Nothing moved.
Not the hands of the clock, which were frozen in a permanent salute to the hour. Not the shower of debris from his entry, which hung in the air as if suspended in amber. Not even the guard dogs who had stopped in mid-snarl, their fangs as still as their glass-bead eyes.
Charles tried not to feel bad as he slipped past them. Even after all these years he still liked dogs. It was true that when they weren’t attacking him they were usually barking him back into the night, but he didn’t hold that against them. They were only doing their job, just as he was only doing his.
Resisting the urge to pat one of the Dobermans on the head he scuttled along the brightly lit hall. The overhead strip lighting revealed a world of institutional green, of rubberised flooring and interior doors that looked as solid as those in any prison.
As he followed his map through the facility Charles noticed the smell which pervaded the place. It was mainly bleach but beneath it there was something else. Something nasty.
Eventually he came to the door he had been searching for. It bore a brass plaque into which had been inscribed the characters XV. The gothic intricacy of their design was at odds with the institutional blandness of the rest of the facility, but Charles didn’t worry about that. He was too busy worrying about the warnings he’d been given.
Standing to one side of the door he unscrewed the stopper from a steel vacuum flask and upended it over the plaque. Warm blood streamed from the flask. It ran down the plastic coating of the door to sizzle and hiss in the grooves of the X and the V.
When the flask was empty Charles looked cautiously at his handiwork. The brass plaque was gone. In its place there was nothing but a smear of sizzling blood and melting plastic. The stink brought tears to Charles's eyes and he blinked as he selected a tool to open the door lock. It was a simple tumbler, and he popped it open on the fifth turn. The door swung open and he stepped inside.
The room was sparsely furnished. Apart from a steel locker the only other objects were a plastic table and a security camera that glowered down from the corner. Charles tugged at his balaclava as he studied the device. If he was surprised that his reflection didn’t show up on the concave lens then he gave no sign of it. He had seen weirder stuff than that while running Mr Anderson's errands.
With a shiver he turned away from the glass eye and got to work on the locker. It took him a moment to realise that it wasn’t even locked. The door swung open and there on the floor was a shoe box. Charles lifted it as carefully as if it were an unexploded bomb and set it on the table. After a moment's hesitation he removed the lid off to reveal what lay within.
For a moment he stopped breathing.
He had known what it would be, of course. He had known as soon as he had been given the job. Mr Anderson was always upfront with him. But it’s one thing to hear about the impossible and quite another to actually experience it.
‘Fuck a doodle doo’ said Charles as his breath returned to him. Inside the box was a cube of plastic. It weighed maybe a kilogram and was perhaps twenty centimetres to a side. It was also a completely new primary colour.
He hadn't realised quite what that meant until now that he saw it, and now that he saw it he knew that yes, yes it WAS impossible. There couldn't be a new primary colour. There couldn't be.
Except that there was.
Charles reached out one cotton-gloved finger to stroke its surface, and when his finger brushed against the cube it exploded into a whole myriad of new colours. He stared at them, eyes as wide as a toddler’s on Christmas morning, and laughed delightedly.
They were beautiful, these colours. So beautiful. They were a glimpse of a better, brighter, cleaner world. A world with countless dimensions and limitless possibilities. Charles pulled off his balaclava and removed his gloves. Then he just stood there, his face lit with wonder as he caressed the living kaleidoscope he had found.
There was no way he was going to hand this over he decided. No way at all. For once Mr Anderson would have to do without.
It was the thought that killed him.
No sooner had he reached the decision than the clock ticked, the debris pattered to the floor and a chorus of snarls echoed down the corridors. Charles’ reflection popped into the concave lens of the camera above and an alarm began to blare.
He thrust the cube into an inside pocket and started to run. It was a vain effort. He hadn't gone a dozen steps before the gas which poured from the air vents caught up with him. His legs stopped working just as the dogs saw him.
He struggled to get back to his feet but his muscles merely twitched. When the dogs reached him he was flopping around on the rubberised floor like a gutted fish and a second later he found that paralysis was not anaesthesia. He felt every rip of the dogs’ teeth, every sliced nerve and ruptured artery. But even his blood, bright red though it was, couldn’t compare with the colours he carried in his pocket.
Charles thought about the colours, about how they glowed, and even as the dogs tore off his face he was smiling.
