TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 (36 page)

‘LET GO!’ screamed Dora even as the crimson sparks engulfed them and Jana felt the lightness in her stomach as she was pulled away from 1645. The undercroft began to fade away, and Jana felt her head go light and empty. She knew she was passing out again, but at least they were on their way. With luck, she’d wake up in a nice clean hospital bed.

Just as she lost consciousness, she heard a final despairing scream from Dora, and felt her hand slip from her grasp.

Jana’s last conscious thought was of home …

Thomas did not know what was happening, but he did not much care.

He had seen his daughter disappear. Kaz had appeared before him earlier that day in much the same way, telling tales of pirate ships, enemies from years to come, and the peril in which Dora found herself. He had persuaded his friends and neighbours to come with him to the hall, to help save his wife and child. To a man they had agreed without question and it had made him proud. But now at least half the menfolk of his village were dead or wounded, and the rest knelt before him, threatened by the blue-faced militia and their strange fire-shooting guns. He, James and Sarah, prone on the floor, had been ignored by the militia. Clearly they were not considered a threat. The clock that floated in the room was counting down, and although he did not know his numbers that well, he knew enough to suppose that nothing good would happen when the counter reached zero.

But none of it mattered because his son was dying in his arms. Thomas had no idea how or why James had changed so. He had heard stories of young men consumed by religious fervour, driven half mad by Puritan zeal, turning upon their families and loved ones. He had shaken his head in wonder at such tales, unable to conceive of such a change. He could not comprehend it in the abstract, so what chance he could comprehend it in his own flesh and blood?

The clock ticked down to forty-one, and then …

Jana began the slow process of regaining consciousness almost immediately, although she could not have said how long she had been out. The first thing she became aware of was that Kaz was still holding her hand. The second thing was that Dora wasn’t.

She opened her eyes and winced at the bright sunlight.

‘Jana, wake up, please,’ said Kaz, close by her ear. ‘I think we have a big problem.’

The world swam into focus. Jana was looking across at Kaz, and she was ridiculously pleased to see him.

‘Dora?’ she asked weakly.

‘She let go. She didn’t come with us,’ said Kaz. ‘But that is not the real issue.’

‘What is?’ said Jana, laying her head on Kaz’s shoulder and wishing herself asleep. ‘We in the Stone Age or something?’

‘No,’ said Kaz, nervously. ‘We are on a roof. And there are three men here who want to talk to you.’

Jana felt a deep knot of fear materialise in her stomach, as if it had jumped through time on its own and just caught up with her. She lifted her head and squinted to see three people she had hoped she’d never see again – ugly, sneery and short.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ she said.

‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ said the tall one, the ringleader with the mirthless smile and the chain. ‘One second you’re jumping off the roof, the next you appear in a cloud of fire with your boyfriend. What kind of freakshow is this?’

Jana began to laugh. There didn’t seem to be any other response. It turned immediately into another bloody cough, and she sprawled forward onto reconstituted rubber, choking. She’d travelled all this way just to end up back where she started, about to be beheaded on a New York roof.

She closed her eyes and waited for death.

After all, she’d died once before and it hadn’t been so bad.

The three men stood over Kaz, grinning the idiot grins of thugs about to dish out a beating. He was stranded on a rooftop in a time and place that were not his own, with his back literally to the wall. He and Jana had nowhere to run; without Dora they could not jump through time to escape.

Jana was sprawled on the floor before him, blood pooling around her, and although she was breathing he could not be sure that she was still conscious.

‘We take the head as proof,’ said the leader to the goon on his left. ‘Cut low on the neck so you don’t damage the chip. I’ll take it back while you get rid of the body like I told you.’

‘Don’t you mean bodies, chief?’ asked the goon on the right, pointing at Kaz.

The leader met and held Kaz’s gaze and then nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Bodies.’

‘Please, why are you …’ Kaz started to say.

The leader kicked him in the face, a shattering impact that filled his mouth with jagged shards of broken tooth, smacked his head against the wall and left him stunned. His senses reeled.

Through his confusion he was aware of the leader of the three thugs kneeling beside Jana and raising his knife even as the other two brandished their weapons and moved towards him, ready to beat him to death, and then …

… Simon snapped awake. There was deafening gunfire, smoke and a bright red flash of light through the haze which silhouetted three figures that were there one moment and gone the next.

Between him and the silhouettes was something far more shocking. His boss, Henry Sweetclover, was flying backwards through the air, blood spraying from a series of bullet wounds across his torso.

As Simon reached for his gun there was another bright red flash, this time directly behind Sweetclover. A woman in black popped into existence and caught him neatly as he fell. The momentum was such that they both toppled backwards and the new arrival was stuck underneath Sweetclover’s bullet-riddled body.

There was a sharp clang of metal, as if someone were rolling a metal ball into the room, and Simon shouted in alarm as he realised it was a grenade. His cry attracted the attention of the new arrival, who reached out from underneath Sweetclover and said, ‘Take my hand,’ in a familiar voice.

He hesitated, momentarily distracted by Sweetclover’s face, which had changed …

‘NOW!’ shouted the black-clad woman.

Simon reached out and grabbed her hand …

… and found himself somewhere else entirely.

… a sudden flash of crimson made Thomas wince. When his vision cleared he saw a young woman in black clothes standing before him, her face obscured by a woollen head garment the likes of which he had never before seen.

