The Final Gambit

by Christopher Healy

  “You’ve been chasing Rector for a year!” Molly said. “Now we’re telling you where he is and that he’s about to kill thousands—and you don’t want to stop him?”

  “Oh, I’ll get Rector too,” Clark said, holding the cuffs open and ready to slap across a set of child-sized wrists. “But later. You’re here now.”

  “Incorrect! We are not,” Robot said. He pulled Molly and Emmett close, one in each arm, and, with a rumbling hum, lifted off the ground.

  “Robot, set us down, now!” Molly said, her stomach clenching from both the panic and the bumpy ride. She pulled on his neck, trying to steer him downward. “You’re too important to lose!”

  “So are you,” said Robot, ducking a terrified pigeon.

  “Molly, you’re going to make him drop us!” Emmett warned. “But Robot, she’s right, this is—”

  “This is silly,” said Robot as they zipped under wispy white clouds. “You said it yourself: every second we waste talking is one second closer to Rector turning on his machine. I have a way to get us there fast. It is silly for me to pretend I cannot fly, when flying can potentially save you and thousands of others.”

  They’d been in the air for barely a minute and already they could see the towering white obelisk rising above the trees.

  “I know you want to help,” Molly said as they swooped over rooftops. “But you can’t put yourself at risk like this!”

  “That is the same argument your mother made back in the barn when you told her you wanted to go after Rector,” Robot said. “Everything is on the record, remember?”

  Emmett looked into her eyes and nodded. They both knew Robot was right.

  “Besides,” Robot continued, “Agent Clark is a very stubborn man. The only way we were going to get him to pursue Rector was to lead him to the villain ourselves.”

  “Wait, what do you mean by that?” Emmett asked. He and Molly cautiously twisted their necks to peer behind themselves. The Daedalus Chariot was bobbing shakily in the sky not fifty feet away, Agent Clark scowling at the wheel.

  “Disobeying a direct order from a law enforcement agent,” he shouted over the wind. “Evading arrest. Reckless flying of an unregistered automaton. So many crimes for the list.”

  “That man really needs a hobby,” Emmett said.

  “I think we are his hobby,” said Molly. She yelled back at Clark, “You don’t know how to fly that thing! If you break my mother’s flying machine, I am going to be so mad!”

  Agent Clark pulled furiously at knobs and levers, and the chariot jolted forward, increasing its speed. The whole vehicle was shaking, but the agent was nearly side by side with the children now. He leaned out and took a swipe at Emmett’s foot.

  “Hold on,” Robot said.

  “You’re the one with your arms around us!” Emmett sputtered, tucking his legs up to his belly. “You hold on!”

  Robot dove downward, then swooped back up, looping upside down, and leveled out again behind the Daedalus Chariot.

  While Molly whooped with glee, Emmett shut his eyes tight. “You can’t save us if we’re dead!” he squealed.

  They zoomed over the red stone towers of the Smithsonian, and the flying chariot banked hard right, swerving to circle back around behind Robot again. Below them, the crowd on the National Mall suddenly came into view. At least no one was writhing in pain yet. Rector was, blessedly, still chattering away, his voice echoing through multiple Empowernator speakers positioned around the Mall. But Molly knew he could pull that lever at any moment and she would start feeling the paralyzing agony of the Mind-Melter. As they closed in on the monument, they could make out the tall antenna rising from its peak—and the bluish glint of the stolen sapphire way at the top. Molly wondered if Robot could get close enough for her to reach out and snatch the gem from the tip of the lightning rod, but even if she managed to pull off that extremely risky stunt, that would only diminish the effects of Rector’s machine, not stop them.

  “. . . is the duty of every American to make a sacrifice to his country,” Rector was saying. “And for those of you gathered here today, the exact nature of that sacrifice will soon become clear. Just remember, everything we do today, we do to forge a better America! And so, in closing . . .”

  “Run, people, run!” Molly tried shouting down to the happily ignorant spectators. Several people saw them flying overhead and began pointing. And applauding.

  “They think we’re part of the show,” said Emmett.

