The Forest on the Edge of Time

Chapter 1 Hazel

Hazel

STATION C, DATE UNKNOWN

After the rush of wind, her body lands like an acorn thudding to a pavement.

Her thoughts are a typhoon of sycamore seeds and dandelion clocks.

She isn’t sure she lost consciousness, but she’s disoriented like she might have.

There are unseen spaces in what just happened, as if she’s turned the light off at night and, though her mind knows where she is, her eyes still can’t quantify the dark.

Still, there’s no gasp of arrival. She’s just here, and when she turns back, there’s only a cliff edge where her memory should be.

Her pupils slide under her closed eyelids.

Home, life, family, job—she has the concepts but there’s nothing for them to cling to.

The only detail she’s got is her name: Hazel Brandt.

It’s not quite a memory, just a thing she knows, a little déjà vu—‘already seen’—a strange phrase when so much of what happens is the in-built programme of human habit running its course anyway; just another repeat in the loop of history.

The dark void of an existential crisis gapes. Don’t let anxiety take over.

How long has she been … here? Seconds only.

She cranks her eyes open. A breathing mask exudes light pressure on her nose and cheeks, brushing her lips with cold, disinfectant-laced air.

Something’s gone wrong. There’s been an accident.

Breathe. Deep and steady, panicking about it won’t help.

In to four, hold for two, out for six, hold for two—Whose voice is that?

Not hers, someone else’s, inside her head.

A memory? Hazel’s panic rises again. Where is she and what’s happened and why is—

In to four, hold for two, out for six—Breathing makes her bruised torso throb, and her pulse pounds in her ears, throat, and pelvis, every beat matched by a machine beeping. She’s being monitored.

Hazel rolls her head, trying to escape the mask’s seal.

Beside her, another person lies prone on the floor, so close Hazel can count the front teeth in its slack mouth.

Blood congeals in a trail from its salt-and-pepper hair, over its cheekbone, and off the bridge of its nose.

The sharp collar of its white lab coat is spattered with viscera.

Not its—hers. Her hand is flung to her head, and she might be only fainting, if it weren’t for the pale metacarpals puncturing her palm.

In to four, hold for two, out for six, hold for—

If Hazel wasn’t wearing the mask, she’d be close enough to smell the woman: the iron in her blood and sweat on her skin; the soot on her collar and forehead; the polystyrene reek of the melted pen still clutched in her three-fingered hand.

Don’t think about where the other two digits are.

The woman’s eyes are glazed open. Hazel screams, but all that comes out is a hiss like gas escaping its cylinder.

Her bruises protest as she turns from the woman’s body, only to find another corpse to her left as well, just the lower half visible: one booted foot, with a ragged stump where the other should be.

Hazel rotates her eyes to the papier-maché sky.

Somewhere beyond the bodies, the repeated slap and sigh of water betrays waves breaking against a gravel beach.

Flakes of ash spiral onto Hazel’s face, and she blinks them away with heavy eyelids.

She brings a hand to her chest, where the pain is worst, and finds a knot of sticky patches and wires plastering her skin.

Of course, for the monitor. Wind blows across her body and, strangely naked, she shivers.

A silhouette leans over her, indistinct against the lustrous clouds, and a pair of too-thin hands stick more patches to her chest. She winces and grunts at the pressure, her voice vibrating through the breathing mask and back into her face.

More pairs of skeletal hands pull and push her into an upright position.

She winces as she realises the extent of her bruising, hot tears flooding her eyes.

‘Stop.’ But the word gets lost between tight vocal cords and phlegm.

It’s her reaching out and grasping a pair of cold hands that makes her carers move away.

Slender fingers grip her wrists, but the thing before her is far from comforting.

It’s no more than two feet high, with a spherical body, lanky multi-jointed limbs, and two long antennae tipped with heavy cylinders for eyes.

Hazel catches her breath and says, ‘You are not as human as I expected.’ Her voice sounds like an overworked motherboard with a janky fan.

The strange figure watches her with its camera lenses.

One of its spidery metal hands unclasps her wrist and re-adheres a peeling sticky patch on her chest. A wire tail undulates from the thing’s back, twisting in the breeze.

It’s examining her—making calculations about her.

