Second Lives

by Scott K. Andrews

  &Hey,' he said as she reached the door. 'Thank you.'

  Jana looked back over her shoulder and smiled at him. 'Next stop: Beirut, 2010.'

  The Rolls-Royce pulled up tp the tall metal gates, gliding through a pall of smoke that whorled and spun in the car's wake, but the gates did not open.

  Quil tutted impatiently in the back seat.

  'Find out what is going on,' she barked as she turned round to peer out the back window. She identified the source of smoke easily - the wreckage of a motorbike lay by the side of the road. It was charred and twisted, no longer burning, but there were small fires in the foliage surrounding it and thin wisps of smoke still rose from the wreckage. She assumed it had crashed into a tree and the petrol tank had exploded on impact, but she was wary enough not to discount more sinister explanations.

  Her chauffeur, a short, stocky man with blue facial tattoos and a shaved head, undipped his seat belt and stepped outside, drawing a gun from a shoulder holster as he did so. He closed the door behind him, leaving Quil alone in the car, her only company the soft feline purr of the engine.

  She rubbed her eyes, still slightly unaccustomed to feeling soft, supple skin where only recently there had been scars. Even in the future, when she had been much younger, she had habitually worn a mask, but it had become a necessity rather than a choice after she had been blown back in time and caught in an explosion during a brief stop aboard what she thought might have been an old-fashioned sailing ship. She and her husband, Henry Sweetclover, had recently travelled to 2076, where she had received the very best reconstructive surgery history had to offer. They had offered to make her look young, but by her reckoning she was nearing forty-five and felt she ought to look it, so there were lines and wrinkles where such things would naturally have occurred. She liked her new face; it was brand new yet it felt lived in, properly owned - but she was unaccustomed to having it uncovered.

  Impatient, Quil wound down her window to demand answers from her chauffeur, who was in animated conversation with a security guard sitting in a little booth just inside the gate, who seemed unwilling to give them access to a large industrial complex that a sign identified as 'Io Scientific'. She leaned her head out, drew a breath to shout at them to hurry up but stopped dead as an explosion erupted from a series of windows in the top floor of the building, bright orange flame blossoming into the sky, showering glass and debris across the neatly kept lawn and the car park below.

  Without hesitation, Quil climbed out of the car, drew her own weapon from her holster and pointed it at the security guard.

  Tm sorry, ma'am,' he stammered. 'But Mr Sweetclover gave strict instructions not to admit anybody. Anybody at all.'

  'I am not anybody,' barked Quil.

  'No ma'am, but, you see, somebody came in earlier, um, disguised as Mr Sweetclover. Really, impossible to tell the difference it was,' said the guard, apologetic and afraid. 'And if someone could imitate him that well, then, how do I know you're, y'know, you?' He trailed off and winced, shrugging.

  Quil considered his words as the sound of car alarms, tinkling glass and gunfire echoed towards her from the building on the other side of the fence she could not quite believe she was still on the wrong side of.

  'Craig,' she said sweetly, stepping forward so the gun was just that bit closer to the guard's face. 'It is Craig, isn't it?'

  The guard nodded fearfully.

  'Craig, are you married?'

  He nodded, even more afraid.

  'Then you can return to your wife this evening in one of two conditions - unemployed or dead.' She cocked the gun for effect. 'You have three seconds to choose.'

  Craig's shoulders slumped and he nodded once as he flicked the switch to open the gates. As soon as the gap was wide enough for her to slip through, Quil pushed past her chauffeur and ran as fast as she could towards the entrance. Had she looked back she'd have seen Craig shuffling dejectedly out the gates and walking off down the road into town, but her only thought was for her husband.

  She realised just in time that the glass doors that would normally have slid open to admit her were going to stay firmly shut, and she skidded to a halt with her hand on the glass. The building was in lockdown.

  There was no point shooting out the glass - she had specified it be bulletproof, a security precaution she now regretted. She could see no movement in the lobby, no one to let her in, so she ran round the side of the building to the fire escape, intending to climb up to the floor where the explosion had occurred and gain access through one of the blown-out windows, assuming the sprinklers had damped down the inferno. As she climbed she mentally filed through the likely causes of the explosion.

