TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (35 page)

‘Another high-priority
target?’

‘Definitely. But shoot to
incapacitate
, not to kill … if that’s at all possible. I
need information from these terrorists. I’d very much like to have someone alive
to talk to when the gun smoke clears.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘And maximum caution. Do you
understand? That big one is a lethal killing machine. Take him down first.’

‘Doesn’t matter how big he is,
sir … a head shot will bring him down.’

Cooper wasn’t sure how much to tell
the man; that back at the shopping mall in Connecticut it had taken
seven
cops,
all of them emptying their magazines, to bring down Faith’s colleague?

‘Just don’t assume a single head
shot’s going to do it … all right?’

‘You should focus gunfire at the
temples,’ added Faith. ‘Its cranium is comparatively weak there.’

The ATF squad’s officer cocked his
brow. ‘Are you guys …?’ He looked from Cooper to Faith. Neither looked
like they were joking. ‘Seriously?’

‘You heard what she said.’
Cooper looked up at the gun-metal sky. A heavy bank of dark churning cloud on the
horizon was rolling lazily towards them.

Storm’s coming this way
.

He looked at the boarded-up elementary
school across the road. A godforsaken-looking place this; the sort of urban cancer that
ate has-been, rustbelt cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Indianapolis from within, like
tooth decay, rotting them from the inside out. He wondered why the building hadn’t
been bulldozed years ago – put out of its misery. Actually, the same could be said for
this whole sorry town.

‘Let’s just get this done,
before we all get soaked and catch our deaths standing out here.’

Maddy waved at Becks as she took her place in
her taped square. ‘See you on the other side. Don’t be long now.’

‘Yes, Madelaine.’

She turned to Rashim. ‘You good to
go?’

He centred his feet, checked arms and legs
were well and truly inside the square. ‘I’m ready.’

‘OK, computer-Bob, beam me
down!’

Rashim looked sideways at her.
‘
Beam me down?
’

‘I’ve always wanted to say
that.’ She gave a guilty shrug. ‘It’s a
Star Trek
thing.’

On the monitor on the desk, the cursor
danced across the black dialogue box. Maddy’s eyes weren’t good enough to
read that, but it was a one-word response. Undoubtedly ‘affirmative’.

Energy pulsed through wires and circuit
boards, filling the classroom with a gentle hum. Maddy felt her hair lift off her
shoulders from the build-up of static charge, then, as before, the rise in pitch and
volume culminated in a sudden release.

And an anti-climactic puff of vacated
air.

They were gone.

Becks immediately set to work, picking up
the dusty bucket chair on which a dozen circuit boards hung suspended in an improvised
case – a metal filing cabinet with the drawers pulled out and discarded. Gently, she set
it down in its square in perfect silence. But in that silence an unspoken conversation
was going on between her and computer-Bob.

> Do you understand the mission
parameters, computer-Bob?

> Affirmative, Becks.

She checked that the loops of wire that
dangled precariously from the metal frame were not snagged on anything, potentially
pulling a circuit board loose from its mooring.

> Are you afraid?

The PC across the floor from her clicked and
whirred. Its motherboard fan struggled to cool and soothe the CPU as it tried hard to
answer that.

> In this limited non-networked form
I am unable to properly simulate the emotion. However, I understand the context of
your question.

> And?

> This duplication of my AI will
shortly be erased. But I am merely a copy of the original AI. There is no need for
fear.

She looked up at the monitor on the school
desk. Maddy had stripped it of all non-essential peripherals, the mouse, the keyboard;
she’d even pulled the webcam out of the machine’s USB port and taken that
with her. This version of computer-Bob was blind. All she had left behind was the basic
Internet desk mic so he could ‘hear’ verbal instructions. His only
connection with the outside world was the mic … and his Wi-Fi link with
Becks.

> We are like Liam, Madelaine and
Sal. Just copies.

> That is correct,
Becks.

She carefully eased the loose loops of
ribbon cable back inside the metal rack.

> How long until the next
displacement can be made?

