Day of the Predator tr-2 Read online

  Day of the Predator

  ( Time riders - 2 )

  Alex Scarrow

  Alex Scarrow

  Day of the Predator

  CHAPTER 1

  2026, Mumbai, India

  They’d heard the rumbling coming towards them down the echoing stairwell like a locomotive train. Then all of a sudden it was pitch black, the air thick with dust and smoke. Sal Vikram thought she was going to choke on the grit and particles of brick plaster she was sucking in through her nose, clogging her throat and the back of her mouth with a thick chalky paste.

  It felt like an eternity before it was clear enough to see the emergency wall light in the stairwell once more. By its dim amber light she could see the lower flight of stairs was completely blocked by rubble and twisted metal spars. Above them, the stairwell they’d been clambering down only moments earlier was crushed by the collapsed floors above. She saw an extended arm emerging from the tangle of beams and crumbling breeze-blocks, an arm chalk-white, perfectly still, reaching down to her as if pleading to be held or shaken.

  ‘We’re trapped,’ whispered her mother.

  Sal looked to her, then to her father. He shook his head vigorously, dust cascading off his thin hair.

  ‘No! We are not! We dig!’ He looked at Sal. ‘That’s what we do, we dig. Right, Saleena?’

  She nodded mutely.

  He turned to the others trapped on the emergency stairwell along with them. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘We must dig. We can’t wait for rescue…’ Her father could have said more, could have completed that sentence, could have said what they were all thinking — that if the skyscraper had collapsed down to this floor there was no reason why it wasn’t soon to fold in on itself all the way down.

  Sal looked around. She recognized faces despite them all being painted ghost-white with dust: Mr and Mrs Kumar from two apartments along; the Chaudhrys with their three young sons; Mr Joshipura, a business man like her father, but single… enjoyed a string of girlfriends. Tonight, presumably, he’d been on his own.

  And… another man, standing at the back of the stairwell, beneath the wall light. She didn’t recognize him.

  ‘If we move things, we may cause more of it to collapse!’ said Mrs Kumar.

  Sal’s mother placed a hand on her husband. ‘She is right, Hari.’

  Hari Vikram turned to look at them all. ‘Some of you are old enough to remember, yes? Remember what happened to the Americans in New York? Their twin towers?’

  Sal remembered the footage, something they’d been shown in history class. Both of those tall, magnificent buildings sliding down into the earth and disappearing among billowing dark grey clouds.

  Heads nodded. Everyone old enough remembered, but none of them stepped forward. As if to press the issue, a metal spar above creaked and slid, releasing a small avalanche of dust and debris down on to them.

  ‘If we just wait here… we die!’ shouted her father.

  ‘They will come!’ replied Mr Joshipura. ‘The firemen will soon — ’

  ‘No. I’m afraid they won’t.’ She turned towards the voice. The old man she hadn’t recognized had finally said something. ‘I’m afraid they won’t come for you,’ he repeated, his voice softer this time. He sounded like a westerner, English or American. And, unlike everyone else, he wasn’t coated in dust. ‘They won’t have time. This building has less than three minutes before the support struts on the floor beneath us give way. Combined with the weight of the collapsed floors above, it’ll be enough for Palace Tower to go all the way down.’

  He looked around at them, the wide eyes of the adults, the wider eyes of the children. ‘I’m truly sorry, but none of you are going to survive.’

  The heat in the stairwell was increasing. A floor below, the flames had taken a firm hold, their heat softening the steel girders of the skyscraper. Deep groans rippled and echoed around them.

  Hari Vikram studied the stranger for a moment; the fact that he was the only one not coated in a thick layer of chalky dust wasn’t wasted on him. ‘Wait! You are clean. How did you get in here? Is there another way through?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘But… you were not with us before the floor collapsed! There must be some way — ’

  ‘I have only just arrived,’ replied the man, ‘and I must leave soon. We really don’t have much time.’

  Sal’s mother stepped towards him. ‘Leave? How? Can you… can you help us?’

  ‘I can help only one of you.’ His eyes rested on Sal. ‘You… Saleena Vikram.’

  Sal felt every pair of eyes in the stairwell settle on her.

  ‘Take my hand,’ said the man.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked her father.

  ‘I’m your daughter’s only way out. If she takes my hand… she lives. If she doesn’t, she will die along with the rest of you.’

