Gates of Rome

by Alex Scarrow

  Sal’s head nodded against her shoulder.

  A computer beeped.

  ‘Come on, then, Sal,’ she said, lifting her away. ‘You’re getting snot on my shirt. I’ve only got one decent one.’

  Sal laughed. Not so much a laugh as a smile. But good enough.

  One of the PCs beeped again – one of those annoying ‘reboot’ beeps, a you-went-and-hit-the-keyboard-in-anger-didn’t-you? beep. Maddy turned round to see computer-Bob had opened a dialogue box and had been patiently trying to get her attention for the last minute.

  >Warning: I am picking up approaching ident signals. 300 yards.

  >Warning: I am picking up approaching ident signals. 200 yards.

  >Warning: I am picking up approaching ident signals. 100 yards.

  >Warning.

  >Warning.

  >Warning.

  CHAPTER 34

  2001, formerly New York

  The shutter door rattled noisily under a hammer-blow impact.

  ‘They’ve found us already!’ screamed Maddy.

  Sal stared at the dented shutter door with bubble-eyed panic. It suddenly jumped again in its running frame and another fist-shaped dent buckled the thick metal slats.

  ‘They’re trying to break in!’ she screamed.

  Maddy turned back towards the webcam. ‘Emergency evacuation, Bob! Activate a portal!’

  >Affirmative. You should specify time-stamp.

  The shutter door lurched again as another huge dent suddenly appeared.

  ‘Anywhere! Activate a freakin’ portal!’

  >Information: Maddy, it is not advisable to enter a portal without a programmed exit location.

  The shutter jumped and rattled again; this time the left side of it clattered out of the top of the running frame and swung inwards. A corner of daylight spilled into the archway.

  ‘Now, Bob!! Jesus! DO IT NOW!’

  She heard the displacement rack start to hum and glanced at the charge display. LEDs flickered one after the other from green, to amber, to red as the reservoir of stored energy began to be discharged into the circuit boards of the machine.

  Bob was right, though. If they stepped into that portal when it appeared before them without some coordinates – any coordinates – plotted in, they were stepping into something unknown, unquantifiable. Unthinkable. A place there was no return from.

  She didn’t, however, have the time to sit down and tap numbers into the system. Sal was backed up beside her, terrified, hopping from one foot to the other. Screaming something at their pursuers in Hindi.

  Maddy couldn’t think clearly. The moment was happening too quickly. She’d planned to set up an emergency evacuation time-stamp: some ‘quick dial’, pre-planned coordinates that she could have Bob pull up and use at a moment’s notice. A precaution. She’d planned to sort that out. It was right at the top of her to-do list. But she hadn’t got round to doing it. Always busy with one thing or another. Always having to clear up after fighting the last fire. Just like everything else, she’d found another way to mess things up again.

  ‘They’re nearly through!’ screamed Sal. ‘Do something!’

  ‘Bob … the last time-stamp! Plot in the last time-stamp!’

  >Affirmative. Plotting.

  The shutter door took another battering, bulging alarmingly on the side that was almost knocked entirely out of its frame. The metal slats there were crumpled and ragged almost like the silver foil wrapper of a chocolate bar.

  Sal turned to her. ‘Jahulla! What about Becks?!’

  She was in the growth tube in the back room. Last time they’d bothered to go in and check on her progress, to look through that murky gunk at the hairless, pre-birth candidate, she’d had the look of a ten- or eleven-year-old girl.

  ‘There’s no time!’

  The displacement machine suddenly discharged its energy. A gust of displaced air sent the rubbish on Maddy’s desk fluttering in come-chase-me circles. Three yards ahead of them in the middle of the archway, perfectly aligned with the shallow scoop in their concrete floor, an eight-foot-wide sphere of energy popped into existence. Maddy could see in the swirling, oil-on-water pattern an image of the location that had been sitting in computer-Bob’s data buffer: Liam and Bob’s deployment location. She could see hints of a rich summer-blue sky, and the greens and browns of grass or trees.

  ‘We can’t just leave her!’

  Another crash and the misshapen shutter door swung entirely free on the right-hand side. It collapsed heavily on to the floor inside the archway.

