Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 3

2001, New York

Monday (time cycle 45)

Most of the damage that happened here in the archway with the last time contamination has been fixed up now — the holes in the walls filled again, the door to the back room replaced with a new sturdy one. And we got a brand-new emergency generator installed. Some workmen came in to set it up. We had to hide the time-portal equipment from them, and when they asked about all the computer screens at the desk Maddy told them we were a computer-game developer. I think they believed her.

It’s a much more powerful generator, and more reliable than the last shadd-yah old one. I hope we don’t have to use it, though.

We’ve also got an old TV set, a DVD player and one of those Nintendo machines. Liam loves the games. He’s mad about one stupid game with silly characters driving around on go-karts throwing bananas at each other.

Boys, eh?

Maddy says we need to grow a new support unit. A new Bob. Just in case another time shift comes along that we need to deal with. Only, the new Bob won’t be entirely new. The body will, yes, but she says we can upload Bob’s AI back into it and he’ll be exactly like he was… and not the retarded idiot that plopped out of the growth tube last time. Which is a relief. Bob was so-o-o-o stupid when he was first born.

We fixed the growth tubes. Some got damaged by those creature things that broke in, but they’re all functioning now, and we’ve got them filled up with that stinking protein solution the foetuses float in. We had to steal a load of that gloop from a hospital blood bank. It’s the fake blood they use, the plasma stuff, but with a witches’ brew of added vitamins and proteins.

Honestly, it’s like runny snot. But worse than that, because it smells like vomit.

What we don’t have yet, though, are the foetuses. Apparently we can’t go and grab any old one — they’re specially genetically engineered sometime in the future…

Maddy looked at Liam. ‘You ready?’

‘Aye,’ he replied, shivering as he stood behind her in nothing more than a pair of striped boxer shorts, and holding a watertight bag full of clothes.

She looked down at her own shivering body, trembling beneath her T-shirt. ‘Maybe one day we could get around to rigging up something to heat the water before we jump in.’

‘That’s for sure.’

She climbed the steps beside the perspex cylinder, looking down into the cold water, freshly run from the water mains. She settled down on the top step beside the lip of the cylinder and dipped her toes in.

A wet departure — that was the protocol. To ensure that nothing but them and the water they were floating in was sent back in time… and not any chunks of floor, or carpet or concrete or cabling that had no possible reason to exist in the past.

‘Oh Jeeeez! It’s freezing!’

Liam squatted down beside her. ‘Great.’

Maddy shuddered then looked up at Sal, seated at the computer station. ‘What’s the departure count?’

‘Just over a minute.’

‘So,’ said Liam, slowly easing himself into the water, gasping as he did so. ‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Uh-huh.’ No, she wasn’t. Not sure about anything. The old man, Foster, had left her in charge. Left her running this team and this field office even though they’d barely survived their first brush with time contamination. All she had for help now was computer-Bob and a data folder on his hard drive entitled ‘Things You’ll Probably Want to Ask’.

‘How do we grow new support units?’ was the name of one of the first files she’d found in the folder when she’d delved into it a few weeks ago. First order of business had been getting the grow-tubes up and running and getting one of those clones on the go. When she’d double-clicked on it, what she’d got was an image of Foster’s face looking out of the monitor as he’d addressed the web cam. He looked ten, perhaps twenty years younger than he had the morning he’d told her she was ready, wished her luck and walked out of Starbucks leaving her to run things.

The Foster onscreen looked no more than fifty. ‘ So,’ he began, adjusting the flex so that the mic was in front of his mouth. ‘ You’ve opened this file. Which means you’ve been careless and your support unit has been destroyed and now you need to grow a new one.’ Foster had proceeded with detailed instructions on maintenance and feeding, and how the growth tubes work. But finally, towards the end of the log entry, was the bit they’d been after.

‘ Right… so the clones are grown from a store of engineered human foetuses. I’ll presume you’ve used up the last of the refrigerated ones kept in your field office and now you need more.’

Not exactly used up; those of them mid-growth had all died in the tubes, poisoned by their own waste fluids because the electric-powered pumps hadn’t been functioning. The bodies — pale, lifeless, hairless, jelly-like forms that ranged from something that could’ve sat in the palm of her hand to the body of a boy of eight or nine — had been taken care of. Taken out, weighted down and dumped in the river. Not an experience she ever wanted to repeat.

‘ The good news is there are more of them. There’s a supply of viable candidate foetuses, all engineered with the silicon processor chip already housed in the cranial cavity. They’re ready to grow to full term and, of course, come with basic learning AI code pre-installed.’ The Foster on the monitor smiled coyly. ‘ If you’ve been smart, you managed to retrieve your last support unit’s chip and preserved its AI…’

She nodded. Yup. Well, Liam had done that messy business.

‘… so any new support unit doesn’t need to start out from scratch as a complete imbecile, and you can upload the AI from the computer system. So, like I say, the good news is there’s more of them. But the bad news is they’re not going to be delivered to your front door like

… like… some sort of a pizza delivery; I’m afraid you’ve got to go and get them yourselves.’

Sal called out a thirty-second warning and Maddy’s mind returned to the icy water in the displacement cylinder. She eased herself in beside Liam, her breath chuffing out at the cold. ‘Uhhh! This is f-f-f-freezing! How d-do you c-cope with it?’ she asked Liam, her teeth chattering.

He offered her a lopsided grin. ‘It’s not like I get a choice, is it?’

‘Twenty seconds!’ called out Sal.

‘When did you say we’re going, again?’ asked Liam.

‘I t-t-told you: 1906. San Francisco.’

Liam’s eyebrows locked in concentration for a moment. ‘Hold on now

… is that not the same year that… that — ?’

‘Yes?’

‘I remember my dad reading it in the Irish Times. It’s the year that — ’

‘Fifteen seconds!’

Maddy let go of the side of the perspex cylinder and began treading water. ‘Liam, you’ve g-got to go under now.’

‘I know… I know! Bleedin’ hate this bit.’

‘Maybe Sal and I should t-teach you how to swim some time?’

‘Ten seconds!’

‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mary, why does time travel have to be done this way? Why did that Waldstein fella have to be so stupid as to invent bleedin’ time travel in the first place!’

‘You wanna blame someone… b-blame the Chinese what’s-his-name guy who worked it out in the first place.’

Liam nodded. ‘Aghh, well, him too!’

‘Five seconds!’ called Sal. ‘You really need to duck under now!’

Maddy held her hand above his head. ‘Need me to push you under?’

‘No! I’ll just… I’ll, ah… All right!’

Liam sucked in a lungful of air and clasped his nose with his free hand.

‘S-see you on the other side,’ she uttered as she pushed him under the water. Then sucked in air and submerged as well.

Oh Jeez… here goes.

Her first time. Her first time into the past, not counting her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking the coordinates were set right, arranging the return window time-stamp, checking Sal had pulled out the right clothes for them to wear from the old closet in the back room, making sure she remembered the details of their mission… too busy with all those things to realize how utterly terrified she was at the prospect of being pushed out of space-time, through chaos space — and God knows what that was — to emerge back into the space-time of nearly a hundred years ago.

She opened her eyes under the water and saw the foggy form of Liam’s scrawny body thrashing around in blind panic. She saw bubbles zig-zagging up around him. She could see the dim lamp on the computer desk through the tube’s scuffed plastic, the faint outline of Sal… then…

… Then they were falling, tumbling through darkness.