by RR Haywood
‘Nine eleven?’ Harry asks.
‘Terrorist attack in New York,’ Emily says. ‘Brought down two famous buildings and everyone later thought it was the American government that did it.’
‘Not everyone,’ Safa says. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Point right there,’ Ben says. ‘It created enough of a conspiracy theory to become a thing in history. Who did it and why? Not that any of it actually matters because the world gets on with living.’
‘Germany still lost though, right?’ Emily asks.
‘God, yes,’ Ben says enthusiastically. ‘They could have dropped five nuclear bombs by then and they’d still lose, but what’s really interesting when you read the books is the concept of . . .’
‘Oh god, please stop, my ears are bleeding. What Miri said was all we needed. Nuclear bomb. Bad guys. Nineteen forty-five. Easy. So where do we start?’ Safa asks.
‘Dunno, ask Miri,’ Ben says sulkily.
‘We start at one twenty-six AD first thing in the morning,’ Miri says.
‘Bingo,’ Safa says, pointing at Miri. ‘I’m liking you more and more. Cheer up, egghead, you’re still sexy,’ she says, kissing Ben’s cheek before pushing off. ‘Come for a swim you nerd . . .’
126 AD
‘Bit bloody cold on the old chap though,’ Bravo says, rubbing his hands together while Charlie, Echo and Delta snort quiet laughs that blast mists of air from their mouths and noses . ‘I think he might withdraw inside like a tortoise,’ Bravo adds, reaching down theatrically to check his penis is still there.
‘When do they invent trousers?’ Charlie asks Rodney.
‘Good question,’ Bravo says. ‘We should ask that nice filly Rodney works with in the history department. Eh, Delta? Mission for you, that is. Infiltrate the trouser secrets of the history department.’
‘I knew it,’ Emily whispers, nodding down the line at everyone else. ‘I said it was them.’
‘Ssshhhh,’ Ben says.
‘I said it,’ Emily whispers, nudging Harry. ‘I said it would be them.’
‘Who’s that other one with them?’ Safa whispers.
‘I don’t bloody know, Safa,’ Ben whispers. ‘I’m watching the same thing as you . . .’
‘Wish they’d hurry up. I hate the cold,’ Safa says.
‘When you’ve been in a war with cold.’
‘Shush,’ Ben says again. ‘They’ll hear us.’
‘So?’ Safa asks. ‘Why don’t we just go round and get in their portal to their base and . . .’
‘Because we’re gathering information for now,’ Ben groans softly, dropping his face into his hands while lying prone on the freezing snow-covered ground on a bank a hundred metres into the thicket of trees. ‘And this is them in the past, not the them now.’
‘Confusing,’ Safa mumbles.
‘It is cold though,’ Emily whispers, leaning forward to look past Harry at Ben and Safa.
‘Oh my god,’ Ben groans again. ‘Go back then . . . Me and Harry will watch.’
‘Harry and I,’ Emily says.
‘Me and you?’ Harry asks her.
‘No, I was correcting Ben’s English,’ Emily whispers. ‘I’m not watching with you. You’ll just get me drunk and have sex with me again and . . .’
‘Ach, enough now,’ Harry says as Ben drops his face into the snow.
‘Joking,’ Emily says, nudging Harry with her elbow, then looking down the bank to the six men grouped together on the path below them. ‘Not joking,’ she whispers a few seconds later.
‘Stop it,’ Ben whispers at her.
‘Don’t tell me to stop it,’ she whispers back at him. ‘Why isn’t Miri here anyway?’
‘I told you,’ Ben whispers, rubbing the snow from his face. ‘The cold hurts her shrapnel wounds . . . Alpha’s moving out,’ he says quickly, pointing down to the men on the path.
‘Marching,’ Harry whispers knowingly at the sound coming through the trees. ‘Marching that is . . . Ben, that’s marching . . .’
‘I think we’ve got that now,’ Emily whispers.
They stay silent, craning necks to try and glimpse through the trees to the path and gaining snatches of views of men walking in formation.