Without saying a word, and before the militia could react, the woman leant forward and placed her hands on Thomas and Sarah’s heads. Thomas was opening his mouth to ask a question when the room around him went black and then reshaped itself into somewhere clean, white and dazzling.

Strong hands lifted James from his lap and a voice said, ‘We’ll take care of him.’

… the one on the left, with the scar on his cheek and the shock of bright red hair, stopped and looked down at his chest. The short one with the chain turned to stare at him, his mouth falling open in surprise.

Kaz saw the redhead tip sideways to reveal a young woman dressed in black, her legs apart, arms high, holding a sword with a glistening red blade. Her next movements were a blur to Kaz, possibly because of his concussion. Or maybe, he thought dreamily, she really was that fast. She pivoted and gestured with the sword and the short one was tumbling too, falling backwards off the building, arms outstretched as if reaching for salvation or comfort.

Another blur of movement and the leader, who was still kneeling over Jana but had not had time to so much as turn his head to see what was happening to his lieutenants, suddenly had no head to turn. His torso was frozen for a moment, kneeling, knife raised but with a fountain of blood where the head had been only a second before. Then the body collapsed in a heap. Kaz did not see where the head ended up.

The young woman crouched before him and removed her black balaclava.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Cut that a bit fine, didn’t I.’

Kaz nodded, and spat out some teeth. He looked into the face of his rescuer, some years older than when he’d last seen her, her features harder, the softness of youth burnt away by time and experience.

‘Yes, Dora,’ he said. ‘You did.’

The first thing Jana was aware of was the absence of pain. It wasn’t the painlessness that steals through you in the moments before death, this was different. The absence was a thing in itself, a tangible fact that told her she was anaesthetised.

She floated there for a while, half conscious; awake enough to realise that she had been rescued, but drugged enough that she wasn’t in any particular hurry to find out how or by whom. She just enjoyed the warm, soft feeling of painlessness until someone spoke to her.

‘Your breathing has changed. I can tell you’re awake,’ said a voice. There was something familiar about it but she couldn’t place the speaker.

‘I am not awake,’ said Jana, despite the numb heaviness of her tongue.

‘The only alternative is that I am a dream,’ said the voice.

‘Do you feel like a dream?’ asked Jana.

‘You are Godless,’ replied the voice. ‘You don’t dream. So I must be real. I feel solid, but I am floating.’

‘Me too.’

‘They have good drugs here. You were stabbed. I was shot.’

‘Sucks to be us.’

‘Sucks to be me.’

‘And me.’

‘That’s what I said.’

Jana considered this for a moment, then opened her eyes. The light was low so she could not make out much detail about the room surrounding the bed in which she lay. She turned her head towards the voice and saw another bed beside hers. Sitting propped up on pillows was a woman, her face etched in shadow.

‘Do I know you?’ asked Jana.

‘Kind of,’ replied the woman.

Jana slowly raised herself up on her elbows, expecting a sudden shock of pain at any moment, pleasantly surprised when none arrived. She really had been given the good drugs. She peered into the half-light, trying to make out the features of her new acquaintance.

The woman leaned forward, her cheekbones catching the light. Jana gasped in wonder.

‘Are you …’

‘You? Kind of,’ said the woman, who looked pretty much exactly how Jana thought she would look like in thirty years’ time.

‘What do you mean, kind of?’ said Jana. ‘Actually, forget it. You were right first time. You’re a dream. Hallucination. All you are is very good drugs.’ She closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow.

‘Keep telling yourself that, kid,’ replied the dream-who-was-not-a-dream.

Jana fell back into floating, anaesthetised sleep, but just before she passed the threshold of consciousness she heard the dream say, ‘Sleep now. But when you wake up, you and I have so much to talk about. So very, very much.’

And so Jana slept.

Dreamless.

The journey from a strange vision of an inverted cone made of shattered crystal that popped into my head just as I was on the threshold of sleep six years ago, to the book you’re holding, has been a long one.

My Editor, Anne Perry, who sought me out, asked if there was anything I had in the drawer that she could look at, and then nurtured this book from a brief pitch to maturity, is wise, funny and almost certainly far cleverer than me.

My Agent, Oli Munson, who made the deal that allowed me to phone my father and tell him that yes, in actual fact, the patently absurd career plan I had outlined to him ten years previously had actually bloody worked, is the best ally a writer could have.

My friends Simon Guerrier and Jonathan Morris, who dissected large portions of this book and told me exactly what I was doing wrong, are both ridiculously talented and extremely generous with those talents.

My wife, who had my back as I worked myself to the point of madness and never wavered in her support for and faith in me, is awesome (and clearly deluded).

My kids are the most delightful people I have ever met and were super-patient as I locked myself away from them to write.

All my parents are supportive above and beyond the call of duty; the sound of my dad uncontrollably laughing with joy (and relief!) when I told him I’d signed with Hodder & Stoughton is one of the best sounds I have ever heard.

I also have to thank Jonathan Oliver at Abaddon Books, who took a huge gamble on me and launched my career – this book wouldn’t have been written if he hadn’t taken that initial leap of faith and commissioned
School’s Out
off the slush pile.

Thank you all. Now brace yourselves – I’m going to do it all over again!