Breakpoint - Pt. 16

Part Sixteen

Len

“I swear to Christ, if I find out someone built this island on purpose, I will spend the rest of my days trying to figure out how to control how this time travel bullshit works, so I can go back and put my foot through the brainpan of that guy,” Len grumbled as he was shaving in the mirror while talking to Harry and Stella, Mira sitting on the counter next to him. “I mean, you two believe me, right?”

“I don’t know of any way you can fake an eight-day beard in 24 hours considering I pulled on those hairs and they aren’t just held on with spirit gum,” Harry laughed. “So yeah, top, I believe you.”

“Good, because I do not fucking like this island anymore,” he said as Mira stroked his chest with her fingertips. “I figured if we were moving in time and space, at least there would be some level of relative time passage.”

“Well, that was fucking stupid of you,” Mira giggled as she swatted at his bare chest that was covered in mosquito bites. “Time doesn’t owe you shit. It’s gonna keep on moving, no matter where and when you are. It doesn’t have to respect whatever rules you think it does, my love. You can leave and arrive at any time, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You can’t fixate on a single point, at least not any way we know how… you’re probably incredibly lucky to even get back here…” She reached over and pulling his face closer to hers. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me after all of this…”

“I’ll try not to fall into any more time holes without you, Mira,” Len tells her. “But it’s not exactly up to me. I’m at the mercy of when and where they appear and disappear, and sometimes we’re already through them before it happens.”

“I think I’ve got a fix for that,” Stella said from outside of the room. “While you guys have been poking around, I’ve been experimenting around, and I have something I want to show you, as soon as Len’s got his face clean.”

“Gimme just another minute or two, and I’ll be ready,” Len said as he brought the knife along his skin, peeling the hair away from his skin with precision and care. “This is a good thing, yeah?”

“Oh yeah, although maybe it’s going to make us all a little bit more paranoid as we go about our day to day,” Stella said. “I know you boys think you’re the only smart ones here, but we ladies have been doing our own research and we’ve got a few ideas of our own we’re giving a go.”

“We’re far from the only smart ones here,” Harry said.

“Hell, we’re probably the dumber ones…” Len admitted. “We agreed to do this on a wing and a prayer, without being able to do any real research or background about where the hell we were going.” He washed off his knife underneath the water, then rubbed a wet towel over his face, getting what stray shaving cream he’d left on his skin off. “Okay, so show us.”

Stella led them out of the apartment and down the stairs to the ground level, taking a little sprint over towards the edge of the village area. “You’ve noticed the sort of clear demarcation lines between the village and the jungle, right?”

“Yeah, there’s a buried metal cable around the outskirts, providing some kind of border,” Len said. “Copper, I think.”

“Correct,” Stella said. “And I think that because of that copper barrier, the village itself is mostly immune from the temporal shifting. It provides some kind of chronological grounding, preventing the time weirdness from getting in here. That may be the only thing keeping us all from getting lost in time and space. It’s grounding the buildings here, like a fence or something.”

“We’d figured that much out, Stella,” Harry said, “so I hope that’s not the big revelation you had for us.”

“Nope,” Stella giggled, as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black rod, clicking at the base of it, as Len recognized it as some sort of flashlight, the tip of it glowing a purple color. Then it dawned on him – ultraviolet light. “This is.” She turned to point the flashlight out towards the jungle, and Len expected not to see all that much, considering how short range those flashlights were, but he was astonished to see the jungle sparkle, a handful of large disc shapes floating between the trees like holes of technicolor, the shapes warbling and wiggling on their axis, as Stella focused in on a larger one, very close to the border, bringing them over to see it. “You can see what the time leaks look like with one of these.”

“You’re sure that’s a time leak?” Harry asked her.

In response, Stella flicked off the flashlight, picked up a rock and tossed it where the glimmering disc had been just moments ago. The rock flew through the air quickly, then as soon as it hit the point where the disc had been, it disappeared, no sound of it landing or striking anything, just completely vanished. “Sure looks like one to me.”

“Huh,” Len said. “That is pretty wild. I wouldn’t have even thought about that.”

“It’s kind of low-tech, and the range isn’t great, but it’s still enough that we would be able to see the time holes and avoid stepping into one without doing so intentionally.”

“Time holes?” Harry said. “We attached to that terminology, because it sounds wonky as all hell.”

“You got anything better?”

“Well… no.”

