Alex Scarrow - Day of the Predator

She nodded. ‘Yes… it makes sense.’ Yes, it did. But it was the feel of… the feel of… ruthlessness that gnawed away at her; the agency seemed to know everything about everyone — and exploited that knowledge mercilessly. In less than eighteen hours the young man she’d been talking to would be nothing more than a twisted black carcass amid the smouldering remains of that bank.

And I have to learn to deal with that, she told herself.

Liam seemed to sense her turmoil. ‘Well, this is the job now, Mads. We don’t have much of a choice in the matter. Do we?’

She looked at him and realized it wasn’t just the young bank teller that the agency was ruthlessly using, but Liam too. The side effects weren’t apparent yet: the onset of cellular corruption, the onset of premature old age. But they’d begin to show at some point, wouldn’t they? The more trips Liam was sent on into the past, the more damage it was going to do to his body, until, like Foster, one day he was going to be an old man before his time: his muscles wasted; his bones brittle, weakened and fragile; his organs irretrievably corrupted by the effects of time travel and one by one beginning to fail him.

She so wanted to tell him. To warn him.

How many more trips, Liam? How many before I’m looking at you and seeing a dying old man?

But she couldn’t. Not yet. Foster had told her it would be unkind for him to know his fate too early.

‘ Let him enjoy the freedom of seeing history for a bit; seeing his future, his past… at least give him that for a while before you tell him he’s dying.’

Liam smiled his lopsided smile. On the face of a grown man, it might have been called rakish, charming even. On him it looked just a little mischievous. ‘You all right there, Maddy?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah… I’m fine.’

He let go of her arm and checked his timepiece. ‘Return window any second now.’

Almost on cue, a gentle breeze whistled up the alley, sending the loose debris of rubbish skittering along the cobble-stones. A moment later, the air several yards from them shimmered like a heat haze: a ball of air twelve feet in diameter, hovering a foot off the ground. Through the portal she could just make out the twisting, undulating shapes of the archway beyond and Sal waiting impatiently for them.

You have to tell him, sometime, Maddy. Tell him time travel will slowly kill him.

She didn’t like the fact that Foster had left the decision to her. Having secrets like that, having something she couldn’t share with him or Sal.

And what about that note?

She could feel the lump of balled paper in her glove, something else she was being asked to keep from her friends. And why? And who was Pandora? She didn’t like that… it felt like she was being used.

What? Like you just used that young bank teller?

‘Come on, then,’ said Liam, stepping forward with the jewellery case in his hands.

‘Liam?’

He stopped. ‘What?’

She could tell him about the note. She could also tell him about the damage time travel was silently wreaking on him. That every time he went back in time subtle corruption was occurring to every cell in his body, ageing him long before his time. She decided she’d want to know, to know that every time she’d stepped through a portal she was knocking perhaps five or ten years off her natural life. She’d want to at least be able to choose for herself whether she was prepared to make that sacrifice for the rest of mankind.

‘What is it, Mads?’

Or maybe Foster was right — she should keep the truth from him for as long as possible…

She pulled her glasses out of her handbag and put them on, then took the silly bonnet off her head with its long, ridiculous ostrich feathers. All of a sudden, dressed in her tight corset and billowing lace skirts, she felt dishonest, a phoney, a fake and, her eyes meeting Liam’s, she felt like a liar.

A worn-thin smile spread across her face. ‘Nothing, Liam. Let’s go home, eh?’

2001, New York

‘Are you sure?’ shouted Sal.

‘That’s what Bob says.’ Maddy’s voice echoed from the archway through the open door into the back room — ‘the hatchery’ as they called it now. ‘He says to attach the end of the protein-feed pipe to the growth candidate’s belly button.’

‘How do we do that?’ Liam replied. ‘It’s not like there’s a socket to screw the thing into.’ The small slimy foetus squirmed gently in his hand, stirring in its slumber. He grimaced as it did, feeling small fragile bones shift beneath its paper-thin skin.

It looked as vulnerable as a freshly hatched bird fallen from a nest, and yet he knew that this tiny, shifting, pale creature in the palm of his hand would soon be a seven-foot-tall leviathan, bulging with genetically enhanced muscles, with a deep, intimidating voice rumbling from a chest as broad as a beer barrel.

‘Bob says you need to push the feed pipe through the belly button,’ Maddy’s voice came back.

Sal’s lip curled. ‘You mean… like… as if we’re stabbing it?’ she called out.

‘Well, obviously don’t stab it with the pipe!’ Maddy’s voice echoed back. ‘Gently do it!’

Liam looked at Sal and shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’d be sick. Here…’ He passed the foetus to Sal.

‘Oh, right… thanks, Liam.’

Sal cradled the thing in her hand and then gingerly reached into the perspex growth tube beside them to retrieve the feed pipe dangling down inside. She grimaced as she fumbled in the slimy growth solution, finally pulling out the tip of the feed pipe. As the slime dripped like mucus from the end of it, she could see the pipe ended with a sharpened tip.

‘Bob says you shouldn’t have to push too hard. The belly button skin is very thin and should… Oh, that’s just gross…’ Maddy’s voice faded away.

‘What?’ called out Liam. Maddy didn’t answer immediately.

‘Maddy?’ chirped Sal. ‘What’s gross?’

‘He says the skin should pop just like a blister.’

Liam looked sheepishly at Sal. ‘Really, I can’t do it. I’d be… I’ll be sick over the poor little fella.’

‘Shadd-yah,’ Sal muttered, ‘you are hopeless sometimes.’

She took the end of the pipe between her fingers and gently drew it up until it hovered an inch above the foetus’s tiny belly: translucent skin criss-crossed with a faint spider’s web of blue veins and a small inward twist of rubbery skin.

She took a deep breath. ‘OK… here goes.’

She gently pressed the sharp end of the feed pipe into the small whirl of flesh. The foetus shuddered in her hand; finger-length arms and legs suddenly flailing, its walnut-sized head slapping against the palm of her hand.

‘Uh… Maddy! It doesn’t like it! It’s struggling!’

‘Bob says that’s perfectly normal… just push it in until the skin pops.’

She heard Liam mutter something about Jesus before his legs buckled beneath him and he sat down heavily on the floor, then slid over on to his side.

‘I think Liam’s just fainted!’ shouted Sal.

‘Never mind him,’ Maddy replied. ‘We need to get the foetus hooked up before it starts starving.’

‘OK, OK.’

She pushed the tip against the belly button again, this time pushing despite the foetus’s protests, until she felt the skin give way, as promised, with a soft pop. A small trickle of dark blood oozed out on to its belly.

‘It’s in!’

‘Right, now, put bonding tape round the pipe and its belly to hold it in place.’

Sal picked up a roll of tape and wound it round as the thing squirmed indignantly in her hand.

‘OK. What next?’

‘Just lower it into the growth tube.’