Vallicose grunted along with the screams, hammering the steering wheel with her gloved palm.
“I love D Bob,” she said, with a tremor in her voice. “God speaks through him.” She called over her shoulder. “Did you ever see that video, Sister Witmeyer? The entire forty-eight-hour torture session is on the Boxnet. Zodety never told those Jax animals a thing.”
“I saw it, Sister Clover. Inspiring stuff.”
Chevie got the feeling that perhaps Witmeyer wasn’t as devout as her partner, but she played along for politics’ sake.
Witmeyer pressed a button on the armrest, and the windows darkened until all Chevie could see was her own worried reflection staring back at her through round brown eyes.
“Just entre nous,” said Witmeyer, “where did you pick up those combat moves?”
Chevie was surprised to hear the Thundercat using a French phrase. Coming from any other mouth, those two words could be considered traitorous. One of her classmates, a snippy local London girl, had been shipped off to the Dublin factory for describing the gluey canteen soup as an apéritif.
Perhaps Sister Witmeyer was slipping a Jax phrase into the conversation in an attempt to trip her up.
Chevie replied. “They were not moves, Sister. I panicked and lashed out.”
“Believe me, little one, they were moves. I have been in enough fights to know the difference between panic and training.”
“I can only apologize, Sister. It won’t happen again.”
Witmeyer chuckled. “That it won’t, little sister. That it won’t.”
“Little sister”—that’s a little ominous, said Traitor Chevie. I’d watch my back if I were you. Wait a minute. I am you, only less stupid.
Chevie bit her bottom lip in case a whimper should leak out.
The drive to Mayfair would usually take up to thirty minutes during morning rush hour, but service vehicles parted before the luxury sedan’s high curved prow as soon as drivers spotted it in their rearview mirrors, and barely ten minutes later Sister Vallicose was parking outside Charles Smart’s town house, which was sandwiched between two monolithic apartment blocks.
I know how that house feels, thought Chevie.
“Look at this,” said Witmeyer. “An honest-to-goodness house. This Smart person must be something special to merit a house in the city center. I’m living in a cupboard, and this scientist who probably never killed a single person for Box is living it up in a house.”
A professor with a house was unusual, as most citizens were squashed into mega-blocks comprised of identical utilitarian apartments with barely enough room to swing a cat—if owning a cat had been legal inside Greater London’s boundaries.
“Citizen Smart may have left for work already,” said Chevie, hoping for a reprieve.
Witmeyer opened her door. “We called ahead. Though he doesn’t know it, Smart is waiting inside for us to come and execute him.” She handed Chevie the standard-issue sidearm. “Or should I say for you to execute him, Cadet.”
Chevie took the gun, and it felt like a cold block of guilt in her hand.
A cold block of guilt, said Traitor Chevie. This timeline is so moody.
Chevie was surprised that her legs carried her to Charles Smart’s door, but they did—a little shakily, maybe, but they managed to avoid buckling. She curled her fingers into a fist to knock, but before she could, the door was wrenched open and an old man appeared in the doorway.
“Just tell me,” said the man in a Scottish accent. “Is he dead?”
Chevie was taken aback. Dead? Is who dead?
“Dead? I don’t understand, Citizen.”
“I get a call from a Thundercat. ‘Stay at home,’ she tells me. ‘Don’t go to work.’ So is my boy dead? Was he killed in France?”
Felix, whispered Traitor Chevie. His son’s name is Felix.
“Felix,” she said aloud, which was a mistake.
The old man reeled as though struck and clamped his hands to his skull.
“I knew it!” he cried. “I knew it. You’re here about Felix. So which is it? Dead or captured?”
Witmeyer bent low, whispering into Chevie’s ear. “You know about his son. Curious.”
I don’t know about him, Chevie wanted to protest. The Traitor knows.
But this made no sense. How could the Traitor know things that were true yet outside her experience?
Perhaps I have the gift of second sight. Perhaps I am psychic.
