Breakpoint - Part 15

Part Fifteen

Len

            “After you eliminate the improbable, whatever remains is what happened, no matter how unlikely it may seem,” Len said to himself, glancing around at the jungle that surrounded him in all directions, with no sign of the village, the path, the barrier or any other landmark he could reliably identify. In fact, he didn’t see signs of human activity within his eyeline at all.

            That certainly didn’t warm his heart any.

            He gathered up his tarp and his sleeping bag, condensing everything down as much as he could, and then he decided to do the only thing he could think of – he would start walking.

            While the jungle space around him felt familiar, there was also something fundamentally different about it all, as if the pieces were put together in the wrong order, the very smell of the place unfamiliar and unusual.

            The trees he’d thrown his tarp over earlier looked a bit younger than they had before, but Len was certainly no botanist, and he wasn’t entirely certain how much younger they were. For all he knew, they might not even be the same trees.

            He considered tying something to the trees or leaving himself some other kind of marker, but he was fairly certain the wind or weather would strip it away if he did, so he decided on something slightly more permanent. He tugged his knife out of its sheathe and used the point to carve the words LET IT BE in the side of the tree in letters only about an inch high, so it wouldn’t be completely obvious from a distance, but also would be hard to miss seen up close.

            It would be the only reminder he would leave behind that this was where he’d slept the night before, hoping it wouldn’t be problematic if he couldn’t find it again.

            Within minutes, he was certain he probably wouldn’t find it again.

            Because the island, this island here and now, was nothing like the place he’d spent the last month or so learning about. Len had done the only sensible thing he could think of, and that was to climb to the top of the nearest tall tree and see if he could get a look at the island from higher up. That had panicked him a little bit, because as soon as he was up high, he was certain he wasn’t on the same island he’d fallen asleep on.

For one thing, there wasn’t one mountain in the center of the island – it looked like there were three spiky peaks in the middle instead. For another, he couldn’t see any signs of colonization of any kind, no matter which direction he looked. Normally there were buildings, grown over or at least partially covered in vines and moss, but he couldn’t see hide nor hair that a human had ever set foot on the island. Finally, the island looked about twice as big as it did when he’d gone to sleep, and that didn’t seem even vaguely possible.

The only hint that he wasn’t alone on the island was that what looked like three or four miles away, he could see a single column of faint black smoke, like that of a campfire maybe, emanating from a portion of the lush jungle forest.

That seemed as good a place as any to be heading, he thought to himself as he shimmied down the tree and started to head off in that direction.

Within just a couple of minutes of walking, Len had already begun to get nervous, because it felt like there were a lot more living things in this jungle than the one he’d left behind. He wondered if the fact that the residents of the island had been hunting had whittled down the population too much that they were scarce, leaving them with nothing to hunt. But he also had to acquit himself of the fact that he might not even be on the same island he’d fallen asleep on.

That was starting to feel more and more like a possibility that he needed to consider.

It was also a distinct possibility, he had to admit, that he had moved a severe amount in time, be it forward or backward.

Maybe he’d moved in both time and space.

This was not a great thing to have to be thinking about, he decided, and so it was best to stick to what he could see and what he couldn’t.

That, of course, was when he saw a large striped tiger sprinting across a clearing in the distance, tackling what might have been a gazelle, mauling it down to the ground, tearing large bloody chunks off of its carcass that had to be dead before it had even hit the dirt. That would’ve been terrifying enough, but moments later a giant bird with a wingspan rivaling some small aircraft he’d been in dive bombed from the sky and grabbed the tiger in its massive claws before lifting the giant cat up into the air, hauling it towards the three mountains in the center of the island.

“Yeah, okay,” Len muttered to himself. “That’s not exactly what I wanted to see right about now.”

The humongous bird left quite the impression on him, the mind-bending sight of it like nothing else he’d seen on this earth. There were no birds of that size on the planet. There never had been as far as he knew. It seemed like the sort of beast he might have read about in books that featured swordplay and big burly barbarians dueling with scantily clad sorceresses.

He realized he could go in for that kind of book right now, as he kept as close to the cover of the trees and bushes as he was able, wanting to draw little to no attention to his movement, just in case something like the bird took a liking to him.

