Never leave intact an asset that can be used against you later.
While the position was easily visible from other airships, which meant a zombie incursion was in the future, Robert hoped the deflated, destroyed envelope would make the airship appear deserted. As the envelope drooped over them, it turned the air musty and close and shut out enough light to make it a bit creepy. Robert felt a pang at losing the ship and the illusion of safety it had given them. Em would have hated taking it down, he was sure. Em. He had to find a way to find her, to contact Wynken and Blynken and save the day. She thought he was a hero. He had to be a hero.
He posted the motley guys as guards. The Belle, with a lot of simpering—Nod’s description because Robert could never remember using or thinking that word—offered to assist during the surgery. Robert could admit to surprise at their ready agreement to help him cut into a zombie head, until it occurred to him that they needed to know there was a way back. Hope was seriously missing in this gray, dismal place. They’d pinned it on him, adding the weight of their need to that of Em and the peeps. At his request, they’d assembled anything that could pass for a surgical instrument—a small assortment of knives, some handkerchiefs and a pair of tweezers.
The impossible just takes longer.
The first challenge to overcome: sedation. The peeps thought they could send in nanite drones, non-sentient scouts that could target the pain and movement centers of the brain. He wouldn’t be medically unconscious, but he also wouldn’t feel pain or be able to move. If the zombie had some kind of anti-nanite shield, then the operation would be over before it started. Heroes didn’t torture people, even zombie people. The two captured and blind folded zombies lay on the deck, in the shadows cast by the sagging envelope, twitching occasionally. Based on the kissing experiment, Nod believed that physical contact would allow nanite penetration. Robert hoped skin-to-skin touch would be enough, because he was not kissing this guy.
Robert knelt by him and laid his palm against the guy’s mouth. No surprise he opened it a bit, allowing the drones non-skin access. The drones were to attempt penetration, avoiding contact with anything that looked suspicious. If they survived, they were to move in and map the area of interest and attempt to send back a report.
Robert’s palm tingled as the insertion began. Nod estimated it would take a full minute to know if the drones had been eliminated or not.
“Shouldn’t you ask for something to cut with?” the Belle whispered.
Robert ignored her. Did the guy’s breathing seem deeper? He lifted the man’s hand, let it go. It dropped and the twitching had stopped. Why no HUD? He had been counting on the heads up display to assist him with the depth of the incision.
It is possible that communication can’t occur until there is an incision. The kissing was—
I know what the kissing involved. Weird to be embarrassed and strengthened by the memory of kissing Em. He shelved embarrassed and used the strength to help him deal with what was. It wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but at least there were signs the drones had survived the insertion. Robert flexed his fingers, held out his hand. “Scalpel.” It sounded better than “pocketknife.”
With something between a smirk and a simper, the Belle placed the pocketknife in his palm. Inside his head, Nod snarled again, though he also offered a stabilizing influence as Robert placed the blade against the line of the scar. He hesitated, caught between his total lack of medical experience and the flood of knowledge from his sister. If we’re wrong—
Trust yourself, Robert-oh-my-darling.
For some reason, calling him that connected Robert to Emily and steadied his insides. This was for her, to find her and free her. He pushed the blade into the skin and turning the line red as the blood broke free of flesh and ran down the zombie’s neck, forming bright stains on the ground. Before he had time for his stomach to lurch—a HUD appeared inside his head, the area with the mind control device a well defined, yet ominously blank spot.
I have made contact. A pause. Dampening field seems to be confined to the surface of the skin. The breach allows us to connect, though not an unlimited connection.
Why the extreme hostility to the peeps—but he already knew the answer on some level. They were highly ethical and an effective fighting force, despite their size. Time trackers. Time pins. Time. If someone wanted to impact the time line, the peeps had the power to stop it. Look what they’d done for Delilah. They’d protected her through two time resets. If it was as Delilah had suspected, if someone was hinking with time, then they’d figured out that the peeps didn’t like it. And had made plans to keep them from this place, or render them ineffective if they did get in.
“Swab it,” he ordered, thankful he could multi-task, though this felt more like panic and calm fighting for supremacy. If this were some kind of constructed alternate reality, what would happen to the people in it if it ceased to exist? The nanites had done something so complex neither he nor Delilah understood the math, in order to protect her, but if they couldn’t do anything here—
Deal with the problem in front of you.
With a lot less simper—and a lot more pale—the Belle staunched the flow with one of the handkerchiefs.
With the HUD in place, he was able to adjust the depth of the incision until the tip of the blade scraped against something. The device. “Tweezers.” Even he couldn’t make them into forceps. He used the blade to press open one side of the incision and eased the tweezers inside.
Now he could see the device with his eyes and his HUD. Long and thin, it was too like a bug for comfort. He clamped it with the tweezers, noting that tiny prongs secured it to the brain stem. When the tip of the tweezers touched the underside of the device, where it pressed against the brain stem, the prongs retracted. He took the opening offered and extracted it.
It was about two centimeters long, and a bit more than one wide. With the prongs visible, it looked even more similar to a bug. “Exterior appears to be brass.”
