Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘But wouldn’t you want to have someone X-ray your head? Take a look inside to see if there’s a chip or something inside?’

‘Not really. Whatever’s in me head, machine or meat, it works just fine.’

She sniffed. ‘Except it’s fake.’

‘Ah well now… who’s to say anybody’s memories are for real? Hmm?’ He chuckled. A plume of breath erupted from his mouth. ‘You know, perhaps the whole world, the whole universe, is just a big pretend — someone’s idea of a funny joke. Huh?’

‘Difference is… we know our lives are a funny joke, Liam.’

‘You can never know anything for sure, Sal. In the end, it’s all a question of what you choose to believe.’ He watched a cloud of his breath drift away — turning, twisting, dissipating in the cold afternoon air.

‘Thing is… I choose to be Liam. I like him.’ He smiled at her. ‘I like being him. And maybe he was once a real lad who lived in Cork and I’m just borrowing his memories, or maybe he’s just a made-up person put together from bits and pieces. Who cares?’

‘But that’s no better than…’ She struggled to think of an example. ‘That’s no better than a child pretending to be Superman. No better than all those people who believe in God. Or Jehovah. Or Allah, or Vishnu, or — ’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘But it works for me.’

She sighed. ‘I can’t do it, Liam,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I can pretend I’m who I thought I was. All I’ve got that’s real is the time in the archway. You. Maddy.’

He pointed at what was clasped in her hands. ‘Is that why you’ve got that with you all the time?’

Sal looked down at the notebook — her diary — and nodded. ‘That’s me, Liam.’ A solitary tear dripped on to the scuffed black cover. She wiped it off irritably. ‘That’s all there is left of me. Ink and paper.’

A crow cawed from the bare branches beyond the chain-link fence surrounding the playground. The solitary, ominous noise of approaching winter.

‘Sal?’ He reached out and squeezed her gloved hand. ‘Don’t do this, Sal. Eh? Don’t drift off and away from me an’ Maddy. We need you, so we do. The three of us need to hold fast together. To stay a proper team.’

‘Need me? What do I do? Nothing.’

‘You will do. When we’re set up again in London, we’ll need you watching for them little changes. Up in the centre of the city, Piccadilly Circus maybe, watching for the time waves.’

She gave that a moment’s thought. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps there was a purpose for her still. She wiped her nose and sniffed noisily. Then sniggered.

Liam smiled. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, go on. What’s so funny?’

‘Something you said.’

‘I said something funny?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing.’ Her face brightened for him. ‘You’re right. We’ve still got a job to do, haven’t we?’

‘Aye. So come in, then, Sal. Before you freeze.’

‘I will. You go. I’ll be along in a minute.’

‘All right. I’m makin’ some hot chocolate. Care for some?’ He cocked a brow. ‘There’ll be a fair chance of some of them nice chocolate biscuits with the cream in the middle.’

‘Oreos.’

‘Aye, those are the fellas.’

‘Sure. Count me in.’

She watched him go, kicking those leaves again on the way back to the double doors of the school gymnasium, blue paint flaking off both and a rusting push-bar on one of them. The door clattered shut behind him.

Something you said, Liam… something funny. Really funny.

‘Perhaps the whole universe is just a big pretend?’ she muttered softly.

No, actually, not that funny after all.

7 October 2001, Washington DC

Faith appraised Agent Cooper. Unlike most humans he appeared to be very task-focused, very driven. One could say binary, almost Boolean, in his mindset. He could almost have passed as one of her short-lived batch of clone brothers and sisters. Except, of course, he wasn’t six foot six inches tall and carrying around eighteen stone of muscle and dense-lattice bone. He was just as frail and vulnerable as any other human being: one of her hands round his neck and a quick twist and he’d be burger meat in a suit. That unfortunate frailty notwithstanding… she’d so far been quite impressed with his performance.

She resumed eating the bowl of Cow amp; Gate baby food.

Cooper in turn was silently appraising her. Perched on the edge of his desk, he grimaced as he watched her spoon the baby food into her mouth. ‘I can’t believe you can chow down that stuff.’

‘It is an optimal formula,’ she replied with her mouth full. ‘Maximum nutrition with a minimum of energy consumed in the process of breaking it down and digesting it.’

She noticed he was looking at her intently. ‘What is it, Agent Cooper?’

‘You’ve, uh… you’ve got a blob of that stuff right there on the end of your nose.’

She remained staring at him — a face that seemed to be wondering why that mattered in any meaningful way.

‘It’s not a good look, Faith.’ He leaned forward, reached out with a finger and deftly flicked it away.

‘ Not a good look,’ she mimicked him. An almost exact copy of his southern Virginian accent. ‘Why?’

‘Why… why? Because you don’t want to look like some sort of day-release outpatient from a nuthouse.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘You’re odd enough without dried baby food plastered all over your face. If you’re going to be working alongside me, we need you to not attract any attention. I’m pretty much exceeding my authority letting you down here as it is.’

Faith finished her food, put down the bowl and carefully wiped round her mouth. ‘I understand.’

Cooper really had stuck his neck out. He’d brought her to The Department a couple of weeks ago. Ushered her past several ID checks, pulling rank on the security personnel. And now here she was down on the mezzanine floor in his domain — the ‘catacombs’ — being kept here like some sort of a pet.

Truth was he didn’t know what to do with her. She couldn’t be left to her own devices roaming around Boston conducting her very own hunt-and-seek mission, murdering who she pleased because she might just consider them ‘a contaminant’ — whatever the heck that was really supposed to mean. And he didn’t want to kill her. She was all he had. She was his only connection to whoever these mysterious time travellers were.

What he had was not very much: an autopsy report on Faith’s dead colleague, and a tiny chunk of fried circuitry pulled from his head that wasn’t anything more now than an interesting fingernail-sized nugget of silicon and graphene.

This creature, this flesh-and-blood robot-woman, was the best piece of evidence he had that he wasn’t going mad; that time travel had been quietly going on right in front of everyone’s nose for God knows how long. For God knows how many decades. Cooper couldn’t even begin to contemplate how valuable the treasure trove of knowledge residing in that digital mind of hers was.

But right now the only investigative process he had on the go was Agent Mallard out there doing the donkey work to track down and confiscate all the CCTV footage that he could lay his hands on. There was the footage from the mall, but also a petrol station, a diner and a motel they’d used the day before. Mallard had already brought back several boxes of tapes, and from those there were some not bad, albeit grainy images of their faces that they’d managed to isolate and enhance.

But that was it. Other than Mallard’s legwork, and hoping for a lead to turn up, he had this unlikely ‘woman’ in front of him.