The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 1

2001, New York

Alone, Maddy watched a cluster of seagulls picking away at some rubbish tipped on to the low-tide silt of the East River. Overhead, traffic clunked rhythmically across the Williamsburg Bridge, the end-of-day mad-hour rush of city workers returning from Manhattan back to Brooklyn.

She tossed a small nugget of tarmac into the water, and watched the seagulls scatter at the sound of the splash.

My God. Her mind was still spinning with the idea. My God, Liam is Foster?

That’s what the old man had said, wasn’t it? That he and Liam were the same person; that he was once Liam. And now he’d said it, she could see he was right. She could see the likeness in their faces, in their mannerisms, even in the way they talked.

‘Time travel did this to me. Time travel aged me, Maddy,’ he’d said.

The fact that Liam was going to become that poor old man … something else for her to keep to herself until she figured that Liam was ready to hear it. She felt so lonely harbouring secrets like this; it separated her from the other two. It felt wrong. After all, they’d been recruited together: her, Liam, Sal … the three of them plucked from different times, from the very last seconds of their lives by the old man. They should be a team. There shouldn’t be secrets between them. Not ones like this.

‘You’re the team leader now,’ Foster had told her, ‘it’s down to you how and when you tell Liam about this.’

She watched the seagulls cautiously return to peck and pull at the plastic bags on the silt.

‘Just great,’ she muttered to herself. Something else to churn away inside her, keep her awake at night. Because it wasn’t just the Foster-is-Liam thing, was it? Oh no. There was that other thing, that scribbled message she’d found at their supply drop point … the one for her eyes only.

Maddy, look out for ‘Pandora’, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tell no one.

She wondered what she was freakin’ well supposed to make of that. It meant nothing to her. ‘Pandora’ — what was that apart from being a pretty stupid girl’s name?

‘Why does it have to be me?’ Her soft voice caused a strutting seagull nearby to pause and cock its head at her.

‘I’m not talking to you, dumb bird.’ The seagull resumed its scavenging, one beady black eye still warily on her. She watched lights flickering on in Manhattan as the sun began to settle behind the two tall pillars of the World Trade Center.

Foster recruited you for a reason. Foster put you in charge for a reason. Because he knows you’re smart enough to figure things out, Maddy.

She sighed. She’d really like to believe that … that she was destined to be a good team leader, a good TimeRider. But somehow, with the way things had gone so far, it all just felt … as if she’d been winging it, hanging in there by the skin of her teeth. Lucky not to be dead, or to have caused the deaths of Liam and Sal. Lucky not to have completely messed up the timeline. Lucky not to have destroyed the world.

Way too much stress for an eighteen-year-old girl to have to be burdened with.

‘Darn right,’ she uttered. ‘Way too much.’