“This way, Mister Jonas. Take a seat there, please.” Gum had never been so far into a police station before, only once, as far as the front desk, to report the joker that had presumably found it funny to keep hiding various international bread items in his garden.

  “You say you're up here on holiday? Brought your work with you - is that it?” asked the weasely-looking detective in the lilac shirt.

  “Yes, I…” Gum began, as the man tried to sit facing backwards on his chair, wrestling his legs through the metal sidebars.

  “Doesn’t look like work though, does it?” he interrupted. “That one,” - he checked his notebook - “Shamra; not looking good is he?”

  “Well no, I…”

  “Your work often put people in comas does it?” He didn't wait for a reply. “Five of ’em. All flat out, unresponsive.”

  “Look, I'm trying to…” Gum began, standing, unable to disguise his annoyance. The stockier detective, his fake tan uneven under the fluorescent lights, strode forward, almost nose to nose with Gum, staring right through his pupils into the back of his skull.

  “Sit down, Mister Jonas,” the other said with a smirk. “We've examined your ‘holiday’ cottage and it looks suspiciously like there was a struggle took place in there.”

  “What? No!” Gum protested. That was Elmo - he knocked the table over. I just didn't tidy up because…” He paused when he realised that the two detectives were whispering to each other rather than listening. “Shouldn't you be taking notes?” he grumbled.

  “You know what I think?” the vocal one said, rubbing a cramp developing in his thigh from being awkwardly angled in the chair frame. “I think you drugged them all, intending to…” he screwed his face into a knot of disgust.

  “What?” Gum protested, on his feet again. “One of them is my wife! The others…”

  “All the way up here in Yorkshire just for a bit of a training exercise? Looks suspiciously like a case of time-theft to me. Health and safety doesn't cut it really, does it? Long way from home, I'd say? You see, we've checked, and none of your so-called friends, currently dead-to-the-world in Accident and Emergency, actually work with you.”

  “I didn't say they did!” Gum exclaimed in a voice louder than he had intended. “You know, I thought throwing baseless accusations at innocent people like this only happened on TV! You aren't interested in what's actually happened.”

  “This is the real world, Mister Jonas, though you don't seem especially interested in that - the real world.” The one Gum now thought of as ‘Pinky’ picked up the virtual reality headset that had been sitting on the incident room table. “Not the kind you get free at a motorway service station,” he said. “Custom job? Beats drugging your victims, I suppose.”

  Gum took a deep breath and sat back down. The big cop in the faux leather jacket, or ‘Porky’ as Gum mentally tagged him, leaned on a radiator, sipping his cold coffee as Pinky made an attempt to get up, then abandoned the process as his leg caught on the metal frame of his chair again. This was a mistake. Gum cursed himself for not knowing better than to involve the authorities.

  *****

  Hurrying along a narrow tunnel with a central gutter carrying water away from the columned chamber, Three found his mind full of hurtling images. He struggled to recall how he had ever gone from a normal life to this poor-paperback-sci-fi-novel of an existence, fleeing from a three-foot rat in a cloak. His heart pumping from the stress of confrontation, his knees easily gave way beneath him as a flood of green fluid and an equally green, slippery body fell upon him from above.

  Gasping, he took a few moments before he recalled the instruction he himself had given to 666: flush subject five if the escape plan had to be actioned. That was supposed to be Holi. She was needed if things were to be restored. But this green creature blinking up at him from the gutter was not Holi.

  No time for deliberation now. Grabbing the ear of the protesting creature, he pulled it along behind him as he proceeded through the gloom. Kicking open a small square grate, he crawled out into open air. He was outside the complex. He knew the place intimately. Although it had been flung together by many conflicting creators, he had been the one to lead the mapping of the place – a task that was yet to be completed; maybe it never would be. Nonetheless, he knew this place and he knew which route to take to meet with the committee before anyone else could reach them.

  What he didn’t recognise, however, were the huge mechanical things trailing long arms, reminiscent of vacuum cleaner hoses, floating in the air, scanning the area.

