The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 5

2001, New York

Liam winced at the noise. It was so loud he could feel something inside his ears vibrate, and that surely couldn’t be healthy. Maddy had dragged him to the front of the small nightclub’s dance floor; dragged him by the hand until they’d found a gap just in front of the stage. He’d been prepared to stand there and listen while the band had been playing a slower, quieter, almost pleasant song. But then, without any warning at all, they’d taken a passable piece of music and turned it into a screaming, banging cacophony of sound that made his ears hurt. And, of course, all the other weird-looking youngsters standing around him had started jumping up and down for some reason and rudely pushing and shoving him and each other.

He soon had enough of that and left Maddy and Sal bouncing up and down like idiots. He squeezed his way through the crowd, quickly giving up on his excuse mes and pardon mes until he found Becks standing at the back of the nightclub, calmly studying the behaviour of everyone inside like a scientist studying a cage full of lab rats.

‘They call this music, so they do,’ he shouted. ‘Music — would you believe that?’

‘Affirmative,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Spectrum analysis of the frequency envelope and beats per minute indicate this music matches other tracks identified collectively as Death Metal.’

‘Death Metal, is it now? More like Deaf-and-Mental.’

She looked at him. ‘Negative. I said Death …’ She hesitated. ‘That was a joke, wasn’t it, Liam?’

He shrugged. ‘Aye.’

She practised a laugh she’d been working on; against the din of the band’s final chorus it sounded coarse and braying and not particularly lady-like. He shook his head and looked back at the dance floor, a seething, bouncing carpet of hair and sweaty heads, nose rings and tattooed shoulders, while five willowy young men on the stage jerked and twitched over their instruments. He decided they looked like something out of a travelling freak show.

Jay-zus, so this is ‘the modern world’, is it?

‘Ah, come on,’ laughed Maddy. ‘Lighten up, Liam. You sound like my granddad.’

‘Yes, it wasn’t exactly the bangra-thrash I’m used to,’ added Sal, ‘but — shadd-yah — they were proper good!’

‘Good?’ Liam huffed as they stepped out of the warm and humid fug of the nightclub into the cool September night. ‘I’ve heard angle-grinders along the Liverpool docks make a more tolerable noise than that.’ He tutted grumpily. ‘Now, are you sure those fellas back there actually knew how to play their instruments?’

‘It’s not about how well you play, Liam,’ said Maddy, ‘it’s the — I don’t know … it’s the energy, the attitude. You know?’

‘Attitude, is it?’ They stepped out of West 51st Street on to Broadway, leaving the milling crowd of emos and grunge rockers dispersing behind them.

‘Yes, attitude. It’s about getting an emotion across to the audience. Laying out how you feel.’

Becks cocked her head in thought. ‘That would indicate the musicians were feeling moderate to extreme levels of irritation about something.’

Liam laughed.

‘Anger,’ said Maddy.

‘And that’s all you need, is it? To be very angry and very noisy?’

‘Umm …’ Maddy made a face. ‘Well, not exactly …’

‘Yes,’ said Sal. ‘Angry and noisy is exactly what music sounds like in ’26.’

As they walked down Broadway towards Times Square, quieter than they’d ever seen it, Maddy checked her watch.

‘You’re sure your idea works?’ asked Liam.

She nodded. ‘We don’t need a portal back to our field office. It’s nearly midnight now. The time bubble will reset in a couple of minutes. By the time we’ve walked back down and across the bridge we’ll be an hour into Monday.’

‘But won’t we, like, meet a copy of ourselves?’

‘That doesn’t happen,’ replied Maddy. ‘We don’t copy. There’s us and we’re either here or there, but not in two places.’

‘I don’t get that,’ Sal replied.

Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking so much about the time thing … just that this is going to be a long walk, so it is.’

The girls laughed at that. Becks dutifully copied them.

‘I would have thought you’d be used to walking?’ said Maddy.

‘Why? Because I’m just some potato-eatin’ Paddy from a hundred years ago?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that exactly. It’s just I don’t suppose there were many cars or buses an’ stuff.’