  “Well, that would be a pretty great show,” Molly said.

  “This is your final warning!” Agent Clark shouted. “Land your flying tin man this instant!”

  “Can’t you hear Rector?” Molly screamed. “He’s going to turn on the machine now!”

  “Wow, you folks sound really excited about making this sacrifice,” Rector said, responding to the roar of the crowd. “I bet you neither of these other candidates would get a reaction like that. Eh, Arthur?”

  President Arthur chuckled. “Heh heh, I think not!”

  “Hey!”

  Outside the peak of the monument, Clark swooped at the flying children from a high angle. He glared sternly until he realized he was on a collision course with the people he was pursuing. His face was suddenly awash with fear. Robot rolled to the side just in time to avoid a midair crash. The crowd went wild.

  “All right, people, that’s enough,” said Rector. “I’m beginning to think there’s something else going on out there. Best to just get on with it. Shall we, Chester, old pal?”

  “We’re out of time!” Emmett cried. “We need to get in there now! Robot, can you fly us straight in through those windows?” At the pinnacle of the monument, just below the pyramid-shaped capstone, were several large openings that led into an observation chamber. It was in that marble-encased room, five hundred and fifty-five feet above the National Mall, that President Arthur and the candidates stood unwittingly with Rector around his doomsday device.

  “I will try,” Robot said, aiming himself at the obelisk’s south-facing window. But as he approached, he began losing altitude.

  “You’re too low, Robot,” Molly said. “Pull up!”

  “I am trying,” Robot said. “I . . . I am tiring.”

  Oh, no, Molly shouted internally. This is it—he’s out of Ambrosium. But he was also their only hope of stopping Rector. “You can do it, Robot!” she cried.

  Emmett joined in. “I believe in you!”

  Straining, Robot rose higher, arcing back up to the height of the window. And then he kept going. Straight past the monument.

  “You missed!” Emmett cried.

  “I noticed that as well,” Robot said. “I am sorry. Hold tighter.”

  Molly didn’t question the order. She wrapped herself around Robot’s torso as he loosened his grip on her and launched his detachable right hand at the open window. The aluminum fingers clamped on to the edge of the opening and held tight as the rope connecting hand to forearm stretched fully taut. Tethered to the obelisk, Robot whipped wildly around the monument. The children screamed with terror. The crowd screamed with delight. And the momentum hurled Robot straight through the window into the observation chamber. The metal man clattered onto the marble-tile floor, letting go of both kids as he landed. Molly and Emmett rolled, in unintentional somersaults, directly to the feet of President Chester A. Arthur, who was draped in furs and sporting bushy, badger-like sideburns. He gawked at the children with dismay, while behind him, bulldog-cheeked Grover Cleveland and a sad-eyed man who must have been James G. Blaine, leapt into each other’s arms.

  Rector, however, seemed unaffected by the sudden entrance of these newcomers. He stood confidently beside a glistening chrome device lined with blinking electric lights of various hues. He still looked uncannily like Thomas Edison as his hand rested on the machine’s big red lever. “A good seventy-eight percent of me expected you kids to show up here somehow,” he said. “I’m not sure how you escaped my unbreakoutable prison, but—congratulations
! Now you get to witness America’s doom up close and in person.”

  With that, he pulled the lever.

  25

  At the Apex of Disaster

  MOLLY KNEW THAT when faced with a dilemma, Emmett’s natural inclination was to pause, examine all relevant factors, and weigh the pros and cons of any potential outcomes before determining the best course of action. At that moment, however, in the observation chamber of the Washington Monument, with Ambrose Rector pulling the lever that would signal not just Emmett’s doom but the doom of all those around him, she saw her friend defy his own instincts. Before the lever was even halfway to the on position, Emmett threw himself at the villain, growling like a rabid chipmunk.

  As shocked as Molly was, she was more than happy to follow Emmett’s lead. In a blink, both children had Rector pinned to the floor, his hand safely torn away from that deadly red lever.

  “Police! Police!” President Arthur shouted. “They’re attacking Thomas Edison! They’re trying to take out the next president before he even wins!”

