Hyde Park

Navari blew the hair out of her face and wiped her eyes clear of sweat and grime. Her hand came away with concealer so she searched in vain for a tissue amongst the pens and notes in her suit jacket. She leaned against rough bark, and heard herself breathing heavily over surround-sound ringing. She had to take it one step at a time, cleared her weapon, and patted herself over for wounds in a tense moment. There were rumours she'd heard from colleagues and read about in First World War accounts of soldiers not realizing they'd been shot until they suddenly collapsed mid-patrol in French countryside. Nothing, as far as she knew, felt numb. Her shirt remained a delicate pinstripe pink and white, lanyard and outer summer jacket were spotted with flaking grass. She peeked out around the side of her tree and then moved forward and towards the café. She had taken only the one magazine of ammunition and lost it all while stalling Raynes. No-one would ever think they'd need more ammo and if they did take more they'd be laughed at. She was just as guilty as anybody in the office of laughing at the overly cautious. 'Planning a raid all by yourself?' or 'look, look, here comes El Jefe' were just a few samples from lunch about their resident gun-lovers.

Navari moved up to the patio and ventured past it with her empty gun in hand to ward off what she hoped was nobody. Aluminium glistened in devoured piles of abstract chairs and garden tables. Wide-brimmed umbrellas flapped soundlessly. The steady glare of sunlight reflected off it all and had made her life hell during that firefight. She found the table she was looking for, now upturned and surrounded by pages, then bent down and collected the thesaurus parts that lay scattered and annotated. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing here. Was it code? Some words were circled, others scribbled. Flicking through the book didn't make it any clearer and she put the loose pages to one side beneath a smashed glass to stop them from blowing away. One of the pages was different from the others. In block capitals with red marker were the words 'TRUST US. HYDE PARK NOT ALONE. FIXING'.

Paul Raynes, she thought, the travelling bureaucrat. The words burned within her. He was a man neither here nor there, on the fence and partly her responsibility, part big man from Washington. He'd arrive when he wanted, leave when he fancied and sometimes not stop in at all. Raynes was the courier who went above their heads when Washington wouldn't trust an email. Him, now him she could understand doing this. But the one that hurt much more was Pat Schofield. Hadn't they had tea and cake for years in the little Embassy kitchen? Did he think that everyone was so stupid that they wouldn't smell defection? There'd always been a sort of camaraderie between the offices, a feeling where no matter what or who was in charge that some things didn't change. She'd rarely noticed it and assumed that some things were constant no matter what the rules were or what politics said, and that Pat Schofield, his friends, and everyone at their place on Charing Cross Road were there to stay. Over the years Schofield had helped her out, and brought them all extra books that wouldn't sell at the end of the year on his rare visits to the Embassy. 'I don't know why these English classics don't sell, Navari, it's almost as if they got lost in the store until today. Strange, that, isn't it? ' And she'd reply that he should open an investigation, and let her know.

Then there was the encounter on Exhibition road, and this new, strange chasm between them, and between her and reality. It was suddenly a world where a man could step backwards and disappear like a blip on an old film reel by saying a few words. And then stupidly whispering and repeating the same words she and Hortez could disappear too, and find an entire district of the city that they'd simply not seen? It was an entire park that just appeared without a sound or a breeze, and from which cars streamed out but none entered. And it was a world where the police you'd been speaking to moments ago to explain the situation couldn't see her, and gazed straight past her. In her work these questions weren't the kind that she wanted answers for. Navari knew the rules of the game, and some things simply aren't mentioned to anyone beyond those above you. This was one of them. 'No, Sir, no I don't know anything beyond what I've just told you. No, it won't go further. No, no action will be taken. Thank you.' That would be the way to handle this now. Bringing in Schofield and Raynes, preferably alive and well, was the only goal. Using extreme methods to do it was acceptable in her book, the situation called for it. She spotted Hortez approaching at a fast pace down the embankment. He had the army-green earmuffs around his neck and held a grim expression. He was hefting the case and nodded to her, then looked around the patio floor in hope he'd find blood stains. There was just tea.

"Hi. You hit?" he asked, surveying the damage. To Navari he sounded underwater and far away, as if a weak voice through the ringing. She guessed what he'd said and hoped she was right.

"I'm fine. Thanks for the help back there. What happened?"

"They must've seen us, you probably more likely than me," said Hortez. Navari held back, and didn't reply to the accusation. She'd been careful, as careful as she could be given the circumstances. "Raynes flipped the table, the kids started sprinting," said Hortez. "I had the crosshairs on Patrick," he said.

"I tried to be careful sneaking up on them but it's the only explanation that they saw me," she replied. "I'll take responsibility for that."

