Fantom Chapter 6, part 6.

   The adjudicator struck Ruth with the gun.  But Patrick looked over his shoulder and saw the fantom, and with only a moment’s dithering jumped over the rail into the upper circle.  it wasn’t much of a drop and he was quickly on his feet and running.  Looking up, her head ringing from the adjudicator’s blow, she saw him disappear out of the door, only to reappear a moment later, followed by the adjudicator’s human guards.  Again he jumped over the rail to the dress circle below.  Managing to dodging past the fantom there, he disappeared through a door.
   She saw him appear in a box, right at the top of the theatre.  He slammed the door and tried to wedge something against it, but it would only stop the fantom for a few seconds.  He scrambled up onto one of the seats and looked round wildly for an escape route.  Ruth, from her vantage point on the stage, saw the other fantom in the gallery just the other side of the wall to the box, waiting, in case he tried to swing round.  She saw him look down.  It was a sheer drop below him, all the way to the orchestra pit.  
   Patrick looked behind him.  The fantom was already smashing through the door.  He climbed onto the padded edge of the box and, balancing there precariously, looked down at the stage.
   Ruth was standing again on the wall, looking down, down, into the deep narrow dale behind Peveril Castle.  Behind her a fantom was lumbering towards her.  She felt the cold breeze and the drizzle in her face as she decided that a world where the adjudicator was in charge was not worth living in.  She gulped-
   And was back on the stage, looking up at Patrick.  The scream had frozen in her throat.  Behind him the fantom smashed through the door and reached out towards him.  He jumped-
   He just caught the chandelier.  
   The fantoms, blindly following, both jumped after him.  They collided in mid-air- Ruth would never forget the sound of clashing stone- and fell, smashing the seats and floor in their ruin.  
   Patrick swung high above, clinging on for dear life.  Ruth remembered the strain in her arms as she had hung from the tree, hearing the fantom crack into a thousand pieces on the valley floor below her.  She knew he would not be able to hold on long.  She could see him struggling to get a foothold.  
   And then, as if his wriggling had dislodged something, Ruth saw to her horror the whole thing begin to swing from side to side, it’s arc increasing.  As it reached the end of one long swing towards the stage something gave, and it began to fall, carried by the momentum of the swing.  Again she wanted to scream, but nothing came out.  She just saw Patrick’s terrified face as the chandelier plummeted towards the stage.
   She pulled away from the adjudicator as it smashed into a thousand pieces around them.  Pushing bits of metal and glass out of the way, she knelt beside Patrick.  One leg was at an angle no leg should be at, and he was not moving.  
   “Patrick?” she said.  There was no response, no movement.
   He must be dead, Ruth thought heavily.  Her heart, that should have been rejoicing at the destruction of the fantoms, was as heavy as lead.  Patrick couldn’t have survived that.  And- that’s how these stories had to end: with a death.  The fantoms didn’t count, they were just minions.  It had to be her, or one of us.  It’s the only way it could end.
   “It should have been me that died here, not you,” she whispered, bending over him and taking his limp hand in hers.  “I was her chosen sacrifice, her Iolanthe.  I’m sorry, Patrick, so sorry.”
   A quiet, hesitant and somehow fuzzy voice spoke from the tangled mass of human and metal wreckage.  “The Lord Chancellor loved Iolanthe.  I reckon he’d have taken her place, if he could.”  
   Ruth’s heart leapt.  “Patrick!” she said.  His eyes opened, and he looked at her.  
   “You always said I always bounced,” he said.  Then his eyes closed again with a little sigh.  Ruth’s heart almost stopped.  She felt for a pulse, and was relieved to find it.  And he was breathing.  He was unconscious, but alive!       
   For now at least.  
   Ruth heard a the click of shoes behind her, and turned round.   The adjudicator was behind her.   “All of you,” she said, looking around at the others, frozen where they stood, “and I’m the only one who is armed.”
   She aimed her gun past Ruth, at Patrick.  
   Tom had reappeared on the stage.  He tried to move stealthily towards her.
   “Before they reach me, I would have time to kill each of you,” the adjudicator said calmly.  “So I suggest you keep still.”  Tom looked an apology at Ruth.  
   By Ruth’s feet, covered in debris from the shattered chandelier, was the sword that the Fairy Queen had been going to kill Iolanthe with.  She picked it up and moved between the woman and the unconscious boy.  Deliberately but shaking just a little, she pointed the sword towards the adjudicator.  For a moment the woman looked taken aback, then she laughed.
   “Oh, come now,” the woman said.  “You know I’ll use this, and I won’t miss.  You don’t stand a chance, even if you could use that thing, and you never would.”
   “What, never?” Ruth said, trying to keep her voice steady.  She met the woman’s eyes.
   “I could put a bullet in your brain before you'd even touched me.”
   “But it might distract you long enough for it to be the last thing you do.”
   “You’d never dare,” the adjudicator hissed.  She swung the pistol so that it was aimed directly at Ruth’s head.  Almost without thinking, Ruth raised the sword, and it met the pistol with a dull clang of metal meeting metal, and scraped along it until it met resistance.  The adjudicator staggered backwards, anger and surprise mingled in her expression.  The gun dropped from her bloodstained hand with a cry as her foot found nothing behind it and she fell backwards into the orchestra pit.
   Ruth pulled the sword back, dazedly noticing the blood on the blade.  She walked, slowly and carefully, towards the edge of the stage and looked down into the pit.  It seemed a long way down.  Amid the ruin of the fantoms, chandelier and various bits of furniture, the body of the adjudicator lay, a somehow small heap of twisted cloth.  It was not moving.
   “Hardly ever,” Ruth whispered.  

