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bring them back, and if she wasn’t able to request a return portal from the future, computer-Bob was to allow six real-time months to pass here before destroying the machine and erasing himself.
    ‘And … meantime, if anyone unauthorized enters this archway without us … then you do the same. Wipe everything. Do you understand?’
    > Yes. I understand. We have already discussed these protocols.
    She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes … yes, of course we have.’ She looked at Liam. ‘I’m just –’
    ‘I know. Clucking like a mother hen.’
    ‘Being thorough … I was going to say.’
    > Do not worry, Maddy. I will make sure this technology does not fall into the wrong hands.
    ‘Good. Right. Then … I guess I’m ready to go. You better give Liam the countdown.’
    A digital display appeared on one of the screens. One minute to go. She watched the seconds tick down.
    She listened to internal circuit switches clicking, the building hum of energy peaking held at bay and ready to be released. A sudden and melancholic notion occurred to her.
    This could be the very last time I see this place
.
    A stupid thought really. After all, every time they’d opened a window to the past, it could quite easily have been her last jump. There was no knowing what fate existed round the very next corner. All the same … it did somehow feel a little bit like a goodbye.
    ‘Liam?’
    ‘Aye?’
    She couldn’t think of anything meaningful to say. Nothing that could sum up the confusing swirl of thoughts and emotions inside her. ‘Just be careful, OK?’
    ‘Always am, Mads. Always am.’ He looked at the countdown display. ‘Ten seconds. Hands by your side and stand still like a good girl.’
    ‘Liam, you know I love you, right?’ she blurted as the noise of the displacement machine began to fill their dungeon. She wanted to quickly add something about not in ‘that way’ … but as a dear friend, as a brother, as a comrade in arms. But, as always seemed to be the case, her farewell words were being cruelly drowned out and she’d have to bellow them to him. But she saw she didn’t need to. He nodded back at her and mouthed, ‘
I know. Me too
.’
    The countdown on the screen showed five seconds. Time for one last reassuring smile. He replied with a wink … and a wave.
    Then she was gone and Liam watched the displacement field collapse to a pinprick of light, then vanish.



CHAPTER 6
     
1890, London
     
    The dungeon was quiet once more, with nothing but the distant muted chug of the Holborn Viaduct generator, the whir of computer fans and the clatter-click of hard drives to keep them company. He turned to Bob. ‘So, it’s just the two of us once again, big fella.’
    ‘Yes, Liam. Just the two of us.’
    ‘I suppose we’d better start identifying
exactly
where we’re deploying. Biblical Jerusalem, I suppose, is a bit on the finger-in-the-air side.’
    ‘Recommendation: we identify a specific time first.’
    ‘Aye. I recall you and Becks had a jolly good go at calculating the start and end times of the beam when we were back in the jungle?’
    ‘Correct. I have the data stored.’ He reeled off the statistics and figures on his hard drive, then broke the numbers down into the conclusions they’d come to eighteen months ago. The beam in the jungle had appeared to be deliberately directed through the very centre of the earth and out of the other side. Emerging, of all places, in the middle of the city of Jerusalem. More specifically, somewhere beneath the big temple in the city. The decay rate of the tachyons suggested the beam either started, or ended, at the very beginning of the first century.
    The time of Christ. Liam wondered whether that was significant or not.
    ‘You know the ideal time we need to aim for, Bob?’ Liam said. ‘Just before that thing is switched on. Like the day before or something. Perhaps we’ll even catch whoever these people are with their launching-ceremony party hats on, cracking