"Yeah. I screwed it too with the silencer. It must've been loose on the first shot, and more than a quarter-turn by the time I corrected it on the third. Anything over one-hundred metres and you can say good luck with that shit. That along with the wind, the damn birds even."

"They all ran off the same way? Together?" she asked.

"Yeah. Schofield followed the kids. Don't know about Raynes. I lost him behind the café."

"Jesus. Hortez, it's not just me, right? Does this make sense?"

Hortez dropped the case wordlessly by the thesaurus and then walked over to a set of piled tables and retrieved a satchel. He opened it cautiously, and looked inside to find what seemed to be regular papers full of mathematics and, separately, what looked to be a laptop. He'd noticed it there from his elevated position over the Serpentine when he was setting up and thought it strange for it to be there abandoned in a group of chaotic tables which surrounded it like a blast shield. He touched some of the patio furniture and found it was wafer thin and flexed under his grip. One by Navari had chunks missing from where he'd shot it. He showed her the satchel, told her his theory that it had been put aside on purpose and gave it to her to inspect it herself. She dumped everything out. There was nothing threatening within, no clear reason why you'd encase it like that.

"These papers belong to an A.Packard," she said. "I've heard of a Packard. It was one of the names on a list sent by Raynes as part of a tracking request. I put it through." She frowned. What little sense Navari had managed to drag together in her own theory of what was going on fell apart. So Raynes and Schofield were with them? They were working terrorists after all, despite years of faithful service? A half-dozen different conspiracies filled her mind, all different options that were equally murky on hazy motivations. The only true working theory was the one that hurt the most, a picture of double-agents. But then why would Raynes text this track request to them and make it so obvious? Why would he put through a request for his own allies? Would students that young be involved? She tried to grasp for answers to it all in Amy's lecture notes and found nothing beyond gibberish maths, and occasional drawings of cats in the margins. 'Hyde park not alone. Fixing'. Maybe there were other locations around the city hidden like this one where tracking them down would prove difficult or almost impossible without knowing how to get in. Navari took out her phone.

"Hi. I'd like to put in a location request please on a Paul Raynes in London. Last seen near Hyde Park, on the east side near Brompton Road." There were arguments from the other side in a darkened room in Virginia, and not only because it was Raynes, their own man gone AWOL. They didn't know where Hyde Park was. She walked them through the ten-step process of hide-and seeking, and was met with stunned silence.

***

The students' phones were dropped underneath a tree nearest to the path, partly because Scott couldn't find a bin, partly because he didn't want to get rid of them. Schofield was louder than he needed to be with his commands and recovered his hearing slower than they'd hoped. At the front of the group were Raynes and Amy. The American didn't have a hand to spare. Scott had to take instructions on how to dispose of the phones, reach in through the American's outer blazer pockets and find the second copy of Ichor to add to the pile of discarded electronics.

It seemed like a waste to throw it all away, and he had difficulty dropping his own phone along with its photos. Sure he had copies of the best ones but everything from the last few weeks would be gone. He did his best to try and remember the spot, the tree, its branches, and put his stash out of the way. It didn't settle well with him that he'd prioritized remembering where his phone was hidden over all the other things. There were things happening that were far more critical. April was slung face down over Raynes' shoulder, hair hanging and waving with each step. The American's grip hadn't changed or faltered and he carried her with a grim efficiency. Behind Raynes remained Amy. She did what she could to wake her friend up, starting with checking her breathing, shouting and ending when Amy shook her hard enough that Raynes turned to face her with muted fury. You want me to drop her? Now she merely followed close behind as if to catch her if Raynes made a wrong move. Scott caught up to Matt.

"D'you turn them off first?"

"Yeah," said Scott. "Schofield says you and I need to be on the lookout for a black cab when we get out of the park"

"Ah, alright," replied Matt. Did he say where we're going?"

"No. Dude's probably just as clueless as us about what to do," he replied. They crunched through the path towards the south-eastern gate. Scott passed it sometimes, mostly when he ran alone since it was a further route than the one by the Serpentine, and one he'd planned that they'd advance to with time. Now he wasn't sure. The life and chatter of Hyde Park was dead and they walked the path alone. Beyond the fence were queues of cars in gridlock stagnant as before, and Scott wondered how, if at all, a taxi could help them out of here. Whole sections of the city were closed off, hidden, or broken in some way. People parked and walked the rest of their journey if they could. Those that had to stay stranded turned their engines off. Lorries manoeuvred between rows of cars and blasted horns at one another. Somewhere off high rise windows he saw the reflection of pulsing police sirens.

"M, this is screwed. We're screwed."

Matt didn't respond, just kept pace beside him. They crunched further and out of the shade and into the summer glare.

"He was right about us. We've destroyed the park," said Matt.

Scott let that hang there, and decided that he'd admit it. "Yeah, we did, Matt, but there was no other way. It's not as if we can do anything now."

