Day of the Predator tr-2

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘But she looks very human.’

  ‘And so does a storefront mannequin, or a GI Joe action figure or a Barbie doll.’

  Sal shrugged and grinned mischievously. ‘Liam seemed impressed.’

  Maddy had noticed. His eyes had been out on stalks. ‘No different to any other boy, I guess… one thing on their minds all the time.’

  Sal giggled. ‘True.’ She spun in the office chair beside the computer desk. ‘So, you don’t… so you’re not jealous?’

  Maddy took off her glasses and wiped them on her T-shirt. It was decidedly odd having Bob looking like that, like some athletic-fit catwalk model, some Amazonian beauty. And yes… having something like that gliding beautifully around was enough to make any female feel inadequate, plain in comparison. But then Maddy was used to it.

  On the other hand, if Sal was asking in a roundabout way whether she had feelings for Liam… well, the answer was no, not those sort of feelings. Liam was nice-looking, charming in an old-fashioned gentlemanly way, but what she felt for him, more than anything else, was pity, a choking sadness.

  Every time I send him through… I’m killing him just a little bit more.

  She looked at Sal. ‘No, I’m not jealous. I’m not, you know, like… after him — ’

  › Maddy, it is time to activate the return window.

  ‘OK,’ she replied, turning to face the desk. She began to tap the retrieval coordinates into the computer.

  ‘But he’s nice,’ said Sal.

  ‘Sure he’s nice,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m sure he had girlfriends back in Ireland, but… but, I’m a couple of years older than him anyway and… and it’s more like he’s a little brother, or a nephew really, than, you know… sort of boyfriend material.’

  Maddy double-checked the coordinates. ‘Anyway… My God, Sal — ’ she grimaced at her — ‘I can’t believe you’re being so personal!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sal, flicking a tress of dark hair out of her eye. ‘Oh… I just remembered! You’ll never guess what I saw in a junk store down-’

  ‘Just a moment, Sal. I need to concentrate…’

  CHAPTER 19

  2015, Texas

  Liam identified Chan among the students. It wasn’t as obvious as he’d thought it would be. There were about seven or eight who looked oriental to him, and most of them were younger than the other students. But he knew Edward Chan was the youngest here and he zeroed in on a small boy at the front, gaping wide-eyed at the zero-point energy reactor. Seemingly entranced by it.

  Becks gently tapped Liam’s arm and leaned towards him. ‘Information: according to the mission data, Edward Chan only has four minutes and seven seconds left to live.’

  Liam nodded. He looked around the chamber, trying to identify what or who could possibly pose a threat to the boy. If they were down to four minutes, then presumably the lad’s killer was right here, right now, getting ready to make his move. His eyes darted from Mr Kelly, explaining the machinery and instrumentation, to Mr Whitmore, stroking his sparsely bearded chin thoughtfully, to the two technicians manning a couple of data terminals.

  One of them?

  His gaze shifted to the students, all of them still marvelling at the interior of the chamber and some of the incredible-sounding statistics that Mr Kelly was reeling off. ‘… equivalent to all of the energy produced by coal, oil, natural gas… over the last one hundred and fifty years…’

  One of them? One of the students?

  Why not? It could just as easily be one of the students. After all, Liam was the same age as the oldest of them and an assassin would probably have a better chance smuggling himself in as a student than he would a member of staff. After all, that had worked for him and Becks. His gaze wandered from face to face, looking for a nervous tic, darting eyes, lips moving in silent prayer, someone clearly agonizing over the precise moment to strike.

  Becks gently tapped his arm again.

  ‘What now?’ he hissed.

  ‘I am sensing precursor tachyon particles in the vicinity.’

  He looked at her. ‘Uh?’ Their return window wasn’t due yet, not until ten minutes after Chan’s supposed moment of death. That was the arrangement. ‘Are you sure?’

  Becks nodded towards the reactor. ‘There. They are appearing…’ Her eyes widened, and her lids fluttered and blinked rapidly. ‘DANGER!’ she suddenly barked at the top of her voice.