‘I was expecting a bit more, to be honest,’ Emily whispers.
‘Me too,’ Safa says. ‘Not like the movies, are they? Bit shit really.’
‘That’s what I think,’ Emily whispers back agreeably.
Ben and Harry don’t think so. What they see are Roman soldiers. Real Roman soldiers. They look a bit grotty and grim but still, it’s an actual Roman army unit with shields.
The four watch the action play out, with two soldiers running at Alpha and Bravo, and each feels the tightening in their guts at seeing a dozen people die in front of them. The detachment from reality is one thing, but these are still real men suffering awful injuries. They see Charlie, Delta and Echo swarm in from the sides and rear and, despite the Roman unit having superior numbers, they are taken down quickly and brutally until one remains.
‘ALPHA . . .’ Echo shouts. ‘Last one.’
‘There it is,’ Ben whispers to himself. He watches as Alpha shouts and motions for the last soldier to go.
They stay hidden as the agents walk down the bank to the younger one who ran off before the killing started now bent over and puking. A glint of a green shimmering light further back in the tree line that the men walk towards and a minute later the green shuts off.
‘That was grim,’ Safa says, getting to her feet. The others rise up, shivering and cold from only wearing the clothes they went to London in. ‘You need to go down?’ she asks Ben.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Quick look?’
They head down the bank, slipping and sliding through the snow until they reach the path, with pistols held ready in double-handed grips.
Ben drops to pick a fallen sword up in the same way Bravo did a few minutes ago. ‘Fuck me . . .’ He hefts it a few times, partly disgusted by the loss of life and partly in awe at handling a real Roman sword. ‘Grab a helmet, Harry . . .’
‘We’re not nicking stuff,’ Safa says firmly, turning from her position of watching the direction the agents went.
‘We can trade it and get a credit chip.’
‘I said no,’ Safa says, her tone hardening. ‘There’s a word for people who nick from war dead.’
‘What word?’ Emily asks.
‘Fucking arseholes,’ Safa says.
‘Um, so that’s, like, two words . . . Actually it’s more like three . . .’ Emily points out.
‘Ben, I said we’re not . . .’
‘We need money, a sword and a helmet. That’s it. We’re not touching personal effects . . . I don’t like doing it, Safa,’ Ben says, looking across to a grim-faced Harry holding one of the dull metal helmets. ‘Ah, you know what, fair one . . . we’ll leave it then,’ he adds at seeing Safa’s expression.
‘No,’ she says slowly, quietly. ‘No, I get it . . .’
‘If it means that much to you,’ Ben says, lowering the sword down to rest next to the fallen soldier.
‘Just a sword and helmet,’ Harry says. ‘We took from the Germans . . . They took from us . . . It’s war.’
A groan silences them. A low throaty noise from a throat struggling to draw air.
‘Blimey,’ Harry says, striding over to a Roman soldier. ‘He’s alive . . .’
‘Shit.’ Ben rushes over with the other two as the soldier opens his eyes to stare up. He doesn’t focus on them, he doesn’t even seem to see them, but blinks and gargles with frothy pink saliva spilling from his mouth as his life blood seeps from the slashes on his body made by surgically sharp blades.
‘He’s done for,’ Harry says quietly, lowering to the man’s side. ‘Got minutes at the most . . .’ He reaches out to draw the man up onto his lap. Cradling his head, then reaching over to grasp his hand. ‘Eh, son, you’re okay now . . . shush . . . easy now . . .’
The soldier finally blinks to see H
arry smiling down at him with warmth in his eyes. He tries to speak, sounding lost words from a language unknown in a voice rasping and broken.
‘I know,’ Harry says deeply, wiping blood from the man’s face and squeezing his hand. ‘Emily? You’ll be saying nice words to the wee man now.’
‘God, yeah, of course,’ Emily says, dropping at the soldier’s side. She smiles at him, seeing the focus when he looks at her, and pushes a hand across his brow as he murmurs with tears falling down his cheeks. ‘It’s okay, you’ll be okay . . . shush now . . .’
