any other living creature, had lifespans that came and went.
He heard voices again, echoing up the creek. The sound of children playing, larking about.
CHAPTER 76
65 million years BC, jungle
Becks followed the spatters of dark blood into the jungle. By moonlight the streaks of blood were black and glistened wetly. The trail didn’t lead too far into the jungle, fortunately. If it had, she suspected she’d have been unable to follow it; the moonlight was beginning to fail her, blocked by the drooping leaves from the canopy trees above.
She heard them before she saw them: the rattling breath of one snorting like a winded buffalo and a chorus of mewling voices that sounded like a pitiful choir of simpering children. Her eyes picked them out. The creature she’d managed to hit was curled up on the jungle floor. Around it an array of the smaller creatures, females and cubs, all pawed and stroked the wounded one, as if somehow that would magically heal their pack leader.
She stepped forward until she was looking directly down at the creature with the broken claw. The pack, perhaps twenty of them here, became quiet; a forest of yellow eyes that glowed with soft fluorescence and narrowed with fear looked up at her.
‘… Help… me…’ The facsimile of a human voice came from one of the females. Becks recognized it as an attempt to duplicate the cries of the human called Keisha.
A part of her computer mind calmly informed her that a mission parameter remained outstanding, and could not be successfully flagged as completed until, at the very least, the wounded creature was confirmed dead.
But another part of her mind, a very much smaller part, a part that contributed thoughts as foggy sensations rather than runtime commands, spoke to her.
Just like me.
She remembered being born, released from growth amid a cascading soup of warm liquid, lying like this creature, curled like a foetus on a hard floor; feeling bewildered, frightened, confused. An animal mind of sensations, feelings… but no words.
She squatted down to get a closer look at the creature. The wound was in the middle of the creature’s narrow chest, and from the pulsing of ink-black blood down its olive skin, was almost certainly going to prove to be fatal.
‘You will die,’ she announced coldly. And then realized talking to them was illogical and pointless — these wild things were no more intelligent than monkeys. But, on the other hand, it felt like another way of processing, filtering her own thoughts… giving words to that part of her mind that wasn’t high-density silicon wafer.
‘I am here to kill you,’ she said. ‘This is a mission requirement.’
The yellow eyes studied her silently. Perhaps those eyes were trying to communicate something, pleading for mercy.
She stood up again and changed the clip in the assault rifle for a fresh one. The mission voice had no time for such an irrational sentiment and gently cajoled her to proceed with the task.
Complete Mission
Terminate alpha male of species
Terminate remaining hominids (optional)
Retrieve all evidence of human habitation
‘I am… sorry,’ she said. She cocked her head, curious. There’d been a strange effect on her voice. It had fluttered ever so slightly. It had actually made her sound more convincingly human; she’d sounded almost indistinguishable from the school students she and Liam had spent the last fourteen days in the jungle with. Those three words really had sounded so very human. For a moment she was almost tempted to say them once again. Instead, she raised the rifle swiftly to her shoulder, her bandaged finger slipped on to the trigger and beneath the dressing the recently vat-grown muscle tissue tightened and pulled. A shot rang out. Her finger muscles released and pulled again
… and again… and again.
By the time the last of the creatures flopped lifelessly across the body of Broken Claw, the clip was empty and the barrel warm.
The jungle was still, every nocturnal species stunned into silence by the rapid crack of gunfire. For a few moments she listened to the shifting breeze, the muted rumble of the nearby river.
‘I am… sorry,’ she said again, and realized this time her voice sounded flat and emotionless, as it always did.
She turned on her heels and headed back towards the remains of their abandoned camp.
2001, New York
‘Where did you send him?’ barked Cartwright, swinging the aim of his gun on to Maddy.
‘I… I j-just sent him back… to help Becks kill the — ’
‘You’re lying!’ he snapped.
‘Honestly I — ’
He fired a shot past her head. Behind her one of the computer monitors exploded amid a shower of sparks and granules of glass.
‘Really,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t advise lying, young lady. I can put a bullet through your stomach right now… and believe me when I say that’s one of the most painful ways to go. Slow and very, very painful.’ He took a dozen steps towards her. ‘Now, I’ll try again… where did you send him?’
Maddy swallowed nervously, her eyes on the gun. ‘I… just… I…’
‘Maddy!’ yelped Sal. ‘Something’s coming!’
Cartwright stopped where he was. ‘What’s that?’ he shouted back over his shoulder, keeping his eyes firmly on the older girl.
‘Did you feel it? A tremor?’
‘No,’ he replied, his eyes and aim still on Maddy. ‘I didn’t feel anything.’
‘I felt something,’ said Edward.
‘Oh my God… the jungle’s changed,’ said Laura. ‘Something different. I don’t know what. Something — ’
Sal nodded. ‘The settlement’s gone. It’s an early ripple… the big change will follow.’
Cartwright cursed. He desperately wanted to see this. ‘You!’ he snapped at Maddy, waving his gun, ‘over there by the entrance. NOW!’
Maddy nodded meekly and hurried across the archway to join the others standing in the entrance and looking out at the jungle. Cartwright joined them, keeping a cautious few yards’ distance and holding his gun on them as he watched the evening jungle. ‘What happens next?’
‘The big wave,’ said Sal. ‘You’ll feel dizzy just as it…’ She looked at him, her eyes round. ‘Do you feel it now?’
His eyes widened. ‘My God, yes! Like an earth tremor!’
On the horizon the orange stain of dusk was blotted out by what appeared to be a rolling bank of raincloud, a storm front rushing in from the Atlantic at an impossible speed.
‘What is that?’ he gasped.
‘The wave?’ whispered Edward.
Maddy nodded. ‘Another reality.’
It crossed over the island beyond the broad river and amid a churning soup of thick, shimmering air, realities mixed and became fleeting impossibilities. Amid the churning reality soup they saw the winking flickering outline of tall buildings warping and twisting and Maddy thought she saw for a fleeting moment a swarm of creatures in the sky like gargoyles, dragons — a possible reality, a possible species that in this correcting reality had no place, existing for a mere heartbeat, then erased.
Then the wave was over the river and upon them.
The archway flexed and warped around them, the ground beneath their feet momentarily dropping away, becoming void.
