The Second Adventure: A Cat Called Britain (A Caper in Time Part 1)

by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - 22.12.14


Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Cocoon
Chapter 2 - The Crossroads Inn
Chapter 3 - The Graveyard
Chapter 4 - Pentasensory Voicemail
Chapter 5 - The Shadowmen
Chapter 6 - The Lost City of Ubo-Chazil
Chapter 7 - Butchers and their Cattle
Chapter 8 - Art History
Chapter 9 - A Giant Robot with a Minigun for a Face
Chapter 10 - Shattered Mirror
Chapter 11 - A Collector of Rare and Precious Things
Chapter 12 - The White Palace of Death

John Boss awoke to the buzzing sound of electrics, the touch of a cold steel table and chair, and the metal bite of handcuffs. He opened his eye and through the myopic fog of the anaesthetic he could make out a haze of green intercut by five solid black shapes; less people than voids where people should be. His head lulled back and immediately he squinted and recoiled from the piercing rectangles of light in the roof. In his dreamlike state, the not-people spoke senselessly in their not-language. One of them reached down into the corner of the room and picked up some object made of blurry gray.

They strode towards him and hurled the bucket of freezing cold water at his face, shocking him back into the world. As he turned his head to the right and spat out the fluid, he noticed the man sitting at the table in the mirror. He had all the physical features of John Boss, yes, but something was different; missing from behind his droopy eye. Maybe it was the sleepy muck still sliding through his veins, maybe it was an optical illusion of the grimy yellow-green light that seemed to infest every tile crack and pore of exposed skin; buzzing and flickering once every minute or so.

The large mirrors on either side of the room created the effect of an endless tunnel: endless windows into endless rooms, curving off into replicated infinity; a thousand unseen men chained to tables, and their five thousand faceless captors. Except for one.

Like her colleagues, she wore a heavy, padded uniform with a litany of little pockets and compartments and, clipped to her belt, a golden badge in the shape of a shield with letters too small for John to read from his end of the room. Unlike her colleagues, she had a face, eyes, and a mouth. She spoke authoritatively to one of the shadows in an alien language clogged with "leu"s and "ch"s. John decided that this unfathomable syllable soup must be Elvish. With her arms folded, she stared down at him as she walked towards the table.

"You have no markings indicating any terrorist cell that we know of, you are unbranded and unchipped so you're not an escaped labourer, and when this lot decided that following an anonymous tip from an untraceable caller was a great idea, you were found trying to steal the bodies of two ancient war heroes - not that you'd find anything, those coffins have been empty for god knows how long. Simply put: what the fuck?"

John stared woozily at the air between himself and the woman's stern face. A word clumsily lurched out of his slack mouth: "yyyyeess...?" Something from behind grabbed the back of his head and smacked him face-first into the table. He lay there for a moment, before giggling quietly to himself. As he dragged his head back up he noticed the shadow standing behind him, reflected in the visor of another one of these inquisitors; disappearing in the dark as the light vanished for a millisecond or two.

The One With The Face leaned over at the table. John noticed that her right hand was covered up with the same gloves everyone else wore, but her left hand was a shining steel mechanism that clanged against the table. She spoke again: "Can you understand anything I'm saying!?"

Boss smiled politely.

She sighed and walked back towards the door. "I'm going to be nice and assume it's the tranquiliser affecting you. Then again, maybe lobotomies are some new ritual punishment among you things, or maybe you're just retarded. Who knows. We'll keep you in a cell for a while and see if the drugs wear off. If not, we'll just palm you off to someone who'll take you." She said something in Elvish, and one of the shadowmen walked towards Boss.

Without warning, all the lights went out and the low hum of electrics died down into silence, leaving everyone in complete darkness.

"Oh for-" she sighed. "Second time this month, right in the middle of interrogation. What's even going wrong?"

"Well, your first mistake was not killing me when you had the chance."

The silence exploded into a scream of agony, the clanging of steel and sickening crunch of bone and plastic. She dived into a corner, sensing some shard of debris flying past her cheek and whipping through her blonde hair. She frantically huddled up into a ball as the room flashed orange with a gunshot, reflecting in the broken mirror a glimpse of the muscular beast smacking someone in the face with his chair. Another gunshot, someone slumping to the floor in muffled terror. A gun clattered to the ground, bone and metal thudded together. Two mouths breathed quickly.