  “Hey!”

  There were no guards or federal agents up in the observation chamber with them, however—probably by Rector’s design. And it would take several minutes for anyone to run up all those steps. In the meantime, while Robot stood by the window and reeled in his hand, Molly and Emmett continued to kneel on the villain’s chest and pin his arms down.

  “President Arthur, it’s us!” Emmett said. “Emmett Lee and Molly Pepper! We’re here to save you again!”

  “This isn’t Edison!” Molly said, ripping at the rubbery nose and false eyebrows on the imposter’s face. “See? It’s Rector!”

  Cleveland and Blaine gasped.

  “Again? You have got to be kidding me,” President Arthur muttered, running his hands down his furry face. “Can I manage to preside over one single ceremony without it being ruined by this disguised megalomaniac?”

  “How do you think I feel, Chester?” Rector said, struggling beneath the children. “At least your plans get thwarted by a devious genius—mine get scuttled by babies!”

  “That machine was never going to light up anything, sir,” Emmett said to the president. “It’s another of Rector’s Mind-Melters—the lightning rod up top is an antenna that is going to transmit the machine’s rays all over Washington.”

  “Was going to,” Molly specified. She gave Rector a sly grin. “But we stopped you. We win, Rector.”

  “Um, does anybody else see the giant wind-up man over there?” Blaine asked, rubbing his eyes. Robot waved hello with his reattached hand.

  On the floor, Rector laughed. “This isn’t over,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Molly insisted. “We’re not moving until the police get up here.”

  “Oh well,” Rector said smugly. “I guess all three of us are about to go boom, then.”

  “What?” Emmett turned his head. “Molly! Look out!” He grabbed her and dove to the side. Rector rolled off in the opposite direction, getting clear just as the Daedalus Chariot slammed violently into the window frame it couldn’t begin to fit through.

  Arthur and the others dropped for cover as Agent Clark, tossed from the pilot’s seat, came flying into the chamber along with various flaming bits of flying machine. While Clark moaned on the floor, Molly skittered back to the window and peeked out to see, hundreds of feet below, the bulk of the Daedalus Chariot on the ground in a smoldering ruin. “You broke my mother’s invention!” Molly shouted at Clark, who was staggering to his feet, his suit torn and singed.

  “And you let the bad guy get free!” Emmett added. Rector was climbing over hunks of wreckage toward the stairwell.

  “Agent Clark?” President Arthur sputtered from across the room, where he used a windowsill as leverage to get himself back onto his feet. “What is the meaning of all this?”

  “Those children are wanted criminals,” Clark replied groggily.

  “Never mind them, you ninny! Stop Rector!” the president shouted.

  Clark did a double take, noticing Rector for the first time. But it was Robot who stepped in to block the madman’s exit.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Rector,” Robot said proudly. “But I have caught you.”

  “You want to catch someone, Tinpot?” Rector said, spinning on his heel and stepping back to grab the president by the lapels of his sable coat. “Go fetch!” And Rector shoved Chester A. Arthur out the window.

  “No!” Clark cried. But there was nothing he could do; the president was already plummeting down toward a screaming crowd of spectators.

  Without wasting a second, Robot flew out the window and zoomed down after the falling president.

  Breaths halted in the observation chamber until the cheering outside told everyone that Arthur was safe. Robot had saved him.

  “I just can’t get a break today, can I?” Rector groaned.

  The pause gave Agent Clark just enough time to leap over the wreckage and face down the villain. “Ambrose Rector, you are under arrest,” he said. “For murder, theft, trespassing, breaking and entering, multiple attempted assassinations, disturbing the peace, consorting with known felons, falsifying documents, extortion, fraud, kidnapping, resisting arrest, more kidnapping, impersonating an inventor, destruction of property, arson, trespassing, building an underground bunker without the proper permits—”

  “Back to plan A,” said Rector. He lurched for the Mind-Melter, but Clark tackled him. Cleveland and Blaine cowered in the corner as the madman and the federal agent wrestled at their feet.

  “Should we help him?” Molly asked.

