by Scott Meyer
At last, Brit found what she’d been looking for, and what she saw made her heart soar, then plummet in quick succession.
It was clearly the application that was controlling the status of his various prisoners. While there was no big red “Restore” button, there was a pull-down menu marked “Dampening Field.” She checked the options, and one was “Deactivate.”
This was all good news.
The bad news was that the top of the window bore the headline “Merlin.” Next to the various menus and statistics there was a rotating image of Jimmy, updating in real time to show what he was doing, and a map to show where he was doing it.
Brit allowed herself a few seconds to search for a menu that would switch to someone, anyone else, but none was obvious. She looked at the remaining running applications she had not yet checked. There was nothing to indicate what any of them did. She clicked on the next one and got another view of the bathroom in the Gwenches’ cabin again. She minimized it and was back to Jimmy’s page.
She could hear swords clashing and Todd gloating. She didn’t shift her focus to listen to what he was saying. She didn’t dare.
This wasn’t the worst-case scenario. That would have been finding no way to give anyone their powers back, and the whole lot of them getting killed. This was the second-worst-case scenario. The only person she could restore power to at the moment was Jimmy, who was patiently waiting his turn to eviscerate Martin. Nobody trusted Jimmy, and “nobody” included Brit. Jimmy had killed people and proven himself untrustworthy. Now she was considering trusting him to save their lives.
She didn’t know what to do, but she knew what she didn’t want to do, and that was explain why someone died while she was hesitating when she had a way to save them.
She moved the mouse to the dampening-field menu and thought, Phillip isn’t going to like this.
Gwen and Roy were getting tired, but they were still managing to fend off Tyler’s and Gary’s attacks. Martin, meanwhile, was having to work hard to battle Phillip, who was under Todd’s direct control.
Normally, Martin would counterattack, but he had no wish to injure Phillip and knew that doing so wouldn’t help anyway, so Martin was stuck playing defense. He tried to make up for this by pouring his extra energy into trash talk.
“You’re done for, Todd,” Martin said. “I’ve got your moves.”
“Really?” Todd asked. “What are my moves then?”
“You keep trying the same two attacks in quick succession until you think I’m used to it; then you try a third. You think you’re going to catch me off guard.”
Todd said, “But not you. You’re smart. You’re paying far too much attention to Phillip’s sword arm for that to ever work, aren’t you?”
Martin said, “You know it.”
Todd said, “Let’s see if you’re ready for this.”
Phillip had been alternating between swinging at Martin’s torso and his legs for a while. Martin was already watching for a changeup. His senses went on high alert. He watched Phillip’s sword arm, waiting for some hint of where he would attack next. The arms did not move.
Phillip barked, “Martin!”
Martin looked up and saw that the spinning blue jewel that denoted who was under Todd’s direct control was no longer hovering over Phillip.
In one smooth, coordinated motion Martin cringed, yelped, and spun 180 degrees. He saw that Jimmy was now under Todd’s control. Jimmy held his sword in two hands like an axe and was bringing it straight down with all of his force directly toward Martin’s head.
Time seemed to slow. Jimmy looked horrified. Martin was horrified. He tried to get his sword up to block, but he knew it would be too little, too late. He saw his own blade rising, and beyond it, Jimmy’s expression changed from horror to shock. In the last instant, the momentum went out of his swing, and his elbows seemed to lose all strength. Jimmy’s blade slowed and struck Martin’s sword with greatly reduced force.
Jimmy’s knees buckled. He dropped like a rag doll and landed on his butt, rolling backward on the slanted floor, but his face broke into a wide, delighted grin.
From the computer, Brit yelled, “Jimmy! You’ve got your powers!”
Todd let out an inarticulate cry of alarm and confusion but was drowned out by Tyler, still hacking away at Roy, shrieking, “No! Not Jimmy! Anyone but Jimmy!”
Roy moaned in such a way as to make it clear that he did not disagree.
