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Spangler could feel his knees screaming in protest as his feet pounded against the stone floor of the courtyard. He rounded the corner and came face to face with a group of around ten men, nine of them raised crossbows to greet him. The one who didn’t, who stood at the front of them, was Lord Garsh. They both froze as their eyes met. For a moment, Spangler thought he detected slight panic there. The moment was brief. Lord Garsh broke into a broad smile and folded his arms.
“Arthur, so good to see you.”
Spangler felt the presence of the man. It felt like they were two opposing magnets being faced towards each other, repelling with a force that seemed impossible to overcome. This was never meant to happen, the two of them were never meant to exist together.
“Hello Aubrey.” A slight flutter ran through the men behind Garsh, hearing his first name had somehow surprised them.
“So your plan after all this time is to turn up alone and attempt to fight me? Or did you hope that the rabble you seem to have roused on the streets would come to your assistance? Maybe now is the time to tell you that they appear to be retreating faster than my men can even chase them?” He gave a cold laugh at this and looked over his shoulder at the men behind him, encouraging them to laugh too. He was reward with a series of low chuckles.
“I am here to surrender myself to you.”
“Well, well, well, finally lost your fight have you Arthur? Given up on your little ‘team’ have you?” He pronounced the word team as though it was something he’d just had to scrape off his shoe.
“What we did was wrong Arthur, we have brought so much misery to the universe, to all of the universes.” A few of the men looked at each other at this point, confusion on their faces. “What you don’t realise Aubrey, is that we were never the ones with power after the accident. It was someone else entirely.”
~~~~
Spencer and Becky laid the unconscious form of Lisa on the giant four poster bed of the Queen’s bedroom. They had already moved the similarly comatosed body of Mabel into the other guest room, far enough away to not be affected by the Vibobbler’s effects. Becky pulled the device from her handbag and laid it on the bed. Then she removed a small bottle of fog and passed it to Spencer.
“I am not going to miss drinking this stuff.” He held the bottle up to the light, it swirled like smoke in the light. She smiled at him.
“Oh I don’t know, you get used to it.” He frowned at her in disbelief, unscrewed the lid and took a large swig. He felt the familiar punch to the throat and held onto the bed post while his knuckles went white. Becky took the bottle from him and followed suit.
“Ready?” she asked once she had taken a moment herself to recover from the drink. “This is probably going to be rough, we haven’t had much and it won’t have had time to take effect.” He nodded in acknowledgement and watched her turn the tiny handle which sat on the side of the device. He felt the air thicken, the room swam slightly and his internal organs seemed to try desperately to get outside of his body. It was easier than the first time, but that wasn’t saying much.
The room changed around them, focussing into another bedroom, decorated differently, but still in an opulent manner. As soon as he was able to stand and move again, he moved over to the window and looked out. Outside he saw cars moving along a busy street on the far side of a large courtyard, similar, but different to the one they had been in not long ago in Alexandria. A crowd of tourists bustled in front of large gates. He knew where he was.
“Er, Becky? We may have a problem.” He turned to see Becky fiddling with the device, already setting it to return them back to Alexandria.
“What is it?” She asked distractedly.
“I think we’re in Buckingham Palace.”
~~~~
Queen Lisandra opened her eyes and looked around. She appeared to be at the racecourse still, but... the place was deserted. There were no footmen in the room, no handmaids stood nearby, waiting to tend to her every whim. She walked over towards the balcony, as she stepped out it was clear that a considerable amount of time had passed since she had last been... been what? Conscious she supposed. The stands were empty, the crowds were gone. The bunting had been removed from the fences and there wasn’t a horse in sight. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, she was getting rather annoyed. In fact, bloody furious was a more apt description. She hoisted up her skirt and marched towards the door. Someone was going to take her back to the palace this instant, and then, someone would pay dearly for this.
~~~~
Lord Garsh sneered at Spangler, one side of his neatly trimmed moustache rising with the curl of his thin lips.
“What on earth are you talking about Arthur? Look around you.” He raised his arms out wide, gesturing to the palace which rose behind him like a mountain. “I control all of this, is that not enough power for you? The country is virtually mine!” He laughed in a high pitch, peculiar way.
“A country?” Spangler spoke quietly, showing no sign of anger. “A country is nothing. You never really understood did you?”
