‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Jana. ‘If you had been here, you would not know it because it would have been too dark for you to see.’
Dora folded her arms and pouted. ‘I do not like the way you talk to me.’
Jana realised her mistake; she had not taken the time to introduce herself to the youngest member of their party. She forced herself to smile, even though she felt sure they did not have time for such chit-chat.
‘I am sorry, Dora. This must all be so confusing for you. My name is Jana, pleased to meet you.’ She held out her hand, but the girl only scowled at it.
‘In my time,’ Jana explained patiently, ‘we shake hands as a sign of greeting and friendship.’
Dora’s face darkened further. ‘So do we,’ she said, keeping her arms firmly folded.
Jana withdrew her hand with as much dignity as she could muster, aware that Kaz was trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal his amusement.
‘We should tell our stories,’ suggested Kaz. ‘If what Steve said is true, we will be spending a lot of time together. Our survival could depend upon trust, but we don’t know each other at all.’
‘Shouldn’t we be spending our limited light trying to find a way out of this place?’ said Jana.
‘Do we need to?’ he replied. ‘When we want to leave, we all join hands and think of somewhere else.’
Jana reluctantly conceded the point.
‘So,’ Kaz continued, ‘I think the best thing we can do is tell our stories. For me, the last twenty-four hours has been very confusing. I want answers. Maybe we can help each other, yes?’
‘I think he speaks sense,’ said Dora.
‘Fine,’ said Jana, trying not to sound too petulant. She did not like being ganged up on and saw no value in wasting their precious light chatting, but she could see that this was not the best time to assert her authority. She and Kaz both perched themselves on lumpy stalagmites, and the boy placed the lantern on the ground in the centre of their little circle.
‘I’ll go first,’ said Jana, determined to retain a little initiative. ‘My name is Jana Patel. I was born, as Kaz already knows, in 2123. I am an American citizen, from New York.’
‘Sorry, I do not understand these names,’ said Dora, seemingly genuinely apologetic at interrupting. Jana sighed. This was going to take a long time.
‘And that’s when I landed at your feet.’
‘Wow,’ breathed Kaz after a moment of silence.
‘Let me save you some time,’ said Jana. ‘No, I don’t know who the men were who chased me. Neither do I know why. One of them did say that “she” wanted my head intact, but I don’t know who they were referring to. I’m just an ordinary girl.’
‘Sorry, but you are not ordinary,’ said Kaz. He instantly realised that he had outraged the girl from the future and tried to explain himself better. ‘Who jumps off a skyscraper?’
‘What is a skyscraper, again?’ asked Dora.
‘Very tall building,’ explained Kaz for the second time.
Jana dismissed his question with a wave of her hand. ‘It was the only option.’
‘Most people would have put up a fight.’ Kaz shook his head, still confused by her explanation. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified by the disregard she seemed to have for her own life, and the dispassionate way she described her decision to take it. He found her calm, logical explanation disturbing. Were all people from the future this emotionless, he wondered? He briefly pictured a world of robot-like people, all emotion purged from their lives, some kind of dystopian future from a sci-fi film. But he dismissed the idea. Nothing in her story supported that vision of the future. He was convinced that her detachment was uniquely hers, a personal quirk.
‘Explain that thing in your neck,’ he said. ‘You said it was a “back-up”. What do you mean?’
Jana indicated Dora, her face a patronising mask. ‘Happy to, but she won’t understand a word of it, no matter how many times we stop to explain.’
Dora stuck her tongue out at Jana.
‘Maybe not, but try,’ replied Kaz.
‘You have the internet in your time, yes?’
Kaz nodded.
‘Mobile phones? Wireless connections?’
Kaz glanced at Dora, who had turned her attention to a nearby stalagmite which she was investigating with exaggerated lack of concern.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘We have that stuff.’
‘Good, well my ENL chip is basically a wireless internet connection. It interfaces with my brain to give me full online access at all times.’
‘ENL?’ asked Kaz.
‘Embedded Net Link.’
