City of Shadows

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘Awl right there, me loves?’ he crowed, quite obviously drunk – swaying uncertainly on his feet. ‘Come an’ join us lads, eh?’

  Sal flipped a hand gesture at him that wasn’t going to have a proper meaning for another hundred years yet. The drunk shrugged it off with a grin. ‘Your loss, love!’ He tossed a good-natured laugh back at them, turned and staggered to catch up with his mates.

  Maddy sighed. ‘Men, eh?’

  Chapter 73

  2067, Piccadilly Circus, London

  Another warm sunset across the overgrown ruins of mankind. The cry of a fox, the chirp of crickets. The gently swaying ochre sea of tall grass. The predatory swoop of a hawk.

  A peaceful grave of humankind. Like some windswept site of archaeological interest – the ruins of Troy, of ancient Sparta, Babylon. Now, just like those places, worn stubs of masonry overgrown by an emerald carpet of nature. Tumbledown walls, caved-in roofs. Nothing lasts forever.

  Here bleached bones lie amid the tangled roots of wild grass, doing a far better job of weathering time than the rusting, flaking skeletons of cars.

  Peaceful, like a prairie, like the Serengeti, like an African veldt.

  But now there’s a fresh breeze, and the faintest distant rumble. The peach-coloured sunset sky has suddenly gained a faint twisting ribbon of black. At first as thin as a pencil scribble following the line of the horizon across a landscape painting. But, very quickly, becoming as thick as a marker pen as it approaches rapidly, and seconds later a looming, dark, continental crust swallowing the land beneath it.

  A dozen seconds of deafening chaos as this black horizon sweeps in over the ruins of London and this peaceful post-human world is swept away; a possible future that had its short chance to exist. Swept away to join a million other begrudging futures that will never get a chance to see the light of day.

  It’s replaced by noise and chaos of a wholly different kind.

  London, 2067.

  The grass is gone. Piccadilly Circus heaves with humanity, a city crowded with thirty million inhabitants. The statue of Eros looks up at looming mega-skyscrapers encrusted with holographic displays and garish adverts for soyo-protein products. The sky buzzes with corporate jyro-copters and police air-skimmers with winking blue lights and brilliant white searchlights tracking and monitoring the heaving populace below. A torrential downpour cascades from an unhealthy, lemon-tinted sky, overcast with polluted clouds.

  Rain-slicked pedestrians push and jostle each other across waterlogged pavements, every last one of them wearing air filters on their faces.

  London: one of a couple of dozen metropolises around the world playing host to its share of the migrating billions. Even though this city’s levees that hold back the swollen Thames are sure to fail one day soon and it will join New York as another city lost to the rising seas, every day thousands more people swarm in and live cheek by jowl in cluttered tenement blocks that dwarf the old buildings of Canary Wharf.

  In a way it’s not so very different from the conditions of Whitechapel nearly two centuries ago.

  London buzzes like a shaken beehive. Pounding music from hawkers on the street and second-tier pedestrian walkways above. A deafening riot of noise and movement and colour. Kerbside bazaars sell snake-oil cures for toxin-induced asthma. A trader sells slabs of pink-coloured dough that he’s claiming is real meat. If it is … God knows what creature it once was. Genetically engineered apelike work-units marked by tattoo bar-codes and dressed in orange overalls move sullenly among the press of people, clearing trash, carelessly tossing the body of some starved-to-death immigrant into the back of a waste recycler.

  This is the London that will exist a mere five decades after the last-ever Olympic Games are held here. Back in a time before the inevitable end was writ large for all to see and then foolishly ignored by one and all. Back before the first big oil shock, when supplies began to falter, before the sea level really started rising fast, the sky discolouring, crops failing, ecosystems collapsing.

  But of course this is the way it has to be. This is the timeline a certain Roald Waldstein is so very desperate to preserve … at all costs. It has to be this.

  And nothing else but this.