There was some hope in this thought. Chevie knew that the Thundercats had a psy-division, and of course it would mean that she was not dying.
“We’re not here about your son,” said Chevie, touching the old man’s elbow. “It’s a different matter.”
Charles Smart drew several deep breaths, calming himself, coming back to earth from the hell of a parent’s grief.
“Felix is safe. Thank God. Oh, thank God. A different matter. What different matter?”
“Maybe we could come inside? Would that be all right?”
Before Smart could answer, Clover Vallicose actually growled and barged past Chevie and Smart into the hallway.
“‘Would that be all right?’” she said mockingly. “That’s not how we do things, Savano. We don’t ask permission.”
They sat in Smart’s kitchen, which was festooned with laboratory equipment. Circuit boards were piled high on the table, and yards of plastic-coated wiring crisscrossed the floor and ceiling. Banks of switches were screwed to the walls, and conduits were threaded through rough holes in the plaster. Colored bulbs blinked from the frying pan, and a block of glowing orange gel bubbled lazily in the oven like some sedated sea creature. Screwdrivers, hand drills, clippers, and assorted screws littered the drain board, and the sink was half full of greenish mist that seemed reluctant to leave the bowl. Chevie thought she saw a fin momentarily break the mist’s surface, but no one else seemed to notice, so she put it down to the Traitor.
“Nice place you have here,” said Witmeyer, brushing a few stray capacitors from the table. “Geek chic.”
Charles Smart had recovered his composure by this point, and it had occurred to him that if the Thundercats were not here for his son, then they were here for him. He sat facing the visitors, outwardly calm, but inwardly barely in control of the panic that bubbled under his skin. A visit from the goon squad was never a good thing.
“Mrs. Smart died a long time ago, Sister,” he said. “Without her, I’ve let the place go somewhat.”
“What is all this clutter?” asked Witmeyer. “Are you building something?”
The way Witmeyer said building something, it was clear that Smart should not be building anything.
Smart thought before answering. It was prudent to consider any possible interpretation of what you were about to say when dealing with Thundercats. A slip of the tongue could be the last mistake you ever made.
“I am working on various approved projects in my own spare time. Labor-saving devices, mostly, to aid with the war effort in France and here at home. My latest invention is a hoist that will allow enormous weights to be manipulated by one person. With my hoist, a single Thundercat could clear an entire highway pileup in minutes.”
Witmeyer was impressed. “That has definite military applications. I’ve seen bogged-down tanks cost a unit half a day to pull out of the mud.”
Smart clapped his hands. “Exactly! Exactly what I told my supervisor, but he won’t approve further funding.”
Witmeyer tapped her temple, taking a mental note. “Perhaps I could have a word.”
Chevie didn’t know how Witmeyer could give this poor man false hope when they were about to shoot him. When she was about to shoot him. Suddenly the gun, which had felt like a block of ice in her jacket pocket, seemed to burn into her skin.
Clover Vallicose had no patience for chitchat. “Cadet Savano see
ms to know your son. Can you explain that?”
“No,” said Professor Smart. “I was waiting for her to explain. Is it true, Cadet? Do you know my boy? Though he’s hardly a boy anymore. He’s well into his forties by now and still not married. ‘Felix,’ I said to him. ‘You need to lower your standards. You’re no oil painting, if you know what I mean….’”
Vallicose thumped the table, scattering fuses and memory boards. “Why do you prattle, Citizen? We are here on the Blessed Colonel’s business, and I feel you are not taking us seriously.”
Smart paled, and Chevie felt a kinship with the old man. They were both sinking in the same boat.
“Yes, of course,” said Smart. “You don’t want to hear about my son’s romantic problems. Why should you concern yourselves, Sisters?”
“Indeed, we do not.”
Smart cleared his throat. “In that case, perhaps we could get to the point of your visit. What exactly has brought you here?”
Vallicose nodded at her partner and grunted.
