by Devon Monk
“That dragon of yours.”
“Lizard.”
“Whatever you want to call it, it is a delightful beast. I do not know what your father was thinking of using it for, but as a thing that can cause sheer chaos, it should be unparalleled.
“So,” he continued, “distraction, dash to the pump house where we can cut the electric to the fence around the dragon, poke the beast—I understand it is sensitive to certain high frequencies—and let the fun and frolic begin.”
“You have a twisted sense of fun, Welton.”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Your brother, on the other hand.” He shook his head and we both stared after Quinten, who was walking ahead of us, just behind Abraham. Foster brought up the rear with Neds, leaving Gloria, me, and Welton in the middle.
“What about him?” I asked.
Welton just shrugged. “Smart man, I can say that. I would like to have met him in better times.”
“Then you would have never have known him,” I said. “We haven’t really had better times.”
“Hm.” We walked for a bit, and then Welton said, “I’ve met men like him before. Running House Technology brings a person in contact with staggering minds—brilliant, savagely genius people. I’ve seen men like your brother lock on to a problem they are determined to solve.”
We walked for a while more. The next bend would drop us at the actual edge of our property. We were close now. Almost there.
“And?” I asked.
“They all have the same blind spot,” Welton said.
“What’s that?”
“They do not see how much of themselves they give away to the problem. They do not see how much that focus makes them perceive only one thing: the problem. Your brother has cracked the code on the Wings of Mercury—or thinks he has. Impressive,” he said with a single nod. “But he has put too much of himself into that solution. Men are not pure enough to endure such heat.”
“A little less poetry and a little more clarity would be nice,” I said.
“I think . . . no, I know that if he manages to catch the moment and travel back in time, he will cease to exist.”
At my silence, he said, “That means I think he’ll die.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at him but was too busy dealing with the idea that my brilliant brother’s brilliant idea was going to kill him.
“He knows, doesn’t he?” I breathed. Now that little outburst by the bus made sense. He wasn’t angry about all the things he’d sacrificed for me in the past; he was angry that he was going to sacrifice his life for me now.
He was going to die so I could live.
No wonder why he didn’t want to talk to Gloria and tell her he cared for her. He knew what the endgame would be. His death.
“Yes,” Welton said. “I’m sure he does. I just thought you would want to know. I never had siblings, but . . . well, there are those of whom I am fond. I’d want to know if my time with them was about to be cut tragically short.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Oh?”
“He’s my brother. He’s done his job looking after me, protecting me. For all our lives. Now it’s my turn to protect him.”
“Spoken like a true galvanized,” he said.
“Spoken like family,” I replied.
“That too.”
Abraham stopped, held his hand up. We all paused. We’d been walking for just over a half hour. We had two and a half hours left.
Abraham pushed forward through the thicker brush. I could hear the creek rushing by. It was such a familiar sound, so much a part of the pulse and breath of my home, that a surge of homesickness poured through me.
I wanted to grab my brother’s hand and run home. Forget this fight, forget these guns, forget our time slipping down to zero. I just wanted to be home with him and Grandma, my arms wrapped around them, together as the world wound down.
But that was a child’s dream, a child’s longing.
It was much too late for that.
It might be much too late for everything.
Abraham scanned the creek long enough that I was getting a little itchy from the rain and sweat.
Then he strolled back to us, and we all pulled in close, bending our heads together in a huddle so he could speak quietly.
“The creek is just down the other side of this hill.” He pulled a palm screen out and it displayed the property. Our location was a small red dot more than a quarter of a mile from the house itself. The guards were indicated by yellow dots that surrounded the house, moving along the road that ringed our pasture, and in clumps of three spaced about a mile apart that were walking the outer edge of our property.
“The next patrol out this far should be passing by in about five minutes.” He pointed at a clump of approaching yellow dots. “Does everyone remember where they are going and what they need to do?”
Everyone nodded.
“All right,” he said. “No heroic crap. I expect each of you to stick to the plan. Your death will not change time. It will not improve this mission. You will each make decisions that will keep you alive. Do not fear for Matilda, Foster, or me. They want us more or less in one piece, and it is very difficult to take us down. We are the mostly likely targets. Do not be surprised if more than a few bullets hit their mark. Stay safe. Even if that means standing down. Are we all gold on that?”
I had to smile at his use of that old saying. “I’m gold,” I said.
“Gold,” the others echoed.
“Good,” Abraham said. “Welton, you’re up.”
Welton pulled back his sleeve to reveal a watch. “Quinten?”
Quinten dug around in his pocket and pulled out his pocket watch. He and Welton must have done some upgrades. The shapes inside the liquid face were shifting in precise rhythm to the watch on Welton’s wrist.
They held both time devices close, waited; then each touched something on the watch faces.
“Good luck to you, Quinten,” Welton said. “And thank you for letting me come along for the fun.”
Quinten nodded. “Just stay on track. Any deviation could be catastrophic to our objective.”