  If the threat came from this time period, it was possible that another organisation or even a government was attempting to sabotage or steal their work - they were developing a number of revolutionary, top-secret projects that rivals around the world would certainly kill to obtain. On the other hand, if the threat was related to her past actions and future plans, then it could only be the three kids and their pathetic gaggle of allies causing trouble. Unless Earth's emergency government had developed time travel too and jumped back here to apprehend her. That thought chilled her blood, but she ran up the fire escape without pausing for breath, all the time thinking about Henry, praying that he hadn't been caught in the blast.

  She reached the fire exit, which was hanging off its hinges, and ran straight inside. The air was thick with smoke and the floor was slick with water from the sprinklers, which were still dripping. She could see no flames but she hesitated for a second, stopped dead by an animal rush of fear as she flashed back to the explosion that had left her a charred wreck so many years before. She dismissed the vision as quickly as it had arrived and pushed on, blinking her tearful eyes to keep them clear, calling for her husband as she hurried deeper into the building. There was no more gunfire, so the only sound was the drip of water and the insistent whine of the fire alarm, which made her ears sting.

  When she reached the corridor that ran the length of this wing of the building she saw the double doors of the central laboratory lying in her way, smashed and smouldering. She glanced right and saw that this had been the seat of the blast.

  Looking left she saw a number of bodies littering the corridor, limbs at unnatural angles, pools of blood surrounding them. Again a rush of fear until she registered their uniforms - none of them were Henry, these were guards.

  She ran past them and found a group of men round the next corner, coughing and checking each other for shrapnel wrounds. One of them was her husband. She ran to him and flung her arms round him, startling him as she held him tight. After a moment's confusion, he returned her embrace.

  Once her pulse had slowed, Quil disentangled herself and stepped back, slightly alarmed at the strength of feeling that had overtaken her. She mentally shook herself and resumed business.

  'What happened?' she asked.

  'It was the kids,' replied Henry. 'All three of them. We apprehended them at the Hall, as you said we would. We brought them back here, performed all the procedures we agreed.'

  'Then . . .?' Quil wordlessly gestured towards the smouldering lab.

  'They had assistance,' said Sweetclover. 'A fourth member of the party. A master of disguise. He infiltrated the building and affected their escape. You can see the result.'

  'God dammit,' roared Quil, looking for something to kick or punch and finding only the guards within reach. She fetched the nearest one a hefty blow to the back of the head, which he seemed not to even notice, but it made her feel better.

  'But you got Jana's chip?' she asked a moment later.

  Sweetclover gestured towards the smouldering lab. 'It was in there,' he said. 'In the vault.'

  With a wordless cry of rage, Quil turned and stalked into the wreckage. The vault door was open, the chip long gone. She worked hard to control her temper.

  'What about the boy, Kaz. Was he interrogated?' she asked as she returned to her husband, w
ho was looking abashed as he wiped blood off his face.

  'He was.'

  'Show me,' she said, and walked past him towards the stairs without hesitation, knowing he would follow.

  They hurried down the stairs and wordlessly made their way to the room that contained the mind probe. Even as Quil pushed the door open she knew what she would find. Sure enough, the recording was gone and a guard lay dead on the floor.

  She didn't have to say anything to communicate her disapproval. She hurried to the surgery with Sweetclover in tow and there, to her astonishment, found the doctor hunched over a microscope, apparently oblivious to the noise of the alarm and the sprinkler water that had drenched his white lab coat. He glanced up as they entered and when he saw who it was his face burst into the widest grin, excited and slightly manic.

  'You have to come see this,' he said breathlessly. 'Dora's blood, it is exactly as you promised, it has the same properties as yours.' He indicated Quil. 'Which I thought was impossible.'

  Quil harrumphed. This confirmed her hypothesis about the children - their ability to travel in time originated from the same source as hers. This wasn't really new intelligence though, not like the recording or the chip would have contained.

