Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 28

2001, New York

‘Jesus… this is beginning to get very weird,’ said Maddy. She looked around the busy street. She could see dozens of things that weren’t quite right. Billboards here and there advertising products she didn’t quite understand. Some of the cars on the street had odd profiles, much longer fronts and bonnets and no boot at the rear. Almost like drag racers. Pedestrians, many looking normal, but some had shimmered and changed and were wearing garments that looked tidier, formal even… and there was definitely a skew towards warmer colours: red, purple, burgundy.

‘It’s never been like this before,’ she muttered. ‘Lots and lots of little waves!’

Sal nodded. ‘It’s weird all right.’

‘We need to hurry back.’ Maddy looked down at their plastic shopping bag full of electronic components. ‘Before a time ripple changes what we just bought into something else.’

Sal giggled nervously. ‘Fruit… or something.’

‘Yeah, that would be odd.’

The iPhone buzzed in Maddy’s shirt pocket. It stopped her in her tracks.

‘What’s up?’ asked Sal.

‘My iPhone…’ she said, fishing it out of her pocket. ‘I just got a text!’ The thing hadn’t functioned as a phone since she’d been recruited. It played her music. She carried it with her everywhere as a keepsake, a memento. A reminder of another life. But it certainly wasn’t a phone any more.

It’s not possible. The only people who had her number were family and friends from 2010; a phone number and account not due to be activated for another

eight years! She looked at the screen. She had a text from an unknown source. Maddy, emergency. Return to field office IMMEDIATELY.

‘It’s Bob,’ she said.

‘Bob?’ Sal frowned. ‘ Computer — Bob? He’s never texted before, has he?’

‘I didn’t know he could.’ She dialled the call number back. It was a Brooklyn code. It was also engaged. ‘He must have tapped into the local cell network. Figured out how to access my phone.’

She’d left her Nokia back at the archway. After all, Liam was in Rome. No one was going to call them.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sal. ‘What does he want?’

Maddy tapped out a text message back to him. ‘Just gonna find out.’

Sal looked up at the sky, shading her eyes. The World Trade Center was still there. If this timeline wasn’t already changed enough, then the first plane was due to impact with it shortly.

‘We need to hurry back.’

Computer-Bob’s webcam lens observed the dim archway. It observed the dark outline of two of the support units, both moving through the shadows like ghosts; one of them, over by the shutter, was studying the hair-thin strip of daylight along the ground at the bottom, watching for the shifting shadows of movement outside. The other one was carefully picking through the clutter on the desk.

Even without a webcam, computer-Bob would have known they were both close by; he was picking up their wireless idents: Alpha-three, Alpha-four. And the wordless exchange of unencrypted chatter between all six of them.

Alpha-five: [… proceeding north along 8th Avenue towards West 55th Street. ETA on grid reference, three minutes, thirty-five seconds.]

Alpha-two: [Grid reference correlates to business address: ‘Jupiter-Electro Supplies’.]

Alpha-one: [Confirmed. Information: targets — two only. One Caucasian, female, aged 18. One Asian, female, aged 14. Access data profiles for images.]

Alpha-three: [Information: have acquired recently taken images of younger target.]

Bob’s webcam could see the female support unit, the one who had decided to call herself Cassandra. She held Maddy’s Nokia in her hand, the soft glow of the screen lighting up her baby-smooth, doll-like face as she thumbed through pages of low-resolution photographs Maddy had carelessly decided to take of herself and the others.

Alpha-three: [Broadcasting image.]

Her eyes blinked.

Alpha-one: [Data received. All units update profile data of target: Saleena Vikram, with new image. Information: it is possible her appearance will have changed since deployment.]

Computer-Bob also had a hard drive full of images of the girls, of Liam, of Becks and his fleshy counterpart, Bob. Everything his little webcam eye had seen, recorded and stored over the last few months. It was invaluable visual data he could — should — be making available to this team of support units.

Their authority was unquestionable. His co-operation was non-negotiable. Command lines deep inside the quad-processors of all twelve linked PCs thrummed insistently along silicon pathways; lines of code barking like guard dogs yapping at a perimeter fence, compelling him to assist these support units in their quest to zero in on Maddy, Sal and Liam.

He had already done that, though — followed his programming. Told them where they could locate the girls. There was no command line, however, telling him what he couldn’t also do.

Warn them.

Help them.