The Dark Restarter Read online

  THE

  DARK

  RESTARTER

  SEAN MCMAHON

  ©2019 Sean McMahon.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means whatsoever without prior permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used in a fictitious manner, with express permission being granted for the use of specific locations.

  Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead, or in Restarter form, is purely coincidental, or referenced satirically.

  Author’s note: utilising the abilities of a Restarter to alter the timeline to amend author-ownership is strictly prohibited.

  For more information, visit:

  www.restarterlodge.com

  ISBN: 9781793133397

  Cover by Sam Moore © 2019

  Dedicated to you.

  Because without your support you wouldn’t be reading this right now, and the Restarters would cease to exist.

  Thank you.

  .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Erasing the Past

  R.I Timestamp Error: Recalculating…

  The Restarter slammed against the wall with a soundless thud, the absence of sound betraying the severity of the impact. He began to raise his hand up to the back of his head, certain that it would be covered in a sickly red on its return journey, but fought against the impulse knowing it would do him no favours.

  A burst of nostalgia flooded through his mind as he recollected the days when he couldn’t feel pain, as the razor-sharp tip of the large knife pierced through his leather jacket, t-shirt, and an unnerving number of layers of his flesh. The Restarter pushed back against the pressure, attempting to prevent the blade from travelling the extra inch into his out-of-phase heart.

  Whilst the dwindling ripples of blue – and ferociously vibrant red – energy erupted from the contact between his hands, which were clenched around his attacker’s wrist, he was infuriated that he seemed unable to draw upon the contact to infuse his own body with some much-needed charge. Remembering his assailant was beholden to an entirely different set of rules, he grimaced at the inconvenience, as his own remaining energy was effortlessly siphoned off into the man before him.

  His adversary barked a laugh, bringing up his free hand in a swift motion to apply more pressure to the hilt, and the Restarter was forced to unclench his teeth as he gasped in agony, the blade edging a further quarter-inch into his chest.

  ‘Just focus,’ he muttered angrily at himself.

  His attacker laughed again, looming over him, revelling in his victim’s woe. ‘What was that? I can’t hear you over your whimpering.’

  The Restarter looked over his soon-to-be murderer’s shoulder, his friend lined up against the wall like a metaphoric lamb being prepped for a very literal slaughter. His failure in this moment would lead to everything he cared about coming undone. Dying in this form was not an option; they had seen what came after. The eternal nothingness that awaited them.

  A dense white fog, one paradoxically static yet mobile, rolled across the floor, eager to cloud his mind and strip away his crucial sense of self and memories now that his charge was almost thoroughly depleted.

  ‘Not now dammit!’ spat the time traveller, before clenching his teeth once again, in the hope it would help him in the way of lucidity.

  The gravity of the situation finally dawned on him; in his misguided attempt to cheat time and defeat the man before him, he and his team had inadvertently ended up providing a highly intelligent and equally motivated sociopath the keys to a time machine.

  As if reading his mind, his assailant spoke.

  ‘Did you honestly think I wouldn't find a way to exploit it? Exploit you? Did you think a force of nature like me could be contained?’

  The irony wasn’t lost on the Restarter.

  After all, he had spent the best part of a year in the second of four alternate timelines trying to avoid hurting anyone, and yet he’d still managed to kill no less than three innocent people. But what if his agenda had been to actively cause harm? Unbound by remorse? Devoid of a conscience…

  He looked up at his eternally invincible adversary, staring defiantly into his opponent’s near-genius analytical mind and realised this was what he could have become if he had been left with nothing to focus on but revenge…

  A Dark Restarter.

  The monster pulled back the blade, noticing his prey was losing the will to fight.

  The fog seemed to sense it too, eager to correct the danger his very existence posed to reality, rolling over the Restarter.

  His arms dropped to his side, leaving him utterly defenceless, with no regard to the severity of his situation, or awareness of his surroundings.

  His opponent grinned, his shark-like teeth lacking glisten thanks to the ineffectual moonlight, realising he was finally about to succeed where his previous incarnations had failed.

  ‘No more restarts. This world is mine now. And everything you love will burn. Not that you will be around to witness the new world order,’ said Malcolm gleefully.

  The Restarter was vaguely self-aware enough to sense the bitterness of defeat, and began to daydream about an alternate world; one where he had succeeded, one where he had saved his chosen family…

  ‘Any last words?’ said Malcolm.

  ‘I can’t think of anything,’ the time traveller muttered, more in literal frustration over not being able to organise his own thoughts, rather than as a direct response to the question that had been fired at him.

  As he teetered along the brink of failure, he realised that this had been Malcolm’s plan all along.

  Too late, he knew the dark truth that had been kept from him; he had been tricked into placing his trust in a man he should never have believed in. Every single piece of information he had been given had been by design. It had all been a lie. He had been manipulated.

