Time Riders tr-1

by Alex Scarrow

  He looked out of the window at the busy street aglow with neon lightspilling down from a billboard advertising Nike sportswear.

  ‘The agency was set up to be ready for what they knew was coming: future timetravellers, those who’d want to change the past and rewrite the present — terrorists, religious fanatics, megalomaniacs, the criminally insane. Anyway — ’ hepushed his stool back and stood up — ‘that’s enough of the history lessonfor now. I think it’s time I took you three outside and showed you a little of the worldout there, the time and place in which you’re going to be based. Particularly you,Liam.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll need to play a little catch-up if you want tofamiliarize yourself with the world of 2001.’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘It doesn’t look so different. Just as busy, noisy, smelly as2010.’

  ‘Oh, but this is a very different New York,’ saidFoster.

  Maddy looked out of the window. ‘Not really… I see the same ol’, sameol’ out there: adverts for Burger King and McDonald’s, Nike and Adidas, yellowcabs and guys trying to sell cheap AA batteries that don’t work.’

  ‘I think I’d better show you something, Maddy. I think it’ll mean a lotmore to you than Sal and Liam.’

  CHAPTER 13

  2066, New York

  Kramer studied the museum’s six security guards, rounded up by Haas and hismen without so much as a shot fired. They stared fearfully back at him, eyes darting anxiouslydown at the weapon slung over his shoulder. A couple of them were tousled-haired andbleary-eyed as if they’d been roused from sleep.

  Kramer shook his head pityingly.

  Great security guards.

  ‘My name is Dr Paul Kramer. It’s very simple, gentlemen. We want the major medianetworks assembled outside and I want to do an interview with them, which will be broadcastacross the nation’s networks, live. We also want a hoverjet landed on the roof of themuseum, in which we intend to leave, untouched, when our work here is done. If we don’t get what we want, we will destroy the museum and all ofits incredibly valuable and irreplaceable contents.’

  Kramer smiled. ‘There. I said it was pretty simple.’

  The security guards stared at him, dumbstruck.

  ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘we will be letting one of you go to take our demandsout to the police, who I’m sure are already on their way by now. The rest, I’mafraid, will be required to stay here with us as our hostages.’

  One of the guards cleared his throat. ‘The government won’t negotiate withterrorists — you must know that.’

  ‘We shall see. There are too many valuable national heirlooms in thisbuilding. Even in these godforsaken times — people starving, people living in shantytowns across this country — there’s still a pride in our heritage, our grand past.The people will lynch the authorities if this place ends up burning to the ground.’Kramer shrugged almost apologetically. ‘I’m pretty sure they’llnegotiate.’

  The guard’s face stiffened. ‘You’d reallydestroy this place?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Kramer smiled sadly. ‘I’m afraid I most definitelywould.’ He took a step towards the security guard. ‘What’s yourname?’

  ‘Malone, Bradley Malone.’

  Kramer appraised the portly guard silently. In the distance they could hear the whup-whup-whup of police hoverjets already approaching and the wailingsirens of ground response units converging.

  ‘Well, Bradley, I like that you spoke up. I really do. You seem to have more balls thanthe others. So why don’t we let you be the one to go out andgive the police our demands? You make sure you tell them that we’re prepared to wait twohours for things to be arranged. Not a minute more. Ifthey’re late… this whole place will go up like a Roman candle.’

  Bradley Malone nodded.

  ‘And if they try something dumb, like — ooh, I don’t know — asurprise assault, they’ll be very sorry. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my menand I are armed to the teeth and, while I’m more of a desk man myself, Karl here, andhis boys, have quite an impressive amount of combat experience between them.’

  Malone nodded once more. ‘I’ll be sure to tell them.’

  ‘Good. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking with you, Bradley.’ Kramer noddedto one of his men. ‘Send him out the front entrance.’

  He watched them go, then turned to Haas.