"How is she?" he asked.

"Amy's done her best," said Scott. "I don't know."

"She's not hit?"

"Raynes says no."

"I feel like something about her used to be a homonym. I could've sworn it. It is kind of like Schofield says. The more you think about it, the easier it becomes to remember, you know?"

"I don't know, M. It would make sense. Amy doesn't feel very hot or cold."

"So why don't we remember it?" asked Matt. It had to be something to do with him, he thought.

"I wish I knew," said Scott.

What they didn't realize but which itched at them was the truth. It was the truth that April was unconscious and unconscious with her was the entire month, the very concept of the month of April itself, all its memories and events, everything. If Scott were to stop and think back to last month it would come up blank. There was nothing there. April was the month made flesh.

"Could it be shock?" asked Matt.

"This is April we're talking about, M. It's not shock," replied Scott.

They wandered out of the empty gates of Hyde Park and into the maelstrom beyond. Greenery was swapped for shopfronts and chaos. Raynes looked out for police where he could and didn't spot any beyond those he assumed were still by Exhibition Road directing traffic. Someone from a passing car frowned at him carrying April. He shifted her a little on his shoulder to return the blood flow to his arm. Having Amy walking alongside didn't convince people that what he was doing was okay. He had one girl unconscious, and a group of battered students with Schofield at the back in what people might assume was a day-trip with professors gone wrong. He could get away with saying the ambulance service can't get through the traffic, but move any further from South Kensington and that lie would begin to fall apart.

"We're never getting a cab, no chance" said Schofield. "Where do you all live? We need to get off the streets. How far is it to a university building or somewhere private with few exits?" He reached for the gun cloth to wipe his face. The polka dots were filthy and stank with something he didn't recognize at first. Outlined streaks of gunpowder and grease ruined any semblance of '50's kitchen joviality.

"We live off Exhibition Road," said Amy, looking from handkerchief to brow and back to Schofield's inner pockets which seemed to Amy to hold anything and everything. There was always something new coming out of that coat.

"Is it close? How far?" he asked. "And Raynes, will you make it?"

Paul shrugged with his free shoulder. "I'll make it." The pins and needles were settling in and pulsed in Geiger-counting chaos through Raynes as far as his upper back. Sure, he could switch shoulder, but if he did then both arms might be too weak to balance her.

"Is there a quiet way through, Miss Packard?" asked Schofield. "Back the way we came isn't going to happen."

"Maybe a taxi further out from South Kensington?" asked Scott.

"No. If we're dicking about on the streets we're going to run into more problems," replied Schofield. His words held the aggressive bass of spent cigar-years, and was said with a certainty that painted images of featureless masks standing in rows behind riot shields and heaving swathes of Kevlar. The thought left the remaining students quiet with a dim knowledge that all of this had turned too real. The whistling threats of gunfire were real, and Schofield's low tone seemed too real to match.

Scott forced the image of Kevlar and riot shields down out of his mind and as deep as he could on short notice into a place he hoped was marked 'stupid fears'. "Okay, sure, we can go to our rooms in the basement," he said. "We'll cut through to the square by the back streets. Follow me." With that he led the way through the dead traffic and kept having to force the fear out. Ignore it. There was no gunfire. You're fine, see? Go to your halls, just pretend it hasn't happened. Humour me, he thought. Just try. And so Scott forced himself to focus on remembering the way home.

The depths of South Kensington are at the best of times on some base level like a hall of mirrors. Streets stretch straight through to the horizon in decorated thick-cream pillars. The pillars, in turn, stand watch over the recessed weight of terraces whose windows look out at you just as much as you try to look in. Each side of a street in South Kesington falls away into a looming canyon of Easter Island faces which glare back in lopsided eldritch plaster. We've been here always, and forever shall. We have seen creation, and we shall see its end, the buildings seem to whisper. The great and the worst have graced our halls. And yet we do not yield.

Scott tread down the length of the edifices on the shaded half of the street and resisted the temptation to meet their gaze. To his left lay the ceaseless barrier of SUVs deserted and waxed within an inch of their lives and, beyond them, the speeding attempts of cars trying to escape gridlock. In the dark glare of the parked metal he glimpsed the bent images of his friends behind him, warped and wary in the wilderness. He refused to look back. He was the Orpheus of cream pillars and almost felt that if he did look back April might not wake up, or that the seams of the doors from one of the SUVs would open and end them all in hushed, pleasant tones. It was superstition, but he didn't look back because today was a mystic day. Today felt like some uncelebrated summer solstice of South Kensington when the witches come out to chant amongst the eldritch plaster edifices and cackle if you don't respect them. And so Scott didn't look back, he just forged on ahead towards Exhibition road, and home.