‘Aye, there’s a good lad,’ Harry rumbles. Emily sees the calmness spread through the soldier as that aura from Harry she knows so well reaches out. Everything is okay when Harry says it is. The whole world is okay. Death is okay. There is no pain now, no suffering. ‘Good lad. You say your prayers now, son . . .’
‘It’s okay,’ Emily says, smoothing her hand over his cheeks. The soldier looks at her. Pain in his eyes and he’s young too. Maybe twenty-two, twenty-three at the most. Stubble on his jaw and his skin tone and hair colour speak of heritage from a Mediterranean country. He must be far from home in a cold, unforgiving place and now dying for something he doesn’t understand. She smiles softly, stroking his cheeks as his eyes start to flutter heavily.
‘Go in peace, lad . . . You’ve done your bit now . . .’ Harry speaks gently, using the back of his hand to wipe the blood from the dying man’s lips.
Safa watches the tree line, but listens intently while Ben holds back out of sight from the dying man and looks down at the sword in his hand.
It takes another few minutes, but the soldier slips away cradled and held by strangers who give warmth and comfort in his passing.
‘Done,’ Harry says, gently lowering the soldier down. He sighs heavily, grabs the helmet he was holding and rises to his feet. ‘Thank you,’ he says to Emily.
‘No, it’s . . . it’s fine,’ Emily says.
A moment of silence hangs between them.
‘Harry, leave the helmet,’ Ben says, dropping the sword. ‘Safa’s right . . .’
‘She’s not,’ Harry says, stooping to grab the sword. ‘The lad’s dead . . . These are things . . . They’re not life . . . You got enough information?’
‘Yeah,’ Ben says quietly. ‘We’ll go back.’
Alpha watches them go. The pistol held down at his right side and not a sound he makes as the four clamber back up the bank. He searches again for sight of their portal, but sees none, but then he didn’t see them either until they broke cover and came down.
He waits for several minutes until the winter air takes on that utter silence of deep cold where there is a void of life and nature in the frozen landscape. Then he waits minutes longer because he is an agent and this is the level he works at. To wait and watch. To see and not be seen.
Alpha finally moves out from his position and walks silently through the undergrowth to once more climb up and onto the track. It felt very strange watching himself and the others, and it felt stranger still seeing himself in action like that. He almost became lost in the technical details of the kills.
He looks at the soldiers as though seeing them for the first time, taking in their youth and the blueness already creeping into their skin from the loss of blood and heat from their rapidly cooling corpses.
He stops at the one they cradled and holds still while thinking. Sound travels well in the silence of winter and he heard every word they said. He goes over it now, processing the new information gained.
Emily Rose. He shakes his head at the thought of it. Tango Two was one of them, but she is very clearly holding her own position in their team.
He has to go. He knows that, and he takes a last slow look round before setting off down the bank and back through the undergrowth to the green light that he steps through to see Mother walking through the door of the darkened portal room bathed only by the shimmering green and the low lights of the complex at night.
‘Mother,’ he says, nodding a respectful greeting without showing a flicker of surprise.
‘On your own?’ she asks.
‘Wanted to check something,’ he says in a business-like fashion.
She folds her arms with a projection of expectation.
‘Would you like me to say what?’ he asks, moving past her to the control panel to switch off the portal, aware of her rotating to track him and even more aware that every setting put into the system is stored. ‘I went back to the Roman patrol . . . I wanted to see the positions and actions of Charlie, Delta and Echo when they split from Bravo and me on the track and before we commenced the attack.’ The green portal shuts off as he works the controls.
‘You have concerns?’ she asks.
‘None,’ he says instantly. ‘But it never hurts to be sure . . . They stayed silent, no conversations, no concerns at all. I know they’re sleeping or in their quarters now so I took the chance to go and see without them knowing.’
‘Good,’ she says, staring at him. ‘Any sign of our friends yet?’