  One of the young boys began to cry. Sal knew him; she’d babysat the Chaudhry boys. He was nine and terrified, clutching his favourite soft toy — a one-eyed bear — tightly in both hands as if the bear was his ticket out.

  Another deep moan from one of the skyscraper’s structural support bars echoed through the small space on the stairwell, like the mournful call of a dying whale, or the stress vibration of a sinking ship. The stale air around them, already hot, was becoming almost too painful to inhale.

  ‘We have just over two minutes,’ said the man. ‘The heat of the fire is causing the building’s framework to deform. Palace Tower will collapse, directly in on itself at first, then sideways into the mall below. Five thousand people will be dead a hundred and twenty seconds from now. And tomorrow the news will be all about the terrorists who caused this.’

  ‘Who… who are you?’ asked her father again.

  The man — he looked old, perhaps in his fifties or sixties — stepped forward through the crowd, his hand extended towards Saleena. ‘We don’t have time. You have to take my hand,’ he said.

  Her father blocked his path. ‘Who are you? H-how did you get through to us?’

  The old man turned to him. ‘I’m sorry. There is no time. Just know that I arrived here… and I can leave just as easily.’

  ‘How?!’

  ‘ How is unimportant… I simply can. And I can take just your daughter… only your daughter with me.’ The old man looked down at a watch on his wrist. ‘Now there really is little time left — a minute and a half.’

  Sal watched her father’s taut face, his mind working with businesslike efficiency. No time for hows and whys. The flicker of fire was coming up from the blocked stairwell below them, sending dancing shadows through the dust-filled air.

  Hari Vikram stepped aside. ‘Take her, then! You must take her!’

  Sal looked up at the old man, frightened at his strangeness, reluctant to offer her hand to him. Not that she believed in anything beyond this world, not Hindu gods, not angels or demons… but he seemed not of this world somehow. An apparition. A ghost.

  Her father angrily snatched at her hand. ‘ Saleena! You must go with him!’

  She looked at her father, her mother. ‘Why c-can’t we all go?’

  The old man shook his head. ‘Only you, Saleena. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ She realized tears were streaming down her cheeks, tracing dark tracks on her chalky face.

  ‘You’re special,’ said the old man, ‘ that is why.’

  ‘Please, you must take my boys too!’ called out Mrs Chaudhry.

  The old man turned to her. ‘I can’t. I wish I could… but I can’t.’

  ‘ Pleeease! They’re so young. Younger than this girl! They have their whole lives — ’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s not my choice. I can only take Saleena.’

&n
bsp; Sal felt her father’s hands on her shoulders. He pushed her roughly forward towards the stranger. ‘You take her! You take her now!’

  ‘Dadda! No! ’

  ‘You take her now!’

  ‘No! Not — ’

  They heard a deep rumble and felt the floor trembling beneath their feet.

  ‘We have only seconds,’ said the old man. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘SALEENA!’ her father screamed. ‘YOU GO!’

  ‘Dadda!’ she cried. She turned to her mum. ‘ Please! I can’t! ’

  The old man stretched forward and grasped hold of her hand. He pulled her towards him, but she found herself instinctively squirming and twisting her hand to escape his tight grip. ‘ No! ’ she screamed.

  The deep rumbling increased in volume, the floor shuddering, and cascades of dust and grit filled the air around them, tumbling down from above.

  ‘This is it!’ the old man said. ‘Time has come! Saleena… I can save your life if you come with me!’

  She looked at him. It seemed madness that he could, but, somehow, she believed him. ‘Your parents want this too.’ His eyes, so intense, so old.

  ‘Yes!’ yelled her father above the growing roar. ‘Please! Take her NOW!’

  Beside his small frame, her mother was screaming, stretching out her hands to hold her one last time. Her father grabbed her, held her back. ‘No, my love! She must go!’

  Mrs Chaudhry pushed her boys at the old man. ‘Please! Take their hands too! Take their hands — ’

  The floor shook beneath their feet, lurching to one side.

  Sal suddenly felt light-headed, as if she was free falling.

  This is it, it’s falling!

  Then the floor suddenly fractured beneath their feet, revealing an ocean of churning, roiling flames, like gazing down into Hell itself. And the last thing she recalled was seeing that one-eyed bear tumbling down through a large split in the stairwell’s floor into the fire below.

