Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

Maddy looked at it now. It would suit their immediate needs. It still had a live power feed that they could tap into. The local electricity company apparently hadn’t bothered to disconnect and mothball the junction box. Instead, it had obviously been cheaper just putting up some hazard signs with risk disclaimers all over them.

The town itself also had a pretty decent hardware store they could use, and they’d passed a big retail park a dozen miles back along Interstate 70. Maddy had spotted a CompUSA, a Best Buy and of course the obligatory mega-sized Walmart.

She looked up at a grey sky. Over halfway into the month, September’s late-summer promise was fading already, and tumbling autumn clouds vied with each other to be the first to drop their load on Green Acres Elementary.

‘Let’s get our stuff inside,’ she said.

Half an hour later, they’d emptied the SuperChief of all the things that had once made the archway in Brooklyn their home. And now ‘home’, or at least their temporary home, was a classroom with mouse or maybe it was rat droppings on a scuffed linoleum chequered floor and school desks and bucket chairs stacked along a cork-board wall still decorated with curling pieces of paper. Thumb-tacked pictures drawn in crayon and felt tip. Childish scrawlings that spoke of happier times here. Blue skies and suns. Mom-an’-Dad-an’-Me pictures with tents and barbecues, summer fairs and parades.

Outside it was finally raining. The tapping of heavy, greasy drops on smeared windowpanes and somewhere inside the school building they could hear an echoing drip-drip-drip where a part of the roof was failing.

Maddy offered them her best morale-boosting cheerleader’s smile. ‘It’ll be a bit comfier once we get ourselves sorted out. I promise.’

Liam remembered the moment he’d first awoken in the archway — a dark place. All damp bricks and crumbling mortar. And yes, just like now, the tap-tap-tapping of dripping water from somewhere out in the darkness. He’d thought it a horrible place to wake up. For a moment even wondered if it might be an odd version of Heaven. In which case he’d vowed to have a word with the first priest he came across.

If truth be told, his first impression of the archway hadn’t been that great. It had appeared to be every bit as grim and unwelcoming as this place. But they’d made it a home.

‘Aye, we’ll get some bits and pieces in here to make it nice.’

‘That’s right.’ Maddy stepped across the classroom and reached tentatively for a light switch. She grimaced as she flipped it, half expecting failing wiring and the progressive corrosion of damp to collude in electrocuting her. Instead, several frosted glass panels in the classroom’s low ceiling flickered and winked to life.

‘See? We got some power! So, we’ll go get a kettle, a heater, camping stove. We’ll be living like kings before you know it.’

Sal nodded. ‘Just as good as the old archway.’ Taking Maddy’s lead, she smiled. Slightly forced. ‘And at least we don’t have to listen to the trains running overhead all the time.’

Actually, Liam had found that regular faint rumble comforting. Stepping outside into that dark, rubbish-strewn alleyway and listening to the restless noises of Brooklyn had been a somewhat reassuring thing. A sign that life was ceaselessly going on all around them.

Here in this abandoned school, they could just as easily be the last people on Earth and not know for sure one way or the other until they drove into town. And even then, given how lifeless Harcourt had looked on their way in, they’d not be certain.

‘Come on, guys!’ said Maddy. ‘We’ve got a ton of work to do if the agency’s going to be up and running again.’

‘Aye,’ Liam shrugged. ‘Under new management, so it is.’

Maddy grinned. This time not her forced make-the-troops-happy smile. This time a genuine grin of excitement. ‘Yes! Exactly what you just said, Liam. We’re Under New Management. Us! How cool’s that?’

‘We’re really going to change the world?’ asked Sal.

‘Yup…’ Maddy wiped dusty hands on the front of her jeans. ‘Now doesn’t that sound like a better job description? To make the world a better place, rather than just keeping it the same ol’ same crud? Huh?’

Rashim squatted down beside SpongeBubba, amid the plastic bags they’d carried in. ‘A better world?’ he muttered to himself. He was already checking through the more delicate parts of the displacement machine’s components. He held a circuit up in front of the lab robot. It dutifully extended a sensitive graphene-tipped sensor and began to test the integrity of the board.

Rashim looked up at the others. ‘Anything that isn’t the world I left behind works just fine for me.’

Sal gave that a moment’s thought. ‘Making a better world does sound good.’

‘Aye,’ Liam grinned. ‘Aye, it does, so.’

‘Then let’s make busy,’ said Maddy. ‘Highest-priority tasks first, ladies and gents. I need a coffee.’

26 September 2001, Green Acres Elementary School, Harcourt, Ohio

We’ve been so busy I haven’t really had time to think about things that much. Which is nice. It’s such a crazy pinchudda thing — last night I realized I was missing my parents and I nearly started crying when I reminded myself they never existed! Or, if they did, they were some other girl’s mamaji and papaji!

Then I reminded myself I’m not even Indian. Then I reminded myself I’m not even human. So, as you can imagine, this is really messing with my head.

That’s why I’m glad we’ve been so busy.

A few days ago we got a load of things from a big camping store: sleeping bags, a stove and gas, kettle, lights, torches, food. All the comforts! So it’s been nice. Like a camping trip. We even made a small fire in the middle of the floor and cooked toast and sausages and stuff. SpongeBubba and Rashim were like a pair of excitable little children! Never done campfire food before. But then have I? Even if I remembered doing that… it would be someone else’s memory, wouldn’t it? Or some made-up memories concocted by some techie somewhere.

Today we need to go back to that big retail park outside of Harcourt and get some more things. Some computers and cables and stuff. Me and Bob and Becks are getting those things.

Oh yeah, Maddy also spotted an Internet cafe last time we came. Said she wants to do some research on where we’re going to set up our permanent new home…

Maddy winced and stuck her tongue out.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Liam.

‘The coffee’s frikkin’ disgusting.’

‘Mine’s all right,’ Rashim shrugged.

‘Yeah, but you’re used to drinking some sort of soya-gunk substitute.’ Maddy put the cardboard cup down on the small table beside their Internet cubicle. The three of them were huddled together suspiciously between the cubicle partitions like three truant teenagers messing about on Facebook.

‘That cack’s all yours if you want any more of it, Rashim.’ She turned back to the computer monitor in front of them. She had Wikipedia up on the screen. ‘So… I guess we should go as far back in time from now as we can get,’ said Maddy. ‘Put down as much distance as we can between us and 2001.’

‘What about going forward in time?’ asked Liam.

She shook her head. ‘We go forward, and it gets increasingly difficult to remain off the radar.’

‘Off the…?’

‘To stay hidden. There’ll be more Internet, more connectivity, more information. Bound to be. I just think we’ve got a much better chance of remaining anonymous if we aim backwards.’

Liam sipped at his coffee. Her explanation made sense to him. It was hard enough getting his head around this time, without going further into an unfathomable future. ‘And I suppose we really have to pick another time? And not stay in this one?’