He hated to contradict her, especially at this junction, but he thought she was wrong. ‘If he’d have eliminated them, then the lights would be dead, not bouncing between sending signals and then dying. It must be something to do with the timeline. Maybe Vincent has altered it or influenced an alteration in it. If he’s gone back to before we intended to send him, then maybe we’re seeing two timelines, one where he hasn’t met them yet, and one where he has.’
‘Youssef, you’re banging my head in here,’ Kevin burst out, clearly interested in the theory but unable to grasp it.
‘Look at it like a fork in the road. The lights are still reporting on one prong, but they’ve been eliminated on the other. I think we still have a mission on our hands here, people. Somehow, in one timeline they have been eliminated, we need to make sure that we finish the job. We don’t know where they are, but we know where and when they terminate. Now, the way I see it is, in all the timelines, these fugitives will be at these locations. It must be a constant! All we need to do is be there to retrieve them.’ He was pointing at Martha Tabram’s dead-then-alive signal to emphasise his point. ‘We capture her here and get the transponder codes from her. Then the rest of them don’t need to die. We can take them one by one and bring them all back.’
‘Of course, that is if they’re willing. They might not come peacefully. In that case, we’ll need to terminate them in situ,’ Kevin pointed out.
‘Agreed,’ Youssef replied.
‘Do you think Vincent has had a hand in all of this?’ Jacqueline asked wistfully.
‘I don’t think it was a coincidence that after he disappeared, this started to happen,’ Kevin replied.
‘If we continue the mission then, do you think we might be able to rescue him, maybe bring him back?’ she asked, the hope in her voice was not lost on Youssef.
‘I don’t see any reason why not. We’d have to take a spare slug with us to inject him with, for the portal to be able to locate him. But I believe it’s possible,’ he replied with a widening grin on his face. ‘It just looks like a matter of finding a new Vincent,’ he continued, looking at Kevin.
66.
London. 1863
WHEN VINCENT MATERIALISED, he was instantly disorientated. The dark room he had appeared in was spinning, and he could feel his legs wanting to buckle beneath him. It hadn’t been like this the last time in Cardiff. That time, there had been a bright purple light and a small physical bump, and that was that, he was there. This time, he had been bathed in a stark, white light and he had the sensation of falling. He was supposed to have arrived in a large unused warehouse, the same warehouse that he was to rent, and use as a base of operations. Instead, he’d materialised in what he could only describe as a building site. There was hay, bricks, and wood everywhere. There were also some rudimentary saws and chisels, and a lot of cement.
As he took in his surroundings, something dawned on him. This was the warehouse he was due to materialise in, only it hadn’t been built yet. Something must have gone wrong in the transport, he thought.
With his head still whirling, he lifted his wrist to his mouth and whispered into it. ‘OP-One this is Clarence, are you receiving me?’
There was nothing.
‘OP-One, can you hear me? Please acknowledge. This is Vincent Clarence reporting in.’
Once again, nothing. Not even static.
He reached into his pack and retrieved his backup communication device and tried that.
It was the same result.
He set the two devices to contact each other as a test, and instantly they reported each other’s presence. There’s nothing wrong with the technology then, he thought, taking in a deep breath through his teeth. He opened his portable portal and spread it out on the ground to its full extent. He called up a map of the city and did a scan for any out-of-time technology. There was none, including his own. Why can’t it see any tech? It should at least read itself as a device, he pondered, getting rather worried at the predicament he found himself in.
A noise alerted him. It sounded like someone snooping around. Instinct kicked in, and he removed his extractor, just in case he needed it, and crept towards the source of the noise.
The night was dark, cloudy, and cold. Vincent crouched behind a sawhorse and waited for the noise to come again. As his eyes became accustomed, he scanned the area for movement. Eventually, he saw it: something, or someone, dressed head to toe in black was making their way across the yard. He could only just make out their silhouette as whoever it was got closer. The oversized helmet he was wearing made it obvious that it was a policeman. He was holding a tilley lamp but had not yet lit it.
