“Grandpa!” yelps the girl, pointing up at the sky. Me and the old man are under tree cover, but she's right in the open.
“Get down!” I prepare to scream.
I've barely opened my mouth when a shell punctures her body. She collapses, blood boiling around a gaping hole in her chest. The girl never stood a chance. Hermes snipers don't miss. Their weapons are loud, but noise travels much slower than mass accelerator rounds do. Once you hear the screechy wail, it's already too late.
The old man snarls in anger. I freeze time. He's turning toward me. In his emotional state, he won't hesitate to gun me down. He's close. I can get to him first. But what do I do? Waste precious seconds subduing him? Run, and leave myself exposed? Do I shoot him? He's on my side! But whatever the cost, I can't let the Empress get the data.
I snap back to the present, that last thought still clear in my mind. The Empress is by the door, speaking to a guard. He's a bald, scar faced man with two missing front teeth. His lips keep twitching. My sister's probably the only person in the world this guy's afraid of. The guard holds his left hand vertical, curves the other, and puts them together in a D-shape – the British Dynasty salute. He slides the door closed behind him.
“She's resisting,” Ernst reports.
“I thought she might,” the Empress says.
My sister returns to the control panel. The memory projection's frozen on the final image: the angry old man.
“What did you do with the data module?” she asks. Politely, as if I'd simply tell her.
“I'm having trouble remembering,” I say with a sarcastic smile.
“Nothing shock therapy won't cure.”
The Empress twists a control. Electricity courses through me. My life flashes before my eyes. Disconnected images from the past hundred years. A bank vault, nuclear mushroom clouds rising above a blue hemispherical shell of energy, an ancient scroll wound around a clay spindle. Nothing makes sense. My body shakes, limbs throbbing violently against the metal restraints.
“You could kill her,” Ernst advises.
“My sister's tough. She can take it.” The Empress shows no concern for my safety.
“You will overload the nanobots, corrupt her memories.”
Freakishly calm reasoning, but it convinces the Empress to shut off the electricity. The panelled door slides open. My sister spins sharply around, a frosty reception that puts the bald guard on the back foot.
“Pardon me, Empress,” he apologises. “You wanted to know when we arrived.”
My sister checks the nearest window. Satisfied, she walks out of sight behind me. I hear a wooden drawer open, then rustling velvet. The guard averts his gaze.
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” the Empress teases him. “Most men find me attractive.”
The cyborg looks in her direction, iris lenses whirring into focus. When my sister comes back into view she's wearing her battle armour.
“You can leave now,” she tells the guard.
He salutes and exits, hurriedly closing the door. The Empress presses a button on the wall. Ernst takes position beside me as a fuselage section swings outward. Hydraulic arms lift it up, exposing the cabin to the warm November air. The city below is an ocean of lights that sprawls into the far distance. Amidst corporate towers and pagodas I see familiar landmarks: Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, the Thames flood walls. We're still in London.
The Empress' armour extends to cover her head. She's fully shielded, amber lenses casting a faint glow around her. “Can't take any chances. Somebody might take a shot at me.”
I feel the pull of gravity as the shuttle banks sharply to the right. London vanishes beneath the floorline. After a few seconds the craft levels out. A woman's head fills the open section. Her flowing, raven black hair is so realistically animated it takes me a moment to realise it's a holographic projection. Latin American. Mid twenties. I feel lingering guilt as I look upon her face. Is she dead?
The Empress glances over at her machine. “No bad memories?” she asks, sounding somewhat disappointed.
“Someone you killed?” I venture.
A chuckle. For some reason that amused her. “You really don't remember, do you?” My sister activates a wrist-mounted comm unit. “Pull back to the vantage point.”
The shuttle engines fire up. We move away from Hologram Woman, far enough to see a light blue and white striped flag draped around her shoulders. She holds aloft a gold, spiral shaped trophy capped with a silver ball. More clues, but they tell me nothing.
“Shut it down,” the Empress orders her underlings.
The projection disappears at her command. Ernst walks to the couch, green-lit pupils scanning my forehead. “Inhibiting the nanobots has affected her recall ability,” the cyborg says. “We will have to stimulate her brain, and search the data recordings manually.”
“A century of teenage angst,” I caution them. “You could be here for a while.”
“I'm only interested in the highlights, little sister,” the Empress says. “And what you did with the data module. But we'll get to that. First let's take a journey back in time. Since you don't remember your last visit to Wembley, let's try the first.”
The shuttle jerks to a stop, hovering in mid-air above North London. There's an empty, black void where Hologram Woman was. Multiple spotlight beams switch on, illuminating a rusted metal arch. The round structure it spans has a gaping hole in the nearest side. It was no accident. I recognise a bomb blast when I see one. I was here for the explosion. I know it. Do I even want to remember what happened?
The spotlights generate a new holographic image. One so large it envelops the ruined structure completely. The arched building is replaced by a roofless concrete arena surrounded by flagpoles, with two identical domed, concrete towers where the hole was.
"We come here today with the Queen," a posh-sounding man says. His voice is interlaced with crackly static, as if it's an old magnetic tape recording. “For the purpose of opening the British Empire Exhibition.”
That's King George V. I remember this. I was with my sister at-- I realise what the Empress is up to, but it's too late. My mind is already shifting to the past.
“Keep her under!” the Empress instructs Ernst. “I don't want her waking up until--”
I don't hear her finish. I'm an innocent child once more. It's 23rd April 1924, the day I stopped growing old.
END OF BOOK ONE
THE ETERNAL CHILD
CONTINUES IN BOOK TWO
1924: The Year of Discovery
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Veteran homicide detective Lakeysia Symons and her womanizing partner Kyle Travis investigate the brutal murder of a San Francisco computer game developer. But his death is only the beginning. Faced with a rapidly escalating body count, the police find themselves under pressure to stop a scheming murderess with deadly martial arts skills.
(Mystery/Thriller Novel for Adults - available from major online retailers)
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