  Chapter 74

  1888, Holborn Viaduct, London

  Wednesday 19 December

  This is where we live now. It’s not so very different to our last home, I guess. I’m getting used to it. We don’t get the twenty-times-a-day rumble of a train over us. Instead, we have the constant deep engine rumble of Holborn Viaduct’s power generator. Not so different, I suppose, to listening to the back-up generator we used to have.

  We’re settled now. Finding new routines. It’s a different feel in here with Rashim and SpongeBubba keeping us company. I think I like it. SpongeBubba makes me laugh; the thing looks so ridiculous with that wobbling nose. We have to keep him out of sight of that nosy man Delbert. God knows what he’d make of that lab unit.

  We have a decision to make about the killer support unit. Its organic body is being kept alive. It’s like some person in an almost vegetative state; the eyes are open but there’s nothing going on inside its head. The thing drools when we try and feed it this barley gruel. Totally disgusting. Rashim says we can keep it going indefinitely if we keep feeding it. The big question is whether we open up its … her … cranium and flip the ‘hard-set’ switch inside. I’m not sure how Maddy feels.

  Liam, of course, says we should.

  Me? I’m not sure. This support unit spent the last couple of months wanting nothing more than to kill us all. I know its programming will all be erased … but will it really be? Completely?

  So, we have our new home. A new place in history, which I do find very fascinating. In many ways it feels like when we were first woken up by Foster. Scary, but exciting, new. It does feel a bit like that again. But it won’t ever be the same. Not now that we know we’re fakes. Pretend-humans. In fact, there’s only one real person in here. Rashim.

  Perhaps this time around, though, it’s better. Like Maddy said, we’re in charge now. We can decide whether or not we want to fix history. And who’s going to stop us now? No one, NO ONE knows where we are now, not even Mr Roald Waldstein.

  I like that. That makes me feel safe.

  Maddy joined Liam standing in their side door. He was watching Farringdon Street slowly come to life. It was just gone seven in the morning and wisps of morning mist spun like silk across the wide cobbled street. Today looked like it was going to be another nice one. A clear blue sky waiting for the sun to get up and join it. A lamp-snuffer was putting out the street’s gas lamps with his long-handled snuffer tray. Above them, on top of the viaduct, the electric-powered lights would be turned off manually by a man from the Edison Electric Company. They were beginning to learn the morning routine along Farringdon Street.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Maddy.

  Liam nodded. He seemed a lot brighter since returning from the Whitechapel jump less than a week ago. ‘Aye, looks like it’ll be nice today.’

  She had an enamel mug of coffee for him. Handed it to him and took up a place on the doorstep beside him. ‘I like that we’re not endlessly recycling in a two-day loop,’ she said. ‘Things change. That’s kinda nice.’

  ‘You sure we don’t need to set up a field?’

  ‘Yup. We’re quite safe here. No one’s looking for time travellers.’ She laughed. ‘No one in this time has even thought about time travel, I’d say. I mean … wasn’t it that writer guy, H. G. Wells, who first thought up the idea of time travel?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘I’m sure somebody must’ve thought of the idea before he did. It must be the oldest fanciful notion ever; that it might be fun to travel backwards or forwards through time.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘He was the first one to write a fiction book about it.’

  ‘Mark Twain.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mark Twain wrote a book about time travel. I’m sure he did. A Y
ankee Fella in King Arthur’s Court I think it was called. Or something like that.’

  Maddy hunched her shoulders. ‘Oh well, whatever. My point is we don’t have to worry quite so much about staying under the radar here. Nor do we have to worry about time waves. None of us are real. None of us belong in this timeline, so it really doesn’t matter.’

  He looked at her. ‘You’re OK, are you? Not … uh, not upset about –’

  ‘About not being the real Maddy Carter from Boston?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not really. Not any more. I think I quite like the feeling of freedom. I quite like not missing my mom and dad and my cousin Julian. Somebody made all those people up. Put painful memories of them into my head. I’m damned if I’m going to spend another second grieving for figments of someone’s imagination. Stuff ’em.’

