‘Put it on the table,’ Miri says, as though to watch and learn.
‘This icon here accesses the images folder and . . .’ Emily trails off with her fingers hovering over the screen when she sees one of the images in question.
‘That one,’ Miri says, pointing to another icon. ‘How do I play that footage and make it 3D?’
‘Er, right, of course, like this: tap the image and two smaller icons appear. This one is conventional, and this is for 3D.’
‘The kid said it will come out,’ Miri says. ‘How do I do that?’
‘Like I said: 3D.’
‘Show me, Tango Two. Make it play now.’
Emily double-taps the screen, then selects the 3D option. An image immediately blooms out from the device to fill the air above. A static shot, just a grey blur that is instantly recognised by Ben, Safa and Harry, who all shift position to watch intently. ‘So to play it, you just swipe left, then to pause you swipe right. Really simple.’
Emily swipes the holographic image. Sound immediately comes. A slight hiss, then the sound of rotor blades. She moves back to her seat, conscious of the earnest looks of the others now staring at the footage.
Ben frowns at Miri. Questions in his eyes. She doesn’t show any reaction, but moves back, as though to watch the footage herself.
The footage blurs with the distinctive motion of a camera lens trying to focus. The noise of the rotor blades increases in pitch as the camera is given lift and rises smoothly into the air a few feet.
The footage of the world in 2111. The footage Ben, Harry and Safa saw in Roland’s office. The end of the world.
Emily watches the grey rubble, confused and not understanding what it is she is seeing. As the drone moves, she spots the charred remains of a child’s doll, and frowns deeper.
The other three have seen the footage before, but not like this. Not in 3D in perfect, pin-sharp, high-definition quality bloomed out in the air.
More rubble. A ruined building. Debris strewn everywhere. Window frames of buildings, bathtubs and household content, charred, broken, filthy, old and lying everywhere. More buildings come into view. A whole street that shows the same thing. Roads buckled and broken. Tree stumps dead and withered. A lack of life. A feeling of an empty, sterile place.
Emily watches as more streets come into view. She spots cars and vehicles, then railway lines. Bigger buildings. A city. They all show reaction at the first capsule from the London Eye. Then more of them littering the ground. The drone goes over the Thames. Putrid brown water filled with jagged shards and shapes hidden by the flowing tide. Westminster Bridge broken and slumped in the river. The Houses of Parliament destroyed. The clock face from Big Ben lying amongst the squalor.
Miri swipes right. The footage cuts off. Silence behind her.
‘What did I just watch?’ Emily breaks that silence.
‘The end of the world, my dear,’ Doctor Watson replies heavily.
‘Good, at least I know how to make that work,’ Miri says, as though to herself. ‘Now, I have another image. I click it? Is that correct? Tango Two?’
‘Her name is Emily,’ Safa says.
‘Huh? What? I mean, yes, just, er . . .’
‘Got it.’ Another image blooms out from the tablet. The atmosphere now thick and charged. Miri carries on, as though ignorant to the change. ‘How do I make it bigger?’
‘You, er, you need to swipe the edges to rotate it and, er, to enlarge it, you take both sides and pull out . . .’
‘That’s Roland’s house,’ Safa says. ‘Cavendish Manor.’
Again, Miri stands back in assessment of the image in front of her. The same 3D, pin-sharp, high-definition quality now showing Cavendish Manor. Seconds pass. Plant seeds. Water them. Let nature do the rest.
Silence broken only by Harry and the doctor eating strawberries. Ben watches Miri closely and takes a strawberry from his punnet. Everything Miri does is for a reason.
‘Can I touch the image without moving it?’ Miri asks.
‘Er, you, er . . .’ Emily clears her throat and blinks rapidly several times before rising to walk over to the tablet. ‘Press this and it locks the image in place.’
‘Thank you,’ Miri says. She stands back, staring at the image and eating a strawberry. ‘We’ll start planning the secondary attack tomorrow,’ Miri says, as though reaching a decision. She takes the tablet from the table and a punnet of strawberries, and starts heading back towards the bunker with the glowing hologram hovering in front of her. ‘Good night.’
‘Night, Sun Tzu,’ Ben says quietly. Miri pauses, a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
‘Night,’ Safa calls out.
‘Ma’am,’ Harry says as she passes him.
Emily takes her first strawberry and bites into the soft flesh. It tastes divine. Perfect even. Juicy and full of flavour. Her mind runs frantic and fast with a pressure applied and exerted by a master at work.
‘Warm,’ Ben says conversationally.
‘Is,’ Harry says in reply, stretching his legs out.
‘Balmy,’ Doctor Watson says.
‘Balmy,’ Ben says, holding a strawberry up in acknowledgement. ‘Good word.’
‘Was,’ Harry says in reply.
‘Want some chocolate?’ Safa heads over to the table to pick a few bars up to carry back, throwing one to Ben and Harry as she passes.
The heavy machine gun. The sniper shots. Barrett. The joke that Ben didn’t know the difference between a Barrett and a Browning. The gunships being fired on from the ground. Ben called them bazookas. The bunker. The isolation from the world. Smurfs. Maurice. Money. Supplies. The empty rooms. Malcolm and Konrad got everything for us. Realisation finally sinks in. This is all they have. It’s just them. Three heroes from history. The end of the world. Emily leans forward as everything slots into place one after the other. Her heart hammering. Her head spinning.
Ben watches the connections form on her face. The more he knows her, the more he struggles to understand how an agent, such as she appears to be, is so slow at working everything out.
‘So nice,’ Safa says, munching contentedly.
Emily shuffles on the seat and looks up to a night sky filled with millions of stars shining down. She doesn’t know where she is in the world, and wonders if they are the same stars in the same places from her time. Why did Mother tell them to kill her? Alpha ordered the gunships to open fire, and she didn’t want to die in the room of a house for a thing she did not understand.
Ben rolls his eyes and bites his bottom lip with frustration. She’s had over three weeks to work it out.
‘Emily Rose is clearly a shit spy name anyway . . .’
She turns to smile as Safa grins back with her white teeth showing stark against the darkness of her features.
‘Emily Rose?’ Safa laughs. ‘That’s so made up.’
‘No! It’s my real name,’ Emily says with an instant grin.
‘It’s a lovely name,’ Doctor Watson says.
‘Is,’ Harry says.
‘You worked it all out yet?’ Ben asks.
‘I don’t know,’ she admits honestly.
‘It’s just us,’ Ben says. ‘To stop what Miri showed you.’