‘Hello, is anyone there?’ the man shouted in a thick London accent. ‘Look, I saw the fireworks, you best get out of there right now. You’re breaking the law. If you want me to take you in, just stay where you are, and I’ll get you.’
Vincent watched as he fiddled with the lamp, trying to light it with a flint. He knew he couldn’t allow the policeman to arrest him. He couldn’t risk being thrown into an eighteen-hundred’s prison. He needed to make his escape.
‘I can see you back there,’ the policeman shouted as Vincent attempted to make his way out of the area using the shadows as camouflage. He raised the illuminated tilley lamp before jerking backwards. Vincent was closer to him than he’d expected. ‘What the…’ was all he managed to utter as he lost his footing and fell, dropping the lamp.
Vincent tried to catch him but was a second too late. He missed, and the policeman fell into a puddle with a splash. A distressed moan escaped him as he landed hard. Vincent assumed it was the wet and the cold that had made him complain; he hadn’t assumed it might have been a pickaxe that had been left on the ground, unattended by the builders, in their haste to leave that afternoon.
In the distorted light of the fallen lamp, Vincent watched as a dark stream leaked into the muddy water around the policeman’s head.
‘Fuck!’ he whispered falling on his knees next to him. Reaching into the pool of bloody water, he reached around the fallen man’s head, and felt the head of the pickaxe buried within the poor man’s neck.
Blood was frothing from his mouth as he stuttered, attempting to speak. ‘W… Who, who are you?’ Vincent recognised the ugly sound coming from him as a death rattle.
‘My name is Vincent Clarence. I’m not the bad guy. This was an accident. I’m so sorry. What’s your name?’ He couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. ‘What is your name? I’ll need to contact an ambulance or whatever you have in this age. Come on, tell me your name?’
‘Frederick, my name’s Frederick. Officer Frederick Abberline, warrant number 43519.’
He tried to lift his hand to touch Vincent’s face, but it fell short as his eyes glazed over. His hand dropped limply into the puddle. Vincent stared into the lifeless eyes of the young police officer.
He felt like crying, but he knew that he had no time to mourn this young man. He needed to disappear, but not before he got rid of this body. He also needed to configure his tools for this timeframe, if he was ever going to get back home. But, in order to do all of this, he needed to know what year it was. He had a sneaking suspicion he was going to be stuck here for a while.
He lifted the body of the policeman, wincing as the pickaxe dislodged from his neck. He noticed that the man was roughly the same size, build, and age as him. He wondered how easy it would be to integrate himself into the police force of this time. He reasoned that his training and insights would be far superior to the whole force put together.
He began to strip the corpse of his uniform.
It wasn’t exact, but it was at least a half decent fit.
~~~~
In the year eighteen-sixty-three, Frederick Abberline joined the Metropolitan Police force with the rank of Officer. Later that year, the same Frederick Abberline was killed in the line of duty while investigating a possible break-in at a building site in Spitalfields.
Undeterred by his
untimely death, in eighteen-sixty-five, due to exemplary service, he was promoted to Sergeant and moved from Whitechapel to Highgate. He settled there and worked hard, eventually earning himself the position of Inspector in eighteen-seventy-three.
In eighteen-seventy-eight, he moved back to Whitechapel and was promoted once again to Local Inspector.
Then, in eighteen-eighty-seven, for his exemplary work on several high-profile cases, he was moved to Scotland Yard.
In February eighteen-eighty-eight, he was promoted again to Inspector First Class, mainly due to his undercover duties and uncanny knack and hunches as to how the criminal mind worked.
All of this was not bad for a deceased policeman whose true calling finally came to him in the summer and autumn of eighteen-eighty-eight.
67.
Orbital Platform One. 2288
‘SHOULDN’T WE GO through the same process as we did with Vincent? A week’s training in another time?’ Youssef asked.