“Understood.” He patted Quinten politely on the shoulder. Then Welton shifted the case in his hand, placing four fingers into indents at the edge of it. “And ready,” he said. “On three. One, two, three.”
He pressed down.
I thought I heard a buzzing just outside my range, but then it was gone.
The yellow dots on Abraham’s screen paused, turned, and headed in the opposite direction. “Let’s go,” Abraham said.
Whatever Welton had done was supposed to draw all their attention to the far side of the property and send most of the patrol there.
What we needed now was speed, not quiet.
We scrambled through the underbrush, wet limbs and brush slapping at us, the leaves under our feet slippery on the downhill slope.
The rumble of an engine fading into the distance was a welcome sound. That would be the nearest patrol moving away to close the circle, thinking we were approaching from the south.
But we still had about a quarter of a mile before we hit the pump house.
We ran along one side of the creek, using it as our guide to the pump house. Rain came down harder. Each footstep sent wet up to my knees. My wounds were healed enough that they weren’t bleeding. While running in the rain wasn’t exactly my idea of easy, I was in good shape and could handle it.
Welton seemed to have some trouble keeping up, his breathing going too hard too fast, and I remembered that Abraham said he had had lung problems when he was a child.
Foster, who was still bringing up the rear, finally knelt and refused to go a step farther until Welton got on his back.
I thought Welton would argue, but he just cussed, then got on Foster’s back.
As for Foster, he was a tireless machine, a mountain of muscle and scars and stitches and wires. Grim as a gravestone; determined a
s death.
Gloria ran beside me, and Neds clipped along at our heels. None of us wasted time on talk.
Finally, finally, the pump house came into view. There was only one narrow door into the little structure. As far as I could tell, no one had thought it was anything more than a pump house.
Which was true. It really did pump the water up to the property and out to the fields. Beneath it, however, was Dad’s lab.
I wasn’t sure that we needed Dad’s lab, but the feed to the electric fences could be controlled from there.
We slowed our approach. Just because most of the patrol was dealing with the diversion south didn’t mean they wouldn’t have eyes out here.
Abraham checked the screen again.
No sign that we’d been spotted. I strode up to the door and opened it, and Foster and Welton rushed inside into the dark with me, the others waiting outside, hidden in the trees that surrounded the pump house.
“Are you ready?” I asked, my hand on the breaker for the electric fences.
“Just. A second.” Welton opened the briefcase, looked up as if getting his compass bearings, then nodded. “Do it.”
I pulled the toggle, breaking the feed.
“And now: chaos.” Welton turned a dial and flipped a switch.
Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything.
“Is it working?” I asked. “Welton, tell me that thing of yours is working.”
He held up one finger, his head bent, as if listening for a faint call of a whistle.
That’s when I heard it. The not-at-all-faint scream of a man, followed by gunfire and the warbling hiss of a very angry Lizard that sent chills through my bones.
“Music,” Welton said. “Why haven’t I made a dragon? I really should do so. Such a fun beastie.”
“Lizard,” I said absently. “Are we clear yet?”
Abraham and the others were outside, waiting for our signal.
“Hold on.” Welton scrolled through what appeared to be a couple dozen camera feeds on my property, focused around the house.
The guards who had been stationed on the porch by the kitchen door and around the perimeter of the house had all left to take care of the three-story reptile tearing its way through the outbuildings.
Bullets bounced off the beast’s thick hide. Lizard was lightning fast when it got going, and it was going now: a streak of muscle and scales that moved too far, too fast between each eye blink, stopping only long enough to smash guards, vehicles, and weapons into an oily mash.
“Can’t see inside the house, but that’s as clear a path as I think we’ll get,” he said.
“Good enough.” I racked a round in my rifle and walked out of the pump house. I signaled the others in the brush to follow.
Sneaking up on the place wasn’t going to do us much good. Welton insisted he had control of all eyes on the place and had blocked or false-fed the other drones and satellites and spy devices that any other House might have put in place.
Abraham, Quinten, Neds, and Gloria strode out of the trees, guns ready.
We broke into a jog and made quick work of the old path up to the yard, where Abraham made us pause to scope out the house.
“Still no guards,” I said.
“Ain’t right,” Left Ned said.
“Nothing’s right,” I said. “Ready?”
Abraham nodded.
We exited the scant cover and crossed the yard to the kitchen door. In the distance, Lizard threw a vehicle that came crashing down to the west, taking out a good section of our pear orchard. An explosion rocked the air.
I was a step ahead of Abraham. Quinten was behind him, then Gloria and Neds.
I opened the kitchen door and strode in, rifle tucked against my shoulder.
The kitchen was pretty much as I’d left it: mostly clean, smelling of freshly brewed tea, and no new blood on the floor.
I heard voices in the other room; one of them sounded like Boston Sue. The other was my grandmother. My heart rattled in my chest. She was alive. Alive enough to be talking. That was a good start.
“Come in, Matilda, Quinten,” Reeves Silver’s voice called out from the other room. “You too, Abraham and Mr. Harris. We’ve just brewed the tea.”
22
Quinten won’t stop making stupid, rash decisions. I’m worried he has a death wish.
