The Eighth Doctor accompanied by Fitz Kreiner and Trix MacMillan, overthrows the tyrant Mondova on an alien world, prevents a time travelling alien from interfering in Ancient Roman history and stops a Dalek (never named as such, but heavily implied) invasion of Mars. Against this backdrop, Fitz and Trix have begun a relationship and decide to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor returns to Earth in 2005, materialising at the grave of Sam Jones. When the Doctor claims not to remember his former companion, Fitz becomes angry and leaves with Trix. As the pair attempt to readjust to normal life, it is revealed that Trix has been secretly passing information gain on their travels to another former companion Anji Kapoor who has used the information to manipulate the stock market and thus built up a considerable fortune. The Doctor discovers that another Time Lord, Marnal, had also survived the destruction of Gallifrey and has been living for the past hundred years as a human science-fiction writer (whose books are actually the history of the Time Lords and their homeworld). Marnal, who also claims to be the original owner of the Doctor''s TARDIS, blames the Doctor for the cataclysm, and takes him and the TARDIS captive while the insectoid alien Vore invade the Earth. The Vore attack leaves millions dead or missing, including Fitz who apparently dies trying to save Trix. After a cold fusion explosion guts the interior of the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that K-9 Mark II has been aboard ever since Gallifrey''s destruction, hidden behind a false wall, with orders from Lady President Romana of Gallifrey to kill him. However, K-9 pauses once it scans the Doctor''s mind and discovers the reason why the Doctor had lost his memory. It transpires that, just prior to destroying Gallifrey, the Doctor (with the help of his former companion Compassion) had downloaded the entire contents of the Gallifreyan Matrix — the massive computer network containing the mental traces of every Time Lord living and dead, more than 140,000 Time Lords — into his brain, with his own memories suppressed to make room for the data. Gallifrey had not actually been erased from history, but an event horizon in relative time prevented anyone from Gallifrey''s past from travelling beyond Gallifrey''s destruction, and vice versa. Both the planet and the Time Lords could be restored, along with the Doctor''s memory, if a sufficiently sophisticated computer could be found to reconstruct them. Before that could be done, however, the problem of the Vore must be dealt with. Marnal is wounded while fighting the Vore, and being on his last regeneration, he dies. The Doctor tells him that he is his hero, and Marnal dies in peace, confident that the Time Lords will be reborn. The Doctor reveals that the Vore have not actually killed their victims, but sprayed them with a chemical that makes them invisible to humans; Fitz is still alive and the Doctor brings him back for Trix, claiming he brought the dead back to life on his first day on the job. The Doctor, Fitz, Trix and his allies travel to Africa with a Royal Navy Battle Group to confront the threat of the Vore. The novel and the Eighth Doctor Adventures end uncertainly, as the Doctor leaps into the very heart of the Vore hive.

