Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

‘It means outside this archway, outside the perimeter of our field-office time shield, things have changed,’ explained Maddy. ‘Changed a lot… if we lost power.’

‘So, what’s out there now?’ he asked.

Maddy splayed her hands. ‘I don’t know! Another version of New York, I guess.’

Cartwright’s eyes widened to rheumy bloodshot pools. ‘Forby, go take a look.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He stepped across the archway and hit the green button. Nothing happened. ‘Won’t open.’

‘The doorway’s not on the generator circuit,’ said Maddy. ‘Just crank it up with the handle. There,’ she said, pointing. Forby saw the small metal handle, nodded and started turning it round.

The computer had finished rebooting and Bob’s dialogue box popped up.

› We are running on auxiliary power. Resume density probing?

Maddy turned in her chair, back towards the monitors. ‘How much more probing have you got to do?’

› Information: 177,931 candidate density soundings made.

She made a face — less than half the total number that Bob had calculated they needed to make.

‘Are there any good suspects?’

› There are 706 soundings so far in which a density fluctuation occurred.

‘Can you narrow that down any?’

› Affirmative: I can analyse the interruption signatures returned and identify those that demonstrate a repeat or an artificial rhythm.

‘Uh… lemme think.’ She bit a ragged edge around her fingernail. ‘But you’re only, like, halfway through doing the probes?’

› Less than halfway.

‘And if you stop now we might miss them,’ she thought out loud.

› Affirmative.

‘But now we’re on generator power, have you got enough power to do all those probes, and open a window too if we find them?’

› I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.

‘Can you guess?’

› I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.

She cursed. ‘All right… so you’re saying it’s possible we’ll run out of juice if you carry on doing the probes, right?’

› Affirmative.

The rattling of the cranking shutter door coming from across the archway suddenly ceased.

‘OK, Bob,’ she sighed, burying her face in her hands with weary frustration. ‘OK… OK. All right, then. Stop with what you’re doing and analyse what we’ve got already. See if we’ve got a hit.’

› Affirmative.

‘What the — !’ That was Forby.

‘JESUS!’ That was Cartwright.

Maddy spun round in her chair and saw the pair of them standing in the middle of the opened shutter doorway, staring out at a canvas of emerald-green jungle.

She sighed. Oh no, not again.

Last time a time wave had arrived like this one, large enough to sever the feed of power into their field office, it had left New York a post-apocalyptic wilderness of tumbledown ruins under a poisoned rust-red sky. She and Sal hurried over towards the open entrance.

‘Jahulla!’ gasped Sal as they joined the other two.

And Maddy nodded. Jahulla indeed.

This time New York was gone, not just shattered ruins, but gone as in never existed. She looked down at her feet. Their cold and pitted concrete floor simply ended in a straight line where their invisible force field’s effect terminated. The ground beyond was a rich brown soil, carpeted in a mat of tall grass and lush clusters of low-growing ferns and other unidentifiable foliage.

She looked up and saw no Williamsburg Bridge, no horizon of Manhattan skyscrapers, just a broad, sedate river delta of lush rainforest.

‘Uh… how… how did we end up in the middle of a jungle, sir?’ asked Forby.

A slow, understanding smile spread across Cartwright’s face. Finally he nodded. ‘Incredible,’ he whispered, his eyes wide like a child’s, full of wonder. A solitary tear rolled down one of his craggy cheeks. ‘ This is quite… incredible.’

‘Sir?’ Forby turned to him. His calm, professional demeanour had vanished and been replaced with barely contained panic. ‘Sir, where the hell are we?’

‘We haven’t moved anywhere,’ the old man replied. He turned to look at Maddy. ‘Or any when? Have we? We’re exactly when and where we were.’

‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘But an alternate history has just caught up with us.’

Cartwright’s ragged features seemed to look ten years younger. The face of a child catching a glimpse of the tooth fairy, or a glint of Santa’s sleigh disappearing into a distant moonlit cloud bank.

‘Sir? The other men? Where are they?’

‘Gone, Forby,’ he replied in a distracted whisper. ‘Gone.’

‘They’re dead?’

‘Nope. They were just never born,’ said Sal.

‘I want to see more,’ uttered Cartwright, stepping off the concrete on to the soft ground beyond. He grinned. ‘My God! This is real? Isn’t it?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s another reality. How New York might have ended up if… if…’

‘If what?’ asked Forby.

‘That’s just it,’ she replied. ‘We don’t know yet. My guess is it’s some change caused by our colleague in the past. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.’

Forby shook his head. ‘You’re telling me one person can actually change a whole… world?’

Cartwright sighed, clearly frustrated by the narrow-minded thinking of his subordinate. ‘Of course, Forby. Think about it, man. If… if a certain Jewish carpenter hadn’t made his mark two thousand years ago, it wouldn’t be In God We Trust on a dollar note, but Gods.’

Forby frowned. A patriot. No one dissed the mighty dollar. Not on his watch.

‘And our friend’s much much further back in time than Jesus,’ added Sal.

‘Small changes in the past,’ quoted Maddy, remembering the first time Foster had spoken to them, bringing them that tray of coffees and doughnuts, a simple and strangely reassuring gesture in that surreal moment of awakening. ‘Small changes in the past can make enormous changes in the present.’

Cartwright glanced towards the nearby riverbank. ‘We should go and explore a little — ’ He stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Look!’

Maddy followed his wavering finger, pointing across the broad river to the low hump of island that was once Manhattan. She squinted painfully, her eyes not so great without glasses. She managed to detect the slightest sense of movement. ‘What is it?’

‘People?’ uttered Sal. ‘Yes… it’s people!’

‘A settlement of some kind,’ added Cartwright.

She thought she could make out a cluster of circular dwellings down by the waterside and several pale thin plumes of smoke rising up into the sky.

‘Look,’ said Forby, ‘there’s a boat.’

Halfway across the river, calm and subdued, barely a ripple upon its glass-smooth surface, was the long dark outline of some canoe. Aboard they could see half a dozen figures paddling the vessel across the river towards them.

‘They look odd,’ said Sal, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘They’re

… they’re moving all funny.’

Cartwright seemed eager to rush down to the riverside and greet them. ‘We should go and make contact.’

‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘Really, I don’t think we should.’

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘The things we could learn from each other! The knowledge of another — ’

‘Maybe the girl’s right,’ said Forby. ‘They could be hostile, sir.’

He shook his head, his face an expression of bemusement. ‘This is an incredible moment of history!’

‘But that’s just it… this isn’t history. This isn’t meant to happen,’ said Maddy. ‘Those people shouldn’t exist. This is a what if reality… this is a never shoulda happened reality, Cartwright. Do you get it? The last thing we need to do is go and make friends with it.’