TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

architecture. However, only Maddy has practical experience of this
     process.’
    ‘Right. OK.’ Rashim pinched the
     narrow bridge of his nose. ‘We’d best wait for her to come back before we
     start dismantling things, then.’
    ‘Affirmative.’
    He got to his feet. Across the archway, he
     watched the Indian girl, Sal, talking quietly with another girl, pale as a ghost and
     completely bald.
    ‘Who is that?’ asked Bubba
     cheerfully.
    ‘It is a support unit,’ said
     Bob. ‘It was set on a growth pattern before we had to deal with your Exodus
     contamination.’
    ‘A genetically engineered AI hybrid,
     SpongeBubba,’ added Rashim. ‘The US military were working with those back in
     the fifties and sixties. Perfect soldiers. We had a platoon of gen-bots come along with
     us on Exodus.’ He looked at Bob. ‘Leaner, more advanced models than you,
     I’m afraid.’
    Bob’s brow furrowed sulkily. ‘I
     know.’ Then, with something approximating a smirk, ‘I did in fact manage to
     disable one of them.’
    ‘Yes, you did.’ Rashim nodded
     respectfully and then offered him an awkward high five. ‘Good for you, big
     man.’
    Bob cocked his head and gazed curiously at
     Rashim’s palm left hovering in mid-air.
    ‘Uh … never mind,’ he
     said, tucking his hand away.

Chapter 5
    10 September 2001, New York
    Maddy returned from Central Park with
     Foster just after half past one in the afternoon. Following brief introductions of
     Rashim and his novelty robot, they set to work. During the rest of the day Sal was
     largely sidelined with the drooling child support unit in her tender care while Maddy,
     Rashim, Foster, computer-Bob and SpongeBubba collectively pooled their technical
     knowledge and carefully dismantled the equipment in the archway.
    It was an exercise in identifying and
     extracting only the technology components that could not easily be replaced elsewhere.
     Bob and Liam meanwhile had been sent out to steal a vehicle big enough for them all and
     the equipment they were likely to take along.
    By the time lights started to flicker on, on
     the far side of the East River, turning Manhattan, skyscraper by skyscraper, into an
     enormous, inverted chandelier and the railway overhead started rumbling with trains
     taking city commuters home from the Big Apple to the suburbs of Brooklyn and Queens,
     they’d done most of what needed to be done.
    A battered Winnebago SuperChief motorhome
     was parked up in the alleyway, a snug, hand-in-glove squeeze between the row of archways
     and the graffiti’d brick wall opposite. The rack carrying the displacement machine
     had been carefully lifted in and secured tightly in the RV’s toilet cubicle. The
     PCs had beenstripped of their internal hard drives and the filing
     cabinet beside Maddy’s desk had been emptied. Its drawers were full of a messy
     miscellany of discarded wires and circuit boards and gadgets: a taser, something that
     looked like a Geiger counter, the babel-buds, a non-functioning wrist-mounted computer
     of some sort with ‘H-data WristBuddee-57’ stamped on one side. Gadgets and
     parts of gadgets, most of them clearly not from the year 2001. Nothing like that could
     stay behind.
    The improvised growth tubes were too large
     to take along, but the pumps and computer interface were removed and carefully stored in
     the RV. The protein solution and the dead foetuses were gone now, poured away into the
     East River.
    Like any normal family moving house, it was
     a revelation to Maddy, Liam and Sal discovering how much clutter they’d already
     managed to acquire. Magazines and books, a Nintendo and a TV, a kettle and sandwich
     toaster, a chemical toilet, a wardrobe full of clothes, a shelf in their bunk archway
     filled with half-used toiletries. And rubbish. A small pyramid of empty drinks cans, a
     teetering Jenga tower of pizza boxes and takeaway cartons.
    As they left the archway, tired after a busy
     day, the last of