  “He’s got that,” Emmett replied. “Let’s get this.” He lifted a long piece of iron sleigh rail from the chariot’s debris and began beating the Mind-Melter with it. Molly hoisted a heavy propeller blade and joined him in pummeling the doomsday device. They pounded the lever until it snapped clear off; they shattered the flashing lights; they dented the chrome panels, pried them open, and ripped loose handfuls of sparking wires. In less than thirty seconds, the death machine was reduced to a fizzling lump of scrap metal. Molly and Emmett dropped their implements of destruction, and smiled even as they panted for breath. The Mind-Melter was dead. Rector couldn’t hurt anyone now.

  “Look out,” cried Blaine. “He’s got a thingie!”

  The children turned to see that Rector had drawn his Magneta-Ray. The weapon hummed and a broken hunk of chariot hurled itself into Agent Clark, knocking him over. The attack bought Rector enough time to race into the far corner, where he retrieved a strange backpack from a shadowy hiding spot. Molly immediately recognized Rector’s antigravity pack. The cretin was going to fly off to freedom just like he had in Antarctica.

  “That’s another count of assaulting a federal officer,” Clark said, standing back up. “Drop your weapon, Rector. I can do this all day.”

  “He really can,” Emmett added.

  “That backpack makes him fly!” Molly cried. “Don’t let him use it!”

  “Enough out of you!” Rector screamed. “You think my Mind-Melter can’t hurt anybody anymore?” He waved his Magneta-Ray and the banged-up death machine, now with jagged bits of metal peeled back into dangerously sharp blades, began floating in the air. It hovered for a second before hurtling itself directly at Agent Clark’s head.

  “Look out!” Emmett cried. He dove, plowing into the agent’s side, and knocking him out of the way. A sharp corner of shrapnel slashed Emmett’s shoulder as the Mind-Melter flew past him and sailed out through the window.

  “Emmett!” Molly cried as her friend hit the ground, gripping his bleeding arm.

  “I’ll live,” he said through gritted teeth. “Stop Rector!”

  The madman had powered up his antigravity pack and was already hovering several inches above the floor. He took the time to give Molly a sarcastic salute before floating out the window.

  No, Molly thought. You do not get away again.

  Molly charged after him. She leapt up, bracing one foot on the windowsill, and p
ushed off, launching herself out into the clear blue sky.

  26

  Breaking the Cycle

  FOR A MOMENT, Molly was flying. No chariot to sit in, no Robot to be held by, just her—soaring through the air all on her own. And then, of course, gravity took over. Luckily, Molly had leapt with enough momentum to reach her goal. She caught Rector’s feet before he could hover out of reach.

  “What the—?” Rector yelped, obviously not expecting to have a passenger dangling from his brown leather loafers. He looked down at Molly and laughed.

  That was when Molly began to question her strategy. Or whether it could even be called a strategy.

  “So, here we are again,” Rector said as they soared above the gawking crowd. Molly would have liked to glare up at him defiantly, but she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from the swirling mass of dots down below that she knew were confused, terrified people. Her mind flashed back to the World’s Fair, when Rector had taken her hostage as he flew to freedom in the stolen Icarus Chariot. She’d escaped that time by leaping down into her mother’s arms—a trick she couldn’t possibly pull again here. At the Fair, they had been flying no more than fifty feet in the air; they were ten times that height now. It was impossible even to make out individual faces on the people below. She wondered if her mother was among them. Or Captain Lee, or any of her friends.

  “See how history repeats itself, Molly?” Rector said. A flock of chittering sparrows parted around them. “I bet that even in your precarious situation, you still think you can best me. And who knows, maybe you can. Probably not. Definitely not. But the point is, even if you do somehow win the day here, how will that change things for you? Let me give you a hint: it won’t. It won’t change a thing. You’ve quote-unquote ‘stopped’ me twice before. Has anything changed for you, your mother, or your friends? No. You always end up right back where you started.”

  One of Rector’s shoes began to slip and Molly had to switch her grip to his ankle. But then his thin black sock began to slide too.