TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Read Online Free

depths. She thrashed and struggled, and broke the surface with her face. She caught a glimpse of a large boat under sail, a warship or a privateer, perhaps. She sank back beneath the water before she could call to it. She fought her way up again, her face breaking the surface for a second time. She managed to raise one arm out of the sea and wave at the distant ship, but the cold and the weight of her dress were too much. She sank again, fast. She felt her ears pop, felt the pressure increase on her as she realised she was about to die. Animal panic pulled open her mouth to try and take a breath to ease the fire in her lungs. And then …
    Lying in a puddle, gasping like a landed fish on the floor of a clean white room, sterile and silent but for the soft hum of unseen engines. There was light without fire and warmth without sunlight. Breathing hard now, wild eyed with terror and confusion, Dora cried aloud when the door opened and a tall, fat man in a strange white jacket came into the room. He walked forward slowly, anxious not to startle her. He reached out. ‘Take my hand. Take my hand and everything will be all right.’ But even through her fear she wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She scrambled back against the wall, gabbling refusals and protestations. Her back hit the hard wall and then …
    Awful, deafening noise. A huge explosion next to her and she was sprawling in rubble, crying and screaming and begging for it to stop. Hands on her shoulders, pulling her backwards. She struggled but then there were hands on her feet, and she was lifted bodily into the air and carried away. Dumped on the ground behind a low brick wall. Bangs and crashes and strange, devilish humming. She coughed as the foul smoke and dust clogged her wet nostrils and frantic, gasping lungs. Hands on her face, forcing her to look up into the bright blue eyes of a young man with close-cropped black hair. Over his shoulder she could see a dark-skinned girl carrying some type of musket. She had a nasty wound across her forehead that leaked blood down across her face. ‘Calm down, Dora, breathe,’ said the boy. ‘It’s OK. You’re all right. It’s a lot to handle first time. I remember. But you need to concentrate, you’ll only be here for moment. I need you to listen, yes?’ Dora nodded, shaking. The boy’s accent was strange, foreign.
    ‘Don’t.’ Yelled the dark-skinned girl. ‘You mustn’t tell her …’ But she was interrupted by a series of small explosions that drew her attention away. She raised her odd musket and began shooting beams of light at unseen attackers.
    The boy bit his lip, worried, but continued speaking. ‘There is one thing you need to know.’ He leaned forward, as if to whisper in her ear, but then …
    Darkness, night-time, winter cold made worse by wet clothes. Firelight through trees and the soft chanting of human voices. She did not know what language they were using, but it was not English. She ran forward, hoping for aid, but found herself standing on the edge of a clearing facing a burning pyre. Tied to a post in the centre of the conflagration was a young woman who screamed and screamed as the flames licked up her legs and her dress caught fire. The crowd stood singing songs to the dying victim; Dora presumed they sang in hope of speeding her to salvation from her wickedness. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The witch’s face was the same face that Dora had seen looking back at her in the mirror a hundred times. The witch was her! Dora screamed in mortal terror as she watched herself begin to burn. The crowd turned, saw her, cried in horror at the impossibility of it, and then …
    Freefall …
    Sweetclover Hall sat shadowed and sullen amongst its copse of trees. Its windows were boarded up and flaps of plastic patched the holes in the roof, preventing the worst of the weather getting inside, but apart from that the house appeared unloved and forgotten.
    Had there been a