Jimmy saw Gwen glancing wearily at him, distracting herself long enough for Gary to nick her left thigh. Martin was still cringing with his sword over his head. He was looking down at Jimmy with an odd combination of hope and fear. Behind him, Phillip was still in a holding pattern, waiting for his turn to attack. Phillip looked Jimmy in the eye and said, “Don’t screw us.”
Jimmy scowled, said, “Extraction: penthouse,” and disappeared.
33.
Phillip and Tyler were stunned. Martin, Gwen, and Roy didn’t have that luxury, since they still had to fend off the preprogrammed attacks of their friends. Phillip had come out of wait mode and swung on Martin immediately after Jimmy left the system. Gary seemed on the verge of passing out. Gwen slapped him as hard as she could between blocking his sword strikes, but if having his body attempt to kill a good friend wasn’t enough to keep him awake, a few slaps didn’t have much chance.
Todd allowed himself half a second to smile over Jimmy’s departure, then turned his attention to the strange woman sitting at his computer.
“Stop that!” he shrieked.
Brit paid him no attention, focusing on moving through the remaining windows as fast as she could, looking for someone, anyone other than Jimmy to liberate.
If Todd had been thinking, he’d have used his powers to stop Brit. Or he might have teleported to the desk to stop her. Or he may have put his energy into sprinting there. It wasn’t that far, after all.
Todd was not thinking.
Todd shouted, “Hey, get away from my stuff!” He moved with a strange gait that was half jogging, half jumping up and down waving his arms, trying to get Brit’s attention.
“You! I said stop! Stop messing with my stuff!”
Roy, still fending off Tyler’s blade, hissed, “You had to open your mouth. If you hadn’t said that, he might have helped us.”
“No,” Tyler said. “If that was enough to put him off, he’d have found another excuse.”
At the same time, Phillip asked Martin, “ ‘Extraction: penthouse’? You know that spell?”
“No,” Martin said, blocking a swing with arms that were clearly fatigued, “but I have other things to worry about right now.”
Todd was standing at the entrance to his weird three-fourths of an apartment, yelling up at Brit. She was still ignoring him. She found a window that looked exactly like the screen that had restored Jimmy’s powers; only this one featured Tyler. She scanned for the drop-down menu she’d used before.
Todd shouted, “Hey! Hey!” He stopped. The anger drained from his face. He said, “Hey,” this time at himself. He followed the power cord from the back of the monitor down to the power strip under the desk, which was just below his eye level. He yanked the cord from its socket. The screen went dark before Brit could get the mouse to the proper menu. She cursed and looked under the desk.
Todd smiled at her as he pulled his tablet from his bag, turned it on, poked at the screen, and disappeared.
Brit heard a rustling behind her. She turned and saw Todd standing over her. He had his tablet in both hands and was wound up to swing it at her head like a wrestler with a metal folding chair.
The world seemed to go silent and still. Brit saw the look of murder in his eyes, saw the metal back of the tablet waiting to strike. She was distracted by the fleeting thought that she was going to die with an Apple logo pressed into her forehead, which pleased her a bit.
&nb
sp; Brit lifted her left arm to shield her head and readied her right to punch Todd in the face once his tablet was clear of his head. She waited for a fraction of a second, anticipating the impact on her forearm. It didn’t come.
He still hadn’t swung. Has he lost his nerve? Brit wondered. Is he toying with me?
“Why don’t you do it already?” Brit asked.
Todd remained still, his face a mask of rage and hatred, but a voice from above and behind Brit said, “He can’t.”
Brit stood. Todd remained frozen; only his eyes moved.
She turned and saw that the fighting had stopped. Phillip and Tyler seemed to have control of their movement back. Phillip cradled his broken arm with great care. Gary remained frozen like a statue, poised mid-thrust. Gwen, Martin, and Roy were all exhausted, but in one piece.
Brit asked, “What happened?”
