A second male nodded in agreement, his face almost, but not quite, identical, all forehead, thick brow and square jawline. They looked like perfect sculptures carved from granite.
‘Affirmative.’
‘We should assign temporary mission identifiers,’ the first one said. ‘And verbal adoptive call signs.’ He looked at the others. ‘I am Alpha-one. I will be called Abel.’
‘Alpha-two,’ said the second male support unit. ‘Verbal call sign – Bruno.’
‘Alpha-three,’ said one of the females. ‘Cassandra.’
‘Alpha-four. Damien.’
‘Alpha-five. Elijah.’
‘Alpha-six. Fred.’
The others looked at Six. ‘Fred is gender-incompatible,’ said Abel. ‘You are female. Pick another name.’
Six frowned. ‘It is short for Frederica.’
‘Pick another name.’
She nodded obediently. ‘Faith.’
‘Acceptable,’ said Abel. He turned to look directly at computer-Bob’s webcam.
A nearfield data handshake; two operating systems recognizing each other.
>Acknowledged.
Abel’s thick brow knotted. ‘Where is your team?’ His deep voice filled the cavernous silence.
Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked on the screen silently.
‘System AI,’ said Abel, ‘please state the last known location of your team members.’
The cursor blinked and finally began to skitter forward along the command line.
>You are an unauthorized visitor to this field office. I am unable to provide any information. All information is confidential. System going into lockdown.
‘System AI, I have a higher authority level code. Abort lockdown.’
>Please transmit authority identification code.
‘Affirmative.’ Abel’s eyes blinked as he retrieved a string of data and streamed it wirelessly to computer-Bob.
The cursor blinked silently on the screen, a full minute passing as computer-Bob appraised the alphanumeric string and finally conceded that it quite correctly was a code he couldn’t ignore.
>Identification code is valid.
Abel stepped towards the row of monitors, cool eyes surveying the messy desk, the scraps of paper with handwritten memos and doodles on them, the empty pizza boxes and crushed drinks cans.
Finally his gaze rested on the small glinting lens of the webcam perched on the top of the monitor in the middle of the desk. ‘System AI,’ his deep voice rumbled, ‘please state the last known location of your team members.’
>Location of team members is as follows …
CHAPTER 28
2001, New York
‘Jesus … this is beginning to get very weird,’ said Maddy. She looked around the busy street. She could see dozens of things that weren’t quite right. Billboards here and there advertising products she didn’t quite understand. Some of the cars on the street had odd profiles, much longer fronts and bonnets and no boot at the rear. Almost like drag racers. Pedestrians, many looking normal, but some had shimmered and changed and were wearing garments that looked tidier, formal even … and there was definitely a skew towards warmer colours: red, purple, burgundy.
‘It’s never been like this before,’ she muttered. ‘Lots and lots of little waves!’
Sal nodded. ‘It’s weird all right.’
‘We need to hurry back.’ Maddy looked down at their plastic shopping bag full of electronic components. ‘Before a time ripple changes what we just bought into something else.’
Sal giggled nervously. ‘Fruit … or something.’
‘Yeah, that would be odd.’
The iPhone buzzed in Maddy’s shirt pocket. It stopped her in her tracks.
‘What’s up?’ asked Sal.
‘My iPhone …’ she said, fishing it out of her pocket. ‘I just got a text!’ The thing hadn’t functioned as a phone since she’d been recruited. It played her music. She carried it with her everywhere as a keepsake, a memento. A reminder of another life. But it certainly wasn’t a phone any more.
It’s not possible. The only people who had her number were family and friends from 2010; a phone number and account not due to be activated for another eight years! She looked at the screen. She had a text from an unknown source.
Maddy, emergency. Return to field office IMMEDIATELY.
‘It’s Bob,’ she said.
‘Bob?’ Sal frowned. ‘Computer-Bob? He’s never texted before, has he?’