—from the journal of E. N. D.
Reeves Silver was in my house, with my grandmother.
I glanced at Abraham. His lips were pressed together, and he frowned. Probably thinking something along the line of what I was thinking.
If we stormed into the room, shooting, Grandma was bound to be hurt.
We had planned to surrender, after all. I lowered my rifle and walked through the short adjoining hallway to the living room.
“Matilda Case,” Reeves said. “You are looking well.”
The head of House Silver wore a casual sweater and slacks, his white hair brushed up and back from his tanned face, giving his blue eyes a glacial glint.
He stood at the far side of the room, leaning on the old stone fireplace.
Grandma was in her comfortable chair, which had been placed in the middle of the room. She was knitting, the three pocket-sized sheep in her lap. To one side of her was the generously proportioned Boston Sue, who had a cup of tea in one hand and a gun pointed at my grandmother in the other.
Three guards, heavily armored and heavily weaponed, stood near Reeves, their guns trained on us.
“Why don’t you put your weapons down?” Reeves suggested. “We’ll have some tea, and we’ll see if we can’t all get through this little business conversation unbloodied.”
The clack of guns behind us made me glance over my shoulder. Three more guards stepped into the room, guns aimed at our heads.
Neds flicked me a look, and I shook my head slightly. I refused to get into a shoot-out that would kill my grandmother before the smoke cleared.
“Call off your men,” I said, “and we’ll talk.”
Reeves pursed his lips. “You’re saying I should stand here, without any weapon in my hands”—he lifted his palms just to prove that point—“while each of you has a gun? That is called an inhospitable negotiation climate. Not my favorite way to do business. So no. However,” he continued like he was just warming up to the beginning of a meeting, “if you put your guns on the floor, I will have my men leave the room so that we can get on with our talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “This is my land, this is my home, and this is my grandmother. You are trespassing. And you are going to leave. Now.”
Reeves smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “You know what I like about these kinds of stalemates, Matilda?” he asked. “They can last for hours. Or days. I have all the time in the world. What about you?”
My heart tripped into a fast beat. He knew. He knew we had no time—well, very little time. He knew that I’d do anything to keep my grandmother safe, just as I’d done anything to keep my brother safe.
What I needed was a quick solution. Bloodless and bulletless, if possible.
“Fine.” I placed my rifle on the coffee table to my left. “My gun’s down. Tell your guards to get the hell out of my living room.”
“Done.” Reeves wrapped his hands together. “Please,” he said to the guards, “wait outside.”
I signaled for Abraham and the others to put their weapons down, which they did, Neds the most grudgingly.
The guards walked out the front door, and I heard their boots cross the porch and crunch in the gravel. I also head the Lizard warbling and the thunderous crack of a tree being uprooted.
If we got out of this, I’d have months of repair to do on the place.
“Now,” I said, “you are going to give me one good reason not to shoot you.”
“Other than Boston Sue has a gun on your grandmother? I suppose if you’d like to risk her point-blank aim, then by all means . . . take your shot. But the moment you do, all the forces I call
ed off when I got here—not just my guards, but all the other House forces who had surrounded your house, including drop units that were carrying a squadron of soldiers armed with incendiary rounds—will be crawling over you. In seconds.”
It might be a lie. It might not.
“What do you want, Reeves?” Quinten asked.
“Mr. Case. I hope you’re feeling better now that you’ve gotten a bit of fresh air. Your release from Slater Orange’s prison seems to suit you.”
“You wouldn’t be here, in person, trying to hold all the cards in your hand, if you weren’t desperate for something we have,” Quinten went on as if Reeves hadn’t even spoken. “What do you want?”
“I want a deal.”
“For what?” Quinten asked.
We were still standing on one side of the living room, and Reeves still leaned on the fireplace.
Bo hadn’t said a word since we’d come into the room, other than to give me a smug sort of smile that made me want to slap her.
“I trusted you,” I said to her.
“Oh, baby sweet,” she said, “that was your mistake. Trust is fine, but money makes much louder promises.”
Grandma finally noticed all the commotion going on around her. She stopped knitting, her face a mix of confusion and worry. Then she noticed me.
“Matilda?”
“I’m here, Grandma,” I said. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“What is wrong?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said, “everything is good. We were just saying that everything is going to be fine. You have some tea there you could drink.”
She looked around, spotted the cup on the table next to her, and made a happy sound.
“My proposal,” Reeves said, “is a simple merger between our two Houses. House Silver and House Brown. Over the years I’ve been working with people from House Brown and I have been pleased with their . . . flexible sense of morality and infinite need for money. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Harris?”
“Fuck bricks, Reeves,” Left Ned said. “Cut your deal or call your troops before I get it into both my minds to blow your head off out of boredom.”
“You want me to cut to the chase?” Reeves asked. “Fine. Here’s the chase: I want House Brown. All of it. Off record, of course. I want full access to every pocket and farm and compound and bunker stashed away in the world. Names, numbers, resources, capabilities.”