“Then I think we’re sticking with that,” Len chuckled. “Great work, Stella. You’re actually proving to be a resourceful addition to the team. I was worried that you were just gonna be trying to learn all our secrets only to be disappointed when you found out we don’t really have any good ones.”

“Oh yeah? The story about how you saved Dr. Ruth from a sniper isn’t a good one?”

Len glanced over his shoulder with a smirk. “Hinted at that, did he? Well, that’s one you’re gonna have to work to pry the whole story out of us…”

She shot back a grin, tossing him the UV flashlight. “Oh, I’ll get it out of Harry sooner or later. He’s always a little chatty after a good fuck.”

“Awww,” Mira said as Len began flicking the light on, waving it towards the jungle, as if trying to take stock of just how many portals were out there. “Your little padawan’s finally getting laid. And you said you thought he had trouble finding someone to warm his bed, babe.”

“Hey!” Harry objected. “I do not have trouble pulling!”

“Mira’s repeating old intel, Harry,” Len said with a laugh, turning the flashlight off again. “You gotta remember, when you first came to us, you were something of a hot mess, and we had to spend a bunch of time undoing all the bad training your previous organization had taught you.”

“I didn’t learn how to pull professionally.”

“That’s good, because if you had, I was going to have to find your teacher and beat them within an inch of their life for trying to convince you cheesy pick-up lines would do you the slightest bit of good,” Len said, waving the flashlight at Stella. “How many more of these can you get us?”

“I’ve got three right now counting that one, and I put more on my request list, so we’ll see when the next supply airdrop is and if they honored my request,” Stella said.

“Alright, give one to either Rin or Mick, whoever you see next, and keep one for yourselves, and we’ll try and do what we can to stay within the borders when we don’t have our magic eyes with us,” Len said. “Last thing I want is any of you wandering through a time hole like I did and suddenly losing eight days.”

“What was it like on the other side?”

“I’m starting to think that the Nazis never withdrew from the island,” Len grumbled. “They all just got lost in time holes. I saw a Nazi airplane circling over head for an hour or so before I watched the pilot bail out close to where the village should’ve been. Y’know, except there was no sign of the village. So I went after him.”

“What happened?”

“I chased him through a time hole, and I’m pretty sure it was the guy I killed and buried near the village outskirts a couple weeks back.”

“Wait, you saw this guy jump out of his plane… after you killed him?”

Len chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Fucking time travel, man. I fucking hate it. I’m sure there are rules and laws and causality triggers and all that nonsense, but we don’t know fucking any of it, so I’m just trying to hop along to get along without losing my fucking mind.”

“Well, at least a couple of the time holes seem to be stable and relatively connected to the same point in time,” Harry said. “Now that we’ve got the UV lights, we can focus on mapping them out without necessarily going through them. That’ll let us get something more of a map.”

“Except that the island itself keeps changing.”

“That’s the thing, top, I don’t think it is,” Harry said, pulling out a small notebook out of his back pocket. “I think it’s just shifting between a handful of configurations. I think on any given day, there’s only one of half a dozen layouts the island can take on, and I’m thinking each of those is pretty easy to identify, with a couple of adjustments and markers. I’ve got enough notes now that I think I could give you a list of features that would tell you which of the six variants we’re currently on.”

“Do you know when the change happens?”

“Sometime between dusk and dawn, although I can’t be sure as to when, unless we got clocks or watches,” Harry said. “We don’t have the tools we need to be able to do precision work around here. That’s what the Management of the island wants from us.”

“Except I don’t think Management of the island knows exactly what’s going on here,” Len said, tapping his hip. “The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’m thinking we’re just guinea pigs, here to try and figure out what’s going on without them risking any of their own personnel.”

“What the hell for?” Mira asked, as Len and Harry both turned to look at her with wry smiles.

“Vatican gold?” Harry offered.

“An entire mountain made of pure ruby?” Len countered.

“Or how about just control of the only place on the planet that seems to naturally allow time travel?” Stella said. “I think that might be worth more than all the gold and jewels combined.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Len said, leading the rest of the foursome over towards the nearby cantina. “I’m starting to think it’s only time travel in the most specific of terms. And I think maybe it doesn’t go backwards.”

“What the hell are you talking about, top?” Harry said as they entered the cantina, moving over towards an empty table, as Len reached over and grabbed the salt and pepper shaker, as well as the napkin holder.

