At that moment the video began to play, maximising over the document on the screen. The clip was 1 minute and 48 seconds long, and opened with an aerial shot over mountains. There was a small village in the middle of the screen. The picture magnified until Sam could make out people moving about between the low stone buildings. It zoomed in again, swooping down on two people, a woman and a man. The woman wore a flowing dress and headscarf. The man’s head was bare and hairless. Suddenly the crosshairs in the centre of the screen flashed from white to green. The woman and man approached a building with a straw roof. The woman entered. It looked like the man was about to follow when, without warning, he stopped, turned on the front step and knelt. A child, a young girl with a flower in her hair, entered the shot. Running, she jumped into the man’s outstretched arms. He scooped her up, twirled her around and went through the door, holding the girl at his hip.
Then the screen went black.
At first Sam thought it was the end of the recording, but the clip had almost a minute left to play. The picture zoomed out, rising, and he realised the blackness was actually dense, oily smoke billowing from the position where the building had just been. In its place a crater covered almost a third of the screen, including the space previously occupied by two or three neighbouring houses. He could make out people running on the crater’s edge, while others lay motionless on the debris-ridden ground.
Sam watched the clip until it ended, returning to the aerial shot over the mountains with which it had begun, then closed the file and put his head in his hands. The village had been bombed. The little girl with a flower in her hair was dead, or would be. No matter how much Sam wanted revenge for his father, this wasn’t a price that he was willing to pay. He began to cry, violent sobs that shook his whole body. Tears streamed down his face, dripping onto his hands and wrists and wetting his sleeves. He couldn’t let this happen. There had to be something he could do.
He was startled by a touch on his shoulder. Lowering his hands, he looked up. Instead of the walls of his bedroom, he was surrounded by the whitewashed breezeblocks of the Tempus Research Facility.
McHayden was leaning over from the next chair, her hand on his shoulder. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Did you find him?’
Sam straightened up and wiped his eyes with the crook of his arm. ‘No.’
‘What do you mean “no”?’ Phelps said. ‘He wasn’t there?’
‘No, it didn’t work. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see the future.’
Lanthorpe thumped his hands on the tabletop and stood, his chair bouncing away off the back of his legs. ‘Come on, Monty. I’ve seen just about enough of this circus!’
Phelps shook his head and heaved himself out of his chair.
McHayden rose too, quickly moving to block their exit. ‘Gentlemen, please. If we could just try one more―’
‘Thank you, Dr McHayden,’ Lanthorpe said, pushing his way past, ‘but you’ve wasted quite enough of our time as it is.’
4
The car stopped outside Sam’s house and McHayden turned to face him. She looked years older, pale and sickly. ‘What exactly happened back there?’ she asked.
‘I…I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘I did what I always do, but nothing happened. It didn’t work.’
‘What if you tried too soon? Perhaps the Tetradyamide hadn’t taken full effect yet.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose, but I waited as long as I always do.’
‘Hmmm.’ She brushed her hair back, exposing grey roots. Suddenly her eyes widened behind her glasses. ‘Or a defective batch of pills? It’s happened before.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, and glanced up. Clarke was staring at him in the rear view mirror again. It felt as if those eyes could see straight through Sam’s deception. ‘I’m sorry if I messed things up.’
‘What? It’s hardly your fault if the pills were defective,’ McHayden said. ‘This is a setback, that’s all. There’s far too much at stake to give up now. Perhaps it was too early to get the MoD involved. We’ll keep trying until we have some solid results to work with, evidence they can’t dispute.’
Sam nodded and looked down at his hands.
‘You tried your best,’ she said. ‘Go and get some rest and we’ll work on what went wrong tomorrow.’
He climbed out, crossed the road and let himself into the house. Once inside his bedroom, he closed the door and wedged a chair under the handle, which was the closest thing to a lock he had.
Sam had believed that the Tempus Project offered a solution to all of his problems, a way to undo the event that had destroyed his family, but after today he saw that he would be responsible for the destruction of a Chilean village, with the deaths of dozens of innocent people on his conscience. McHayden had told him that his ability would be used for good, but instead Sam had become a weapon.
He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. The warm tingle of Tetradyamide still pulsed through his limbs. Dr McHayden had warned him never to manipulate time on his own, but it seemed to be the only way out. With the drug in his veins, mistakes could become a learning curve and hindsight transformed into decisive action.
He closed his eyes and focused on a day at the end of last summer. It was the day that had changed everything: the day of the crash. Sam wasn’t sure how he was going to stop his mum and dad boarding the plane, but was pretty sure he’d think of something once he was back there. Shapes fused together in the darkness behind his eyelids to form an image of the ceiling. He saw a cobweb hanging in the corner above his bed that he hadn’t noticed before. The still frames flicked back, one by one, steadily gaining speed.
The dark of night followed the light of day, over and over until Sam was left with vertigo. This was by far the furthest he’d ever attempted to travel through time and the process seemed to last forever. With no way of knowing how far he’d already gone, he began to worry that he might overshoot the mark and come round a baby, sucking a dummy and pooping in his nappy, when all of a sudden he experienced the sensation of running into a brick wall.
