5

Amber and Ghost headed back into the Physics Room and into the corridor. The rooms were dangerous, giving ghouls too big an advantage. The corridor wasn't great, but it was better and Ghost knew where they should to go next.

Apart from a shotgun, Ghost didn’t carry any weapons exactly. He wore a long coat with a lot of interesting pockets and carried a rucksack slung over one shoulder. While Amber carefully checked all her equipment before they set off, he was equally careful not to check his. It was like those times you can’t remember if you locked the car and you have to actually check it to see. By not knowing what he had brought with him, he could adjust reality whenever he needed so that what he wanted was what he’d packed. He also had a knack of focusing reality into a weapon.

They continued down the corridor until it came to a fork and turned left. There were the fire extinguishers that people invariably set off on the last day of term. They passed more science labs and then the maths rooms. They turned left. The next part was tricky. They didn’t need to go too far along the corridor, but it would be easy for them to be trapped in from both ends now. In which case their only way out would be through the classrooms and if they had ghouls in them it would be a problem.

Amber took a deep breath and let it out slowly. They walked along until they reached the specific door. It was different to all the rest and much better secured. In fact now that she looked at it, she felt it was like someone had taken the room from somewhere else. She looked at Ghost. He shook his head; this door was self-locking; there were no other realities to choose from. She put the shotgun against the lock and fired. The door swung open from the blast. She raised the shotgun to fire a second shot at anything that had decided to be there that night.

In the music room the rioting ghouls looked up and paused. That shotgun blast had been much closer...

The room was dark. Security windows blocked out the moonlight. She listened carefully but could only hear her heart beating in her ears. Well at least there were no ghouls rushing them yet. Ghost concentrated then reached into a pocket pulling out a torch. Careful to point it into the room, he turned it on. The room appeared to be empty.

He’d only been here once before. The feeling that the room really belonged somewhere else struck him too. The desk the Headmaster would sit behind, a few comfortable chairs, a scattering of pictures on oak shelves and a few bottles of alcohol. This wasn’t a place for students. It wasn’t even a place for teachers. It was somewhere, separate.

He sat down in the chair behind the desk. It felt strange. It was one of those things, like meeting your teachers later in life and still calling them “Sir” or “Mr Rogers” rather than Jack. Amber perched on the desk, still covering the room with her shotgun.

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4

The world had become more black and white. As Governments created phenomenal debts and Global Companies accrued significant assets, the world started to change. Some tried to make the world better; others didn’t care if it burned as long as they got their share. Religions too became more polarized. There were those who cared for the sick and the poor and there were those who set people on fire. Somehow they all managed to do it under the ever-widening umbrella of religion. Being independent and free-thinking didn’t cut it in the big wide world anymore. Sooner or later you had to choose a side. Apathy was off the agenda too. There were too many people with too much power. You found who you wanted to be with or they found you. Ghost still wasn't entirely clear whether he had found Gideon or Gideon had found him. But for now at least they were on the same side. Unfortunately, Ghost wasn't entirely sure whose side Gideon was on. As was his nature, Ghost had decided to wait patiently and see, but acknowledged that whilst Gideon was helping him he was an asset.

Amber re-loaded the shotgun.

Ghouls would have heard the blast. Whether they’d attack was another matter.

She looked at Ghost and tilted her head slightly “Stay or go?”

That was the question. They couldn’t handle a large pack of ghouls. But then ghouls didn’t tend to be organized. Given that they didn’t already have dozens pouring into the room and none could be seen out of the windows, Ghost was thought it was likely that there weren’t that many here. But then Ghost knew better than to trust in what was likely.

The question people normally asked Ghost was "If you can manipulate the present why don’t you win the lottery?!”. His usual answer was the most obvious; because he wasn’t the only person who walked Schrodinger’s Way. If all that did tried to influence the numbers they would just ended up pulling against each other as they would all be choosing different numbers. Now, if they all agreed on the numbers that would be different! But in order to agree they would have to be able to identify one another; that could mean serious repercussions.

“Stay.”

They moved into the next room. Bottles of chemicals were everywhere. The labels had deteriorated over time, but still there were possibilities.

On the far side of the school, in what had been the music room, a pack of ghouls paused as they heard the shotgun fire. The room was in pieces. Ghouls didn't just destroy things, they then destroyed the remains and the remains of the remains, until the room made even most sloppy teenager look positively organised by comparison. Ghouls took no pleasure or joy in anything; they destroyed because it was their nature. Anger literally flowed through their veins clouding their vision with hatred and fury. Yet for some reason they were drawn to the instruments. Flutes were smashed against drums, symbols were thrown across the room. The cacophony of broken instruments was mindless, but they never tired of it. For now the shotgun noise didn't interest them; it was far away and they were too caught up what they were doing.