The Gallifrey Chronicles

15-year-old Jessica Day moves with her family to Bixby, Oklahoma after her mother is employed at a high-tech aerospace company. Soon after the move, Jessica awakens to find time frozen and rain stopped in mid air. Although she thinks it is a dream, she is suspicious when she wakes to find her clothes wet. The next night, it happens again. Leaving her room, she finds that her family is frozen and the only other living thing is a cat, which leads her out of her house. Once outside, the cat transforms into a snake, revealing that it is actually a slither. It, along with other slithers and a darkling in the form of a large cat, attacks her. Jessica is rescued by the "Midnighters": Dess, Rex and Melissa, who chase away the animals using thirteen letter words and steel. The next day, they explain that in Bixby time freezes for an hour every midnight and that only Midnighters - people born at the moment of midnight - can enter it. Creatures known as darklings live in this secret hour where they can hide from advances in human technology. Darklings hate people and fear new inventions, complex concepts and the number 13. It was the darklings who took one hour of each 25-hour-day and hid inside it so that people couldn''t get to them. They also explain that each Midnighter has a special power - Dess is a polymath, Rex is a Seer (someone who can read the lore - the ancient history of the midnighters) and Melissa is a mindcaster (meaning she has a variety of telepathic abilities). They don''t know what Jessica''s power is, except that it isn''t the same as any of theirs. The next midnight, Jonathan, a boy from Jessica''s school, arrives outside her house, and takes her flying with him - he is an Acrobat, and in the Secret Hour gravity does not have a strong hold on him. He and Rex don''t get along, and the other Midnighters avoid talking about him. After flying for most of the hour the pair are chased by a darkling and narrowly escape - only to be arrested by policemen enforcing Bixby''s eleven o''clock curfew. Jessica is grounded for the rest of the month. Meanwhile, the Midnighters are becoming suspicious of why the darklings, who normally avoid Midnighters, are so intent on killing Jessica. Rex decides to take Jessica out to the Snake Pit, a place in the badlands, where she will be able to discover her power. Unfortunately, the badlands are also the home to the darklings. Dess sets up protection beforehand and the Midnighters plan to be inside it before the Secret Hour arrives. However, they are all late, and rely on Jonathan to fly them inside the protection, which causes Rex to get jealous and Melissa to get disgusted and angry. The darklings are so desperate to attack Jessica that they suicidally attack the defenses, weakening them considerably. Just before the defenses collapse, Rex discovers Jessica''s power is Flame-bringer, but none of the group know how they can make a fire. As the defenses are breached, Jessica realizes that her watch is still ticking, implying that her ability allows her to use technology in the secret hour. She uses a flashlight to kill the darklings, and the Midnighters leave safely.

Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour

Eldon Fochs is a 38-year-old accountant and lay provost. He is happily married with four children. Feshtig works as a therapist in an Institute of Psychoanalysis funded and controlled by the church. Fochs is persuaded to go to Feshtig by his wife, who has a growing suspicion that her husband harbours dark secrets. Fochs slowly reveals the contents of his dreams and his "disturbing thoughts" about children to Feshtig. He reveals two dreams; one when he strangles and dismembers a girl and another of a 12-year-old boy. In the dream, the boy comes into his office and Fochs brutally sodomises him. He frightens the boy with threats and forces him to admit to having been molested by an uncle, something that never happened. Fochs claims that in his dream he was guided by God. In the chapters where Fochs is in the first person, he describes how he assaulted and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He also describes his ecclesiastical superior confronting him with allegations from two mothers that he has molested their boys. He denies the allegations, and his superiors choose to believe him. Feshtig meets with one of the mothers and starts to counsel her son Nathan Mears, and he gradually uncovers the extent of the damage that Fochs has done to the young boy. As the abuse allegations reach the media, the pressure on the church mounts, but it does everything to protect itself and its reputation, going as far as to excommunicate the two mothers. The pressure on Fochs from his wife is more difficult to answer as she presses him on what he was doing the night the girl was murdered. Eventually he rams his car into a tree, having surreptitiously unclipped his wife’s seat belt. She is thrown through the window and killed. Feshtig reveals his conclusions to the police, but their DNA tests are inconclusive. Protected by the church, Fochs still contrives to spend time alone with young boys in order to molest them. He is eventually transferred to a teaching position in another city, free to carry on his abuse. As the novel ends, having assaulted his children’s babysitter, Fochs sinks to further level of depravity and starts a cycle of incest with his eldest daughter.

