Hope for the Best

by Jodi Taylor

  Telling myself I’d laugh about this one day, I stepped through into the Time Police Detention Centre.

  29

  Actually, such had been my fevered imaginings on the way down here, it was a bit of a disappointment. I’m not sure what I’d expected. Dank cells with manacled occupants screaming in torment, possibly. Or a bald, burly, leather-aproned man scrubbing blood off the walls. Sometimes, too much imagination is a curse. I was looking at a bright, modern detention facility, laid out like a racetrack, with what I assumed were offices and such-like down the middle and cells ranged in a rectangle around the outer walls.

  Each cell’s door was identical. Alongside each door was a keypad – so much for my plan to overpower the guards and take the keys – and over the keypad was a panel with the name of the prisoner currently benefitting from the facilities. As in a hospital, they’d put the most serious cases by the door. Those cells were occupied by Sullivan and his men. For the moment at least, they were taking priority over two harmless teenagers.

  Apart from Markham’s concealed stun gun, I was unarmed. I’d seriously thought about acquiring some weaponry – don’t ask me how because they didn’t leave that sort of thing lying around – but I’d decided against it on the grounds that although they might not have any problems shooting an unarmed person dead, they definitely wouldn’t have problems shooting an armed person dead. Besides, I couldn’t just march into the armoury with a shopping list.

  An officer blocked my path. Female. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking this would make things any easier. Her badge read: MSg B. Romano. She was built like a tank, but there was only one of her. I rather hoped a large number of her colleagues were off apprehending the idiot Halcombe and his minions at that very moment.

  ‘Yes?’

  I’ve always thought of Italian as a very melodic language, but not this time.

  ‘Maxwell – to see the prisoners. I’m supposed to gain their confidence and encourage them to tell us everything.’

  She relaxed a little. ‘Well, I do not think it will take very much – the little one has not stopped crying since she got here.’

  Good for Mikey.

  ‘Let’s hope I can capitalise on that,’ I said, trying to look stern. ‘Is there somewhere quiet I can take them?’

  She looked around. ‘There’s an empty interrogation room over there. Number Two. Separately or together?’

  ‘Together, I think. To begin with anyway.’

  I stood as close to her as I dared and watched as closely as I dared. I’d talked to Markham about keypads and he was almost certain they would change the code every day, although, as he said, that was always the problem. People forget passwords. Just take a look at the number of yellow Post-it notes with today’s passwords, key codes, whatever, plastered around people’s work areas. It’s forbidden but still people do it. Because the trouble is, he said in his capacity as oracle, although you had to have something different every day, it still had to be something everyone could remember. Today’s date usually figured prominently, he said, because everyone, with the possible exception of historians, always knew what today’s date was.

  Because I knew more or less what I was looking for, I reckoned I’d got it. She started with six figures – today’s date, I fervently hoped – and two letters afterwards. Her initials, possibly? That would make sense.

  Mikey was released first. Still tousled and weeping profusely, she was propelled into the interrogation room.

  The door hissed closed. Adrian was next up. Romano checked I was standing well back and then opened his door. He looked past her at me, and I nodded slightly. He, too, was pushed into the interrogation room. I was surprised there was only one of her to handle two prisoners, but both of them looked so bedraggled and woebegone, and Mikey was weeping buckets. Obviously, no one expected them to put up any sort of fight. Just as they’d been instructed.

  ‘Just one thing,’ I said quietly, as I followed them into the interrogation room. ‘Commander Hay wants the cameras off.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘She didn’t tell me. She’s given me five or six questions to ask – it’ll take me about thirty minutes, I reckon – and then I’m to report straight back to her. All this is for her ears only.’ I leaned closer and then lowered my voice. ‘I suspect there are certain details she won’t want made public. Such as how the two of them managed to evade us for so long.’

  I think it was the ‘us’ that did it. She thought for a moment and then said, ‘I can knock off the sound but not the camera. That’s for your protection. In case they overpower you.’

  Well, that was insulting. Between them, Adrian and Mikey had the muscle power of cotton wool. Damp cotton wool. However, I nodded and contrived to look grateful.

  As I’d hoped, she turned her back on me and reached up to the recording device on the wall. I pushed her hard. She smacked into the wall and I zapped her with my stun gun. She went down heavily, knocking over a chair. She would only be stunned for a minute but a minute was all we needed. And I was going to have to spend the rest of my life ensuring I never encountered Master Sergeant B. Romano again.

  There were two cameras, one at each end of the room, so no chance of concealment. We had to work fast. Adrian and Mikey were already rolling her over. I ripped two zip-ties out of my utility belt. Adrian zipped her feet. Mikey took her hands and we rolled her under the table.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ I said, because I’d had an idea for a diversion.

  I crossed to a random cell and peered at the keypad.

  I banged in today’s date, took a deep breath and then entered her initials. BR. She’d only entered two letters, I was certain of it. So, no rank and no middle initial.

  The lock clunked open. I walked away. The door remained closed but was now unlocked. I wondered how long before the inhabitant investigated. As long as he diverted attention from us he could do whatever he liked with his unexpected freedom.