  Liam laughed. ‘Aye, that does seem a bit daft.’

  ‘I am who I am. Right now, in this moment of time, this is who I am. And that’s all.’ She looked sideways at him and smiled. ‘Nice thought that, isn’t it? It’s liberating.’

  ‘Aye.’

  They heard a steam whistle echoing up from the far end of Farringdon Street where the docks and the River Thames were. Barges came in there and loaded and emptied round the clock. A never-ending cycle of trade and commerce.

  ‘On the other hand, Sal’s not coping so well, I don’t think,’ said Liam finally.

  Maddy nodded. ‘You and I should keep an eye on her. After all, I suppose we literally really are family now.’

  ‘Uh?’

  She looked at him. ‘I might just be your sister, Liam.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it … we could’ve been grown together as a batch.’ She laughed at her own words. Then curled her lip at a thought. ‘God, I really hope we didn’t share a grow-tube with you. That would be kinda gross.’

  ‘Charmed.’

  They sipped their coffees, blowing clouds of condensation out of their mugs into the chilly morning air.

  ‘What about you, Liam? You all right?’

  ‘About being a meat robot?’ He grinned that devil-may-care lopsided smile. She wondered if that stupid smile of his was what kept him sane, made his good nature bulletproof. ‘Aye, I’m not too bothered. So, at least I know now why it is I can cope with all that time travelling and not age so much as a normal person. It makes a bit more sense now.’

  She hadn’t told him about the ageing thing. She’d planned to, but never quite got round to it. And yet … it seemed he knew all about that.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked, Maddy. I’m not completely stupid. I worked out this is how I became Foster. Or I should say, how I become like Foster. I presume Foster was a meat-product like us. Right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Travelling is ageing me.’ He flicked the tuft of grey hair above his right ear. ‘And I’m not blind. I noticed that.’ He pulled at the skin around his eyes. The faintest of crow’s feet there. ‘And don’t think I didn’t notice this either.’ He cocked his head casually. ‘So? I’m getting a little older. Happens to all of us eventually, doesn’t it?’

  She could have kissed him for being so resolutely … Liam. So brave.

  So strong. So flippant.

  ‘You know, Mads, I was thinking about this last night. I presume I must be older now. You know? Physically? No longer just a sixteen-year-old slice of a lad, eh?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Older than you, Mads?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. I guess so. What’s your point?’

  He grinned. ‘Well now, if I’m the oldest, does that not mean that makes me the boss around here, then?’

  She snorted coffee from her nose. There was laughter somewhere in that. ‘In your freakin’ dreams, Mr O’Connor.’

  Epilogue

  2069, W.G. Systems Research Campus, Pinedale, Wyoming

  Roald Waldstein stared out of the broad panoramic window of his boardroom. The lemon-tinted sky over the steep slopes promised another downpour of acid rain, further stripping the last vestiges of green from the dying Douglas firs and the hilly landscape.

  His forehead pressed against the plate glass, his hands leaving fingerprint smudges. He felt emotionally void. Utterly spent. The last three days of his life had been spent in a desperate panic to get those embryos speed-grown and ready. He was far too old for this damned level of stress. He’d begun to hope it was all long behind him. That his project, the agency, was something he could forget about.

  Fourteen years ago.

  Fourteen years ago almost to this day it happened. Almost an anniversary. The day Joseph Olivera had turned on him and demanded to know what Pandora was all about.

  Back then Waldstein had begun to look on the young man almost as a son. A son to replace his boy Gabriel. (So long ago now that he’d lost little Gabriel and his wife Eleanor. A simple vehicle accident. If his wife had done just one of a thousand inconsequential little things differently that morning, she and Gabriel would still be alive and with him today.) But Olivera had pushed and pushed and pushed, asking questions Waldstein couldn’t possibly answer and then coming to his own paranoid conclusions all by himself.

