‘How did they know which vehicle was ours?’ Maddy asked. The parking area out front already had a few hundred cars in it. Even more now surely.
‘Your lab unit,’ said Bob. He turned to Rashim. ‘Your lab unit must have left its wireless communication on.’
Rashim nodded. ‘They must have homed in on Bubba’s signal.’
‘All the way from New York?’ said Liam. ‘I thought –’
‘It’s only a short-range signal. Half a mile and you’d lose it,’ said Rashim.
‘Then they must have already been tailing us,’ said Maddy. She looked at Foster. ‘Do you think?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’
Becks had been watching the quick-fire conversation, her gaze snapping from one person to the next. But now her eyes suddenly widened as they settled on something at the far end of the concourse. ‘They are here,’ she said softly.
She pointed.
All of them turned to look. Two silhouetted figures emerging through large rotating glass doorways, striding purposefully in their direction, the pallid glow of morning light outside behind.
‘Jay-zus! There’s two of them!’
‘We can’t fight,’ said Maddy. ‘We’ve got to run!’
Bob stiffened, bristled like a guard dog. ‘I can fight them. I can provide you with time to escape.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Bob,’ said Liam. ‘They’ll rip you to pieces, so they will.’
‘Shadd-yah! Who are they?’
‘We’re wasting time,’ said Maddy. She turned to look in the opposite direction. The concourse carried on another fifty yards where it terminated as a circular eating area, tables and plastic bucket chairs surrounded by a dozen fast-food outlets. A lift and a couple of escalators could take them up to a balcony overlooking the central area, and the upper floor of shops. But as far as she could make out, the only way out of the mall was back towards the approaching support units … and out of those big revolving glass doors at the front.
‘How about in there?’ said Sal. She pointed towards a large store with two floors, upper and ground. A pre-school toy store called TOYS-4-TOTS! All bright, happy-clappy colours inside. Out in front of the store a tall, surly-faced young man was putting on the head of a costume, the store’s mascot, a livid pink dinosaur that Maddy suspected was a blatant rip-off of Barney.
‘Yes! Go! Go!’ She grasped Foster’s hand and led the way. The others followed.
She pushed her way past a toddler on reins. The child turned to watch them pass by, blue eyes suddenly round and wide at the sight of Bob. Presumably thinking he was another store mascot, the toddler chuckled gleefully and reached out to grab and hug one of his tree-thick legs.
‘Back off!’ boomed Bob. The toddler toppled backwards in shock, landing and bouncing on its nappy-cushioned behind. It gazed up at them in confused silence, watching this odd assortment of grown-ups leave the play area before finally deciding to bawl.
Maddy led them into the store TOYS-4-TOTS! She shook her head. How’d they get away with a name like that? Still early enough in the morning it was mainly staff milling around inside: puffy-faced teens in gaudy pink store shirts bearing plastic name tags.
It was the right place to hide, cluttered with racks of chunky, plastic nonsense, large furry soft toys, rotating display stands of storybook CD-ROMs and nursery-rhyme favourites.
‘Everyone split up! We’ll lose ’em in here.’ She had hold of Foster’s hand still. She wasn’t going to let it go. She wasn’t losing him again. ‘Split up … and we’ll rendezvous …’
Where?
‘The diner?’ said Sal.
‘Yes …’ Not the RV. Definitely not the RV. There might be another of them waiting for them there. The diner was next to the motel. Good enough. ‘Make your way to the diner!’ She looked back out past the knock-off-Barney mascot standing out on the concourse. She could just make out the distinctive outlines of the support units. Closer now. The pair of them could so easily be Bob and Becks.
‘Go!’ she hissed. ‘We stand out like a sore thumb. Split!’
Their group fragmented in different directions: Rashim and Sal; Bob, Liam and Becks.
She pulled Foster with her, quickly weaving past an extravagant diorama made from BaBe-Blox building bricks into a maze of aisles laden with romper suits and cute, frilly Babygros. He was already breathing hard. This was getting difficult for the old man. ‘Maddy … I …’
‘Shut up, Foster! I’m not leaving you behind.’