He was on his back, surrounded by darkness. It felt as though his body had been put through a cement mixer, every bone ground to dust. He tried to open his eyes, but they were heavy and gluey.
‘He’s awake. He’s coming to!’ a voice said.
Sam tried to speak, but an object was blocking his mouth. Gradually his vision returned. The light in the place seemed painfully bright. Above, the outline of a person hovered over him.
‘Don’t try to move, I’ll fetch the doctor,’ the voice said.
It was Mary, Sam’s nurse at St Benedict’s Hospital.
5
Dr Saltano rushed in. He placed his cup on the bedside table and turned to inspect the array of monitors connected to the life support system on the other side of Sam’s bed. Mary leaned over and eased the ventilator from Sam’s mouth. He coughed as his lungs drew air.
‘Sam, can you hear me?’ she asked.
What was he doing here? Of all the times and places Sam might want to revisit, this was close to last on the list.
Ignoring the question, he closed his eyes again and was presented with the image of Mary standing over him with the ventilator in her hand, a string of his drool dangling from the mouthpiece. He willed the image to move back and, slowly, it did. In freeze frames he saw Dr Saltano collect his cup and reverse through the door. Then his vision dimmed and he was left in darkness.
That was it. He couldn’t go back any further. The brick wall had returned, blocking the way to the time before he’d woken up. But suddenly Sam understood why. If his ability to manipulate time was the result of his brain injury, this, his first conscious moment after the crash, would be the earliest he could go. He was at the beginning of the book, the place where the pages of time began. And that left only one possible direction.
Sam threw himself forward. Thankfully, the pages began to turn again, images flowing by in a blur as he left the hospital far behind. The days and weeks
that followed roared past as nothing but flashes of light and colour, vanishing too fast to make out any detail. He wanted to return to the present, but by now the Tetradyamide was diluting in his blood and he could feel his control weakening.
Slowly the images stuttered to a halt. Sam was lying on his back with a white ceiling above him, but when he blinked and tried to sit up something held him back. He couldn’t move. His head felt foggy and his vision was hazy, like he was looking through clouded glass. He tilted his head to the side and saw a strand of long, greasy hair flop over his eyes. There was a windowless breezeblock wall where his bedroom door should have been. He tried to move again, but his arms and legs were fixed in place.
Sam managed to lift his head a few centimetres and, looking down the length of his body, saw a dirty hospital gown covered with blood and urine stains and layers of accumulated filth. His arms and legs were pale and withered, as if they hadn’t seen daylight in years. Thick leather straps at his wrists and ankles pinned him to a metal trolley.
Wherever he had ended up, it definitely wasn’t his bedroom.
Straining against the leather straps, he tried to call for help but only managed a feeble croak with vocal cords rusty from lack of use. The restraints dug deeper the more he struggled, causing thin streams of blood to run from unhealed wounds on his wrists and ankles. He gritted his teeth and tried rocking the trolley back and forth. It was a colossal effort on his shrunken muscles, but eventually he succeeded in jerking the wheels on one side an inch or so off the floor, and by swinging his weight in the other direction tilted the trolley even further. He repeated the process, swinging harder and harder until the trolley toppled over with an almighty crash. Sam’s head slammed against the concrete floor and he blacked out for a moment.
When he came to he discovered that his situation was even worse. He was now lying on his side, facing a steel security door, his right arm and leg suspended above him by the restraints on the other side of the trolley. Blood was pooling around his temple and beginning to run into his left eye.
The sound of heavy footsteps approached from behind the door. There was a rattle of keys, followed by the clunk of a lock sliding back. The door swung open and Clarke stepped into the room.
‘Help me,’ Sam wheezed.
Clarke crossed the room and lifted the toppled trolley upright again. More footsteps approached, this time the clip-clopping of high heels.
‘Where am I?’ Sam asked.
Clarke backhanded Sam across the face with his knuckles.
When the stars had cleared from Sam’s vision, he discovered that Clarke was gone and McHayden now stood in his place. She looked younger and fresher somehow, as if her wrinkles had been smoothed out.
‘Another escape attempt?’ She sighed. ‘I had so hoped we were past all that by now.’
‘Where am I?’ Sam asked again.
She reached out and stroked the side of his face where the impact of Clarke’s hand still burned. ‘Why, the very same place you’ve been for the last six months – the Tempus Research Facility.’
Six months. Half a year.
Sam could barely take it in. ‘But why? Why are you keeping me here?’
‘Hush now, do we really have to go through all this again? You know I could never leave you walking about, not with everything you’re carrying up there.’ She tapped a fingernail on Sam’s forehead, scratching his skin. ‘Besides, I would so miss our little chats.’
‘You can’t keep me here,’ he said. ‘I want to go home.’
She cocked her head to the side, her lips curling into a sneer. ‘My dear boy, I think you must have bumped you head harder than I realised. This is your home.’