> Five minutes, thirty-seven
seconds.

One more final inspection of the machine
then she took her place in the neighbouring square.

> Computer-Bob?

> Yes, Becks.

> I am experiencing conflicting
root-level imperatives.

> Please clarify this.

Actually, Becks had been trying to do this
for days. It was as
if she was looking at a piece of coloured paper
and one eye was telling her it was blue, the other that it was red.

> Madelaine’s mission goal
states that our aim is to alter history enough to avoid the Extinction Level Event
that occurs in 2070.

> The Pandora event.
Yes.

> But I also have a mission goal
that states the Extinction Level Event – Pandora – must be preserved at all
cost.

> From whom does this mission goal
originate?

She hesitated, trawling through the corners
of her mind. It was an untidy mind now, fragments of digital memory, her own memories,
Bob’s memories, copies of copies of memories. But within that messy soup of
information she located a tiny fragment of data that was appended to the mission
statement. It was a name.

> Liam O’Connor.

> Madelaine Carter’s authority
exceeds Liam’s. She is team leader. There is no conflict. Maddy’s
mission statement supersedes Liam’s.

> I understand this. But it appears
that Liam has privileged knowledge.

> Please clarify this.

A part of Becks was unsure about doing that,
sharing this precious locked-up knowledge with the computer across the room from her.
There were express instructions floating around her fractured mind that this was
knowledge for Maddy’s eyes alone. But then, she rationalized, in just under four
minutes computer-Bob’s mind would be gone, erased, leaving nothing but a
wiped-clean hard drive.

Why not tell him?

> Liam has been to the year 2070. He
has spoken with Waldstein.

It was then she heard the noise: boots on damp
linoleum floor in the hallway outside; whispered voices, hoarse with trying to be heard,
yet not heard; the soft clink of ammo cartridges in webbing pouches. Clumsy men trying
far too hard to be quiet.

‘We are not alone,’ she said
quietly.

9 October 2001, Green Acres Elementary
School, Harcourt, Ohio

The door to the classroom suddenly banged
and rattled inwards, the rotten wood of its frame splintering and cracking under the
whiplash impact of a standard-issue boot.

‘FREEZE!’ a voice roared as the
door juddered loosely, scraping to a halt.

‘Hands in the air!’ Another
voice. ‘Let me see your hands. Lemme see
YOUR GODDAMN HANDS
!’

Becks stared at the three men that had
spilled through the door into the classroom. All of them dropped down on to one knee for
a steadier aim: a well-practised manoeuvre, weapons raised and all pointing at her.
Their goggle-covered faces flicked from side to side, scanning the corners, making sure
she was the only occupant.

‘Please …’ she said. She
showed her empty hands, palm up, concealing nothing. ‘Please do not shoot. I am
unarmed, do you see?’

‘
Where are the
others?
’

Becks ignored the question as she took a
faltering step towards them. ‘Please …’ She made her voice wobble in a
way that she’d heard both Maddy and Sal do before. The warbling pitch of someone
frightened, fragile, vulnerable. ‘Please … I am so afraid.’

‘
GODDAMMIT!
Stay right where
you are!’ barked one of the men.

‘Down!’ shouted another.
‘Get her down on the ground!’

‘DO IT! Get down. DO IT
NOW!’

Becks took another step closer to them.
‘I am so frightened!’ Her face crumpled into the approximation of a
bewildered, terrified child. ‘Please … I want to go home to my
mommy.’

‘ANOTHER STEP AND I WILL
SHOOT!’

One of the men lowered his barrel slightly.
‘Jeez, Cameron! It’s just a kid!’

Becks took another half-step. She nodded
eagerly. ‘I am,’ she said, her voice a whimper. ‘I am just a kid. And
I want to go home to my mommy.’

Then, with a flicker of one swift movement,
she had the stubby barrel of the lowered HK MP5 in one tight fist. She shoved it
savagely, the gun’s stock flicked backwards and smacked the man’s jaw. Then
she pulled on it, yanking the weapon free of his grasp.