“Me?” Garsh shrieked, “It was you who always thought small Arthur! You wanted to just test your theories, to publish dusty academic papers that nobody would read or care about, I wanted to change the world! To own it!”
Spangler shook his head slowly. “That’s the thing Aubrey, you and I were never the ones who had that power.”
~~~~
Mr Pall stepped round the corner of the narrow alley and smiled. A few hundred yards away he saw around twenty men hauling a contraption on wheels which had various tubes running out from the large metal body that sat on the back of the cart. The sound that came from it was deafening. The sound of a fake riot. He’d caught up with the group of palace guards who had been sent out to deal with the rioters, and found them edging slowly down each street, spooked into a slow cautious advance by the noise which seemed to always be just around the next corner. He’d left them and hurried on on his own, cutting into side alleys to help pinpoint where the noise was coming from. It was easier in the smaller spaces where the sound was rolling around like waves against the wide, paved roads.
Now that he had seen what was responsible for the noise the guards had found so worrisome, he was impressed. It was quite a clever idea, and if it hadn’t have been for him, it would have worked. He jogged back through a couple of alleys and came out onto a main street where the guards were still cautiously edging their way along.
“Come on you idiots! There’s no riot! It’s a few blokes making a load of noise with a machine!” The guards stopped and looked at him in confusion before seemingly coming to the conclusion that it was safer to believe the dangerous man in front of them and risk running headlong into an army of rioters, than it was to actually tell him to his face that they didn’t believe him. He turned to run back towards the sound, and after a brief, nervous pause, they followed him. By the time they reached the alley where Pall had seen the noisy group, the machine had been moved almost to the end of the street. He stepped out and continued his run towards them, the guards fell in behind.
~~~~
“You have to be kidding me?" Becky walked to the window and looked out to see for herself. There was no denying it, they were in a bedroom of Buckingham Palace, in London, their London.
“We should have thought of this to be honest, I mean, we knew where we were back in Alexandria, it makes sense.” Spencer looked down at Lisa who lay sprawled across the bed. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, leave her here obviously,” Becky said “We can’t risk getting caught here, if we don’t get back and finish this, who knows what will happen.”
“I know, but come on Becky, what’s going to happen to her when she’s found here? Look, she’s crazy, but I'm not sure she deserves that.”
They both fell silent, staring at Lisa. Suddenly, there were voices from the hall outside the door, and they looked back at each other in panic. Spencer looked around the room and saw a large wardrobe which stood on one side next to a dressing table. He started towards it, Becky clearly had the same idea as she was right behind him. Inside were a few thick, heavy coats wrapped in plastic and a few pairs of shoes which sat on the floor. They stepped in and pulled the door closed behind them. Almost immediately, they heard the bedroom door open from the other side of the room. Two, extremely posh women’s voices came through the gap in the thick oak doors.
“I don’t know what he was thinking, arranging a cocktail party when the you know who is away, like he’s eighteen again and... Oh my word! Well would you look at this Clarissa! Another one of these nouveau riche floozies who just want to get on the cover of Heat Magazine! She’s clearly had too much to drink. Why don’t you go and call someone who can take her home dear.”
~~~~
Albert was running out of fuel. The men had been pulling a large coal scuttle on wheels alongside the riot machine he had created, shovelling it in as they moved through the streets as fast as they could drag the heavy boiler. Once the fuel was gone, the plan was to scatter. The men would go home and if Mrs Strang was anything to do with it, get a clip round the ear for joining up with Garsh in the first place, and he was to make his way to a place called Ingress. He’d never been there, but he had been given directions. Now if he could just get another few minutes out of the boiler... It was then that he noticed the group of men a few hundred feet down the road from them, and advancing quickly.
The man at the front was grinning, and not in a nice way. It was the kind of grin that suggested it was the last smile that many, many men had seen. The men behind him wore bright red uniforms, and although Albert wasn’t sure what the uniforms were for, he knew they were not good news.
“Run!” he shouted to the men, who were concentrating so hard on their tasks to keep the sound coming and the cart moving, that it took them a second to catch on. He realised they weren’t going to disentangle themselves from the machinery and make an escape before the men reached them. Without thinking, he tore the coal shovel from a man whose mouth was forming an ‘O’ at the encroaching group, and ran head on towards them, shovel raised above his head. Everything seemed to run in slow motion. There was a split second when he thought he had caught the leader off guard. Just a few feet away he had already begun to swing the shovel over his shoulder to hit the man, but then he saw his face change. A grin had spread across the man’s face as he shifted his weight mid-run and stepped to the side of Albert’s charge.