The grunt translated as: You take over, partner. Explaining things is your area.
Witmeyer drew a tin of chewing tobacco from her pocket and took her sweet time bunching a plug and depositing it inside her bottom lip.
“It’s like this, Citizen. We have an order, passed down from Colonel Box himself, to terminate your life cycle. He was quite specific about the time and date, but not about the method. That has been left to our discretion.”
I am the method, thought Chevie. I am about to become an instrument of death. An assassin who kills on command.
Chevie had always known this day would come. After all, wasn’t that what she was being trained for? But now that the day had arrived, she was far from certain that she could be a loyal Boxite and murder this somehow familiar stranger.
Witmeyer gave her bombshell a moment to penetrate, chewing noisily on the tobacco and spitting a long rope of brown juice in the general direction of Smart’s sink.
“You shouldn’t spit,” said Smart absently. “Believe it or not, this is a sterile environment.”
The professor did not seem as puzzled as he should rightly have been. There was no slack-jawed disbelief or raging objection. Smart simply muttered to himself and ran his fingertip in complex zigzags across the tabletop.
“I did it, then,” he mumbled. “I must have done it. Incredible.”
Witmeyer snapped her fingers. “Are you still with us, Professor? Would you care to share what you must have done?”
Smart lifted his head, but his eyes were unfocused. “The only way Colonel Box could know about me would be if we met, or if he knew my work.” A thought seemed to slap him across the face. “Oh my God. Oh no. All those missiles, those futuristic missiles. It’s my fault. I opened the wormhole. It could only have been me.”
Clover Vallicose’s tiny reservoir of patience was running out. “Citizen, speak plainly. What missiles? Are you building missiles for the Jax?”
Smart drifted back into the room. “Jax? What? No, of course not. Don’t you see?” He waved his arms wildly. “This. All of this. It’s my doing. It must be. The only way the colonel could have built such weapons is if I opened the wormhole for him. I enabled this godforsaken empire.”
Chevie felt her heart speed up, thumping palpably in her chest.
Yes, said Traitor Chevie. Yes. This is it. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Smart was on his feet, running both hands through his sparse white hair, smoothing long strands backward across his shining skull. “How would it have gone? I built the machine in another timeline, and Box accessed it. He went back with his team and took over the country. With his knowledge, it would have been child’s play. Crazy? Am I crazy? No. It must be.” Smart opened the bread bin and pressed a series of buttons on a panel hidden inside. “So, what then? He’s emperor of all he surveys. The last thing Box wants is someone coming back and taking it all away from him, so he leaves an order that I am to be killed. But he won’t have me executed as a child. He has to wait until the world is his, plus the length of the wormhole, in case he needs an escape route.”
Smart rushed around the kitchen, flipping switches on circuit boards that had seemed discarded. His eyes were wild; his hair sprang from his skull in an electric halo no matter how he tried to flatten it.
“Don’t you see?” he shouted. “I did this. All of it. And now I must undo it.”
Vallicose drew her weapon. “You speak in riddles, spy. Blasphemous riddles at that. Stand still, blast you, and allow our young cadet to carry out her orders.”
The kitchen was now humming like a giant refrigerator, and Witmeyer felt the situation slipping away. “Very well, Citizen. You’ve had your little episode. It’s natural, people react in different ways. Now, you tell us in plain English what you are babbling about, and the girl here will kill you quickly. We can’t be any fairer than that.”
Smart ignored her. “I can still stop Box. Without those missiles, he’s nothing.”
Vallicose was offended. “Box? Do you speak of the Blessed Colonel as an equal?” She stood suddenly, shunting her chair backward. “On your knees, Citizen. And pray to God for purgatory instead of hell.”
Witmeyer rolled her eyes. Here came the fire and brimstone.
“Cadet Savano, this is ridiculous. Do your duty and put an end to the madness.”
There is no end to madness, thought Chevie. No end.