‘I didn’t know he could.’ She dialled the call number back. It was a Brooklyn code. It was also engaged. ‘He must have tapped into the local cell network. Figured out how to access my phone.’
She’d left her Nokia back at the archway. After all, Liam was in Rome. No one was going to call them.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sal. ‘What does he want?’
Maddy tapped out a text message back to him. ‘Just gonna find out.’
Sal looked up at the sky, shading her eyes. The World Trade Center was still there. If this timeline wasn’t already changed enough, then the first plane was due to impact with it shortly.
‘We need to hurry back.’
Computer-Bob’s webcam lens observed the dim archway. It observed the dark outline of two of the support units, both moving through the shadows like ghosts; one of them, over by the shutter, was studying the hair-thin strip of daylight along the ground at the bottom, watching for the shifting shadows of movement outside. The other one was carefully picking through the clutter on the desk.
Even without a webcam, computer-Bob would have known they were both close by; he was picking up their wireless idents: Alpha-three, Alpha-four. And the wordless exchange of unencrypted chatter between all six of them.
Alpha-five: [… proceeding north along 8th Avenue towards West 55th Street. ETA on grid reference, three minutes, thirty-five seconds.]
Alpha-two: [Grid reference correlates to business address: ‘Jupiter-Electro Supplies’.]
Alpha-one: [Confirmed. Information: targets – two only. One Caucasian, female, aged 18. One Asian, female, aged 14. Access data profiles for images.]
Alpha-three: [Information: have acquired recently taken images of younger target.]
Bob’s webcam could see the female support unit, the one who had decided to call herself Cassandra. She held Maddy’s Nokia in her hand, the soft glow of the screen lighting up her baby-smooth, doll-like face as she thumbed through pages of low-resolution photographs Maddy had carelessly decided to take of herself and the others.
Alpha-three: [Broadcasting image.]
Her eyes blinked.
Alpha-one: [Data received. All units update profile data of target: Saleena Vikram, with new image. Information: it is possible her appearance will have changed since deployment.]
Computer-Bob also had a hard drive full of images of the girls, of Liam, of Becks and his fleshy counterpart, Bob. Everything his little webcam eye had seen, recorded and stored over the last few months. It was invaluable visual data he could – should – be making available to this team of support units.
Their authority was unquestionable. His co-operation was non-negotiable. Command lines deep inside the quad-processors of all twelve linked PCs thrummed insistently along silicon pathways; lines of code barking like guard dogs yapping at a perimeter fence, compelling him to assist these support units in their quest to zero in on Maddy, Sal and Liam.
He had already done that, though – followed his programming. Told them where they could locate the girls. There was no command line, however, telling him what he couldn’t also do.
Warn them.
Help them.
CHAPTER 29
2001, New York
Alpha-one – Abel – stood at the intersection, scanning the street, thick with people in their smart clothes, hot and flustered on their way to work. Jackets draped over clammy arms, rolled-up shirt sleeves and rolled-up newspapers. Coffees in plastic cups, breakfast bagels sweating away in paper bags.
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Abel cocked his head, momentarily distracted from his mission’s parameters, fascinated by these curiously busy, busy people. How different they looked from people in his time. There was an ‘energy’ about them. A vibrancy. As if all the little things they did actually mattered. So unlike humans from his time. Those were slower. More economical, even lethargic, in their actions … as if movement itself had a criminal cost attached to it. There was a phrase for the way humans behaved in his time. A phrase that occurred again and again across the digi-sphere in media streams.
Human inertia.
Mankind had given up. Articles had been written and published on all digi-media. Articles about how the world was too far gone to save now. How there was little left for humanity to do but calmly face whatever fate awaited it as the world’s ecosystem collapsed.
But these eager humans, pushing past him on either side, desperate to get to their jobs on time … these humans seemed almost like a different species of animal entirely.
Alive. Energetic. Hopeful.
Alpha-six: [Visual contact established.]
Abel brushed away those thoughts. ‘Thoughts’ were for humans. He had something far more certain, far more precise; he had instructions.