  As he took his last breath, a tear rolled down his cheek as he was forced to accept that after everything he’d been through, his time on this earth was over. And, worse, the woman bleeding out against the wall behind his killer would be next.

  Failing her felt like the worst part of all.

  And, in a moment that would change everything, Malcolm brought up the blade one final time, thrusting it towards the heart of the man before him with an insatiable eagerness, intoxicated by the deliciousness that only years of planning finally coming to fruition could provide, as he proceeded to overwrite not only his own future, but the potential past, present and future of millions.

  CHAPTER TWO

  New Beginnings

  1st Cerebral Reversion – Friday, August 24th, 12:01pm

  After what felt like an eternity of timelessness, the relentless sound of rushing air ceased abruptly, and there he stood, with nothing but the darkness for company.

  Malcolm fell to his knees, entirely off balance, and wanting to expel the contents of his stomach, his body refusing him the indulgence. He heard footsteps above him, and quickly pulled himself together, not having felt this exposed and unprepared in a long, long time.

  As his razor-sharp mind processed the best course of action, he heard the alarming sound of a key being turned in a lock, and the mundanely familiar click of a light being switched on behind him. A faint surge of light filled the room with a pathetic amber glow, the intensity inexplicably scorching his retinas and forcing him to cover his eyes.

  Peering between his fingers, a tattered sofa came into focus to his right, and he dragged himself across the floor usin
g his elbows for leverage, like a rat scurrying out of sight in the hope it would increase its mortality for just a little longer.

  The unwanted guest at the top of what he could now tell were stairs began to descend, making their way towards him, each step loaded with weight, purpose, and a complete lack of urgency.

  It had been a long time since Malcolm had felt this uncharacteristically afraid. A feeling that felt incredibly alien to him.

  Over the past 24 years Malcolm had trained not only his body, but his most valuable asset; his mind, to be the strongest they both could be. He had studied various forms of combat, increased his understanding of his already incredible grasp of forensic science thanks to his former connections to the Metropolitan Police, and had become more than proficient in various forms of psychology.

  A crucial skill that allowed him to form the necessary rapport with his works of art, prior to ending their miserable and pathetic lives.

  But despite all that, he felt afraid.

  Weak.

  And utterly lost.

  He hadn’t felt this way since Oph–

  ‘This will have to do,’ said the man, now mere metres away from Malcolm, who realised all too late that one of his feet was sticking out beyond the edge of his makeshift hiding place.

  There was no way in hell the man had not seen him, hiding behind the sofa like a child. Now it was just a matter of how long the person looming above him wanted to toy with him, as Malcolm desperately tried to become the man he knew himself to be, so he could take back control of this confusing mess he now found himself embroiled in.

  The visitor sighed, more than a hint of disappointment in his tone as he spoke again.

  ‘Should’ve spent longer looking for more suitable concealment.’

  Malcolm realised the jig was up and, refusing to pander to the fear and confusion, stood up, dusted himself down, and stared at the man facing away from him with an intense glare.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Malcolm.

  The man chuckled, a hoarse reverberation leaving his mouth more akin to gravel churning in a blender than possessing any real humour, and made his way to a table at the edge of the basement, offloading his bag and removing some A3 sized folders.

  ‘Answer me,’ growled Malcolm. He had no tolerance for rudeness, and despised arrogance, the irony of that totally lost on his self-absorbed mind. Only then did it dawn on him. He recognised this place. ‘Wait…how?’ he added, more for his own benefit, not really knowing what it was that he was asking his brain to decipher.

  Instead of responding, the man continued onwards with his routine, placing items around the table in an almost ceremonious manner.

  Malcolm had to respect that. He too was a man of precision. But the evident lack of respect being sent his way wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. Malcolm took several large strides towards the man who still refused to face him and placed his hand on his shoulder, which passed right through the person’s body.

  Malcolm’s eardrums popped, filled with the sound reminiscent of an old camera he used to own from the 80’s. He recalled with unexpected fondness how the camera would always make a plinking noise when the bulb had expired, advising the user that a new one was required.

  Malcolm’s incredulity was replaced with a look of awe, as he pulled back his hand as if he had been burnt. He stared once more at his appendage, turning it slowly in front of his eyes, flexing his fingers one by one and forming a fist, then repeating the process, ensuring his hand had not been compromised.

  He looked up too late, as the ghostly visitor span around on the spot and glided through him, his entire body phasing through Malcolm’s, causing him to stagger backwards.

  ‘Impossible,’ muttered Malcolm, as his taste buds flared and his mouth filled impossibly with the taste of the colour red.

  In fairness, murderous monster though he may have been, even he was allowed a free pass on feeling disconcerted by seeing a duplicated version of himself phasing through his own body.

  It was then, in a matter of seconds, that Malcolm realised he was dead.