  Mikey and Adrian were already at the outer door, waiting for me. Usually, having got into a secure establishment, getting out is easy, but this was the Time Police, after all. There was a keypad on the inside as well. My hand was trembling as I entered the code. How long before anyone noticed that not only had two prisoners disappeared, but that another one appeared to be perambulating the corridors? Would they automatically link the two circumstances? How much time would that buy us?

  The lock clunked and Adrian grabbed for the door.

  We pulled it to behind us and raced down the corridor. Up until now, things had gone according to plan but, from this moment, we were on our own.

  Very, very cautiously, we emerged into another corridor. As we did so, the alarms went off. I never discovered if we had triggered something or whether they’d just realised two of their prisoners were missing.

  The noise was overwhelming. It hurt my ears and made it difficult to think. We certainly couldn’t hear ourselves speak. I think it must have been designed to be heard by the dead. The very deadest of the dead. We fled down the corridor hoping if anyone saw us they would think it was just panic. Actually, they wouldn’t be far wrong. I was beginning to lose count of the number of laws I’d broken in the last week.

  I eased open the door to the pod bay. Everyone was crowded into the office at the far end. I hoped they were busy trying to establish the cause of the emergency.

  Adrian and Mikey’s pod was parked quite close, up against the wall. I had no trouble picking it out. No one would have had any trouble picking it out. Pods come in many sizes and shapes. They may not all be small, anonymous, apparently stone-built shacks, but only one of them looks like a twelve-foot high teapot.

  We sidled hastily through the door and it was lucky we did so because the bloody thing locked itself behind us. I suspected doors were locking themselves all over the building, cutting off any faint chance of escape. If we couldn’t a
ccess the teapot then we were going nowhere.

  Three mechs were standing, open-mouthed, in the office at the far end. One caught sight of us, put two and two together and shouted something at his colleagues. One spoke urgently into his com – the other two burst out of the office and came racing down the hangar. As I’ve already said, it was a big place and they were down at the wrong end. They were shouting at us. I could see their mouths opening and closing. They were waving their arms. I wondered whether they were armed. How much damage could weapons do in a place like this? They wouldn’t worry about damage to people – people were expendable – but their precious pods weren’t.

  The teapot doesn’t have a door. Or a ramp. It has a hatch at the top. And a ladder to access it. And there was no ladder. Shit – no bloody ladder.

  Shit, shit, shit. I thought I’d thought of everything and I’d forgotten the hatch was about ten feet off the ground. It was just so typical of these two. They’d created and built just about the most sophisticated pod in existence. A pod that had, somehow, managed to bypass most of the safety protocols that were automatically built into both St Mary’s and Time Police pods. Which was the main reason the Time Police had come down so hard on them, because theoretically, there was nothing to stop Adrian and Mikey pillaging the past and – and this is the important bit – loading up their pod with stolen treasure and auctioning it all off to the highest bidder. They’d never done so – in all fairness, I don’t think it had ever entered their heads – but that wouldn’t save them from the wrath of the Time Police. Which we would feel very soon if we didn’t get a move on.

  However, we still had the entry problem. Whenever they wanted to exit their pod, Adrian and Mikey opened the hatch and chucked out an enormous, heavy and very old-school wooden ladder. It wasn’t even a modern aluminium folding affair. My own theory was that it doubled as a weapon. If they didn’t like the look of you then they just dropped the ladder on your head and you were out of the game for the next week.

  But – and this was the crux of the matter – the ladder was inside the pod.

  Not for the first time, I’d underestimated the Time Police. They had one of those airplane ladders parked alongside. All ready for the mechs to start investigating the pod. It was one of those metal ones on wheels with a small platform at the top. Mikey was already wheeling it podwards.

  At that moment the alarm stopped and the silence was almost as painful as the noise.

  The leading mech shouted and at the same time, the tannoy clicked on. Commander Hay’s voice echoed around the pod bay. This was not the Commander Hay determined to promote the softer side of the Time Police. This was the voice of Commander Hay who had fought in the Time Wars and seen her colleagues die.

  ‘This is Commander Hay. Stand still and surrender yourselves. Do not do this. You will be fugitives forever. We will find you. We will hunt you down.’

  I couldn’t help myself. I shouted, ‘Oh really? Before or after you fail to bring down Clive Ronan?’

  I don’t know why I did that – it wasn’t as if she could hear me.

  Down at the other end of the bay, I could hear doors banging open. Time Police officers were streaming into the hangar. We had three, maybe four seconds at the most. Less if they used their sonic weapons.

  ‘Come on,’ screamed Mikey.

  I turned. While I’d been wasting my time shouting at Commander Hay, they’d pushed the ladder to the pod and were opening the hatch. Mikey’s legs were already disappearing inside.

  ‘Come on, Max.’ That was Adrian, lowering himself into the pod, his body lit by a strange blue glow as Mikey began to fire things up inside.

  I raced up the ladder. As I reached the top I could feel the ladder vibrate. Someone was close on my heels.