The Belle leaned in, “It looks like a cockroach.” She started to poke it. The prongs flexed as if to grab her flesh. Without the peeps, her shriek would have permanently impaired his hearing, though the earthquake tremor helped mute it some. Knocked off balance by the tremor, Robert fell on his back, somehow managing to keep his grip on the tweezers and the brass bug. He landed between the two zombies—or the zombie and the hopefully ex-zombie. There was a different kind of tremor, a sense of being in two places and then the zombie he hadn’t operated on vanished as if he’d never been.
“Where did he go?” He looked from the tumbled Belle to the Colonial.
“Where did who go?” the Colonial asked.
Robert did a motley crew head count and came up one short there, too. Green was gone, but Robert didn’t ask about him. Maybe he’d caught some of Em’s dislike of questions. Or he feared the answer.
TWENTY-NINE
Conan’s fascination with Doc worked for her—and against him—making him ridiculously easy to “secure.” She liked it when events went her way, though this event still made her uneasy. She quelled her conscience by the mental reminder that she owed him—even if it was from an alternate reality or two. And if someone was messing with his life, he deserved to be set free. If that freeing got him off her ass, it would be a win-win, though she’d settle for a win for her. She’d briefly considered bringing General Halliwell in on the op, until Hel reminded her that she wasn’t subject to his orders or discipline.
I do wish you’d quit forgetting we are mated. He sounded more amused than aggrieved.
Married. We’re married. She felt him smile at her auto response. He knew she didn’t like it and did it anyway. For some reason, he liked getting her hot under the collar.
Not just under the collar.
She almost laughed until she realized the twit was watching. She scowled instead, and then directed her attention to the sedated barbarian. The Garradian equipment showed the location of the device, though it failed to penetrate
the surface and give them a look inside. She programmed the incision and the countdown started.
As the laser approached the back of Shan’s head, Doc picked up a flicker of something in the nanites connection, almost a sense that everything had blinked out. She shook her head, then stiffened as the twit made a strangled sound. She wavered, would have dropped to her knees if Hel hadn’t grabbed her. No time to ask Lurch what was going on. Just a sense that something was very wrong as the twit flinched back, going as white as a purple person could, her arm raised as if trying to avoid a blow.
“Wait—” Hel began, but the twit shook her head violently.
“Do it. Do it now.”
THIRTY
Now that the moment had arrived to start cutting, Emily wanted to ask Wynken and Blynken if they were sure about the course of action, but that was a question. Everything that popped in her head was a question and all of them were some variation of are you freaking crazy? It wasn’t the question one wanted to use to break a lifelong tradition, though it felt important enough to be the ban breaking question, which left her busted on a technicality, kind of, and back where she’d started. Holding her knife trying to drum up the courage to slice into a zombie head.
She looked at Carig, then Glarmere. They’d kept their distance since she tricked them into helping her—and since she ninja kicked zombie butt. What she found most odd, neither of them asked anything, even after she pulled out the Mega PocketKnife 3000. If a person she was with went ninja on some zombies, then pulled a knife and other items of possible mayhem, even she might be forced to ask a question, but they just arched their brows and pressed their backs a little harder to the wall. At least they’d helped her secure the zombies she didn’t plan to cut on. No surprise they liked the duct tape. Didn’t seem to matter what galaxy a guy was from. They all liked the duct tape.
You are stalling.
Yes I am.
We will assist you.
This left her stuck between a rock-question and a hard-place query about barfing.
You defeated an automaton. You can do this. For Robert-oh-my-darling.
That almost sounded sly and manipulative, but no one called Wynken or Blynken could be sly or manipulative. Sleepy yes, sly no.
You liked taking down the zombie, didn’t you?
Well, yeah. The headlock was way cool. And that combo kick and karate/ninja flip was also seriously awesome.
You will like this, too.
Right. She so didn’t believe that, but if it had to be done, it was best done quickly. Or something like that. She dug into a pocket and pulled out her antique spectacles with attached magnifiers in varying levels of magnification. Perhaps if everything were huge, it wouldn’t look like what it really was. And it was the first time she’d actually needed them, which helped blunt awful with some steampunk awesome.
Okay. I’m ready. I think. There was a bit of whimper, a bit of “please don’t make me do this” to the tone, but one couldn’t help one’s tone, particularly inside her head.
Place your hand against his mouth so that we may insert drones to assist in the surgery.
That was better than a knife, so she complied. Felt her palm tingle a bit and saw tiny flashes of light under his skin for a couple of seconds. It kind of brought home the reality of bunches of tiny computers cruising around under her skin. Way better than a pet rock, that’s for sure. And they did seem to clean up after themselves. And her.
Now we will make the incision.
Of course, a pet rock wouldn’t want her to cut into a zombie, but it also wouldn’t have repaired her butt. Not sure what conclusion she’d reached, she tilted her head until she could see the magnified section of zombie neck and pocketknife. Right. The incision.
Place the tip of the knife at the top of the scar and then relax. We will guide your hand, so that proper depth and length are achieved. We will also monitor zombie life signs.