Father of Lies

The book of Job tells the story of an extremely righteous man named Job, who is very prosperous and has seven sons and three daughters. Constantly fearing that his sons may have sinned and "cursed God in their hearts", he habitually offers burnt offerings as a pardon for their sins. The "sons of God" and Satan (literally "the Adversary") present themselves to God, and God asks Satan his opinion on Job. Satan answers that Job is pious only because God has put a "wall around" him and "blessed" his favourite servant with prosperity, but if God were to stretch out his hand and strike everything that Job had, then he would surely curse God. God gives Satan permission to test Job''s righteousness. All Job''s possessions are destroyed: 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys carried off by Sabeans; 7,000 sheep burned up by ''The fire of God which fell from the sky''; 3,000 camels stolen by the Chaldeans; and the house of the firstborn destroyed by a mighty wind, killing Job''s ten children. Still Job does not curse God, but instead shaves his head, tears his clothes, and says, "Naked I came out of my mother''s womb, and naked shall I return: Lord has given, and Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of Lord." As Job endures these calamities without reproaching God, Satan solicits permission to afflict his person as well, and God says, "Behold, he is in your hand, but don''t touch his life." Satan, therefore, smites him with dreadful boils, and Job, seated in ashes, scrapes his skin with broken pottery. His wife prompts him to "curse God, and die," but Job answers, "You speak as one of the foolish speaks. Moreover, shall we receive good from God and shall not receive evil?" Three friends of Job, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, come to console him. (A fourth, Elihu the Buzite (Heb: Alieua ben Barakal the Buzite), begins talking in Chapter 32 and plays a significant role in the dialogue, but his arrival is not described.) The friends spend seven days sitting on the ground with Job, without saying anything to him because they see that he is suffering and in much pain. Job at last breaks his silence and "curses the day he was born." God responds saying that there are so many things Job does not know about how this world was formed or how nature works, that Job should consider God as being greater than the thunderstorm and strong enough to pull in the leviathan with a fish-hook. God then rebukes the three friends and says, "I am angry with you... you have not spoken of me what is right." The story ends with Job restored to health, with a new family and twice as much livestock.

Book of Job

June AD 79: The story begins in the home of Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain. Flavia is sitting in the garden reading one of her favourite scrolls, when she hears her father call for her. Flavia enters her father''s study to find him in a panic for he has lost hisCastor and Pollux signet ring which Flavia''s late mother gave to him. Flavia promises to find it, and the search leads her to a magpie''s nest in the necropolis outside the city wall, where she finds a gathering of jewels that the magpie has stolen. Suddenly a pack of dogs chase Flavia and she is rescued by Jonathan ben Mordecai. He takes her back to his house next door to her own where she meets his father Mordecai ben Ezra, a doctor, and his sister Miriam. Marcus takes Flavia to the harbor to sell the jewellery she found, and on the way she is moved to pity when she sees some recently-disembarked slaves on the way to the market. When she is given six hundred sesterces by the jeweller, she immediately decides to buy the young girl she saw with the slaves, to save her from a life of misery. Flavia treats the young slave-girl, who is called Nubia, very kindly, giving her dates to eat and beginning to teach her Latin. Later in the day she has a birthday party with her father, Nubia and the Mordecai family. A few days later, after seeing Marcus off on a voyage, they are shocked to find that someone has killed Jonathan''s dog Bobas and taken away his head. Flavia decides this is another mystery to solve, and her friends agree. Following a lead from Cordius''s freedman Libertus, they suspect a sailor called Avitus who hates dogs because his daughter died of rabies after being bitten. A young boy, treed by the wild pack, is rescued by Mordecai, who has to kill two of the dogs in the process. He looks after the boy when he falls from the tree and offers him a place to stay. He realises that the boy''s tongue has been cut out and he cannot speak. Flavia recognizes him as the beggar boy from the forum and Nubia finds out that his name is Lupus. Lupus is the Latin word for wolf. Lupus agrees to help them solve the mystery. They cannot find any evidence against Avitus, so Lupus offers to follow him around town, as nobody notices a beggar boy. Although he finds out that Avitus just goes from tavern to tavern getting drunk, at one tavern Lupus overhears a conversation between gamblers about treasure at Marcus Geminus''s house. Later he sees the grief-stricken Avitus commit suicide by throwing himself from the top of the lighthouse. When Lupus returns to find that Cordius''s dog has been beheaded that afternoon, he is able to clear Avitus of the crime. He asks to stay at Flavia''s house that night, but in the middle of the night is caught stealing gold coins from the storeroom - Cordius''s money, secretly entrusted to Marcus. Flavia is shocked, but instantly realises that this sheds light on the mystery. Someone is after the treasure, but very few people know about it. Lupus confirms the identity of one of the gamblers he overheard. Next morning, they find a horrible sight in the street, a trident with three dogs'' heads stuck on it, obviously intended to frighten them away. Flavia decides to lay a trap for the dog-killing thief, which the guilty Libertus falls into. The team is successful. Mordecai persuades Flavia and Jonathan to forgive Lupus, reminding them of his difficult life, and of their own imperfections, and they invite him to the celebration party. Cordius is grateful to the detectives and gives them all a reward of a gold coin, as Flavia explains the clues which led to the solving of the mystery. Nubia brings two puppies and gives one to Jonathan; they will be called Nipur and Tigris. Marcus promises them next time he goes away on a voyage, they will all go to his brother Gaius''s farm in Pompeii, where they will be safe.