Matt and Amy weren't far behind, and walked in step a few layers behind him, and behind Raynes and April too. Matt tried to think of something to say and took a glance through his conversation starters, only to find his heart jumped in a nervous 'no' when he tried to select anything. All of them were superseded when he looked to Amy and found that she didn't hold the usual forced Amy-confidence smile that after a while convinced you it wasn't forced at all. It was one which he thought about probably too much. The only questions he could think of were technical ones, or to ask about something that she'd said to them so animated at the café.

"You thinking about what's next, Aims?" he asked eventually.

"No." She nodded towards April. The girl's hair swung helplessly down in black wide tufts and melted into Raynes' dark grey. Her arms joined limply in time with Raynes' step. "Thinking of new words for you." She did give him a weak grin then.

"Shame about your laptop."

"Yeah. You didn't do it, did you? You didn't make the keys." She shrugged and turned to look at the passing chandeliers and dark-set high-ceilings that drifted by them as they walked past the edifices of South Kensington's eternal mansions.

"No, I didn't do the keys." 'I tried to', he wanted to say, 'all throughout the talk with Schofield I was chanting to myself'. They continued side-by-side, weaving from house number 36 to 112, and pacing through the one-way side-avenues until they were almost back home. Amy hoped she could do better, be positive, and feel like herself. But today was a different day to the rest of them, and feeling like herself had come and gone with the keys, and the heat, and the cold, and see-sawed throughout the day until she wasn't quite sure how to feel.

April coughed.

"Hey, Apes. Hey, you there?" The voice resounded to hit April through the endless hall of images and lines, and resonated through the black waves into an echo that grew dim and died to nothing. The sound was out of place. It seemed wrong and tainted the waves enough to make her aggressively snap out of position. Where was she? She wondered whether she was there amongst the waves, or somewhere else. The question confused her. She first had to know whether she was she, or what wasn't her, and what was her. The dim echo of 'hey' had faltered, and its meaning collapsed into noise as if it were a dead language from long ago. Maybe moments, or more, passed.

She could feel her arms, but nothing else at first. In front, rising out of the dark waves were the white slate monoliths of information-glass, tall as standing stones and shimmering just out of reach but tempting to touch, and huge. They loomed impossible as single-panes millions of tonnes in weight, infinitely high and crashing like wafer-thin icebergs into the black ocean of the unreal. Each stacked itself, thin and razor-sharp. Each was heaving with enough information to flood her forever and drown her in knowledge, obliterate her completely under its weight and have her screaming and flailing into the un-ocean lost. She didn't touch them yet but sensed she knew each of them as a faint memory, smell or colour. It was as if she'd touched them before and been with them or been them forever, but only now remembered their presence had been missing. The waves stretched deep and without logic against all of it. They came from nowhere and went the same way. The ocean were ankle deep now, but that could change.

If everything was known and all of it, from the waves to the glass, was familiar then why wasn't she at home? Why did it feel somehow on loan? That ugly word reared its head, and fell away in disgust. Was she seeing something that was fake, but not completely? She didn't know, but the voice that didn't belong which had shouted to her wasn't fake. That intrusive voice wasn't rented, and it was home more than this home. She wandered towards it, and found that she didn't need to. It wandered her way instead and narrowed her mind with each pulse of the black un-waves until the borders of her vision came back, and between the borders she saw slabs of concrete passing like picture frames in an old film reel played too slow. On some of the slabs once in a while were little arrows drawn in paint. There were rusting outlets for the water supply, others for sewage. All of it was shaking. She had pins and needles in her arms. And, holy shit her stomach hurt. She tilted herself upwards and found herself face to bobbing face with someone through strands of hair.

"Holy crap," she heard her own voice slurred and low "do I feel like shit."

The face went away and reappeared, then grinned and did something out of view. There was commotion, and different overwhelming sounds that each rang a tone, short or long. In the distance there were blocks of very not-sharp tofu coming into view. She felt nauseous, and everything spinning didn't help. Not tofu, rang another, separate and clearer slice of her mind, buildings.

"Raynes for Christ's sake let her down!" said the first voice.

"Would be my pleasure," rumbled something much louder than the high-pitched sound. Her world tilted upwards and somersaulted sickeningly straight through the white lines of buildings into deep blue of sky and back again. Her view settled. She was lying down, that she knew, and her head ached. Gravity still worked, though it took her a bit of adjustment. 'So, that's what it feels like to have gravity' she couldn't help thinking and then the novelty of it returning wore off and she nervously began to wonder 'what did you mean by that? Wasn't it always like this?' She thought about it, and the fading memory of the waves blurred together and disappeared like the last breath a dream after a morning avocado half. She frowned, and tried her best, like in those mornings, to hold onto it. A part of those memories of the waves stayed and she remembered that they were there, somewhere, out of reach beyond the borders of her vision.