Travelling was challenging, simply because the foliage was quite dense. The longer he spent working his way through it, the more convinced he’d become that this island wasn’t the same island he’d been on before, and that the time couldn’t possibly be the same. Even the air itself had a slightly different taste to it. Bitter. Sharp. Like it was harsher on his lungs than it should’ve been. Where and maybe more to the point when was he?

He kept moving because what the hell else was he going to do?

There was plenty of space but not a whole lot of useful information. He wasn’t able to see much in the way of anything he could recognize, and while he didn’t know much about botany, he was fairly certain the plants weren’t the same that he’d seen on the island before.

A few hours in, he made his way over towards the shore to try and see what he could about the place and came across something truly different. He’d heard tell of the ruby waterfall, but what he came across was even stranger than that – it was an emerald cliff. There wasn’t a river or even a stream running along it, but there was a large outcropping that was made entirely of green emerald stone that had been polished up a bit by the waves of the ocean constantly.

Len made his way over to it and tapped at it, but it was such a giant surface that he didn’t see any major faults from, which surprised him. He did, however, seem some loose stones, so he grabbed an emerald about the size of his fist and tucked it into his bag.

As fascinating as the emerald wall was, Len needed to find his way back to wherever it was he came from, so he kept on moving.

Half a day later, he’d reached the base of one of the three peaks in the center of the island, only with some massive confusion, since it seemed like the mountain itself had gotten smaller as he’d gotten closer to it. He wasn’t sure if it was a visual trick or if the geometry of the island was constant flux. He also wasn’t sure which would’ve made him feel better.

He needed to go up the mountain, but the incline didn’t seem too dangerous or treacherous, so he started doing his best at hiking up along the side of it. It wasn’t a particularly difficult or arduous climb, so he simply kept moving upwards and onwards without too much trouble.

Within a few hours, he found he had made quite a lot of progress, although he couldn’t be sure how long he’d been climbing. In fact, it almost felt like the sun hadn’t really progressed much at all from where it had been (or at least where he thought it had been) when he woke up.

When he got high up enough on the mountain, he started to get even more worried.

He couldn’t see anything on the horizon in any direction, but that much didn’t surprise him. What did disturb him was the fact that he could see a boat on the other side of the island. It certainly wasn’t anything modern, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it looked relatively new, he would’ve said it would’ve belonged in a museum.

That wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to deal with, and the last thing he needed was to be spotted, so he started climbing his way back down.

About half way down, he discovered a new problem. He could see an aircraft flying overhead, and it too looked more like a museum piece.

It also had a Nazi insignia on it.

One that looked freshly painted.

Mick

            It was their second day in traversing the island, and Mick only kept growing more and more unhappy, while Rin was growing more and more amused. “I love the fact that you’re bothered by the fact that there are dinosaurs running around on this island,” Rin said to him as they were closing in on the far side of the island.

            “I’m not bothered by the fact that there are dinosaurs running around the island,” Mick said. “I’m bothered by the fact that I don’t have anything to defend myself from them with. Give me a pistol, a rifle, hell, a bloody rocket launcher, and I’ll feel more comfortable, but right now, we’re goddamn naked and those things could kill us without so much as breaking a sweat.”

            “Do dinosaurs sweat?” Rin asked him with a grin.

            “That isn’t the bleeding point, Rin, and you know it.”

            “Look, Mick, I worry about what I can one day at a time. I worry about the things that are right in front of me, or I don’t worry at all,” she said. “Because worrying is like trying to do astrophysics with a slide rule – yes, I suppose it’s feasibly going to have some impact, but not so much that it’s going to do you any good, especially with all the effort you have to put into it.” She sighed, placing a hand on his shoulder. “If you really, truly have to worry about something, worry about getting off this god forsaken rock, especially with our skins intact. Besides, we found Len’s girl. We found your girl and we didn’t even know she was here or, y’know, alive. We’ve got enough information that we can just leave now and pass on what we know to one of the governments, or all of them!”

            “Oh yeah?” Mick said, cocking his head. “What do we know, then? Go on. Tell me what we know. We don’t know where the island is. We don’t know who’s running it. We don’t really know who’s been held here. We don’t know what they’re using it for. Sure, there’s a bunch of spies here, but why? Nobody’s asking us any questions. Nobody’s trying to learn anything. So why not just kill us? Or maybe we’re lab rats in some sort of weird prison? But we do know? We do know that time doesn’t always function right. We do know that there sometimes giant bugs with electronic grafts on them like they’re rejects from a bad Saturday afternoon sci-fi monster movie. We know the Vatican had a big supply of gold they left here on the island for… some reason. We know both the Nazis and the Japanese had military bases here at some point. And we know that they can kill us via remote any time they want to, apparently. I wouldn’t exactly call that a shitload of information to go on.”