The Thieves of Ostia

The novel is set in the modern Parisian quarter of Belleville. It starts with the dramatic death of a policeman, shot by a "grannie" he was trying to help, and witnessed by at least four others who conveniently forget all details of what they see. The inspector Van Thian goes undercover as a Vietnamese old woman to investigate. Three other investigations follow: one into the attempted murder of a young woman, another into the serial killings of small old women in the district, and a third into drug trafficking by old men. Benjamin Malaussènne, professional scapegoat, quickly becomes suspect number one of all four investigations, owing to the numerous children of his prolific mother he lives with, the various old men with obsolete talents that he shelters, and his repeated abortive romantic affairs. Like all novels in the Malaussène saga, the setting is anything but conventional, the streets of Paris brimming with immigrants in open celebration of their diversity, the situations rarely Gallic yet authentically Parisian.

The Fairy Gunmother

From the moment Alexander wakes up, things just don''t go Alexander''s way. When Alexander gets out of bed, he trips on the skateboard and drops his sweater into the sink while the water was running. At breakfast, Alexander''s brothers, Anthony and Nick reach into their cereal boxes and find amazing prizes, while Alexander ends up with cereal. On the way to school, he doesn''t get the window seat in the carpool. At school, his teacher, Mrs. Dickens doesn''t like his picture of the invisible castle (which is actually just a blank sheet of paper), criticizes him for singing too loud and leaving out 16. His friend, Paul deserts him to his third best friend and there is no dessert in his lunch. At the dentist''s, the dentist, Dr. Fields tells Alexander he has a cavity, the elevator door closes on his foot, Anthony pushes him in the mud, Nick says he is a crybaby for crying, and Mom punishes him in the act of punching Nick. At the shoe store, they''re sold out of Alexander''s choice of sneakers (blue ones with red stripes), so Mom has to buy him plain white sneakers, which he refuses to wear. At Dad''s office, Alexander makes a mess of things when he fools around with everything there (the copying machine, the books, and the telephone) getting to the point where Dad tells him not to pick him up from work anymore. At home, the family has lima beans for dinner (which he hates), there is kissing on TV (which he also hates), bath time becomes a nightmare (too much hot water, soap in his eyes, and losing a marble down the drain) and he has to wear his railroad train pajamas (he hates his railroad train pajamas). At bedtime, his nightlight burns out, he bites his tongue, Nick takes back a pillow, and the family cat chooses to sleep with Anthony. No wonder Alexander wants to move to Australia. The book ends with Mom''s assurance that everybody has bad days, even for people who live in Australia. In the Australian and New Zealand versions he wants to move to Timbuktu, not Australia.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

When Licence Renewed begins, M reminds Bond that the 00 section has in fact been abolished; however, M retains Bond as a troubleshooter (pun intended), telling him "You''ll always be 007 to me". Bond is assigned to investigate one Dr. Anton Murik, a brilliant nuclear physicist who is thought to have been having meetings with a terrorist named Franco. Franco is identified and tracked by MI5 to a village in Scotland called Murcaldy. Since Murcaldy is outside of MI5''s jurisdiction, the Director-General of MI5, Richard Duggan requests that M send Bond to survey Murik. Relying on information that MI5 did not have, M changes Bond''s assignment to instead infiltrate Murik''s Scottish castle and gain Murik''s confidence. Bond makes contact with Murik at Ascot Racecourse where he feigns a coincidental meeting, mentioning to Murik that he is a mercenary looking for work. Later, Bond joins Murik in Scotland at Murik''s behest and is hired to kill Franco, for reasoning at the time unknown. Franco in turn has been tasked by Murik to kill his young ward, Lavender Peacock because she was the true heir to the Murik fortune, which could only be proved by secret documents Anton kept in a hidden safe within his castle. Murik''s plan is to hijack six nuclear power plants around the world simultaneously with the aid of bands of terrorists supplied by Franco. To ensure that Murik can never be associated to this deal, he attempts to use Bond to assassinate Franco. Ultimately terrorists do take over six nuclear power plants, but are prevented from starting a meltdown when they are given an abort code by Bond, believing him to be Murik. Murik is eventually defeated by Bond and Lavender before his demands were met.

