TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (11 page)

All six of them had chorused a deadpan
‘affirmative’.

Abel looked out at the bright sunny morning
now, a blue cloudless sky above them. The road was clogged with morning traffic. A world
of humans tirelessly going about their everyday business, getting up and going to jobs
as if today was just another day. Like program loops executing regardless of the
previous day’s extraordinary events. Life going on the same as before.

‘They are behaving as if nothing
unusual occurred yesterday,’ said Faith as if reading his mind. ‘Why do you
think that is?’

‘A post-trauma behaviour
pattern,’ he replied. ‘Access your database. File 3426/344-456. Human Stress
Responses.’

She blinked momentarily, digesting a short
data entry on how the human mind filled itself with unnecessary repetitive tasks to
block out painful thought processes. Denial. She looked at him. ‘Keeping busy so
they do not have to confront what they witnessed yesterday?’

‘Correct.’

‘Experience, recollection, is useful
data. Denying it makes no sense.’

‘Agreed.’

Little of what they’d experienced of
human behaviour over the last twenty-three hours had made any sense. There was a
frustrating randomness to human behaviour that made predicting what they were going to
do next almost impossible. Like trying to accurately predict the course of a waterdrop
down a rain-spattered windowpane.

There was no knowing for certain that the
target named
Madelaine Carter
was taking her team back to her hometown. There
was a strong likelihood. A reasonable probability. But no certainty. All they had to
support that assumption was the indentation of that word on the jotter pad. Boston.

All they had was a very human
thing … a
hunch
.

Faith suddenly twisted in her seat to face him.
‘I have a signal.’

His eyes locked on her and he nodded.
‘I also just detected it.’

For a second, less than that, they’d
both picked up an ident signal just as they’d driven past a turn-off leading to
some large square buildings fronted by an enormous car park.

‘An AI ident,’ she said. Her
grey eyes locked on his. ‘Software version date –’

‘2064,’ he finished. Nothing in
this time –
nothing
– other than their primary target could possibly be
broadcasting a signal with a future date stamp. ‘It must be them.’

‘Agreed. Take the next
turning.’

12 September 2001, New York

Cooper had arrived in New York not long
after sunrise and was taken by an NYPD squad car over from the precinct HQ. The
plain-clothes police sergeant drew up and stopped in front of a fluttering streamer of
crime-scene tape.

‘As far as I can go, I’m
afraid,’ he said. ‘Feds have it all staked out even though it was a couple
of
our
guys that got shot,’ he added without attempting to hide his
disgust.

Cooper thanked him, stepped out and flashed
his ID at a uniformed officer guarding the tape line.

A chalk circle on the tarmac marked several
bullet cases, and another marked a dark dried puddle of blood.

‘Is there an Agent Damon Grohl
on-site?’ he asked the cop.

‘Your FBI buddies are down there
somewhere,’ he replied, pointing to the opening of an alleyway beside the base of
the towering support for the bridge he’d just been driven over from Manhattan.

‘So what’s down
there?’

‘Damned if I know. Nothing us dumb
ol’ beat cops are being allowed to see.’

Cooper crossed the intersection, flashed his
ID at another uniformed cop standing at the mouth of the alleyway.

‘Yo, Cooper! Coop! Down here!’ a
voice barked out from further down the alley.

It was Grohl. Cooper could make out his chunky
silhouette standing two-thirds of the way down. Light from crime-scene floodlights was
spilling out from some archway across cobblestones and piled rubbish.

‘Damon!’ He began to hesitantly
pick his way into the mouth of the alley, sidestepping a discarded spicy chicken wrap.
‘You going to tell me what this is all about yet? I just spent the last four hours
driving up here! And I really don’t know what –’

Grohl waved at him to come on down.
‘I’m not going to shout about it. Come over here.’

Cooper made his way along the alley. At the
far end of it he could see a handrail and quayside, a view of the East River and the
underbelly of the bridge overhead, receding until it merged with Manhattan beyond. Warm
morning sunlight picked out the tops of the skyscrapers along Wall Street. In the sky,
several news choppers buzzed around where yesterday the Twin Towers had stood.

