Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

‘It may be possible that the tachyon beacons can be adapted to return a signal to our field office,’ said Bob.

If they turn up. And frankly Sal was pretty sure today was going to pass by without incident, the four of them listening to this old loon muttering, ‘ Tomorrow will be the day… of course it is… I remember now!’

And the next day. And the next.

‘I don’t want to be stuck here,’ she said.

‘I know,’ sighed Maddy. ‘None of us do.’

‘It is coming soon,’ said Rashim. ‘I promise. Yes!’ His rheumy old eyes took in the wild meadow. ‘This is the place… for certain, yes.’ A long slender finger pointed out at the swaying grass. ‘Right there… me. That’s the spot I arrive.’

Sal nodded, less than convinced. She wanted to say, ‘Yeah. But what if you’re a whole year out? Huh? What then, Mr Genius?’ But she didn’t. It wasn’t going to help any. The mood was already pretty sombre out here. The other two, particularly Liam, seemed unusually quiet and distracted. Normally they could count on him to fuel them all with a generous helping of unrealistic optimism. And if not that, to say something pretty stupid and make them laugh.

‘Maybe I’ll go and get us some more water,’ she said.

No one answered. ‘Liam? You thirsty?’

He seemed to be a million miles away.

‘Maddy?’

She stirred as if she’d been poked. ‘Uh?’

‘Water? You want some?’

‘Uh… er, yeah. OK, yes, that would be good.’ She looked across and smiled. ‘Be careful, ’kay? Remember to keep out of sight. Those scouts are out there.’

They’d seen a few more yesterday, in pairs, careering along distant tracks and roads, almost certainly looking for them.

Sal picked their cracked jug up, got to her feet and turned to head down the slope, through the trees to the babbling brook at the bottom of the hill. She decided she might just sit with her feet in the cool water for a while. And there were several fig trees down there. She could pick a few and bring them back for lunch. That might cheer this miserable lot up.

‘Be back in a bit,’ she said. Not that anyone seemed to hear her.

Sal ducked beneath the low branches, picking her way slowly downhill past the humps of tree roots that surfaced from the hard clay soil like the backs of writhing sea serpents.

‘Wait, Saleena!’ A deep voice.

She turned to see Bob crouching under the low, thorny branches to join her. ‘Maddy sent me to watch you,’ he said as he ducked past her and pushed his way through undergrowth and low pine needle branches.

‘Oh, so I’m not the invisible girl today, then?’

Bob looked back at her. Puzzled. ‘No. I see you quite clearly.’

She joined him. ‘Bob, can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m scared of those things… those other support units. Why — ’ she stepped over a gnarled root — ‘why were they trying to kill us?’

‘I have no information on their mission, Saleena.’

‘You saw one of them, though, right? They looked exactly like you. Did they come from the same place as you? Are they like brothers and sisters or something?’

He stepped ahead and pushed the branches of a thick bush aside for her. She could see the glint of the stream below, a thread of silver curling its way through weather-worn boulders of flint and sandstone.

‘The unit I saw appeared to be almost identical. Most likely from the same foetus batch. I registered his AI ident only briefly. His software was only one iteration newer than mine. Inception date 2057.’

‘Hold on.’ She run-stepped the last few yards down a steep bank and stopped herself against one of the boulders, blistering hot to the touch. ‘Hold on,’ she said again, ‘you make it sound like the same people… the same company made you.’

Bob scuttled down, keeping an ungainly balance. ‘Correct. The unit I encountered was also manufactured by W.G. Systems.’

‘Who are they? W.G. Systems? They like a weapons manufacturer or something?’

Bob settled down on the hot stones beside the stream. ‘I will fill your jug if you like.’

She handed it to him. ‘Thanks.’

‘They are one of the largest profitable organizations at the time of my inception. I have only common-source market information on them.’

‘Well, that’ll do.’

‘The company was founded in 2048 by Roald Waldstein. The same year — ’

‘You mean the time travel inventor?’

‘Correct. He filed a number of technology patents in the same year. In the space of less than six years, he becomes the third richest man in the world.’

‘And he’s the one that set us TimeRiders up, right?’

Bob shrugged. ‘That is not information I have. I have, however, heard Maddy make that speculation.’

‘Is she right, do you think?’

‘This is possible. Waldstein campaigns against time travel. Waldstein also has access to the resources and technology to have set up this agency.’

‘But you’re saying it’s also Waldstein’s clones that were trying to kill us?’

‘Affirmative.’

She settled down beside him, letting her feet drift in the cool water. ‘So…’ She frowned. ‘Does that mean he wants us dead now? Why? If he went to all the trouble of recruiting me, Maddy and Liam… huh?’

‘I do not have that information. It is possible they were units that were acquired and programmed by some other organization.’

That made more sense to her. ‘I thought we were top secret, though. That no one else knows about us?’

‘It is possible, Saleena, that you are no longer a secret agency. Remember, Liam mentioned that man Locke?’

‘The Templar Knight?’

‘Correct. If he is to be believed, there are people who are aware of the existence of this agency. Whether they actually know for cert-’

She looked up at him, momentarily frozen. ‘Bob? Are you getting a

…?’

‘Particles. Yes.’ He returned her gaze. ‘It appears that Rashim was correct. Today is the day.’

AD 54, outside Rome

Maddy and Liam watched the young man in silent dismay. Long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, sunglasses, a checked shirt and jeans. She turned round to see Rashim, staring out, wide-eyed and trembling.

‘My God! That’s you?’

He nodded, his fingers absently probing the sunken contours of his old face.

‘But he’s so young!’ whispered Liam.

‘Yeah,’ said Maddy, ‘he… he looks, like, twenty-something?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ said Rashim wistfully. ‘Twenty-seven.’

It didn’t make sense to Maddy. Rashim said the Exodus group had overshot by seventeen years; that he’d been stuck here for just seventeen years. That made him just forty-four? She turned and studied his feeble frame again. Not old age, that wasn’t why he looked like this… but abuse, malnutrition. Borderline starvation… and the sheer terror of being Caligula’s caged pet.

‘What’s that yellow thing?’ whispered Liam.

She saw something about a yard high, box-like, waddling through the tall grass behind the young man as he paced across the field, several metal rods under his arm.

‘It looks like…’ She giggled a little manically. ‘No, surely…’

‘What?’

Am Ilosing my freakin’ mind? Is that what’s happening?

‘Maddy? You all right there?’

‘Liam, it looks like…’ She shook her head. ‘It looks exactly like a stupid cartoon character I used to watch on cable.’

The old man’s face split with a nostalgic gummy smile. ‘ SpongeBubba! ’ he crooned softly. ‘My little SpongeBubba!’

They watched as the young Rashim stopped pacing across the field, pulled one of the iron rods out from under his arm and rammed it into the hard-baked earth. He squatted down beside it, as the SpongeBob-like robot joined him. She saw him talking to it, listening as its goofy plastic mouth flexed an answer, and then fiddling with something on the rod — a touch-screen or a keypad. The top of the rod began to blink green, like a navigation light.