It all felt a bit distant, which she didn’t mind all that much. Distant was good, as her hand, seemingly of its own accord, sank into flesh, releasing a gush of bright, red blood. Okay, so maybe not a gush, but it looked like a lot of blood running down his neck and dripping onto the dusty, wood floor of the ratty tenement turned operating room. With her free hand, she staunched the flow with her oil rag. Not sterile, but the nanites seemed confident they could handle anything her oil rag could dish out. Whatever the drones were doing in there, it worked as the blood seepage slowed.
Secure the needle-nosed pliers and insert them in the incision.
A whimper rose in her throat, but got drowned out by two thumps against the wooden floor. Her two tag-a-longs had face-planted. It seemed neither could handle the sight of blood. What a couple of girls. For some reason, it helped tamp down her urge to barf and/or gag, or join them in the face plant. Emily grabbed her needle-nosed pliers and eased them inside the incision, felt the ends scrape against something metal.
The opening in the flesh allows us to connect to the drones.
Emily had a sense of them doing a happy dance, then a weird map formed inside her head. Kind of transparent, because she could see her hands, could see her pliers inside the guy’s neck, but—and this was the totally weird part—she could also see a map of his innards. It was both creepy and interesting. The ends of her pliers rested against a long, dense device, like a misshapen Junior Mint. Relaxing into Wynken and Blynken’s guidance, Emily nudged the end of one side of the pliers under the edge and felt it come loose. She snagged it with a dexterity that made her feel a bit sassy and extracted it from the wound.
The zombie twitched and moaned, then subsided again.
Did I kill him was not the first question she wanted to ask, so she didn’t. Instead, she checked his pulse with her free hand, relieved when she felt one. She brought the device to eye level, wondering either idly, or as a distraction, if she should start out with an easy question. Kind of like jumping into the shallow end of the pool. Maybe that would be easier than finding the ultimate question that needed to be asked no matter what. The problem with that approach, she suspected she’d left all the easy questions at home. This place wasn’t easy on any level.
“Its brass,” she said, wincing at the surprise in her voice. Of course it would be brass in this steampunk place. That was Steampunk 101, too. Glarmere opened his close set eyes, moaned and subsided again.
She opened her mouth to say something, something hopefully wise and wonderful, but the tremor hit before she got it out and let her off the hook. The hardest one yet. It knocked her on her butt and rolled the two girls into the wall. Shook her unconscious zombie pretty hard, too. But the truly freaky part, for just a second, she thought she could see through the walls. And then it stopped.
“Wow. That was weird.” Her words echoed in a kind of hollow and wimpy way, in the hollow and mostly empty room—she stiffened. Mostly empty. Except for the two girls and four zombies. Out of the corner of her eye, the place where the zombies were appeared to be a bit on the empty side. She could look, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
They are gone.
Apparently, neither Wynken nor Blynken understood the concept of denial. Since they’d spilled those beans, she probably ought to look, but it was still hard. Not any harder than cutting open a zombie head, she reminded herself. Herself was unimpressed, but felt impelled to look. Yup, gone. Then she realized the zombie she’d just cut on was gone, too. “That’s not Steampunk 101. Probably not. Maybe.”
Perhaps we should examine the mind control device.
Worried it was gone, too, and she’d have to start over, she brought the pliers up into her sight line. At least it was still here. So she could focus on something else she did not know how to deal with. Lovely. She flicked down another magnifier, making the thing pop into view, as if it had jumped closer. She might have jumped a bit, but Wynken and Blynken pretended she hadn’t. It was long, lean, a bit bug-like. A tad too brass cockroach for her taste, but it did bring back the steampunk vibes. Though
, if she were going to create a mechanical creature, it wouldn’t be a cockroach. Typical evil overlord move. She tipped it to the side, exposing two rows of tiny, prong-like legs. The underside looked different, softer and a bit on the spongy side. She nudged it with her pinkie—the only digit that would fit between the legs—and the thing grabbed the end.
Someone screamed.
It might have been her.
THIRTY-ONE
When the wave arched over her, Ashe thought she’d lost. She flinched back, covering her head with her arms, her eyes closed against the end incoming. Perhaps that’s why it took longer than it should have to realize that the tsunami failed to arrive. Instead, a sad, little wave lapped against her ankles. Not even a cold wave. The entire chill zone centered around her chest as shock sent shudders to her toes and back up to rattle her teeth. It may have lost its oomph, but she knew to her core the call had been too close to rejoice in.
Hands gripped her shoulders, kept her on her feet, which was good because her knees were deep in wobbly. She almost feared to look, sure something had to have changed, but what?
“Are you all right?”
He sounded the same, so she ventured a look.
The Chameleon’s man stared at her, anxiety fading into cautious relief.
“She’s lost most of her color.”
“Not as much as she needs to lose.” His woman’s voice was flat, but with a hint of acid that Ashe found reassuring rather than annoying.
At least she hadn’t changed. Nor had her man. Didn’t mean nothing had changed, of course. Ashe took a cautious breath, snatched it back as the aftershock hit. Not a wave, but a shower of sparks in pretty colors, with lots of pastels, and a temp that warmed her almost to her core. The stream shuddered like she had a moment ago and for a couple of seconds the room phased, flickering like an ancient circuit.
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