  ‘Karl, have the other guards taken into the basement; we’ll hold them down there.And let’s get our kit down there too. No time to waste — the clock’s tickingnow.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The men moved quickly and efficiently, hustling the hostages through double doors labelledwith a fading sign: TO STORAGE BASEMENT: STAFF ACCESS ONLY. Therest of them began to lift their crates and canvas sacks of equipment after them, bangingclumsily through the swing doors and grunting with effort as they hefted them down concretesteps to the basement.

  The sound of the hoverjets and sirens had grown louder, and through the metal grilles thatcovered the building’s grand front windows he could see the blue flash of police lights.Apart from a couple of his men, stationed by the windows, keeping an eye on the policeassembling outside, weapons unslung and ready to fire, Kramer stood alone in the dim interiorof the Museum of Natural History’s main hall.

  ‘That should keep everyone busy enough, for now,’ he muttered quietly.

  CHAPTER 14

  2001, New York

  Foster pointed up at the New York skyline. ‘Do you see something there thatshouldn’t be there?’

  Maddy gasped. ‘Oh my God… the Twin Towers!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Foster, ‘the World Trade Center.’

  She looked at him. ‘Does this mean history’s changed already? That they won’t be destroyed by terrorists?’

  The old man shook his head sadly. ‘Sorry, no. History remains unaltered… remainsin this case — regrettably — as it should be.’

  ‘Oh man.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘I’d forgotten how beautiful theylooked, all lit up at night like that.’

  ‘The agency picked this time and this place for a very good reason,’ Fostercontinued. ‘Today’s date is the tenth of September. Tomorrow is theeleventh.’

  Sal looked up at him. Her eyes widened, suddenly registering something. ‘Nine-eleven!’ she said. ‘I remember, we studied that inschool. That’s going to happen tomorrow?’

  Foster nodded.

  Liam looked from one face to another, bemused. ‘Nine-eleven? What’s that? What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Nine-eleven is how people refer to the terrible thing thatwill happen tomorrow morning, Liam.’

  Foster gestured up at the glowing skyscrapers towering above Manhattan’s cityscape likesentinels. ‘Tomorrow, at eight forty-five a.m. precisely, a plane fullof people will be deliberately crashed by terrorists into the side of the north tower, andabout eighteen minutes later another will be crashed into the side of the south tower. By tenthirty a.m., both towers will have collapsed in on themselves and about three thousand peoplewill have lost their lives.’

  Liam looked at Maddy and noticed the glistening trail of tears running down her cheeks.

  Foster took a deep breath. ‘Many people in New York lost someone they loved, someonethey knew. The nation was traumatized. Tomorrow, Liam, this will feel like a very differentcity.’ He placed a comforting hand on Maddy’s arm. ‘I’m sorry. I knowfrom our computer records that you lost family in there.’

  She nodded. ‘A cousin. Julian. He was cool.’ She could have told the others howshe’d had a childhood crush on him. How he’d made her laugh till she criedwhenever he came to visit. He’d run the computer network for one of the banks. Juliandied along with three thousand others. Died, and left them nothing to bury.

  ‘I know this is painful for you,’ continued Foster, ‘but for practicalpurposes this is an ideal location for an agency field office.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, wiping her cheeks dry. ‘Why does it have to behere?… Why now?’

  Foster paused for a moment, thinking how best to
explain.

  ‘The archway you awoke in, the field office, exists in a time bubble of forty-eighthours. Two days. Monday tenth and Tuesday the eleventh of September 2001. Come midnight onTuesday it automatically resets back to the beginning of Monday. You, as a team, will livewithin that time bubble. You will live those two days over and over again, whilst for the restof the world those two days will come… and go.’

  ‘But why does it have to be these two days?’ askedMaddy. ‘I remember that day. I was nine. My mom and dad both cried thewhole day, that Tuesday. Why then?’

