6.

"Do you think any of this will make more sense when we get to Ibaraki?" Zachary asked Emile.

"I don't know, but if you believe Baragsen. He said you'd get your answers. So, why not?"

"Who are you?" Lowerstoff asked, suddenly.

"The son of the woman you tried to kill," Emile frowned.

"We didn't try to kill anyone."

"You know this is all about you. You and Zack. I'm not sure who is the key here, but if I were to opt for one or the other, I'd say Lowerstoff."

"Ladies and gentlemen we will shortly be landing at Narito International Airport. Please remain in your seats until we reach the terminal building. Check you have all your personal items and any hand luggage with you. Thank you for flying JAL, we hope you had a pleasant flight and look forward to welcoming you on-board again in the future. Imanotokoro sayōnara!"

They always ended arguing about what was going on. Emile thought, and maybe Lowerstoff as well, that Zachary had the answer if he remembered things before Paris. He did sometimes. Fragments. Like the trip to Saint Paul's in London, but that didn't have much to do with Lowerstoff who pretty much thought he didn't belong here. He was only here because of Hamilton.

Tokyo airport was much like any international airport anywhere, not that Zachary had been to that many, but it just seemed a question of scale Their luggage was waiting on the conveyor. They picked it up and breezed through customs coming straight out into the busy terminal. Lowerstoff spotted the little Japanese guy with their names on a card. Zachary waved and he smiled, moving to join them. He actually bowed when they came face to face and they each sort of did the same.

Less than ten minutes later they were in a nice car, well a van, but a very comfortable van, heading out of Tokyo towards their destination, Ibaraki. It seemed to Zachary a lot rested on what they found at this research institute. For now, he contented himself with watching the cityscape pass by the windows.

The institute was a modern cubist building of metal and glass. Lots of glass, huge floor to roof glass that gave a magnificent view. The place was halfway up a hillside, but it was otherwise an ordinary building, an annex of the Okinashama University. Doctor Kanishoi greeted them. Not a medical doctor of course, but a professor of scientific research, a quantum physicist.

"This should be good," Zachary whispered to Lowerstoff.

"Welcome to the Ibaraki Research Institute, gentlemen." The professor was an elderly Japanese man, small, with greying hair which tinted his otherwise black colour making a weird combination that leant a kind of mad scientist look. As if he had been drawn from one of those popular Manga comics.

They sat in comfortable chairs in his large office with an even larger glass front looking out over the hill and the landscape below.

"It's like this," he explained, "You might say it all started with Wigner's original idea, which Ringbauer proved to be true. Two entangled pairs, which means two entities whose fates are linked, so knowing the state of one automatically tells you the other's state, both exist, both are real. Simply, or perhaps not quite so simply, two different realities."

He paused a moment. Zachary glanced at Lowerstoff, then Emile. What do I make of this, Zachary wondered? The explication of quantum mechanics was starting to sound like it would go right over his head and both Lowerstoff and Emile looked equally puzzled.

"Let's forget the quantum mechanics explanation and proof. What's happening is that your friend here," he waved his arm in Lowerstoff's direction, "has been slammed into another reality he is not actually a part of. Linked with you," he looked directly at Zachary, "he controls this existence, he sort of keeps it all together. Only not quite so. It is not a steady state and anomalies can occur."

"Why would someone do that?" Zachary asked.

The professor stared at him.

"Why would they propel someone, Lowerstoff here, into a reality which wasn't theirs?"

"Difficult question," the professor huddled over his desk, then looked up. "It is their reality, only not in the same time and place. My theory, " he continued, "is it allows a certain control. Destroy the entangled half, Mr Lowerstoff, and you destroy the other connected half, you might also collapse the reality."

"You see, chaos!" Emile exclaimed. "What I've been saying all along."

"Yes," the professor agreed, "chaos would describe it well, random chaos."

Isn't all chaos random? Zachary thought it was, by the very nature of being chaotic.

"We need to find Hamilton and destroy him. Before he destroys us," Emile was almost triumphant in his declaration.

Zachary couldn't help having a sneaky feeling of doubt. Was this really so clear cut. It could be Emile wanted Hamilton out of the picture because Hamilton wanted to do the same to Violetta. It was their battle, him, Lowerstoff and the others, were the pawns who could be sacrificed.

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"Well, if that's what you came for," the professor stood up, "I've arranged accommodation for you to stay here tonight. If you'll excuse me."

He left, to be replaced by a petite young lady who wanted them to follow her, which they did. The accommodation was in the image of the rest of the architecture, a rectangular room with four beds in a row, like a dormitory. Minimalist, but with a huge glass window, almost a glass wall, and a fantastic view.

"It's nearly as good as the hotel in Nice," Lowerstoff remarked.

They dumped their stuff and Zachary stood looking out the window and taking in the view. "Not very private," he said.

"Watch this!"

Emile hit a switch and the glass wall became a crystallised frosted window, shutting out the light, obscuring the view, and making the room totally invisible from outside. At the same time the lights came on.

"Cool," Lowerstoff smiled, seemingly impressed by the technology.

Emile hit the switch again and the view was back, the lights switched off. He went to sit on one of the beds, the furthest away.

"We need a plan," he said.

