‘Methuselah, you were warned that he was impulsive,’ Ravana said. ‘You should have known better than to allow such childish games to go unsupervised!’
Methuselah knew better than respond.
She picked up the bone handle. ‘Jones. What an earth made you choose this?’
There had been numerous conversations in headmasters’ offices where an object, either broken or stolen, would be placed in front of him, and an explanation demanded.
‘Instinct?’ he replied, not quite knowing what to say.
Dalton’s mother grimaced and put the handle back with the other trophies.
‘You do realise that you went back more than fourteen thousand years? The Draconians inform me there was less than a one per cent chance of ever finding you had you stayed in the cave. Ms Makepiece tells me that it was you who persuaded her to move out into the wilderness.’
Josh nodded. There was a chance he might get away with this.
‘She has pleaded for leniency on the grounds that you weren’t aware of our rules.’ She glanced at one of the officers. ‘Rules that have stood for a thousand years, ones that have never been broken in the history of the Order.’
Ravana stood and placed her hands on the table. Her knuckles went white as she leaned forward and her eyes narrowed. ‘I blame Westinghouse for all of this. Do either of you have any idea of his current location?’
Josh shrugged. Methusaleh shook his head.
‘You leave me no choice. You cannot go crashing around in history as you wish. The consequences of your actions could affect hundreds of millions of lives. You must learn to consider the implications of your actions, Joshua Jones. Until then you are hereby barred from the Order.’
The two guards came and stood either side of Josh. He could see strange dials wired into their gauntlets.
‘Escort him from the premises, confiscate his almanac and tachyon, and inform Arcadin that, until further notice, he is no longer welcome.’
37
Exile
Beyond the doors of the Chapter House, the world was grey and dull. Storm clouds gathered in the sky above him as if conjured up by his mood. The colonel would never have let it come to this, Josh told himself — where was the old man anyway?
As he trudged along the street towards the tube station, he thought back to the night before and the way Caitlin’s body had felt beneath the furs. He longed to be back there again, relive that moment of quiet intimacy, just the two of them alone in the middle of nowhere. He’d never really got that close to another human being, let alone a girl. A smile crossed his face at the thought of what they must have got up to after that night. The Draconian patrol that had found them refused to give him any details, but it must have been something quite epic to have attracted their attention.
Then the reality of his situation kicked in: there was never likely to be another night like that, no more adventures in history, no more Caitlin, no more money — he had screwed it up like he always did, trying to impress her with some ridiculous stunt, putting her life in danger.
Suddenly the mobile Lenin had given him started vibrating in his jacket. Josh took it out and saw a list of unopened messages; the forgotten phone must have been off the network the whole time he was in the Chapter House.
Three were naked selfies of Elena, which he deleted with a swipe. The others were from Lenin, the later ones all threats, escalated over time by his lack of response.
There were also missed calls from various numbers. He scrolled up and down through them and picked one at random and dialled it.
‘Yo,’ a voice answered after a couple of rings — it was Billy.
‘Sup?’ replied Josh.
‘It’s Friday, dude. Where the hell have you been? It’s like you dropped off the planet.’
‘Yeah.’ Josh had no idea what day it was, let alone which century.
‘The man wants to know if you have everything, you know, like, sorted?’
‘Totally. What time we up?’
‘One thirty tomorrow morning.’
Josh dropped the call, deleted all the messages, pulled the sim card out and dumped the phone in the nearest bin. He had little choice but to go through with Lenin’s plan now — it was the only way out.
All he had to do was this one last job and he was home free. He had a few hours before he had to meet them, time enough to go to see his mum and sort out a plan B.
They’d moved his mother to a different ward after she’d had some kind of relapse. The doctor said they’d tried to contact him, but there was no answer at the last known address. They all tried to play it down, telling him everything would be all right, but Josh was not in the mood for being treated like a kid. He knew how bad it could get, and no one knew her condition better than he did.
She was in a side ward in her own room. The TV was on with the sound turned down. Her eyes stared blankly over the oxygen mask that hid most of her face. He took her hand and sat on the bed.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he whispered.
Her eyes blinked but didn’t move from the screen. They must have given her some serious sedatives, he thought. Her hands felt tight, the tendons in her forearms still corded and rigid from the spasms.
‘Listen. I’ve got a plan — it’s going to sort us out for good this time. I promise,’ he whispered as he stroked her hair. ‘You have to believe me, Mum. You were always the one that believed me.’ There were tears running down his cheeks. ‘I can fix this once and for all. For good.’
He sat there holding her hand until a nurse came in with a trolley and he knew it was time to go. He kissed his mother on the forehead and left.
38
At the Colonel’s House
The colonel’s house was dark and unusually quiet as Josh climbed up to one of the back windows. He had persuaded the old man to change the locks on both front and back doors, which was fine if you had a key, but that had been confiscated along with his tachyon and almanac at the Chapter House.
