Day of Rebellion Read Online Free Page A

paraphernalia on display in various glass cabinets.
    Angus found his voice. “This is it, isn’t it? It’s the Revisionist base. What VIGIL would give to see this.”
    “Buried somewhere beneath the Bass Rock in the middle of the Firth of Forth… mind blowing,” Jack said. “How did they build it all?”
    “And keep it secret?”
    Jack bit his lip. “It’s like the Marie Celeste .”
    “Yeah – too creepy.”
    Jack stepped further into the library and suddenly stopped in his tracks. He felt his insides convulse.
    “Oh God… there’s another one.”

The Rock
    T he second body was lying face up next to a low table in the library. The man’s lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling and a dark pool of blood oozed out from beneath him. Jack’s shock was tempered by only one thing. The body wasn’t his father’s.
    “That blood looks fresh… it must have just happened.”
    Jack didn’t want to look any closer.
    Angus pointed to the floor. “You’re right, dark drops… it’s a trail of blood… goes through to the next room.”
    “Must be from that guy…”
    “No. Look. It stops well before where he’s lying. Someone else must be injured.”
    Jack trembled in horror. “It could be Dad’s blood.”
    Suddenly, from deep inside the underground complex, they heard a dull mechanical whine. It was rising quickly in pitch and volume, like a jet engine preparing for take-off.
    Jack glanced at Angus. They recognised the noise and knew it meant only one thing.
    Without saying a word, they rushed through the doorway at the far end of the library. The scene before them was strangely familiar. Directly in front of them, was a solid wall of thick green glass that extended from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. The glass had the same hue and texture as the Taurus blast screen at VIGIL HQ. Beyond this was a large machine embedded withina network of interconnecting pipes, cables and gantries. They were standing in front of the Revisionist’s time-travel machine. It was just like the VIGIL Taurus, but, if anything, even bigger. Jack and Angus stopped in their tracks and stared in amazement. They could tell by the shrill scream of the generators and the throb of the alert lights that the Taurus was already fully powered up. Jack looked up to the transfer platform in the upper level of the machine. The atmosphere above the platform within the semi-enclosed transfer chamber was changing. It was as if the air had become molten and was moving and wobbling like some sort of super-heated plasma. Up on the platform, Jack could see a man. His image distorted and then, suddenly, he was gone. Almost instantaneously they heard the generators power down and in seconds the Taurus returned to normal.
    “That guy up there – I couldn’t see clearly – but are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Angus said uneasily.
    “I know…” Jack agreed his voice trembling with fear, “it looked just like him…”
    “Pendelshape.”
    “But it’s impossible. Pendelshape is dead. We saw it with our own eyes – we saw him die in France in 1940.”
    “Maybe it was a trick of the light.”
    Suddenly the blast screen started to lower and in seconds it had encased itself back in its housing. Now Jack and Angus could see the Revisionist Taurus in all its detail. It sat there, brooding and waiting, like some powerful mythical beast.
    “What a monster.”
    “Look…” Angus said, and pointed.
    The trail of blood from the library led directly up to the Taurus and onto the steps that accessed the gantry to the transfer platform.
    “So it was the guy who was hurt…” Angus said.
    “Or maybe someone else…”
    Angus looked at Jack quizzically.
    “I don’t know, Angus, but there’s been a serious fight here. Two guys are dead. Maybe Dad wanted to meet us here but something went badly wrong. Maybe when he got here he found these guys – I don’t know… Maybe they’re the last of the Revisionists? Maybe that one we saw up on the