The Reluctant Assassin

by Eoin Colfer

  There was a little chitchat, which was impossible to make out, then Riley struck and everything went orange. End of story. QED, the check’s in the mail, the prosecution rests.

  Or does it?

  Chevie freeze-framed the moment when Riley lunged. It seemed a little weird. Chevie knew all about knife fights, and the boy’s stance seemed off to her. He was leaning backward while moving forward. This was not an easy thing to do. Also, the look on his face was pure horror.

  Either this kid is schizophrenic, or he had a little help.

  But there was no one else in the dark room. No one that she could see, at any rate.

  Chevie was tempted to pound the ancient hardware.

  Alt-tech, my butt. I can’t even clean up the image a little.

  Then Chevie had an idea: maybe she couldn’t clean up the image on this box of bolts, but if she could transfer it . . .

  Chevie pulled her smartphone from her waistband and took an HD shot of the screen. Simply transferring the image to her phone seemed to sharpen it up a bit, but it was still dark and fuzzy.

  Dark and fuzzy, not a problem.

  Chevie had no fewer than four photo manipulation apps on her phone, and she selected one to run the picture through.

  In a way it was therapeutic to have such a mundane task to perform, which could momentarily help her to pretend she was working on a normal case.

  She ordered the phone to sharpen, lighten, and boost color.

  It took a few seconds, then another person appeared from the shadows, behind Riley to the right. A tall man, slightly bent, with dark, close-set eyes that were devoid of expression, like those of a corpse. The face was bland, made more so by the soot smeared across his features, and Chevie couldn’t imagine ladies ever swooning before this guy, but the eyes gave him away. Chevie had seen those dead eyes before, on the faces of serial killers in the Quantico files.

  Chevie shivered.

  So that’s what it feels like when your blood runs cold, she thought. I’ve heard the expression but never understood it.

  This was the man Riley had spoken of, no doubt about it. Death, the magician. This guy looked capable of anything.

  Yet it was Riley holding the knife. The boy was still guilty.

  But . . .

  Chevie double-tapped the image to enlarge it, then centered the crosshairs on Riley’s knife arm, enlarging again. It seemed conclusive. A hand holding a knife, a forearm, wrinkle shadows at the elbow.

  Wrinkle shadows . . .

  Chevie enlarged again until the pixels blurred and saw that the shadows were not shadows.

  Not unless shadows have knuckles.

  There were four long fingers gripping Riley’s arm, forcing his hand.

  The boy is innocent! she thought, releasing a breath that she’d not realized she was holding.

  Looking into that blackened face, with those flat eyes, Chevie was glad that this man could not, contrary to what Riley believed, make his way into the future.

  All the same, she thought. Maybe I will stand guard over the pod with a round in the chamber. Just in case.

  Chevie tugged the Timekey from its socket and hung it around her neck for safekeeping.

  Just in case.

  Special Agent Lawrence Witmeyer, her boss in the L.A. office, was a man with a parable for every occasion. Many involved a made-up Fed called Agent Justin Casey, who was always prepared and never got himself shot because he forgot to follow protocol.

  Chevie snorted. Agent Justin Casey. A helluva guy.

  And if she hadn’t been a little distracted by her reminiscing, she might have noticed an angry blister of red energy boiling at the heart of the WARP pod and had time to duck before the explosion.

  Unfortunately she was distracted and didn’t see anything until the computers set off a warning alarm. By then it was already too late.

  Garrick and Smart tumbled into the wormhole together, but as separate people. Once inside, Garrick held on to his consciousness, but Smart’s heart had already stopped beating and his brain was winding down. The effect of the self-destruct bomb was to excite some particles that were not meant to be excited and corrupt the transition, in effect merging Smart’s last neurons of consciousness with Garrick’s and some of his physical characteristics too, which the WARP pod would rebuild around his altered DNA.

  A new being with accelerated evolution. All the gifts that millennia of adaptation would bring.