Epilogue

Fantom Chapter 6, part 5.

   They landed back at the opera house, but this time right at the top among the technical cubbyholes and storage spaces.  “The last thing we want is her getting hold of the TTC,” Tom said, looking out to check the coast was clear.  “Everyone ready?”  
   “Let’s get it over with,” Ruth said.  
   Quickly they found some stairs and made their way down.  The audience were still milling around foyers and stairwells, getting in the way, but at least it made it easier for them to leave the TTC well behind before they were noticed.  They managed to reach the doors to the auditorium before someone spotted them and they were marched up to the stage where the adjudicator was still fuming.  Ruth looked around.  The cast and audience had gone, and the place seemed deserted apart from the adjudicator, her guards and the fantoms.  That was probably just as well.
   “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” the adjudicator said, standing over them as they were driven up onto the stage and pushed roughly to the ground.  “And where did you get to?  More to the point, where is the TTC?”
   “Don’t say anything,” Ruth said to the others.
   “Don’t say anything?” the adjudicator mimicked, her rage evident.  “Oh you’ll tell me.  You’ll tell me in exchange for your deaths when you can’t take any more.  After what you did today I will make sure you suffer.”  We weakened her authority, Ruth thought, made her look a fool.  If we fail now I’ll wish I’d just let her kill me before.  
   The fantoms closed in.  She took a step towards them.  
   “Now!” Tom yelled.  Adam pulled the baton from his sleeve and began to conduct.  “Stop him!” the adjudicator shouted, lunging forward, but Ruth and Agnes barred her way.  She pushed them away angrily, and Ruth fell, catching her weight on her barely recovered ankle.  She gasped in pain, as she struggled to stand up.
   The fantoms were under coming Adam’s control.  At his direction they formed a ring around the five time travellers.  The adjudicator snatched a wand dropped by one of the faries and began to conduct in opposition to him.  Several of the fantoms stopped, looking from one conductor to the other, confused.  
   “You’ve got to stop her,” Adam said urgently.  “I don’t know if I can hold them.”
   “Order them to attack her,” Agnes said.
   “I am!  That’s what’s confusing them.”
   “Then order them to do something else,” Tom said.  “Order them to leave the building, to go and guard something, anything that gets them out of the way.  Better that risk her using them against us.”
   Adam tried.  Slowly, the fantoms turned and began to leave the building.  Ruth sighed.  Without their help, their chaance of success was even slimmer.  And the adjudicator still had human guards, who must be somewhere in the building- probably searching for them.  Surely, before long they would return.
   Her heart sank.  Two more fantoms were emerging from the wings.  One looked more flaky than the others- the one she and Patrick had created alone.  The other, she was fairly sure, was the surviving original.  They were ignoring Adam.  They began advancing on the time travellers.  
   She’s controlled them for longer, Ruth thought, and they know us and hate us- or me, at least.  Adam can’t compete with her control over them.
   “It’s no good,” she said.  “Run!”
   “She’s right,” Tom said.  “Split up.  It’s our only chance- they can’t follow all five of us!”  
   “I don’t need to,” said the adjudicator in Ruth’s ear.  She jumped- and her ankle gave way once more.  She tried to run, but the adjudicator had her arm in a grip like a vice.  She could not free herself.  The others were disappearing up the aisles and through various doors, unaware, but Ruth did not make a sound.  There was nothing they could do for her.  
   “I’ve got unfinished business with you,” the adjudicator said.  
   Ruth faced her.  “Then get it over with,” she said, trying not to show she was afraid.  Perhaps if she distracted the woman’s attention her friends might yet be able to escape.  
   “Oh, it can wait a little longer,” the woman replied.  She pulled a gun from somewhere inside the costume that she was still wearing.  She pushed Ruth down so she was kneeling in the position- in the exact place- where Iolanthe had waited for her death.  I’m even still in the costume, Ruth thought.  How stupid we were- I was- to think we could stop her.  There’s no hope.  What have we done?
   Maintaining her painfully tight grip on Ruth’s shoulder, the adjudicator looked up and called, in a sing-song voice that could be heard all over the building.  “Come out, come out, wherever you are.  I’ve got your friend and you cannot get far.”
   To her horror Ruth saw Patrick’s face peeping over the rail round the front of the gallery.  And there was Adam, looking out from behind the curtain of a box.  She shouted:
   “Don’t listen to her!  She’ll kill me anyway, and she’ll kill you to if you give yourselves up.  Don’t listen!”  
   There was one of the fantoms, in the dress circle, crushing seats as it searched.  Where was the other?  She looked back up to the gallery.  There it was, framed in the doorway.  It had just seen Patrick.
   “Patrick!  Look out!” she yelled. 