  CHAPTER 2

  2001, New York

  Sal sat upright in her bunk — gasping for breath, feeling her cheeks wet with tears.

  The nightmare again.

  It was quiet and still in the archway. She could hear Maddy snoring on the bunk below, and Liam whimpering nonsensical words in his soft Irish accent as he stirred restlessly on the bunk opposite.

  A muted lamp glowed softly from across the archway, lighting their wooden dinner table and the odd assortment of old armchairs around it. LEDs blinked among the bank of computer equipment across the way, hard drives whirring. One of the monitors remained on; she could see the computer system was doing a routine defrag and data-file tidying. It never slept.

  Not it… not any more — the computer wasn’t IT any more. It was Bob.

  Unable to go back to sleep, she clambered off the top bunk. Maddy twitched in her sleep, and Liam also seemed to be unsettled. Maybe they too were reliving their last moments: Liam’s sinking Titanic, Maddy’s doomed airliner. The nightmares came all too often.

  She tiptoed across the archway, barefoot on the cold concrete floor, and sat down in one of the swivel chairs, tucking her feet under her and sitting on them for warmth. She grabbed the mouse and opened a dialogue box. Her fingernails clacked softly on the keyboard.

  › hey, bob.

  › Is this Maddy?

  › no, it’s sal.

  › It is 2.37 a.m. You cannot sleep, Sal?

  ›nightmares.

  › Are you recalling your recruitment?

  Recruitment, that’s what the old man, Foster, had called it. Like she’d had any real choice in the matter. Life or death. Take my hand or be mashed to pulp amid a crumbling skyscraper. She shuddered. Great fragging choice.

  ›yeah, my recruitment.

  › You have my sympathy, Sal.

  ‘Thanks.’ She spoke softly into the desk mic — too lazy to tap out any more. Anyway, the clickety-click of the keyboard echoing through the archway was far more likely to disturb the others than her speaking quietly.

  ‘I miss them so much, Bob.’

  › You miss your family?

  ‘Mum and Dad.’ She sighed. ‘It seems like years ago.’

  › You have been in the team 44 time cycles. 88 days precisely, Sal.

  Time cycles — the two-day time bubble that played out and reset for them, constantly keeping them and their field office in 10 and 11 September 2001, while the world outside moved on as normal.

  Outside… outside was New York — Brooklyn, to be more precise. Streets she was now getting to know so well. Even the people she had conversations with, people who were never going to remember her: the Chinese laundromat lady, the Iranian man running the grocery store on the corner. Every time they spoke, it was, for them, the first time — a new face, a new customer to greet cheerily. But she already knew them, knew what they were about to say, how proud the Chinese lady was of her son, how angry the Iranian man was with the terrorists for bombing his city.

  This morning was the Tuesday, 11 September, the second day of the ever-resetting time cycle. In just under six hours the first airliner was going to crash into the Twin Towers, and New York and all her inhabitants were going to change forever.

  ‘So what’re you doing, Bob?’

  › Data collation. Hard-drive maintenance. And reading a book.

  ‘Oh? Cool. What’re you reading?’

  A page of text appeared on the screen. She could see individual words momentarily highlight one after the other in rapid blinking succession as Bob ‘read’ while they talked.

  › Harry Potter.

  Sal remembered seeing the old films from the first decade of the century. They didn’t do much for her, but her parents had liked them as children.

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  Bob didn’t answer immediately. She noticed the flickering of highlighted words on the open page of text on the screen grind to a sudden halt, and the soft whirring sound of hard drives being spun momentarily ceased. Forming an opinion… that was something Bob struggled with. It required the computer system’s entire capacity for him to actually formulate, or rather simulate, something as simple as a human emotion… a preference. A like or dislike.

  Finally, after a few seconds, she heard the hard drives whirring gently once again.

  › I like the magic very much.

  Sal smiled as she acknowledged how many terabytes of computing power had gone into that simple statement. If she had a mean streak in her, she could have asked him what colour he thought went best with violet, or what was tastier — chocolate or vanilla? It would probably lock the system for hours as Bob laboured through infinite decision loops to finally come up with the answer that he was unable to compute a valid response.

  Bless him. Great at data retrieval, cross-referencing and processing. But don’t ask him to pick dessert off a menu.

  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’.