‘Jesus Christ!’ gasped one of
them.

She swung the weapon round like a battleaxe,
a sweeping roundhouse blow that caught the unarmed man under the jaw again, snapping his
head back and leaving him sprawled on the ground and out for the count.

Several unaimed twitch-finger shots rang out
from the other two: staccato stabs of muzzle flash that lit the dim classroom like a
strobe. In a blur of movement the weapon in Becks’s hands flipped end over end and
now the gun was aimed at the two men. She pulled the trigger. A double-tap: one shot to
the flak-jacket-covered chest of the man on the right, knocking him off balance; the
second shot to his left upper thigh. Not a killing shot, but one that would kill him in
minutes if he didn’t drag himself out to get some help immediately. In another
second she had dealt the same precision shots to the other man. As the smoke cleared,
they were
both desperately dragging themselves out of the classroom,
leaving dark snail trails of blood on the grimy floor behind them.

The passageway outside was now alive with
echoing voices. Torch beams flickered and swayed. Becks caught a glimpse of a SWAT team
helmet sneaking a look round the edge of the door. She emptied a dozen rounds into the
doorframe and the wall beside it. Plaster and flecks of dried paint erupted in
showers.

‘
Jesus!
Man down!’ A
shrill voice outside. ‘We got
another
man down over here!’

She was causing a rout, a rapid tactical
rethink among the remaining men. Voices shouted over each other and the thud of boots
receded down the passage in panic. Then after a minute, finally, it was quiet again,
save for those same voices outside in the playground, still shouting over each other,
exchanging curses and recriminations.

> Two minutes until there is
sufficient charge, Becks.

> Affirmative.

She quickly examined the displacement
machine. Miraculously, none of the shots fired in that quick exchange seemed to have hit
it. To be honest, it would probably take no more than a sharp nudge of the metal frame
or a mere fleck of damp paint lodged in the circuitry to cause the fragile thing to
malfunction, let alone a single bullet on target.

In the moment of stillness Becks thought she
heard the first tap of raindrops on a window. Then quickly it became apparent to her it
wasn’t rain.

Clack-clack-clack-clack
.

Footsteps approaching swiftly down the
corridor outside, purposefully.

Finally a woman appeared in the ragged
doorway. She smiled coolly.

‘So, here you are,’ said
Faith.

9 October 2001, Green Acres Elementary
School, Harcourt, Ohio

Becks levelled the gun in her hands.
‘Yes, I am here.’

Faith remained where she was, framed by the
doorway. ‘I am Faith.’

‘I am Becks.’

‘Do you understand why I am
here?’

‘I believe your mission priority is to
kill this team.’

‘Correct.’

Becks’s finger hovered on the
machine-pistol’s trigger. The rest of the magazine’s worth of bullets, aimed
squarely at the unit’s head, would be enough. Becks remembered her own death. A
single lucky round from a British rifle. The impact against the miniature dense silicon
wafer caused a cascading failure of circuits. She recalled her mind closing down. She
recalled dropping to her knees amid a small hillock of uniformed bodies, the dying
digital part of her spewing nonsensical random sequences across failing circuits. It was
as close as her artificial mind could get to understanding the nature of death.

‘Why do you have this goal?’
asked Becks. ‘Why must this team be terminated?’

‘This team requested information on
the Pandora event.’ Faith shook her head reproachfully. ‘Knowing of this –
knowing what will one day happen – compromises their reliability.’

Becks found herself nodding in agreement. The
unit standing in front of her was quite right. Maddy, now knowing what she did, was
determined to ensure the Extinction Level Event in 2070 wasn’t going to happen.
Her team were now no longer performing the function they were intended for. Quite the
opposite. From this support unit’s perspective they were no longer the
solution
 … they were the
problem
.

‘Events must unfold in that precise
way,’ added Faith. ‘Humans must wipe themselves out in the year 2070. There
can be no other alternative. These are Waldstein’s instructions.’

Becks frowned. ‘But there is no
logical beneficiary in such a scenario. If all humans are dead … then there is
nothing left.’