Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

“What is it?”

Hegel wrestled with the fasteners and then slowly removed the slim object from the pocket. It was his time phone.

Hegel held it out to Delgado with a look of confusion. Delgado approached.

“What is that?” he demanded.

Angus looked at Jack with an expression of extreme agitation.

“It’s a kind of lucky charm. We have them, er, where we come from,” Jack said.

“Is it valuable?”

“Not really — but you can open it.”

“Show me.”

“You’ll have to untie me.”

Delgado nodded at Hegel to release Jack’s hands — but he remained firmly chained to the wall by his feet. Jack rubbed his wrists which were already raw from chafing on the rope.

“It is a wondrous thing,” Hegel said in awe. “Plato — come look at this!”

Plato left Fanshawe tied to the rack and ambled over to where his friends toyed with the time phone.

“It is made of a strange smooth material — like shell.”

“Carbon fibre compound, actually,” Jack said, under his breath.

“And you say it opens?”

“Yes — you slide that on the side… and… there.”

The VIGIL time phone slid open and the three men’s faces lit up with wonder as the intricate display and controls were revealed.

“Like a jewel — do you have others?”

Before Jack could say anything, Plato was searching him roughly and quickly located Jack’s time phone and the two others — which they had taken from Whitsun and Gift.

“Four!” Hegel exclaimed.

The Spaniards now had all the time phones. Jack had won them a temporary reprieve but then he noticed something else. From inside the first time phone, the yellow bar winked brightly at them. There was a time signal.

“It produces a shimmering light…” Delgado said.

“It must be magic,” Plato whispered in wonder.

Jack knew what he needed to do next and he knew he was taking a huge risk. But it was their only option.

“Not magic and not witchcraft — just a plaything. If you like I can show you something else it does. But you need to stand there, all gather round and touch it.”

The three other time phones were discarded on a nearby table while the men gingerly placed their fingers on Angus’s time phone. “Now, sir, it does a special trick… you see that little button there?”

“This one?” Delgado asked, pointing at one of the small control pads.

“Yes, that one. You have to press it quite hard.”

“What will it do?”

“Nothing really, just a little… er… trick of the light.”

Delgado pressed the button and Jack closed his eyes and leaned away.

The air around the three men shimmered. Suddenly the gloomy cellar exploded in incandescent white light. When Jack opened his eyes again, the three Spaniards had vanished into thin air.

Jack turned to Angus. “Now, that is magic.”

Angus couldn’t contain himself. “Get me out of this!” he cried. Jack was still manacled to the wall but with his hands free he just managed to reach over to Angus beside him and loosen the rope around his wrists sufficiently for Angus to twist them out.

“What about these stupid chains?”

“You’ve got me there.” The heavy iron manacles that still encased their ankles were chained to the wall.

“There should be a key somewhere…”

“Unless it was in our nice Spanish friend’s pocket and it’s been zapped into hyper-space with him… you do realise what you’ve done?”

Jack exhaled. “Sorry — it was all I could think of at the time.”

Angus’s lip curled up in a half smile. “Actually it was pretty cool. Hilarious in fact. What will have happened to them?”

“No idea. Depends on the space-time fix in the time phone. Guess it was still set from when we left — so maybe it will go straight back to the Taurus. Maybe our VIGIL friends back home will have a little surprise when they come face to face with the Spanish Inquisition. Mind you, the phone was not recalibrated before they went, so for all I know they could have ended up on the moon.”

“With any luck they’ve been vaporised. Those guys were something else. I’d love to see their faces. Imagine if the Taurus has zapped them onto the top of the Forth Road Bridge… or the Statue of Liberty or something, by mistake!”

“We’ve got other things to worry about. We have a time signal — great. So all the time phones should be activated. Which means we could time travel out of here, except for the fact that we’re still tied to these stupid chains and the other time phones are over there on the table.”

In the excitement, they had forgotten all about Fanshawe, who was still attached to the rack, in the middle of the room. In contrast to a few minutes previously, he was completely silent. He stared gormlessly from his elevated position on the rack at the spot where the three Spaniards had just… disappeared. His jaw hung loosely from his gaping mouth.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

It was as if Fanshawe had not even heard the words. He just kept staring into space.

Jack tried again, louder, “Harry — you okay? Can you free yourself and get us out of these chains?”

Fanshawe blinked. He whispered, “It is a miracle. We are saved…”

“Yeah. Something like that,” Angus said.

“But… how…?” Poor old Fanshawe had endured complete sensory overload in the last hour. He had been kidnapped, threatened with torture and then seen three grown men vanish into thin air.

Jack sighed in frustration. “Harry… can you try and work yourself free of that thing and unchain us?”

It was no use. Even if Fanshawe had been in the appropriate mental state, which he wasn’t, he was well and truly trussed up.

“What now?” Angus said.

“If VIGIL are doing their job properly, they should also have got a space-time fix on our location and time period through the time phones.”

“But the Revisionists’ time phones are also activated so they will know where we are too.”

“That’s if Whitsun and Gift have escaped and reconnected with the Revisionists. Then they’ll have told them that we’ve got their phones, and they won’t be happy.”

“So we just have to wait and see who gets here first…?” Angus pulled on the chain again in frustration. But it was hopeless. They had got rid of the Spaniards, but they were still stuck.

“What’s that?” Jack said, suddenly.

“Footsteps? Upstairs in the house? Someone’s here already?”

“But is it VIGIL or the Revisionists?”

“Or some other joker?”

There was an almighty crash as the cellar door was forced open and splinters of wood rained down the stone stairs. Next, they heard someone gingerly making their way down the steps into the cellar. Angus and Jack craned their heads to try and make out the figure, but from their position, chained to the wall, their view was impaired. Suddenly a powerful beam of light shone towards them.

Jack whispered to Angus, “A torch?”

They didn’t recognise the figure silhouetted behind the bright light at first.

“Good evening, gentlemen. It looks like I got here just in time.” The voice was unmistakable — Dr Pendelshape.

Pendelshape scanned the room quickly to make sure there was no one else there. He then turned his attention to Jack and Angus.

“We don’t have much time. We’ve got to get you out of those chains.”

“Yes, but we don’t know where the key is.”

Pendelshape searched the wooden tabletops. The first things he spotted were the remaining three time phones laid out on one of the tables.

“At least we have those back,” he said. “And an extra one… a VIGIL time phone.” He smiled. “Now that is going to come in handy.” He opened each of them in turn and powered them down. “We don’t want anyone else to know where we are just now, do we?”