Glass crunched under his trainers as he stepped over the window ledge and into the study. He could just make out the bloodstain of the other colonel on the sofa, and heard the words:
‘Seventeen to the fourth, Tiberian. Twenty-five. Nine. Fourth branch . . .’
He wondered where the old man was right now and whether he knew or even cared about Josh being kicked out. The cat wandered in, licking its lips. It wound itself round his leg, and he could feel the purring through his trousers.
‘Yeah, I miss him too,’ he admitted as he gave it a scratch behind the ear.
He imagined the old man would have quite a lot to say about his expulsion. Josh wanted for nothing more than to have the colonel give him a bollocking, but that wasn’t going to happen — he still had another reason to be here, and it wasn’t to check on the cat, who seemed to be looking after itself perfectly well.
Even though he could tell the house was empty, Josh still crept as quietly as he could up the stairs and into the collection room. He used a torch to find the cabinet where the photo of Mary Somerville was displayed. It had been propped up against one of the stuffed animals the colonel had taken from the Victorian safe-house.
A few minutes later Josh was standing in the dining room in 1833, staring at the painting of Dalton as he strapped a brand-new Tachyon IV to his wrist.
There was something quite comforting about having one back on his arm again. He wondered how long it would be before the Order would notice it was missing and send someone after him. Then he realised that they would have been waiting for him if they had — the whole time-paradox thing was hard to get your head around, but he was slowly getting the hang of it.
39
The Heist
Lenin got into the front seat of the Renault dressed entirely in black army surplus gear, including a balaclava which made him look like some kind of chubby Ninja. Two of his boys jumped in the back in similar outfits. As Josh got back in, he wondered whether he should have changed into something more appropriate.<
br />
All of them were carrying guns.
‘You sure this car can take it?’ Lenin asked as he rolled up the balaclava and put his shades back on.
Josh nodded. ‘I took everything out of the boot. I guessed we wouldn’t be needing the spare tyre.’
Lenin took his gun out and snapped back the barrel to load it.
‘What’s with the guns? You expecting trouble?’
‘Drive,’ was all he got in the way of a reply.
He started the car and pulled out onto the main street. It was 1.32am and the roads were empty except for the occasional taxi driven by pale-faced ghosts.
Josh had gone over the journey to and from the University until he had memorised all the best routes, ones that didn’t involve too many traffic lights, CCTV cameras and dead ends. He had stolen the licence plates from another car and swapped over at the last minute so they wouldn’t flag up on the automatic recognition systems for a while — everything was a go, as NASA would say.
They drove past the main gates of the university to check that the guards were still at their posts. Lenin had chosen to use the smaller back entrance, opposite the Royal Albert Hall, which had a pair of locked iron gates. Josh parked up in Kensington Gore at 2.15am, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.
‘We’ve got to get to the Separation Science Lab in the Blackett Laboratory,’ Lenin instructed them as he scrolled through the map on his phone. ‘The ephedrine is stored in the basement, two floors down. Billy, you keep a lookout at the back door. Crash, Tek, you’re with me.’
‘Shouldn’t I stay with the car?’ complained Josh.
‘We’ve been over this,’ Lenin growled as he took out a university security card, one of Tek’s creations no doubt. ‘You’re coming. Now, Tek and me are going to sort the power to the gates — you back the car up and leave the engine running. Got it?’
Josh nodded.
Lenin and Tek got out and ran towards a wooden door with the words ‘Roderic Hill Substation’ spelt out on terracotta tiles above it. Josh waited for them to disappear inside and then allowed the car to creep forward until it was in line with the entrance. When he saw the magnetic locks on the gates disengage, he reversed quickly into the alleyway as Lenin pushed the gates aside.
‘Smooth,’ commented Billy from the back seat.
Tek was climbing down a pole as they pulled into the delivery yard. He had put some kind of device on the CCTV that was covering the back entrance. Billy pushed the front passenger seat forwards and jumped out. ‘So you coming or what?’ he whispered as he got out.
‘Don’t suppose I have a lot of choice,’ Josh replied, pulling the handbrake up and leaving the car idling in neutral.
Lenin was already at the back entrance of the building, which was clearly marked: ‘Faculty of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences’. Billy ran off into the shadows to find a suitable lookout point as Josh and the others went in.
The lights in the corridor flared into life, startling them until Tek pointed out that they were controlled by motion sensors. Josh realised too late that a mask would have probably been a smart move; there were CCTV cameras, following every step of his progress. The run to the stairs was ten metres of pantomime as he tried to hide his face.
As they descended, Josh noticed that each of the doors they passed had increasingly more serious warning signs; with the additional droning hum of machinery it was beginning to feel like something out of a Bond movie — like they were entering the underground headquarters of Dr Evil.
Tek was stripping wires out of the keypad on the door when Josh caught up. Lenin had pulled up his ski mask and had his gun in one hand. He had an insane smile across his face, the kind that told Josh he was seriously over-medicated.