  ‘Because everyone’s attention will be on what happened. No one will ever noticethe comings and goings from that little archway beneath the bridge. No one will ever remember-’ Foster glanced at Liam — ‘this young man dressed in asteward’s uniform, wandering around the night before. Your existence here will neveraffect time, never contaminate time… you’ll never beremembered by anyone. All anyone will ever recall of today and tomorrow will be the horrendousimages of the planes striking the towers, the towers coming down, the dust-clogged streets,the grief-stricken survivors emerging from the smoke.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s how we stay unnoticed, Madelaine,it’s how we keep the agency a secret. It’s how we keep from contaminating timeourselves.’

  She nodded silently, new tears beginning to fill her eyes.

  He rested a hand on her arm. ‘I’m truly sorry. Do you remember the daybefore?’

  She shook her head.

  He smiled. ‘The day before, the Monday, really was beautiful. A warm and sunny day,Central Park filled with tourists and New Yorkers enjoying the warmth without a care in theworld. Take comfort in that, Madelaine, at the end of every grim Tuesday, because for you theworld resets and that Monday waits to happen once more.’

  Maddy wondered if that meant she might one day catch sight of Julian striding to work in hissmart office clothes, be able to talk to him again. Warn him not to turn up for work?

  No… No, I guess I can’t. She shook the temptingnotion from her head, knowing that it would come back again to taunt her.

  Foster glanced at his watch. ‘It’s been a few hours now. The seeker should havefaded away.’

  Liam swallowed anxiously. ‘You’re sure of that, MrFoster?’

  ‘Yes. It was already dying when we left. I left everything powered off, even that lightswitch. It’ll have faded away by now. We should head back. There’s much for thethree of you to learn, and learn quickly.’

  Maddy drew her eyes from the towers and studied Foster intently. ‘Why therush?’

  ‘And why us?’ asked Sal.

  ‘Why you? It’s simple. All three of you have the specific skills we need. Now wehave you, though, I need to train you for the work at hand.’

  Foster took a moment to consider what to say next. ‘And I’ll not lie toyou… it’s going to be dangerous.’ He looked at them sombrely. ‘I lostthe last team because of a silly mistake, a simple, stupid mistake. They should have scannedbefore pulling me back. They didn’t. So this time the training’s going to be morethorough. All three of you will need to work hard. You’ll need to understand how timeworks, know what you’re doing or…’ He paused, looking away.

  ‘Or what?’ asked Sal.

  ‘Or you’ll end up like the last team.’

  They stood in silence, watching the busy street, listening to the bustle of cabs, thethumping bass of a passing sound system, the distant squawl of a police siren bouncing offskyscraper walls of glass and steel.

  ‘Mr Foster,’ Liam said after a while, ‘what if we don’t want to do this?’

  The old man offered them a sad, pitying smile. ‘Then there’s only one place youcan go… back where I found you. For you, Liam, back on deck E, just as that poor brokenship starts its descent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.’

  Liam shuddered involuntarily at the thought.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s not much of a choice, is it?’

  ‘Not really,’ muttered Liam.

  He spread his hands. ‘I’m afraid that’s the way it is.’

  Maddy shook her head. ‘Well, there’s no way I’m going back on to a planethat’s about to crash and burn.’

  ‘If you decide to stay,’ cautioned Foster, ‘there’s no leaving. Ifyou decide to stay, you’re in for good.’

  ‘Until we die in the service of this agency?’

  He nodded sombrely. The three of them regarded the old man in stony silence.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we should probably head back. There’s one moremember of the team I want to introduce you to.’

  Liam cocked his head. ‘Someone like us?’

  ‘Not exactly… no.’

  CHAPTER 15

  2066, New York

  It’s down here somewhere in the dark, Paul. Can’tyou feel destiny tugging at your sleeve?

  He didn’t. What he felt were the eyes of Karl and his men upon him, anxiously,impatiently, watching him thumbing through his little black notebook.

  Through the open door, leading on to the stairwell up to the main hall, he could hear themuted echo of a loudhailer coming from outside. Apparently they already had a negotiator outfront trying to establish contact. If he wasn’t so preoccupied down here, it would havebeen fun to be upstairs in the museum’s main hall watching the growing circus buildingup out there.

