Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

Oh God help me… Opening up that dusty old lab again after all these years, pulling those military-class foetuses out from cold storage, growing them, ‘hatching’ them and briefing them — briefing them to execute his own children — had been one of the hardest, most painful things he’d had to do in his entire life.

He’d sent them back to 2001 little more than an hour ago and he’d just realized something. He was probably never going to know for sure if they’d been successful. Most probably they had. Six lethal killing machines arriving right inside their archway without any warning whatsoever? His poor children wouldn’t have stood a chance. The kill team had instructions to terminate the TimeRiders, destroy every item of equipment in the archway, then terminate themselves.

He should have thought to instruct them to send a final message when they had completed those objectives. Just before they self-terminated… a simple message to let him know the deed was done.

TimeRiders successfully terminated.

But in his panic and haste he hadn’t.

Waldstein looked out of the window as gentle spots of toxic rain began to spatter heavily against the glass. Well… it was almost certainly done and in any case, there wasn’t much time left now for anyone to steer history from its proper course.

‘It’s nearly time.’ He sighed, leaving a small cloud on the glass. In a few months’ time a virus was going to be released by either the Japanese or the North Koreans; no one was ever going to know who. Mankind was going to be almost completely wiped out in the space of a few short weeks.

‘Nearly time.’ His words echoed across an empty boardroom. W.G. Systems was a shell of a business now. A few caretaker staff left, but most had been let go eighteen months ago; there really was no more need for his business empire to be making any more money. Far better his employees spent what little time left with their families and loved ones.

‘It’s nearly time,’ he whispered once more.

I’ve done all that you asked me to do… please, now, let this be enough.