Kaz considered this. ‘How do you access information without a screen?’
‘Most people use special glasses that beam the information into your retina,’ explained Jana. ‘Kind of like a screen. But that’s the cheap option. If you’ve got more money, you can have your auditory and visual cortexes wired up so you can see and hear whatever you want to access. And then, if you’ve got even more money, you can interface your memory.’
‘How does that work?’
‘Impossible to explain the sensation to someone who’s never experienced it. It’s kind of like you ask a question in your mind and the answer pops into your head, like a memory, like you learned it at school.’
Kaz shook his head in wonder. ‘I have so many questions.’ He registered Jana’s look of both tiredness and warning. He took the hint. ‘We haven’t got time, but quickly: you have the best version of this chip thing, right?’
Jana nodded.
‘So you are super-rich or something?’
‘Or something,’ Jana replied curtly.
‘OK, so what do you mean “back-up”? Back-up what?’
‘If you’re really, really super-rich,’ she glanced at Kaz, ‘or something, you can set the chip to transmit all brain activity, in real time, to remote servers. That way, if something happens to you, you’ve got a back-up of yourself, of your personality and experiences, stored away in case of accidents.’
Kaz thought about the implications of this for a moment but in the end he shrugged and decided to let the questioning lie for now. ‘So many questions,’ he said again. ‘Last one: what use is the chip to you if you’re not connected?’
‘There’s some internal storage on the chip itself,’ said Jana. ‘Not much, a couple hundred petabytes. Pitiful really. But you can take some stuff with you when you go offline.’
‘Anything in it that will help us?’
Jana’s forehead creased in puzzlement. ‘Weirdly enough, there may be. I found it full of stuff about seventeenth-century England earlier today, but didn’t put it on there. I think maybe it was hacked sometime last night, but I can’t be sure.’
‘How about you, Kaz?’ interrupted Dora, her examination of the limestone concluded. ‘Can you tell us your history in a way that a peasant like me can understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Jana, much to Kaz’s surprise. ‘You know enough about me for now. What’s your story?’
Kaz shrugged. ‘My story is not interesting, like Jana’s.’
Dora folded her hands in her lap and gave him a smile that told him she would find anything he said utterly enchanting. He tried not to smile at how obviously this annoyed Jana.
‘All right. Um, my name Kazik Cecka, born 1995. I grew up travelling with my parents.’ He stopped for a moment as the memories of the explosion, so shockingly fresh and vivid, washed over him again. When the moment passed he glanced up to see Dora looking concerned. Jana just looked impatient.
‘I travel with my father to where he works,’ Kaz went on. ‘But last month we had a big fight and I ran away from home. If you can call it home. I came to England to work on a farm in Cornwall, but conditions were bad and the farm owner was a bastard. So I walked out. I was looking for somewhere warm to sleep, I found the old house, you two – BOOM! – arrive out of air.’ Kaz shrugged, apologetic that his story was so simple. ‘You know th
e rest.’
‘That wasn’t boring at all,’ said Dora sweetly, with a snide sideways glance at Jana.
‘Interesting, though,’ said Jana. ‘You’re the odd one out here, Kaz. Dora and I were both snatched from our own times for whatever reasons. You weren’t. But according to Steve you also have the power to travel in time. One more question we need an answer to – why did Dora and I travel through time but you didn’t?’
Remembering Steve reminded Kaz of yet another question he’d been pondering earlier. He focused on Dora.
‘When we were prisoners, they took Jana’s chip out,’ he said. ‘I think they did that to get her memories. At the same time, they connected me to some kind of machine that made me tell my life story. They were gathering intelligence about us. What did they do to you, Dora?’
Dora bit her lip and thought hard. ‘Lord Sweetclover made me wear these silly clothes, gave me some very strange food … oh, and a doctor stuck a metal leech in my arm and sucked out some of my blood.’
‘That doesn’t fit the pattern,’ said Jana curiously.
‘Hang on,’ interjected Kaz. ‘Dora, you knew Sweetclover from your own time, yes?’
