The Trouble With Time by Lexi Revellian Page A

more force. As the cuff gave way and his hands separated, he noticed the darkness was less absolute, and shapes were becoming distinct once more. Birds tweeted in a desultory autumnal way. It was dawn. It had taken him all night to get this far.
    His wrists were sore and bloody where the bands had cut into them, his knuckles raw. He wiped his face on his sleeve to try to remove the slugs’ slime. He felt in his pockets for his penknife to release his feet, but the moment he found his phone had gone, he realized Quinn must have searched him while he was unconscious. In the corner of an inner pocket his fingers closed on something Quinn had missed; hard and triangular like a plectrum, it was a locator he’d borrowed from Kayla weeks ago and forgotten about. Jace smiled a grim smile to himself. If a time traveller approached within a mile radius, the locator would give him a minute’s notice, beeping louder the nearer it got to the location where the traveller would time in. He put it carefully away again, and used a slim metal tag on a zip to slide into the roller-lock and remove the cuffs from his feet and the remaining wrist band.
    Jace stretched and looked about him; exhausted, chilled to the bone, and feeling as if he’d been on the rack. What would be happening back in his own time? Nothing yet; it would be around six in the morning there as well as here. But later . . . he imagined life going on without him, his colleagues discussing his unexplained absence, ringing his dataphone. As the hours passed, Quinn’s initial pretended concern would turn to reluctant drawing of conclusions: the obvious, neat solution to the mystery of the vanishing TiTrav and the missing operative.
    Would Kayla accept this story, or not believe it of him and do some investigating on her own? That would be dangerous for her. He desperately longed to be back in his own time, sorting things out, exposing Quinn. Frustration and misery gripped him. This would not do; if he was going to survive, and he was, he had work to do – he needed to get his stiff limbs moving, explore, discover where he was, look for shelter, tools and food.
    The tops of tall buildings were visible above the trees. He headed towards them, to look for a knife.

CHAPTER 11
The wrong question
    Thursday, 23 rd July 2015
     
    “Florence?”
    Floss swivelled, house keys poised by the lock, her other hand holding her bike steady. Nobody had called her Florence since her school days. Screwing up her eyes against the sun, she saw a tall solidly built man with stubble-short hair standing on the pavement. She could have sworn the street was empty a moment before. Though it was a warm evening, he wore a padded jacket and heavy boots.
    He came up the steps towards her. “Florence Dryden?”
    “Yes, what is it?”
    His hand reached out and grabbed her arm, jerking her away from the bicycle. For an astonished second she looked into cold blue eyes, then the world went dark, inky black, and her stomach felt as if she was simultaneously plummeting in a lift and spinning on a fairground ride. Time passed, long enough for her to wonder if he had hit her over the head – was this what being knocked out felt like? Or maybe this was what death felt like. Terror assailed her while she battled with acute nausea, then she felt solid ground beneath her feet and could see again. Someone barrelled past her, knocking her out of the stranger’s grasp and on to all fours. Floss vomited convulsively on rough wet grass, eyes watering, damp soaking through the knees of her jeans while a steady rain fell on her back and seeped through her tee shirt. Behind her she heard thuds and grunts. As soon as she could, her stomach emptier than it had ever been before, weak as a kitten, she struggled upright and turned.
    She wasn’t in Islington any more. Ancient gravestones covered in moss and ivy leaned drunkenly towards each other, and tree saplings sprouted through ragged grass. Where was she? And how had