"STOP OR I'LL SHOO-UGH!"

Something cracked and somebody screamed as the woman felt for her gun.

"WHER ARE YO-ACK!"

She aimed into the black void as somebody collapsed.

Silence.

"Your second mistake..." The electric lights snapped back on, revealing a still-handcuffed John Boss sitting at the table surrounded by a bloody mess of limbs and discarded weapons. "...was trying to when you didn't." John Boss surveyed his handiwork strewn across the room, and saw that it was good. He turned to the woman pointing a gun at him. "Hi."

"...Hello."

"How was you day?"

She readjusted her grip on the gun. "Normal. Until people started dying."

"Oh, no!" He waved off her concerns. "They're not dead, just napping. Except that one." He gestured to one officer lying in an expanding pool of blood. "But that wasn't me, that was..." He looked back and forth between two other bodies "...him. With the gun. Anyway, what's your name?" He smiled.

"Chel Hagar. Capital Police, Anti-Terror Unit."

Boss suppressed a chuckle. "You look rather terrified to me."

"I have a gun. Why would I be scared?"

"But, of course, you're not going to shoot me."

"Why not?"

"Because I, miss Hagar-"

"Officer."

"-Officer Hagar, I have a name." She looked confused.

John leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "See, once upon a time, about two hundred years ago, there was a man. This man was known far and wide throughout Wurld. Some knew him as a hero, some knew him as a scoundrel, many didn't even believe he was real. But wherever there was trouble to be got in, an adventure to be had, buckles to be swashed, that man was there. The old stories say this man had accrued bounties in every kingdom over a thousand years old, and so phantasmagorically high, that the person who handed him in dead or alive would surely become the richest person on the planet. But nobody did. Nobody ever could. Because legend has it that one night, after saving the little town of Ludorena from a pack of rampaging bandits, the man simply...disappeared off the face of the continent."

"So? What does this have to do with anything?"

"Hello. My name is John Boss." He snapped his fingers, and the handcuffs magically sprung off his wrists as he reclined in his chair. "You may have heard of me."

Chel stood up without taking her aim off Boss' head. She glanced down at the useless handcuffs. "How did you do that?"

"I'm a qualified magician, available for pubs, clubs and children's birthday part-"

She shot him.

John Boss folded his arms in disapproval. "Were you never taught that it's rude to shoot someone while they're talking?"

Her eyes widened, and the colour faded from her pale gold cheeks. "What...what witchery is this?!"

"The kind that makes Little Timmy's 10th birthday unfor-fucking-gettable, that's for sure."

"You dodged a bullet!"

"Did I?"

"How the hell aren't you dead?"

"It's no fun if I tell you, you're supposed to be deliberating amongst yourselves!"

Chel looked around the room. "There's only one of me."

"Question is, did I spot the person crouched behind where that smashed mirror used to be in the reflection of your eye..." There was a pop from the darkness of the hidden room behind the smashed one-way mirror. "...or are you just that terrible a liar?"

Boss calmly removed the dart from his neck. "That's the second issue here: these things! In what way are these necessary? It really is just bad manners. They shouldn't even be working on me, I'm ME! You need to give me the recipe for these though, they're fantastic! And by "fantastic" I of course mean: 'terrible'."

He stumbled out of his chair, supporting himself on the table. Officer Hagar tightened the grip on her gun as two more elves in black uniforms appeared through the heavy metal door, one carrying a rifle.

John began gesticulating clumsily "So! Before I go sleepy, can someone just...EXPLAIN what's going on here? Exactly? I think there was something about a war? 200 years, I need filling in! Like, what is the vibe?"

An elf smacked John's face in with the butt of his rifle and he fell to the ground, finally unconscious.

"Are you hurt?"

Hagar exhaled and turned on the safety on her pistol. She slotted it back into its holster and pulled out a cigarette from one of her pockets. "Fine."

