Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

Her eyes snapped open. ‘Negative. I am reprioritizing mission parameters. Just a moment… just a moment…’

A minute passed in silence. Long enough for Cooper to begin wondering whether he needed to prod her again.

‘Information,’ she said finally. ‘While you may be able to assist me, revealing mission objectives to you is a protocol breach. A contamination.’

‘Contamination?’

‘A time contamination: providing information to you that may cause you to behave in a way or perform actions that alter the timeline. This is a basic protocol breach and must be avoided. However…’ Her eyelids stopped fluttering and her gaze settled back on Cooper. ‘There is a greater contamination occurring at the moment which must be prevented.’

‘The people you were after?’

‘Correct. They are not of this time. They must be located immediately and dealt with.’

‘By that, I’m guessing you mean killed?’

‘Affirmative. They have with them the necessary components to facilitate further time displacements and cause even greater contamination. They must be located before they effect a displacement.’

‘Displacement? You mean time travel?’ Cooper felt hairs rising on the back of his neck. ‘My God, you… you’re actually talking about a functioning — ’ he felt ridiculous even voicing the words, but there was no other way of saying it — ‘time machine? Is that what you’re talking about? Is that what they’ve got with them?’

‘The components required to rebuild one, yes.’

Cooper felt a little unsteady. Like Mallard had a moment ago, he rocked back on his heels, settling gently against the cold wall of the cell, grateful for its support.

She played a cold, emotionless facsimile of a smile across her lips. ‘What is your name?’

‘Cooper,’ he answered. ‘Agent Niles Cooper.’

‘Cooper, I am Faith. I believe that we are able to assist each other.’

A deal. She’s proposing a deal.

‘You want us to let you out of here?’

‘Affirmative. I can lead you directly to them. I have data on their likely movements.’

‘And, if you find them, then what?’

‘I will kill them.’

‘What about their — ’ he decided to use her term — ‘ displacement machine?’

‘It must be destroyed.’

‘No, we’d want that intact. I can’t agree to those — ’

‘Negative. Allowing you to possess a fully functioning displacement device is unacceptable. That would be an even greater contamination threat. You will not be permitted that.’

‘Then I’m afraid there’s no deal, Faith.’

Her eyes closed and her eyelids began to flutter. She started to pant and flex again, an unsettling sight like a child sucking in air and preparing to throw an almighty tantrum. But then she stopped. ‘I am able to offer you an alternative, Cooper.’

‘What?’

‘My silicon mind, completely intact.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘The computer in your head? Just like the other one… in your dead friend?’

‘Correct. I will, of course, delete all files associated with time displacement, but you would be left with the computer architecture entirely intact.’

‘Jesus,’ whispered Mallard. ‘That’s a fifty-year jump in computer technology!’

Cooper nodded slowly. ‘Yes… yes, it is.’

‘Do we have an agreement?’ asked Faith.

He tapped his chin again. He could feel those hairs on the back of his neck once more, his scalp prickling.

‘All right. I think we have the basis of an agreement.’

13 September 2001, Interstate 90, Newton, Massachusetts

It was mid-afternoon the next day when the debate in her head finally came to an end and she got up off her bed. Sal was still snoring.

Becks heard her stir, looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. ‘Where are you going, Maddy?’

‘Out,’ she replied softly.

‘Are you going to visit your family?’

No point lying to her. ‘Yes.’

‘The others are worried about you doing this.’

‘I need to go.’

She and Becks had had this conversation before. Back when the archway was a pile of rubble in the bottom of a bomb crater, barely holding itself together. She’d nearly walked out on Becks and the others then. She’d planned to somehow make her way back to Boston in the vain hope of finding an alternate version of her parents, perhaps even a version of herself. It had been a moment of weakness. A moment when she’d been prepared to leave her friends to deal with things on their own.

Maddy doubted Becks had a memory of that particular conversation, of walking out, abandoning her in the archway. At the moment she wasn’t sure what memories Becks had back in that skull of hers. Bob had been filling her mind up with as much as he could over the last couple of days, a slow process over their nearfield wireless link. Whatever memories she had on-board now would be Bob’s, not her’s anyway. Becks’s full mind remained on an external hard drive.

‘Don’t wake Sal. If she does wake and asks where I am… tell her I’ve gone to get some supplies in or something.’

‘Yes, Maddy. Be careful, Maddy,’ she added almost as an afterthought.

Half an hour later she was on a Greyhound bus heading towards Arlington. Maddy realized she’d forgotten how the lines were organized, which ones went where. And yet once upon a time she must have taken them everywhere: to school, back home, into the city to meet friends from high school.

I’m nineteen and I’m already going freakin’ senile. How come I can’t remember which buses I used to take? She wondered whether a new bus service had taken over here, and perhaps that was why none of the numbers or routes made sense to her.

The bus passed a high school and she looked out on a football field; several dozen young men lined up in their tracksuits, donning shoulder pads and helmets, preparing to practise a few set pieces. Some younger boys kicking a soccer ball around on another field. Maddy realized she couldn’t even remember the name of her high school. Not even the name. Nor the names of any of her teachers. Or their faces. God… nor could she even recall any of her friends.

I had some friends, right? At least one friend… surely?

But none came to mind. Not a single one. She felt the first stirring of panic set in.

I really am losing my mind!

She could guess what this was — this was that damned archway field, the time bubble. Those freakin’ particles killing her mind, one brain cell at a time. She’d just now joked about going senile, but maybe that was just it. Sitting in that brick dungeon all these months was gradually, memory by memory, wiping her mind clean.

She was suddenly grateful to be out of there — OK, they were on the run, but at least they were free from the ever-present corrosive effect of that technology. And grateful, so grateful that she still had enough of her mind and memories left intact to at least find her way home.

The Greyhound dropped her off outside a small 7-Eleven store. She smiled. Her mind remembered that all right. The first familiar sight so far, it was the only convenience store around for miles. The rest of this suburb was endless loops of road flanked on either side by well-tended lawns and picket fences, long paved and brown asphalt driveways leading up to grand-looking white-collar homes.

She passed the store, and second on her right Silverdale Crescent. Lined with mature maple trees, their leaves beginning to turn golden for the autumn, not quite ready to fall. She stepped aside for a couple of boys riding their bikes along the pavement, talking to each other about an upcoming game console called the Xbox, that was due to be released this Thanksgiving.