Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [145]
Maddy spread her hands. ‘I … I don’t know. I –’
‘The beginning of life on earth? The first division of cells?’ Cartwright seemed lost in his reverie, of the things he could see, the places he could go. All his now for the taking.
Sal suddenly felt the hairs on her forearms stand on end, and knew it was here – the time wave. A moment later the ceiling light dimmed and flickered and they all felt it, a moment of imbalance, the floor dropping away beneath their feet. The monitors over Maddy’s shoulder all flickered and went dead. Laura cried in alarm and Edward gasped as the ceiling light flickered off, leaving them, for a moment, in complete darkness.
Then the monitors flickered back on and the ceiling light fizzed, blinked and bathed the archway in its cold blue glare once more.
Cartwright giggled joyously. ‘Good God! That was it? Wasn’t it?’
Maddy nodded slowly. ‘Yeah … I think it was.’ She looked at him accusingly. ‘You should’ve been outside our field. You should have been out there with your people. This messes things up. This –’
‘But I wasn’t outside,’ he said calmly. ‘So why don’t you just get over it?’
‘You don’t understand … you’ve been written out of the present. I’ve got no idea what that means to you or –’
‘That suits me fine,’ he smiled.
Sal noticed the blinking cursor was back on-screen and all of a sudden it occurred to her what Bob was desperately trying to tell Maddy.
‘Maddy!’ she cried, pointing at the monitors. ‘You need to look!’
Maddy turned to glance over her shoulder. ‘Oh no!’ She turned back to Cartwright. ‘GET OUT OF THERE!’
His wiry brow furrowed. ‘Uh? What’s up?’
‘MOVE!’ she screamed.
The displacement machine’s hum changed in tone as stored-up energy prepared to be released.
‘LOOK!’ shouted Maddy, pointing to the ground at Cartwright’s feet. He looked down, wondering what was so special about a chalk circle and, within, a small irregular section of the grubby concrete floor scooped out and …
‘OH GOD, CARTWRIGHT, GET OUT!’
It happened in nanoseconds, the instant appearance of a sphere of energy around the old man. Most of him was inside, all but his left hand.
Sal thought she saw in that fleeting moment dark shapes swirling around him like demons or ghosts, a window on to some world that an uneducated person, a superstitious person, someone from the Dark Ages, might have called Hell.
Then he was swept away. Gone.
The sphere pulsed and shimmered, and now she could see what appeared to be an undulating Texas-blue sky, and an arid and drab landscape … and the wavering outline of a shape stepping through. Liam staggered into view with a distinct look of nausea on his face, and a moment later the sphere of supercharged tachyon particles vanished with a soft pop of rushing air.
‘Jeez, that was an odd one,’ he said queasily, bending over, nauseous and heaving.
‘Liam!’ yelped Maddy. ‘Oh my God … I thought you were going to get all mushed up with Cartwright! I …’
He raised a hand to hush her. ‘Just a second, just a second … I’m gonna –’
He threw up on the floor and on to the still-twitching hand Cartwright had left behind.
Sal rushed over to him. ‘Liam? You OK?’
He wiped his mouth and looked up at her with his bloodshot eye. ‘I … I just … I’m all right now.’ He straightened up and looked down in disgust at the hand and the acrid-smelling puddle at his feet. ‘That wasn’t like I’m used to. That one felt really odd, so it did.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what happened. Cartwright was standing in the circle. I forgot the countdown was due.’ There were tears in her eyes, running down her cheeks. ‘Oh God, Liam, I thought you were going to end up a twisted mess with him and …’
‘Well …’ Liam rubbed his mouth dry and grinned. ‘I’m all right now, aren’t I?’ He spread his hands and looked down at himself.