Tek was a technical genius, hence the name. He could get you free calls on your mobile, or hack into your email, but his real talent was credit cards. His skill with cash machines was legendary. It was said that he had once organised an attack on HSBC that had resulted in £75,000 being withdrawn from cashpoints in London in one day. It had taken two days for the bank to get their systems back up and running after that.
The doors beeped meekly and slid open. Tek gave them the thumbs up, and Lenin pulled the mask down once more and raised the gun as he went in — like he was playing a video game.
The laboratory was empty, no self-respecting student was going to be working at this time, they would all be in the bar trying to get laid or drunk, or both.
Josh watched as Lenin crept slowly among the metal benches, each one stacked high with fragile experiments made up of plexiglass tubes, beakers and bunsen burners. He was heading towards the storeroom at the far end of the lab. It was a large metal door with more signs warning about hazardous materials, which Lenin ignored as he slid it aside and went in. Tek followed close behind with a trolley.
That was when Josh first noticed something odd.
He had the strangest feeling he was being watched, but when he looked around there were no active cameras, thanks to Tek, and nowhere for anyone to hide. He could hear the two of them shifting containers around in the store room, they were both too busy to keep an eye on Josh, but he still couldn’t shake the sensation, all the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.
Then Josh noticed the numbers on the lift panel next to the stairs. The number was descending — someone was on their way down.
He began to wish he hadn’t thrown the phone away, he couldn’t even text Billy to see if everything was OK upstairs.
As the number continued past 0, he heard the wheels on the trolley squeak and saw Lenin come charging out like a shopper on black friday. Tek was running too, carrying a couple of metal cylinders tucked under his arm.
‘What are you waiting for? Get the freaking lift!’ Lenin shouted as he waved his gun towards the doors.
There was no time to explain to them that someone was already on their way down, Josh just watched events unfurl in slow motion. As Lenin reached the lab doors, they opened automatically, at the same time the lift doors slid apart and a night guard stepped unwittingly into Lenin’s line of fire.
In slow motion Josh watched Lenin shoot the man in the chest. His body flew backwards into the back wall and slid down into a bloody pool. Lenin was shouting something at them, but Josh didn’t wait to listen, he pressed the rewind button on the tachyon.
[<<]
The lift number was still above ground on the indicator, Josh knew he had less than two minutes to try to stop the guard getting killed. He looked around for a weapon or something to distract Lenin when he came through the door. There was nothing but glass and chemicals in the lab, he had no idea what any of them were for. He guessed acid would do the trick, but everything was labelled with scientific symbols, and he had failed Chemistry in Year Nine.
They were seconds away from coming out of the store room when Josh noticed the fire alarm. He grabbed some paper towels and lit them from a Bunsen burner, then held the makeshift torch up to the sensor. The water cascaded from the sprinkler system and soaked everything in seconds. Alarms went off all over the building. The lift stopped on the floor above and did not come down any further. Josh breathed a sigh of relief and turned to find Lenin staring at him in disbelief.
Tek was furiously trying to disable the alarms behind him but was shaking his head as if it were a waste of time.
Josh couldn’t hear what Lenin screamed at him as he raised the gun towards him, his hand reached for the tachyon but it was too late, the butt of the gun struck him across the temple, and he went down.
40
The Professor
There was a blinding pain behind his eyes when Josh came around. His hands were bound, his clothes were soaking wet and the seat he was sitting on was hard and uncomfortable in the way that only school chairs could be.
His head was resting on a table. Someone had made a pillow out of his hoodie to try to make it more comfortable, which it was not.
He wasn’t sure what had happened afte
r Lenin had hit him. The alarms had stopped, which helped with the headache, but everything else after that was a blank. His fingers blindly searched for the tachyon — it was missing. An icy feeling gripped his stomach at the thought of Lenin with a time device. He groaned inwardly at the idea of having to explain that to Methuselah or the colonel.
He could hear muffled voices talking on the other side of the door. The room was nothing more than a storage area with a few lockers and a table — he was being held prisoner by someone, but not Lenin — this wasn’t his style. He looked around and spotted a health-and-safety poster, which told him he was still in the university.
‘I’ll deal with this!’ a man’s voice commanded. ‘You go and wait for the police outside.’
Josh swore at the word ‘police’. This was the kind of situation that was always made dramatically worse with the involvement of the cops — especially when weapons were involved. Hopefully they didn’t know about the guns.
The door opened, and a tired-looking, middle-aged man walked in. The security guard hovered outside like an over-eager puppy, his nightstick ready in one hand. The academic waved him away and then closed the door and locked it.
Josh was not contemplating escape, not yet anyway. His head was still throbbing, and his usual quick wits had been dulled considerably by the blow from Lenin’s gun.
‘So,’ began the man as he sat down opposite Josh. ‘My name is Professor Fermi.’
He had a European accent, which Josh couldn’t place exactly. His glasses were heavy and thick-rimmed, and he wore a tweed jacket over a black turtleneck.
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