Kevin shook his head. ‘It won’t be necessary. We were all involved with that week’s training and were all privy to the information as it happened.’
‘That’s as maybe, but we weren’t there. We were here, safe and sound,’ Youssef replied hesitantly.
‘You worry too much. It’s basic training; we’ve all done it.’
‘But what if the women won’t give up the transponder codes and an extraction has to be made? That’s not basic training.’
‘Well, I hate to be insensitive, but it’s a case of get on with it. It has to be done, and it’s not like I haven’t done wet-work before.’
Youssef shook his head. ‘OK then, agreed. Are you ready to go?’
‘All set. Injections done, supplies ready, backpack filled. I’m ready to go, sir,’ Kevin replied with a salute.
Jacqueline handed a similar backpack to Kevin to the one she had handed to Vincent, a couple of days earlier. ‘Do we have any further idea of what could have caused the malfunction?’ Kevin asked as her accepted the pack.
She shook her head. ‘We have a theory, but that’s all it is. We think the nuclear power packs on the tools we equipped him with become unstable in the displacement. We’re still looking into it, so, for now, we’re issuing you with cellular ones. Just in case.’
Kevin could see the sadness in her eyes as he slipped the backpack on, concealing it beneath his cape. He nodded. ‘OK then, let’s do this.’
‘Start up the Hadron Collider,’ Youssef shouted.
68.
London. 1888
‘VINCENT, IS THAT you?’
Abberline was shaking as he held the mystery man in his arms. He had never felt like crying as much as he did right now. He removed the hat from the shadow’s head before reaching behind and untying the hair that had been bunched up in the back. He then removed the false moustache. Even though he knew who he had in his arms, he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was her, she looked exactly the same as she had the last time he’d seen her. Twenty-six years ago.
‘Jacqueline?’
‘Vincent? Vincent, I, I don’t know what to say,’ she stuttered as the dawning reality that it was an aged Vincent Clarence holding her. ‘How could you have aged so quickly?’
Abberline laughed. ‘Maybe it’s been quick for you, Jacqs, but I’ve been here twenty-six years.’
As he smiled at her; she could see, beneath his aged face, that it was the same smile he flashed at her prior to stepping into the pod.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I was going to ask you the same thing. I was in the Collider. It was a bumpy ride, and then I turned up in eighteen-sixty-three. There was an accident, and a young policeman died. It turned out that he was about my age and build. I realised that there had been an accident in sending me back. None of my tech would connect to twenty-two-eighty-eight. I concluded that I was alone. I decided, in honour of the dead policeman, I would become Officer Frederick Abberline, warrant number 43509!’
She was shaking her head. There was disbelief in her eyes, but also relief that Vincent was still alive. ‘You’ve been here for twenty-six years?’ She reached her hand to touched him, her fingertips tracing the lines of his face. ‘So, you’re what now? Fifty?’
‘Fifty-two,’ he nodded, the sadness in his smile almost broke her heart.
‘There was a power surge,’ she continued, trying to take her mind off the tears that were welling in her eyes. ‘It was the nuclear cores of your tools. They’re still in the process of dismantling Hadron One. We think that the nuclear power packs in the tools is not convivial to time travel. You’d been gone for three days before we made the decision to continue the mission.’
‘Why did they send you? Why didn’t Kevin take my place?’
Jacqueline laughed. ‘Youssef didn’t want anyone at first, but then we saw all the women’s quantum signals begin to flux until there were only three left. Whatever you’d done allowed us to know the locations, and times, of the women’s demises, so we made sure we were there for all of them. He said there was a chance that you had continued your mission, and we wanted to see if we could contact you. Initially, we did send Kevin. He got Martha’s slug, did a fine job too, but on the Nichols job, he was attacked by Callaghan and she almost killed him. We had to bring him back in an emergency transport.’