"Apes, April. Are you alright? Say something." The girl speaking turned to someone who reluctantly removed their jacket. The person who'd taken the jacket off held it up and took out of its inner pocket something long and almost as cream-coloured as the tofu which she knew for a fact out of the clear-blue was ceramic Starlite, and not an ordinary pistol at all. Her vision tilted as Raynes' jacket was propped up against her head, and the girl helped her sit up against a wall. April stared at what resolved itself into a group of people in front of an SUV.

"It's a hundred metres, no more. I say we keep going."

"Schofield, if she can walk, let her," replied the agent in white.

"Let me talk to her. We've got time," said the very first voice. Amy. That was Aims, the girl who she'd given a keyring of an arrow hitting a target as a gag gift on her birthday. The joke had grown on her friend to the point where the gag had turned to genuine appreciation. Keys. That word rang a bell for other reasons April didn't want to go into yet.

"We don't have time, Miss Packard. Please, people, we need to get off the streets. We don't have the luxury..." the rest of the speech dissolved into droning, and April had to focus hard to keep herself there in South Kensington.

"I did do it. I did say 'April'," said a different voice. "Of course it's a homonym."

"And it worked? Holy shit, M."

"It must've."

"Do you know the opposite to 'April'? Huh? Fucking October? How are we going to fix this? Apes, hey, April, stay with me. Come on." Amy shook her, and she gave a groan in response.

"Mmmwhatyouwant," April ended up saying. It was difficult enough concentrating on listening without the added challenge of replying.

"Look, Apes, stay with me. Come on, look, this way. Nod if you can hear."

It took an immense effort and the weight of her head grated against her like never before. She slumped herself forward, and tried to lift herself back up as fast as she could.

"Good," said Amy "you're doing great." The girl turned away. "She can't walk, Schofield. No way."

April wanted to jump in to say that if they would just wait a moment and just give her a second to reorient herself away from the ocean that it would be okay, that she would be up in a little while, better than ever. But saying that all would require more energy than she could fathom, and concentration measured in the high molar numbers. Oh good, the internal science jokes were returning. She tuned back to the conversation. It was Matt talking now, that was his name.

"I think so. If she goes unconscious, then the entire month goes dark, too."

"The entire month? What the hell, Matt," said Amy.

"Dude, neither M nor I could remember that April was even a thing until a moment ago." Scott regretted calling Amy 'dude' for a moment, but thought the overall point was worth it. Part of him wanted to mention Orpheus of South Kensington. He resisted.

"Raynes, will you make it to the square?" asked Schofield, dabbing his forehead with the handkerchief. He looked back the way he came.

"Hold this," said the other one, the one who spoke in an accent unlike the rest of them and handed over what April knew now was a pistol. Not just a ceramic pistol, whispered the pillars of white information-glass in the black ocean, but starlite, the kind of ceramic it was dangerous to have. People died in bathtubs because of it, had accidents when they asked for a sample to use in their new coolant systems. She didn't so much think this as see it somewhere behind the black borders like a second computer screen just out of sight. It was somewhere and nowhere at the same time. The one with the American accent walked up to her and crouched to rummage in her headrest. He got up and opened a box of ammunition and gave it to Schofield to reload the pistol magazines.

"Shall we start to make a move?" asked Schofield, handing a second magazine to Scott to reload.

The others nodded in agreement sullenly. April's surroundings were beginning to reassemble properly now and resolved themselves into one solid image from two split unfocused pictures of Raynes.

"Ready?" he asked.

The American didn't wait for a response and she found herself hauled upwards with her spine an impression of aches from sitting on Kensington granites. Her world swam and the black borders shifted and tilted as if pulled by gentle currents. Shuttering images of pavement tiles returned alongside the soft squeak of Doc Martens, swam a little and settled. Her ribs hurt too, and for the first time she wondered lucidly if she'd been shot. She tried to think back. Was that what happened when you got hurt? You went unconscious into this deep-sea and monoliths version of life flashing before your eyes? His shirt had been white, hadn't it, right? There was no blood dripping down her limp arms. Did she trip and fall? She struggled to remember. The film of pavement continued moving, on and on.

"April, Apes, it's not far, okay. We're almost there. We can have a rest soon," The voice came from her side. Her body struggled to comply with her when she tried to lift her head. She didn't see eye to eye, but caught the occasional glimpse of the wavy Amy hair.

"Eh-Amy, w-what..." she trailed off, wind knocked out of her little by little with each jolt, the last jolt strong enough to take the word 'happened' away from her lips completely.

"Stay with us, alright, just hold on. Matt did something stupid."

"Eh-ain?"

"Again. He used your name," replied Amy.