The story continues...

Fantom Chapter 6, part 4.

   “Hold!”
   The adjudicator looked round angrily.  “Who said that?” she hissed.  Agnes stepped forward.
   “I did,” she said loudly, to cover her fear.  “That’s how the story goes.  You can’t just change it.”
   “You little fool,” the woman hissed.  “You’ll be next.”  She turned back to Ruth.
   Or tried to.  Her attention elsewhere, she had placed her high-heeled shoe on Iolanthe’s discarded veil.  Ruth saw it, and as the adjudicator turned back and raised the sword once more she pulled.  With a cry of fury the woman fell backwards.  The baton she used to conduct the fantoms fell from her sleeve.  Patrick leapt forward and grabbed it, then helped Ruth to her feet.  
   “Over here!” Tom shouted, running for the wings.  The others followed, as the other performers and audience began to wake from shock.  They made for where they had left the TTC, but it was guarded by a fantom.  Behind them they could hear sounds of pursuit rapidly spproaching.
   “It’s no good,” Ruth said desperately.  “She’ll never let us escape.”
   “Maybe I can distract it while you get past,” Tom said, looking at the fantom.  It looked back at him and grunted, but did not move.  
   “Here,” Patrick said, passing the baton he had picked up to Adam.  “You know how to conduct, can you get them to obey you?”
   Adam waved it experimentally.  The fantom’s gaze shifted to him.  
   “They’re right behind us!” Agnes said.
   Adam raised his arms and began to beat time, strongly and confidently.  The fantom looked puzzled (as much as its’ stony face could display any emotion) and began, slowly to move to the side.
   “You’ve done it!” Agnes shouted.  
   “That might slow them up,” Adam said, as the creature moved off in the direction of their pursuers.
   “Come on,” Tom said, “We’ve got to get to the TTC.”
   The time capsule’s doors slammed behind them and Tom and Patrick pushed the bars into place.  Adam sat down at the keyboard.
   “When to?” he said.
   “Anywhen!” Agnes said.  “Anywhere but here.”
   Tom was at the other keyboard, typing hurriedly.   “Go!” he said.  
   The familiar shaking began.  Ruth sank down on a seat and leant her head against the wall.  It had all happened so quickly.  She was relieved to have escaped, but the pent up tension hadn’t yet earthed itself...
   “Tea?” Patrick asked, filling the kettle.
   That did it.  Ruth started to laugh, and then found tears rolling down her cheeks.  It was the sheer normality of it that got her.  Ten minutes ago she had been waiting for her death in front of hundreds of people, and now Patrick was making her tea, as if the last few months had never happened.  
   “Are you ok?” Agnes asked, puzzled.  Ruth nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
   “Sorry,” she said.  Patrick sat down next to her.  “It’s all right,” he said.  “She didn’t hurt you?”
   “No,” Ruth replied.  “But if we ever meet her again she’ll kill us all, I know it.  We’ve made her look a fool.”
   “Maybe we’ve shown people they can defeat her too,” Adam said.
   “I don’t think it’s as simple as that,” Ruth said.  
   They landed.  “Where are we?” Agnes asked.
   “Back in York,” Tom said.  “Before all this happened- the day after we left for Buxton.”
   They stepped out of the TTC into a deserted, grimy street.  Something was wrong.