Abberline laughed, rocking back on his heels as he did. ‘You’re telling me that Kevin got taken out on his second job?’
Jacqueline laughed too. ‘Yeah, he was ribbed pretty hard about it once we got him back. After that, the decision was made. It was decided that I was to come back to search for you. I jumped at the chance, I was hoping you were still alive and well. But when I got here, I couldn’t connect to your tech, so I had to undertake the mission myself. I was hoping that you would turn up at one of the times and locations.’
Abberline shook his head. ‘I didn’t do anything! What happened after I left?’
‘All the women’s quantum signals began to fluctuate. They began to report times and locations of termination. It was strange as they were all still showing as live too. So, we thought that you were responsible for the extractions. I was sent back to get you. That never went to plan.’
‘I’ve had to jury rig my tech quite a few times, and the biographies of the women got lost somewhere amongst time. It became less of a memory, more like a dream. It wasn’t until I went undercover to try to locate a rogue reporter, to oust him for unscrupulous work practices, when I witnessed Tabram come back. The purple smoke, the strange light, the woman appearing from nowhere. It brought everything back to me, the reason I was here. I dusted off my portal and my other tools and attempted to locate them. I was getting new reports coming in all the time, but due to my elevated position in the force, I couldn’t just go and get them. I’ve employed the services of a local I know. He’s a bit deranged, and on edge, but for some reason, he’s tied to the women. He was also there when they arrived and has been there at most of your extractions.’
‘Am I being investigated?’ she asked.
Abberline chuffed at the question. ‘You’re the biggest news that has happened around here for a long time. A sensation! They call you Jack the Ripper; my acquaintance gave you the name. He heard you talking one time after an extraction, and he overheard Jack, ripper, so he thought that was your name.’
‘That would have been after I got the Nichols slug,’ she laughed. ‘Jacqueline here! I’ve extracted the slug. I had to rip it out of her. That would have been one of my logs.’
Abberline laughed again. ‘You’ve been the cause of mass hysteria here in the East End. No one has felt safe, not even the men. People have been blaming the aristocracy, the Jews, the freemasons.’
She shook her head. ‘I still haven’t finished. I’ve lost one woman; Emily Callaghan. I had her in my warehouse, but she got away, her signal went with it, even though I never took it. I don’t have Liz Stride’s slug either. I was disturbed in the process of extracting that one.’
/> ‘I’ve got them both,’ he smiled. ‘I took Stride’s just before she was buried, and I took the other one from the woman in your warehouse. I extracted that one myself.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘That’s a relief. I was worrying about that one, as the date had passed regarding the signal terminating, but I knew that I hadn’t gotten to her. I’d given up faith on meeting you and was worrying that the paradoxical laws were not true and someone from this time had gotten to her.’
‘Well, someone kind of from this time, did get to her,’ he laughed.
‘What do we do now? If I’m big news, then surely there’s a large section of the populace and the police force looking for me.’
Abberline smiled. ‘There is a large section of the police looking for you, but I’m the lead inspector on the case.’ He stood up and smoothed out his jacket, putting his shoulders back and standing to attention. ‘Inspector Abberline, First Class, at your service, ma’am.’ He offered out his hand to shake, and she accepted it.
He noticed there was something different about this young woman. There was something distant in her eyes, something hard. The killing of the fugitives had changed her from the sweet, innocent girl he remembered all those years ago, into something, or someone, else. He remembered her soft eyes, her mouth quick to laugh, and quick to kiss. She could always see the good in everyone. Maybe it was the years playing tricks with him, or maybe it was the fact that she was now a stone-cold killer.
‘Was Mary Kelly in the room with you, then?’ he asked.
She flipped the little flat metallic slug out of her pocket and threw it to him. ‘Yes,’ she replied.
He caught it and looked it over. It was still warm from the extraction.
‘That one was a bugger to get out as well. I’m telling you; you don’t want to see the state that I left her in back there.’
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