  Sal was right. It wasn’t just that they owed Becks. Not just a support unit, she was much more than code and meat now. She was a friend. A member of their small family. And it wasn’t only that – the loyalty owed to a friend. Somewhere inside her memory was a packet of data that perhaps was an answer to every question they had. Perhaps also an answer to this – why they were being attacked. Who’d sent the units. What they’d done to deserve this.

  Through the semi-opaque portal, she could see three perfectly bald heads, ferociously pushing their way over, untangling themselves from the twisted and jagged metal and entering the archway.

  No time now to save the unborn child floating in the growth tube.

  ‘GO!!’ she yelled at Sal, shoving her roughly in the direction of the portal.

  Sal looked back at her, ducked down and picked up the wrench ready to swing it. ‘I’m not leaving without you!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m coming!’ Maddy stretched across her desk and grabbed the small bullet-dented hard drive, wrenching it free of the ribbon data cable attached to it.

  ‘Go!!’ she screamed. ‘I’ve got Becks! Now GO!’

  Sal nodded, understanding that at least they had the ‘essence’ of Becks with them. She ran forward and leaped into the portal.

  ‘Bob! Close it right after me!’ Maddy yelled over her shoulder as she turned towards the shimmering sphere. Through the semi-opaque, shifting, dancing image of sun-baked countryside, she could see that one of the support units was entirely free of the tangle of metal and was looking her way. It broke into a sprint towards her. Towards the portal.

  She leaped forward, gritting her teeth at the terrifying prospect of hitting the sphere of energy at exactly the same time as the support unit entered it from the other side; the pair of them fusing together in chaos space and emerging as some entwined, horrifically arranged and short-lived conjoined twins.

  ‘NOOOOO–!’ She found herself screaming as her feet left the ground and she leaped into the spherical void, her arms swung up protectively in front of her face, for what little good it was going to do her.

  CHAPTER 35

  AD 54, 7 miles outside Rome

  ‘How much longer now?’ asked Liam.

  ‘It is due in two minutes, thirty-six seconds,’ replied Bob.

  Liam shook his head. ‘Can’t come a second too soon.’ He looked around the olive trees, grateful that their rendezvous was a quiet, discreet location and seven miles away from the stench of decay and squalor in Rome.

  ‘I’m glad we’re out,’ he added.

  A week, that was all. One week in Rome and Liam could quite happily say he never wanted to see the city again. He shook his head at his naive hope of a week ago: assuming the place was the very definition of order and civilization, an endless spectacle of marbled splendour.

  How wrong he’d been.

  The city, what he’d managed to see of it, was a slum of over a million people. Buildings stacked several storeys high, packed tightly side by side like arrows in a quiver. And the smell was unbelievable. The stench of human and animal faeces. Of rotting bodies. The city was riddled with diseases from polluted water – typhoid, cholera. Liam recalled Nottingham, a city that had been in just as much trouble. But Rome had something else. It had Caligula.

  Examples of his madness were everywhere. In every communal area – marketplaces, forums – T-shaped cruciforms were erected, from which hung those who’d displeased him in so
me way. Graffiti on almost every wall depicted the emperor as either mad or cruel or demonic, or god-like and benevolent. Rival gangs, collegia, daubed the walls with these lurid illustrations and most of the gangs seemed to favour the emperor. They flourished in the growing chaos of the city.

  That was the thing. From those Romans they’d spoken to, overheard – their landlord in particular, a short, thickset and foul-tempered man who seemed to swear with every other word – Liam had got a sense that Caligula had disengaged from running his empire. Was content to let it descend into chaos, ruin and anarchy … while he prepared for some rumoured and imminent destiny.

  Within the walls of the city, it had been the very definition of Hell itself. Liam felt queasy as images of the last few days flashed before his mind. Glimpses, frozen images, a slideshow of horror, splashes of blood and squalor.

  Stop it, Liam. Think nice thoughts.

  ‘Surely they’re probing here already, are they not?’

  Bob shook his head. ‘I have not detected any tachyon particles yet.’

  ‘That’s not right. They should’ve probed already.’ Liam looked up at the support unit. ‘Something’s wrong. Maddy always checks first before she opens.’