  Howard was almost beside Chan, his finger on the trigger inside his bag ready to pull the small weapon out and fire it at his back. He wanted to be right beside Chan, right next to him, to know as an absolute certainty he wasn’t going to miss. Too much rested on this. Everything rested on this. He was just a couple of yards from him when a tall girl with distinctive red hair at the back of the knot of students suddenly started shouting.

  Mr Kelly stopped mid-sentence. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘DANGER!’ shouted the girl again, her voice loud and urgent.

  ‘Excuse me, young lady,’ replied Mr Whitmore, ‘this is not the place for some sort of stupid prank!’

  Howard turned to look at the girl.

  Something’s wrong. Someone knows!

  ‘DANGER!’ shouted the girl again, but her finger pointed directly at the reactor, not him. ‘Tachyon interference with the reactor! The reactor will explode!’

  Howard had no idea what the hell she was on about. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, perhaps she was just some flaky goth girl making some sort of a protest against experimenting with zero-point energy. He was with her on that, but now was not the best time. He wasn’t going to be distracted. He pushed his way forward towards Chan as the other students began to step back warily from the reactor in response to her outburst.

  At last, standing beside the small boy, he looked down at him, his finger poised on the trigger, ready to whip the gun out and fire.

  Chan turned to look up at him. ‘What’s the girl at the back saying?’

  Howard found himself shrugging. ‘I… uh… I guess she’s having some kinda fit.’

  ‘Now stop it!’ snapped Mr Whitmore, pushing his way through the bemused students towards the girl. ‘Nothing is going to explode!’

  Chan grinned up at Howard. ‘Crazy girl, huh?’

  And Howard found himself smiling back at the kid, somehow not quite ready… not quite ready to pull out the gun and fire at point blank range. He really hadn’t expected to be looking down into a friendly face at the very moment he pulled the trigger on Chan.?

  Without a warning Becks grabbed Liam roughly by the shoulders and man-handled him back from the reactor towards the walkway leading to the sealed exit.

  ‘Becks! What the hell are you doing? What’s going on?’

  ‘Imminent threat of explosion,’ she said crisply and calmly, and a little too loudly. Her voice spooked the other students nearby who quickly began to join them backing away from it.

  ‘Everybody, calm down!’ shouted Mr Kelly. ‘Nothing is going to happen!’

  Liam looked up at Becks. ‘Are you sure it’s going to — ?’

  Becks suddenly stopped dragging him. ‘Too late to escape!’ She yanked Liam’s arm downwards to the floor and he dropped to his knees.

  ‘Ouch! What are you doing? ’

  She knelt down in front of him and wrapped her arms round his shoulders, shielding him from the reactor. Liam peeked over her shoulder and saw the reactor’s thick metal casing suddenly start to ripple like jelly and a moment later begin to collapse in on itself.

  ‘What the — ?’

  Becks reached out one hand and grabbed his nose painfully. ‘You must lower your head,’ she ordered, yanking him roughly down until he was almost doubled over, his head in her lap. Then all of a sudden he felt the oddest tugging sensation. As if he and Becks and the world around them was being sucked into a gigantic laundry mangler, stretched impossibly thin like elastic strands of spaghetti towards the reactor… following the collapsed metal casing into some inconceivable pinpoint of infinity.

&nbs
p; ‘Ooooooohhhhh Jaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy-zzzzzzussssssss!’

  CHAPTER 20

  2001, New York

  Maddy and Sal stared at the shimmering window in the middle of the archway. Through a curtain of undulating, rippling air they could see the dim outlines of the storeroom they’d sent Liam and the support unit to.

  ‘Something’s definitely wrong,’ whispered Sal.

  Maddy nodded. ‘That’s the third back-up window they’ve missed.’

  Five minutes ago they’d been cheerfully prepping the scheduled return window, assuming that the simple scouting mission had been a success and Liam and the support unit would be ready and waiting to come back and tell them what exactly had happened to Chan.

