*THE TRAP DISARMED*
by OnlyTheGhosts
"Trapped forever?" Steel's voice expressed sudden amusement, "We're ageless and would only gain from the opportunity to practice our skills. They know that. And that tells me they were lying again."
"About what? They lied about everything?"
"Yes, they lied about everything. The claim of this being nowhere was another of their lies. They were trying to deceive us about the nature of the trap. They were lying about the location of this place."
Sapphire's expression was thoughtful. She was trying to understand what it was about this café and petrol station which could be a lie.
Steel walked back to the window, beyond which only stars could be seen. There appeared to be vacuum outside, yet the windows of the building and the doors had not exploded outward from the air pressure within. The contradiction itself was a clue to the nature of the trap.
Steel explained, "This place is not nowhere. We're in the same place, the same location. The device . . . think about what we saw and what we know about it. It could move people in time. We saw that is what it did. But the device never moved anyone or anything in location. It could move people in time, but not in space."
Understanding dawned on Sapphire's face, her expression changed to a brighter mood but only briefly as she echoed "In time, but not in space."
"We never moved in space. We're in the same place, it's not nowhere. It's somewhere. We're still at the petrol station . . . but in a different time. Sapphire, you can change that. Wind time back. Wind time back again and help me to save us both!"
The woman in the blue dress stood perfectly still, and stared. Her eyes turned blue. They glowed brighter as she forced herself to push this further than she ever had before. Movements blurred around them. The curtains in the window closed. The scattered chess pieces returned to the cases on the table. Quite suddenly the other man and woman reappeared as before but their actions were in reverse as Sapphire and Steel stood unmoving and watching. Then time was allowed to move forward again for all four of them.
This time around, neither Sapphire nor Steel were confused. They also had just appeared in the café, and didn't come in through door as when events had played out before. The transient man and his ally, the woman, were both seated at the same table as before. Just for a moment the man frowned as Sapphire and Steel were very suddenly within the room and hadn't entered through the door from outside as expected. Steel moved quick, grabbing the edge of the table and flipping the table into the face of the seated man. To the transient leader, Steel's sudden appearance and action were totally unexpected, but the man wasn't human, and he started to smile smugly. Until Steel's next move which hurt him more. Intense cold hit the man as Steel touched him. In moments, frost covered his body. The man screamed and froze solid.
Steel stepped back, allowing the table to fall down to the side. The surface along the edge was white with hoarfrost where Steel's hands had gripped the table. The young woman then realised what had happened to her non-human lover. She screamed in a voice of shock, horror, and dismay. Despite the blood which streamed down her face from a cut on her forehead, she reached out towards the frost-covered man who stayed frozen with his mouth open in agony.
Sapphire grabbed the woman's wrist and pulled her away, warning, "Don't touch him or you'll . . . "
The woman struggled though, and managed to put her fingers in contact with the frozen man's jacket.
"Ow! He's cold!"
Steel hadn't stopped moving, but swiftly pulled the brittle jacket apart, rifling through the frozen man's pockets. Steel found another slim case and shook it. There was no sound. It too had frost over the surface. Steel stood back up and struggled with clumsy fingers to unlatch the case. He opened it slowly, then adjusted a couple of the tiny controls within. Sapphire raised an eyebrow in curiosity as it outwardly seemed that Steel knew what he was doing entirely, but she knew he probably didn't fully understood the device's operation. Steel said nothing as he coolly aimed the device towards the frozen man.
The young woman's eyes widened and she rushed forward to prevent Steel from switching it on. Steel reacted without thinking, brushing her aside, the woman tripped backwards just as the device activated. Sapphire yelled "Not her too!"
Both the frozen man and the woman who had loved him shrank, falling away into a great distance, spinning, and disappearing.
Steel and Sapphire were again alone in the café.
"I didn't mean to . . . I didn't mean to send her too. I was planning to take her with us, back to her proper time."
Sapphire placed one hand on one of her partner's shoulders to placate him. She felt his dismay.
"You couldn't have expected her to do that . . . Where did you send him . . . and her?"
Steel shrugged very slightly, "I honestly don't know. I recalled the settings which Silver had used before and only turned the controls to copy what he had done."
"We are still trapped here, aren't we? Except for having that." Sapphire waved a hand indicating the slim case Steel held.
"Trapped only in space at this time, but not actually trapped in time. How did those two leave before? We saw them both leave, but they didn't walk out. Think about what we saw. They must have moved in time. The barrier does not prevent escape through time. Go back to before the barrier was there, we could go anywhere."
He adjusted the tiny controls within the slim device, while continuing, "My fingers are slow, too cold, and I nearly froze the controls before . . . but this should do what we need it to do. Our assignment isn't over yet. We have another problem to solve."
"Silver?"
"Two problems then. I would guess that they sent Silver somewhere else in time. First, I hope that I've guessed correctly how to operate this."
He adjusted a tiny control circuit and the café faded away for a moment of blackness.
The two of them, a man in a grey business suit and the woman in a blue dress, were standing outside a large wooden garage shed. A single gravity-feed fuel pump of antique style was nearby, it was painted fire-engine red, and was dirty with smudged oily grime despite being otherwise new in appearance. Adjacent to the garage was a house, not much more than a cottage. Pretty flower-patterned curtains hung visible within the windows. It was lightly raining here, overcast, and daylight. No one else was around as far as either of them could see as they glanced about. There was bird song, the sound of rain, dripping and splashing in puddles. Nothing repeated. The random sounds of wind occasionally passing through the trees. The susurrous of leaves in the forest surrounding them.
"We escaped." Sapphire's voice lilted in some surprise, "Time is normal here."
"Maybe . . . " Steel strode to the house next to the wooden shed, and looked within via the dirty window. There was a narrow gap in the curtains inside, through which he could see a small office. There was a calendar on the wall to his left. At the top was printed boldly, 1925.
Sapphire came over as Steel stared inside.
"This is the same place we saw before, the single pump service garage and the old man."
"He was one of them. The first to come here. This is the place where they met." Steel looked down at the muddied ground around them, "No recent tire tracks, maybe we've arrived too early, but probably not too late."
"Do you believe Silver could be here too?"
Steel didn't show much expression except thoughtfulness. He slowly replied after awhile, "No, not yet. We should leave now, you know . . . and become part of the problem. Another paradox unsolved. There would be a loop in the timeline but we'd have escaped and that higher authority which employed the transients wouldn't be the wiser about what had gone wrong for their plan. That will make them more anxious. It will confuse them. Without knowledge of what went wrong, they'll be more cautious about trying again. They have lost three of theirs and they won't know how."
"And for Silver? Gone forever? Lost somewhere? He's our friend. We don't have many of those to spare."
Steel's face didn't show much expression but Sapphire knew him. He was thinking. Hard. Calculating. Brilliant. She'd long ago learned to trust his genius for solving complex puzzles. He was determined, like her, and he'd find a way. Steel never gave up.
She just then noticed that there was ice accumulating on his shoulders and on his mop of hair. Steel's body was still too cold, and the rain was freezing as it touched him. He looked very tired, almost ill.
In mind, she said, You need to get warm and rest.
Yes, he replied, but we survived. We know that we can survive. Our personal timelines shouldn't be changed or we might not survive another attempt, time for us to leave and somehow, in some way, we'll learn what happened to Silver. We also still have this machine.
Steel moved closer to her, almost touching, they stood face to face looking into each other's eyes. Love unspoken shared between them. Together, they faded away . . .