  I seized the edge of the hatchway intending to heave myself up and in but suddenly it receded into the distance. My fingers couldn’t seem to get a grip. At the same time, I felt a sudden, sharp pain across my chest. I couldn’t breathe in. I couldn’t breathe out, either. I’d been zapped with one of their sonic thingies.

  It’s a dreadful sensation. Your body just shuts down. I couldn’t breathe. My heart fluttered. The ladder swayed beneath me. One arm was already waving uselessly in the air. The other was clutching at the hatchway. I felt my fingers slacken. I was going to fall. Except I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down.

  Underwater sounds washed around me . . . I no longer had control over any part of my body. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I opened my mouth to tell them to get away without me but nothing happened. The fire in my chest was spreading. I was dying . . .

  No, I wasn’t – I was flying. Something caught at my wrist at exactly the same time as something caught at my ankle. They’d got me. They would pull me off the ladder. I’d crash ten feet or so on to the concrete floor and it wouldn’t do me any good at all. If that didn’t render me unconscious their boots soon would.

  I tried to kick and at the same time someone grabbed my other wrist. I was being pulled in half.

  My free leg was waving around like a flag on a breezy day. I had no control over it at all. I certainly can’t take any credit but it connected with something and suddenly the pressure was gone. I was hauled through the hatch. Head first. It wasn’t graceful. The hatch slammed shut behind me.

  I’d like to think the two of them tried to catch me or at least break my fall, but if they did then they made a lousy job of it. I crashed on to the floor and lay, alternately stunned and dying. I had no idea what I’d fallen on, but I’d really bashed my shoulder on the way down and, believe it or not, I’d bitten my tongue as I landed. I could feel the metallic taste of blood.

  Adrian and Mikey were yelling at each other. I could feel a vibration running through what I assumed was the floor. Lights flashed around me. This couldn’t be good. Were we going to blow up? The noise rose to an ear-splitting whine. Adrian was counting down. I hoped to God everyone outside had got clear. There’s a safety line for a reason.

  ‘Now,’ shouted Adrian. ‘Jump. Jump. Jump.’

  The whine became an escalating scream.

  Bloody hellfire. I closed my eyes and waited for death.

  Believe it or not – the world exploded in shards of purple.

  30

  Time for a bit of a recap, I think. To give me the chance to pull myself back together again.

  Obviously, I hadn’t broken our two young tearaways out of TPHQ. We’d been allowed to get away. Not that everyone had been in on the plan. Yes, the security chief – who wasn’t going to thank me for letting one of his prisoners go free and tying up his Master Sergeant – had known about it. But not the Master Sergeant herself, who was probably going to spend the rest of her life looking for me.

  The senior mechanic had known. The one who had so conveniently left the mobile ladder for us and made sure everyone was down at the far end of the pod bay.

  And Commander Hay, of course. And probably Captain Farenden. And Captain Ellis.

  And that was it. Anyone else we encountered would have done their best to take us down. Or take us out altogether. They hated Adrian and Mikey for making fools of them for years and I hadn’t used my time there to make friends and influence people, either. If we had been caught, then the three of us would have ‘fallen down the stairs’ any number of times on our way back to the detention area.

  Not that Adrian and Mikey’s ‘capture’ had been entirely genuine, either. My unscheduled appearance at the remote site had been enough for Dr Bairstow – concerned we might find ourselves trapped between Ronan and the people in London – to bring forwards his plans. Leon had shot off with Adrian and Mikey to collect the teapot so they could be ‘captured at last’ by the Time Police. Something that, given the state of them when they eventually arrived back at TPHQ, they deserved considerable credit for.

  Now for Phase Two. Here we were – fugitives
in the wind and with the full force of the Time Police about to come down on us. And in possession of the world’s most dangerous pod. Word would soon get out. We would be attracting all sorts of attention. From all sorts of people. And from one person in particular. Or so I hoped.

  Mikey appeared in my blurred vision and bent over me.

  ‘Max, how are you?’

  ‘Hurrrr,’ I said.

  ‘I know – the take-off can be a little bit . . . uncomfortable if you’re not expecting it. Here, have some cheese.’

  ‘Nnnnnn,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll soon feel better, I promise you.’

  I looked at the small cube of sweaty cheese.

  ‘Nkyu.’

  ‘Let me get you a blanket.’

  I felt like granny being tucked up by her granddaughter. No, scrub that – great-granddaughter. But the cheese did help. I have no idea why. Slowly, the effects of the Time Police sonic gun wore off. My stomach settled, my eyesight was no more blurred than it usually was without my specs, and I could sit up and look around.

  To begin with, I could hardly believe I was in a pod. The walls were circular. I could see two very narrow bunks – little more than planks, really. There were no lockers, but on the other hand they didn’t own anything, so why would they want lockers? There was no bathroom. Not even a bucket that I could see. They did have some sort of console, which at the moment was buried under chocolate wrappers, spill-proof mugs, and a half-eaten sandwich which might have been there for some considerable time.

  A pair of Adrian’s underpants hung off some sort of joystick. He saw me looking, snatched at them and stuffed them away somewhere. There was a distinct sockiness in the atmosphere. You’d never think I was sprawled in just about the most dangerous piece of equipment in the world today.