He joined Grohl and shook his hand.
‘Sheesh … long journey all the way up from Washington this morning.
Every plane in America’s been grounded. I had to damn well drive.’ He looked
at his old Academy buddy. ‘Now I was trying to figure out what the hell it is you
think you’ve got that made you decide to give
me
a call.’

Grohl smiled. ‘Come on, Coop, everyone
in the Agency knows you’re the custodian of all that weird X Files stuff.’
He slapped Cooper affectionately on the arm and grinned, a knowing
boy-have-I-got-something-for-you expression. ‘You won’t be
disappointed.’

They were standing beside a brick archway; a
metal shutter door was wound three-quarters of the way up, but still low enough that
they both had to duck down to look under. ‘What’s in here?’

‘Last night, early hours of the morning
actually, there was that double cop killing. You probably saw the evidence markers out
there on the intersection?’ Cooper nodded.

‘Eyewitness saw the whole thing. Said
they emerged from this alleyway, two of them; one male, one female, mid-twenties, white,
tall, athletic. And get this –’ he grinned – ‘both as bald as buddhas.
Walked right up, assaulted the first cop, took his gun off him and shot him and his
partner dead, execution style. Two to the chest, one to the head. Then calm as you
please they both got into the squad car and drove it away.’

‘Sheeesh. Linked to the Trade Center?
Terrorists?’

‘That’s what we thought.
That’s why we got handed this one so quickly. Follow me.’ He ducked down,
led the way inside. ‘Precinct cops were first on the scene. They searched the
alleyway and found this archway left wide open.’

Cooper ducked under after him and stood up
inside.

‘And this is where it all gets very
weird
.’

Cooper looked around. The place looked as if
it had been burgled or rifled through. A mess of things pulled out and strewn across the
floor. He noted the bunk beds, the table, armchairs. Kettle, pizza boxes, burger
wrappers and drinks cans. ‘What? This some sort of drugs den? A gang
crib?’

Grohl shrugged. ‘No. Not narcotics,
not even a trace. But we did find this.’ He pointed down to spatters and smears of
dried blood on the floor, each mark highlighted with a chalk circle and an evidence
number. ‘Something went down in here. A fight. Crime-scene pathologist reckons
there’s enough blood on the floor to suggest another possible homicide. Two dead
cops out there and another possible killing in here. But no body. Anyway, we got handed
this ball because it might … 
might
 … have something to do
with the terror attack.’

Grohl beckoned Cooper to follow him across
the floor
towards a desk cluttered with wires and circuit boards. He
picked up something sitting in a plastic evidence bag.

‘And
this
little beauty is
why I thought I’d give
you
a call, old friend.’ He passed it to
Cooper. ‘Don’t worry, it’s already been dusted for prints. You can get
it out and take a look at it.’

Cooper reached into the bag and pulled out a
smooth, fist-sized piece of glossy black plastic and chrome. ‘What is this thing?
Some sort of digital organizer?’

‘Turn it over.’

He did and noted the logo on the back in the
centre. An apple.

‘This is some sort of prototype
Apple
product?’

Grohl took it back off him. Pressed a button
at the bottom and the screen glowed brightly. He slid his finger across the screen.

‘Jesus! That’s …’

‘Touch-the-screen technology. Very
fancy, huh?’

Cooper nodded. It wasn’t fancy, it was
stunning
. But he still wasn’t sure what he was doing all the way up
here this morning. There was enough work the FBI needed to be doing chasing down
whatever leads they might have on the horrific events of yesterday.

‘Jesus, Coop, even the military
doesn’t have anything near as
slick
as this little beauty.’
Grohl’s thumb found an icon on the screen and tapped it. ‘Check it out. This
is where it gets real interesting, though.’ He turned the device round and showed
him the screen. Cooper squinted at a page of text.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘System software information. Look at
the software version date.’

Cooper’s stomach did a queasy turnover
in his belly. It was showing the year as 2009.

‘And the device’s calendar is
set to 2010. You ever see
anything like this gadget? It looks like
something right out of
Star Trek
.’

Cooper shook his head. No, he’d seen
nothing as advanced as this, not even mocked-up prototypes at a gadget show.