‘Jay-zus, we’re not jungle savages, you know. We have … had … trams and trains and the like in Cork, so we did. I didn’t like walkin’ much then, just as I’m not so keen on doing it now.’

Broadway led them on to Times Square, which was much busier. The cinemas were spilling out those who’d been watching the late showings of Shrek and Monsters Inc., and yellow cabs queued in the central reserve to pick up the last of the well-dressed audience for Mamma Mia!.

Sal staggered for a moment.

‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.

‘Dizzy.’

‘It was a bit loud in there, I guess. My ears are still ring-’

Sal shook her head and looked up. ‘Not that. I just felt the ground shift.’ She looked at them. ‘You didn’t feel it?’

Liam and Maddy shook their heads. Maddy looked around at the busy thoroughfare. Nothing looked any different to her. ‘Sal? Was it a …?’

‘Yes. A small one, I think.’ Her eyes systematically scanned the buildings, the people, the cabs.

‘See anything?’

‘Not yet … not yet. Give me a second.’ It was difficult. She was used to scanning Tuesday morning at 8.30 a.m., the routine she’d established. She could describe that particular moment and place in time down to the tiniest detail now. But this was Times Square thirty-two hours earlier, with different people doing different things. Then her eyes landed on a poster outside the Golden Screen cinema.

‘Over there,’ she said, pointing and stepping quickly through a logjam of cars and pedestrians to get to the far side of the square. A minute later the others joined her as she ran her fingers across the scuffed perspex cover over the sidewalk poster. ‘This is new,’ she said. ‘This isn’t meant to be here. Not on Tuesday morning, it isn’t. I’m certain.’

Maddy looked it over. The poster displayed a picture of a young man on the run, being chased by helicopters and black Humvees through some European city. It could have been Paris, it could have been Prague, for all she knew. ‘The Manuscript,’ she read aloud. ‘Never heard of it.’

Liam read the strapline. ‘The greatest code in history has just been broken.’ He looked at the top of the poster. ‘So, who’s Leonardo DiCaprio?’

Maddy waved the question aside. ‘Sal, you sure about this?’

‘I felt something … and this shouldn’t be here.’ She nodded, tapping the poster. ‘Unless it gets taken down before Tuesday.’

‘But why would they?’ Maddy checked the date. The movie wasn’t out until 15 October, just over a month from now. ‘They run these posters right up until release week.’ She turned to the others. ‘Anyway, I’ve never heard of this movie. And I’m pretty sure Leonardo’s never been in a — a chase-y, spy movie like this. I’ll give this a look-up when we get back.’

Becks nodded firmly, an untidy tress of dark hair flopping across her face. ‘This isn’t right.’

He watched them go, picking up their pace as they strode purposefully across Times Square.

Don’t lose them. Whatever you do, don’t lose them.

He matched their pace, weaving between the stop-start yellow cabs and ignoring the insults hurled out of the drivers’ windows at him.

Don’t lose them … not now, not after all this time.

He only recognized two of them: the girl with the glasses and the frizzy hair, and the tall athletic girl with long dark hair. The other two seemed to be friends. Close friends by the look of their body language. And they’d stopped and been studying a poster for the movie, hadn’t they?

The movie, The Manuscript, was just another Hollywood cop-out: a cheesy chase movie with big explosions and stupid slow-motion gunfights and the obligatory baddy with an English accent.

They were heading down Broadway now, the three girls and the boy, passing by a noisy gaggle of middle-aged women — tourists by the look of them. He lost sight of them for a moment and began to panic.

Don’t lose them, whatever you do!

He caught sight of the tall girl with the dark hair again, striding like an athlete on platform heels that added another half a dozen unnecessary inches to her height. He gasped with relief as the other three emerged through the tangle of women. He decided to close the gap on them, unwilling to risk losing them because a pedestrian light went against him, or they’d turned a corner and took a side street before he could re-establish a visual.

Too long he’d been waiting to see them again. Way too long to lose them now.