He was right of course, but Zachary was still staring at the countryside down below. Looking at the road they had taken to get there, it twisted up the hillside, appearing and disappearing through the trees. Finally, he sat down on the side of the bed next to Emile, facing him.

"You're right, we need a plan."

"I've decided I trust you," Emile replied. "My mother, Violetta sent me to see Baragsen the same as Hamilton sent you, to discover his plans. But like with you, he palmed me off. We got nothing, except..."

"Except what?" Zachary stared at him.

"I was there longer than you and I did learn something looking through some papers."

Lowerstoff came to sit on the bed next to Zachary. "What papers?" he asked.

"Papers that sketched out an action plan, but it wasn't complete. It was about countering Hamilton."

"That's good then, isn't it? Lowerstoff said. "It's what we all want to do. Stop Hamilton."

Zachary wasn't sure it was what he wanted to do. What was important for him was not losing Lowerstoff. Stopping his father causing chaos was kind of secondary. Hadn't they been playing his game since Paris?

"Do you know anything about probability theory?" Emile asked them. Faced with blank expressions he continued. "Doctor Kanishoi said what Hamilton wanted to create was random chaos, but there is no random chaos."

"I thought chaos was all random," Zachary told him.

"Yeah, but that idea takes no account of probability theory. Imagine if you roll some dice. Say two dice. Each time you roll the dice you get a random number, but roll them enough times and those random numbers form a pattern and that pattern is a normal distribution which is a curve up to a peak and down again."

He picked up a note pad from his bag and began drawing the curve.

"You don't need to understand all this," he added. Which Zachary could have taken as a little offensive, like he was saying they were stupid. "Thing is, Hamilton wants to produce random chaos enough times that there is a pattern and that pattern, if you like, is the reality timeline which is most probable. When you have the most probable timeline you are in control, because you know where things are going."

Lowerstoff had stood up and wandered across to look out the window. Maybe he had given up on this explanation of Emile's, or the view helped him focus and he was still listening.

"So he doesn't want chaos, he wants to use it to have control. Control of what?" Zachary asked.

"Everything." Lowerstoff chipped in turning back from the window. He had been listening. "There's a column of flashing blue lights coming up the hill," he added, calmly.

They both stood up and Emile and Zachary stared out the window. A storm was brewing. A streak of lightning lit the sky. The rumble of thunder was clearly audible. And, there was a column of vehicles which looked very much like police vehicles, climbing up towards them.

"This is not good," Emile said. "That is no coincidence. Keeping us here is Doctor Kanishoi's ploy to get rid of us."

"Are you sure?" Zachary asked him.

"Of course. I know how all these people work. Let's go. I'm not sticking around anyway."

"Me neither," said Lowerstoff. "Prison does not seem like a good idea."

"Okay, let's go. But how do we get away?"

"When we arrived I saw a helicopter," Emile said.

"Yeah, I saw that too," Lowerstoff added.

"And who's going to fly it?"

"The pilot," Emile said, and pulled a gun from his bag. "Let's go!"

"Leave that we don't have time!" Emile shouted as Zachary went for his rucksack.

"No way."

He slung it over his shoulder and Lowerstoff grabbed his and they were out of the room chasing after Emile who led them to the stairs and down two floors. He pushed wildly at the double doors which threatened to swing back in their faces, but Zachary caught one and Lowerstoff the other. He was ready the next time as Emile crossed the foyer and did a repeat performance, so was Lowerstoff, they grabbed the doors to stop them swinging back. Letting them go when they were out in the open. Now they could see the chopper.

There was another lightning flash which tore across the sky and a very loud crack. The clouds were racing in and the rumbling storm was growing violent. The wind started to blow a gale. They had only minutes to make their escape.

Emile burst into the cabin next to the heliport and as they followed him Zachary stopped short. He was standing there pointing his gun at a guy in uniform. The pilot he guessed.

"You!" Emile shouted. "Get out there and start that thing up."

He was pushing his gun into the guy's side.

"Now!" he screamed.

"We can't go anywhere in this storm," the pilot responded, seemingly calm.

"You get us out of here or I shoot."

Emile was not joking. I think the guy saw that too.

Sirens blared.

Not two hundred metres away the convoy of police had arrived.

Crack!

Another lightning strike.

They were in the helicopter and the engine cranked alive. The rotor started spinning and rapidly the noise grew. Zachary grabbed some headphones which Emile and the pilot already had on. The gun was still there pressed into the guy's side. They lurched into the air and swayed dangerously close to the building. The wind was gusting making it very hard to control the chopper. Zachary could see some guys below on the heliport, looking up. Then he saw little flecks of light burst across the sky, they were shooting. A click click of metal against metal raked across the rear of the helicopter. The pilot slammed the joystick forward and right. They lurched down over the tree tops covering the hillside. The ground dangerously close as they grazed some branches, pushed by the gusts of wind. The pilot managed to pull up. The shooting had stopped. They were flying level. The sky was lit up by the storm with several more lightning flashes. They were being buffeted from side to side, the pilot was struggling with the controls, fighting a battle with the elements. Then an alarm went off, lights blinking. The chopper lurched and span around.

"We're going to crash!" Zachary screamed.