She watched Becks as she paced thoughtfully down the hallway, pausing every now and then to study an exhibit more closely.

You really have no idea how important you are … do you, Becks?

The female support unit had data embedded in her silicon brain, a minor sector of her miniature hard drive devoted to holding a secret. Their last crisis had involved being led to a medieval document, the Holy Grail no less, containing an encoded secret that dated from somewhere around the time of Christ. Becks had been able to successfully decode the secret, which, it seemed, had also rather annoyingly included a protocol that prevented her from revealing the message she’d managed to decode. And now, whatever this Big Secret was, it was locked away in a portion of her silicon mind.

Maddy had tried asking her about what was in there, but poor Becks knew nothing; she too was locked out of that portion of her own mind. All she knew was that at some point a ‘correct condition’ would arrive that would unlock the truth.

What Maddy did know was this: whatever truth was lurking in there, it wasn’t good news. Not good at all. And it had something to do with a particular word.

Pandora.

Secrets and lies. She hated them. There was never any good that came out of a secret. They were corrosive. Like another one, a secret she was having to keep from Liam and Sal … but Liam, in particular.

He’s dying. Time travel was killing him. Every trip through the portal was corrupting his body’s cells, ageing him before his time in a far more aggressive, damaging way than the forcefield that looped them and their old archway field office back around those two days in 2001 that they were stationed in.