Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

‘It is the correct tactical choice,’ she replied.

Liam glanced at John, looking up impatiently at the sky and still humming. ‘I think he’s got a bit of a thing for you, Becks.’

‘A thing?’

‘You know … I think he fancies you.’

Cabot snorted a dry laugh, then quickly blessed himself with a guilty glance to the heavens.

‘Yes! You’ll have to be careful!’

‘I will be able to deal with him,’ she replied calmly. ‘I will use his … desires and motivations … to my advantage.’

‘You can’t let him know you’re some sort of robot from the future,’ said Liam. ‘Do you understand? That’s too much contamination.’

Becks studied Liam for a moment, then her cold, emotionless face seemed to melt, transforming into a warm and sensual smile. She tossed her dark hair for good measure. Liam felt something flutter inside him … desire ?

Oh come on, Liam. Meat robot, remember?

‘My AI has already learned much. I have observed female rituals. I have also read Harry Potter. I know what body language and verbal inflections work most efficiently on human males.’ The smile remained on her face — teasing, encouraging, bewitching. She even managed a wink: clumsy and forced, but still enough to make his heart flutter. ‘I will be fine, Liam O’Connor.’

She will at that .

Liam nodded. ‘All right, then. You stay here. See what you can find out. We’ll let the field office know exactly where you are so they can beam a tachyon signal to you. If something goes wrong, Becks … if for some reason Maddy doesn’t contact you with a schedule for a window here, make sure you get to Kirklees in time for the six-monther. Do you understand?’

‘Affirmative. I have no wish to self-terminate.’

‘All right, then … that’s that.’ He looked at Bob and Cabot, nodded, then turned to face John. ‘Lady Rebecca agrees to stay, so she does.’

‘Of course she does,’ said John. ‘I will make her most comfortable.’

Liam stepped forward and offered John a polite nod. ‘We’ll be off now, Sire.’

‘Please waste no time, Liam,’ said John. A momentary flicker of tension crossed his face. ‘I have heard rumours King Richard is already in France.’

‘We’ll be back before you can say pog mo thoin .’

John’s heavy brows locked in mild confusion again. For a moment his lips pursed as if he was going to actually have a go at saying it.

‘It’s just a turn of phrase where I come from, Sire.’

‘Right.’ He dismissed Liam with a curt nod. Liam turned and pulled himself up into the back of Cabot’s cart. Bob followed him up, the cart’s axles creaking under his weight.

‘It has been good to see an old friend again,’ John called out to Cabot. ‘Lord knows ’tis been a while since I’ve had one.’

‘We shan’t return empty-handed, Sire.’ Cabot clacked his tongue and goaded the horses to life with a sharp tug on the reins. The cart slowly clattered forward across flagstones towards the castle’s front gate. Liam looked out of the back canvas to see the men — his men — forming up and dutifully falling in behind them: a short column of ruddy-faced soldiers in dull chain mail, marching heavily in their wake.

He caught one last glimpse of Becks, that teasing smile of hers packed away for later use. She nodded a farewell at him as they clattered beneath the archway and out on to the bridge.

2001, New York

Sal watched Adam across the archway, bustling around their kettle and fridge, making them some tea.

‘Are we not telling too much?’ she asked Maddy. ‘Showing him too much? I thought Foster said we were, like, this top-secret organization.’

Maddy looked away from the monitor towards him. ‘I know, I know,’ she muttered guiltily. ‘But I … he’s useful, Sal. We need him.’

‘So what happens, though … when we’ve fixed things up and it’s all back to normal? What’re we going to do with him then?’

Maddy said nothing … which Sal misinterpreted. Her eyes suddenly lit up. ‘He can stay?’

‘No!’ she replied quickly. ‘No — we can’t recruit him!’

‘Oh.’

‘He can’t stay, Sal. He can’t. I just can’t take in anyone we — just because we, you know? Just because we like them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because this is a team already. A four-man team, just like Foster said. The agency is made up of four - person teams. Each with their own role and — ’

‘But with Becks we’ve already got five in our team!’

‘I know! All the more reason not to be taking on any more!’

They watched Adam pour water from the kettle into several chipped mugs, stirring the tea with a tinkling sound that echoed across the archway.

‘So what’re you going to do, Maddy?’

She sighed. ‘Nothing.’

‘ Nothing? ’

‘Because — ’ she bit her lip and looked away — ‘he’s not going to last very long.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I checked his name, Sal. Checked it against the roll-call of tomorrow’s victims …’

Sal’s gaze returned to the desk, to Maddy. ‘ Shadd-yah! ’ she whispered. ‘No. Tomorrow? Don’t say to me he’s …?’

Maddy nodded. ‘He works for a company called Sherman-Golding Investment … they’re on the ninety-fifth floor, north tower.’ Maddy realized her voice was wobbling ever so slightly. ‘He’s one of them that never made it out.’

They heard his footsteps approaching. Both turned to see Adam carrying a steaming mug of tea in each hand.

‘Here you ladies are. Nice cuppa.’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s up with you two?’

Maddy fixed a wide smile on her face. ‘Hey … absolutely nothing.’ She reached for her tea. ‘Thanks.’

He glanced back at the kitchen table. ‘I’ll just go get the biccies. Mum always said a cuppa tea’s too wet without something to dunk in it.’

They watched him go. And Maddy found herself wondering what sort of a person this job was turning her into — that she could just knowingly let someone as likeable as Adam walk blindly to his death.

1194, Nottingham

The town of Nottingham glowed in the dark. Not the welcoming glow of lanterns and night-watch fires but from several buildings set aflame.

As the cart and its escort of guards slowly approached the entrance to the town, their ears picked up the faint ring and clatter of melee weapons and the roar of a defiant crowd.

Through an open and unmanned gatehouse they entered the walled town to see a thoroughfare cluttered and messy with broken slats of wood. A funeral pyre burned in the middle, stacked with a dozen corpses. The smell of cooking human flesh made Liam gag.

Cabot sitting beside him on the jockey seat turned. ‘All right, lad?’

‘Jay-zus! The smell,’ he grunted, wiping a string of dangling bile from his chin. ‘What’s happening?’

‘’Tis a rebellion, I think.’

Liam noticed some women and children in rags and on their knees around the fire, presumably grieving for those bodies burning in the flames. He spotted a cart laden with what at first he thought was a pile of bark-stripped firewood, pale knobbly branches of beach or willow. Then he realized he was looking at arms and legs — bodies, stacked on top of each other.

‘Starvation and disease has come to Nottingham,’ said Cabot, shaking his head. ‘Farmers no longer work their farms only to have all they yield taken in taxes. So food rots in fields and ’tis the towns that feel it first.’