Authors: Dean Waite
Tags: #assassin, #suspense, #action, #future, #australia, #hero, #survival, #weapons, #timetravel, #brisbane, #explosions, #gorgeous woman
1 Life 2 Die 4
Copyright 2014 Dean Waite
Published by Dean Waite at Smashwords
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Table of Contents
Coming soon: ‘
2 Lives 2 Live
4
’ (take a sneak peek at the
sequel)
Acknowledgements
Thank you to those special people who have supported the writing of
this story. Particular thanks to Emma, Wendy, Alan, Callum, Thomas
and Tim.
Prologue
Gallery
of Modern Art (GoMA), Brisbane, Australia.
Just before 2am, Tuesday morning
Except for the steady drone of a passing taxi, an
almost perfect silence hung over the Brisbane city fringe near the
Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. On the top floor, like everywhere
else in the gallery, the subdued security lighting left the
spacious display areas cloaked in a soft shadow, punctuated here
and there by scattered pools of golden light focussed on some of
the more expensive art works currently residing there.
Suddenly – inexplicably – an area in the
north-east corner began to shimmer and sparkle with the pulsating,
vivid colours of a million tiny rainbows flickering silently about
in the air. The dazzling display looked for-all-the-world like some
vibrant work of art for which the Gallery might have paid some
ridiculous sum of money.
But this was no work of art.
Less than a second after it had begun, the
mesmerising display abruptly vanished, returning the area to its
usual unremarkable tapestry of shadow and light. Bizarrely,
however, on a previously empty section of floor there now stood a
large abstract sculpture consisting of several gently-curving,
interconnected slabs. A small plaque stood before it on a narrow
metal stand, its neat black lettering reading:
“
BRIDGE TO SALVATION”
by Ian Callum Hope
2001 (Concrete over steel)
Most of the slabs within the mysterious new
sculpture were around ten centimetres thick and a half-metre wide,
connected by sturdy rods of stainless steel so that they ran in on
one another at various angles and heights. A slightly thicker and
wider central slab rose from the floor at a gentle angle, curving
steadily upwards over the rest of the sculpture towards a spot
where, just seconds earlier, a small water-colour landscape had
hung on a blank, cream wall. Now, in its place stood a huge window
roughly two-and-a-half metres square, revealing a sweeping City
panorama beyond. The State Library all-but filled the foreground of
the view, its façade of two-storey vertical panels providing the
vague impression of an enormous shelf packed full of gigantic
books. To its left, however, the dark, slow-moving waters of the
Brisbane River reflected a distorted collage of sparsely-lit city
skyscrapers and the wide, elegant white arches of the Victoria
Bridge.
Several hours later, shortly after the GoMA
staff began arriving, a ruckus erupted over the unexpected changes
on level three. Yet it quickly died away once paperwork authorising
installation of the new art piece, as well as the completion of
various minor building alterations, was discovered on a clerk’s
desk on level one. Despite the ageing man’s noticeably hazy
recollection of the origin of these documents, and the fact that
these changes had obviously been carried out during the dead of
night, everyone was far too busy to dwell further on a series of
sanctioned, minor changes. Of course, even if they had, it was
unlikely that any of them would have suspected the sculpture, the
window and the associated paperwork had all materialised out of
thin air during the early hours of the morning.
During the following few hours, there were
similar confused reactions to various other unexpected changes
across a wide swath of the City centre. Yet each time, just as had
happened at GoMA, the appropriate paperwork was eventually
uncovered and everyone was left feeling satisfied despite a vague
sense of uneasiness about what had occurred.
As if all this wasn’t confusing enough for
those working in and around the CBD, just twenty-four hours later
their grasp of reality was once more cruelly tested when a similar
series of astonishing events reversed every single one of these
mysterious changes. Considering the total lack of appropriate
paperwork on this second occasion, a far greater ruckus would have
seemed inevitable. Yet few people took much notice at all. By that
stage, everyone was far too preoccupied with the devastating trail
of destruction left in the wake of the sensational events of the
previous afternoon.
*****
1
Brisbane
City Centre, Australia, 2016.
I felt pretty good as the bus pulled up and I climbed
out, hardly needing to look for the stairs leading up out of the
underground bus terminal. I’d been taking the ride into the
Brisbane CBD on my own every six months since I was ten, and at
just over fourteen and a half I now had the routine down pat. Leave
school early, at 12:45; catch the 12:58 from Yeerongpilly to the
Queen Street mall underground, then up the stairs, through the mall
and on along Queen Street for another hundred metres or so. Mum had
made the trip with me until I turned ten, but that was all the
hand-holding I got. It’s never worried me though. I’ve grown up
with my parents being too busy for me. And being an only child, I’m
used to doing things on my own.
The stairs led me out into the sunshine above
and I strolled off through the busy Mall feeling relaxed and happy.