“Okay, so this napkin holder is us, right? We’re the island, the big central point, the anchor, but every time we slip into a time hole, it’s not just a time hole, it’s also a space or maybe even dimensional hole,” he said. “Any time we step through a time hole,” he said, placing a salt shaker next to the napkin holder before moving it away, “we’re actually moving into a different reality, not our past.”

“And the Nazis?”

Len clapped his hands together. “That’s just it – I think, from their perspective, they’ve only been over there maybe a few weeks or even months. I think wherever they’re at, time is moving differently, and we’re just getting windows into it when we cross over. And I think you’re right, Harry – I think it is eight entirely different islands, none of which are on the same planet, or, at least, the same version of the planet… The plants aren’t the same, the creatures aren’t the same… hell, I’m not even sure all those Nazis are from our planet.”

“You think we’ve got alternate reality zombies to deal with?”

“I wanna show you something…” Len reached into his pocket and pulled out a small little notebook, tossing it over to Harry. “Can you make heads or tails out of that?”

Harry opened the book and glanced down at the handwriting in it quizzically. “Is it a code?”

“I don’t think it is,” Len sighed. “I think it’s a language.”

“That’s not German and that’s not English,” Harry said. “It’s not even Latin characters. They almost… maybe is it some derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphs? Like, highly simplified drawings?” He flipped through page after page after page. “This isn’t something that’s done at a large. I mean, even the symbols that are printed by the manufacturer in the front of the book are those same kinds of characters. What the fuck?”

“I think these aren’t Earth Nazis, not our Earth, anyway,” Len sighed. “Egyptian Nazis? Really?”

“I mean…” Harry said, tapping one of the figures. “Doesn’t this look like a simplified version of Horus to you?”

“Of who?”

“Egyptian god?”

“Sorry, my knowledge of mythology’s pretty light on the ground.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Mira said. “How the hell would Nazis still spring up in a place where hieroglyphics are the default language?”

“One parallel universe theory states that each universe next to ours is only a few steps off from our own,” Stella said, “so maybe that’s the one split, just in terms of language. But they still did all the racist, horrible shit that the other Nazis did. So it’s not like we’re in a better or worse universe – just a slightly different one.”

“Alright, let’s go get the flashlights and see if we can find Rin and Mick so we can tell them what’s up with our interdimensional Nazis.”

“The shit we say on this island…”

Rin

The vantage point they’d taken up to watch the building wasn’t the best concealment, but they did have an amazing view through the window. They’d been trying to make sense of what they’d been seeing and hearing for the better part of an hour now, and so far, they weren’t any closer to understanding what was before them than they were when they started.

“You’re supposed to be our linguistics master, Rin,” Mick said to her. “What the hell language even is that they’re talking in?”

“I haven’t the foggiest, Mick, and that’s what’s bothering me,” she grumbled. “Early on when I started studying languages, there were a handful of tips and tricks they teach you on how to start whittling down a language you don’t recognize, at least to pinpoint a region, but none of that shit seems to apply here – I can’t even tell you what root language they’re branching off from. It’s certainly not a Latin derivative.”

“Russian?”

“Not even close,” Rin muttered. “None of the sounds are right. Nor for any of the Asiatics. It doesn’t have any of the expected pronunciation tics that I would expect from any of the Afrocentrics. It’s clearly a language, but I haven’t a clue where it comes from, much less what they’re saying.”

 “Well, they have to at least speak some Russian,” Mick said, “otherwise I have no idea how they’re going to be able to buy those Russian unfiltered cigarettes the guy’s smoking up like a chimney over there.”

“How sure are you those are Russian unfiltereds, Mick?”

“I know that smell, Ringo, trust me,” Mick said as he rubbed his fingertips and his thumbs together. “If they aren’t Russian unfiltereds, they smell a whole hell of a lot like them… And it’s rare to smell pure tobacco without a ton of chemicals and other bullshit in them… It does have a slightly… I dunno… is that almost a toffee undercurrent to it?”

“I’m not the ex-smoker here, Mick,” Rin said, “so I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about them. It all just smells like awful noxious smoke to me.”

“It smells glorious to me. Like heaven. Like unbroken promises. Like a walk on a warm beach on a breezy day with cool water lapping at your heels. I fucking love it.”

“Don’t drop a load in your pants there, Mick,” Rin giggled. “You quit smoking, remember?”

