Kaz shook his head.
Quil seemed disappointed. ‘Shame, I was hoping you could tell me. Way I see it, there are three options. One: the universe explodes. Two: you create an alternate timeline that exists separate from the original, but with you in it. Three: time resets and you vanish in a puff of paradox. And I have no idea which is the right one. So if she croaks in the next minute or two, and you decide to kill me, thereby creating two paradoxes at once, and the universe doesn’t go FOOM! you’ll at least be able to discount one option.’
As she finished her little speech there was a cry from outside the door and Kaz realised that the sounds of fighting had faded away.
‘Oh good, the boys have arrived,’ said Quil. ‘Open the door, Hank.’
Sweetclover rose and opened the door. Outside Kaz could see Quil’s blue-faced guards standing over a line of men – both soldiers and Clubmen – kneeling with their hands behind their heads. The floor was littered with dead and wounded of both sides. Kaz could see both Thomas and Dora propped up against the wall comforting people, oblivious to everything that was happening around them.
Kaz cursed himself. The Clubmen of Pendarn, who had fought so bravely, had lost, and it was all his fault. He was the one who’d persuaded Thomas to help him storm this place to try and get Dora and Jana out. He’d tried to play the big hero, come running to the rescue, and look what had happened – half the men of Pendarn were dead or dying. Confronted with the consequences of his actions, the totality of his failure and the awful cost of his recklessness, he felt the fight go out of him.
Kaz dropped the sword.
‘Screw it,’ he said. ‘You win.’
‘I usually do,’ said Quil.
32
Jana felt like she was swimming to the surface from the very darkest depths of the ocean. There was light ahead (or above, she couldn’t be sure which) and she was clawing her way towards it through liquid agony. Even when sounds began to fade back in they were muffled and distant, as if she was sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool trying to listen to a conversation someone was having on a pool-chair by the water.
The first words that came through loud and clear were, ‘Screw it, you win.’
That didn’t sound good. She kept her eyes closed and tried to breathe calmly, as if she were still unconscious. Easier said than done; one side of her chest felt as if someone had cut it open and shoved a red-hot steam iron inside. She could taste blood in her mouth and throat. She could smell it too, and feel it caked around her nostrils and lips. She was lying down, had no feeling in her legs or right arm. She wanted to vomit, had the worst migraine she’d ever experienced, and generally felt as bad as she thought a human being can without actually being dead.
She heard footsteps around her head, and the voices moved away. She lay still for another minute, somehow managing to prevent another bloody cough, and when she was sure there was no one directly beside her she risked opening one eye into the tightest of squints. Brick ceiling. So she was still in the undercroft. Even that small amount of light hurt and she winced as her brain found one more pain centre that it hadn’t previously activated and gave it a punch, just to complete the set.
She risked turning her head, which was a very bad move indeed, because she almost passed out again from the pain of it. Once it had subsided to merely excruciating, she squinted again. She was looking into the undercroft, where Quil and Sweetclover were standing over a row of kneeling prisoners. They were an odd bunch – some soldiers, some civilians, and Kaz, who looked totally downcast. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. She closed her eyes and lay still for a moment, collecting her thoughts. She wasn’t dead, which was a nice surprise, but she felt sure she soon would be unless she received urgent medical care. There were two options, as far as she could tell – persuade Quil to save her, or join hands with Dora and Kaz and jump to a year where they had hospitals.
Given how completely Quil seemed to have the upper hand, Jana quickly discounted getting her help. Which raised the question – how was she going to get to Kaz and Dora, when she couldn’t walk, and there were guards looming over them?
She turned her head again, stifling a groan of agony, and looked around the room for inspiration. The first thing she saw, lying right by her hand, was a sword.
And that gave her an idea.