Some guys would probably fight with their parents about religiously
visiting the tooth doctor every six months. But I never complain.
For a start, I know there’s no way my dad would listen. When it
comes to teeth, he’s about OC level 100 (‘OC’ stands for Obsessive
Compulsive, in case you didn’t know. Like the poor sods who have to
wash their hands every two minutes for no good reason other than
that they just can’t help themselves.)
Anyway, ever since the first tooth burst
through my gums, Dad’s been at me about keeping my ‘biters’
spotless. I reckon I’m the only kid in Australia who’s expected to
clean his teeth for five minutes, five times a day. Yeah – for
real! My dad even makes me take a toothbrush and toothpaste to
school every day! Of course, that doesn’t mean I actually risk the
embarrassment of having other kids see me scrubbing my teeth at
school, but I always make sure I give them a quick clean as soon as
I get home. Dad has a freakish ability to work out whether my teeth
have been cleaned, just from a quick glance when he gets home.
He’s so fanatical about it all that when I
was five, Santa-Dad gave me ten tubes of toothpaste, an electric
toothbrush, about a kilometre of dental floss and a special timer
that flashed and played ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front
teeth’ when my brushing time was up. It’s a real shame the timer
vanished after the first day and was never seen again (I hope our
dog, Canine, doesn’t dig too much in the back left corner of the
yard!)
Dad seemed pretty upset, so I figured I’d
better use the other stuff really well, otherwise he might just
decide he needs to buy a replacement timer. Now, more than nine
years later, I could probably clean my teeth standing on my head in
the dark.
But I’m just sooo over all that scrubbing and
flossing
!
Anyway, Dad’s OC-ness aside, the real reason
I never argue about coming in here so regularly is that I love
being able to check out a few of the more interesting stores after
my check-up’s done. There’s a cool skate shop on Elizabeth Street
and an awesome video game centre nearby where they let you try out
games for as long as you want. The place I love most, though, is
the gun dealership down near the Botanic Gardens. Not that I can
buy any at my age, of course. I just love checking them out. Mind
you, I’m not one of those gun-crazies who get a rush from killing
things. I just love the look of them … and the idea of a machine
which can spit lethal chunks of lead that move faster than a
Formula One racing car!
Coming out of my daydreaming, I realised I’d
already reached the Central Post Office. Still trying to decide
which store I’d visit first, after I’d done my dental duty, I
waited while the traffic pulled up. Then, along with a bunch of
other pedestrians, I stepped onto the crossing. My dentist’s office
was in a high-rise just twenty metres away, on the far side of the
road, and although there were people swarming everywhere, I was
easily going to make it with five minutes to spare. If he was
running on time, and if my Dad-inspired dental-hygiene-overkill
meant there were no nasty surprises, I should have at least an hour
afterwards before I had to catch the bus home.
Then I saw her
…
She was just stepping onto the far side of
the crossing when our eyes met and it felt like about a million
volts shot through me! I’m not ashamed to say that one of the other
things I always like about the city is that there are plenty of
good-looking women around. And like most teenage guys, I notice
pretty much every one of them.
But they hardly ever seem to notice
me
.
And they
never
look at me the way this
gorgeous doll was! She had a kind of desperate, wary frown around
the most beautiful dark-brown – almost black – eyes I’d ever seen.
It gave her an odd impression of deep, inconsolable sorrow that
left me frowning as well. And there was something else, too;
something even more odd, though I found it almost impossible to put
into words … a sort of burning protective passion, barely held in
check. Like she was some wild, caged panther watching through bars
while hunters stalked her mate. Together with her Jessica Alba
lips, the effect was so startling I almost tripped over my own
feet!
Why on earth would this drop-dead
gorgeous woman be looking at
me
like that?
Then ‘Jessica’ looked away and I suddenly
found I could breathe again. It only took me an instant to realise
how stupid I’d been. She’d obviously been looking at someone behind
me. As if a mid-twentyish, absolutely stunning woman - my gaze slid
down a bit - with a body to-die-for - would want anything to do
with me. Not even fifteen yet, I was gangly and pretty
average-looking. Not the kind of bait that catches the big
ones!
Grinning wryly to myself at how thick I’d
been, I allowed my eyes to hover just a bit longer than I should
have on the provocatively low neckline of her deliciously snug
white top. It probably sounds a bit arrogant, but despite my
limited years of experience, I consider myself a true connoisseur
when it comes to the female body. And she was, without a doubt, one
of the finest examples I have ever seen. Despite understanding that
we were complete worlds apart, it almost killed me right then and
there knowing that in a few seconds she would walk straight past
and vanish from my life without a second thought.
I was still struggling to come to terms with
this tragic realisation when ‘Jessica’ turned back and her stare
hit me like an uppercut from a rampaging red kangaroo!