            “No, I get it. And you’re right. It’s fuck all compared to what we usually know. But that’s all we’ve found so far,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “And we’re going to keep at it. I’m still surprised you want to spend any time away from your wife now that you know she’s alive again.”

            “That’s just it, Rin,” Mick sighed. “That’s exactly just it. She’s alive, but she’s lost six years that she doesn’t know she lost. And if I’m being entirely truthful, it doesn’t feel like she’s actually aged those six years. She’s almost too good to be true.”

            “Or she skipped time,” Rin said.

            “What?” The thought hadn’t even occurred to Mick.

            “Maybe she got on the island six years ago, wandered into a time rift before she knew which way was up or who anybody was on the island, and then just assumed that nothing had happened, because she didn’t know any better,” Rin said. “You talked to her about what she remembers?”

            “She doesn’t remember a lot, which doesn’t make me feel any better.”

            “You don’t remember a lot either, Mick.”

            “Yeah, I can be the one who’s got the memory holes for the both of us.”

            “You have to cut her some slack.”

            Mick smiled wearily. “I’m really tryin, Rin. Believe me, I am. We’ll get through it.” He glanced over at the distance and narrowed his eyes. “Hey, come have a look at this.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the pair of binoculars they’d brought with them before offering them to her. “Tell me you see what I see.”

            “That can’t be,” she said, glancing out towards the ocean with her eyes before taking the binoculars from him to peer through them. “Son of a bitch. That’s a surfaced submarine. German make?”

            “Yeah, I thought so too, although certainly not anything too current. Might not be, though. Submarines are weird things. They all kind of look alike.”

            “That’s newer than WWII though,” she said. “What the hell’s it doing out here?”

            “It’s confirming one of my theories about the island,” Mick said.

            “Which is?”

            “The impenetrable mountain lair beneath the dormant volcano?” he asked her. “I think they’re getting in and out by using a sub tunnel that’s too deep for anyone to easily free dive.”

            “Wouldn’t someone have seen this thing before now Mick?”

            “Most of the island population’s on the west side, Rin,” he said. “They don’t come to this side that often because there’s no structures over here, nothing that shows any sign of colonization or that people are safer over here than they are within the boundaries of the village over on the other side.”

            “What about that?” she said, pointing off to a spot in the distance. It didn’t look like anything other than a nest of trees to Mick until she handed him the binoculars. “Over near those larger trees by the beach, down nestled in that little crevice.”

            It took him a long moment to slowly comb across the far edge of the island but eventually his eyes drew in on where Rin was pointing him, and sure enough, nestled amongst the trees was a singular tall concrete building. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “What the hell is that doing over here?”

            “If we’d have come from pretty much any other direction, we’d probably have missed it,” she said. “Shit, if we hadn’t stopped to gawk at the submarine, I think we’d likely not even have noticed it. Just dumb fucking luck.”

            “No such thing,” Mick said. “We make our own luck in these parts. So we’re investigating.”

            “There was any doubt?”

            “You’ll notice I didn’t phrase it as a question.”

            It took them the better part of four hours to make their way over towards the building, but at least a third of that time was spent making sure they were approaching undetected, something that took a lot more time than they had planned, although it was aided by the fact the building’s own camouflage was working against it. While the building was well obscured from nearly all sight lines, it also meant that there was not a lot of view for the building to see approaching people or wildlife on foot.

            The building also had one other great advantage – it was only about a hundred feet away from an insanely steep rock cliff on three sides. And Mick and Rin were at the top of that rock cliff, looking to try and find a way down towards to the dirt floor the four-story structure had been built into.

            “I’m not jumping,” Rin said to him.

            “I wasn’t going to suggest that you do,” he replied. “You’d easily break your legs, best case scenario. Why don’t we both scout a bit from our vantage point here, in the bushes, and then we can decide if we need to climb down and head into the building.”

            “Let’s do that, then.”

