Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

“No way!” Angus nearly slid off his seat. “It’s the Marlowe players at Corpus Christi and that’s got to be Fanshawe, Trinculo and Monk…”

“And?” Jack said knowingly.

Eyeing the picture more closely, Angus spotted two further figures off to one side. One was tall and broad with longish black hair. The other was shorter, more slender, and had a shock of blond hair. For a moment Angus could not place them — then he realised — it was the two of them: Angus and Jack.

“Didn’t really notice it before. But that’s not all. There’s a picture of the battle of Gravelines — you know, showing the ‘fiery god’.”

Angus was not impressed, “Doesn’t look much like a helicopter to me. Certainly not a WAH-64 Apache armed with a chain gun and CRV7 rockets.”

“Well, as Joplin said, that’s the problem with eyewitness accounts.”

“And historians — they’re clearly all rubbish.”

The shop was quiet for a moment. Gino broke the silence, humming behind the counter as he prepared the chip butties.

“I nearly forgot!” Jack said, pulling out his mobile. “Got a message…”

“Oh yeah? Who’s it from?”

“Dad.” Jack scrolled down the emails and waved the device in Angus’s face. “Look.”

Angus squinted at the text and read aloud:

“Let us go in together;

And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!”

“It’s that weird quote again — about the world being broken and someone having to sort it out. Wasn’t that what you said?”

Jack smiled. “Sort of — the verse from Hamlet .”

Angus read on.

Jack,

Sources tell me that you have had quite an adventure. You and Angus are very brave, young men. I have heard about Pendelshape’s attempt to change history — it was poorly planned and badly executed. It is not how I would have done it, were I still in charge. Most importantly, you must know that I would never have put you in such danger.

I see now that you are finding your own way in life, and I understand that it may not be the way that I have chosen. You have to make your own choices, Jack. Despite this, I still hope that we might meet one day, talk as friends and perhaps even find a way to make peace with VIGIL. But what I really wanted to say is this: I am proud of you.

Dad

Angus looked up. “Wow. What do you think he will do next?”

Jack shrugged. “No idea. He’s in a pretty desperate situation… a fugitive. Must be tough — on the run from VIGIL.”

Jack quickly pocketed the mobile as Gino brought over the Gino-chinos and the chip butties, taking his own place next to them at the booth, with a small espresso in front of him.

“You did very well, lads. The whole team is proud.”

Francesca, Gino’s daughter, emerged from the back of the cafe. She was burdened with large bags of shopping. Gino winced, and whispered to Jack and Angus, “Watch it boys — she’s in a bad mood.”

Sure enough Francesca marched up the aisle between the booths and dumped the shopping at Gino’s feet.

“Why am I the only one who does any work around here?” she demanded.

“Hi Francesca,” Angus said breezily. Francesca returned his greeting with a withering stare.

“I’m sick of this pokey little shop and I’m sick of this pokey little town…”

Gino looked hurt, “My dear…”

But the girl had clearly had enough. “There’s nothing to do here… nothing ever happens…”

Gino’s moody daughter could not have been more wrong. Around the booth next to them, there was a disturbance in the air, then a blinding flash of white light. In front of them appeared a tall man with a rich tan and chiselled features. He wore a fine black cloak. Next to him were two shorter, powerfully built men. One had a badly disfigured eye and a scar that stretched from his forehead, across the side of his eye and down his cheek. The last time Jack and Angus had seen Delgado, Hegel and Plato was in a torture chamber underneath a house on the outskirts of Elizabethan London. It was just before Jack had tricked them with the time phone and zapped them into hyperspace. Little did he know that they would be transported to Gino Turinelli’s Italian cafe in the middle of Soonhope High Street.

Although they looked dazed and confused, it did not take long for Delgado to gather his wits. He had no idea where he was, but he recognised Jack and Angus and he drew his sword. Francesca screamed. Gino was the first to react. He leaped from the booth and dived over the counter of the cafe. For a portly man he moved surprisingly quickly. In an instant Plato was after him, sword in hand. He jumped up onto the counter and swung his sword around his head, dislodging great lumps of plaster from the ceiling and sending plates, glasses, bottles and jars flying around the cafe. Gino slowly got to his feet and raised his hands from behind the counter in a gesture of surrender. Plato stopped waving his sword around and from his position on the counter, lowered it menacingly so it touched the base of Gino’s throat. He looked back over his shoulder to Delgado and awaited his orders. Hegel grabbed Francesca from behind and held a dagger to her cheek. Francesca whimpered. Delgado approached Jack and Angus with his sword outstretched and they cowered back in the booth.

Jack glanced over at Gino who was trembling and had his eyes closed. But Jack noticed that in one of his outstretched hands he was grasping something… a mobile phone.

Delgado hissed at Jack, “Where are we — what kind of witchcraft is this?” He no longer spoke in the calm and collected way he had done in the cellar. He was confused and scared. This made him dangerous and unpredictable — he might do anything.

“You speak, my friend,” he glanced over at Hegel, who pressed the flat side of his knife to Francesca’s cheek, “or the girl dies.”

Suddenly, in the distance, they could hear the sound of a police siren. Jack’s heart leaped — somehow Gino had made the emergency call.

Delgado heard the noise too and he became more agitated. “What is this noise?”

He left Jack and Angus unguarded for a moment, crept gingerly forward to the plate-glass window at the front of the cafe and peered into the street beyond. The good people of Soonhope, oblivious to the strange events taking place inside the town’s favourite Italian cafe, were going about their business — as on any other Saturday lunchtime. Jack could see the look on Delgado’s face as he gazed from one end of the High Street to the other. It was the same expression of stupid shock that Jack must have shown when he regained consciousness on top of the tower at Fotheringhay Castle. In a way, what Delgado saw was normal. There were people out there, walking, talking and going about their business. The large building at one end of the street looked oddly familiar — a church built not long after. But the people were dressed in an extraordinary way. There were no horses or carts. And why was the street strewn with large, coloured boxes… on wheels?

Delgado was still standing paralysed in front of the window when three distinctive metal boxes drew up outside — ones with flashing lights on the top. The people of Soonhope had no time to register that the most exciting event in their High Street’s history was happening right before their eyes. The plate-glass window of Gino’s cafe shattered and before Delgado could react, the two dart-electrodes from the taser gun hit him square in the chest. He screamed as the electric charge coursed through his body. Behind him, Hegel and Plato experienced the same fate, as police stormed in from the back of the cafe. Incapacitated, the three men were quickly bundled into the back of a police van and driven off at speed. Naturally, VIGIL’s reach also extended to the local police force. The cafe was quickly cordoned off.