TimeRiders - 02 - Day of the Predator by Alex Scarrow

Author:Alex Scarrow
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780141326931
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 41

65 million years BC, jungle

Howard noticed the young boy walking alongside him, sloshing through the warm seawater.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Edward smiled. ‘Hey. You always called Leonard, or do your friends call you Lenny?’

Howard shrugged; not a question he’d anticipated being asked. ‘Uh … mostly just Leonard,’ he replied. ‘My mom calls me Lenny, but I hate that.’

‘I heard someone say your best subject is math.’

He nodded. ‘It was my –’ He stopped, inwardly cursing. ‘It … is … my favourite school subject. Always loved math. It’s like, well, I dunno … I suppose it’s like a sort of poetry that only a few people get. If you know what I mean? It’s, like, exclusive.’

Chan nodded. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. That’s why I like it. It’s something I know and other people don’t. It makes me feel kind of special, I guess. Maybe that’s why I don’t have any friends at school, cos they think I’m odd.’

Howard nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess I’m the same. A loner.’ He squinted up at the bright sun. ‘Never ever get picked for sports, because I’m the geek.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s OK, cos I never liked sports anyway.’

Edward nodded. ‘Me neither. It’s for jocks and ditto-heads.’

‘Ditto-heads?’ Howard laughed. ‘I like it.’

‘You never heard that expression?’

Not in my time, he almost answered. But instead he just shook his head.

‘Hey!’ said Edward suddenly, and bent down to scoop up a curious twisted ammonite shell from the shingle.

‘See? There are even bigger ones of those,’ said Howard, nodding at some of the others, wading waist deep in the clear blue water, occasionally ducking down to pull shells out of the water to admire them.

They walked on in silence for a while, going a little further into the warm water. Up ahead, leading the way and deep in conversation, Howard could see the two ‘agents’ – Liam and his robo-girl. He shook his head at the irony of it. Despite their turning up in 2015 to ‘save’ Chan, they were all on the same side really, all trying to prevent the nightmare of time-travel technology from destroying the world. Same goal … different methods. He wondered how he’d never come across this agency in all the years of his campaigning, all the rallies and protests he’d been to … and no one, no one, had ever suggested, even as a joke, that there might be an agency out there actually using time travel itself to combat the corruptive effects of time travel. He wondered who was behind it, who’d set it up. Surely not the American government? Not any government, in fact. The internationally agreed penalties for that were severe. No politician would have the guts to risk having anything to do with time travel, because international law was brutal and strict on this matter. It was an automatic death penalty for any involved. The great Roald Waldstein had been a powerful speaker on the horrendous dangers of it. A great man, an influential man. Howard’s small campaigning group had achieved far less.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.