Dora nodded. ‘He was older on this side of the time bridge, but yes.’
‘So have you known him your whole life?’
‘I do not know him at all. His family have lived at the hall since before I was born, but his sort don’t mix with the likes of me.’
‘But you come from a nearby village, yes?’
‘Yes. Pendarn.’
Kaz turned to Jana. ‘So he does not need her story. He knows it already.’
‘But why the blood?’ asked Jana. ‘They didn’t take any of mine …’
Kaz interrupted. ‘How do you know? You were unconscious.’
Kaz could see she was surprised to have missed something so obvious, and to have it pointed out. He thought maybe his question had garnered a smidgen of respect, but he sensed that getting her to like or trust him was going to be hard work. She did not seem the kind of person who made friends easily, or at all. But by proving himself to be clever, asking the right questions, he was slowly making headway.
Dora coughed, pointedly. ‘Don’t you want to hear how I crossed the bridge of time?’
Kaz turned to Dora, who sat prim and straight backed with her hands folded in her lap. ‘Absolutely,’ he said.
‘Then hark, for this is a tale most strange and terrifying …’
‘And thus was I magicked across the years.’
For the first time since she had met the bossy brown-skinned woman, Dora felt she had her complete attention.
‘You saw us on your journey? Jana and me?’ asked Kaz.
Dora nodded.
‘I wonder …’ said Jana slowly. ‘Dora here encounters a strange woman from the future who’s been injured by being thrown back in time. Steve told Dora that the operation at the lab was being run by the same woman. I was attacked by guys who said “she” wanted my head.’
‘You think it’s the person Steve told us about?’ asked Kaz. ‘What was her name?’
‘Quil,’ replied Jana. ‘I think maybe you met our enemy, Dora. A time traveller who was controlling events in Kaz’s time and mine. And you say she knew your name?’
Dora nodded. ‘She did.’
‘That’s suggestive. I think …’ began Jana, but Dora was tired of listening to what Jana thought.
‘It seems to me that we are all victims of circumstance,’ said Dora. ‘Neither Jana nor I chose to cross the time bridge, and poor Kaz was unfortunate enough to witness our arrival and was taken prisoner as a consequence.’
Dora registered Jana’s surprise at her understanding. Good. She was determined to prove to this boyish future-woman that she was not as stupid as she seemed to think. She went on.
‘We have all three been unable to make decisions for ourselves until this moment. Now we find ourselves free. Nobody is hunting or chasing us, locking us up, sticking us with needles or telling us what to do. I think it is time for we three to decide what we want to do.’
‘She’s not wrong,’ said Kaz. He gave her a warm smile, which Dora gladly returned. She liked this man. He was kind and patient. ‘But there are too many questions,’ added Kaz. ‘Until we know more, how can we be sure that anything we do will not make things worse?’
‘I agree with Dora,’ said Jana, much to Dora’s astonishment. She tried not to look too triumphant. ‘We’ve all just been reacting. We have to take control of this situation.’
‘OK,’ conceded Kaz. ‘How?’
What Jana did next took Dora entirely by surprise. ‘Dora,’ she said, ‘what do you think we should do?’
So astonished was she by Jana soliciting her opinion that it took Dora a moment to gather her thoughts and formulate a response.
‘I believe that we should join our hands again,’ she said. ‘I will think of my home. We can cross the bridge back to my village and then we can ask Lord Sweetclover about the woman in the undercroft.’
Jana turned to the boy. ‘Kaz?’
He nodded. ‘It seems a good place to start.’
Jana clapped her hands together and smiled, although Dora thought the expression did not sit comfortably upon her normally stern countenance. ‘We have a plan.’
‘I think we do. But listen,’ said Kaz seriously, making eye contact with both of them in turn. ‘We have to trust each other, OK? We are a team. We look out for each other. Yes?’
‘I agree,’ said Dora, smiling.
‘Me too,’ said Jana. ‘But if you suggest a group hug I’ll puke.’
