Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (48 page)

It was a good thing for Clem, whose experience at the hospital made her better equipped to handle the unsettling scene before them. She bent over each one, taking its pulse and brushing a hand across its forehead.

“Okay, we can’t destroy the machine until they are disconnected or we could kill them,” Ettie repeated out loud information they both knew.

Clem straightened and examined the tubes. “I think taking them off at the machine is the riskier course of action. If we can unscrew these metal halo things from their heads, we might be able to remove them safely.” She looked up at Ettie with worried eyes. “But I’m really just guessing, Ettie. We could kill them either way, and they are already so weak.”

Unscrewing the metal circlets would be time consuming, but it would allow for a more gradual disconnect from the machine. Then they could destroy it, closing the wormhole for good and shutting down the fluctuating frequency waves preventing the Feralon from leaving or entering the building.

Ettie nodded determinedly. “Let’s get to it.”

They both worked on one at a time. The task of removing the halo was gruesome as the screws came out with a sucking sound, gore dripping from the ends. When the first was completely free, the Feralon stirred in its sleep. The two women looked at each other from over its body and sighed with relief. The little creature was still alive.

Clem bound its wounds with bandages from her nurse’s kit, while Ettie moved on to the next one, Clem joining her when she was done. They had almost removed the second halo when they heard an alarm go off in the distant recesses of the vast building.

They looked up at each other, and Ettie nodded calmly trying to still her racing heart as they continued with their mission. This was part of the plan. Or, at least, something they knew could happen. Of course, it would have been better if no alarm had sounded, but she knew that was the unlikeliest of scenarios. They were just lucky that Sir Knightly’s arrogance was such that he had not felt the need to rig an alarm on the machine.

“Well, they’ve tripped an alarm. We don’t have much time now,” Ettie commented stoically as they lifted the halo from the Feralon’s head. Like the first, it stirred in its sleep, but did not wake.

At the very least, the alarm told Ettie that Charlie and Inspector Hamilton were in the building. Faith had been jumpy and uncertain, frightened that the omniscient Knightly Davis was on to her, but apparently her access had not been impeded. Ettie was only praying that they would find Clem’s aunt and uncle, as well as the trapped Feralon before Davis could call in reinforcements.

This whole rescue was a gigantic calculated risk, a matter of “ifs” and “hopefullys.” It would all work
if
they could get in undetected,
if
Sir Knightly only had his usual small contingent of guards,
if
Faith could open the doors,
if
the Feralon’s map were accurate. Then
hopefully
they could get the Feralon out and in between before they were discovered;
hopefully,
they could free Clem’s family and household servants;
hopefully,
they would destroy the machine, and, equally important,
hopefully
escape to the rooftops before they were captured.

Already Ettie knew that one of their “hopefullys” was not going to pan out. The Feralon were too weak and debilitated to even wake up, much less escape in between. It was up to the other Feralon to help their fellows, but only if she and Clem could gain access for them to the room. They only had one more to release, and worked frantically with steady hands.

“Ettie?” Her palmavox popped and crackled.

She nodded to Clem to continue and grabbed it from her inner pocket. “What is it, Charlie?”

“Kill the machine! The Feralon can’t get in while it’s still on,” his voice was tense and breathless. She had the impression that he was talking on the run.

“I know. We’re almost there.” She propped the communicator on the cot and held the metal halo still while Clem worked on the last bolt. “Did you get them?”

“Yes,” he replied curtly, saving his breath. Ettie imagined them running through twisting hallways, looking for access to the upper floor while avoiding armed guards. “Adelaide and Faith took Sir Matthew and Lady Abigail and the rest out over the rooftops from Faith’s room. Hamilton and I are headed your way.”

Ettie nodded, not bothering to sign off. The last of the Feralon was finally free. She walked to the metal canisters of the flying machine and detached the heavy rod-like handlebar. She turned with purpose to the machine that seemed to glow menacingly in the darkness.

“Now for you,” she hissed under her breath and raised the bar over her head.

A razor sharp ray of light shot out from the opposite end of the room, and Ettie felt the stinging pain of her arm slicing open. The laser cut through muscle and tendon, and her arm dropped to her side useless. Ettie fell to her knees grasping at the wound and trying to staunch the blood slipping through her fingers. Clem ran to her. She dropped down beside her and pulled a tourniquet and bandages from her bag, tying them around Ettie’s arm.

“Miss Speex,” the oily voice of Knightly Davis insinuated itself into the darkness, “that’s private property you were about to destroy.”

She spit her words out through gritted teeth, “It’s stolen, you bastard! That’s my brother’s technology, and you’ve no right to it!”

The palmavox popped again, and Charlie’s voice crackled urgently over the airwaves, “Ettie? Ettie? What’s happening? They still can’t get in!”

A smile touched the withered lips, and his flat eyes were like stagnant pools of blue. “I must admit, this caught me a bit off guard. I never thought anyone in this timeline would be so audacious. But then you’re not from here, are you?”

Ettie could feel herself go lightheaded, and she blinked hard trying to keep from fainting. “You know I’m not. You and that crazy woman who killed my mother!” She felt fury reinvigorate her muscles and struggled to stand, Clem supporting her.

She refocused her eyes on the man in front of her, but noticed something else moving behind him. Several small black-cloaked figures seemed to walk right through the wall and into the room.

“How?” she silently mouthed the word.

Clem’s voice was a bare whisper. “We must have cut off the machine’s energy supply when we disconnected the last Feralon.”