Licence Renewed

In The Second Angel, passages of narrative by an omniscient narrator alternate with lengthy, discursive commentaries on the characters, and complex observations on human nature and blood by a first-person, intrusive narrator, who claims to be the omniscient narrator telling the story, but deliberately refrains from disclosing his or her identity until the last chapter. It is the late 21st century, when 80% of mankind have been infected with a virus called HPV2 (human parvovirus 2), or P2, whose spread was accelerated with the discovery and use of synthetic blood. P2 disrupts the blood''s ability to carry hemoglobin around the body, greatly shortening the host''s life. The only known cure for P2 is a complete blood transfusion with healthy blood, coupled with a dose of the drug ProTryptol 14. With only 20 percent of the world''s population free of P2, the price of a litre of healthy blood has reached almost two million dollars. In the novel, blood has replaced gold and diamonds as a valuable commodity (gold was extracted in great quantity from the sea and is now valued at about $200 a kilogram). Uninfected people reside in "Clean Bill of Health" (CBH) zones within cities to avoid contact with the sick, for vamping (murder for the purpose of blood theft) is a major risk for healthy individuals. Standard procedure for those who are uninfected is to perform autologous donations to enable them to completely replace it in the event of becoming infected. The healthy blood reserves are kept in state-of-the-art blood banks around the world, the largest being the First National Blood Bank on the Moon. Due to the high incidence of theft in these banks, they are guarded by the most sophisticated security systems. The greatest designer of blood banks is Dana Dallas, who works for one of the largest security firms in the world, and has designed several state-of-the-art blood banks, including the First National Blood Bank. His ingenious security systems have never before been bypassed or robbed. His boss, Simon King, grows concerned when he hears that Dallas''s daughter Caro has been diagnosed with thalassemia, an illness that can only be cured by a lifetime of regular healthy blood transfusions, as despite his high position in the company Dallas would never be able to afford to pay for this treatment. Rather than risk Dallas leaking industrial secrets to the highest bidder, he orders Rimmer, the company''s security officer, to kill Dallas, his wife and his daughter. His wife and daughter are indeed killed, but by chance Dallas survives and realises that the company had meant to kill him too. Dallas escapes to relative safety outside the city''s Clean Bill of Health zone, hiding in a hyperbaric hotel. Dallas is now set on revenge and recruits a team funded by himself and a mafia boss to rob the First National Blood Bank on the moon. The robbery goes according to plan with only a few complications. On the way back to Earth, Dallas is told by his personal computer that a quantum computer has actually evolved in the bloodbank; the intrusive, omniscient narrator turns out to be this computer (a super-computer that opportunistically used the millions of litres of blood stocked in one place to re-create itself, using the unique storage and duplicating capacity of DNA); it has gained access to the memories of the characters by "merging" with them when they had a blood transfusion. The blood contains extremely advanced nanomachines which activate an ability to live longer, and be far more resistant to human limitations such as the need for food, water and oxygen; it enables them to survive in a state of suspended animation for years at a time. The supercomputer wanted to combine humans and computers with nanomachines in order to explore the galaxy. While Dallas and his crew are asleep on their way back to Earth, the supercomputer (unbeknownst to the humans) activates their new hibernation state and sets their course to deep space.