She moved her arm, which unleashed a fresh hell of pain across her chest and nearly forced out a wet red cough, but she managed to grasp the blade, slick with fresh blood, and pull it to her, her fingers slipping again and again as she struggled for purchase. When the sword was close enough, she walked her fingers down the blade until she found the hilt and grabbed it. Then, trying not to think about how much it was going to hurt, she lifted her arm, put the point of the sword on the floor, and used it as a lever to sit up.
She wasn’t even aware of having screamed until the sound had faded away, because her head was so light from lack of blood that she passed out for a moment as she was pulling herself upright. But when her hearing and vision returned she found, to her delight, that she was sitting up, sword in hand. And everyone was staring at her.
‘Sorry,’ she wheezed, and attempted a smile. ‘That hurt.’
Gritting her teeth for another brush with darkness, she raised her other arm till she was holding the hilt of the sword with both hands. The wound in her chest felt like someone was trying to scoop out her heart with a blunt teaspoon, but she managed not to pass out again. Finally she rotated her hands and raised the tip of the sword until it was pointing at her throat.
‘What are you doing, Jana?’ asked Quil, her voice full of amusement.
‘Going home,’ she rasped.
‘Really?’ Quil laughed. ‘Oh, this should be good.’
‘Kaz and Dora. Where are they?’
‘I’m here, Jana. So is Dora, but she’s not so good.’ That was Kaz, his face the picture of misery.
‘Kaz and Dora are going to come and sit with me,’ said Jana. ‘Or I’ll drive this sword through my throat into my chip, and destroy it.’
The long silence that greeted her pronouncement was broken by a slow clapping.
‘Oh, very good,’ said Quil, ending her applause.
‘I’ll do it,’ croaked Jana. ‘Nothing to lose.’
‘I can see that,’ said Quil. ‘So what’s the plan – hold hands, jump to a time with a hospital, get yourself fixed up, live to fight another day?’
Jana tried to say ‘something like that’, but found she only had breath for, ‘Yes.’
‘The jump might kill you, you know.’
Jana managed a short laugh.
Quil made a show of considering her options. ‘I do want that chip, and damn if I don’t believe you would kill yourself just to spite me. If you stay alive, I can always catch up to you another day.’ She shrugged. ‘Why not? Kaz, Dora, go sit with your friend.’
Kaz rose to his feet and walked over to the wall. He had a mumbled conversation with Dora and then, holding her hand, he helped her get to her feet. Sparks shot from their joined fingers. Together they walked across to Jana.
‘Hi,’ said Kaz.
‘Hello, Jana,’ said Dora, in an odd, flat voice that told Jana she was deep in shock.
‘Hi, guys,’ breathed Jana.
‘We leaving?’ asked Kaz.
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, I can’t leave. My family’s all here, I need to stay with them,’ said Dora.
Kaz smiled at Dora patiently. ‘That’s OK, Dora,’ he said. ‘We can come back for them. But Jana and me need you to help us jump out of here to somewhere with a hospital. Or Jana will die. We cannot jump without you, Dora.’
Dora looked over at Jana and her face creased in puzzlement. ‘Jana, why are you holding a sword to your throat?’
‘Long story,’ gasped Jana, wishing that Dora would shut up and hold hands already.
‘You know what, Hank?’ said Quil loudly, making a point of ignoring the three time travellers
. ‘I think it’s time we got going too. Not much point hanging around here any more, not if Jana’s leaving.’
‘Go where?’ asked Sweetclover.
‘I thought Paris, the Grand Expo, my time. It’ll be lovely. I can get a new face, you can try escargot, we can drink the city dry. What do you say?’
To Jana’s eyes Sweetclover seemed relieved by Quil’s suggestion, as if getting away from all this bloodshed was his fondest wish. He nodded and said, ‘Yes.’
Quil turned to address them. ‘OK, we’ll be off then. It’s been fun. Don’t hang around too long, though, I’m going to set the self-destruct. Don’t want to leave any evidence lying around to confuse the archaeologists. Just this room, though. Seal it up. For now.’
So saying, she typed a series of commands into the computer’s keyboard. All the screens merged into one large image, showing a clock counting down from sixty seconds.