"You go outside, we'll take care of this from here". People with stretchers came streaming in for the wounded elves, the rifle was kept trained on the brute of a man lying in the centre of the room.

Head tucked down into her cupped hands as her lighter snapped into quivering life, Chel slipped out of the crowded interrogation room and into the grotty corridors halls outside. These police officers - more like soldiers most of the time - with their shiny black shells of plastic were like insects scuttling through the dusty veins of a towering corpse, where a large and impressive building might once have stood. She sighed with some kind of relief, the trails of smoke slithering up towards the strip light which cast puddles of yellow over nauseating green walls and chequered linoleum.

She turned a corner while two men pushed some restraining device down the hall on squeaky wheels that reminded her of a mortuary slab. She decided to go up to her desk where it was quiet, maybe relax with some shit music on the radio and settle down with a good book of ugly-coloured paperwork.

"Chel!"

She looked over her shoulder and smiled from behind her cigarette. "Oh, hey Alvus" she said. "Oh, for fuck's sake, what do you want now?" she thought.

Alvus slipped out from behind a door, closing it behind him with a squeak. "I just heard what happened on the radio. I would've been right there to help you but-"

"It's fine, Alvus."

"Was it an Alpha or something?"

She leaned on the wall, with chipped wood panels that must have been put there to look elegant, once upon a time. "Dunno. It did talk."

He stood looking pensively at the ground for a moment. "...shit."

"Yeah." She took a drag on her cigarette.

"Are you okay?"

"Six guys unconscious, one maybe dead and you're asking how I am." She blew out smoke and turned to him. "I'm standing right here, aren't I?"

An awkward silence, one of a long career between the two.

"Well, yeah but, I was just making conversation, y'know? I just care about y-"

"How's the wife, Neas?" She slipped the cigarette between her lips, jamming shut a little smile."

"What? Oh, fine. Fine." His eyes darted around the empty hall. "How's Dhac?"

"Oh, the usual." Another silence. "Anyway, I'll be off now. Lots to do." She kicked herself off the wall and headed down the corridor, tapping ash into a tray on top of a bin. "Ta-ta."

"Uh, yeah. See you around." Alvus watched her walk away until she disappeared up a set of stairs. He breathed in and straightened up his body, snapping himself out of whatever it was before opening the door to the office, with Enos on one side of the desk and Aerin Liette sat on the other. Enos swivelled around in his creaky office chair to face Alvus. "Everything alright?" He said in his nasal voice.

"Yeah, they dealt with it. Some of the guys got beat up pretty badly but they'll pull through. Chel got out fine though."

Enos nodded and turned back to Aerin, who sat in a wiry chair with patches of flayed padding, and habitually stared out of the small, dirty window to his left. "Well, Mr. Liette, that's everything really. Just waiting for this stupid thing to work." He impatiently tapped on one of the buttons on the ugly gray box with the glowing glass face which sat on the desk, and was connected to another ugly gray box.

Alvus kneeled down to inspect the thing, and pressed a blinking red button which caused the machine to whir as it spat out a sheet of paper. Alvus gestured to the machine as if it were a magical and mysterious object. "It's that simple."

Enos snatched the paper from the flimsy plastic tray and scrutinised it. "The seal's in black and white."

"So?"

"It's supposed to be in colour. We live in a bloody police state Alvus; you'd think that we, The Police, would feel some bloody benefits!"

He handed the paper over to Aerin. Alvus was looking at the glass screen on the gray box. "What kind of name's 'Brittany Felliday'?"

"She filed Mr. Liette's 'Missing Persons' report," said Enos.

Alvus looked over at Aerin. "Where would you be without Brittany?"

Aerin stretched the sides of his mouth outwards, in what he immediately recognised as the single least convincing depiction of joy on a face in history since...well, 200 years ago. As Enos sat up, so did Aerin venture out of the chair, but not before raising his arms and holding onto those of the chair as if to say, "I am going to get out of this chair and leave now, do you find this acceptable?"

Alvus held the door open for Aerin, and he stepped out into the dilapidated corridor. "It's okay now", he thought to himself as he was escorted back to the entrance of the police station. "No more questions, you're fine. Now we can get out of here and go to the house and everything will be fi-"

"Shit, look at this big bastard!" said Alvus excitedly.