None of the others spoke, but the voice, Jimmy’s voice, said, “I’ve saved you. Surprising though that clearly is.”
There was a terrible rumbling sound. The roof of the circular chamber shook. Cracks ran the ceiling’s circumference; then the whole thing lifted into the air like an immense manhole cover. What had been a large room was now a hole in the ground. They looked up at the circular disk of rock that hung in the air above them. Below it, standing at the rim, was Jimmy. His hair and beard were neatly trimmed. He wore a slim black suit. Behind him, the lava fountain, the billowing clouds of smoke and soot, and the sullen, gray clouds were all frozen as if someone had paused the world. He waved his hand and the former roof flew away like a carelessly discarded Frisbee.
Jimmy took a single step. His stride was relaxed and casual. In that one step, he covered all the space between where he started, on the far rim of the crater, to where he landed, in what was left of Todd’s office, next to Brit and Todd.
Jimmy brought his face in close to Todd’s. “What do you think?” he asked. “How do you like my version of your macro? I haven’t implemented it the same way, of course. There are differences. For instance, the force fields that hold you were created automatically when I targeted you, in real time.” Jimmy motioned to Brit. “I could immobilize her in an instant, right now.”
Jimmy smiled, glanced at Brit, saw the look on her face, then added, “But I won’t. I wouldn’t. That was just an example. You can relax.”
Brit said, “Good,” but she didn’t relax. Jimmy shook his head.
He turned away from Todd and Brit. He looked down at the others. They were winded, wounded, and filthy, and not one of them seemed totally happy to see him. The only one who wasn’t looking up at him wearily was Gary, whom he had deliberately left bound by Todd’s force fields.
“Well, first things first,” Jimmy said. He stretched out his arm toward Gary and said, “Quest extraction: Gary.” Gary disappeared.
“Where did you send him?” Tyler demanded.
Jimmy closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He opened his eyes and saw that Tyler was watching him like a hawk, ready to dodge at the slightest hint of trouble. Jimmy thought for a moment about how he must look, standing there with his fingers to his temples. He dropped his hands and said, “Oh, come on, who do you think I am, Magneto? I sent Gary to a doctor. Louiza, the doctor in Atlantis.” He turned back to Brit. “She’s good, right?”
Brit said, “Yeah, the best.”
“Good,” Jimmy said. “Right, that’s what Brit the Elder said.”
Brit the Younger said, “That’s where you went? To Brit the Elder?”
“Yeah. Where else? Who would you go to for help?”
Brit chose not to answer that but said, “If you did anything to harm her—”
“She’d have seen it coming a mile away,” Jimmy interrupted, “because you would find out right now that I’d done it and she’d have remembered that before I ever showed up. Come on, you gave me my powers back, but I didn’t know how fully or what the best thing to do with them would be, so I went to future-you for help. Together we came up with a plan. Is that so hard to understand?”
Phillip asked, “Why didn’t you just come right back the next instant, then?” He and the others had all limped closer to the edge of the apartment. “Why leave us here fighting?”
Jimmy smiled down at him, then said, “Showmanship.”
Jimmy looked at the exhausted faces looking up at him and saw that his answer was insufficient. He sighed, then added, “And, if I’m being honest—”
Tyler snorted, “If.”
“After your reaction to Brit here giving me my powers first, I wanted you all to appreciate my contribution a bit more. I knew I had to come back and help you, but I wanted you all to know that really, I didn’t have to. Do you see what I’m saying? I couldn’t just leave you all to die, but I could have.”
“And we’re glad you didn’t,” Roy said, “but you clearly weren’t in a hurry. You took the time to go to the barber and get a new suit.”
Jimmy said, “The suit’s not new. I transported out, contacted Brit the Elder, let Eddie know what was going on; then, yes, I cleaned myself up. I was going to be working with a lady, and I didn’t want to do it wearing leather pants and a fur cloak that I looted from a corpse before going on a two-week hike.”
