Continuing from the previous story, Jago, Litefoot and Leela enter (or break in, thanks to Leela) the Regency Theatre to investigate the disturbance. At first, everything seems normal…until they discover what appears to be the spirit of a woman in a wheelchair floating amongst the pews of the theatre.
In 2011, a wheelchair bound woman named Alice arrives late to her laboratory, much to the ire of her superiors. They are conducting experiments on Time Travel on the orders of a man called Elliot Payne. They soon discover spirits in their time too, and these spirits talk with upper class English accents. While trying to ascertain what these spirits might be, Alice discovers the laboratory was built on the site of an old theatre that was destroyed by a bomb in 1940 during the London Blitz.
Meanwhile, back in Victorian England, the trio start to hear the music from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ emanating through the theatre. Eventually Jago, Litefoot and Leela manage to establish contact with the scientists from the future. Unfortunately, they also see more spirits, that of a man dressed as Robin Hood and he kills one of the scientists with his bow and arrow, believing him to be the Sheriff of Nottingham, what’s more, he seems to be acting as if he is being cheered on by children at a pantomime. Another spirit manifests itself in the future as a fencer, while quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Leela reveals that with each experiment, the scientists are weakening the walls that binds reality, eventually the walls of the Regency theatre begin to manifest in 2011 and the Lab with the Regency Theatre in 1890. Leela reveals that they must shut down their generators that creates the time experiments. Alice manages to separate the two buildings…by running on her feet. It is eventually revealed that the Regency Theatre embodied an emotional resonance that took the form of an angry spirit of the plays performed in it, it manifested as a side effect of the time experiments. And this spirit is using the time experiments to possess Alice and whisper voices in her head, telling her to kill people. The reason for possessing her was because it was attracted to Alice’s anguish at not being able to perform anymore due to her physical disability. She was in fact the Fencer and Robin Hood, hence her spiritual appearance in Victorian England. Before she can kill more people, Jago, Litefoot and Leela pass through into the future and attempt to reason with Alice. Leela does battle with Alice while Jago and Litefoot try to destroy the machine, which is now running on its own. The duo attempt to sedate the spirit by quoting Hamlet and children’s pantomimes. Jago confronts the creature upon realising that it is the theatre incarnate and manages to reason with it. Upon realising the suffering it has wrought, Alice of her own will shuts down the machine to stop the time experiments for good…at the cost of her own life.
Moments later, a man appears on the stage of the Regency Theatre and introduces himself as Payne…and he is here to destroy the world…
