The boy, Riley, swears there’s some kind of magical killer back there.”
Smart’s voice was muffled by the filter over his mouth. “Ah, yes. The bogeyman. It’s classic transference, Savano. Blame Mr. Nobody. Even if there is some Fagin person back there, I think my boys can handle him.”
Chevie thought so too. These guys looked like they could take down a small country.
“What if there’s an earthquake, and your boys are stuck in the rubble?”
“Well, that’s what the red button is for, though these suits have been in storage for fifteen years, so I hope the mercury switches still work.”
This statement brought the gravity of the situation home.
“Self-destruct?” said Chevie. “You are kidding me? This isn’t an episode of The Twilight Zone.”
Agent Smart’s shoulders jerked as he chuckled. “Yes, it is, Chevie. That’s exactly what it is.”
Chevie did not chuckle; she had a sense of humor, but selfdestruct jokes were not to her taste.
“So I gotta just twiddle my thumbs here while you machonerds are off straightening time dominoes?”
Smart froze. “Macho-nerds? Straightening time dominoes? Do you know something, Agent Savano? I think you have grasped the essence of what’s going on here, and I never really thought you would. Some people’s biggest muscle is in their trigger finger, but you have held it together admirably during this stressful time, and without shooting a single person.”
Chevie stared. Was Smart taking the time to make fun of her? Or was he simply a robot?
“Are you sure you should be heading up this operation? Maybe I should relieve you?”
Suddenly the four ninja-nerds pulled their sidearms from holsters on the coat hanger.
“Don’t say the R word, Chevie,” advised Felix. “This mission is pretty important. Nobody wants to end up not existing because my father polluted the timeline.”
Chevie backed down not one inch. “Yeah, well, you tell your boys that when they get back, I’ll see them in the gym, two at a time.”
The hazmat team lowered their guns, gazing at Chevie, heads cocked in surprise, like lions challenged by a little mouse.
“They don’t say much, your lab buddies.”
Smart opened a series of laptops on a metal table; thick cables flopped onto the floor from the rear of the computer bank and wound their way across to the WARP pod. He quickly tapped in long code sequences.
“That’s why I like them, Agent. They just do their jobs, no small talk.”
The laptops were old and chunky, with raised letters on the keyboards that glowed green and were not in the usual qwerty order. Chevie tapped one casing, to check whether it was actually wooden.
Smart slapped her hand away. “Don’t poke the equipment, Agent,” he admonished. “This stuff is ancient alternative tech. We don’t even have the parts to repair this anymore.” “Shoot, I got some wood in my room.”
Smart ignored her comment and continued his systems check. As he typed, the pod shook itself awake, vibrating and venting steam like a very old fridge. The banks of square lights flickered in complicated patterns, and the fat power lines buzzed with barely contained megawatts of electricity. In spots, the rubber melted, exposing fizzing wires.
The entire setup reminded Chevie of old sci-fi series she had seen on cable reruns.
This is how people thought the future would look on last-century TV. Cheap and flashy.
Laser beams shot out from several nodes on the pod, connecting to form a lattice around the ship.
Lasers? thought Chevie. It’s a time machine, all right. I feel like I’m going back to the seventies.
It took several minutes for the WARP pod to warm up. It shrugged, coughed, and hummed into life, six electric motors clattering into action at its base. Chevie was quite glad that she was not among the group waiting to step into its belly to be dematerialized. Eventually the pod hovered maybe half an inch above its trailer and the various lights flashed in perfect harmony, except for the ones that popped and crackled.
“Okay,” shouted Smart above the electrical din. “We have ninety-seven percent stability. That’s good enough.”
Ninety-seven percent? thought Chevie. I bet those hazmat guys didn’t see the monkey arm, or they’d insist on waiting for a hundred percent.
The black-clad hazmat team climbed through the hatch into the vehicle and sat on a low bench that ran around the wall. They were a cramped bunch in there and suddenly looked a little less tough, in spite of their scary suits and weapons. Chevie was reminded of her little foster brother and the night he and his buddies had camped out in the