Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

Several more arrows whistled out of the darkness, another finding Bob’s right hip, a third hissing past Liam’s head so close he could feel the rush of air on his ear.

‘Bandits!’ shouted Cabot, scrambling to his feet and heading for the open back of his cart.

Into the pale dancing light of the fire, a dozen shapes in rags emerged, all of them armed with bows and long double-edged swords that glinted and flickered. By the look of them, Liam guessed their intention wasn’t to demand they hand over their valuables, but to kill them all first, then to pick through their cart for what might be worth taking.

Bob and Becks moved at exactly the same moment, identical AI routines calculating risk and available courses of action in precisely the same number of micro-seconds. Bob sprinted towards the nearest man, ducking down swiftly at the last moment to dodge the careless swing of his sword. He sprang up again and crushed the man’s throat with the bullet-hard jab of his oversized fingers just beneath his jaw. As the man dropped to his knees, gasping and spraying blood from his mouth and nose, Bob grabbed hold of his sword, flipped it blade-over-hilt and caught it, then finished the bandit with a lightning-quick thrust into his chest.

Becks meanwhile had effortlessly relieved another man of his bow and, using it like a quarterstaff, had scooped him off his feet and on to his back. She dropped down on to him, knees on his chest, and grabbed his head, twisting it sharply until cartilage and bone cracked.

Bob’s blade clattered with a heavy ring as a second man stepped forward and swung at him. Sword pommels locked, Bob pulled his sharply, yanking the other man’s sword out of his hand. It flew through the air, still humming like a tuning fork, and clattered off the trunk of a nearby tree. The man, older than the others, a florid face framed with wisps of dirty white hair, screamed, ‘I yield!’

He raised both his hands in surrender, a gesture entirely wasted on Bob. His next swing severed both of the upraised hands, sending them spinning to the snow-covered ground. The man screamed in agony, turned and ran into the darkness, waving bloody stumps before him.

Liam heard the twanging release of another drawstring and saw Becks had retrieved some arrows from the corpse at her feet. A grunt on the far side of their crackling fire, and a man, who had been sneaking around to take Liam and Cabot from behind, staggered slow baby-steps forward, sporting a tuft of fletching from his forehead and a yard of bloody shaft out of the back. He toppled over on to the fire, sending a shower of sparks up into the dark sky.

The remaining bandits had already seen enough and turned and fled like startled hares, boot soles and swinging arrow quivers disappearing into the darkness. Someone’s agonized drawn-out wailing — presumably the unfortunate handless old man — quickly receded to an indistinct echo that merged with the other frightened calls of the remaining bandits as they tried to find each other in the darkness of the woods.

In those few seconds — little more than the time it had taken Cabot to retrieve his trusty campaign sword from the back of the cart and adopt the once-learned-never-forgotten on-guard stance of an experienced swordsman — four of their attackers lay dead.

‘Good God!’ gasped Cabot.

Bob walked over towards Liam. ‘Are you all right, Liam O’Connor?’ he asked casually.

‘I’m fine, Bob. But you might want to take care of those,’ he replied, pointing at the arrow shafts protruding from Bob’s chest and hip.

‘Affirmative.’

Becks joined them. ‘I will assist you, Bob,’ she said, calmly reaching for the barbed tip of the arrowhead poking out from between his shoulders. She snapped it off with a flick of her wrist. She reached around in front of Bob and pulled the shaft out of his chest with the sucking sound of puckered flesh.

Cabot watched in goggle-eyed silence as she snapped the second tip off and pulled the arrow out of Bob’s hip without even a flicker of reaction on his face.

‘Blood is congealing from the two wounds already,’ she said. ‘I would estimate your combat functionality to be no less than ninety-five per cent of full capacity.’

‘Agreed,’ said Bob.

‘What in the saints’ names are ye?’ hissed Cabot.

Bob glanced at him. ‘Very tough human being, serr,’ he replied unconvincingly.

‘And ye,’ Cabot said to Becks. ‘No lady have I ever seen fight like that!’

‘I am also a very tough — ’

Liam laughed a little shakily, still adrenaline-pumped from the attack. ‘It’s all right, I told him we’re from the future already. You can drop the old English now.’

Becks frowned. ‘That will cause unnecessary contamination.’

Liam shook his head. ‘Ah well, it’s not like the fella believes a word I was saying anyway.’

Cabot was still holding his longsword aloft. His arms, now tired, lowered it to the ground. He leaned on the hilt and regarded the three of them in silence.

‘Well, Liam of Connor … I think I believe ye now.’

2001, New York

‘Oh my God, yes! Yes, it has! It’s changed!’

Sal stared at the grainy image on the computer screen. Old stone dimpled and worn with age and mottled with olive-green blooms of algae. She could see faint lines inscribing the name Haskette , a gouge in the lettering where at some point in the last eight centuries someone had hacked at the gravestone or perhaps it had been shot at.

At the bottom of Adam’s photograph, where brambles emerged into the image, she could just make out the faintest groove of several lines bisecting. If he’d taken this picture in poorer lighting it might not even have been visible. They’d easily have missed it.

‘That’s definitely it!’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’

Sal nodded. Maddy said nothing.

Sal’s finger traced the shape on the screen. ‘And that’s the coded symbol for an L?’

‘Yes — yes, it is!’ Not for the first time his jaw hung open, dumbfounded. ‘I can’t believe it. I visited the ruins of Kirklees Priory six years ago and took all these graveyard pictures. And these digital images have been sitting on my old hard drive, in my chest … Jesus, I haven’t plugged in this drive for a couple of years — it’s just been collecting dust. And, yet, something’s happened on there! Something changed on my hard drive! That picture’s been altered. That’s … that’s just … well, it’s just messing with my head!’

‘A minute wave,’ said Maddy. ‘That’s what happened. A tiny, tiny time wave. So slight only Sal felt it.’

Of course, Sal really wished she didn’t pick up on the subtle ones; they felt like motion sickness, that sensation of spinning around too much with your eyes closed.

‘And you’re telling me this is a wave that’s been rolling forward through eight hundred and seven years?’

‘Yes, subtly changing this timeline in its wake. Except, of course, everything inside the archway’s preservationfield .’ She could see a look of confusion on his face. ‘That’s why I placed your hard drive outside in the alley. There, it’s outside the energy field, and so it can be altered by a time wave. Do you see?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Right. So … when Sal sensed a … wave thing, that’s why you …?’

Maddy nodded. She’d raced outside with a data cable the moment Sal started wobbling and looking pale, and had quickly downloaded Adam’s graveyard photos again. All the while with him standing in the middle of the archway, open-mouthed and looking utterly bemused.

He nodded his head again, as if that was going to help him get it. Then he leaned forward and studied more closely the image in front of them all. ‘I feel like my head’s going to explode.’ He laughed. ‘This really is the most incredible thing ever!’