  CHAPTER THREE

  String Theory

  47th Cerebral Reversion – Saturday, August 25th, 1.37pm

  It didn’t take Malcolm long to establish a baseline for his current predicament.

  It was now his forty-seventh jump backwards in time, and he was halfway through the current cycle, making this the forty-eighth Saturday, August 25th he had relived thus far. As he stood outside what he realised to be both the cause and potential solution to all his problems, he reminisced over what led him here, and how he had so cleverly worked his way backwards to the locational equivalent of an epiphany.

  Early on, it had been a simple matter for him to employ the principle of Occam’s razor; he had been presented with competing hypothetical answers to a multitude of questions that culminated in one singular truth, and he had decided early on to simply select the one that made the fewest assumptions on his part;

  He was in the past.

  He couldn’t affect his surroundings, was surely in some form of purgatory, and in order to get out, he would have to retrace his steps to ascertain the critical moment that had led him to this proverbial dead end.

  Once he had accepted these truths, he found that he had literally nothing other than an abundance of time to do just that. The “cerebral reversions” as he was calling them, seemed to confine him to a thirty-three-hour time period.

  Whilst he was free to roam the surrounding area of the Pentney Lakes, he could not step foot beyond the boundary line without it accelerating the process and triggering the next Cerebral Reversion, which sent him back to precisely 12:01pm on Friday the 24th of August.

  A mild inconvenience, which he would only resort to when strictly necessary in order to begin his plans anew in the event his carefully orchestrated observations proved fruitless. Case in point;

  Cerebral Reversion Number 17.

  During his seventeenth jump, he had decided to revisit his last memory before being delivered into his own past. It was utterly beyond the realm of possibility that the cause of his plight had been during those final moments.

  Or so he had thought.

  In his arrogant belief that he was untouchable, and despite having seen his own dead body lying on the floor of Kevin Barker’s basement, it had taken him until his sixteenth Cerebral Reversion for him to revisit that moment.

  His assumptions were embarrassingly debunked, as he had watched his past-self being held in place by an unseen force, blue arcs of lightening erupting from the eye sockets of his physical form, culminating in his last moments in the world of the living as he watched himself collapse into a humiliating heap on the floor.

  He watched on, as an invisible presence ascended the staircase behind him in the form of ghostly footsteps. Malcolm dutifully followed those breadcrumbs, watching as the basement door opened of its own accord. Using this opportunity to slide through the gap, he noted how the hairs on his out-of-phase arms crackled with a blackish-red energy, and took in the sight before him; the woman in orange, and the rat-catcher bringing Kevin’s creature back into the lodge.

  He coughed in a pointless attempt to get their attention, then remembered he was invisible to those residing in this timeline, or rather, what they perceived as their present.

  Malcolm cursed at the vexation of that.

  As the young man and woman departed, he once again heard footsteps, this time turning back on themselves and descending the staircase. He followed them, then quickly realised he was witnessing his final moments from a new perspective, before unceremoniously being thrust back into the past.

  Upon re-entry, he quickly made his way to the boundary line of the lakes, eager to place as much distance from his ruthlessly repeating fate as possible.

  But as he reached the exit sign and crossed an unseen threshold, he experienced a sensation that could only be described as being vaporised. Cut to ribbons at the molecular level, his body – or at least wha
t constituted for it these days – eventually reformed, along with his consciousness.

  His eighteenth Cerebral Reversion therefore became notable for the revelation of the curse that came with it;

  There was no escape.

  He couldn’t leave, and he couldn’t interact with anything. He was at an impasse.

  In a deadlock of recurring dilated time that refused to release him, with no way of knowing the true cause behind what had thwarted his past-self and sent him to this elaborately self-contained underworld.

  He had to get creative.

  Which is why he was here.

  The path that all roads led to.

  A torso-level fence with a humble black sign attached to it, emblazoned with two golden, simple words that would change more than even he could imagine.

  “Fir Lodge.”

  As Malcolm strode soundlessly across the shingle driveway of the lodge before him, he experienced a wave of temporal dissonance, noticing the hairs on his forearm rising once again, as another faint crackle of red energy arced between each hair.

  He flattened the hairs with his large hand, rubbing his arm gently in an attempt to shrug off the odd sensation that someone had walked over his grave.

  The killer winced, then smiled darkly at the loaded terminology.

  Weaving around the numerous cars on the driveway, Malcolm casually entered Fir Lodge through the open front door. His ears perked up as he heard laughing coming from the end of a hallway, and a flash of garish colours danced across his field of view from the end of the lodge.

  As he walked down the corridor and out through the door into the rear garden, Malcolm closed his eyes, inhaling deeply as he absorbed the mental clarity afforded to him by the music emanating from a nearby speaker, the rhythmic idle hum of the large hot tub to his left resulting in him almost forgetting, albeit for a mere second or two, that he wasn’t really here at all.