  For a length of time that was immeasurable and yet instant, Garrick felt himself disembodied in the wormhole. He could not see anything and spent the time flicking through Smart’s memories.

  I have killed both father and son, he realized, and wished that he had received payment for the second murder.

  This thought of payment set Garrick thinking about the shady cove who had contracted him for the murder of Charles Smart.

  Did he know, Garrick wondered, about all of this magic?

  On a normal outing there would have been no complications. Garrick would have slid in and out like a gust of wind, but Riley had been along for his first kill. It had been a trial run for the lad, plain and simple. Garrick had kept an eye on the comings and goings for a few days, then sent Riley in through an upstairs window. He would never have risked his reputation or purse taking the boy along had there been even a smell of peril.

  All of these magical happenings are luck or fate.

  Though Garrick could not now believe in either magic or fate. Atoms collided or they did not, simple as that. Atoms, thought Garrick, delighted with the new understanding that the merge with Felix Smart had brought him. I can see their systems in my mind’s eye.

  Garrick was not anxious or ill at ease over this curious transition. He knew now exactly what was happening and what awaited him in the future. Nor was he disappointed over the absence of “real magic,” for was this not magic all around him now? Wasn’t this new knowledge power without measure? Garrick was too enchanted by his new state to take to brooding.

  The future awaits and, with my new awareness, I will be master of it.

  These were issues to be decided in a future Garrick knew well.

  Three-D movies and pocket-sized computers. Automatic weapons and Japanese robots. My oh my.

  On this occasion there was no gentle materialization in the house on Bedford Square, no wisps of ethereal mist or shuddering passengers in the pod. This time a red ball of liquid appeared, maybe the size of an apple, and then it exploded in a grisly mess, vomiting sheets of blood into the basement, accompanied by a sonic boom and wave of concussive force. The ring of dampers set around the pod exploded like fireworks at a rock concert.

  Chevie was lifted like a leaf before a hurricane and tossed backward the length of the basement corridor. She touched down a couple of times before crashing into a stack of her own packing boxes under the stairs, which she had been meaning to fold flat since she’d arrived. The boxes tumbled on top of her, leaving a triangular tunnel for her to keep an eye on the pod. And it was only one eye; Chevie’s left eye closed on impact and her senses longed to desert her, but she held on long enough to see what else came out of the pod.

  What came out was a sac of flesh and bone, lurching across the blood-slick floor, fighting with itself. Chevie saw a hand punching through the membrane and a face pressing against the viscous surface.

  “Smart,” called Chevie weakly. Then the face bubbled and changed, becoming that of the man on the screen.

  I am in a nightmare. Wake up, Chevron Savano. On your feet.

  If this was a dream, it was incredibly realistic, engaging all of her senses, even smell.

  I can’t remember smelling in a dream before.

  Chevie knew it was no dream. The tiles that smooshed her jaw and cheek were too slick with lumpy blood and ichor.

  The jumble of body parts clicked and rattled with labored breaths, drawing bolts of energy from the pod. It shook like a wet dog, shaking off globs of its cocoon until the figure of a man emerged. The man oozed
into a standing position, then spread his arms wide, flexing his fingers as though they were wondrous inventions.

  Chevie felt her legs piston weakly as they sought traction on the floor, but even that effort made her head spin.

  Riley. I need to save that boy.

  The figure seemed to hear the thought and shrugged off the remains of the distended bubble of sloppy substance, transitioning from solid to gas and floating in clouds toward the ceiling.

  Clothes grew on the man, literally appearing stitch by stitch, crawling like worms along his solidifying skin. The garments were a curious blend of hemp, hazmat leggings, and a Victorian gent’s overcoat, topped off by a bowler hat that seemed as out of place as a bow tie on a shark.

  “Riley,” said the man, as if testing his mouth. “Riley, my son. I have come for you. I know where you are incarcerated. The futurist Smart showed me.”

  Smart showed him, thought Chevie, and she knew in her gut that the hazmat team was gone.