The Second Angel

The first few chapters following the brief introduction about Bundy''s birth and family describe Rule''s friendship with Bundy, her first impressions of him, and her reluctance to consider the evidence that he might be responsible for the crimes of which he was accused. The events of the Chi Omega murders at Florida State University in January 1978 are written in third person, but not omnisciently, as the perpetrator is not identified as being Bundy, thus keeping the documentation of these events in-sync with the knowledge available to officers at the time. It is not until Bundy''s capture and trials in Florida that Rule fully accepts that Bundy is a serial killer. She finds the idea shocking to the point that she "[runs] to the ladies room and throws up" An afterword, following Rule''s lament for Bundy and his victims, describes the Kimberly Leach trial. The 1989 update outlines Bundy''s execution, and the 2000 update touches on many things, including various women claiming to have encountered Bundy in the 70''s, Robert Keppel''s retirement from detective work and his employment at the University of Washington, and Bundy''s possible involvement in the unsolved disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, a girl who disappeared in 1961 when Bundy was 14. A 2008 update of the book includes more stories from women who have contacted Rule with stories of their "near-miss" contacts with a man they believe was Ted Bundy, and also a ''Ted Bundy FAQ'' section where Rule tries to answer the questions most frequently asked by readers, including the fact that he was not responsible for the 1973 murder of Kathy Merry Devine, for which he was long suspected. DNA testing linked that killing to an ex-con named William Cosden, who was subsequently tried and convicted of her murder.

The Stranger Beside Me

A young boy called Michael,travels with his parents around the world on the yacht Peggy Sue after his parents lose their jobs at the brickworks and decide to sail the seven seas. Michael''s parents teach him what he would have normally learnt at school and he has a secret log that he writes in. They travel from England to Africa, South America and Australia. He is on lookout one night when Michael and his dog Stella Artois are washed overboard, near Papua New Guinea. They awake to discover that they are stranded on a desert island that is shaped like an elongated peanut in the Pacific Ocean. While Michael is struggling to survive on the island, food is regularly left for him. To his surprise, he learns that an elderly Japanese man called Kensuke is also living on the island. Kensuke helps Michael to survive. He sets guidelines that Michael thinks are just annoyances, until Kensuke saves him from a jellyfish after warning him never to go in the water. Michael teaches Kensuke English, and Kensuke teaches Michael how to paint, how to fish and where to find the best food and water. He is eventually revealed to be a doctor and survivor of World War II, and he believes that his family died in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped there on August 9, 1945. Over time Kensuke begins to understand how Michael feels and how he misses his family. Together they build a beacon that can be lit to signal to ships, but for a long time they see no sign of any ships. Later, however, Michael witnesses a Chinese junk and he consults Kensuke as to whether or not he should light the beacon. Kensuke recognizes the ship as that of poachers, and he and Michael rush to gather all the orangutans into the cave to protect them from the threat that lies in the ship. They nearly succeed but cannot find one particular orangutan, the one Kensuke calls Kikanbo his. The ship arrives and they hear gunshots. When the ship leaves, they discover that some gibbon monkeys have been killed but that Kikanbo is still alive. The next time they see a ship it is not the poachers, and they both light the fire. The crew on the ship see the fire and change direction, heading towards the island. When the boat is closer, Michael sees that the boat is the Peggy Sue, with his parents on board. Kensuke decides at that point, despite thinking otherwise earlier, that he will not be sailing home with Michael; he says "This is my place. This Kensuke''s Kingdom. Emperor must stay in his Kingdom, look after his people. Emperor does not run away. Not honourable thing to do." Kensuke tells him to keep everything a secret until ten years have passed, when Kensuke will be dead. Michael runs out to the beach where the ship had landed and is reunited with his parents. Four years after Michael''s secret log is published, he receives a letter from Kensuke''s son (who is still alive). Michael goes to Japan to visit him a month later.

