Alex Scarrow: The Doomsday Code

Then his fading mind was aware of another person leaning over him.

‘Where is it?’ said the new man.

Geoffrey spat congealing blood out on to his cheek. ‘We … we have … no … money.’

‘I’m not after your money,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come for the relic. No matter, we’ll find it ourselves.’

Geoffrey’s grey eyes tried focusing on him. ‘Y-you … know … of it?’

The man’s voice softened, almost kindly now. ‘Yes. I’m one of your brotherhood.’ Geoffrey felt a hand under his cropped hair, lifting his head out of the snow. ‘Here’s something to ease the pain.’

The second man, a lean face framed by long hair and a beard, lifted a glass bottle to his lips. He tasted a strong mead.

‘I’m truly sorry,’ said the man. ‘But we must have it.’ He sighed.

‘The … the relic … is to … be taken to Scotland. It must … it must be kept safe for — ’

‘For future generations,’ the man completed his words. ‘Yes, I know this. That’s why we’re here.’ He smiled. ‘We are that future generation and we’ve come for it.’

Geoffrey could feel death coming fast; warm and welcoming. And yet his mind felt compelled to know more. His mission had failed. It was to be taken from him and now he needed assurance.

‘Ye … ye are … a …?’

‘A Templar ? Yes.’

Geoffrey’s eyes were far off now … looking for hosts of angels to guide him to the Kingdom of Heaven.

‘We’ve come from near the time that it all happens … and we have to know the truth. We’ve come to find out. It will be safe, brother … I promise you that. We will keep it safe.’

The words meant nothing to the knight now. His breathing, short and rapid puffs of tainted air, finally ceased with a soft gurgle.

The man gently eased the knight’s head back down on to the snow and traced the sign of the cross along the red cruciform on the man’s white tunic. Then he looked up at the hooded figure, kneeling in the snow beside him. He nodded towards the abandoned baggage cart. ‘It’ll be there somewhere. Find it.’

The hooded man silently stood up and strode towards the cart.

‘ I’m sorry ,’ the Templar whispered again to the dead knight, gently closing the lids of his eyes. ‘ But we simply have to know .’

2001, New York

Liam winced at the noise. It was so loud he could feel something inside his ears vibrate, and that surely couldn’t be healthy. Maddy had dragged him to the front of the small nightclub’s dance floor; dragged him by the hand until they’d found a gap just in front of the stage. He’d been prepared to stand there and listen while the band had been playing a slower, quieter, almost pleasant song. But then, without any warning at all, they’d taken a passable piece of music and turned it into a screaming, banging cacophony of sound that made his ears hurt. And, of course, all the other weird-looking youngsters standing around him had started jumping up and down for some reason and rudely pushing and shoving him and each other.

He soon had enough of that and left Maddy and Sal bouncing up and down like idiots. He squeezed his way through the crowd, quickly giving up on his excuse me s and pardon me s until he found Becks standing at the back of the nightclub, calmly studying the behaviour of everyone inside like a scientist studying a cage full of lab rats.

‘They call this music , so they do,’ he shouted. ‘ Music — would you believe that?’

‘Affirmative,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Spectrum analysis of the frequency envelope and beats per minute indicate this music matches other tracks identified collectively as Death Metal .’

‘Death Metal, is it now? More like Deaf-and-Mental.’

She looked at him. ‘Negative. I said Death …’ She hesitated. ‘That was a joke, wasn’t it, Liam?’

He shrugged. ‘Aye.’

She practised a laugh she’d been working on; against the din of the band’s final chorus it sounded coarse and braying and not particularly lady-like. He shook his head and looked back at the dance floor, a seething, bouncing carpet of hair and sweaty heads, nose rings and tattooed shoulders, while five willowy young men on the stage jerked and twitched over their instruments. He decided they looked like something out of a travelling freak show.

Jay-zus, so this is ‘the modern world’, is it?

‘Ah, come on,’ laughed Maddy. ‘Lighten up, Liam. You sound like my granddad.’

‘Yes, it wasn’t exactly the bangra-thrash I’m used to,’ added Sal, ‘but — shadd-yah — they were proper good!’

‘Good?’ Liam huffed as they stepped out of the warm and humid fug of the nightclub into the cool September night. ‘I’ve heard angle-grinders along the Liverpool docks make a more tolerable noise than that.’ He tutted grumpily. ‘Now, are you sure those fellas back there actually knew how to play their instruments?’

‘It’s not about how well you play, Liam,’ said Maddy, ‘it’s the — I don’t know … it’s the energy, the attitude . You know?’

‘Attitude, is it?’ They stepped out of West 51st Street on to Broadway, leaving the milling crowd of emos and grunge rockers dispersing behind them.

‘Yes, attitude. It’s about getting an emotion across to the audience. Laying out how you feel.’

Becks cocked her head in thought. ‘That would indicate the musicians were feeling moderate to extreme levels of irritation about something.’

Liam laughed.

‘Anger,’ said Maddy.

‘And that’s all you need, is it? To be very angry and very noisy?’

‘Umm …’ Maddy made a face. ‘Well, not exactly …’

‘Yes,’ said Sal. ‘Angry and noisy is exactly what music sounds like in ’26.’

As they walked down Broadway towards Times Square, quieter than they’d ever seen it, Maddy checked her watch.

‘You’re sure your idea works?’ asked Liam.

She nodded. ‘We don’t need a portal back to our field office. It’s nearly midnight now. The time bubble will reset in a couple of minutes. By the time we’ve walked back down and across the bridge we’ll be an hour into Monday.’

‘But won’t we, like, meet a copy of ourselves?’

‘That doesn’t happen,’ replied Maddy. ‘We don’t copy. There’s us and we’re either here or there, but not in two places.’

‘I don’t get that,’ Sal replied.

Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much about the time thing … just that this is going to be a long walk, so it is.’

The girls laughed at that. Becks dutifully copied them.

‘I would have thought you’d be used to walking?’ said Maddy.

‘Why? Because I’m just some potato-eatin’ Paddy from a hundred years ago?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that exactly. It’s just I don’t suppose there were many cars or buses an’ stuff.’

‘Jay-zus, we’re not jungle savages, you know. We have … had … trams and trains and the like in Cork, so we did. I didn’t like walkin’ much then, just as I’m not so keen on doing it now.’

Broadway led them on to Times Square, which was much busier. The cinemas were spilling out those who’d been watching the late showings of Shrek and Monsters Inc ., and yellow cabs queued in the central reserve to pick up the last of the well-dressed audience for Mamma Mia! .

Sal staggered for a moment.

‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.

‘Dizzy.’

‘It was a bit loud in there, I guess. My ears are still ring-’