Free The Eternal War by Alex Scarrow

home, then.’
    Bob nodded. ‘Correct.’
    They stepped into the displacement window one after the other.
    2001, New York
    A moment later Liam emerged from the milky void into the archway to see the three girls standing beside the computer desk, awaiting his arrival.
    ‘Hey-ho!’ he chirped as he strode towards them. ‘World saved … yet again!’
    Bob emerged from the portal behind him with a heavy grunt as his feet found the firm concrete.
    ‘Stand clear!’ said Maddy as she turned round to the desk to instruct computer-Bob to close the portal.
    Liam stepped towards Maddy. ‘Me an’ Bob need to go back again, Maddy. We didn’t manage to …’ He stopped. Saw Sal’s eyes suddenly wide, a white-gloved hand raised to her mouth.
    ‘What’s up?’
    Behind him the crackling burr of energy around the portal suddenly ceased as it snapped out of existence and the archway was its normal quiet hum of computers and the fizz of tube lights flickering a cool clinical glow down from above.
    ‘GOOD GOD! … WHAT IS THIS … DEVILRY?’
    Liam spun round on his heel to see a tall young man crouched and cowering in panic and confusion in the middle of the floor, eyes as wide, terrified and startled as a bull in an abattoir.
    ‘Oh great,’ sighed Liam.

CHAPTER 14
    2001, New York

    The man recoiled fearfully at the sight of Bob, taking several quick steps away from him. ‘WHAT IS THIS P-PLACE?’ he bellowed anxiously. His eyes darting from one of them to the next.
    It was Maddy who reacted first. She took several steps forward. ‘Liam? Is that …? Oh crud, that’s not …?’
    ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, Mads. It’s Lincoln.’
    Her jaw hung slack. ‘Oh my God!’ She advanced slowly. ‘Mr Lincoln? Abraham Lincoln?’
    Lincoln’s manic eyes settled on her. His shaggy eyebrows scowled, covering his fear with suspicion. ‘You … you know me , ma’am?’
    Maddy nodded. She even offered him something that looked like a polite curtsey. ‘Yes, Mr Lincoln. Yes we do.’
    Lincoln’s voice softened from an outraged courthouse bellow to something quieter and altogether more agreeable. ‘Then … please, ma’am, tell me where in tarnation I have suddenly ended up.’ He looked around the brick archway. ‘Just a moment ago I was in the Jenkins storehouse.’ His eyes fell on Liam. ‘Listening to you, sir, and your two friends talking about things incomprehensible to me.’
    Liam cursed his carelessness. ‘Jay-zus, he must have been following us!’
    Lincoln carried on. ‘And then I saw that … that round …  doorway appear out of –’ Lincoln’s deep growl of a voice became a breathless whisper and his mouth snapped open and shut like a fish caught on a hook and landed on a riverbank. ‘It arrived out of nothing! Like smoke, like … like a vision of angels. Like …’
    Sal chuckled at that.
    ‘Fool that I am, I dared to step through.’ He glanced at Liam. ‘To follow you through, sir, through the … that … that doorway, and find myself in a … an unearthly whiteness !’ He scratched anxiously at the thick bristles of his beard. ‘Then I find myself here … in this strange place!’
    Maddy took another step forward, now only a yard from him. ‘You can relax, Mr Lincoln. Please … it’s all right, it’s OK. You’re perfectly safe here.’
    Lincoln studied her in suspicious silence for a moment. ‘You, ma’am. You sound less foreign to me than the others.’ He nodded at Bob. ‘Particularly that ugly ox of a man there. Good God! If I had a dog as ugly, I’d shave its posterior and teach it to walk backwards!’
    Lincoln chortled drunkenly at his own joke.
    Maddy shook her head. He’s been drinking .
    ‘Now you, ma’am,’ he said, eyeing Maddy warily, ‘you have the sound of New England in your voice.’
    ‘Boston,’ she replied. ‘I’m from Boston.’
    Lincoln nodded slowly. ‘And I trust you have a name?’
    ‘Maddy. Maddy Carter.’ She offered her hand