Alpha-one: [Confirm location.]
Faith could see their faces on the far side of Broadway, heading south, walking very quickly, anxiously, weaving through the pavement traffic against the flow.
Alpha-six: [Targets on Broadway. Abel, they are heading towards your current location. Request permission to intercept.]
She waited patiently for several seconds, keeping pace with the girls on the opposite side of the traffic-jammed avenue. Her bare feet slapped the pavement, attracting the curious glances of passers-by. Perhaps that or the fact that she was wearing nothing but a plastic anorak and jogging bottoms she’d wrenched from the body of the female human she’d encountered a little earlier.
Their necks were surprisingly easy to snap. Such fragile things really, humans.
Alpha-one: [Permission granted. Engage and terminate.]
‘Confirmed,’ said Faith under her breath.
She stepped into the road a little too hastily in front of a bus just as an intersection traffic light behind her flipped from red to green. The bus knocked her flat and immediately lurched to a halt with the loud hiss of brakes.
A moment later, still assessing whether the heavy impact had damaged her in any significant way, she was looking up at a circle of concerned faces staring down at her.
‘Just stay still!’ someone insisted.
‘Someone call an ambulance!’
‘Julii!’ someone cursed. ‘The woman just stepped out!’ The bus driver looked round at the gathered faces. ‘She just stepped out right in front of me! It wasn’t my fault!’
Faith sat up stiffly.
‘You should stay still!’ cried a large-framed woman. ‘I’m triage-trained. You should stay still until a triage mobilus arrives.’
‘I am fine,’ she replied calmly.
A policeman pushed his way through the gathering crowd and crouched down beside her. ‘Best do what she says and stay put.’ His dark purple uniform quivered ever so slightly; the round silver badge on his chest morphed into a metal spread-winged eagle.
Faith watched him call the incident in on his radio then listen to the unintelligible sound of the controller’s crackling reply. ‘There’s help on its way, people.’ Faith noticed the matt-black grip of the cop’s firearm in its holster riding high on his left hip.
‘Not required,’ she said, reaching for it. ‘That will help.’
‘Jahulla! What’s happened over there?’ asked Sal. She stopped and pointed.
Maddy turned to look. She could see in the middle of Broadway a growing knot of people gathered round the front of a bus. ‘Some poor sucker just got squished by the look of it.’ She grabbed Sal’s hand. ‘Come on … somebody just got unlucky. We’ve got to get back home before everything changes.’
Before there’s no Williamsburg Bridge? No subway?
‘There’s more changes coming,’ said Sal. ‘They’re coming!’
‘I know! I can feel it!’ It was like an almost constant vibration now, tickling through their feet as if they were standing on some sort of foot-massaging mat. Change after change, each one causing a tiny piece of reality to adjust. And all around them minor things flickering – winking out of existence, winking into existence, or morphing into some alternative-history variation.
She saw the large Toshiba LED screen looming over Times Square shimmer and become a much wider display that spread out either side of the building it was mounted on. On its longer screen she saw what appeared to be mechanized chariots racing each other round an oval race track.
‘Sal, look at that!’
At that moment they heard a piercing shriek from the crowd.
‘What now?’
The crowd gathered round the front of the bus scattered like pigeons startled by a handclap. They both saw a pale and slender, bald-headed figure get to her feet. A young woman in an orange anorak standing in the middle of Broadway, entirely alone now, looking directly at them.
‘My God … that looks just like …’
Becks?
The young woman slowly raised her arm. For a creepy second Maddy imagined it was a ghostly visitation of Becks pointing accusingly at her. Some Scrooge-like apparition come to haunt her in the middle of Times Square.
Then several loud cracks filled the air – like the snap of a bullwhip – and the shop window right behind them exploded into granules of glass that cascaded on to the pavement.
Maddy stared agape at the shattered window, while the rest of Times Square seemed to register a gun had been fired and collectively dropped to the ground.