            For the next hour, they watched from their concealed place amongst the bushes that grew at the edge of the land above the building. At first it seemed like building might be completely empty, but then after a few minutes, Rin spotted a guard on patrol on the third story, walking with a crossbow in hand, his eyes quite alert for someone on what had to be an insanely boring patrol path.

            “I told you crossbows would be a good idea,” she hissed at Mick, shaking his shoulder to point to the guard.

            “Yes yes,” Mick agreed. “What fools we were to not pack the crossbows when we were kidnapped? I should’ve just asked my torturers if they had any spare crossbows I could bring with me to the island when they sent me here.”

            “I’m just saying crossbows are a good idea.”

            “Great. Wonderful. Forget about the fucking crossbow and tell me what else you notice about this guy.”

            Rin looked through the binoculars sizing him up. “Huh. No military patches or insignias. The crossbow doesn’t have an obvious make or model number. He looks Asian, but I don’t see anything about his outfit that give us any clue as to where he’s from and who he works for.”

            “Haircut?”

            “Too generic to tell you anything.”

            “Shoes?”

            “Pretty much standard combat boots.”

            “No ink?”

            “Not a drop.”

            “C’mon, Rin,” Mick said, “there’s got to be something about this guy to give you some kind of clue where he’s coming from.”

            “Shit, get low, he’s stepping over to the window,” Rin hissed. The two of them did their best to get into concealed positions, as the man glanced out of the window for just a moment, never looking up, just looking down. Then he pulled out a packet of cigarettes, fishing one from it before lifting it to his lips. “That’s Cyrillic,” she told Mick, watching the man through the binoculars. “Now we’ve got fucking Russians in the mix too?”

            “Or a Russian mercenary. Or a guy who just likes Russian unfiltered.”

            “I didn’t say it was unfiltered,” she said.

            “I can smell it,” Mick said with a chuckle. “I’m an ex-smoker, remember? That’s not an old pack, either. They’re bringing in fresh cigarettes. Jesus, that smells fucking good.”

“You quit smoking, Mick, remember that,” Rin said to him.

“Yeah yeah,” Mick grumbled. “But after all the shit I’ve been through lately, I’d kill that guy for that fucking cigarette, self-improvement be damned…”

Harry

            Harry and Stella had just finished breakfast at the cantina, and they were bussing their trays when there was a loud crash outside of the building. “The fuck was that?” Stella asked him.

            “What now?” Harry asked, as exasperated as he possibly could. Yesterday, Mick and Rin had set forth to check out the far side of the island, Len had said he was going to see what he could find by deliberately being outside of the borders of the village after sundown and Harry had spent all of yesterday trying to figure out how many of the cameras had live cables running from them and how many were purely for show.

            The answer hadn’t been one he’d liked.

            Most of the cameras were live and hooked up to… something. But the cables were in the walls, beneath the copper strips, underneath the floors… all concealed behind too much construction to play follow the lead.

            He’d lost the whole day looking for a single solitary flaw in how the wires were hooked up, and hadn’t found a single hint that would help identify where the wires were heading, and Stella had spent the day working with him, trying to her best to be helpful. It was clear she wanted to be part of the team, of any team really, and since she was linked up to Harry, she seemed to think she could get into his good graces by being useful. Or cute.

            The cute part was more useful right now.

            The two of them ran outside of the cantina and towards the back where they saw the trash dumpster kept out back starting to rustle. For neither the first nor last time in his stay on the island, Harry wished like hell he had a weapon on him.

            Then Len’s head popped out from the dumpster with a black plastic bag on his head before he pulled it off, glancing around until his eyes focused on Harry. “Harry! Jesus, thank Christ, you’re okay. I’m okay! I’m fucking back.”

            “Back?” Harry squinted at Len’s face, seeing the beginnings of a blonde beard. “Len, what the hell happened to your face?”

            Len’s eyes, bloodshot and weary, turned to glance back at Harry. “It’s got a beard. What did you expect?”

            “What are you talking about?” Harry asked him. “How’d you grow a beard overnight?”

            Len’s face turned ashen white. “Harry… I’ve been gone eight days…”

            Harry shook his head slowly. “I… I saw you yesterday, Len.”

            Len looked over at Stella, who nodded in confirmation that Harry was telling the truth, before he looked back to Harry. “I hate this fucking island…”