Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘Uh?’

She looked at him. ‘I might just be your sister, Liam.’

‘ What? ’

‘Think about it… we could’ve been grown together as a batch.’ She laughed at her own words. Then curled her lip at a thought. ‘God, I really hope we didn’t share a grow-tube with you. That would be kinda gross.’

‘Charmed.’

They sipped their coffees, blowing clouds of condensation out of their mugs into the chilly morning air.

‘What about you, Liam? You all right?’

‘About being a meat robot?’ He grinned that devil-may-care lopsided smile. She wondered if that stupid smile of his was what kept him sane, made his good nature bulletproof. ‘Aye, I’m not too bothered. So, at least I know now why it is I can cope with all that time travelling and not age so much as a normal person. It makes a bit more sense now.’

She hadn’t told him about the ageing thing. She’d planned to, but never quite got round to it. And yet… it seemed he knew all about that.

‘Don’t look so shocked, Maddy. I’m not completely stupid. I worked out this is how I became Foster. Or I should say, how I become like Foster. I presume Foster was a meat-product like us. Right?’

She nodded.

‘Travelling is ageing me.’ He flicked the tuft of grey hair above his right ear. ‘And I’m not blind. I noticed that.’ He pulled at the skin around his eyes. The faintest of crow’s feet there. ‘And don’t think I didn’t notice this either.’ He cocked his head casually. ‘So? I’m getting a little older. Happens to all of us eventually, doesn’t it?’

She could have kissed him for being so resolutely… Liam. So brave.

So strong. So flippant.

‘You know, Mads, I was thinking about this last night. I presume I must be older now. You know? Physically? No longer just a sixteen-year-old slice of a lad, eh?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Older than you, Mads?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible. I guess so. What’s your point?’

He grinned. ‘Well now, if I’m the oldest, does that not mean that makes me the boss around here, then?’

She snorted coffee from her nose. There was laughter somewhere in that. ‘In your freakin’ dreams, Mr O’Connor.’

2069, W.G. Systems Research Campus, Pinedale, Wyoming

Roald Waldstein stared out of the broad panoramic window of his boardroom. The lemon-tinted sky over the steep slopes promised another downpour of acid rain, further stripping the last vestiges of green from the dying Douglas firs and the hilly landscape.

His forehead pressed against the plate glass, his hands leaving fingerprint smudges. He felt emotionally void. Utterly spent. The last three days of his life had been spent in a desperate panic to get those embryos speed-grown and ready. He was far too old for this damned level of stress. He’d begun to hope it was all long behind him. That his project, the agency, was something he could forget about.

Fourteen years ago.

Fourteen years ago almost to this day it happened. Almost an anniversary. The day Joseph Olivera had turned on him and demanded to know what Pandora was all about.

Back then Waldstein had begun to look on the young man almost as a son. A son to replace his boy Gabriel. (So long ago now that he’d lost little Gabriel and his wife Eleanor. A simple vehicle accident. If his wife had done just one of a thousand inconsequential little things differently that morning, she and Gabriel would still be alive and with him today.) But Olivera had pushed and pushed and pushed, asking questions Waldstein couldn’t possibly answer and then coming to his own paranoid conclusions all by himself.

He’d never had Frasier Griggs killed. The poor man had simply been desperately unlucky. Took the wrong route home one night. But Joseph had been convinced, hadn’t he? And he wanted to know… wanted to know why Waldstein needed to steer history this way.

Why? Why do you want mankind to destroy itself, Mr Waldstein?

If only he could tell the poor young man. But Olivera had gone and panicked. Olivera had garbled something about Griggs being killed because he’d found out too much.

That day back in 2055, poor young Joseph Olivera had convinced himself that Waldstein was going to have him killed. Nothing could have been further from his mind. He wanted Joseph out of that lab, away from the instrumentation panels before he did anything stupid. But Joseph had panicked and hurled himself into an open portal without any preparation, without any density checks. Nothing. God knows what horror happened to him.

Waldstein had cried for him that day.

And then there was the alarming event a few days later. A group of anti-time-travel activists managed to break into a project being secretly developed by the Russians: activists who hero-worshipped Waldstein, regarded him with his anti-time-travel message as some sort of a prophet. It turned out the Russian time-displacement project was a one-way-only technology with a severely limited range. But it was enough for the activists to send a lone assassin back to 2015 in an attempt to kill a young Chinese-American boy called Edward Chan. The young man who would soon write a thesis that would change the world. A thesis Waldstein would read as a young man himself. And there it would be: how time travel could actually be possible.

The assassination attempt was successful and Waldstein had watched from within the safety of his lab’s protection field as the ensuing time wave changed everything outside.

That was the final straw. Too much to handle. Too much stress. He’d beamed a warning back to the 2001 team. But that was it — the last thing he wanted to do with this. That day, fourteen years ago, was the day he decided to finally close the doors on his special little project. To mothball it. Put locks on it and walk away. The agency was back there in 2001. They now had everything they needed to function — and that was always his intention anyway. For them to be self-sufficient: entirely on their own and working to preserve this timeline.

They certainly didn’t need a heartbroken old man like him keeping tabs on them.

He’d closed those doors and locked them with a few final solemn words.

I’m sorry… you’re on your own now.

Fourteen years ago.

And, since then, most days he thought of them: those three hand-crafted genetic products, so carefully designed for their roles. Liam with his robust, quick-witted mind. Sal with her enhanced visual acuity. Maddy with a mind designed for data sifting. In a way, they’d almost been like his own children. Like two daughters and a son. They were back there, all on their own with an older copy of the boy as the closest thing to a mentor for them. If they could just hold things together, prevent anyone else unseating this timeline for just a little longer, just until 2070… then it would all have been worthwhile. Job done.

Mission accomplished.

Waldstein had even begun to believe it was all working out. There’d even been days when he hadn’t bothered to routinely check that tatty, yellowing page of newspaper with the personal ads on it. All, it seemed, was fine, going to plan. They were back there doing their job… and mankind was counting down its last few months and years until Pandora happened. Before they wiped themselves out.

Then all of this exhausting stress. Three days ago, out of the blue, that message from the Maddy Carter unit demanding to know all about Pandora. Demanding… and threatening.

His three ‘children’ were rebelling against their father. Like Joseph Olivera, demanding to know what Pandora was and threatening to come off-mission if no satisfactory answer was returned. With that brief message, they’d switched from being part of his plan to being a very big problem.