Before Dora could enquire what a ‘group hug’ was, she noticed something that made her jump to her feet and point into the darkness.
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I told you I had been here before. I recognise this place.’
The murk had lightened. There was soft, dim light in the cavern now. Dora had been so focused on their conversation that she had not noticed. The far end of the cavern was swimming gloomily into view and there, exactly as she remembered, was a wall of strange cocoons.
‘Stasis pods,’ said Jana, her voice full of wonder. Dora did not think she would ever tire of seeing Jana surprised.
‘What?’ asked Kaz.
‘Hibernation units, used for long-term deep space travel,’ Jana explained.
‘That means we’re in your time, or close,’ observed Kaz.
The light, which seemed to be emanating from the very rock itself, was spreading, the edges of the cavern sketched out of shadow by its gradual progress. As the light moved, more serried ranks of the glass cocoons were revealed set into the far walls of the cavern. There were thousands of them, row upon row, stacked as high and as far to the right and left as she could see, more swimming into view with each second.
There was a bright flash of crimson in the far recesses of the cavern to their left. Dora turned to see a tiny figure in the distance, barely visible in the lengthening twilight.
‘That’s me!’ she said. ‘I remember this!’ She waved and shouted. ‘Hello, me!’
The figure waved back and then vanished in another flash of violent red fire.
Dora turned to Jana and folded her arms defiantly. ‘See, I told you I had been here before. And you didn’t believe me.’
Jana barely had chance to apologise – a muted ‘Sorry’ – before Kaz interrupted.
‘They’re moving,’ he said, pointing to the cocoons. Dora squinted and sure enough there was an impression of movement behind the glass.
‘I don’t know about you,’ continued the boy, ‘but I really, really don’t want to be here when they wake up.’
‘Me either,’ agreed Jana.
Dora’s heart sank as she realised it was time to leave. She should have been excited about going home, but she found she was more afraid of the journey itself. After a second’s consideration she decided she was even more afraid of the cocoons and their strange inhabitants than she was of another journey
across the magic time bridge.
She held out her hands. ‘I shall think of my home.’
By the time the cocoons opened – all at once, with a single massive crack and hiss of released air – the three travellers were long gone.
First Interlude
‘You are not a very good interrogator.’ The woman leaned back in her chair, a half-smile dancing on her lips.
The interrogator, sitting across the table from her, said nothing. The woman studied him. About forty-five, she thought. Sagging chin, slight bulge at the waist, thinning hair. He wore a wedding ring, so somebody found him attractive. Or did once, anyway. His skin was pallid and grey, his teeth off-brown. He wore no uniform, preferring an anonymous grey suit, white shirt, blue tie combo that completed the picture of a man who was in every sense middling; middle-aged, middle-rank, middle-England. A functionary, a bureaucrat.
His small grey eyes, though, told a different story. They lacked all pity. He looked at her as if she were a specimen beneath a microscope. The woman harboured no illusions. The interrogator’s appearance was a façade, part of his act.
‘I think,’ she said, pursing her lips and considering him with exaggerated care, ‘that you were the kind of boy who liked pulling the wings off flies. Burnt ants with a magnifying glass. Maybe graduated to cats and dogs. Lots of pets go missing in your neighbourhood when you were young, did they?’
The interrogator stifled a yawn.
‘Oh,’ said the woman. ‘Am I being predictable?’
The interrogator inclined his head slightly as if to say ‘sort of’.
‘Sorry. I’ll try harder.’
The interrogator widened his eyes as if to say ‘go on, then, surprise me’.
‘Really? Is this the act? Sit there and let me talk? A bit of body language – that’s your big play?’
The interrogator gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
The woman shook her head. ‘I think I’d almost prefer the mind probe.’
The interrogator smiled and shook his head.
The woman cursed inwardly. He knew about her defences. Someone had betrayed her. She’d known that already, of course. She wouldn’t be stuck in this anonymous room, buried deep within a top-secret high-security building in an out-of-the-way part of an insignificant country, if she hadn’t been betrayed.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 9