“You heard me, Savano. Prove yourself a patriot.”
Smart is the key, said Traitor Chevie. He is the way out.
“Shut up!” said Chevie, and she pulled her weapon. “Shut up.”
Smart behaved as though he were alone, rattling off long equations, throwing switches, and testing the wind with his finger.
“It should work. I have been building it for years. The calculations are sound.”
Chevie pointed the gun at him. What choice did she have?
“Stand still,” she ordered. “Stop talking.”
“Good girl,” said Witmeyer. “It will all be over soon.”
“Shoot!” said Vallicose. “For Box and Empire, shoot!”
No, said Traitor Chevie. You know this man. Think. Remember.
A vision popped into Chevie’s head. Smart, but with a monkey arm.
Not now, she begged the Traitor. Just let me get through this.
She followed Smart with the barrel. A moving target. “Please, Professor.”
Please, Professor what? Stand still and be shot like a good fellow?
“The bridge is constant,” said Charles Smart, dialing the knobs on the oven. “I should be in time to stop Box.”
“Kill the heathen!” shouted Vallicose. “Kill him!”
Professor Charles Smart, that’s his name, not heathen. And his son Felix. Agent Orange. Remember, Chevron.
Chevie pointed the gun at her own head. “Get out of me! Leave me!”
“Well now,” said Witmeyer, delighted. “This is interesting.”
The entire room was vibrating now. Whatever Smart was doing, it was a lot more than making an omelette.
You know this, said Traitor Chevie. You know exactly what is happening here.
“Kill the heathen!” shrieked Clover Vallicose.
No. She could not. Chevie could not believe that the Blessed Colonel wanted her to murder old men.
Her head pounded. Hammer blows behind the eyes. The Traitor was exploding.
“No!” she shouted. “I won’t kill him! No.”
She took the cold steel from her own temple and turned it on Witmeyer. “Raise your hands.”
Vallicose pointed a righteous finger at Chevie. “Do you see now? I was right. Was I not right?”
“You were right, Sister, but we had our orders. And she is a mere child.”
Witmeyer raised her hands, but in a mocking fas
hion, wiggling her fingers as though terrified when her features showed she was anything but.
“Don’t shoot me, Cadet. I am your friend, truly.”
The walls began to flex slightly, and Vallicose had seen more than enough to convince her that something traitorous and possibly heretical was going on here.
“I will kill the professor now,” she declared. “We can investigate later.”
“As usual,” said Witmeyer.
Chevie was confused. Did they not see the gun? Did the Thundercats think themselves immortal?
“Stay where you are!” she ordered, half-wishing the Traitor would take over now and she would become a super soldier. “Leave the professor alone.”
Vallicose ignored Chevie completely, moving briskly toward Smart, who had opened the dishwasher and was rearranging the plates inside. With each switched plate, the lighting inside the kitchen changed color.
Witmeyer stood, keeping her hands raised. “You don’t think, Cadet, that we would put a loaded weapon in the hands of a traitor.”
They were testing me, thought Chevie. And I failed.
Just to be sure, she aimed the gun at Witmeyer’s leg and pulled the trigger. There was no bang, just the hollow clack of a hammer on an empty chamber.
Witmeyer sighed. “Click, not boom. That means, Cadet, that you are out of time.”
The walls suddenly began to shake.
“Yes,” said Professor Charles Smart. “It’s working.”
Whatever was working, Vallicose didn’t like it. “In the name of the Blessed Colonel, shut this racket off.”
Smart crossed his legs and sank into the lotus position. “It can’t be shut off. Not now. We are all going on a journey, Sisters. It will be easier if you relax.”
“No journey for you, traitor,” said Clover Vallicose. She drew her weapon from a hip holster and fired. Smart was hit high in the chest and skittered backward as though dragged from behind. Blood frothed from the jagged wound, saturating his upper body in seconds. There was no doubt in Chevie’s mind that this couldn’t be anything but a fatal injury.