Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘Wait… hang on a minute!’ cut in Griggs. ‘We said no more direct interactions!’

Waldstein waved a hand to silence him. ‘They need an observer. Joseph?’

Joseph nodded. ‘I can s-splice into her existing memory. We have her life-story file, right up to the recruitment event.’ He scratched his chin. ‘I suppose I can graft in some generalized memories of her living in the archway with the other two. Nothing too s-specific, just the general impression that she’s been living in close proximity to Maddy and Liam for some weeks. It’ll be a little foggy for her.’

‘Foggy?’

‘She’d be a little disorientated. Like she’s experienced a kind of mild amnesia. A gap in her memory, as if she’s experienced a mild trauma, concussion, like a blow to the head. There’ll be minor continuity errors she won’t be able to make sense of, but if we deploy her directly after a field refresh or a corrective time wave she and the others may attribute that foggy memory as some side effect of the realignment of the timeline.’ He shrugged. ‘Since they’re newly recruited, I imagine they’ll buy that explanation from Foster. They’ll trust what he tells them.’

Waldstein nodded. ‘Then we should do that.’ He looked at Joseph, placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be as careful as you can splicing in her memory.’

That didn’t need saying. Sal needed to wake up and find herself returning to the archway, believing nothing more than some time wave must have caught her outside; messed with her head in some small way. If that didn’t work, if she started questioning her reality…? If the team figured out they were a bunch of enhanced support units, meatbots? Then the whole project was over. They’d have to start again from scratch. Delete the old ones and grow a brand-new team. New minds, new memories, new lives.

‘I’ll be very careful, Mr Waldstein. Trust me.’

‘Good.’

Griggs stepped forward and grabbed Waldstein’s arm. ‘Roald… this is really pushing our luck. You know we broadcast our presence every time we open a portal! You know there must be dozens of tachyon-listening stations all over the world. Christ… it was your campaigning that made sure of that. Do you want to be discovered? Do you want that?’

‘It’s an acceptable risk, Frasier.’

‘No, it’s not. This whole project was always too risky. We were supposed to travel only to 2001 to set it up. And that was it. No further trips!’

‘It’s an acceptable risk.’ He looked at Griggs sternly, then lowered his voice. ‘Please, don’t push our friendship, Frasier. This is more important than that. More important than anything.’

‘More important?’ Griggs laughed. ‘What’s all this really about? Eh?’

‘You know as well as I do. Three-dimensional space is as precious as fine bone china. You can’t let time travel — ’

Griggs spat a curse. His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s not what you really care about.’

‘Frasier…’

‘You know what I think this is about? Vengeance. Bitterness. You can’t bring your wife and son back so you — ’

‘ENOUGH!’ Waldstein glared at Griggs. He pulled the man by his arm. ‘You and I need to talk, Frasier. We need to talk right now.’

Joseph watched, dumbstruck by the suddenly charged atmosphere in the room, as both men stepped out of the lab into the small adjoining conference room. The glass door hissed shut behind them and their voices became muted. He saw Griggs’s face darken with anger, and he heard their muffled voices, quiet at first, but then quickly rising in volume and pitch, getting louder and louder.

Then finally that word. Pandora. And… Why, Roald? Why do you want that to happen?

13 September 2001, Interstate 90, Newton, Massachusetts

‘Where did she go?’

Becks looked at him, a growing expression of anxiety on her face. ‘Maddy… said she was going to get some supplies.’

‘Said… she said… so maybe she wasn’t?’

The support unit could only look at Liam plaintively. He grasped her slim arms firmly. Arms that easily could have shrugged off his grasp and twisted his head off his shoulders if she had the notion to do so. ‘Becks! Come on! Where’s she really gone?’

‘She… said — ’

‘She’s gone to her old home, hasn’t she?’

Becks looked conflicted, torn between an instruction to lie and a logical imperative to speak the truth.

Liam cursed. ‘I knew it!’

‘That is an unwise action,’ said Bob. His cool eyes looked around the others gathered in the girls’ motel room. ‘The pursuing support units may also attempt to travel to the same location.’

‘I don’t think we could’ve stopped her,’ said Sal. ‘I think she’s too close to home to not try to see them. She really misses her family.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I know it’s what I’d want to do.’

‘And I miss me own ma and da just as much!’ said Liam. ‘But Bob’s right — that’s a stupid thing she’s gone an’ done! I should have known she’d do this!’

‘What if they’re clever,’ said Rashim. ‘What if they don’t attack her there, but instead follow her back here?’

‘Exactly!’ said Liam. ‘She could lead them right to us all!’

Just then a key clicked and rattled in the motel room’s door. All heads turned as the door opened and daylight stretched across the mottled pattern of the room’s threadbare carpet.

Maddy.

‘Perfect timing!’ said Liam. ‘We were wondering…’ His voice tailed off. She stood in the doorway staring back at all of them. On any other occasion he would have expected her to do a double-take at them all staring wide-mouthed at her and irritably snap ‘ What’s up? ’ But instead she stepped slowly in, kicking the door shut behind her. She sat down on the end of the bed and stared listlessly at the blank glass screen of the TV set, reflecting her own sullen expression back at her.

‘Maddy?’ said Sal. ‘You OK?’

No answer.

Liam could see her eyes were red-raw beneath her glasses. Her cheeks were wet. She was crying. He sat on the bed beside her. ‘Maddy?’

‘She appears to be distressed,’ said Bob.

Liam waved him silent. ‘Maddy? Is everything all right?’ She shook her head silently.

Liam didn’t dare ask the next question. But it needed asking all the same. ‘Maddy? Your family… are they all right? They’re not hurt in any — ?’

‘They’re not my family,’ she muttered.

‘Uh?’

‘Not my family,’ she said again. She turned from her dim reflection in the TV screen. ‘And they never were.’

Liam leaned in closely to her. ‘Maddy? What do you mean? What’s the matter?’

He’d never seen her like this before, not even when things had seemed at their worst, not even that first day when they’d all met in the darkness of the archway, freshly plucked from the very last moments of their lives. This wasn’t normal Maddy: stressed, irritated, annoyed or frustrated. This was a totally alien Maddy Carter: utterly crushed, defeated.

Sal got up off the chair by the door and knelt on the floor in front of her. She could see it in her face too; this was Maddy right at the end of her game. She reached out for her hand and squeezed it. ‘Tell us what happened?’

‘I… I’ve worked it out,’ she said, her voice a mucus-thick whisper.

‘Worked what out?’

She looked at Liam. ‘I’ve worked out who we are.’

‘Who we are?’ He frowned. Confused.

‘Or more to the point,’ she added, ‘I’ve figured out what we are.’

‘What we are?’ Liam turned to the others, then back at Maddy. ‘What in the name of Jesus an’ Mary are you talkin’ about?’