She crouched low, pulling aside clothes hangers on a rail to peer out. Across the store she could see the top of Rashim’s head for a moment, then it was gone behind a row of super-large Sesame Street cuddlies. She looked back at the store’s entrance, hoping to see the support units striding past and missing them.
Nothing for the moment. Perhaps they’d already gone past.
‘Maddy …?’
‘Foster, shhhh … I’m trying to see –’
‘Excuse me? Miss?’
Maddy turned to see a member of staff looking down at her. A girl in a pink shirt, with a nose stud and up-way-too-late-last-night red-rimmed eyes, stared wearily down at her. A face that clearly indicated this was too early in her cruddy day to put up with customer-stoopid like this.
‘Ma’am, you’re not really allowed to hide among the clothes like that.’
Maddy straightened up. ‘I … err … I was just looking for … umm … bargains.’
‘I think it might be best if you step out of the store, ma’am.’
Maddy remained where she was, her eyes on the store’s entrance. ‘Just give us a sec here … we just need … to uh …’
‘You need to leave, miss. You’re clearly not shopping. You’re being a nuisance –’
‘Christ!’ Maddy turned on her. ‘Just give me a freakin’ moment, will you? It won’t kill you!’
The girl didn’t like that. ‘I’m asking you politely to leave, please. If you don’t, I’ll call the manager. I’ll call mall security.’
Just then Maddy saw them. The support units standing in the entrance, two pairs of grey eyes sweeping the toy store like prison searchlights.
Knock-off Barney, the implausibly pink dinosaur, sauntered cheerily towards them, probably wearily parroting the store’s moronic catchphrase: Friends That Play Together Stay Together!!
The female support unit – Becks, Maddy found herself thinking – lashed out with a fist and caught Barney in the throat. He disappeared from view.
‘Whuh?’ said the girl in the pink shirt to herself. ‘Did she just punch Joshua … ?’
The male support unit’s eyes panned round and caught sight of Maddy just as she was about to duck back down out of sight. He raised his arm, something in his hand glinted. Someone screamed.
And then the gunfire started.
Chapter 21
7.29 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, outside Branford
Maddy felt a warm puff of displaced air on her cheek as the shot whistled past her head. She heard the shot impact on something. A soft thud followed by a gasp.
She turned to see the girl on her knees beside her, dark crimson blossoming across her store shirt. She looked down at the blood then at Maddy, perplexed.
‘I … I … just got shot …’
Another couple of gunshots, deafening in the shop’s stillness. The baby clothes hanging from the rail above Maddy lurched and danced. A blizzard of foam stuffing erupted from a Humpty Dumpty on a shelf nearby.
Maddy remained hunched down, Foster beside her. ‘My God, we’re gonna die!’ she whimpered to him. There were raised voices outside the toystore in the mall’s main concourse. A male voice. Two of them, issuing a sharp challenge. A warning.
More shots, aiming out of the store this time.
‘Maddy … you go!’ It was Foster.
‘They’re distracted!’ she whispered. ‘Come on, let’s –’
‘No!’ He shook his head. ‘I can s
low them down. You go!’
‘Slow them down?’ She made a face. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Not fight them … I’ll talk to them.’
More shots. One of them hit a wall nearby, showering them with flakes of plaster.
‘You can’t talk to –’
‘They’re just like Bob! They have the exact same AI.’
‘Yeah, but … but they’re running an entirely different freakin’ mission! You step out, they’ll shoot you just as soon as look at –’
Foster grasped her arm. ‘Maddy … I’m dead anyway.’
He didn’t need to explain that. They both knew he was dying. She knew he was dying the day he walked out of that Starbucks and left her in charge of the team. But somehow the reality of that had seemed removed. With time looping for her in New York, he was never going to die. Every time she’d gone to visit him in Central Park, he was the same old Foster. No sicker. But then, of course, he wouldn’t be. It was always the same moment for him. The same morning over and over and over.
