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