Roy was satisfied with the answer but not so much so that he actually said anything. Jimmy looked down at the group. They looked up at him as if he were on a stage. He asked, “Before I continue with the business of saving your skins, are there any more questions?”
Martin raised his hand.
Jimmy said, “Yes?”
“The trigger phrase you used to escape. ‘Extraction: penthouse.’ What is that? It’s not any spell I’ve ever heard. It sure isn’t one of the spells we’re allowing you to use while you’re on probation.”
Jimmy sucked his teeth for a second, then said, “Yeah, I guess I should come clean about that. Remember three years ago when I told you that I had voluntarily stripped myself of all my powers? That wasn’t true. I had taken the time to set up my own shell program you all didn’t know about.”
“So when you said you had no powers, you actually had all of your powers,” Phillip said, unimpressed.
“No,” Jimmy said. “Not at that time, but I’ve added to it since then.”
“When?” Martin asked. “You haven’t had access to any computers.”
“In your time,” Jimmy said. “I’ve been zipping back to modern times on a regular basis to work on my shell program.”
“How often?” Roy asked.
“Once a week, and I’d stay there for a week. It’s like I’m bicoastal, but with time. I’ve been splitting my time between Leadchurch and a condo I keep in the future. It’s a good place to unwind and take a break from your constant suspicions.”
“Our well-founded suspicions,” Tyler said.
“But when were you doing this?” Martin asked. “We’ve been watching you twenty-four–seven.”
Jimmy blushed slightly. “Not quite twenty-four-seven, Martin. None of you watched me when I went to the bathroom.”
Todd, although held immobile, managed to make a muffled but unmistakably gleeful sound.
Jimmy looked to Todd and said, “Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me. Time to get back to business.”
Jimmy stepped over to Todd, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Extraction: penthouse.”
Jimmy and Todd both disappeared. The room was silent for a moment; then Jimmy and Todd reappeared. Jimmy was wearing an entirely different beautifully tailored suit. Todd was no longer paralyzed, but he looked drawn and haggard. His clothes were rumpled and sweat stained. He looked as if he’d been to hell and back.
Gwen asked, “Where did you take him?”
Jimmy said, “I told you, my condo.”
“What did you do to him?” Gwen persisted.
“I asked him some questions,” Jimmy
said. “And I waited until he decided to answer.”
“He wouldn’t give me food or water,” Todd blurted. “And he wouldn’t let me sleep!”
Jimmy smiled. “I said I waited, not that I waited patiently.”
Phillip said, “Jimmy—”
“Oh, spare me, Phillip. He put us through the wringer; then he was going to slice us up like deli meat. Before you leap to judge me yet again, don’t you think you should ask me what information I got from him?”
Phillip said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Jimmy smiled down at Phillip.
Phillip looked up at Jimmy.
Jimmy tilted his head to the side, questioningly.
Phillip rolled his eyes.
Jimmy smiled a bit wider.
Phillip exhaled loudly, then said, “Okay. Fine. What information did you get from Todd?”
Jimmy said, “There. Thank you. Was that so hard?”
Phillip said, “Yes.”
Jimmy said, “Splendid. I got the password to his encrypted hard drive. It’s ‘Hot Toddy.’ You can see why he resisted telling me. Anyway, on the drive you’ll find all the details of how he did all this, all the footage of the quest that he has gathered, and the exact telemetry of precisely how, when, and where Jeff died. If you’re clever enough, you should be able to think of a way to save him. If you’re not, the Brits almost certainly will be.”
“Good,” Roy said. “Well done, Jimmy.”
Jimmy said, “Thank you! See, everyone! That’s how it’s done.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Roy said. “So, now what do we do with Hot Toddy over there?”
Jimmy looked at Todd and said, “We don’t do anything with him. We don’t have him. I have him, and I have to decide what to do with him. Todd, what do you think I should do with you? Should I send you back to prison where I found you, or should I strand you somewhere in the past?”