  'Extract the mineral we need,' said Quil as she turned to leave. 'It will only be a trace amount, but it may be of use.'

  She didn't wait to hear whether the doctor responded with enthusiasm, dismay or sycophancy. A few minutes later, back in her office, she poured Sweetclover a whiskey and they sat and considered their next move.

  'Was this before they travelled to 1645?' she said, even though she knew the answer.

  Sweetclover nodded. 'This was their first trip through time, yes.'

  Quil shook her head mournfully. 'So that was our best chance to put a stop to all this, gone.' She looked up accusingly. 'How the hell did you let this happen, Hank?'

  He shrugged. 'They had help, I told you,' he said. 'I don't know who it was, but he was well disguised and entirely duped the guards.'

  'Another time traveller?'

  'Yes. It could have been one of them, maybe Kaz, I don't know.'

  'So now it's Mars, isn't it,' she said resignedly. 'They go on to Mars and screw everything up.'

  'As far as we know.' He paused, and considered. 'There was one thing. I listened in on the boy's interrogation briefly.'

  Quil leaned forward, interested. 'And?'

  'He told a story about his mother's death. A bomb, it was. Somewhere called Beirut. Only a few years ago. Maybe we could use that?'

  Quil threw her arms round his neck and kissed him hard.

  Now that was something she could work with.

  Beirut Lebanon, 18 March 2010,11:41 P.m. - 30h 51m to car bomb detonation

  The thunderstorm covered their arrival with uncanny accuracy, unleashing a simultaneous flash of lightning and sharp clap of thunder at the instant Dora, Kaz and Jana arrived. The commotion confused Jana for a moment; it was jarring enough jumping through time without being greeted by blinding light and deafening noise.

  'Crap,' she muttered when her senses aligned properly and she was able to assess her surroundings.

  The rain fell with brutal intent and the air had the tangy thunderstorm smell of scorched ozone. Despite the white electric light that had caused her to wince on arrival, it was night. There were no streetlights, so she blinked and tried to construct her surroundings from the after-image left by the lightning and the soft bleed of light from shuttered windows.

  She and her friends were standing in the middle of an empty, narrow street next to a shabby old Volkswagen microbus. The walls on either side of them were three or four storeys high, with balconies that jutted out into the alleyway.

  The walls were light but the whitewash on them was old and flaking, covered by a few desultory flyers that were even now in the process of coming unstuck in the face of the storm's onslaught. There was a narrow sidewalk lined with small bollards. Three scooters were piled up against the walls beneath a nearby balcony. A cat's cradle of phone lines tangled above them, spanning the alleyway.

  Ahead of them was a dead end, the alley terminating in a three-storey house with shuttered windows and a doorway topped by a curving cupola-shaped window that rose to a point. Definitely Middle Eastern, which was a hopeful sign.

  They'd been aiming for Beirut but they'd dressed for hot, dry weather, so Jana was soaked to the skin writhin a second of arrival.

  She felt her wrist being pulled and allowed Kaz to drag her underneath a balcony, which provided scant cover.

  Ts this it?' asked Dora.

  'Think so,' said Kaz. 'Hang on a moment.'

  Kaz, who was dressed in soggy shorts and a wet T-shirt, which clung to his scrawny boy's frame, hurried out into the downpour just as there was another lightning flash and thunderclap, again simultaneous, indicating that the heart of the storm was still directly overhead. Jana smiled as Kaz jolted in alarm. He made it to the open end of the alley without being struck down by the hand of God, and peered into the adjoining road, holding his hand above his eyes to shield them from the rain so he could see better. After a moment he turned and gestured for them to join him.

  'I think I know where we are,' he said as they sheltered beneath a canvas awning that sagged threateningly, heavy with collected rain. 'If I'm right, it's only a short walk to United Nations House.'

  When planning this trip they had considered approaching Kaz's parents at their home, but the possibility that Quil or her agents might be waiting for them had caused them to adopt a more circumspect approach. A better option would have been to catch his dad at the HQ of the UN mission in nearby Naqoura, where he spent most of each week, but the heavy military presence there made it unlikely that their arrival would go unnoticed. In the end they'd decided to seek out Kaz's mother at her workplace - she stayed in Beirut with Kaz and came to the UN building almost every day to collect documents, work contacts and get material for stories. The building was busy and large, well-protected and central. Even so, Jana was not happy.