Since she’d grabbed him from Central Park, time, for him, had advanced. Two days, that was all it had been, but enough time that she could clearly see he was getting worse. A dying man. He should be in a hospital bed, a hospice, kept comfortable on a drip perhaps, not running for his life through a shopping mall.
‘They know me,’ he said. ‘It’s enough … it’ll confuse them. They may let me talk.’
‘Know you?’
‘There’s no time to explain!’ He pushed her. ‘Go! Just go!’
Maddy glanced at the girl beside them. She was in shock, pale. Alive, but maybe for not much longer unless she got some help.
The gunfire was beginning to wane. Whomever the support units had been exchanging shots with outside on the concourse, police, mall security, it was nearly a done deal now.
‘Foster, I …’
He shushed her with a finger over her lips. ‘This is goodbye, Maddy. Don’t ruin it by blurting something stupid.’
She pulled his hand away. ‘Foster …’ She wanted to call him by his real name. ‘Liam …’
Foster smiled. ‘It’s a long while since I’ve been called that.’
‘Please …’ She had no idea what she wanted to say. Something meaningful. ‘Please’ wasn’t it. ‘Please’ was just so pathetically lame.
‘For the love of God, Maddy … will you just bleedin’ well go!’
‘Liam …’ she said again. ‘I, I …’
He waved her silent. ‘I loved you, Maddy. Each time. I always did. Even when I knew …’ He stopped himself. So much he wanted to say, and so little that he could in this all too short heartbeat of time. ‘Just go!’
She heard footsteps inside the store. Heavy, purposeful footsteps drawing closer.
Then, cursing herself for being a coward, for leaving him behind, she scooted on hands and feet, through aisles of chunky plastic playsets, beneath rows of fur-hooded children’s anoraks and racks of cheerily coloured wellies, perfect for little feet to stamp in autumn rain puddles. She scuttled on all fours until she finally stumbled upon the moving metal grated steps of an escalator.
Foster waited until she was out of sight, stood up, his hands raised above him. Both support units levelled their weapons at him. The male support unit was bleeding from three gunshot wounds, one to the forehead. A dark trickle of blood rolled sluggishly down between thick brows, down the side of his nose from a circle of puckered flesh above his eyes. A perfect take-down shot from some policeman or mall guard. Whoever had taken that head shot must have died wondering how a man could be shot between the eyes and shrug it off like a mere gnat bite.
‘You know me,’ said Foster.
The female support unit frowned, a hesitant, confused expression on her face. The old man standing before her looked very similar to one of the faces in her database. It wasn’t an exact match, but a very close one. Close enough that she wanted to take a couple of steps closer, see him more clearly and confirm his identity one way or the other.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Abel.
Foster shrugged. ‘Long gone.’
‘You are a part of their team?’ Halfway between a statement and a question.
‘You know me, don’t you?’ said Foster again, trying a lopsided smile. ‘It’s me. I’m your Authorized User. Now then … why don’t you lower your weapons?’
Abel narrowed his eyes. He had to admit the man standing in front of him with his hands raised did look very much like the man who had issued them their instructions: Authorized User.
He cast an uncertain glance at Faith. A glance that asked the question: Is he?
She was still working on that particular one herself.
The escalator carried Maddy slowly towards the shop’s upper floor; Baby-Toddler Wear. It was so still, so very quiet. All she could hear was the gentle hum of the escalator’s motor and the soft chime of mall music outside. Still down on her hands and knees, she decided to chance one last look. She lifted her head to see over the smoked glass side of the escalator, over the black rubber rim of the hand rail and she caught sight of Foster, standing just yards in front of the two units. His arms raised in surrender … but slowly lowering them as if the gesture of surrender was no longer necessary.
He was saying something, she could just about hear his voice, low, unclear. But it was definitely him doing the talking.
My God, he’s actually doing it! He’s actually talking them round!
For a moment there, just for a moment, she let herself believe something might go their way for once.
Then one of the units fired.