“Don’t remind me again and I’ll try and keep the lavish thoughts to myself.”

“Fair enough.” She glanced around, shaking her head. “We need to get to the ground floor and get inside of that building. We can’t see enough from here.”

“Getting down the side of this cliff face is going to be damn near impossible, unless we want to back up and head over to the side and head down the more wooded part of the outcropping, but I feel like we’re gonna be too exposed if we do that.”

“I don’t think we got a choice.”

Mick let his eyes wander down one direction then back down the other. “Shit. You’re probably right. But I think it may be worth the risk.”

“It ain’t worth the risk if we get caught, Mick,” she sighed, placing her hand on his shoulder. “We gotta go back and tell the others what we’ve found.”

Mick scowled for a long moment before he nodded in agreement. “You’re probably right. Knowing more about these folks without being able to relay it back to the team isn’t going to do us any good at all, is it? Alright, back up we go.”

“Christ, I hate climbing.”

“Nowhere to go but up, Rin.”

The two started making their way back up the difficult terrain of the inside of the overcropping, but it was challenging movement, and they couldn’t move anywhere near as quickly as they liked, doing their level best to stay concealed as much as they were moving upwards. They picked and weaved, working in their path until they reached the top of the overhang once more.

It took them some time to get back to the peak, and once they did, they started trying to weave their way back to towards the other side of the island, but about a third of the way on the trip, none of the features of the island they recognized were present, and both Mick and Rin started to grow nervous.

“I don’t like this, Rin,” Mick muttered. “The damn volcano’s not there anymore. Why’s the damn volcano not there?”

“Just keep moving,” Rin said, “and maybe it’ll be back next time we look.”

Half an hour later, they dipped deep into a portion of jungle and lost sight of all the possible markers they had, and just had to trust their intuition that they were moving in the right direction the entire time. And sure enough, when they poked their head back out of the jungle a little bit later, the volcano had reappeared off to their right, although it looked a little different than they’d seen it last time, what looked like the fresh wreckage of a plane against the side of it still smoking off in the distance. As much as they wanted to go investigate, the need to get back to the group was more important, so they pressed on, which turned out to be for the best, as after another ten-minute dip through the jungle and back again, the entire wreckage had disappeared without a trace, as if it had never happened. Also, the time of day had changed dramatically, having entered the forest at what felt like mid afternoon and emerging from it at what felt like evening.

None of this bothered them quite as much as when they reached the bunker with the Vatican gold in it and saw a firefight occurring around it, streaks of colored light ripping through the night sky. There were clearly three or four different groups battling for control of the area, but each time a gunshot would rip through the night sky, it would seemingly damage the world around it, rifts and tears showing different versions of the island through it, some in daylight, some in darkness, sometimes revealing strange or unusual animals, sometimes taking soldiers (or bodies) with the rips, which would appear and disappear moments after the bullet whizzed into the night.

The two made the easy decision to steer clear of the firefight, moving to head back into the jungle, and within just a minute or two of delving into it, they could no longer hear the sounds of gunfire or explosions. For some reason, the duo felt a strange compulsion that they needed to get back to the village.

They had to pause and set up camp for the night at one point, the pair of them making sure they kept their location well-secured, not setting up a fire for warmth, knowing it would only give their location away. Instead, they did their best to bundle for warmth and security and took turns getting rest before picking themselves up and proceeding onward. Even though they felt like they had each gotten about 8 hours of sleep over ten hours, when they started to move again, it felt much more like midday to late afternoon again.

In took another day and a half to make their way back across the island, far longer than it had taken them to get out to the far side of the island, something that was continuing to irk Mick to no end, as he couldn’t figure any possible way that the trip there could be shorter than the trip back.

They finally reached the ruby waterfall, and Mick had never been happier to see something so absurd in his entire life. Except they stopped at the tree line as soon as they realized something – there was a naked woman bathing in one of the steppe pools, a pile of her clothes off to one side, her blonde hair slicked back. On her pile of clothes, a red swastika armband could be seen.

“I say we take her,” Rin whispered to him.

“Take her? Take her where? Back to the village? Are you crazy?”

“Think of the information we could get from her…”

“From a Nazi?”

“I’m doing this, Mick, so either you’re getting on board and helping or you’re sitting back and watching… either way, this is happening…”

“Ffffffuck,” Mick growled. “Alright, on three…”

“One… two…”

“THREE!”