  ‘Affirmative. That is standard procedure, Liam.’

  Liam shook his head silently. This was one place he really didn’t want to be stuck any longer than necessary. He had a memory of taking confession with Father O’Grady, his parish priest, a few years ago. Confessing to him guilty fantasies about Rosie McDonald, his schoolmate’s older sister who lived three doors down from him. Father O’Grady had given him chapter and verse about the temptations of Satan, and then gone on to describe in glorious detail the torments that awaited him in the underworld. Liam had gone home and that night had dreamed fitfully of the world O’Grady’s words had conjured up in his young mind.

  These last few days he’d seen that nightmare world for real.

  ‘I am detecting precursor tachyons,’ said Bob.

  ‘Ah, thank Jay-zus for that.’ Liam felt relieved enough to try out a smile. Another minute and they were going to be back home and working out together how they were going to put an end to this nightmare timeline.

  ‘We should stand clear,’ said Bob, holding Liam’s arm and leading him several steps back. Liam turned to look up at their cart and the ponies. It was up the hill on the side of the track, where someone was likely to find it sooner or later. He was wondering whether they should have cut the poor animals free when he felt the puff of displaced air on his cheek. The branches of the olive tree hanging over them swayed and hissed excitedly.

  Liam looked at the shimmering orb that had just appeared, hovering in front of them. He saw the familiar, welcoming, cool dimness of the archway and … there … he could just about see the flickering outlines of Sal and Maddy.

  Sal burst out of the portal, running as she hit the ground. She lost her footing and tumbled into a patch of long grass. She was instantly up again on her feet. ‘Liam!’ Looking around frantically. ‘Liam!’

  ‘Sal?’ he called out to her. She spun round and saw him and Bob standing in the shade of the tree. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  Before she could answer, Maddy was spat out of the portal, arms ahead of her as if she’d been taking a leisurely dive into a swimming pool. ‘–OOOOO!’ She hit the dusty ground and rolled head over heels.

  ‘Maddy? What’s going on?’

  She scrambled to her feet, like Sal, spinning round, glancing in all directions to locate him. ‘Liam? Bob?’ She saw Sal. ‘Where’s Bob?’

  ‘We’re over here,’ Liam said. Then: ‘What the devil’s going on?’

  She ignored his question for the moment, turning back to look at the portal’s shimmering image. ‘Oh God … close! Please!’ she muttered. ‘Close! Dammit!! Close! CLOSE!!’

  ‘Close?’ Liam looked at Bob then back at her. ‘Uh … why do we want it to close? Maddy? Are we not meant to be going back n–?’

  Just then, as the sphere began to collapse in on itself, a third figure was spat out on to the dusty ground. Maddy screamed, backing away from it as it attempted to get to its feet. Only it had no feet. Just bloody stumps smoothly cut and cauterized above the ankle and one arm severed at the elbow by the edge of the force field as it began to collapse in size and winked out of existence.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Chuddah! It’s got a gun!’ said Sal.

  Bob was the first to react, charging forward towards the footless figure, trying to steady itself on uneven stumps, wielding a pistol in its remaining hand. It fired off a shot at Bob, hitting home, a puff of crimson coming from his shoulder. But then Bob was upon it, throwing his full weight in and knocking it flat on the ground. They tumbled across the hard dirt, locked together in a lethal wrestler’s embrace.

  Liam winced as the footless figure fired two more shots into Bob before he managed to knock the gun out of its hand. His eyes were trying to make sense of what he could see; it looked like two versions of Bob rolling around, squirming together in the tall, dry grass, kicking up clouds of dust between them.

  ‘Get the gun!’ shrieked Maddy. ‘Get the freakin’ gun!’

  Sal stepped forward and scooped it off the ground.

  ‘Shoot it!’

  She cupped the gun in both hands, a finger on the trigger, grimacing uncertainly as she tried to line up a shot on the right Bob.

  ‘Shoot it!’

  ‘I can’t … I … I’ll hit him.’

