"I'm full of surprises," I managed to say, after a while.

"I'll say," Suzie said dryly. "First the Reasonable Men, now the Shadow Men. Soon Walker won't have anyone left to send after you."

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said.

I rose shakily to my feet and wiped the sweat off my face with a handkerchief that had seen better days. Tommy actually winced at the sight of it. I put it away, and we all looked at the Time Tower. Suzie looked at me.

"Why do they call it a Tower when it manifestly isn't?"

"Because that isn't the Tower," I said. Even my brief contact with the Tower's defences had been enough to fill my head with all kinds of information I hadn't possessed before. "That building is how you access the Tower, which isn't exactly here, as such. Old Father Time brought the Tower with him from Shadows Fall, but it's only connected to the Nightside by his will. It exists ... somewhere else. Or maybe somewhen else. That stone thing only contains the Tower's defences. And trust me when I say you really don't want to know what powers them. I know, and I'm

seriously considering scrubbing out my frontal lobes with steel wool."

"All right," said Tommy, in the tone of voice usually reserved for calming the demented and potentially dangerous. "How do we get to the Tower?"

"Through the door," I said. "That's what it's for."

I led the way over and tried the brass door handle. It turned easily in my hand, and the door swung open. This was a good sign. If Old Father Time didn't want to talk to you, the handle wouldn't budge. Inside the door was an elevator, with only the one button on its control panel. The three of us stepped inside, and I hit the button. The door swung shut, and the elevator started moving.

"Hold everything," said Suzie. "We're going down."

"The Tower exists at one hundred and eighty degrees to our reality," I said. "To reach the top of the Tower, we have to go all the way down."

"Am I the only one who finds that distressingly ominous?" said Tommy.

"Shut up," I said kindly.

Four mirrored walls surrounded us. As the elevator fell and fell, our reflections began changing. First a detail here and there, and then the changes accelerated, until the mirrors were showing us possible versions of ourselves, from alternate timetracks. Facing me was a female version of myself, looking very stylish in her long white trench coat. Another mirrored wall showed Suzie a male version of herself, looking like a berserker Hells Angel. A third wall showed a Punk version of Tommy, complete with a tall green Mohawk and safety pins through his face. The images changed abruptly, and suddenly all three of us were wearing masks and capes and gaudily coloured spandex. We had muscles and square chins and attitude to spare.

"Cool," said Tommy. "We're super-heroes!"