Ghouls didn't prey on each other; there were no weak ghouls. The change strengthened tendons and sinew but atrophied muscles, such that the weightlifter and the geek were indistinguishable afterwards. Their paralysing touch didn't affect other ghouls either. No one was quite sure why, and it wasn't particularly safe to ask. The most common theory was that the changes to the body and brain made them immune. Elves were also immune to the effect; however again no one was quite sure why. The only thing that was said with any conviction by rather annoyed elves was that it was not because their brains had atrophied; indeed if anything, they claimed it was because their brains had evolved beyond human limitations. Naturally humans weren't convinced.


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3

Ghost and Amber took their time. Their primary escape route was still clear and they had several others planned. If necessary, sheer firepower would get them out of here. But once they entered the buildings things would change and not for the better. Amber knew that the noise meant something was here and anything making what was fast becoming a racket was not something she wanted to meet at night.

Ghost concentrated for a moment on the door and found the reality where it had been left unlocked. He opened the door and went in, Amber followed him.

Carefully they walked down the corridor to the old Physics Classroom. The door was slightly ajar. Ghost walked in calmly, the moonlight spilled through the windows lighting the room well enough for him to see. For Amber's elven eyes it may as well be daylight. She closed the classroom door behind her and nestled into the corner, covering the room. Ghost walked slowly between the desks, running his hand absently along the scarred wood. He remembered the time Claire and Nicole had set one desk on fire and a faint smile danced across his face. And here if you looked closely you could see where David had patiently burned his name into the wood with a magnifying glass. It was strange how schools always felt slightly too small when you went back to them. He opened a few of the cupboards looking for anything of value. People didn’t use real money so much anymore. You could live your whole life and never handle a coin or a note; for most money had become digital and abstract, noughts and ones.

He turned towards the back of the class where the door to the lab technicians’ room was. As he did so he looked at the blackboard. It was one of the last blackboards. Hundreds of thousands of words and numbers had been written and rubbed out on it.

Memories were strange things. They shaped who you were; gave you strength or scars. Yet memories weren’t fixed. Sometimes you remembered things differently from the way they happened. Sometimes you didn’t know the whole story; the act you regretted may well have caused something wonderful you never knew about. For now though, Ghost was following Gideon’s advice. He was finding the place where his memories were strongest.

As Ghost moved toward the door, it sprang open. Something that had once been human jumped out and lunged at him. He blurred slightly and then wasn’t there as Amber’s shotgun fired into the creature’s back. It convulsed and then lay still. Ghost re-appeared next to Amber, choosing the reality where he’d walked back to her rather to the door. They walked over to the corpse. Amber put the shotgun to its head and pulled the trigger again.

“Ghouls,” she said simply.

If you weren’t unhinged before you became a ghoul, you certainly were afterwards. Whatever happened to a ghoul’s brain left cunning and anger but not much else. People didn’t talk about killing ghouls. You put them down. Trying to reason with them was like trying to reason with a rabid dog. The mutation they possessed transformed their muscles and tendons, making them incredibly fast and resilient. To make matters worse, their touch scrambled the synapses. It was like banging your elbow and feeling your arm go numb. A ghoul would attack you as fast as possible; the part of its brain that should register pain had atrophied away, it just wanted to keep hitting you until you couldn’t move. What they did then didn’t bear thinking about.

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2

He looked at the buildings around him. Languages and Woodwork. Not really his thing. He’d had classes here of course, but Gideon had told him to start where his memories were strongest. He looked at the school hall to his left. Assemblies, Drama, exams. They just blurred together. He nodded to Amber and carefully started to walk along the pathway to the next set of buildings.

This was where things got dangerous.

The school looked deserted, but he knew better than to trust appearances. To Amber’s sensitive ears the noise she had barely been able to hear was beginning to get louder. It still didn't make sense to her, it sounded faintly musical in a really, really bad way. She thought about mentioning it to Ghost, but he had a far away look that warned her to keep as still and quiet as possible. She would mention it later, if they survived that long.

The science block was on the right. Memories came flooding back… As a child he’d been forever asking “Why?” and was so dissatisfied with the answers he’d developed frown lines in his teens. As he got older he understood more and more the approach of adults’ “lies to children”. Teachers would say things that sounded right and then use long, confusing explanations if questioned, but if you had time and thought about what they said you knew that something wasn’t right. It was ironic; science tried to explain everything in concrete terms and yet, when it came down to it, it revealed nothing. Science was all just theories; and those were disproved on a fairly regular basis. At one stage it had become so bad that some scientists even started to treat the “truth” as “what reasonable people think”; or to be more precise, what they thought.