"My n-name? Not shot?" She jolted on Raynes' shoulder in hopeless anger, a ragdoll locked in and unable to move. Here she was, the one who did the Times crossword in half an hour now unable to finish a damn sentence. Not just unable to say a sentence, but unable to say more single grunted syllables.

"No. You're fine. Not shot." Amy squeezed her hand. Amy had tried to say 'you're fine' dismissively, but she'd overdone it, and it'd gone from heartfelt straight to sounding uncertain.

He'd used her name, she thought. And the fear that died down with the hand-squeeze from Amy now rose on a warm swell of dark waves that she hoped weren't there. No-one else could see them. The hand-squeeze was brushed with sea-spray that blotted it in ink and corroded her arm into blankness. And the oceans that weren't oceans were infinite, weren't they, stretching back through the years into black nothing. And the monoliths were defined in how much information they had, they went nowhere beyond their thirty day confines. This was May and it was wrong for her, April, to be here. Her mind buzzed and hummed with that other world. No, part of her thought, she should be somewhere else. It was wrong, obscene, to still be alive in May.

She was here in South Kensington, and there too in the black lapping waves. The streets of South Kensington pulled one way and the fishless swells dragged her in the other. The borders of her vision tore and the film threatened to burn through into static. The image of London clouded over and her mind swam between the two frames and places layered on each other. She should've been blown down into dust, destroyed at the calendar boundary, shouldn't she? Past April how could she exist? Was this what Amy's life had become? Was it this bad for her when they took her to the hospital? Why did it seem so humiliatingly wrong just to exist in May?

She made out weak shapes of London as she approached infinite glass white slices. The glass panes embedded themselves stronger and emerged out of the black sea-spray. We were always here, they said. We always shall be. Each of us are one month. We are you. The monoliths would be battered forever by the waves, unchanging in their one-month boundaries and their corners sharp no matter how many countless waves smashed against their shores. The mist of superimposed Kensington tinged the pure-black horizon, coloured the monoliths grey and chalk-green. Within the white glass there was everything. It was infinitely dense information in clean-sheen perspectives. There was one for every year.

The glass was hers. It was both terrifyingly alien and familiar at the same time, the glass incomprehensibly honed and ground down into a pure white razor by time constraints. There would be another monolith next year which would burst from the waves if this universe survived till next year. Then the background mist of South Kensington started to fall away completely as she touched the one piece of glass she knew was from this year.

It didn't hurt, and it was cool. The glass warped milky and ran down her arm in lazy liquid mercury. The glass pane warped away from her and from the deep waves. Her elbows dripped pure April into the waves, but the waves had stopped moving now. They were dead, black and static in solid basalt. They stayed there, rooted and cemented her feet in the waters. Everything from the most recent month was accounted for in the glass, segregated here as she'd have segregated the information herself if she'd had the infinite time to do so. What had happened in each place, each leaf, continent, and deep sea were here. The orbitals of planets were there and further out were things she could understand if she wanted to, murkier and deeper in the glass. She could find out anything, but contented herself to reading the titles from afar on the metaphorical shelves, and found that she didn't want to know what was there. It could break her for good if she knew too much. The mist would snap then. April wondered if it wasn't worth it to abandon the naked May. Her hand didn't reach further, though. It was too soon for such a commitment so she just watched the metal drip, swim and curl in different streams on her arm, felt it tickle her elbow and saw the droplets hiss into the black like milk in purest black coffee. There were things in the library about Matt, and Scott, and all of them. It's where she'd gotten the information from about the ceramic gun that looked a colour that was the same colour as this glass. And she tried not to think too hard, to keep the streams of information slow, and watched them carefully wane and wander into her mind. Don't take too much, not too fast, don't check out all the books, the library card can only hold so much. We're always here, April, and we're you. We'll be here when you're not looking, and one day you'll change your mind, and you'll stay here forever. You'll put in your arm to the elbow, and we'll be done with-

"Hmph." Holy shit she could barely breathe.

"Hey, well what do you know," said someone "that did it!" April gasped in deep breaths and opened her eyes to see Amy panting and wincing in pain too.

"Jesus Christ, Aims. Goddamn full on bitch-slap, that was," said Scott. "Did she break your neck, Apes?"

"Mmph," said April. Her cheek pulsed.

"That sounds like a yes" said Scott.

"We're out of options here," replied Amy. Scott went out of view.

"We can't afford her falling in and out like this," said Schofield's deep monotone. April felt the pins and needles receding. She was standing, held up by Raynes at the midsection. Matt propped up a left shoulder.

"Hey, Apes, good to see ya," he said.

The black borders receded to where they should've been, still in view but maybe a little more stable. Her back hurt, her ribs hurt, and she remembered how she'd hurt both. Around her there were the oak trees and benches of a familiar square. They were in front of their halls, and their basement flat. This was Prince's gardens with its little paths, and trees, and mats where students sat in the summer months and pretended to do group-work. They'd taken the route through this place hours ago to take Amy to the hospital after breakfast.