‘I love a good countdown, don’t you? Bye.’
She reached out and took her husband’s hand, and they vanished in a blaze of red.
‘Crap,’ said Kaz.
Jana let her arms flop to her sides and the sword fell to the floor. She was racked by a terrible coughing fit, and felt her mouth and throat fill with blood again.
Dora was staring at the clock curiously. ‘What happens when the clock gets to nothing?’ she asked.
Jana tried to warn Kaz not to tell her, but she was too busy coughing to get the words out, and the dumbass went and answered her question.
‘This room will explode,’ he said. ‘We have to go.’
Jana gave Kaz the dirtiest of looks in which she tried to communicate as much of ‘and what about her family, you moron?’ as she could manage in a glare.
She saw Kaz realise his mistake but it was too late, Dora was already tugging at his hand.
‘My parents, my brother, we have to get them out of here.’
Kaz held tight, refusing to let her pull away. ‘Those guards aren’t letting anyone out. We stay, we die. We are the only three who can escape, Dora. We have to go now.’
‘Let go of me,’ said Dora, pulling as hard as she could.
Jana, knowing that it was now or never, willing herself to ignore the pain, raised both arms, leant forward and grabbed Kaz and Dora’s free hands with her own.
‘LET GO!’ screamed Dora even as the crimson sparks engulfed them and Jana felt the lightness in her stomach as she was pulled away from 1645. The undercroft began to fade away, and Jana felt her head go light and empty. She knew she was passing out again, but at least they were on their way. With luck, she’d wake up in a nice clean hospital bed.
Just as she lost consciousness, she heard a final despairing scream from Dora, and felt her hand slip from her grasp.
Jana’s last conscious thought was of home …
Thomas did not know what was happening, but he did not much care.
He had seen his daughter disappear. Kaz had appeared before him earlier that day in much the same way, telling tales of pirate ships, enemies from years to come, and the peril in which Dora found herself. He had persuaded his friends and neighbours to come with him to the hall, to help save his wife and child. To a man they had agreed without question and it had made him proud. But now at least half the menfolk of his village were dead or wounded, and the rest knelt before him, threatened by the blue-faced militia and their strange fire-shooting guns. He, James and Sarah, prone on the floor, had been ignored by the militia. Clearly they were not considered a threat. The clock that floated in the room was counting down, and although he did not know his numbers that well, he knew enough to suppose that nothing good would happen when the counter reached zero.
But none of it mattered because his son was dying in his arms. Thomas had no idea how or why James had changed so. He had heard stories of young men consumed by religious fervour, driven half mad by Puritan zeal, turning upon their families and loved ones. He had shaken his head in wonder at such tales, unable to conceive of such a change. He could not comprehend it in the abstract, so what chance he could comprehend it in his own flesh and blood?
The clock ticked down to forty-one, and then …
Jana began the slow process of regaining consciousness almost immediately, although she could not have said how long she had been out. The first thing she became aware of was that Kaz was still holding her hand. The second thing was that Dora wasn’t.
She opened her eyes and winced at the bright sunlight.
‘Jana, wake up, please,’ said Kaz, close by her ear. ‘I think we have a big problem.’
The world swam into focus. Jana was looking across at Kaz, and she was ridiculously pleased to see him.
‘Dora?’ she asked weakly.
‘She let go. She didn’t come with us,’ said Kaz. ‘But that is not the real issue.’
‘What is?’ said Jana, laying her head on Kaz’s shoulder and wishing herself asleep. ‘We in the Stone Age or something?’
‘No,’ said Kaz, nervously. ‘We are on a roof. And there are three men here who want to talk to you.’
Jana felt a deep knot of fear materialise in her stomach, as if it had jumped through time on its own and just caught up with her. She lifted her head and squinted to see three people she had hoped she’d never see again – ugly, sneery and short.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ said the tall one, the ringleader with the mirthless smile and the chain. ‘One second you’re jumping off the roof, the next you appear in a cloud of fire with your boyfriend. What kind of freakshow is this?’