  Jana grabbed Kaz's arm as he made to walk away. 'Remember,' she said. 'Quil and Sweetclover could be waiting for us there.'

  'And if they are, what better cover than a thunderstorm to help us sneak past them and into the building?' said Kaz reasonably.

  'He's not wrong,' said Dora, whose light summer dress, which would have suited her beautifully four years ago, now looked incongruous pasted on to her lithe, muscular frame by the rain. Jana had preferred Dora when she spoke in seventeenth-century English; more recent colloquialisms sounded wrong coming from her mouth.

  Kaz and Dora did not wait for Jana's approval, and they ran off into the downpour.

  Jana rubbed her chest and winced as the scar from Quil's knife itched and throbbed. The doctor in Kinshasa had told her it was too soon to be putting herself under pressure, but after two weeks in bed she had gone totally stir crazy.

  Jana sighed and ran after them, wondering exactly when she'd lost the initiative in this trio. Another crash of thunder made her head throb and the rain lashed at her, as if trying to force her back to her proper time and place.

  This street was wider, the buildings taller, but still the same crumbling balconies and jumble of wires strung overhead. There was no sidewalk, and cars lined both sides of the road close in to the walls, so the trio were forced to walk down the centre of the street where the rain - and possibly the lightning - could victimise them unhindered.

  Jana saw a green dot flash at the limit of her peripheral vision, alerting her that there was new information on the interface chip that sat at the base of her skull. It had connected to a comms network and thereby to the system of global positioning satellites. A map appeared in front of her, a marker indicating her location. She used her eyes to toggle the map to the top right of her vision, where it retreated and became translucent but still readable, if she glanced up and left.

  'Guys,' she said, catching up to them with some difficulty.

&nbs
p; Kaz and Dora turned to her, Dora impassive, Kaz impatient. Jana held up a hand while she caught her breath, trying not to panic at how shallow her breathing was due to the now extreme discomfort her healing wound was causing her.

  T have GPS,' she gasped eventually. 'We're on Gemmayze Street. What address are we heading for, Kaz?'

  'Riad A1 Solh Square,' he said.

  Jana thought the address and looked up and left to see a route clearly marked. She turned 180 degrees and began jogging back the way they'd come.

  'This way,' she said archly over her shoulder. Although the pace was slower, they were now going in the right direction. Initiative regained.

  Ten minutes later the worst of the storm had passed and they were standing beneath an underpass staring across an ornamental garden towards a huge glass arch fronted by flagpoles. Between them and the entrance to UN House were circular patches of grass ringed with trees, an abstract stone sculpture and lots of open space.

  'We can't approach this way,' said Dora, who had taken advantage of the momentary cover to strip her dress off and wring it out, standing in only her panties and bra. Remembering his reaction to her own nudity in Pendarn, Jana glanced across at Kaz and sure enough he was staring fixedly at his feet, his urgent drive to reach his parents momentarily overwhelmed by a mixture of embarrassment and hormones. But his reaction, endearing as it was, was far less interesting than what he was reacting to. Jana looked back at Dora, realised a moment too late that she was staring and blushed slightly when Dora caught her eye. She looked away.

  Dora slipped her dress back on and led them in as roundabout a way as she could towards the building's entrance, using trees and walls for cover, never venturing into the garden proper. As they moved, Jana finally set her eye-mods to night vision and scanned for signs of surveillance, but could see none. It seemed their instincts had been correct - if Quil and Sweetclover were lying in wait for them in this time period, they were probably watching Kaz's home.

  They reached the front door, which was well-lit and guarded, and skirted around the side of the building. It only took a moment for Jana to bypass the keypad security on a service door at the rear, and they were inside. Jana toggled a switch on a small box attached to her belt and reminded the others to stay close - every person within a three-metre radius of her was now invisible to the security cameras.