The Doomsday Code

thrashing and convulsing marionette she’d expected to see by now.

Then, with a soft pop — not a bang but a pop — and a gentle puff of displaced air, it all stopped. The sparks, the humming of power, the fizz and crackle of raw electrical energy. All still and silent. In the complete darkness she could hear the ragged breathing of everyone around her.

‘Somebody better call an ambulance!’ she heard a man utter.

A torch snapped on, and the beam swung round on to the cage.

‘My God! Where is he?’

It was empty. Just as he’d assured them it would be. He’d vanished. Anna felt a surge of relief. She found herself laughing giddily. ‘I’ll be …’ She shook her head. ‘Well, that’s what he said, right?’

Not everyone else seemed quite so relieved and amused by the spectacle.

‘I didn’t come here tonight just to see a magic show! I’ve got articles to file, ya know? Real work, not this kind of insane crud — ’

A ribbon of sparks suddenly flickered along the wire of the cage.

‘Whoa! Stand back, everyone! It’s still live!’

Anna expected a repeat performance to begin, to cover his ‘arrival’ back in the cage. Smoke and mirrors, that’s what magicians call it — the art of distraction. But instead through the wire she could see a faint ghostly glow; at first a pinprick, but quickly it expanded in diameter to several feet across, shimmering and undulating like water. How she imagined ghostly ectoplasm might look — if that kind of supernatural nonsense was for real.

‘What is that?’ someone uttered. The torch flicked off, allowing them to see the ethereal glow more clearly. Anna shook her head in the dark, as if the question had been addressed to her personally.

‘No idea,’ she replied. In the faint swirling light, she thought she could detect a vaguely human shape. Perhaps shapes — plural. Something in there, someone. Some people. An outline gradually became more distinct, as if drawing closer. Anna had the definite impression that the faint glow was somewhere else. As if — had the wire mesh not been in the way — she could have stepped forward and reached inside … and touched another place. Almost as if it was a shimmering, wavering doorway to another -

She caught herself. What? Really? Seriously?

‘This is insane,’ she whispered to herself.

The distinct form was human. She could see that clearly now. It seemed to be shuffling forward towards her, beginning to block out the swirling light of this ‘other place’. Then all of a sudden the ghostly light was gone. It was dark. In the pitch-black she felt a puff of air on her face, flicking a tress of hair into her eye. She brushed it aside. There was something inside the cage. She could hear it breathing, fluttering irregular gasping coming through the mesh.

‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘Waldstein? Is … is that you in there?’

The breathing remained unchanged.

‘Who’s got that torch?’ said someone behind her. ‘Get it on the cage.’

She heard someone fussing with something, cursing as they fumbled for a switch too subtle for its own good.

‘Waldstein?’ whispered Anna. ‘You all right?’ The breathing faltered and stopped in answer to her question.

‘Get the torch on!’

‘I’m trying! I can’t find the … Where is it?’

The poor man in the cage started to say something quietly. Anna leaned forward, finally brave enough to press against the wire mesh. It was still warm from carrying the electrical charge but not hot. And, thankfully, not live. ‘You OK in there?’

‘I … I’ve s-seen … it …’

‘It’s all right. We’re going to get you out … and then we’ll get an ambulance.’

‘I … I’ve seen it,’ his voice rasped.

Then behind her the torch snapped back on and shadows danced in all directions.

‘He’s in shock,’ said Anna. ‘Get the light on him.’

The beam swung down over her shoulder, casting a grid-work of leaping shadows around the warehouse. Through the wire she could make out the man she’d seen moments ago: the man she’d thought needed medication and a nice comfortable padded cell in which to live out his delusion.

No burnt human carcass. That much was a relief. But his face … his face.

Those eyes beneath the frizzy lunatic hair and behind those madman spectacles were still round and wide, but not with the childlike wonder and excitement he’d been exhibiting before. Not any more.

It was terror. Sheer terror. The look of a mind utterly closed down to protect itself from insanity. At that moment she realized tonight had been no parlour trick. No stage magician looking for an audience, looking for publicity.

He’s been somewhere. He’s actually been somewhere. And for some reason she had a feeling he’d been gone far longer than a minute.

‘What?’ asked Anna Lopez softly. ‘What just happened?’

His gaze, faraway, perhaps still looking upon another place, seemed to gradually return, slowly catching up with the rest of his body to arrive back in Chicago. His eyes focused on her — a gradual realization that he wasn’t alone, that someone was just on the other side of the wire mesh.

‘I …’ His mouth opened, dry and cracked lips. ‘I … I’ve s-seen … the end.’

Behind her she could hear someone making a call. Phoning an ambulance. Maybe some of them were hearing him. She noticed the sicko with the camera was still filming. Maybe he was disappointed not to have a smoking corpse to show his editor. Maybe this man’s insane babbling was going to be an even better story to file.

‘Waldstein?’ uttered Anna. ‘What do you mean … the end?’

She realized he was crying. A tear rolled down his cheek and soaked into the bristles of his beard. The lost faraway look was finally gone. His eyes were on her. He suddenly looked around the cage. ‘My God! This is … this has all got to go!’

‘What? You mean your machine?’

He slammed a palm into the wire cage and it rang and rattled, echoing around the warehouse. ‘THIS! Time travel! It’s … it’s going to destroy us!’

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