Jana began to laugh. There didn’t seem to be any other response. It turned immediately into another bloody cough, and she sprawled forward onto reconstituted rubber, choking. She’d travelled all this way just to end up back where she started, about to be beheaded on a New York roof.
She closed her eyes and waited for death.
After all, she’d died once before and it hadn’t been so bad.
The three men stood over Kaz, grinning the idiot grins of thugs about to dish out a beating. He was stranded on a rooftop in a time and place that were not his own, with his back literally to the wall. He and Jana had nowhere to run; without Dora they could not jump through time to escape.
Jana was sprawled on the floor before him, blood pooling around her, and although she was breathing he could not be sure that she was still conscious.
‘We take the head as proof,’ said the leader to the goon on his left. ‘Cut low on the neck so you don’t damage the chip. I’ll take it back while you get rid of the body like I told you.’
‘Don’t you mean bodies, chief?’ asked the goon on the right, pointing at Kaz.
The leader met and held Kaz’s gaze and then nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Bodies.’
‘Please, why are you …’ Kaz started to say.
The leader kicked him in the face, a shattering impact that filled his mouth with jagged shards of broken tooth, smacked his head against the wall and left him stunned. His senses reeled.
Through his confusion he was aware of the leader of the three thugs kneeling beside Jana and raising his knife even as the other two brandished their weapons and moved towards him, ready to beat him to death, and then …
And then …
… Simon snapped awake. There was deafening gunfire, smoke and a bright red flash of light through the haze which silhouetted three figures that were there one moment and gone the next.
Between him and the silhouettes was something far more shocking. His boss, Henry Sweetclover, was flying backwards through the air, blood spraying from a series of bullet wounds across his torso.
As Simon reached for his gun there was another bright red flash, this time directly behind Sweetclover. A woman in black popped into existence and caught him neatly as he fell. The momentum was such that they both toppled backwards and the new arrival was stuck underneath Sweetclover’s bullet-riddled body.
There
was a sharp clang of metal, as if someone were rolling a metal ball into the room, and Simon shouted in alarm as he realised it was a grenade. His cry attracted the attention of the new arrival, who reached out from underneath Sweetclover and said, ‘Take my hand,’ in a familiar voice.
He hesitated, momentarily distracted by Sweetclover’s face, which had changed …
‘NOW!’ shouted the black-clad woman.
Simon reached out and grabbed her hand …
… and found himself somewhere else entirely.
… a sudden flash of crimson made Thomas wince. When his vision cleared he saw a young woman in black clothes standing before him, her face obscured by a woollen head garment the likes of which he had never before seen.
Without saying a word, and before the militia could react, the woman leant forward and placed her hands on Thomas and Sarah’s heads. Thomas was opening his mouth to ask a question when the room around him went black and then reshaped itself into somewhere clean, white and dazzling.
Strong hands lifted James from his lap and a voice said, ‘We’ll take care of him.’
… the one on the left, with the scar on his cheek and the shock of bright red hair, stopped and looked down at his chest. The short one with the chain turned to stare at him, his mouth falling open in surprise.
Kaz saw the redhead tip sideways to reveal a young woman dressed in black, her legs apart, arms high, holding a sword with a glistening red blade. Her next movements were a blur to Kaz, possibly because of his concussion. Or maybe, he thought dreamily, she really was that fast. She pivoted and gestured with the sword and the short one was tumbling too, falling backwards off the building, arms outstretched as if reaching for salvation or comfort.
Another blur of movement and the leader, who was still kneeling over Jana but had not had time to so much as turn his head to see what was happening to his lieutenants, suddenly had no head to turn. His torso was frozen for a moment, kneeling, knife raised but with a fountain of blood where the head had been only a second before. Then the body collapsed in a heap. Kaz did not see where the head ended up.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 28