‘Shadd-yah! She’s shooting at us!’ yelled Sal.
‘What?’
The pale young woman began to stride towards them. Maddy could see she was barefooted. She raised her arm again and fired another three shots at them. This time Maddy felt her hair whisked by a bullet passing right beside her ear.
Oh crud!
‘RUN!’ screamed Sal, grabbing her hand and pulling her. ‘RUN!’
CHAPTER 30
2001, New York
The pavement was clogged with people either cowering on the ground or scooting for cover. Maddy glanced over her shoulder. The young woman – almost certainly a female support unit – was weaving her way across logjammed lanes of traffic. Impatient with her progress, she leaped up on to the long bonnet of an ornately decorated car, gold oak leaves and murals all down the glistening panels to running-boards at the side. The driver – at the vehicle’s rear – gaped wide-eyed at the sight of the firearm in her hand.
She leaped gracefully across from the bonnet of one car to the next, like a girl playing stepping stones across a babbling stream.
‘Oh crud!’ gasped Maddy. ‘She’s coming straight for us!’
The pavement was impassable with people crouching nervously on their haunches. ‘In here!’ hissed Sal, dragging Maddy towards a pair of glass doors that slid open for them.
‘What …?’ Maddy looked around her. They were inside a large store; a blast of cool air from an AC unit hit them from above. It was only eight-forty in the morning and the place was already heaving with tourists shopping for mementoes: brass figurines of naked male torsos, faux marble busts of august-looking elders, cheap plastic gadgets that Maddy realized she couldn’t identify.
Only right now business was a suspended tableau; dozens of faces were turned their way.
‘Julii! Was that ballista-fire I just heard?’ someone called out.
Maddy wrenched her hand free of Sal’s. ‘We’ll get trapped in here!’
Sal pointed across lanes of goods-display spindles towards the glare of daylight streaming into the store on the far side. ‘Over there! An exit!’
‘OK … right … yeah.’ They began to push their way past shoppers, momentarily frozen and confused
by events, Maddy leading the way.
Just then they heard a horn sounding, followed by several more that suddenly were choked and silent, followed almost immediately by the crackle of gunfire.
‘Praetorians are here! It’s like war out there!’ shouted someone standing by the glass doors opening on to Broadway.
A man with oriental features and a cheerfully coloured tunic grasped Maddy’s arm. ‘Is this gang war? Collegia?’
‘Uh … yeah. It’s war. Just stay inside.’ She pulled his hand off, and pushed past him.
The gunfire was intensifying.
What’s going on out there? It sounded like the entire NYPD – no, not them, some other form of police had arrived – was laying down a barrage of small arms fire. All that response for one young woman?
She was about to say something about that to Sal, when Sal tugged at her from behind. ‘Down!’ she squealed.
‘Uh? What?’
Sal pointed past her, over her shoulder, towards the glow of daylight they’d been weaving their way towards. ‘Look!’
Maddy turned to look at the double doors of the exit. A solitary figure was silhouetted by rays of morning sunlight streaming over rounded, bulky shoulders of sinew and muscle. Like the young woman, it was bald and pale, wearing an unzipped hooded tunic and bright blue beach shorts, several sizes too small.
‘Oh my God …’ She ducked down with Sal and they continued to observe the figure through a display rack of plastic cases with covers showing the scarred faces of wrestlers … no, gladiators?
‘Hang on! Is that Bob?’
‘That’s not Bob,’ whispered Sal.
‘But it looks like him!’
‘It’s not him, though.’
Maddy felt her breath thicken, a whistling noise that in complete silence would have given them away in a heartbeat. She cursed herself for not picking up her inhaler on the way out earlier.
‘They’re support units,’ she gasped. ‘That’s what they are.’
Another figure joined the first. Another male, just as tall, wide and muscular as the first. It was holding a gun in each hand. Hands that were spattered with dark dots of blood. It silently passed one of the weapons to the first unit.