  He’d never had Frasier Griggs killed. The poor man had simply been desperately unlucky. Took the wrong route home one night. But Joseph had been convinced, hadn’t he? And he wanted to know … wanted to know why Waldstein needed to steer history this way.

  Why? Why do you want mankind to destroy itself, Mr Waldstein?

  If only he could tell the poor young man. But Olivera had gone and panicked. Olivera had garbled something about Griggs being killed because he’d found out too much.

  That day back in 2055, poor young Joseph Olivera had convinced himself that Waldstein was going to have him killed. Nothing could have been further from his mind. He wanted Joseph out of that lab, away from the instrumentation panels before he did anything stupid. But Joseph had panicked and hurled himself into an open portal without any preparation, without any density checks. Nothing. God knows what horror happened to him.

  Waldstein had cried for him that day.

  And then there was the alarming event a few days later. A group of anti-time-travel activists managed to break into a project being secretly developed by the Russians: activists who hero-worshipped Waldstein, regarded him with his anti-time-travel message as some sort of a prophet. It turned out the Russian time-displacement project was a one-way-only technology with a severely limited range. But it was enough for the activists to send a lone assassin back to 2015 in an attempt to kill a young Chinese-American boy called Edward Chan. The young man who would soon write a thesis that would change the world. A thesis Waldstein would read as a young man himself. And there it would be: how time travel could actually be possible.

  The assassination attempt was successful and Waldstein had watched from within the safety of his lab’s protection field as the ensuing time wave changed everything outside.

  That was the final straw. Too much to handle. Too much stress. He’d beamed a warning back to the 2001 team. But that was it – the last thing he wanted to do with this. That day, fourteen years ago, was the day he decided to finally close the doors on his special little project. To mothball it. Put locks on it and walk away. The agency was back there in 2001. They now had everything they needed to function – and that was always his intention anyway. For them to be self-sufficient: entirely on their own and working to preserve this timeline.

  They certainly didn’t need a heartbroken old man like him keeping tabs on them.

  He’d closed those doors and locked them with a few final solemn words.

  I’m sorry … you’re on your own now.

  Fourteen years ago.

  And, since then, most days he thought of them: those three hand-crafted genetic products, so carefully designed for their roles. Liam with his robust, quick-witted mind. Sal with her enhanced visual acuity. Maddy with a mind designed for data sifting. In a way, they’d almost been like his own
children. Like two daughters and a son. They were back there, all on their own with an older copy of the boy as the closest thing to a mentor for them. If they could just hold things together, prevent anyone else unseating this timeline for just a little longer, just until 2070 … then it would all have been worthwhile. Job done.

  Mission accomplished.

  Waldstein had even begun to believe it was all working out. There’d even been days when he hadn’t bothered to routinely check that tatty, yellowing page of newspaper with the personal ads on it. All, it seemed, was fine, going to plan. They were back there doing their job … and mankind was counting down its last few months and years until Pandora happened. Before they wiped themselves out.

  Then all of this exhausting stress. Three days ago, out of the blue, that message from the Maddy Carter unit demanding to know all about Pandora. Demanding … and threatening.

  His three ‘children’ were rebelling against their father. Like Joseph Olivera, demanding to know what Pandora was and threatening to come off-mission if no satisfactory answer was returned. With that brief message, they’d switched from being part of his plan to being a very big problem.

  Oh God help me … Opening up that dusty old lab again after all these years, pulling those military-class foetuses out from cold storage, growing them, ‘hatching’ them and briefing them – briefing them to execute his own children – had been one of the hardest, most painful things he’d had to do in his entire life.

  He’d sent them back to 2001 little more than an hour ago and he’d just realized something. He was probably never going to know for sure if they’d been successful. Most probably they had. Six lethal killing machines arriving right inside their archway without any warning whatsoever? His poor children wouldn’t have stood a chance. The kill team had instructions to terminate the TimeRiders, destroy every item of equipment in the archway, then terminate themselves.