‘Not yet,’ he says, only now aware of the fact he knew he was going to lie the second he saw her in the portal room. He stays calm and controlled, shifting into work-mode, of hiding every reaction, of showing only what needs to be shown.
‘You don’t seem yourself,’ she says suddenly, with a reminder who he is dealing with and that her instincts are dangerously sharp.
‘I’m fine,’ he says carefully, offering a quick glance. ‘I think we’re all feeling the strain of waiting.’
She walks closer, examining his features closely. ‘You should be fine, Alpha. You’re getting fucked every night by our historian. How is that for you anyway? Hmmm? Enjoying it, are you?’
‘Do you want me to stop seeing her?’ he asks plainly.
‘God no, you carry on your sordid little affair. I don’t care what you do. I only care about winning. This is a mission, Alpha. This is a job.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Goodnight.’ She turns to walk off. ‘Have fun with your little slut . . .’ she adds before pushing through the door.
He fights to keep a neutral manner because he knows she will check the camera feed. He completes the checks once again to show what a thorough and methodical agent he is. He walks out into the corridor and walks slowly through to the large mess room and pauses to look round then on to the briefing room, peering inside as though to check. He goes on through the complex, visually examining rooms and showing Mother what a thorough and methodical agent he is.
He walks slowly through the corridor feeding to the living quarters, hearing the voices of people talking in their rooms. Holo movies playing, music and even the rhythmic grunt of sexual intercourse underway. People living lives. People existing.
‘I’m awake,’ Kate says sleepily, sitting up to try and look awake while peering out through half-asleep eyes. ‘I’m not.’ She waves a hand and crumples back down into his bed. ‘You were gone for ages,’ she murmurs. ‘Come to bed now and stop being all agenty . . .’
‘I am,’ he says, undressing quickly. He climbs in to feel the warmth made by her body within the sheets, the pressure of her form, and inhales the scent of her hair and body.
‘Do you like it?’ she asks, peering up at him. ‘It’s the perfume you got from that store in America.’
‘It’s nice,’ he says.
‘It’s divine,’ she says, rolling onto her back to stretch her arms above her head with a languorous groan. ‘You okay?’ she asks, seeing his quiet, pensive look.
‘Fine,’ he says, easing down to curl into her as she rolls over.
‘Where did you go?’ she asks. ‘Spoon me properly . . .’
‘I’m trying . . .’
‘Try harder. That’s better . . . What were you saying?’
‘You asked me where I went.’
‘Did I? That’s nice,’ she murmurs. ‘Do tell me . . .’
He wants to tell her. He wants to tell her what he saw and the kindness Harry and
Emily showed to the young soldier. He wants to tell her he lied to Mother and something is changing inside him and they should go and just disappear into time, because everything they are doing is flawed and broken and wrong. It can’t be fixed. None of it can be fixed. Maggie Sanderson can stop them detonating that bomb, but Mother will escalate and on it will go until either one side is caught and trapped or everyone is dead. He wants to ask her what the song was he heard playing as he walked through the complex because he never really had an interest in music before. He wants to say many things and tell her his real name, but he stares into the darkness of his room and listens with an expert ear to the changes in her breathing that tell him she is asleep and so he says nothing because to say anything would be dangerous for both of them.
Instead, he wonders where in time and space Maggie and her team are, what they are doing and if the lives they have are so much different, and he wonders why the hell he didn’t tell Mother he saw them.
Twenty-Three
The Complex
Alpha walks out from his private quarters and through the corridors, thinking of last night and seeing Ben, Emily, Safa and Harry on the track, then after and the way Mother spoke to him.
Why did he lie? He had the element of surprise too; he could have attacked them when they were giving aid to the Roman soldier and stood a strong chance of taking them out. He could have got through their portal to Maggie. He felt sure it was them now and not a memory of them, so why didn’t he react? Why did he lie?
‘Morning.’ A worker passes him in the corridor. He lifts his chin in greeting, noting the dull eyes of the people he passes and the awful, heavy mood now permeating the place. It’s like a pressure cooker in here and getting worse by the day.
