Crucible Zero

by Devon Monk

I could stop that.

  I could try to stop that. I’d find a way to stop that.

  “You need to get us into Slater’s building, Matilda,” Abraham said. “Now. Break those locks. He knows we’re here, doesn’t he, Sallyo? He knows we’re coming for him.”

  “I’d listen to your boyfriend,” Sallyo said.

  I knew I had to get us in to Slater. I knew every second I wasted on the bomb was too long. I knew Slater could be on his way right now with grenade launchers and troops and plenty of things to kill us dead.

  But Quinten was in Compound Five. So were Neds and Gloria and Welton. I’d watched them die to give me the chance to go back in time to change the experiment, to save the world.

  And I’d be damned if I watched them die again.

  “Matilda,” Abraham warned.

  “I will not,” I said, “live in a world where my brother is dead when I have the chance to save him. Or Neds or Welton or any of you. If Slater is on his way, then that’s fine with me. I can kill him here just as easily as in his own apartment. It’ll save me the trouble of breaking the locks.”

  An explosion blew in the door. The blast threw Foster off his feet. Abraham turned toward the threat, firing at the men with blast shields who pressed through the burning metal and smoke and into the room.

  “Matilda!” he yelled.

  I hadn’t left the desk. I was almost done breaking the code. I just needed a second, a moment more.

  A bullet tore into my left arm, and I yelled.

  But I had the code now. I could stop the signal to the bomber. I could stop the signal to all the bombers.

  Foster and Abraham fired at the guards, but there were too many of them and too many guns.

  Sallyo grabbed her gun and darted to the other door. “Get out of here,” she yelled, as she fired at the guards. “There’s no time.”

  * * *

  And then, right that moment, the world went slippery and dizzy. I struggled to remain focused on the keyboard, to code in the cancelation sequence that would stop the bombing.

  But the world slid away in the drenching perfume of roses.

  The room around me shifted. Instead of a control center, it was a storage room, boxes piled high all around me, making the place instantly claustrophobic and horrifically silent.

  Since I shifted time but remained in the same space, I suddenly realized I could time-slip myself into a wall.

  And then I’d be dead.

  “Matilda?” Welton’s voice said from a muffled distance.

  I hurried through the towering stacks of cardboard and found him, leaning against the wall, exhausted and wheezing terribly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. Then I saw the blood pooling beneath where he had his hand pressed against his stomach. “Oh, God,” I said. “You’re hurt. You need a doctor. Or a technician. You need to get to Libra.” I walked over, my hands out so I could help support him.

  “Don’t,” he said, his breath coming out wet. “Slater knows it’s the watch you took back in time. He’s planning to break it in my timeway. He wants his original timeway—this one—to remain the one true reality. If he gets the watch, your family will be dead, and all the galvanized will die in prisons. I’ll be dead soon too. Slater will destroy your chance to live in a world where at least some of you could find happiness.”

  “You can too,” I said. “You’re alive in my timeway. Running House Earth instead of House Technology.”

  “House Earth?”

  “It’s like House Brown. But you’ve modified it a bit.”

  That got a small smile out of him. “Doesn’t that sound like an interesting thing? I’m pleased to hear I’m thriving somewhen. Because I will not survive long here. No, don’t look at me like that. Libra had her fun making me into her wind-up doll, but that’s over. I’m . . . over.” He paused to breathe, and the sound of mechanics deep beneath the bulky coat he wore was startling.

  “I’ve known it for months. But I wanted . . . I wanted to take my last breath knowing that bastard wasn’t going to rule. In any reality.”

  “He won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Your grandmother,” Welton said.

  “She’s fine. She’s alive too.”

  “Of course she is. I have had time to study . . .” He paused to inhale, exhale, and swallow. His color had gone a ghastly gray-yellow. “Her journal,” he said, his voice a little shaky. “The dates of the entries were curious. So I looked into her past, looked into her life.” He paused again for breath. “She’s old, Matilda. Very old. She was there. In 1910, when Alveré Case built the Wings of Mercury machine, when he triggered the experiment. She was his assistant.”

  “No,” I said, “She couldn’t have been. That would make her more than three hundred years old, and no one but galvanized live that long.”

  “I think you weren’t the only family secret your father was trying to hide,” he said with a wan smile. “She was Alveré’s assistant. Lara Unger Case. I’ve found no record that Alveré survived all these years, but I believe she did.”

  “How?” I was probably the last person in this world to doubt an impossibility, but to think my grandmother was—what? Immortal? Galvanized?—was a reach, even for me.

  “My theory? She was in the eye of the storm when the experiment was triggered. It . . . did something to tie her to the experiment, to lock her body into the altered times.” He gave me a steady look. “There is a possibility, a small possibility, that it isn’t the watch you need to destroy to set reality. It may be your grandmother.”

  “No,” I said, a chill of fear washing over me. “Never. That’s not going to happen. Tell me Slater doesn’t know about her. About her being Alveré’s assistant.”

  “He most definitely does not,” he said with a little bit of heat. “I made sure of that. But I thought you should know. In case . . . well, in case.”

