It’s not up to us to play god!
It’s not up to us to play god!
Benjamin King wrenched his mind back from the precipice. He was still in the mask chamber, both of them clutched between the metal fingers of robotic arms.
There was no swirling maelstrom of colour, no lashing tendrils of energy, yet he knew it was there, yearning and churning at the subatomic level.
It’s not up to us to play god!
The words finally slammed home. Abuku had tried to play god. He had butchered thousands. Pryce had tried to play god, and how many had died in his quest? Kha’um had tried to harness the powers of the gods, as had his own father, and now so did he. But, in all their quests to undo the wrongs of the past, to bring back Kha’um’s people, to save Reginald King’s wife and daughter, to save Sid, only new horrors emerged, more death, more suffering.
Raine was right. It wasn’t up to him to decide who lived and who died. Was it fate? Was it destiny? Was it god?
“Sid,” he whimpered and her face was there again, before his eyes, beautiful and angelic. His obsession with the Moon Mask had lost her long before Nadia’s bullet had taken her from this world.
“Ben!” Raine bellowed at him.
The stolen Russian pistol was still in his hand.
Time is like a tapestry! The words repeated themselves over and over.
He aimed.
All you need to do is pull out one thread and the whole thing will come crashing down!
And fired.
The single bullet spewed forth from the mouth of the gun and shot through the air in the blink of an eye. Yet King saw it impact the very centre of the fake mask and punch through. Five cracks zigzagged up natural weak points in the metal, in the exact same place as the divisions on the original mask, and then the entire thing sheered apart.
The five individual shards seemed to hang on the pulsating edge of the maelstrom for a moment and then, one by one, as if being sucked into a sinkhole, they vanished.
No one ever quite knew where the Moon Mask came from.
No one ever quite knew the purpose of it.
No one ever quite knew whether it had come to the earth as a gift for good.
Or a weapon of evil.
But Benjamin King watched as each piece of the mask shattered through the fourth dimension of existence and reappeared, scattered through time, scattered across the globe.
On the plains of Africa, a young boy stumbled up it; in the jungles of South America, the islands of the Pacific and the deserts of Egypt, each of the five shards reappeared.
They had not been scattered by some ancient civilisation, as he and his father had always believed. In fact, they had been scattered, not across the earth, but across the tapestry of time, by a future one.
Kha’um hadn’t found the wrong mask after all. In fact, there had only ever been the one mask, King realised. One mask, caught in a paradox beyond his understanding, yet ironically of his making.
A lump of molten metal would fall from the heavens, part of a much larger meteorite. The Xibalbans would fashion it into a mask but its cult would later be usurped when a single piece of its radioactive self was hurtled back from the future. Scattered across different epochs of time like flotsam and jetsam upon the tide, each of the five pieces of the newly tachyon-charged mask would one day be fashioned into new constructions, crafted by the peoples of Xibalba and Egypt, the Bouda, the Easter Islanders and the doomed civilisation of Yonaguni. And there, in their altars or in their tombs, each piece would wait until it was stolen by Pryce, Kha’um, or King himself, and reunited now, in this very moment to pass their tachyon-charge on to that original lump of metal from the sky.
The circle would begin again, the paradox never ending.
It all finally made sense.
The thread was complete.
The tapestry was woven.
Exhausted, Benjamin King’s body folded like a pack of cards and he crumpled to the deck.
64:
Threads
Nathan Raine was a soldier. He thought laterally, logically, focussing on his surroundings. He knew he didn’t have a chance of understanding what was happening in the ‘fourth dimension’. He knew he didn’t stand a chance of comprehending whatever the hell it was that Benjamin King had just witnessed. But, as he saw his friend raise his gun and fire point blank at the fake Moon Mask, he too felt a certain sense of completion.
However it had happened, the fake mask was gone, shattered exactly like the original and scattered into the tides of time. Soon, the original Moon Mask, clutched within the fingers of the robotic arm, would be at the bottom of the Pacific.
It was over.
Almost.
The deck heaved all of a sudden, pitching Raine, Nadia and the Russian soldier forward. Down below, a huge gash ripped up the side of the Eldridge’s hull and gallons of seawater rushed in. The dying vessel moaned as it pitched to port.
“Son-of-bitch,” he cursed, nevertheless using the distraction to launch himself at the soldier. With his final bullet, he landed a head shot and the man went down. He rushed to him, picked up his fallen rifle then lunged himself at the airlock door. He fired at the locking mechanism then ripped the door open, slammed the inner door control and rushed to King’s side.
“Benny,” he gasped, kneeling beside his fallen friend.
King’s eyes fluttered open, a pained expression within.
“Come on,” Raine said, helping him to his feet, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
They hobbled to the door, then King halted. “Where’s Nadia,” he growled.
“Forget her,” Raine said, urging him forward. “This ship’s going down. We’ve got to go.”
King saw movement, a lithe figure darting around the access chamber and down the starboard-side catwalk. He broke free of Raine’s grip and ran after her.
“Ben!” Raine called after him, rolling his eyes. Then he too set off in pursuit.
King rounded the corner and ran down the length of the aft catwalk to where it branched off, running the length of the ship. Down below, more and more water churned into the enormous chamber. Without any bulkhead or internal doors, the ship would go down quickly he knew.
Nadia was heading for the access ladder leading to the hatch Raine had blown open earlier. Even though the over-head catwalk had been obliterated, the ladders connecting the other three were still fixed to the bulkheads.
King ran after his fiancée’s murderer. The angle of the catwalk was awkward as the ship pitched to the port side.
“Nadia!” he bellowed at her. His voice, though thunderous, was almost lost in the tumultuous cascade of water surging below.
Nadia froze, and turned to face him. She held no weapon and so slowly raised her hands in an act of submission.
King approached, handgun levelled at her chest. His heart beat like a pneumonic drill.
“Go on, Ben,” she told him, shouting to be heard. The angle of the catwalk grew ever more acute. “Shoot me. Kill me. I deserve it.”
King’s hand trembled. His face twitched with anger. He jerked the pistol towards her and she flinched. He could see her body trembling too.