  Now, for the third time, both girls were staring at a dark storeroom with no sign of either of them.

  ‘Oh boy,’ uttered Maddy. ‘I don’t know what we do now. That’s it — we’ve tried all the back-up windows.’

  › Maddy?

  She stepped towards the desk and leaned over the deck mic. ‘Yes?’

  › You should try the six-month window.

  ‘Yes… yes, you’re right.’

  Bob was right, it was worth a try. She clicked the PURGE button on the screen and the shimmering window in the middle of the archway vanished with a soft pop and a gentle puff of displaced air. She entered a new set of time coordinates: exactly five months, thirty days, twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes after the time they’d been sent into the future; exactly five minutes before the support unit’s mission time span was up and it was scheduled to self-destruct. It made sense. It would be the last possible chance to rendezvous with a return window. With the support unit dead, Liam would not be able to receive a tachyon signal to instruct him on a new rendezvous time-stamp. If they weren’t there, in that storeroom six months after arriving and impatient to get back home, then Maddy had no idea what she could do next.

  She clicked on the screen to confirm the new time coordinates and then activated the displacement machinery. Once again a twelve-foot-wide sphere of air began to shift and undulate, revealing the storeroom again. Both girls squinted for a while at the dark space beyond. Same store cupboard… a few things had been shifted around; clearly someone had had a spring-clean in there. But no sign of either Liam or the support unit.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sal. ‘We’ve really lost them.’

  Maddy pinched her chin. ‘No… let me think.’ There was a way to communicate with the support unit. A tachyon signal beam. That’s what they’d done last time: aimed a broad beam of particles in the direction in which they’d guessed Liam and Bob were and transmitted an encoded signal back through history. It had worked. Bob had picked it up.

  ‘Bob,’ she spoke into the mic, ‘can we send a tachyon signal beam forward?’

  › Affirmative. We have enough power.

  ‘Right… what if we send it to, say… five minutes before whatever happened to Chan, happened.’

  ‘What message?’ asked Sal.

  ‘I dunno. Something like — abort the mission, something is going to go wrong.’

  Sal nodded. ‘Yes, we should do that.’

  Maddy sat down in one of the office chairs and purged the open window. It puffed out of existence. She then opened the message interface and quickly tapped in a message.

  Return to the store cupboard immediately. We’ll pick you up there. Something is about to go wrong with your mission. Something is about to happen to you. A return window will be waiting for you.

  Bob’s dialogue box popped up.

  › You wish to send this message?

  ‘Yes, immediately.’

  › Recommendation: a narrow beam transmission.

  A narrow beam meant she needed to know quite precisely where to aim it. But she had no idea where the two of them might be. They might have been somewhere else in the facility. Something may have caused a detour, a fire alarm perhaps? Or some malfunction in the lab may have resulted in everyone being evacuated.

  ‘Bob, let’s make the beam broad enough to sweep the whole area. Make sure the support unit gets the message.’

  › Caution: there will be technology in the vicinity that may be unpredictably affected by tachyon particles.

  ‘I really don’t care if we mess up somebody’s experiments, or damage their precious gizmos… I want Liam to get that damned message!’ she snapped angrily. ‘All right?’

  › Affirmative. Wide beam sweep to cover vicinity.

  Sal looked at her. ‘Are you sure about this?’ She nodded towards the computers. ‘Bob just sort of cautioned us, didn’t he?’

  Maddy spun the chair to face her. ‘You got any other suggestions?’

  Sal shook her head.

  ‘Right, then,’ she replied, her voice brittle. ‘We have to make contact.’

  Stay calm, Maddy. You’re the leader, so stay calm.

  Her face softened as she reached for her inhaler on the desk. ‘Sorry, Sal… I’m just a bit stressed and — ’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’

  ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

  › Confirm transmission?

  ‘Bob, you cautioned me… because what? Is there some sort of danger to Liam if we throw a whole load of tachyon beams forward?’

  › Information: tachyon particles might interfere with zero-point energy experiments that are being conducted at the institute at this time.