Fragments climb from the crevasse of her amnesia: Python, Golang, C++, DataTrill; a stifling office on Silicon Roundabout; too many bodies in a tiny room but it’s OK cause we’re just starting up; the scent of gunpowder tea, takeaway curry, and fresh-ground, cold-brew coffee; little mechanical arms and pixelated eyes—

‘Ah,’ Hazel says. ‘You’re a robot. I like robots.’

Robots are like the genes in DNA: just a series of commands executing in a chain.

She can deal with a robot. Or at least, she should be able to, but there’s something uncanny about this one.

She thinks—though the void of her memory makes it impossible to know for sure—that this category of robot is new to her, its capabilities completely unknown. She shivers.

As if in response, the robot’s tail flicks and two more automatons emerge from behind Hazel’s back.

They whir and tick like grandfather clocks being wound as they pour a patchwork blanket over her.

Hazel clutches the blanket to her chest, blinking.

Blood vessel–patterned sparks spatter her eyes every time her heart beats.

The monitor stutters. She could do with a pair of human hands reaching out, but the only ones nearby belong to the deceased.

The sea echoes the blood swishing in her ears, as she tries to make sense of her surroundings.

She’s at the edge of a concrete dome that’s been blasted open by an explosion.

The bodies either side of her wear white lab coats, lightly dusted in shards of metal, plastic, and stone.

In the centre of the floor, a crater smokes, edges tattered with wires.

‘What happened?’

The robot who’s still holding her hand stays silent, but its lenses adjust. Surely, it’s not responsible for the explosion?

It gazes at her, tail making S shapes. The two other robots assemble behind it, identical except for the rust patterns on their hulls and the neat steel patches welded over damage.

The robot whose hand she’s clutching looks as if it’s wearing a rusty red waistcoat like a robin; the one to her left has a neat row of teaspoons patching its shoulder; the one to the right is so shiny even the weakly luminous clouds sparkle off its hull.

Robin; Teaspoon; Shiny. She should probably be grateful they’re trying to keep her alive.

Their tails wave in sync as the heart monitor beeps, steadier than Hazel feels. In to four, hold for two, out for—

Wheels crunch over the debris-strewn ground and more robots join them, trundling around the dead bodies, organising into groups to carry the corpses away.

The heart monitor staggers, then stabilises at a higher rate, but Hazel can’t pay attention to it. It’s not her fear. That heartbeat doesn’t belong to Hazel Brandt, it only connects to a small, stupid part of her that needs to get a grip. Intofourholdfortwooutfor—

The first robot—Robin—glances at Hazel, its lenses adjusting repeatedly, as if it’s making further calculations.

‘You still haven’t told me what happened.’ It stares at her. Her head sags sideways. ‘Huh. You can’t talk, can you?’

Robin releases her wrist and opens a small door in the side of its round belly, pulling out three little objects that it drops in her cupped hands: two oval tablets and an earpiece, clean, but scratched with wear.

She holds up the earpiece. ‘You want me to put this in?’

Robin gazes, its lenses reflecting her own face, flecked with cuts and bruising in the convex distortion.

The earpiece buzzes against her fingers, as if someone’s already speaking on the other end.

Sure enough, when she holds it to her ear ‘… Hazel Brandt, please respond. This is a message for Hazel Brandt, please respond. This is…’ The voice should be a relief, but Hazel’s stomach works into knots because, again, it isn’t human: It’s a thousand voices speaking in unison, so perfectly synchronised no human conductor could orchestrate it.

‘Yes.’ She replies between shallow breaths. ‘I’m here. I’m Hazel Brandt.’

‘Hazel Brandt, please follow the Tinys into Station C to commence your briefing.’

‘The Tinys…’ She mutters. Robin, Teaspoon, and Shiny all turn to her, their tails standing bolt upright as if saluting. ‘Right, the Tinys.’

‘Please follow the Tinys. We have numerous items to discuss before nightfall.’

She looks at the sky, but the thick clouds and gritty haze offer no clue where the sun might be. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘Affirmative. The events preceding your arrival will be discussed during your briefing.’

‘Briefing? I don’t remember…’ She trails off. ‘I don’t remember anything, but I certainly don’t remember a briefing.’ No contract signed, no job offer, no agreement. No briefing.

‘Hazel Brandt, you are the latest recruit for Project Kairos. We have— You are—’ The earbud stammers to a standstill. Then, ‘Are we not drawn onward ere divided?’