"Let her rest," said Amy. "April, come on, one foot then another, the bench is right here."

With some difficulty April made it to a bench and fell clumsily into it, yielding another 'hmph'. Her legs gave way. Her upper body was better, and she could clutch on to the sides to keep balance but feeling returned sluggishly and reluctantly to her legs and feet. She grasped on to the glass-metal memories better this time. There were things she knew from last month which she'd never done, never seen. She knew that Scott had a one night stand he'd never admit to, and that he'd liked that girl more than expected the next morning when she'd explained the ground rules. It was cloudy when she fought with the deep waves but the memory was there. 'Text me, yeah?' he'd asked that girl, she was sure he'd told the girl that. And then there was Amy, the one who'd hoped something like that might happen, but to her. She'd text back. And there were other things, her own parents in April when she went to visit them tinged with sadness that both their girls had gone to university.

April took a deep breath. This wasn't the time for it. Sure she could dig, but Amy was sitting next to her now, and Scott leaned on the bench, and the others stood round in hopes she might say she felt better, ready to stand, to go inside.

"I'm sorry about the slap, Apes, really." Amy looked concerned. Amy, who had secrets like anyone, who'd change and mutate before April's very eyes if she dug too far into that private information.

"It's okay," she replied. "I just feel weird. A lot happens in thirty days."

"What do you mean?" asked Amy. Her brow furrowed and sank.

"I can see a lot of stuff I shouldn't, Aims. If it happened in April, then I can see it if I try."

Dull quiet fell over the square. Schofield leaned around an oak to get a better view of the streets and anyone approaching. Raynes did the same on the other side with his finger on the safety. Nearby a study group sat on the grass. They looked like regular people with books out open on a random page, smoking despite the danger of stern words from the university groundskeeper who'd tap at the no smoking signs and keep you there for near a half-hour.

"Is it bad, Apes? Does it hurt?"

"Yeah, Amy. It's bad, but it doesn't hurt. I didn't think I'd wake up, so if you need to, then hit me again."

"You know I'm your friend, right?" she replied.

"Hit me if you have to."

"You can find out anything?" asked Scott. "Anything from April? So do you know what's going on here? Do you know what's happened to M?" She thought about it, and dug down into the information held in her white cool glass. She didn't know. It wasn't there. That information was in May, and there was nothing she could do about that, the boundary was solid. But dig was the right word. There was something beneath them, under the square, Exhibition road, beneath the main bridge in Hyde Park where Scott said it started, and that had been there in April and a long time before that. There were tunnels, though she couldn't see all of them, not all of them had been explored last month by the university's subterranean inhabitants. Under Hyde Park there was a door. She could see it gleaming steel with its wire-reinforced glass window in a service corridor. Beyond that door stood a lone guard in a beret amidst the halogen glare. She swapped from the perspective of the one standing behind the door to the perspective of the guard and found that he didn't patrol far – only the main tunnels branching off to each department. In one of the underground rooms were a mass of computers, their screens aged with ancient-era programmes whose support started and ended in the '90s. There was no need for change. The computers worked, and that's what mattered. She couldn't see it all, the people hadn't remembered all the details, and if the people didn't remember all the details then it meant she'd have to dig deeper. She could dig deeper but the more she found out without using human perspectives, the worse she felt.

Beyond the bank of computers, and the huge monitoring screen were doors marked 'DO NOT ENTER WHEN LIGHT SHOWS'. It reminded April almost of one of those old-style control rooms you'd see at a space-launch. Maybe it was a bit smaller. And beyond the doors with 'DO NOT ENTER' there were miles of wires bundled into steel sleeves held up by brackets that sagged above a corridor. On the left was a single, thick blue pipe of the accelerator. The word accelerator popped into her mind and she was barely surprised by it. Of course that's what it was. This was only a little piece of what was a synchrotron, the detectors were further up. The pipe was deep grey on top where the dust had settled unwiped, and uncared for. And on the pipe near the door were the manufacturing details for the accelerator that had long ago been erased. On top of the manufacturing details a brass plaque was stuck on. The plaque was glued in April maybe eight, ten years earlier after someone had made a joke at the office and the name had stuck. THE ATOMIC VICE. You vice - grip the atoms and watch as you crush them together in full readout glory. And there was more information, so much more, but with each search the borders of her vision got narrower, and May reality on the bench felt further away. She noticed she'd spent too long staring blankly at her feet, and tried her best to return to normality.

"Vehrs uh...I mean", she took some time to get the borders out of the way, "there's a facility under Hyde Park. Tunnels run", she pointed "from here in the square, under that tree, the road, through the university buildings, all over the place."

