Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

From behind she heard the careful placing of approaching feet. She turned to see Bob and Sal quietly creeping forward under the low branches of the bush to join them.

‘Who’s that?’ hissed Sal.

‘Him.’ Liam nodded at the quivering older Rashim.

‘And SpongeBob SquarePants,’ added Maddy, not quite believing she was saying that.

‘So what do we do, Maddy?’ asked Liam.

‘I guess one of us has to go out there and talk to him. Let’s try not to totally freak him out, though. We don’t want him to run away.’ She looked at the others. Rashim looked like a wild, completely insane hermit. Bob, thoroughly intimidating, still spattered with dots of dried blood. And Liam and Sal were looking at her expectantly.

‘I guess it’s me, then.’

Rashim squatted down in front of the second translation array marker and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. He was torn between getting this job done quickly, getting the hell back home to the twenty-first century… and taking the time to breathe in this clean air, to savour that rich blue sky untainted by pollutants. To take a moment and really drink in the sensation of actually existing in history; actually standing on a hilltop in Italy

… a mere fifty-four years after the birth of Christ!

He was entirely alone out here. His decision. The less mass to transmit, the higher the safety margin. It was just him and his lab unit. A five-minute errand into ancient history to deploy and test the translation array markers. That’s all.

He kept looking anxiously over his shoulder, for some reason half expecting an entire Roman legion to descend on him at any moment with horns blaring. Silly really, he noted, the cliches one associates with well-branded history.

‘Give me the reference sequence again, will you? I need to check it offsets correctly.’

‘Righto, skippa!’ SpongeBubba said enthusiastically. ‘The sequence is… are you ready, Rashim?’

‘I’m ready. Fire away.’

‘Nine. Zero. Seven. Two. Two. Three.’

Rashim tapped those into the rod’s touch-screen. ‘Go on.’

‘Two. Nine. Seven…’

A pause. He looked at his lab unit. ‘Yeah, I’m waiting… go on.’

‘Uhhh… Rashim?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s a person coming towards us.’

‘Uh?’ Rashim stood up and saw a young woman in a burgundy-coloured tunic and with a mane of frizzy strawberry-blonde hair striding through the grass towards them. He cursed under his breath. They’d checked this hilltop hundreds of times over for passing density shifts. Apart from signals that might be the occasional bird, or a passing goat… no one came here. Ever. Until now apparently.

Dammit.

He’d learned a smattering of Latin — a requirement for all the Exodus candidates. He quickly removed his sunglasses before she got too close, wincing at the brightness of the day. The clothes and his bright-yellow lab unit he couldn’t do anything about. As she drew up in front of him, he offered the young woman his most charming smile.

‘Uh… Salve.’ He was pretty sure he’d just mangled up the pronunciation right there.

And then, rather belatedly, he realized she was wearing glasses. ‘Hey,’ she replied with a casual wave. ‘How’s it going… Dr Rashim Anwar?’

Rashim’s jaw swung open and hung there uselessly.

She offered him a hand. ‘Yup, I speak English. And yup, I know precisely who you are. My name’s Maddy by the way… pleased to meet you.’

‘How… how… who…?’

‘I know. You’ve got a lot of questions.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t worry — I know exactly what that’s like.’

He stared at her outstretched hand.

‘I know all about Project Exodus, Dr Anwar. So look, I’ll cut to the chase. I work for some people. We’re… well, you won’t have heard of us, but our job is preventing foolish things like this from happening.’

Rashim’s mouth finally closed. ‘You… you’re from thatagency, aren’t you?’

She frowned. ‘ That agency?’

‘The freelancers! Rumours! Jesus! I’ve heard rumours. Not sure I ever believed them! But — ’

‘Rumours?’

‘Yeah… about the agency. The agency. They say that billionaire nutcase Waldstein’s involved in some way. Is… is it for real?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘I can’t say exactly who I — ’

‘My God, it is! Isn’t it?’ Rashim didn’t know whether to be begging for an autograph from her, or running for his very life. International law on time travel was unforgiving. And very final.

‘Jesus! I thought it was just us, you know? Just us with a viable time-translation system!’ He laughed nervously. ‘But how the hell…? I mean we’ve had trillions of defence budget dollars, trillions, thrown at this and we’ve only just managed to get the system reliable enough to risk human translations!’

She lowered her hand. ‘Look. We really need to talk with you. Project Exodus is going to fail badly, Dr Anwar. I’ve seen the results for myself.’

‘What? You… you’ve pre-empted us? You’ve arrived here before now?’

She nodded. ‘You’re going to miss this time-stamp by a mile. It’s going to go badly wrong and you’re all going to die. This project has to stop right here.’

She offered her hand again. ‘Dr Anwar… Rashim, I’m not here to arrest you, or hurt you or threaten you. I’m just here to stop this nightmare happening. Can we talk?’

AD 54, outside Rome

Dr Rashim Anwar looked at the old man, stick-thin arms wrapped round knees that bulged like arthritic knucklebones.

They were sitting together in the shade of the trees. He sipped ice-cold Protein-Plus solution from his cell-powered thermos flask, offered it to the young Indian girl beside him.

‘He…?’ he said, pointing at the old man. ‘He’s me?’

Maddy nodded. ‘The Exodus group’s translation overshoots those beacons you were putting out.’

‘But… it shouldn’t. They should anchor the particle signal. They should — ’

‘Mass,’ the old Rashim hissed. ‘Mass. We miscalculate… you and me. We get it wrong. Yes!’

The young man shook his head vehemently, his ponytail swinging like a pennant. ‘No, I’ve calculated and recalculated the figures. Run simulation after simulation on the total mass we’re planning to send.’

‘It changes!’

‘Changes?’

‘The translation day is hurried f-forward… candidates changed… last-minute panic. It’s a mess!’ The old man muttered more, but it was lost in his gurgling throat.

‘Why?’

The old man was muttering a one-sided conversation with himself. The young scientist leaned forward and grabbed a stick-thin wrist. ‘Tell me! Why is Exodus hurried forward? What happened?’

The old man’s black and brown peg-tooth smile looked revolting. ‘The end… young me!’

Maddy looked at him. ‘Did you say “ the end ”?’

He cackled. A sad, dry laugh. ‘We finally do it… wipe ourselves out.’

‘What?’

‘Kill the planet with drips of poison… then finally kill ourselves. Tidy finish, hmm?’

‘What is it, bombs?’ said Maddy. ‘Is that “the end”? Is that what happens? A nuclear war?’

Rashim rocked gently on his haunches, distracted as he spoke. ‘Oh no! Bombs some of us could survive. But this? No… no-no-no. No one survives this!’

‘What is it?’

The old Rashim grinned. ‘Elley! Elley! Elley!’

‘Who’s Elley?’ asked Sal.

‘He means an ELE. An Extinction Level Event,’ replied Rashim. ‘Like the K-T event wiped out the dinosaurs: an asteroid.’ The young man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, the way things are. It’s — ’