  *****

  When the TV had pulled at Mist's hand, she had fallen to the floor. She assumed she had fainted. Sitting up, Mist rubbed at her face, sensing something had changed. The first thing she noticed was that the fire was still on. She was quite pleased to find it still blazing away as before.

  “So I shall be warm here at least, whatever is going on.”

  It took a few moments to register that her room was inverted, backward - like a mirror image. Moving to the door, she pulled it open, wondering if everything beyond would be likewise back-to-front. However, a disused corridor seemed to have replaced the rest of her home. The musty smell and flaking walls were a contrast to the mirrored room. This looked like a derelict, deserted building.

  Mist peered down the corridor, where half-open doors with peeling paint were lit by a series of windows on the opposite side. Sunlight strained through dust and grime to form angular patterns on the walls and floor. Mist ventured along the corridor, looking for - well, she didn't really know what she was looking for. Perhaps there was a staircase, the view from the murky windows suggested she was currently upstairs. A staircase might mean a way out.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Rounding a corner at the end of the corridor she found an empty lift shaft and a stairway that led down to a shabby foyer and main entrance. Pulling at the handles, she found the great entry doors unyielding. In the back of her mind she kept the thought that she could always go back to the mirror room if she needed to. Yet she felt compelled to venture further for now.

  In the dusty foyer a broken lift hung, jammed in its shaft. Another downward stairway looked dark and foreboding. She was about to try a different direction when a distant howl somewhere above made her jump. The eerie sound might have been the wind, but it was enough to make the gloom of the stairs seem worth braving. Mist hurried downward, following the right-angle turns that bent the descent into a box-like spiral.

  A faint orange glow below was the first hint that this place wasn’t completely abandoned. The light touched the stairs casting soft shadows in the corners. Should she keep going or…? A shudder shook Mist’s shoulders as she thought of the wind-dog sound she had heard. There probably was no dog, but an unknown orange light seemed more appealing than finding out for sure.

  A sound like water movement in a cave drifted up from the direction of the light as she continued downward. Was there an underground pool? Did the steps lead to a grotto or subterranean passage? She thought of the Narnia stories in the large, boxed special edition Roan had given her as an anniversary present and the strange pools between worlds.

  Considering again the option of returning back up the stairs, Mistletoe was surprised when she rounded a final corner and saw a beautifully crafted, tiled pool lit by burning braziers. The pool was about two metres wide - intimate, with a row of little lights at water level. It was partly sheltered within a chamber of smooth stone blocks glowing in the warmth of fire-light, but as she entered the chamber she saw that the far end extended into open air, draped with foliage, sunshine streaming in. The place reminded her of a spa retreat, soft fragrances touched the air and the glassy ripples of the water looked very inviting. This was better.

  *****

  Number Three galloped down the old wooden staircase to the library, midget-ear in hand, panting, “We’re compromised! He knows we know!” Three Elmo's, gathered round a set of transparent blue holoscreens on a large table, jumped in unison.

  One, in a painted leather jacket and hair swept dramatically to the left, cried, “What? How does he know? How much?”

  “He knows enough. He knows we know he’s been tampering with Gum back in Timeline 3. Omle, shut the bug down!” An Elmo whose toned physique stood out like a thumb among fingers banged a fist on the green-surfaced table between them.

  “He’ll come for us!” another growled, peering over a pair of small, round indoor shades. “What's with the green guy?”

  “He fell on me. Flushed. Someone messed up. Never mind that. I know that he knows that we know... because I, er... I let it slip that we know about him and First-Elmo, what he did to him in his sleep...” Three slumped into a chair, breathing heavily.

  “The whole of Elmokind knows that is crossing a line!” the swept-hair member of the Elmo gathering protested. “Interfering with First-Elmo is wrong, we all agreed that we wouldn’t tamper with TL1! Wasn’t it Holi that was supposed to be flushed?”

  “He’s cowardly and has no boundaries,” Shades grumbled. “We’ve analysed every moment of that day in TL1. He did this just so he could personally explore original time! We specifically told Six Six Six to flush Holi! Wait - who gave him the details? Mole?”

