Shades of Time kobo

by Sarah Woodbury

  The thought was instantly clarifying. The situation had been life-threatening, but apparently not enough to cause her to time travel back to her world.

  And that meant she was here for a reason.

  Chapter Three

  19 March 2022

  Mark

  Mark Jones’s mobile buzzed for the second time in as many minutes, but he ignored it, knowing without looking that it was a routine notification of the daily backup, which always occurred at this hour.

  Instead, he pushed the stack of paper on his desk towards his metal outbox. The papers weren’t yet ready to go out, but in the back of his mind he hoped if he left them over there for a while, he’d be that much closer to completing them. It was three in the morning, and he’d been at work all night, trying to finish a report for his boss’s boss, who’d left nine hours earlier.

  It was a little hard to believe, here in 2022, that so much paper was still being generated by any office. You would think there’d be none, but actually, the reverse was true. There was more paper being used now than ever before. If the twenty-first century had taught the intelligence services anything, it was that every email, text, mobile phone call, and electronic device could be hacked. Listening devices were thinner than hairs, and they could project for miles. Mark’s office was swept daily for foreign electronics, and still he never felt quite sure nobody else was listening.

  So if a person wanted secure communication and an official record, they were back to paper. Tasks like this had taken over his life, now that he was the lead programmer of a much-beleaguered group of satellite software engineers, part of a subset of the Security Service which focused on processing the millions—billions—of bits of data Britain’s surveillance systems took in every day.

  The government’s focus was on stopping acts before they started, as it should be, but this required earlier and earlier notification. Such was the workload that Mark rarely left his office, and many of his staff at times slept at their desks in their quest to stay abreast of hackers. His people were desperately needed but never loved, and always one step behind, since if an incident took place, it was clearly their fault for not having prevented whatever Trojan, virus, or malware a twelve-year-old from Chiswick—or foreign spies—had directed at Britain.

  Thus, if a person so much as made a joke about a bomb or anything resembling an act of terrorism, he or she should have a file at MI-5. Mark’s section was also merely backup to the much sexier GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), which had risen from the ashes after its complex had been blown up nearly three years ago.

  In the intervening years, Britain’s intelligence community had worked frenetically to rebuild itself and its infrastructure. Three years ago, Five had been uniquely placed to step into the gap the loss of GCHQ had created, having maintained their own redundant covert surveillance program all along. Once GCHQ was up and running again—and more secretive than ever—Five, instead of mothballing its program, had, naturally, expanded it. Mark was, in effect, a beneficiary of that decision.

  For the most part, Mark believed in what he did, which might have surprised some of his peers who didn’t work at Thames House, the main office of the Security Service in London. They viewed the government’s surveillance program as a violation of civil liberties. Which, in truth, it was. But Mark was convinced that without the CCTV cameras, microphones, and electronic surveillance, criminals and terrorists would have had that much more of a free hand. They’d caused a great deal of damage in recent years as it was, and people said the most amazing and terrible things when they thought nobody but the person they were talking to was listening. Of course, it was also the same technology that had caused the overload of paper on his desk.

  High heels tapped down the hallway beyond his half-open door, and the familiar tentative knock of Livia, his newest tech, three months now on the job, echoed into Mark’s office. As usual, technology services were in the bowels of the building, though he did, for once, have a window located high up in one wall. If he stood on a chair and looked out, it gave him a view of a narrow car park.

  “Mr. Evans? I may have something interesting here.”

  Mark didn’t consider himself immodest, but he knew himself well enough by now to state a bold truth: he was one of the cleverest people at Five. That was just a fact. He’d discovered within five minutes of meeting Livia that she was well into his range, though completely out of his league in dating terms, even if dating a subordinate could ever be appropriate. She was taller than he was, model-thin, and blonde.

  When Livia had been shuttled into his department three months ago, Mark had run her through her paces, wanting to know why his boss had given him someone so obviously overqualified. He hadn’t had his questions answered, however, and he’d decided, admittedly based on no evidence whatsoever, that she was a plant, a spy within his department, and probably specifically tasked with keeping an eye on him. He’d grown all the more certain of it the more often she kept the same hours he did.

  So he didn’t look up from his computer. It was deliberately rude, but he wasn’t going to make spying on him easy for her, and he merely grunted, “Come in,” even as he waved at her to enter his office.

  The door squeaked all the way open, but when Livia didn’t say anything more, he realized she was hesitating in the doorway, precariously balanced on too-high heels the Director-General had decreed were the current dress code. While other institutions were dressing down, Thames House was a bastion of knee-length skirts and suits, high heels and wingtips. Mark’s parents had given him a tie for his last birthday, a gift that would have sparked laughter a few years ago, but now actually made him grateful.

  Just thinking about what Livia’s feet must feel like at the end of the day made Mark tired. She was at most six years younger than he, but a year at Five was like seven in the outside world, making her vastly less experienced than he was.

  Thus, he relented, and though he was still mostly focused on his computer, he took a moment to glance at her face. “What is it?”