Different people approached science in different ways; Ghost followed Schrodinger’s Way. Statisticians had tried to predict the future using mathematics, but for all their equations you never really knew what would happen until it happened. Science was transforming. In the 20th century it had been beaten to sterility by scientists, chaining it with formulas and strapping it with logic. But something had changed. For those who looked for it there was an art and poetry within science. Some people called it magic. Some weren’t sure.

People were sensitive enough about the boundaries between the sciences; was biology more chemistry or physics? Pointless hours were spent debating these inconsequential questions. Why was it so important to humans to put things in boxes, that’s what Ghost wanted to know. Try and tell a scientist that astrophysics was in fact an art form or that there was a musicality to molecular biology – that’d really heat-up the debate!

Ghost accepted that there were no fixed boundaries and he used this to his advantage. He could push against reality like it was a piece of elastic, feeling the different possibilities, temporarily entering alternate realities, finding the one he wanted and then let it snap back to become, well, real. Few shared Ghost’s skill, and of those that did there were even fewer who were as sensitive to the repercussions of what they did.

New levels of scientific discovery were being found all the time. The previously held taboos of human experimentation and tampering with the laws of nature were now more of a faux pas that were tolerated and ignored. Mutations, although random, had been the focus of some people’s efforts. Some had combined their experiments on people and animals with their ability to use Schrodinger’s Way, using it to affect the mutations. Largely they’d been influenced by folklore and myth. Amber’s made her look like an elf, with almond-shaped eyes and elongated, pointy ears, but there were other, less pretty outcomes. Why did people agree to be turned into monsters? Who knew? But they did. Much as society tended to turn a blind eye to gangs’ “turf” as long as they stayed there, so it was with monsters and the depraved ‘scientists’ who created them. 

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1

It’s a strange thing to go back to your old school, Amber thought. Most people only do it at re-unions, dressed up and out to impress. Not too many turn up in the dead of night armed with a shotgun.

Ghost walked up to the steel gates. It seemed to Amber that the area around him became slightly out of focus for a moment before snapping back to normal. The padlock fell open easily in his hand, even though a moment before it had been securely locked. No matter how often Amber saw him do it, it still seemed eerie, hence her nickname for him, “Ghost”. She’d done it so long now, she never called him anything else.

He pushed the gates open and thankfully they didn’t creak; who knew what attention that would attract?

Amber looked at the barbed wire and spikes around the top of the gate and the surrounding fences. They had been put there, she had been told, to “protect the children”. Hah! At school the things you needed protection from lay inside the gates. Those gates had been fortified to make sure you couldn’t get out!

Just ahead lay the first security cameras. Again the area blurred for a moment. When Amber looked again the cameras were covered in cobwebs; apparently someone had decided it wasn’t worth maintaining them. She carefully swept the courtyard with her shotgun. It was quiet, too quiet. Amber brushed her hair back over the tip of one delicate ear, listening to the night. There were different kinds of silence, but even at night there were often sounds that were supposed to be there. She listened more carefully. In the background there was something, but it didn't make sense. Just discordant noise. Even so, everything seemed to be alright. She doubted it would last.

As they crept through the gates Amber looked more closely at the windows of the decaying school buildings. They had all been smashed; although strangely it looked like they had been broken from both inside and out. That was not a good sign. The gloom inside the rooms could too easily conceal things she really didn't want to meet tonight. They wanted to be in and out, smooth as silk, that would be good. She smiled bitterly to herself; somehow she didn't think they'd be that lucky. But then she had the shotgun for a reason. And of course there was Ghost.

The school had started off much smaller than it was now. Over time more buildings had been built until gradually it felt more and more claustrophobic. Shadows engulfed large concrete walls and obscured the small pathways that ran between them. Ghost stood silently in the courtyard. They’d spent several weeks studying this place from a distance. It seemed that no-one was interested in it at the moment and that suited him fine. He still wasn't entirely sure what he was doing here. Gideon gave new depths of the word “enigmatic” but so far his advice seemed to have been productive, if you looked at it sideways with hindsight and one eye closed whilst hanging upside-down, preferably drunk.

There were a lot of ways this could go wrong, too many unknowns, too many possibilities. Everyone had their own way of dealing with life. Ghost was patient. Some people would have rushed in guns blazing, and he accepted there were times when that was the best way forward. But given the choice, he preferred to think through what could happen and then adapt to what did happen as calmly as possible. Of course it helped that he could shift the odds in his favour. But to do that he needed to consider how the smallest change could cause the greatest benefit; unfortunately, these days, he often needed to do that whilst somebody was trying very hard to kill him.

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