Aerin stopped dead. Three men were hauling the restraining device up the corridor, John Boss was unconscious and tied down to the thing with endless straps and buckles.

"You ever seen a fucker like this before Neas?" laughed one of the elves pushing the trolley. Alvus wrapped two hands around one of John's arms and squeezed. "How did he even get that size? Most of them are just like worms basically." The elf at the front started pulling him up the hall again, carting John's still body past Aerin, who was still frozen in horror. "He managed to break open his handcuffs, then apparently Chel shot him in the head and he still didn't shut up."

Aerin didn't have time to process that, because one of the elves pushing had stood up and was staring at Aerin with furrowed, greying eyebrows. "You. Weren't you at the graveyard?" he said, in a voice that was even more menacing in person than it was blasting out of a metal beast.

Aerin snapped back into terrified life. "Um, I don't..."

"Alvus."

"Yes, Atair?"

"Did you check his hand?"

"Well, uh, everything he said checked out with the information we wer-"

Alvus quickly stepped out of the way as Atair stormed over to Aerin, who backed up against a wall. "Now look, sir, I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstan-"

The officer grabbed Aerin's wrist, pulled some black plastic block from his belt and pressed it to his palm. The machine buzzed for a moment, glowing red against Aerin's palm. The officer let go of Aerin. He felt his heart sink in his chest as Atair silently watched the thing, keeping a suspicious eye on Aerin. The machine made a beeping noise, and he inspected its face - which was black glass with vibrant green numbers and diagrams.

After a few seconds, the officer fastened the device back to his belt. "Alright, your chip says you were downtown last night; drinking, by the state of you, and went for a wander in the countryside before falling asleep at about 2AM, waking up at 7 and wandering about the woods for a few hours before the track glitches for a minute and you end up on a dirt road. No graveyard."

"Right where we found him, see? It's fine." said Alvus.

"Now go." He ordered.

Aerin nodded and quickly walked away in the direction he'd been going, Alvus went to catch up with him. He wanted out of this place as fast as possible, nearly running down the stairs and rushing through the station's entrance lobby too quick to take notice of his surroundings; the receptionist behind her glass and metal bars, the dirty faces of the people sitting by the opposite wall, a screaming child dressed in filth.

"Can you make it home from here?" asked Alvus, trailing behind.

Aerin grabbed the faded gold handles of the heavy wooden door and and pushed out into the world.

He stopped. He'd only caught glimpses of the future Dryadora from inside the car's small windows. But now he wasn't protected by glass, now he was part of it all.

It was worse than the inside of the building. It looked like Hell carved in blocks of filthy granite. He slowly walked down the large, cracked steps of the police station. Cars sped up and down the black road, excreting something visible into the air that made it sting to breathe. He looked upwards and could barely see a sky, just uniform towers that looked like titanic support columns for the infinite fog above them. The buildings themselves were solid slabs of contempt for all things living and smiling into which rooms and windows and staircases had been cut to fit as many people as possible inside. They looked like they had been un-designed, that all curvature and flourish had been stripped away until there was nothing left, except for the unfeeling will of stone gods to rise.

Aerin looked around, disoriented by every sight and sound around him. Alvus put a hand on his shoulder. "Aerin?"

He turned around.

"Can you make it home from here?"

Aerin collected himself, shrugging off the officer's touch. "No. I'm sort of...completely lost."

There was a short silence between the two. The world around them deafened with beeping and rushing and skidding and sputtering. "Right. The car park's not far from here. Where do you live again?"

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Cocoon
Chapter 2 - The Crossroads Inn
Chapter 3 - The Graveyard
Chapter 4 - Pentasensory Voicemail
Chapter 5 - The Shadowmen
Chapter 6 - The Lost City of Ubo-Chazil
Chapter 7 - Butchers and their Cattle
Chapter 8 - Art History
Chapter 9 - A Giant Robot with a Minigun for a Face
Chapter 10 - Shattered Mirror
Chapter 11 - A Collector of Rare and Precious Things
Chapter 12 - The White Palace of Death