Albert tried to adjust, but it was too late, his balance was all wrong. The man passed to the right of him and swung a small truncheon which landed with a crack on the back of Albert’s head.
~~~~
Spencer opened the wardrobe door a crack and looked out into the room. Everyone had gone. They’d both heard the woman called Clarissa come back with two servants of some sort. The two men had carried Lisa away, apparently towards a taxi and then a hotel. They hadn’t been able to find any identification on her, so they had decided to let her sleep it off in one of the more luxurious London hotels. There had been one dangerous moment when the two women, as Lisa had been lifted off the bed, began to discuss her dress. The louder of the two had said, "Just who does she think she is? Wearing a gown like this! Like she’s somebody!" Becky had very nearly laughed, but a nudge from Spencer in the black of the wardrobe had forced her to stifle it.
It had now been silent for almost ten minutes, and he was sure the room was clear. He stepped out and walked to the door which led out onto the corridor, putting his ear to it. Silence. He locked it to be sure no one would disturb them again, and turned back to Becky who was laying the device on the bed.
“Are we ready?”
“Yep.” She pulled a second bottle of fog from her bag, took a long draw, and passed it to him. He took what was left of the small bottle and sat next to her on the bed.
“Here we go then, let’s hope what’s waiting for us on the other side is ok.”
She turned the handle slowly, the room slipped out of focus.
~~~~
Lord Garsh walked the few yards which separated him from Spangler, pulling a small dagger from his belt as he did so.
“I don’t care about your bizarre little theories Arthur. It’s all over for you now anyway. You can’t stop me. I have our world, but there’s so many more Arthur, so many. And I intend to have them all.” He moved to just a few inches from Spangler’s face and brought the knife up, placing it against the old man’s throat. Garsh gave a thin smile as he drew the blade along Spangler’s cheek, drawing a thin line of blood.
“I intend to make you hurt Arthur.”
~~~~
Mr Pall led his men along the street towards the palace gates. Albert was being carried by two guards, one on each arm. He was conscious now, but he wasn’t enjoying the experience. His head pounded like a jackhammer and his feet didn’t seem to want to obey him properly. A carriage was coming at some speed from the other end of the street. The men stopped as it neared them, the driver heaving on the reigns as it reached the gates. Mr Pall walked towards it, arms folded.
“What’s the hurry mister?” He shouted up to the driver, who was looking over the scene in front of him with some confusion.
“Er....” The driver turned back towards the carriage doors which burst open as he spoke. A small, furious woman dressed in a rather ornate dress stepped out and marched over to the group of men who were now stood dumbfounded.
“What on earth is going on here?!”
Everybody froze. Everybody except Mr Pall.
“What are you doing out here? You need to get back inside before you get into trouble.”
“Trouble!” The woman seemed to puff up like a balloon. “I am your Queen man! I do not get into trouble, I do what I bloody well like and that often involves getting other people into trouble! Guards! Arrest this man!”
The men behind Mr Pall looked around at each other. The man they had been taking orders form was undoubtedly a nasty piece of work, but he was nothing compared to his right hand man, the man who they had taken orders from recently and was stood in front of them now. This man was as likely to kill them as he was someone who he considered their enemy, but, the Queen was the Queen, and the blood of Alexandrians were nothing if not loyal monarchists. Generations of obeying royalty was in their very DNA. A couple of them moved forward a step. Mr Pall cocked his head slightly as though listening, but didn’t turn around. Two other guards took a step.
It happened so quickly that Albert barely saw the motion until it had already happened. Pall reached into his coat pocket, pulled a small round object out and tossed it behind him. There was a loud crack and a burst of light bloomed from the street floor, blinding everyone for a moment. When they opened their eyes, Pall was already on the move, halfway across the street and darting into an alleyway.
~~~~
Spencer and Becky appeared back in the bedroom of the palace in Alexandria to find the two guards they had previously knocked out stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Becky reached into her handbag to try and find a blowpipe, but the two men had already got over the confusion of seeing two people appear in front of them, and had raised their crossbows.