  ‘Sir,’ Karl prompted under his breath, ‘there’s only half an hourleft of your deadline. They will surely come in soon if they think negotiation isn’tgetting them anywhere.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied, looking down at the pages of his scrawled handwriting.‘It’ll take just a moment.’

  Karl looked around the basement. It was filled to the high ceiling with crate after woodencrate of varying shapes and sizes, each stamped with a unique catalogue number. There werehundreds, no, thousands of them stacked down here on long rows of metal brackets andwooden-slat shelving.

  Kramer looked up and noticed the concern on Karl’s face.

  ‘Karl, these boxes are all categorized. It may appear random, but theywere very careful when they closed down the museum to store the exhibits by department, bysub-department, by genus, by species.’

  Kramer waved the black book in front of Haas. ‘He wanted to be able to locate iteasily, quickly — not have to sift through a thousand wooden cases.’ Kramer lookedaround. ‘We’ll find exactly where it’s located,’ he added. ‘Theanswer’s in this little notebook. Trust me.’

  Kramer flicked through a few pages, finally running his finger down a page filled with fadinghandwriting.

  ‘And here it is. CRM, three-zero-nine, one-five-six-seven,two-zero-five-one.’

  Karl Haas turned to inspect the nearest crates, but Kramer grabbed his arm.

  ‘We don’t have the time to check every box. We canwork out where to start looking from the number.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘CRM is the prefix code for the scientific exhibits. Three-zero-nine is thepalaeontology department.’ Kramer turned round and approached the huddled securityguards.

  ‘Tell me, gentlemen, where are the dinosaur exhibits stored?’

  They shook their heads nervously. One of them, a frail old snowy-haired man who looked tenyears past retirement age, nodded towards a nearby wall.

  ‘Th-there’s a chart just th-there.’

  Kramer smiled. ‘Ah yes… I see, thank you.’

  He stepped over, tore it off the wall and examined it quickly. ‘Right. It’s downthere, I think.’ He pointed along an aisle that faded away into darkness. He pulled atorch out of his backpack and switched it on, heading at a swift trot into the narrowpassageway flanked on either side by shelves laden with wooden and cardboard boxes of allshapes and sizes.

  After a minute he stopped and checked the code stamp on the box nearest him.‘Two-zero-seven, we’re getting closer,’ he whispered to himself, and set offagain at a trot.

  Footsteps behind him.

  He turned to see Karl, his torch a swinging beam of light l
ancing out in front of him.‘Sir? Can I help?’

  Kramer stopped. ‘Yes. Get the men to bring the Porta-Gen down this way. As soon as welocate this thing, we’ll need that generator cranked and ready to go.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Kramer continued into the darkness a while further, then once more drew up and checked thecatalogue stamp on a nearby box.

  ‘Three-zero-six,’ he wheezed, winded by the exertion.

  Geology… very close now.

  He walked swiftly, panning his torch across boxes that were increasing in size, from smallshoeboxes to crates that could fit an armchair, and even larger ones in which one might fit asmall car… or even a dinosaur.

  He grinned. This was it, palaeontology.

  It’s got to be somewhere here.

  Kramer checked his watch. They had about twenty minutes left until the deadline he’dgiven expired. There was no guarantee the police were going to hold back until then, ofcourse. But he suspected they probably would, and then stall a while longer after that,fine-tuning their plans to storm the museum and take down the terrorists inside with theminimum amount of damage to the nation’s treasures.

  He swung his torch from one box to the next, quickly scanning the catalogue numbers.

  Getting close.

  He clambered up on to the lowest crate and swiped the beam of his torch across the onesstacked on the shelf above.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ he found himself hissing, ‘where thehell is it?’

  His eyes darted from one number to the next. ‘It’s got to be heresomewhere.’

  It is, have faith.

  As if in answer to a prayer, his torch spilled across a CRM-309 number. He quickly swung thetorch back and read the next four digits.

  ‘One… five… six… seven…’

  He looked down at his notebook.