The Doomsday Code

‘And, look, it’s not exactly like I’m heading somewhere super-dangerous. It’s England, 1994.’ She turned to Becks, standing patiently at the end of the table. ‘Where is it exactly?’

‘Information: Adam Lewis is a registered second-year student at the University of East Anglia in the city of Norwich.’

‘A university campus … there. Hardly dangerous.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe even fun.’

‘I could come,’ said Sal hopefully.

‘Sorry, not this time, Sal. It’s probably best you’re here too, watching for signs. We’ve had one small ripple … there could be more on the way.’

Sal huffed. ‘Why do you always get to decide everything now?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s …’ Maddy sighed. ‘Foster made me leader, Sal. So I’m supposed to lead. That’s the way it is. I wish it wasn’t. I wish somebody else was calling the shots. I wish Foster was still here, to be honest. But it is what it is.’

‘Just seems unfair.’

‘All of this is unfair! I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t choose to die in a plane crash at eighteen. I had plans, you know? I had plans to do more with my life than watch a bunch of computer screens and live in this cruddy dump.’ She could have said more. Things she’d regret later. It was bad enough having to be in charge when she barely felt she had a grasp on how things worked. But, add to that, somebody somewhere seemed to be trying to warn her about something and she was way too stupid to get it.

The moment tasted sour and all of a sudden she felt tired. She looked at her watch: it was gone two in the morning. ‘Look, I’m hitting the mattress. Maybe we all should. It’s late and we’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.’

She got up and headed into the arched recess where their bunks were and pulled a curtain across as she changed into her PJs.

Liam looked at Sal and shrugged, both of them perplexed at her mood. ‘Maybe she’s missing home?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Sal.

CHAPTER 8

2001, New York

Maddy and Becks were treading water in the perspex tube one moment and gone — along with sixty gallons of diluted disinfectant solution — the next. The large plastic tub flexed inwards with a loud thud that echoed through the archway.

‘Jay-zus! Does that tube always do that?’

Sal nodded. ‘The pressure of all the water suddenly not there … it makes the perspex flex.’

‘Oh, right.’ He looked round at Sal sitting patiently beside him, hands crossed in her lap. ‘So what normally happens now?’

Her smile was resigned. ‘We haven’t had “normal” yet. Either we’ve been hiding from cannibal mutants or we’ve had secret-service agents knocking at the door.’ She laughed skittishly. ‘It seems like we’ve been hopping from one crisis to the next since we first arrived here, doesn’t it?’

Liam nodded. ‘Well then, while it appears the sky hasn’t yet fallen on our heads again, and while we’re waiting for this machinery to recharge, perhaps Miss Vikram would like to go for a breakfast in one of those charming Scottish restaurants.’

‘Scottish restaurants?’

‘One of them McDougal places?’

‘McDonalds?’

‘Aye, that’s the fella. The ones with the big fancy yellow M.’

She pulled a face. ‘Breakfast sounds good … but maybe somewhere else?’

CHAPTER 9

May 1994, UEA campus, Norwich

Opening the portal in the university’s swimming pool after closing time had seemed a good idea to Maddy back in the archway. They’d arrive wet, but there’d be changing facilities, and hopefully a blow-dryer or towel or something. But now, floundering beneath the water in total darkness, not knowing which way was up and which way was down, she realized it ranked pretty high on her own Not To Be Tried Again list.

Suddenly Maddy felt Becks’s hand grasping her, followed by a hearty yank and her face breaking the surface. She coughed, retched and spluttered as Becks swam to the side of the pool, pulling her after.

‘Recommendation: this was not a good idea.’

‘No, really?’ she gasped.

Becks nodded firmly, not yet a master of irony. ‘Yes, you could have drowned.’

Maddy eased herself out of the cold water and flopped exhausted on to the side. She looked around. The university’s sports centre was closed now, the swimming pool dark, lit only by the dim amber glow of street lights outside, strips of orange light leaking through the drawn and turned-down blinds along the racing-lane side of the pool.

‘All right, well … so we’re here now. We’ve got four hours. So let’s get dry and changed. And then we’ll go find this Adam Lewis.’

Adam’s nerves were getting the better of him. He needed to get a grip.

‘Get a grip,’ he uttered to the face in his mirror. A lean face of freckles and acne, framed by the pitifully feeble sprouting of an auburn beard. Auburn — not ginger. Auburn. That’s what he kept telling everyone. And the tatty twists and turns of greasy hair tied back in a ponytail, they were flippin’ well auburn too.

His eyes looked back at him through round-framed ‘Lennon’ specs.

‘You look terrible,’ he told himself.

Well, why not? he argued back. I’ve got every right to look terrible.

Why not indeed. He was scared. Really scared. He’d not stepped out of his room now for what? … Four, five days? Missed half a dozen study periods and lectures and his flatmates were beginning to mutter about him in the hallway outside his door. They’d already thought he was a bit of an oddball before … well, before … this.

Outside it was dark. Eleven. He could hear the thud of music coming from the floor below. He recognized it: Chili Peppers. His flatmates were playing Mario on the SNES; there was a lot of noise, the clack-fissss of cans of beer being popped open, and laughing, lots of laughing … most probably about him.

Not so big a deal to him now. A week ago stuff like that got him down a bit, being a loner, being perceived as the resident freak. But he brushed off the quips and sniggering at his expense the way every hardened geek does it, by acting as if far greater matters were on his mind, matters these beer-swilling oiks wouldn’t even begin to understand.

One day I’ll be flying business class … and, you idiots, you’ll be serving fries somewhere.

That’s the sort of thing he usually said aloud. The lads laughed and shook their heads at his lame and faltering comeback. But he quietly smiled because he knew it was undoubtedly going to be true. And that, he figured, was how he and every other geek coped with being the frozen-out loner — the certainty that there’d come a day of mega payback for all the jibes and the sniggering.

But right now he really did have far, far greater matters on his mind.

Why me? How do they know my name? Oh God … who are ‘they’?

All of a sudden the throbbing music and the drunken guffawing stopped. He realized the front doorbell to their