  ‘But does that endanger Liam in some way?’

  › Unknown. Records show zero-point energy research was abandoned as being potentially hazardous. There is very little public domain data on the Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute’s work in this field.

  ‘So? What do I do?’

  › Recommendation: do nothing.

  ‘Nothing?’

  › Correct. Wait for possible contact from them. Sending a tachyon signal forward may endanger Liam and the support unit and might also present a security risk for the agency.

  Maddy stared at the screen in silence. ‘You want me to do absolutely nothing? When they might be in trouble and need our help? You’re asking me to do nothing but sit on my hands?’

  › Affirmative. A tachyon signal might be detected by sensitive instrumentation at the institute and the message intercepted. This would clearly alert them to the existence of time travel and the agency.

  ‘They could know time travel is possible fourteen years before Edward Chan does his maths paper,’ added Sal. ‘Our message to Liam might alter history just as much as someone killing Chan.’

  › Sal is correct.

  ‘So you’re saying we wait for them to get themselves out of whatever’s happened?’

  › That is my recommendation. They are very capable.

  Maddy chewed her lip in thought for a moment. ‘And this is my call?’

  › You are team leader. I can only offer data and tactical advice.

  ‘Right, well then I say forget potential contamination, forget any of their zero-point experiments we might be messing up and stuff any security risks for the agency. They’ve pretty much left us all alone to fend for ourselves so far… I’m damned if I’m going to sacrifice Liam just to keep them happy. We warn Liam and the support unit to abort the scouting trip. We get them back home and then… then… we can deal with any time changes we may have caused! All right?’

  Sal nodded. ‘I suppose it’s a plan.’

  Maddy turned to the computer screen. ‘All right?’

  The ‘›’ cursor blinked thoughtfully on and off in the dialogue box and they heard the computer’s hard drives whirring softly. Finally, after a few moments the cursor flickered forward.

  › Affirmative.

  ‘Cool,’ said Maddy. ‘So, Bob, send that message to five minutes before Chan’s recorded time of death.’

  › Affirmative.

  As Bob proceeded with beaming the message, Maddy prepared to open a window yet again in the storeroom for the same moment in time and resolved to keep it open for at least ten minutes. That wou
ld give them enough time, she hoped, to receive the message, wherever they were in the institute, and make their way back to the storeroom. She was about to activate the time window when Bob’s dialogue box appeared centre screen.

  › Information: there is an intense energy feedback loop interfering with the tachyon signal beam.

  ‘Meaning?’

  › 87 % probability that this is an explosion.

  Her breath caught in her throat. ‘An explosion?’

  › Correct.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Maddy felt the blood drain from her face. ‘How big?’

  › Unable to specify. It is a large signature reading.

  She looked at Sal. ‘Oh my God, you don’t think…?’

  Sal swallowed nervously and didn’t say anything — her wide eyes said it all.

  ‘Bob, tell me it wasn’t us that just caused that to happen — our tachyon signal?’

  Bob’s cursor blinked silently for a few seconds.

  The tachyon signal is the most likely cause of the explosion. The precursor particles may have caused a reaction.

  ‘Oh God, what have I done?’

  CHAPTER 21

  Brilliant white, floating in a void of perfect, featureless white. To Liam it felt like hours, staring out at it, hanging motionless in the void as if he was floating in a glass of milk.

  It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes, seconds even.

  He’d begun to wonder if he was actually dead and hanging around in some pre-afterlife limbo. Then he saw the faintest flicker of movement in the thick milk world around him.

  An angel coming for him? It looked like a cloud of slightly dimmer white and it danced around like a phantom, gliding in decreasing circles that brought it ever closer to him. It looked familiar.

  I’ve seen that before.

  Then he remembered. The day that Foster had pulled him from the sinking Titanic. In the archway, as he’d woken the three of them from their slumber…

  The seeker.

  There were more out there, faint and far off, drawn to him as if they could smell his presence, like sharks smelling blood. Perhaps the first seeker had silently called out to them that there was something here for them all to share.