  An Elmo fatter than the rest, slouched on a padded sofa, slammed a doughnut greasily onto the seat and grumbled, “Melo's right. He’s too cowardly to risk going in bodily in case he can’t get back, so he violates our originator’s body!” He sounded genuinely outraged at this sacrilege. “Without him knowing! In his sleep! How can he justify it?” He looked around to check whether he had successfully changed the subject as he licked a finger and used it to retrieve doughnut fragments. Then he added quietly, “I wrote the instructions.” When everyone looked at him accusingly, he protested, “Holi! I wrote Holi! Ell eye! You don’t suppose?”

  “Hob!” Shades huffed. “We got Hob thanks to your scrawl! A nibblin from the UnKnown World. No-one needs to put him back!”

  “Never mind him,” Three said, releasing the nibblin and staring at one of the active holoscreens. “Two's broken every agreement we made: using devices, tampering with time... He's testing the limits. The bug we planted, Omle, has he seen it?”

  “Gave me the creeps seeing him trance-out with his lackey holding a device inches before his ugly, whiskered face,” Mole said.

  “He's not like the rest of them,” the swept-haired Elmo muttered, stabbing at a keyboard. “Trying to untangle time, get back to ‘normal’ life. Two wants something else. He's frightened of time travel in case he ends up stranded when he jumps, but even I think using a device to get into the thoughts of others is immoral. TL3 Gum is suffering for it, we all met him, or copies of him in the attic. He knew someone was interfering in his thoughts, he fought it, but... The bug? Hard to tell.”

  “He's not like the rest of us, full stop! Just look at him! I know we aim to be different, but a rat? Who says he's really even Elmoid?” Mole shouted. “It's a word! Come on, none of us descend from a timeline where a stray rat swaps bodies with us.”

  “No, but we know there is a first timeline and we know he's done the unthinkable and got into First-Elmo there. He's too spineless to actually go to day zero, so he gets in First-Elmo’s brain in the days before Yorkshire, whilst he's asleep. We all had the dreams, we all had those! Trapped in nightmares of portals, pins, devices and wardrobes. They're not just crazed montages of stories, and TV programs. Why would he come up with the brilliant idea of the phage? What did he need to hide from us? He ran his phage in us, we were all First-Elmo once or copies of him and then he ran it in Mistletoe. With her crazy dreams she’d hardly notice anything was different.”

  “With the phage to clean up afterwards, that rat could explore anyone's head to his heart’s content. But how far will he go? We all went through the stunt in the attic that ended us up here. Jumps in time, copies of copies, more and more twisted. You copy a copy, you get defects.” Melo stood next to the bulky form of Mole, peering over his shades, to emphasise his point.

  “Vive le différence!” Mole cried, thrusting an arm in the air.

  “Who else has he used? He might not risk exploiting First Elmo too far, but Gum or Mist? How far would he push? That creature they had in the labs, that ogrish thing - it had Gum written all over it, but like he'd been stretched too far, copied too often.”

  “Yes!” Omle agreed, flicking his straying fringe back leftward. “Number Two jumps back and back and back, over and over, testing the limits, seeing how far he could push it. What do you think, Three? Was it some Gum abomination?”

  As Three’s mind flashed back over covert observations, it occurred to him that maybe they weren’t the only ones capable of planting bugs. Anxiety etched into his features, he peered under the table, then around the edges of the shelves and chairs, feeling every crevice with his fingertips.

  “What are you doing?” Mole demanded as others caught on and joined the search. A steady diet of eighties spy thrillers had taught all they needed to know about espionage and adventure.

  “Here!” the bullish Elmo announced, snatching at something bright red that flew up from a pot plant at his approach.

  “What have you got Leom?” Three asked.

  Opening his big fist, Leom revealed a tiny, metallic mosquito struggling to take flight. He crushed it, hearing its delicate parts crack. “Out!” he shouted, but before Mole could lead, or rather obstruct the group up the stairway, a large, red mechanical probe hove into the room swinging in a graceful arc, focusing a big, bright eye on the startled committee.

  “Run!” It was a pretty obvious thing to yell.