  Chevie remembered having a gun, which was possibly in its holster at her side, but that seemed like an impossible distance for her hand to travel. It was all she could do to keep one eye open. She saw the magician fondly tap the keyboard on one of the old computers, then his gaze turned on her.

  He sees me, Chevie realized, feeling the cold from the basement’s floor seep into her body.

  His gaze lingered on her a moment, then the magician made his way with determined strides toward the lockup door.

  It’s okay, she thought. That door is reinforced steel. The devil himself is not getting in without a card or a code.

  The demonic figure came to a halt in front of the security keypad, cracked his knuckles theatrically, then punched in the code.

  “Abracadabra,” he said as the holding-cell door yawned open.

  I am sorry, Riley , thought Chevie. You told me the truth, and I left you there to die. Forgive me.

  Garrick doffed his hat, as though entering a church, then ducked inside the cell.

  Chevie closed her eye. She did not want to see what happened next.

  Albert Garrick had literally become a new man when he emerged from the sac and stepped into the future. Everything was different: his DNA, his vocabulary, his range of expertise, his stance, muscle development, comprehension. He had even studied Shakespeare, or at least Felix Smart had.

  To be or not to be, my little Riley. In your case, I am undecided. It occurred to Garrick that there might be some danger lurking in this facility in which he had materialized, though Smart’s memories assured him that the sole sentry was a young girl, a slip of a thing who one would imagine to be relatively harmless. And yet Smart’s memories told him that she was an accomplished combatant who had performed most admirably in the City of Angels.

  And she wears the last Timekey, he remembered. Even though Smart’s memories had emerged from the wormhole intact, his Timekey lay like a cinder on his chest.

  Do not underestimate the girl, Garrick told himself, or unto dust will be your own destination.

  Garrick planted himself firmly in the real world and cast his eyes around. This was a strange place; windowless walls were lined with colored ropes and wall-mounted machinery.

  Cables and servers, the electricity flowing between his new nerve endings informed him.

  The gory evidence of Garrick’s passage from the past was evident: blood striped the walls and lay in congealing splashes on tabletop machinery.

  “Riley,” he said, testing his voice. “Riley, my son. I have come for you. I know where you are incarcerated. The futurist Smart showed me.”

  Garrick headed toward the machinery. This is a laptop, he thought, tip-tapping the keyboard. How charming.

  There would be time for such fancies later, but for now he must release Riley, retire to a safe crib, then let the boy bask in his master’s new glory.

  There was no obvious sign of Miss Savano. Perhaps the violence of his arrival had done her in?

  Or perhaps she lies in wait?

  Garrick forced himself to concentrate. He moved to the wall, squinting through the smoke and flashing lights down the red-bricked hallway to the jumble of containers.

  There. Look!

  An arm was sticking out from the crawl space below the boxes. The fingers twitched spasmodically and the head resting on that arm wasn’t moving. One eye was fully closed, the other glazed and swollen.

  That little periwinkle is a shade from death. I will nab my boy, then extinguish her final spark on the way out.

  Garrick moved quickly down the corridor, feeling better than he had in decades. The trip through the wormhole had purged his system. He felt like a giddy whelp about to shinny his first drainpipe.

  Another challenge lay before him, a challenge for the old Albert Garrick that was. Not the new model.

  Version 2.0, he thought, then pinched the skin on his own forearm to force concentration.

  The challenge was a keypad for the electronic lock.

  This machine can be fed with numbers or cards. I don’t have the card, but the codes to everything in this house are in my head somewhere.

  Garrick cocked his head while his brain supplied the numbers. He cracked his knuckles, then tapped the code into the pad. The light winked green and the door popped open.

  “Abracadabra,” he said with satisfaction.

  Garrick doffed his hat and ducked inside, smiling at the thought of Riley’s amazement.

  Oh, my son. We have much to share. So much.

  The cell was spartan, with only a narrow cot, a single chair and, of course, a camera crouched like a spider on the ceiling. But that was all.

  No boy.

  Riley had gone. His son.