  ‘Give it to me!’ snapped Maddy. She wrenched it out of Sal’s hands and strode towards the two struggling support units; like a pair of giant pitbulls locked together, all rippling cords of muscle and entwined limbs. One then the other managing to get the upper hand. Bob was on top again now, this time holding the other support unit in a tight headlock and bracing his hold position with his legs spread apart as it flailed ferociously to struggle out of his grip.

  ‘Hold it still!’ Maddy yelled at Bob. She stepped forward, standing over the pair of them. ‘Hold IT STILL!!’ she screamed.

  She aimed the gun and fired.

  ‘Jay-zus, be careful!’ shouted Liam.

  She fired again. And again. And again. And again. Then the gun was clicking harmlessly in her cupped hands. The struggling stopped and as the dust began to settle, Liam realized he’d stood on the side uselessly, too confused by what he was seeing to be of any help to the girls. Cursing his moment of stupidity, he rushed forward.

  Maddy collapsed to her knees, the empty gun still in her hands. She was gasping for air, or perhaps she was sobbing, he couldn’t tell. Either way she looked like an utterly spent force.

  ‘Bob!’ Liam pulled at Bob’s bloody shoulder. ‘Bob, you all right?’

  His deep voice rumbled. ‘Affirmative. The damage is minimal.’

  He sat up slowly on his haunches, releasing his grip on the other support unit. It flopped lifelessly to the ground.

  Liam looked down at the thing’s head. ‘Jay-zus! It’s you … Bob. Your twin or something!’

  ‘Is it …’ Maddy panted several breaths, a ragged rattle. ‘Is that thing dead?’

  ‘Three well-placed cranial wounds,’ replied Bob. ‘It is quite dead.’

  She sighed, dropped the gun into her lap. And this time Liam realized by the heaving of her shoulders she really was sobbing.

  Sal came over to soothe her. ‘We made it, Maddy,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all over. We’re safe.’

  Liam looked at them both, wondering which of a dozen questions spinning round his head to blurt out first. He ended up going with the obvious, catch-all question.

  ‘Anyone mind telling me what’s bleedin’ well going on here?’

  CHAPTER 36

  AD 54, 7 miles outside Rome

  It took Maddy half an hour to get Liam and Bob up to speed on everything that had happened to them since she’d sent them off to Ancient Rome. ‘I’ve never been so scared,’ she concluded. She cast a quick glance at the dead support
unit. ‘I thought we were going to die.’

  Sal nodded. ‘So stupid. I kept thinking, “Why are Bob and Becks trying to kill us?” Even though I knew it wasn’t them.’

  ‘I would never harm any of you,’ Bob assured them.

  Maddy looked at him. ‘Because it’s not a mission parameter.’

  He nodded. ‘Correct.’

  ‘But, hang on! So who sent them support units after us, then?’ asked Liam.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Maddy shook her head. ‘I’ve got no idea, Liam. I just don’t know who would –’

  ‘Maybe it’s someone we upset?’ said Sal.

  ‘Upset?’ Liam looked at her incredulously. ‘If that’s what upset does … I’d not want to know what totally hacked off gets us.’

  Maddy waved him silent. ‘Someone wants us dead … who, though?’

  ‘Maybe someone doesn’t want us looking after history. Someone who wants history to be changed, all messed around.’ Sal took a sharp breath. ‘What if … what if this Roman contamination was linked to those support units? Somehow?’

  Maddy stroked her chin, giving that some consideration.

  Sal continued. ‘Maybe whoever came back here somehow knew all about the agency? About us? Maybe they wanted to make sure they took us down so we couldn’t undo whatever they’re up to right here.’

  They looked at each other. A long, uneasy pause.

  ‘I think it was the message,’ said Maddy. She looked at the others. ‘Asking about Pandora. Someone other than Waldstein intercepted it.’

  ‘That’s not good …’ said Sal eventually. ‘That someone knows about us.’

  ‘They knew precisely where and when we are.’ Maddy pulled on her lip. ‘Not good.’

  ‘And those support units you were talkin’ about,’ said Liam, ‘they’re still back there? In our archway?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Quite probably trashing our place as we speak. Destroying everything.’

  Liam looked up at her. ‘But this means we’re … we’ll be stuck here, then. Right?’