  I nodded. “That in case isn’t going to happen. In any reality.”

  “Good,” he said. “Foster?”

  “He’s well. I told him what you said.”

  Welton smiled, though it looked like it took some effort. “He believes in this time-travel nonsense?”

  “He sort of has to. He’s the one with the watch.”

  “Time is in . . . good . . . hands,” he said, his voice going soft and distant as his eyes went yellow, glossy, and fixed. His lips moved around another word, but I couldn’t hear it over the machines in his chest that blared out Klaxon alarms. He shuddered.

  I grabbed for him as fell to the floor. Then the world twisted and spiraled as a distant bell rang out in rose-scented peals.

  * * *

  I yelled as gunfire filled the room and world. Welton was gone, and I knelt in the middle of a firefight. Foster’s huge hand seemed to come out of the nowhere of smoke and noise. Too fast. This was all happening too fast. I couldn’t handle the whiplash between realities.

  Foster pulled me up off the floor.

  The bomb!

  “No!” I said, reaching for the keyboard. “I have to stop the bomb. I have to stop the bombing.”

  “We run,” he said, his eyes glowing red with anger and probably pain, since his hand was still wrapped around my wrist and he had collected more than one new bullet hole.

  “We save.” I yanked out of his grip and finished coding in the command to stop the countdown.

  I didn’t know why I wasn’t shot to pieces. Either the guards were the worst shots in the history of man, or something else was getting in the way of their killing.

  “Foster!” Abraham yelled from where he was holding open the door on the far side of the room.

  And that’s when the madness and chaos around me snapped into shape.

  The galvanized poured through the door Sallyo had opened. The room became a riot of galvanized tearing a swath through the g
uards. Just a couple seconds ago, the guards had been behind riot shields, firing weapons. Now they were not outnumbered, but they were definitely outpowered.

  “Now,” Foster yelled. “Now, Matilda.”

  I didn’t have time to unlock Slater’s security system. I didn’t even have time to see how many of the galvanized were still standing. From the voices shouting directions, swearing, and laughing, it sounded like all the galvanized were still on their feet.

  Foster wrapped his hand over my uninjured shoulder and quickly pushed me across the room.

  I jogged slightly ahead of him while Abraham stood in the doorway, his gun drawn. “This way,” he said.

  We were in another long hall with metal doors uniformly spaced down either side.

  “Did you shut down the locks?” Sallyo asked as she ran just ahead of us.

  “Why are we following her?” I asked.

  “You didn’t disable the surveillance cameras,” Abraham said. “She’s on record for having allowed us all into the city. Slater will kill her. Well, torture her, then kill her for what she did. Even Hollis can’t keep her safe. Only killing Slater will ensure her safety.”

  “So, we’re on the same side now?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Locks?” Sallyo asked again.

  “No,” I said.

  “Did you take care of the bomb headed to House Brown?” Abraham asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “Good enough. Now let’s blow our way into Slater’s building and hunt the bastard down.”

  Sallyo took us down several flights of stairs, then through a crawl space between the walls I thought might be there only for electricians. Small electricians at that.

  It was a tight fit for me, and Abraham and Foster cussed and swore and both lost a layer of skin by the time we exited out into a darkened hall. Good thing they couldn’t feel any of their wounds.

  The hall was stone on both sides, and from the dust that covered the floor, it hadn’t been used in years. The metal door at one end was shut, the other end of the hall was lost in stagnant shadows.

  “We’re inside his building,” Sallyo said. “But I have no idea which floor he’s on or what kind of weapons he has.”

  We needed to find Slater. And since he and I were somehow connected by time, and the watch was somehow connected to time, I thought maybe it could work as a sort of compass to find him.

  “Foster,” I said, “do you have the watch?”

  He pressed his fingers inside his jacket and pulled out the watch.

  “I think I should hold it,” I said.

  “Why?” Sallyo said. “What does the watch have to do with anything?”

  I ignored her and turned to Abraham. “Welton told me Slater knows the watch is the key. Slater wants to break the watch in the other timeway so he can lock that in as reality. You’re all dead there, and as soon as the watch is broken, he would kill me too. I’m going to try to use the watch to find him. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to break it now, while we’re in the right time.”

  “Which means Slater can kill you.”

  “And I can kill him.”

  “With the watch?” Sallyo asked.

  I touched the handle of the gun. “Shelley dust–filled bullets.”

  “What’s Shelley dust?” she asked.

  I held my hand out for the watch. “The easiest way to kill a galvanized.” Foster pressed the pocket watch into my palm.

  The world went dizzy again and the scent of roses filled my nostrils and mouth. A great bell rang, loud and louder.

  Every inch of me broke and shattered, scattering on the wind. Time, all time—images and visions of things this reality had never been, things of other realities, more than I could count—echoed out around me like a hundred movies playing at once through a hundred different round windows.

  It was too much to comprehend. It was too much to contain. Even broken in a million pieces, there wasn’t enough of me to withstand the storm of possibilities surrounding me.

  There was only one correct timeway, only one where I knew the people I loved were alive. And sorting out that one single timeway from all the other possible times was like plucking a specific drop of water from a thundering waterfall.