   “Look,” Tom said, pointing at a big poster on the end of a row of houses.  It showed a giant picture of the adjudicator, smiling triumphantly, with a caption saying: “Work and obedience will save our nation! It is your patriotic duty to report all skivers, paracites and deviants to the appropriate authorities.”
   Their hearts sank.  “What’s happened?” Adam asked.  Ruth shiverred.  Looking down, she realised she was still wearing her the thin dress of her Iolanthe costume, complete with wings.  The others were still in costume too.
   Agnes had got her phone out and was looking at news websites.  “She’s running the country.  Everything’s changed.  But it doesn’t make sense.”  
   Patrick pointed to the date in the corner of the screen.  It was three years in their future.
   “Look her up on wikipedia, if it still exists,” Adam said.  “Maybe it’ll tell us how she came to power.”
   It did.  But it wasn’t cheerful reading.  Depressed and cold they went back into the TTC.
   Tom looked at the screen.
   “I got the date wrong,” he said.  “Must have been because I was in a hurry.  
   “If that’s the future with her in charge, I don’t think I want to live there,” Adam said.
   “Don’t worry,” Patrick said bitterly.  “I don’t think she’d let us live for very long.”   
   “What are we going to do?” Tom asked.  “We can’t go back to our time or the future without coming within her reach.  Where can we go?”
   Patrick made more tea.  The other were almost silent, someone occassionally putting foward a suggestion that someone else would quickly point out a problem with before silence returned.  Ruth sat in a corner, still shivering a little.  After a while (and two cups of tea) she looked up.
   “We’ve got to stop her,” she said quietly.  
   “Us?”  Tom said.
   “Yes.  It was our time travel that got us into this mess, our wanting to change history just a little bit allowed her to change it a lot.”
   “All we did was bring a score back.  How were we supposed to know what that would do?”
   “We couldn’t.  But it didn’t even work- our wanting to save Thespis actually resulted in it being destroyed.”
   “But they were already destroyed before we ever travelled back in time,” Adam objected.  “It’s not our fault.”
   “But if we hadn’t gone back in time she would never have had her chance to come to power,” Patrick said.  “Ruth’s right there.”
   “We started it, so we’ve got to stop her.” Ruth said somberly.  “Whatever the cost to ourselves.”
   “But- can we? I mean, we know what’s going to happen in the future.  If we go back and get rid of her,  isn’t that changing history too?”
   “That’s why we can't use time travel to defeat her. We've got to do it in the present- our present.  The past isn’t ours to change, but the future- we change the future just by living in the present.”  Ruth stood up and began to type the date into the computer.
   “Now?”  Agnes asked.
   “Will there be a better time?”  Ruth turned to look at them all.  “If we're weak enough to tarry- we might loose our nerve.  Besides, where else can we go?”
   “Can’t we at least get some weapons or something?  She’ll be armed,” Adam said.
   “Would you use them?” Ruth asked.  “I don't think I could.”
   “Then what are we going to do?”  Tom said.  “Adam’s right, it’s no use just going straight back to when we left.  We need a plan.”
   “We’ve got to use her own weapons against her,” Ruth said.  She picked up the baton.

The story continues...