The Watch – Part 111:

For the first time in what felt like ages, Amy broke the silent tension by asking, ‘when are we?’

‘Thirty minutes before the other us arrive,’ I said. ‘That should give us enough time to do what we need to do and get out.’

‘You sure?’

‘No,’ I said truthfully.

‘Fair enough,’ Amy accepted my honesty. ‘There is one problem, however, and that’s the receptionist. If we try and sneak in without being seen, that will only lead to what happened before, and we can’t keep going back.’

‘Good point,’ I said thoughtfully. An idea popped into my head. ‘We don’t have to try and sneak in without being seen; we won’t be seen in the first place,’ I explained cryptically.

‘I’m going to need a bit more information,’ Amy said plainly.

‘We go invisible, sneak in and when we’ve found Tom’s parents, we turn visible again.

‘OK,’ Amy accepted the idea without any hesitation, but there was a question brewing on her face. ‘But how does that work? I thought the watch would only work on us if we are travelling from one place to another. Would it be able to turn me invisible?’ That was a good question. I just assumed it would, but I couldn’t answer the question positively.

‘We’ll just have to find out,’ I said. That wasn’t what Amy was expecting, but it’s the best option we have at the moment in a very short time frame. She nodded.

‘Grab my arm,’ I said, assuming once more. She did and I navigated myself through the interface of the watch, strolling through the many menus until I found what I wanted: The invisible superpower.

‘Ready?’ I asked Amy.

‘Ready.’ I pressed the button. I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, and I could still see my hands, arms, and the rest of my body, yet I knew that I was invisible, but it looked as if I wasn’t, and that played havoc with my senses.

‘Wow,’ Amy expressed in awe. I could see Amy and Amy could still see me, but again, we knew that we were invisible, and once again my sensors starting going haywire. It might take a few minutes for them to settle down, but unfortunately we don’t have a few minutes. We have to get moving now, so we just have to fight through it.

‘It’s such a strange feeling,’ she said, ‘I can still see myself, giving the impression that I’m not invisible, but I know that I am,’ she explained the same feelings as I have. ‘My senses are all over the place,’ she said.

‘We had better start getting this over and done with, we don’t have much time left’

‘Ready whenever you are.’

Again, despite the natural sensation of awe, Amy does appear to be taking this in her stride, but I can’t focus on this at the moment. We have more important things to worry about. We walked side by side, our steps automatically falling into a perfect sync as we headed back towards the office block.

The doors opened by themselves, but the woman behind the desk was too into her paperwork to notice, just like when we arrived earlier – or will arrive in about ten minutes’ time.

If the receptionist looks up now, she won’t see anything but an empty space. She’ll look straight through us, never knowing that we were ever here. We didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, and so you could say that we were performing that comical sneaking action cartoons do when they want to bypass any security. If we drop our feet too loudly, she’ll look up in wonderment, only to see nothing there. What she’ll think next is unknown, but I don’t want to find out.

It’s almost mind-blowing really. We’re thirty minutes in the past, which means thirty minutes later, Amy and I are going to walk through those doors, and I’m going to cause plenty of unnecessary commotion, and it is even more unnecessary now that we’ve learned that we were here before, and sorted out the problem we came here for. Even if the receptionist looks up for any other reason, she’ll see nothing, and knowing that does make it slightly difficult to process properly, but we’re here for a more important reason that studying the situation, so I put it to one side and carried on forwards, making sure to be as quiet as possible.

Moving this slowly does make the reception area bigger. She’s still writing furiously on her many pieces of paper, and therefore deep into her own world. Eventually, we made it to the double doors at the other end. The task now is to open them without causing any distractions. That seems easier said than done, but we have to try. I placed both hands on the left hand door, and Amy placed her hands on the right, and together, as gently as possible, slowly pushed backwards. The door springs were too strong to be moved this slowly, and even if we were able to move them, the noise would be too loud. The slower you go and the more you try and make as less noise as possible, the more you are going to make – that is a fact. The only we’re going to get through these doors is if we walk through them normally. Amy knew this and nodded, mouthing the words, ‘one, two, three,’ and together we pushed the doors open, slipped through and let them swing shut normally. The noise echoed through the entire reception area. I could see through the mini windows that she was now looking in our direction, confused. What was going through her head now? Imagination? Ghost? Wind? It’s difficult to dismiss such a strange event, but if this happened before we arrived, then maybe our arrival would make her forget what happened.