  Livia had been hired to do quality control on the software his section designed, and she was very good at her job. “I found something in the software I wanted you to see.”

  He found himself grunting again. The only way to uncover credible threats to the nation’s security was to flag many that never panned out, so Mark didn’t dismiss her immediately. Meanwhile his mobile buzzed again.

  “Sir, I really think you should look at that.”

  “It’s just the backup notification.” Mark pressed send on the email he’d been writing.

  “It is, and it isn’t. That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. There’s a hidden program in the backup notification.”

  She had his full and undivided attention. Such was Livia’s composure, however, that she stood her ground as he glowered at her. Probably she could see right through him and knew he was all bark and no bite.

  “What are you talking about?” He reached for his mobile.

  “I found a Trojan horse in the software, hidden inside the backup notification you just received and others like it. The Trojan was built into the code itself, and the encrypted notification piggybacks on the standard one. It is sent only to you, and the latest notice was sent ten minutes ago. Sir.” The last word came out stiffly.

  Mark stood abruptly, and his hand trembled around his mobile to the point that he almost dropped it. Because, of course, she was right. He had been the one to write the original software for the satellite tracking system without which Britain’s entire system of surveillance wouldn’t work. That Trojan she’d found did go directly to him, and the buzzing he’d ignored was telling him that someone had arrived.

  Someone had arrived!

  Mark’s heart was pounding, and his breath caught in his throat, all of which he worked to hide from Livia while at the same time trying to decide what he was going to tell her.

  But she had her own ideas. “Please let me show you.”

  L
ivia’s office was two levels down in a true basement, which was unfortunate. Thames House was (unsurprisingly) on the River Thames, which meant despite near constant cleaning, the concrete always felt dank and borderline moldy, though the engineers and environmental techs swore it passed all the tests. Mark himself sneezed every time he ventured down here, even though he’d never been allergic to mold before. Consequently, he flat out didn’t believe them.

  Livia truly had the worst office in the building, not dissimilar to Mark’s first office in Cardiff, back when he worked for Callum. While the room was twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide and would have been spacious if carefully appointed, it was crammed floor to ceiling with old equipment nobody dared get rid of, since every gigabyte inside every device had once been classified. Everybody knew it was impossible to delete data.

  Technically they weren’t wrong. When data on a computer was deleted, the space on the hard drive was freed up to be used again, but until it was overwritten, the deleted data could be retrieved. GCHQ’s software engineers had created a program that overwrote the empty spaces with randomly generated patterns until the data was no longer recoverable. The United States military had come up with something similar, but no matter how many times Mark said the material was safe, his request to surplus the equipment was always denied.

  Livia ushered him into her office, checked the hallway for signs of life, and carefully closed the door. Mark, meanwhile, from his mobile, shut down the cameras and recording devices in the room. He should have done it before he’d left his own office, but Livia’s discovery had flustered him.

  “What exactly have you discovered?” Mark had had time merely to glance at the notification, but he knew England well enough—and London in particular—to know the coordinates he’d been sent were close by. He hadn’t called up the map yet, however, because he almost didn’t want to dig deeper. Once he did, his feet would be set on a path from which he wasn’t going to be able to deviate until he’d seen it through to the end. That he’d escaped the encounter with Christopher, Gwenllian, and Arthur with his cover intact was nothing short of a miracle. Christopher had found Gwenllian and Arthur in Pennsylvania, however, not London, and in the last nine months MI-5 had grown only more suspicious of their own.

  Livia went around her desk to her computer and tapped on the keyboard. “It’s the time travel project, isn’t it?”

  Mark’s head came up, and his stomach turned to a block of stone. Still, he tried to brazen out his response to her revelation anyway. “What are you talking about? What time travel project?”

  “Either that, or you’re a mole, but I don’t think so. The incidents all match the records, and I know you designed the software, so you must have embedded the Trojan into the code from the very start.” Her voice revealed how pleased she was with herself for discovering this.

  “What records?” Even having turned off the cameras and listening devices, Mark still spoke in a low whisper. The rest of his staff had checked out of work, and he and Livia were the only ones on the floor, but paranoia was all-consuming and contagious, and the longer he worked for Five, the worse it got.

  Of course, sometimes someone really was watching. And sometimes that person was him. While the techs swept this room as often as any other, Mark knew the location of each of his employees at all times because nothing went on at Five that wasn’t logged and turned into data.

  “You erased everything in the computer records, most thoroughly, I might add, but nothing is truly ever erased at Five.” Livia went to one of the dozen filing cabinets in the room, pulled open the second drawer, and gestured like a quiz show hostess. “Files.”

  Mark moved to look, pulling out one folder, just to humor her, and then, when it proved to be a dossier on Callum, setting it aside and grabbing a stack out of the drawer. He swept aside some discarded equipment, half of it falling to the floor with a crash, and spread the folders across the table. “How are these here? I shredded everything!”