"You mean the maintenance tunnels?" asked Scott. "And they go as far as Hyde Park? So they exist? I thought Foster-Hall was screwing with us."

"Who?" she asked

"Friend of ours, funny guy, does biochemistry," replied Matt.

She thought for a moment, then shrugged apologetically "well you didn't speak to him about it last month. Either way, down there is a synch...ugh...", she struggled to get the words out and had to plan each syllable so it would sound coherent "...an accelerator", she said. That had been almost, but not quite, as hard as 'synchrotron' to say in her state. "It goes under your bridge, loops 'round the Serpentine." Somehow the borders weren't getting better but instead thicker and worse. She gulped in air through the pain in her ribs, and fought with nausea.

"The excess heat you felt," said April. "Emer...emergency vents. Under the bridge."

"The heat's fine but we've not got too long 'til the next time we have to get Matt chanting," said Amy. "We need to start soon, okay?" April saw Amy look to the side-streets as if hoping to catch an early glimpse of the danger. Maybe it would be a scope glint, or an unmarked police van. She noticed now that Raynes casually leaned on one tree, Schofield was behind another on the opposite side, hands in pockets. Both looked towards opposite sides of South Kensington, waiting. They'd hoped to go to the basement kitchen, but had been overruled.

"No," said April "I mean the steam." She turned to the boys "from what you were saying this morning, that's what it was. It's from the accelerator. It's from the emergency vents. They tested them last month."

The word 'accelerator' bounced in Matt's mind and didn't know where to go. He didn't know what to do with it. The only accelerator he'd heard of was in CERN. That acronym was single-syllable, drawn out, dead-serious, and he'd seen pictures of the facility on the news. There were thick-vinyl floors with tyre marks, underground bunkers of painted steel girders and catwalks with netted gratings. There were copper cables that dwarfed humans, detector rings that hummed and gargled as they siphoned off gigawatt hours of energy to trade for harmless readouts. And when they'd shown CERN on TV he'd seen the pipes stretch out underground, and watched a hard-hat reporter ask 'is this the end of the world? If you produce miniature black-holes then what will happen?'

Nothing happened, it turned out. Nothing went wrong. There were hundreds, thousands of people making sure nothing would go wrong and calculating to make certain sensationalist nonsense stayed that way. In the offices above the catwalks in CERN were filing cabinets that wouldn't close and brimmed with documents detailing how to stop the colossal machines from breaking. But all of that felt foreign, it was far away on the news in another part of the world. And then he remembered the story of how for a while nuclear physicists in the Manhattan Project wondered if setting off an atom bomb would burn the atmosphere in a planetary chain reaction. Matt imagined it, a blinding light spreading across the globe. You wouldn't have time to think, to react at all. But neither of these grim fantasies were real. The world didn't burn. Black holes didn't swallow the planet whole. He was uneasy against all that. There was a sense that somehow science for all the grand leaps forward was mostly coloured with a mundane rigor during the day-to-day. Insanity didn't happen. Mad miscalculations that ripped the world asunder didn't happen. There were no horrific surprises except on paper any more. There was a community out there that, if they knew about him and knew about this Monday morning, would react to him with the same momentary puzzlement and light-hearted chuckle as if following the question from that reporter asking 'is this the end of the world'. But here he was, nevertheless.

April got up, leaned on Amy for support in full mirror-image of the trip this morning. "Didn't think we'd swap roles so fast," she said. "Where are we going?"

"We're going to the computer lab, third floor in Maths. It's a quiet place with old machines no-one's going to miss that Matt can use and try saying 'the keys' again. It's quiet enough that when we take cover behind stacks of desks no-one's going to shout 'excuse me that's my computer and my sandwich you're destroying'."

"How violent of an explosion is it?" asked Matt. "We have to take cover?"

"Full ka-boom, teeth everywhere, Matt. You better be ready. Schofield was this close to losing both hands," she replied. She didn't have an arm free with April leaning on her to show how close 'this close' was.

They headed out with Raynes first and Schofield at the rear. The Englishman checked his watch that he'd forgotten was still on pre-'escape' time. "Miss Suzuyama, holler if you need Raynes to help you." He got some kind of quiet groan in response.

"She says 'I'm okay'", shouted Amy. "The next phase of Project Dali is in full swing, people." She'd thought of a name for it, the Metamorphosis of Months, and reckoned it fit. The actual painting wasn't quite called that, and hung in the Tate Modern gallery south of the Thames. She'd been there on sad days to stare at the insane story it told, the macabre order, and magic. Turning this insane day into an adventure, giving each stage a name made it a bit better. It took her mind off the whip-cracks of bullets and disintegrating aluminium at the park, of Raynes flipping the table, of April barely-conscious. It helped her feign jealousy and helped her say to Apes "well your superpower is way cooler than mine".