Amy tapped me on the elbow to signify that we had better get moving. I nodded and turned around. We both started ascending the stairs together, careful not to create too much noise. There’s a chance that the receptionist would believe that she was so lost in her own world that she just simply didn’t notice anyone walking across the room and through the doors. That’s not much of a relief, but it does settle the mind slightly.

‘Do you know what floor we need?’ Amy whispered.

‘No,’ I said simply. I wasn’t going to dwell on how stupid I was to not find that information out at any point. Amy sighed.

But as luck would have it. Two people came out of the one of the floors and walked upstairs. Those people were Tom’s parents. They had their back to me, which gave me an idea.

I whispered my idea to Amy and she accepted. I disabled my power, returning us back to normal.

‘Excuse me,’ I called upwards, catching the attention of Tom’s parents. They stopped and turned around, noticing us two a couple of steps below. They recognised me more than they did Amy, but greeted us both the same.

‘Hey, Sebastian,’ they said coming down and shaking hands. ‘How are you these days?’

‘I’m good,’ I said enthusiastically. The plan worked like a charm.

‘Good,’ Tom’s dad said. Tom’s mum hugged me, which I gratefully accepted. They have no idea why we’re here and hopefully, they won’t ever find out.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom’s dad said, ‘but we’ve never met,’ he said to Amy, extended a hand, which she took and they both shook.

‘This is Amy,’ I said.

‘Ah, Amy, yes,’ Tom’s dad said excitedly. They know about Amy. Tom, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. I blushed red with embarrassment.

‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Amy said smiling.

‘And to you, too,’ Tom’s mum said. They were both wearing smartly organised suits that didn’t seem to be ruffled that much, meaning they must have spent the majority of their time today sitting behind a desk.

‘What brings you here today,’ Tom’s dad said. ‘I would have thought Tom would have been here as well.’ A perfectly reasonable assumption.

‘Um,’ not knowing what to say, ‘we need to have a word, if that’s OK?’ I asked.

‘Of course it is,’ Tom’s mum said. ‘We’re just heading upstairs to our office. We can talk there.’ This was going better than I thought. The two problems that presented me now was: How do I save them from a bomb that I know nothing about except that it explodes later on today, and how much time has passed before the other us arrive and would make such an interesting conversation if ever we meet? Hopefully, the entire event would be over before anything confusing happens.

We entered Tom’s parents’ office. It was empty save from us four, meaning that the conversation that we’re about to have wouldn’t be overheard, which is handy.

‘So, what do we owe this pleasure,’ Tom’s dad said once we had settled down at their desk. I didn’t know exactly what to say. How do I start a conversation when the topic involves saving their lives from a bomb that could explode any minute now?

‘Um, we…’

‘Do you hear that?’ Amy asked who was sitting beside me nearer to the printer. The entire room went silent as we tried to listen out for whatever caught Amy’s attention. I didn’t know what to listen out for. All that I could hear was the low hum of the many computers in this room, but, the more I listened, the louder a peculiar sound became.

‘I don’t hear any…’ Tom’s mum was about to state before I cut her off.

‘I hear it, I believe,’ I said. The room went that much quieter than before, allowing the sounds of the office to grow, subsequently, the strange sound, which I have managed to distinguish as a very low ticking sound. I looked around, trying to see if there was any type of clock, but only finding digital ones. I focused my hearing on where I believed the sound was coming from.

‘I don’t hear any…’ Tom’s dad was about to repeat before I stood up and headed towards the printer.

‘What’s going on?’ Tom’s mum said curiously. If she was angry with the strangeness of my actions, then she didn’t show or say anything, she just watched me curiously, as I focused my attention onto the big, free standing printer right beside their desk, of which the low ticking sound grew louder. Whatever was in this, wasn’t good. I lifted the printer lid.

‘Amy,’ I said, ‘grab my arm.’

‘Er…’ she said curiously, ‘sure.’ She grabbed my arm and I activated the necessary settings on my watch. Amy didn’t want to say anything, but I knew that she was asking the question as to why I am revealing my watch in front of Tom’s parents. The truth was, I had a plan, and I couldn’t afford to waste time explaining it. I pressed the button, sending us back in time by a couple of minutes.

‘What did you do that for?’ Amy asked once we had rematerialized back into the office room that we had just been minus Tom’s parents, who were currently downstairs.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ll explain later.’ I opened the printer and plucked the bomb out from inside it.

‘I think I know what you are doing,’ Amy said, ‘but how do you expect to…’ I crushed it in my hands, disabling the bomb. I had activated super strength as well. The bomb disintegrated in my hands, falling onto the ground in defused pieces.

‘Now we can go home. I can explain everything there,’ I said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)