6
McHayden took a syringe from the pocket of her lab coat and stuck the needle through the rubber cap on a glass bottle. She pulled back the plunger, drawing up a clear liquid, then removed the needle and flicked it twice. ‘There have been issues surrounding the stability of our enhanced operatives,’ she said. ‘It really is most unfortunate given how quickly the disease is spreading, but they keep on…what’s the word I’m looking for?’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Oh yes, dying! That’s it, they keep dying. I suspect it might have something to do with the abnormalities we discovered in your cells—’
‘Abnormalities in my cells?’
‘That’s right. I’m afraid we’re going to need to extract more bone marrow for testing, but you’re used to that by now, aren’t you, dear boy?’
Before Sam could say anything else, McHayden had jabbed the needle into his arm and pushed the plunger. Tiredness instantly surged over him. Every muscle in his body loosened and his eyelids sagged shut.
All of a sudden Sam found himself staring at the cobweb on his bedroom ceiling. He sat up and rubbed his wrists where he could still feel the bite of the restraints that would hold him in place for six months. What he had seen was a future in which things were far worse than he could ever have imagined. By changing a fate in which he would be responsible for the bombing of a village, Sam had replaced it with one where he would end up as McHayden’s hostage. But it hadn’t happened yet. Hindsight could still be turned into decisive action.
He picked up his phone and called Lewis.
7
Sam ran downstairs as fast as he could when the doorbell rang, but his grandmother emerged from the kitchen as soon as he’d let Lewis in.
‘Oh, you’re back, pet,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in. Are you boys hungry? I could heat up some leftovers.’
‘We’ve already eaten,’ Sam said before Lewis could accept. ‘Haven’t we?’
Lewis narrowed his eyes, looking like he was about to complain until Sam elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Um, yeah, that’s right,’ he said, puffing his cheeks and resting a hand on his stomach. ‘I’m stuffed, couldn’t eat another bite.’
‘Well, there’s plenty in the fridge if you change your minds.’
Sam waited for her to return to the kitchen and then led his friend upstairs.
Lewis dumped his coat on the floor and slouched in the chair by the desk. ‘You just made me miss out on your grandma’s cooking,’ he said. ‘This better be good.’
Sam lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, took a deep breath and told Lewis everything that had happened. When he had finished, Lewis linked his hands behind his head and sighed gently.
‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself in a spot of bother, if you ask me.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Sam said, ‘that’s very helpful.’
‘Well, you’ve got two options, as far as I can see. First, you meet her tomorrow as planned and tell her you’re leaving the Tempus Project. Convince her you can’t do this time travel thingy anymore and you’re of no use to her.’
Sam shook his head. ‘I can’t see her going for that. And if she analyses the pills – which she will – then she’ll know there was nothing wrong with the batch and I was lying to her. What’s the second option?’
‘You come clean,’ Lewis said. ‘Tell her the truth about today.’
‘The truth? I don’t see how that’s going to help.’
‘It might if you can get your hands on more of the drug. Then you could travel back and, I don’t know, stop yourself from ever meeting her or something. What if you tell her you’ve had changed your mind and want another chance at finding this Humboldt guy? She might give you more then.’
Sam thought about it for a minute, then stood up and clapped Lewis on the shoulder. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I think that might just work.’
8
George stood at the back of the comms room with his arms folded across his chest. The only sound was the murmur of efficient activity as the surveillance team worked at banks of computer terminals, monitoring transmissions from the cameras and listening devices he’d planted at the boy’s house.
‘Sir?’
He turned to find a technician at his side, a man several years his junior whose name always evaded him. ‘Yes, what is it…�
�� George snapped his fingers, trying to dredge up the man’s name.
‘Marshall, sir. There’s something you need to hear.’
‘Well spit it out, man. No need to be coy.’
‘We’re recording a conversation, sir. I think it might be important.’
George followed him to a terminal and accepted a pair of headphones. Five minutes later, he stood up and adjusted his cuffs.
‘I’ll need a full transcript.’
‘Of course,’ Marshall said.
‘As quickly as you can manage.’
‘I’ll get right on it.’
George left him tapping away at his keyboard, marched straight out of the room and rode the lift to the third floor. He paused at the door to McHayden’s office, squeezed his fingernail into the pad of each thumb five times – no more, no less – and knocked before entering.
She was in her preposterous, over-sized chair, cradling a glass of brandy. ‘George, good to see you,’ she said and gestured for him to sit in one of the chairs on the near side of her desk. ‘I’ve been meaning to fill you in on this afternoon’s debacle. It seems we have a problem with one or more batches of Tetradyamide.’
George remained standing. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the Tetradyamide.’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘We’ve just received transmission of a conversation between Sam Rayner and Lewis Fisher. The boy has been lying to you, ma’am. The assignment was completed and Humboldt’s location was successfully established. Rayner got cold feet about the collateral damage and told you he couldn’t do it.’
‘The little so-and-so.’ She drained her glass and placed it on a coaster on her desk. ‘And he thinks he can get away with this, does he?’
‘Not at all,’ George said. ‘It seems our young friend is planning to part ways with us. He intends to confess in the hope we’ll give him another chance to prove himself. Once he has more Tetradyamide, he’ll reverse his initial discovery, meaning we’ll have no knowledge of his existence. The consequences for the Tempus Project are…well, I’m sure you can imagine.’
The Pages of Time Page 22
