the rudies clustered in the office. They didn't look right. They looked out of place. They looked surreal.
Suddenly the office door flew open. Goji looked up, eyes narrowed, then relaxed as he saw who it was who had come in.
Gum recognised the intruder. Koji Rokkaku, his black hair rumpled, wearing a suit she was pretty sure cost as much as a year's supply of spray paint.
"Father," he said, "can I talk to you?"
"Koji, you know you are supposed to enter this office after the secretary has buzzed me."
"Exactly! We're living on tenterhooks here, how do we know Canada or Britain or China won't mount a full-scale attack?"
"Canada and Britain and China will fall as the USA and Japan did," Goji said. The computer keys clicked.
Surely he'll see there's eleven other people in here, Gum thought. Surely.
"Oh, for god's sake, why can't you just give up? You've wrecked my life and you've wrecked Ca–"
"Silence!" Goji roared, leaping to his feet and through Tab, who had been leaning over his shoulder. "You know my feelings on the latter issue you mentioned –"
"Issue?" Koji snorted. "She's your daughter!"
Goji drew a deep breath like he was just managing to hold onto his temper. "Koji. I will not speak of this subject again. And as for giving myself up – I have no need to do that. I'm in control I'm in control. You're in the most powerful family in the world, and you should be damn grateful."
"Grateful?" Koji said. "Why should I be grateful? You've destroyed my inheritance. No one will ever trust this family again. Now when you snuff it, what have I got?"
"Two of the greatest countries in the world in your power," Goji said coolly. "And while I live – Koji, you've got everything you want in this tower. All your basic needs provided for. All the latest technology. All –"
"I don't want countries and technology!" Koji yelled. "I – I want freedom, I want to be proud of my family, and I want my sister back!"
"Get out."
Goji's eyes narrowed. They roared with flame. Gum felt Yo-Yo grip her hand.
"Get out right now," Goji snarled.
Koji stared at him, looking like an angry child.
Then he turned, walked through Mew, and out of the office.
Goji gave a low growl, and sat back down, and started typing again, stabbing at the keys.
"So – what's happened to Camilla, then?" Garam said at last.
"Japan and the US are taken over…by him?" Cube swallowed.
"Come on. Let's follow Koji." Beat hurried out into the corridor. The others followed.
Koji had just reached the lift. The GGs crowded inside, and they began to descend.
Mew ran a finger down Koji's face, and the Rokkaku put his hand to his cheek.
"He felt it?" Cube said.
"Maybe he felt the air currents or something," Tab said.
"You could try pinching him," Yo-Yo said.
Mew gave him a look.
"I just meant on the arm, okay?"
"I know." Mew flicked her fingers against Koji's forehead, and he winced. Only slightly, but he'd noticed.
"So…we're not totally transparent, are we?" Future Gum said. "That's cool. I think."
"But that doesn't make sense," Beat said. "If we don't exist, how can we affect this world?"
"Maybe it's because we used to exist," Tab said. "Or something. I don't know."
The lift ground to a halt, and Koji stepped out. He began walking down the corridor, which was empty, and seemed to be a dead end.
"What's he doing here?" Mew said.
No one answered.
Koji reached the end of the wall. Hanging on it was a large Japanese print of a woman in a red kimono. Koji swung the picture back to reveal a computer terminal, and started to type.
Tab read over his shoulder, "Still no progress. He won't listen and he won't even mention you. I'm really sorry. I hope you're okay."
Koji hit the Enter key, and slid the picture back over the terminal. Then he turned and walked back to the lift.
"Let's see what's behind the wall," Beat said.
"What if you walk out into thin air?" Tab said.
"I'm already dead."
"Yeah, but you could still break your legs –"
Beat walked through the wall.
There was a pause, then he stuck his head back out, and said, "Guys, move it."
The other GGs followed him through.
It wasn't thin air. It was a small bedroom, the walls bare, no door. A woman sat on the bed, studying a computer terminal set into the wall. As the GGs entered the room, she sighed, and bit her lip.
She had long, tangled dark hair, and she was wearing a simple red dress with a knee-length hem. Her feet were bare, and she had large blue eyes, which at the moment were filled with rage.
"Fine," she hissed at the computer screen. "Fine. Let him hate me. He can't keep me here forever. Can he? Well, duh, Camilla, of course he can. And he will. He'll keep you locked up in a room with no door until you go stark raving mad. Maybe I am mad. Oh, shit…"
"Looks like we found the missing Rokkaku," Beat said.
"Don't look like she's got much time travel on her agenda, does it?" Cube said. She looked concerned.
"You're right. I haven't."
Past Gum jumped. Camilla was staring at them. Not through them. At them.
"Well, come on," she said. "Aren't you going to introduce yourselves?"