  “As far as I can tell, everything nobody else wants ends up in this room. The other filing cabinets are full of all sorts of material. I’ve gone through most of it, but—”

  “But these caught your interest.” He bit his lip. “You’ve read them all, of course.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” The word came out slightly defiant.

  “What made you connect the Trojan to the time travel initiative?”

  Her expression brightened. “So it is real! The written reports go back farther than the satellite records, but the Trojan is there, every time. Did you design the software all the way back to when you worked for Director Callum?”

  Mark pressed his lips together, not wanting to answer, but Livia gazed at him so earnestly—and already knew so much—it was pointless to shut her out. “Yes.”

  “So what is the message it’s sending?”

  “Surely you worked that out too. You just said you did.”

  “I know … but I can’t believe it.”

  He just gazed at her, although his mobile was burning a hole in his hand.

  “It tells you when someone has arrived.”

  “Arrived from—” he prompted her.

  “—from the Middle Ages. From the alternative universe.”

  Callum’s file in his hand, Mark stepped close to Livia and spoke so low he could barely hear himself. “Tell me you haven’t said anything about this to anyone.”

  She shook her head. “No. Nobody. I wouldn’t.”

  He looked at her hard. “No boyfriend, no coworker, no casual conversation down at the pub after work?”

  She pressed her lips together for a moment and then amended, “When I first found the files, I asked Veronica over in records if she knew anything about the time travel project. She rolled her eyes and asked if someone had said something to me about it.”

  “Did she mention me?”

  “No, and I told her no, only that I’d heard some of the girls talking in the loo. She told me to ignore them. It was a discredited project that for all intents and purposes had never happened. She said everyone who’d worked on it had been let go.”

  Mark tapped a knuckle to his upper lip. “That’s true.”

  “Except for you. How come they don’t know you worked on it? You’ve been to the Middle Ages!”

  “New life, new identity, new job,” Mark said. “I worked out of the Cardiff office, and few knew me there, since I was in IT. Nobody notices anybody in IT.”

  Livia made a rueful face because she couldn’t deny what he said was true. “So … your name isn’t really Gabe Evans?”

  “No,” he said shortly.

  In politics, and thus at Five, a few months could be a lifetime. Even though it had been only fifteen months since Caernarfon Castle had blown up and Mark had returned to work, with a change in government came a change in directors and a reordering of priorities.

  Turnover in the early years of the Security Service had been slow and measured. Now, they had a new Director-General every few years, and his appointment had become more and more political. Employees rose and fell like a lift going up and down. It was terrible for morale, but it had been good for Mark and had allowed Director Tate to slide him into his new job without fuss, before leaving himself to become the Ambassador to Finland. He had, in fact, urged Mark to come with him, but Mark had respectfully declined, knowing he could do more good for David from here.

  This new Director-General had given no indication he even knew a time travel project had once existed. Mark had put out feelers in every direction, making friends in many sections, trying to determine where he stood. Tate had warned him upon his departure to keep his head down, and Mark had done all he could to remain inconspicuous. At times, he felt like a mole in his own agency, a spy working against his own country, except the foreign power he worked for was the King of England—David, in other words, and in an alternate universe.

  “Are you going to tell me what your name really is?”

  “Not until
I have to.” Mark decided he couldn’t put off dealing with the message any longer, and he activated the screen on his mobile. The map appeared with a dot showing the location of the entry.

  Livia’s eyes were bright. “Who is it?”

  “It doesn’t tell me that.” Mark zeroed in on the map, and then straightened in surprise at what it showed him. “Unfortunately, if whomever this is tries to contact Five to find me, I don’t exist, so that means we have to go looking for them.”

  Completely focused on the matter at hand, and apparently unintimidated by the truth, Livia leaned in to look at his screen. “Westminster Palace?”

  And for the first time since Livia had been assigned to his division, Mark saw her not as a possible enemy, but as a genuine person, a colleague, and a computer scientist not unlike himself, who’d somehow found herself working for Five as a low-grade tech instead of getting a different—and better paying—job in the corporate world.

  “We have literally no time to lose.” Mark patted down his pockets, making sure he had no electronic devices on him, including his mobile, which he left on Livia’s desk. From now on, he needed to think one step ahead of everyone else, even MI-5. The moment he connected with whoever had arrived, he needed to become immediately untraceable. He headed for the door. His heart was in his throat, half-excited and half-terrified at what and who awaited him.

  Livia hesitated, her own mobile in her hand. “We?”

  Mark paused in the doorway. “Yes, we. Don’t you want to come?”

  Chapter Four

  19 March 2022

  Ted

  “Ted, it’s Chad.”

  “Just a sec.” With a glance at Elisa to make sure she was still asleep, Ted swung his legs out of bed. He’d left the phone on vibrate, as he always did, knowing the hum on his bedside table was too quiet to waken Elisa. He pushed his feet into his slippers and pulled his bathrobe from the hook on the back of the door.

  Once down the stairs, he flipped on the kitchen light and pressed the on button for the coffee maker at the same time he said, “Okay, shoot.”