  Garrick would not allow himself to roar the boy’s name. He had once been a celebrated illusionist, after all, not a simple player of dreadful melodrama. Instead he contented himself with a resounding slam of the door on his way to interview Miss Savano.

  How fortunate that I did not kill her before, he mused. Now she may help me find Riley before she dies.

  Chevie’s world was spinning in a kaleidoscope of dull colors. Concrete gray and streaked brown. She had been thinking, The boy is dead, over and over, but now she couldn’t remember if that was a snatch of a song lyric or an actual thought she should be concerned about.

  Something was happening outside her head to one of her body parts. A shoulder, maybe? Yes, her shoulder. Why was someone shaking her shoulder when all she wanted to do was sleep?

  “Miss, wake up,” said a voice urgently. “He’s coming.” Wake up? No, thanks. This was her day off. Maybe a little surfing later on down at Malibu.

  “Miss, on your feet now, or Garrick will kill both of us.”

  Garrick.

  An image flashed through Chevie’s mind of a bloody body emerging from some kind of cocoon.

  One of her eyes fluttered open; the other was still swollen like a pink beetle in her eye socket. The boy leaned over her, hoisting her by the lapels.

  “Riley?”

  “The one and only, Miss Savano. We have to quit this place right now.”

  Leaving? But I thought you were dead. I’m just going to close my eyes for a second.

  Riley grabbed the agent under her armpits, and hauled her upright.

  “Come along now,” he grunted. “Upsy-daisy.”

  Chevie’s good eye flicked open. “I am not a child.”

  At this moment Garrick appeared in the corridor, his face set like alabaster and streaked with blood.

  He is angry, Riley realized, and the sight of his master’s cold expression nearly paralyzed him with fear.

  His survival instincts took over. He grabbed Chevie’s pistol, placed it in her fingers, and, clasping her hand in both of his, he aimed the gun at Garrick’s chest.

  “Shoot, miss,” he said. “Now!”

  With Riley’s help, Chevie managed to squeeze off not one but two shots, both pulling high, but the second slug struck close enough to give Garrick pause. The m
agician snarled like a cornered street mutt and changed his pattern of movement entirely, becoming fluid, but also erratic, never arriving where his body language forecast he would be. When it seemed as though he was committed to a sidestep, his body would make an impossible diagonal lunge forward.

  The gunshots jarred Chevie back to reality, and she noted that this Garrick person moved in a way she had never seen. She blinked her good eye.

  “What? This guy is like a cat.”

  “Misdirection, a magician’s ploy,” said Riley, grunting as he hauled Chevie backward up the stairs. He could explain more about Garrick’s unique style later, when they had escaped this death house, if escape were possible.

  Chevie backed up the stairs, keeping her gun trained as much as possible on Garrick. The magician hissed now, like a vampire, and jammed his bowler hat down to his brows so he would not lose it.

  He’s getting ready to spring, thought Chevie.

  “Yeah, that’s right, fella,” she called down to the magician. “You come a little closer. Let’s see how well your disco moves work in a narrow stairwell. I will drill you right through your eyeball.”

  The warning seemed to work, possibly because there was a lot of truth in it. If Garrick set foot on the stairs, he would be boxed in by the wall and bannister. But if Chevie thought the nineteenth-century man would be cowed by her futuristic weapon, she was wrong.

  “You cannot escape me, Chevron Savano,” he said, head cocked to one side. “I will have my boy back and the secrets of the Timekey.”

  Chevie’s blood ran cold. This guy knew an awful lot for a Victorian.

  “Take one more step,” she said, keeping her weapon as steady as possible, “and we’ll see who escapes.”

  All this time Riley muttered into Chevie’s ear and dragged her backward toward street level.

  “Step and retreat,” he said, trying not to catch Garrick’s eye, for that glacial gaze would freeze and shatter his resolve. “Step and retreat.”

  They were near the top step now, while Garrick lurked at the bottom, flexing his fingers in frustration, wishing for a throwing knife. Chevie had an idea.