Kensuke''s Kingdom

Will Fuller, a grade nine student, is in history class with his best friend James Bennett. As the class comes to an end, James tells the class how he will be going with his dad, a firefighter, to work tomorrow while Will is dreading tomorrow as he must go with his distant dad, John Fuller, who he describes to be never home due to work, to his office on the 85th floor at the South World Trade Centre Tower. Early next morning, Will finds himself commuting to his dad''s office via car and subway. They meet some of John''s friends there. Will later learns that everyone had their own "seat" that they sit in the same place every single day. When they finally arrive, Will is overwhelmed by the sight of the World Trade Center, but is still unsure of the day ahead of him. To his surprise, him and his dad first visit the Observation Deck before returning to their office a few stories down. Upon arriving at the office, Will is left with John''s secretary, Suzie, where he is introduced to a colleague of his dad, Phil. Afterwards, he returns to his dad''s room, where a sudden, loud noise rocks them. To their surprise, the North Tower has been hit by an airplane, and John, the fire Warden of the floor, orders the floor to evacuate despite their tower being intact. Reluctant at first, the employees eventually begin their way down the tower. As their office leaves, John goes around to other offices on the floor to evacuate the floor, but, one of the managers of one of the offices refuses to leave. As the argument between them become heated, an announcement states that it is not necessary for the tower to evacuate, and that workers may return to their offices. John and Will leave the office, and, despite the announcement, John decides to evacuate anyways. As they head towards the stair case, another sudden, loud noise rocks the building. Running back to the office, they realize that a plane has hit the South Tower. Realizing the danger of fire, John returns to his office and soaks a tie for both of them to use when they reach the stories with fire in the stair case. John also gives Will a whistle to use in case they''ll become separated and instructs Will to blow the whistle should it ever happen. As they begin their journey down once again, they are suddenly stopped by a group of people heading up, instead of down, as they tell them that the stair case has been blocked, since the plane hit the levels beneath them, and that they will be heading up to await rescue. Not wanting to risk it, John decides to use another staircase, which is farther away from the crash site, to descent the building. As they descend down, the reach the stories where the crash happened, and finds it extremely difficult at it is extremely hot. Eventually making it through, they come across a level where they find an injured and trapped woman who speaks very little English. Although Will is reluctant at first to carry her down, and instead wants to leave her in the stair case after freeing her, John believes otherwise and carries her down the stairs. As Will realizes his father is becoming red a tired of carrying the woman, named Ting, he offers to alternate the job of carry her down. As they continue down, they eventually come across groups of firefighters, in which one of them they see James'' dad. James'' dad ask them to take his son home, as he does not want him to go home alone from the station, and they agree to do so. Afterwards, John admits that he did not spend enough time with Will and that he should have put his business aside to spend more time with Will and his mother. Eventually Will, John and Ting make it down the lobby, where paramedics attempt to take a look at Ting. Ting, however, scared, backs away from the paramedics and holds onto John. John says that he''ll stay with Ting while she is looked at and will rendezvous with Will outside the tower near at the ambulances after the paramedics make an assessment of Ting''s injuries. As Will leaves the building with an officer, he is suddenly blown to his feet on the streets outside the tower by a sudden force. Struggling to regain balance after failing and injuring his arm, he is suddenly taken back by the police officer, explaining that the South Tower has collapsed and they must leave for safety. Realizing that his dad is still in the building when the building collapsed, he turns and runs towards the building, only to be stopped by the police officer again. Suddenly remembering the whistle his father gave him, he frantically blows on it. In the distance, he sees figure resembling his dad and runs toward the figure. As he becomes closer, he confirms that it is in fact his father with Ting still on his back. Upon reuniting, John explains that they just stepped out of the building when the building collapsed. The story ends with Will stating "This is my father, now we can go."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Gallifrey Chronicles

By Lance Parkin

Midnighters 1: The Secret Hour

By Scott Westerfeld

Father of Lies

By Brian Evenson

Book of Job

No Author Listed

The Thieves of Ostia

By Caroline Lawrence

The Fairy Gunmother

By Daniel Pennac

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

By Judith Viorst

Licence Renewed

By John Gardner

The Second Angel

By Philip Kerr

The Stranger Beside Me

By Ann Rule

Kensuke's Kingdom

By Michael Morpurgo

We All Fall Down

By Eric Walters