  I was drowning, stretched too thin, unable to breathe. Unable to exist.

  Then the world snapped back into one solid focus. I gasped, filling my lungs with air I could not get enough of. I was on the floor of the dark hallway, Abraham’s hand under my head, the watch held at arm’s length away from me in his other hand.

  For a moment—a fleeting breath—he was the happier, tattooed Abraham, his hair pulled back in a band, the concern on his face more akin to shock. Then that image blinked away and it was just Abraham, the mercenary Abraham, kneeling over me.

  “Matilda?” he said. “Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

  I swallowed, tasted vomit and blood. My head hurt like all kinds of hell, and my skin felt like I’d been standing in a bonfire.

  “Yes,” I croaked, my voice raw. “I hear you.”

  The relief on his face was instant. “Can you sit?”

  I didn’t waste time or energy answering. I pushed up with his help. He was keeping the watch in his extended hand as far away from me as possible.

  I found myself agreeing with that decision wholeheartedly.

  “Foster.” He gave Foster the watch, and the big man tucked it back into his jacket pocket.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You . . .” Abraham shook his head. “I don’t know what you did. But you were in agony until I pulled the watch out of your hand. What do you remember?”

  “Everything. Nothing. All the time. None of it.” He helped me up to my feet.

  The world stayed steady beneath me and around me. I felt like crap, but I was standing, and I was pretty sure I could walk.

  “When did you and I meet?” I asked Abraham. I needed to know he was the Abraham in the reality that I wanted to thrive.

  “In my recollection, we met back in the jail in 1910. More recently, at your kitchen door.” He frowned. “Why do you—”

  I held up my finger. “You came with Foster and Sallyo. You met my brother, Quinten, and Neds, whom we left at House Earth Compound Five, which we also might have just saved from being bombed. Is this correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Oh, thank heaven. I really was in the right timeway. “Gold. I can’t touch that watch again, so I can’t break it.”

  “We noticed,” Sallyo said.

  “Someone else is going to have to take care of that,” I said.

  The hall filled with a light so bright, I thought I’d gone blind.

  “Did you think I would let you walk into my House?” Slater’s voice rolled out over the speakers. “Did you think I wouldn’t know you were here? That I haven’t known all along that you were here? You gravely underestimate my intelligence, Ms. Case.”

  “The door!” Sallyo ran for the door at the end of the hall, but it was locked. And before Abraham or Foster could break it down, before we could pull a gun, the room was flooded with a gas that tasted like grape seeds and motor oil.

  Sallyo collapsed, gasping. My vision narrowed down. The hallway tilted as I fell.

  And everything went black.

  21

  I woke to the sound of gunfire. Again. Five measured shots rang out, impossibly close. Impossibly loud.

  My head and all the rest of me hurt, but I forced my eyes open. I was chained to a wall, manacles around my wrists above me, ankles shackled, waist pinned.

  It was a small, clean room. Metal walls, concrete floor. One door, locked and bolted. No windows. It was cold in here, as if the person who spent the most time in the space worked hard enough to sweat.

  Abraham sat, shackled, in a ch
air that was bolted into the floor. He was unconscious.

  Foster lay on the ground next to me, bleeding from the bullet holes in his chest. His eyes were open, fixed on some distant vision between the floor and ceiling, his breathing labored and drawn.

  Slater, wearing a dark, tailored suit, stood next to Foster’s prone body. The gun in his hand—my gun—was aimed at Foster’s head. He must have heard us talking in the hallway. He knew exactly what those bullets held: Shelley dust.

  I’d heard five shots. There was only one left.

  “Don’t,” I said, trying to make my voice heard over the ringing in my ears. “Don’t kill him.”

  “Ah, Matilda,” Slater said, his back still toward me, his head tipped down as if he were hypnotized by the bleeding man below him. “You still think you can tell me what to do.”

  He turned. The shadows of the fluorescent lights revealed a madness in him that time had only cultivated.

  He was not a man I’d ever thought would listen to reason. He had always been self-important, conniving, vicious.

  But now I knew there was nothing I could say that would make him do anything other than exactly what he wanted. There was nothing human left of him.

  “Do you have the watch?” he asked with the lullaby softness of a man just warming up to the pain he knew he was going to put a person through.

  “No,” I said.

  “You are lying to me, Matilda Case. You have always lied to me. But your friend Welton didn’t lie to me when I tore out the wires of his guts and left him bleeding on the floor. He told me about the watch. He said you must have it. So. Where is the watch?”

  “I don’t have it,” I said again. “I don’t have to have it to kill you.”

  “More lies. It is a wonder I don’t just end you forever. Now.” He lifted the gun, leveling the barrel at my head.

  Galvanized can live forever. We are endlessly repairable, as long as the majority of the brain is not destroyed. But that bullet was filled with Shelley dust. One of those, in my brain, would do more harm than a dozen bullets.

  It would be the end of me.

  “Shoot,” I said. “It won’t kill me as long as the watch is intact. Nothing you can do can kill me.”