Her last image of Foster was him dropping to his knees in front of the killer meatbots. She thought she heard him swear at them, something Irish, something defiant … something so very Liam. Then, as the escalator carried her past a sales display and she finally lost sight of him, she heard four or five shots one after the other. Then one last executioner’s shot.
Chapter 22
7.32 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, outside Branford
Liam led the way out of the toystore’s upper-floor exit, on to the top concourse. The few mid-morning shoppers were frozen where they were; no one was going anywhere, merely exchanging expressions of panic.
‘Was that a gun I just heard?’ a woman asked Liam as he and the two support units rushed past.
‘Aye,’ said Liam, dragging a dawdling Becks by the hand.
‘We must stop and fight them,’ she said.
‘There’s two of ’em. And they got guns.’ He looked at her. ‘Are you that desperate to get yourself into a scrap?’
She cocked her head. ‘Scrap?’ Not used to Liam’s speech patterns just yet.
‘Inadvisable,’ said Bob. ‘The best course of action right now is evasion.’
Liam nodded. ‘Listen to your big brother.’
They were just passing a Barnes & Noble when half a dozen more shots erupted from the floor below and rang out across the mall.
‘Jay-zus!’
‘Oh my God!’ someone across the way screamed. ‘It’s terrorists!’
The ‘T’ word spread like a ripple across a still pond. People’s mouths dropping open into ‘O’s. The mall music suddenly stopped and a voice announced over the tannoy that an emergency situation was in progress and that all customers and staff were to proceed immediately to the nearest fire exits.
Inevitably someone screamed the ‘B’ word and the frozen tableau of confusion turned into a flood of shop staff emerging from the entrances of their respective stores, spilling on to the upper concourse. Suddenly it seemed like a very busy mall.
Liam and the other two joined the press of bodies heading towards the escalators at the end that would take them down to the front entrance and out into the car park.
Sal and Rashim had found a different way out of the toystore on the lower floor, a door marked STAFF ONLY that led to a stockroom piled high with cardboard boxes and bubble wrap. From there the
y found a door at the back that gave access to a service corridor of dull grey breeze-block walls.
‘Which way now?’ asked Rashim.
‘I don’t know.’ Her guess was left. Left would take them towards the entrance they came in, she figured. She led the way. Muted by two closed doors, they heard the faintest crackle of gunfire behind them.
‘This is insane,’ gasped Rashim. ‘Who in God’s name wants you lot dead so badly?’
‘Jahulla!’ she whispered. ‘Wish I knew.’ It felt to her like they’d been running non-stop for weeks. In added-up time for her, it was almost that. Just after sending Liam and Bob back to Rome, that’s when they’d been jumped in Times Square. Ambushed and pursued all the way back to the archway, and there, attacked yet again – one of the units even managing to dive through the portal right behind them and join them back in Ancient Rome.
Pandora. It was asking about Pandora that had set this off. Sal was almost certain of that. That and perhaps, somehow, it was linked to that poor, poor man who’d jumped back to 1831 to warn her about something.
But what was that warning? ‘The bear’. ‘You’re not who you think you are.’ What the pinchudda was that supposed to mean?
I think I’m Sal. I’m Saleena Vikram. I’m a schoolgirl from Ajmeera Independent Academy in Mumbai. I used to play Pikodu pretty well. And listen to bhangra-metal. I’m the daughter of Sanjay and Abeer Vikram. And I used to live in a small apartment in Mumbai. Papaji used to buy and sell computer chips. Mamaji used to be an accountant. What part of all of that isn’t right?
They turned a corner.
‘Yo! Hey!’
Ahead of them, a black mall security guard. ‘Stop right there!’ He had a handgun pointed at them. ‘Hands where I can see them!’
‘We’re trying to get –’
‘SHUT UP!’ A hand fumbled for the radio on his belt; he kept his eyes on them. ‘This is Kent. I got two of ’em right here. Service Access 5b.’
The radio squawked static and an unintelligible voice.
The mall guard replied. ‘Asian. One male, approximately mid-twenties. One female, mid-teens.’