And there is more. The explosion inside the wormhole has changed me. I am more than human now. I am the universe’s first quantum man. The rules of normal space do not apply to me anymore. My very appearance is fluid, and my mind is chock-full of useful nuggets.

It took Garrick mere seconds to lift the lockdown from Bedford Square, and he listened with satisfaction as the shutters rolled back from the windows.

The magician cackled aloud.

Computers! Wonderful machines.

He was free now to leave and wreak havoc on this new age, with no one to stop him or even understand what they were trying to stop.

So, why don’t I abandon my hunt for Riley and disappear into the multitude?

Garrick now understood his need to track the boy down. Garrick’s father had deserted him in dramatic fashion when he was ten, so he had a deep fear of desertion.

You is sorted proper now, my son, his father told him one morning. And I cannot live sober with what my hand was forced into doing to secure your future. I slit the throat of my best mate and a few more besides to keep you in a bed away from the Old Nichol.

The ten-year-old Garrick noticed his father’s belongings tied in a pillowcase at the foot of their room’s small bed.

Are you leaving me, Da?

Tears flowed down his father’s ruddy cheeks as he answered, I am, boy. You know I have struggled with a grog habit all my life. And now, with dreams of blood and your poor brothers and sisters occupying my mind, I can’t fight no more. So it is my intention to return to the Nichol and drink myself into the grave. Shouldn’t take more’n a month. Don’t try to find me, as I plan to be drunk and violent. I will shout hello to your mother on my way past the pearlies, and keep an eye on you from the devil’s shoulder.

And he was gone, stumbling through the doorway, half blind with tears. Albert never saw his father again but heard rumors that he had died from a fractured skull following a crack on the head from a peeler outside the Jerusalem Tavern.

I was deserted and so have a fear of desertion, concluded the creature that was Albert Garrick. I know this but still feel it.

But there was more to this current pursuit than a fear of desertion. Wherever Riley was, there too would be Chevron Savano. Garrick had an urgent desire to make contact with that young lady, for she possessed the final remaining Timekey, and with that he could return to his own time and be its master.