‘Damon, it looks to me a bit like a
super-advanced version of those new Apple iPod things the kids are all asking for
Thanksgiving.’

‘Oh, and this thing is also designed
to make phone calls.’

‘It’s a
phone as
well
?’

‘Oh yeah, only … it
doesn’t connect to anything because it’s using a telecoms protocol that
doesn’t actually exist …’ His eyes met Cooper’s and Cooper
understood what word his friend was leaving unsaid and dangling in the space between
them.

… 
Yet
.

7.24 a.m., 12 September 2001, outside
Branford, Connecticut

Abel swung the Volkswagen Beetle into the
car park and climbed out of the vehicle, the engine still ticking as he crossed the
tarmac towards the source of the signal, a large white vehicle with wide perspex windows
at the front and back. It looked like some kind of habitation module on wheels.

Faith strode beside him. She withdrew the
handgun from the waistband of the jogging bottoms she was wearing, stolen from some
hapless runner what seemed like a lifetime ago.

‘They are here,’ she said.

Abel nodded and reached for the handle of
the vehicle’s rear door. It failed to turn. He grabbed it tighter and twisted it
hard. Something snapped softly and clattered on to the floor inside. He pulled open the
door and stepped up inside the vehicle. The RV lurched gently under his weight.

Inside his eyes picked out a mess of bin
liners and plastic bags piled down the vehicle’s central aisle towards the driver
and passengers’ seats up at the front.

And a small, yellow cubed android was
sitting on one of the seats. Big ping-pong-ball eyes batted lashes as its pickle-shaped
nose quivered. ‘You’re not supposed to come in here,’ it said with a
cautionary tattle-tale voice.

Abel’s mind detected a squirt of data.
A broadcasted alert. The
yellow robot was beaming an alarm signal. A
fainter signal approximately a quarter of a mile away registered an acknowledgement. He
dropped back on to the ground outside and turned to Faith.

She’d picked that up too.

‘The acknowledgement came from over
there,’ she said, pointing towards a large squat white building, sporting signs of
big-brand retailers. Between them a sea of tarmac beginning to fill with cars parking
up: early-bird shoppers.

‘They are inside that building,’
said Abel.

‘My God.’ Rashim shook his head
with disbelief. He looked around the mini-mart and then reached into a freezer unit and
picked up a shrink-wrapped pack-of-three Ma Jackson’s Shaked n’ Baked
Tennessee Chicken Drummers. ‘This is real?
Real
food?’

Sal nodded. ‘Those? Real chicken legs?
Uh-huh.’

‘From what was once a real live
chicken?’

‘Of course.’

His eyes widened.
When
he’d
come from only the wealthiest could afford vat-grown meat and even then it wasn’t
really proper meat. ‘Meat on the bone’ was muscle cells grown on plastic
rods shaped like bones. It tasted vaguely savoury, with a gelatinous texture, a meat-gel
lollipop at best. Everyone else lived on synthi-soya alternatives.

‘There’s so much!’ He
shook his head again. ‘There’s just so much of this real food!’

‘Yeah, well.’ Sal took the
drumsticks off him and dropped them in the shopping trolley. ‘Best make the most
of it, right?’

Maddy’s call. Since this food
supermarket inside the mall was already open, she decided that since they’d
stopped they might as well stock up on some essentials. The RV had a fridge that worked,
they might as well put something edible in it and the
little kitchen
cabinets located above it. Maddy said she wasn’t sure whether they were staying in
Boston or moving on. But it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to have a few luxuries
aboard the TimeRiders’ ‘tour bus’.

‘This way, Becks.’ Sal led the
trolley. Becks pushed it dutifully.

‘Affirmative.’ Her language pack
was installed now. Just the default library. Her voice was monotone, completely without
any expression. Sal turned to look at her. She was wearing a beanie hat to cover her
still-smooth head, and baggy jeans and a jumper hung loosely on her slight frame. Her
pale face had a slack, vacant look to it. At least that part of her looked convincingly
teenager.

And at least she wasn’t drooling
now.

‘My God!’ Rashim’s voice
echoed from the next aisle along. A moment later he appeared at the end of the freezer
aisle gazing wide-eyed at something sitting on the palm of his hand. She waved him
over.