Of course, Ettie thought, how could she be so stupid? It must have taken a couple of minutes for it to shut down once the Feralon were free. Her back to the machine, Ettie could see by his expression that Knightly Davis knew it too as the dials began to blink and fade.

A malicious smile touched Ettie’s lips. “They’re going to get you,” she told him in the evil sing-song voice of horror movies.

“Not before I kill you,” he said, raising the laser gun.

In that instant, before he could fire, two things happened simultaneously. The door burst open as Charlie and Inspector Hamilton used their collective strength to crash through it, and a glittering void appeared through which a woman stepped.

“My… my God!” Charlie stammered, struck motionless with disbelief, “Odette!”

She spared him a bare glance and said off-handedly, “On the side of the angels this timeline, Drake?”

No one could take their eyes off her. She seemed encased in starlight, her movements rustling with an internal breeze. A shot fired from Knightly Davis’s gun was deflected with the flick of her wrist, where it was absorbed into her hand and rendered harmless.

“Mister Davis,” she said with false sweetness, “was that nice?” Her smile was both beautiful and terrifying. She walked toward him, and he dropped the gun to his side, backing away from her. “You’ve led us a merry dance, I must admit.”

Us? Ettie looked around her to see the room surprisingly full of people, tall, stoic people who appeared both imposing and insubstantial. It was disorienting.

“The frequency variations you used to entrap the little
Liberi
created the time shifts, effectively covering your tracks and hiding this timeline from us. We searched so many different alternative decisions that led nowhere.”

His typically expressionless countenance reflected both terror and confusion.

“From the look on your face, you appear to have been unaware of this particular consequence of your, um, ‘work.’

“No matter, your intended crimes are sufficient.” She walked over to the Temporatus and circled it, looking it up and down. “That you were able to reengineer a technology that was meant for science and exploration into one of torture and enslavement is an accomplishment indeed.”

Odette tried to hide it, but Ettie heard her words shake with fury. Finally, she stepped away from the machine. With a wave of her hand, it fell to dust.

The
Liberi
, or Feralon as Ettie knew them, gathered around Odette. The rest of her people flanked out behind Knightly Davis.

Odette stood tall before him, solemn as a high court judge. “You are a fool, meddling with power you know nothing about, motivated by greed and arrogance.” She shook her head. “Still, Mister Davis, your interference did have another consequence that, we hope, will prove positive.”

He blinked, and his lifeless eyes reflected a spark of hope.

“This timeline and your experiment have revealed to us a new generation of
Liberi
, or Time Traitors, as we are sometimes called.”

Inspector Hamilton, who had been watching in awe next to Charlie, whispered, “Ungawen.”

Odette cast him a quick glance and smiled. “Yes, and Ungawen, as well.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Davis’s voice was steady, but tense.

Odette walked up to stand only inches from him. “We are going to take you somewhere where you can no longer cause damage to any other living being until the day you die.”

His face had molded into an impenetrable mask, yet his eyes flickered with malice.

She saw it and said, “Don’t count on being rescued. We will find whatever accomplices you may have and stop them.”

Two Time Traitors stepped up to grasp him by each arm. A smug smile spread across his face just before they disappeared, and Odette was left staring into thin air.

She walked over to where Ettie and Clem stood.

“You look like Odell,” she said simply.

Ettie smiled and would have spoken, but her vision started to waver, the disorienting feeling of two overlapping timelines made her legs weak. Odette’s eyes went wide with panic, and a hoarse, terrified whisper broke from her, “No! Oh no!”

In the instant between one blink of an eye and the next, she was gone, and Ettie with her.

*

Odell rolled on the ground and tried for a second time to get up. He opened his eyes and then shut them again quickly. Pulsing in his brain caused the room to roil with motion. The deafness in his ears came and went, punctuated by intervals of silence and roaring noise.

Finally, he was able to get to his knees. His vision began to clear, and the scene that met him was one of chaos and terror. Several people lay prone and bleeding on the floor. The table was knocked over, and the candlesticks had rolled extinguishing their flames. The room was illuminated only by the fire in the hearth and the light from the open parlor door which backlit a hunching, howling figure.

The figure was screaming, its voice pitched to the level of madness. It was her, Lillian Brandon, looking like an aged and insane Ettie. She couldn’t have been more than forty, but lines of fury and grief were etched deep in her fair complexion. She wore a workman’s rough-spun trousers and jacket, her blond hair escaping in wisps from a queue tied at her neck. In one hand, she limply held a semi-automatic handgun, and the other clutched her head where a bloody gash appeared.

She was screaming at Ava, “Where’s my baby! What have you done with my baby?”

Odell staggered to his feet and gasped at a searing pain along his ribs. He clutched at it and felt the unmistakable sticky sensation of blood. He surged forward as if finally released from the reverberations of the flash bomb.

Ava looked up as he skidded to a stop beside her. Her expression reflected back at him his own shock and stupefaction. Yet she held in her hand one of the heavy silver candlesticks, with which it was clear she’d had the wherewithal to bash Lillian in the head.

“Odell,” Ava said numbly, “Odell… I think the clip is spent.” She began to shake and tears spilled over onto her cheeks.

Odell looked around the room. The walls were ragged with bullet holes. Washington and Adams were both superficially wounded and administering to the dying Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin was uninjured.

Odell’s heart gave a jolt of fear when he realized that Franklin knelt beside the recumbent form of Gabriel Wright. A bullet hole in his chest, the mortally wounded man’s head rested on his daughter’s lap.

Ava said shakily, “Gabe was her first victim, but only because he shielded Evelyn. You were next. She missed Franklin. He was too quick for her. The rest, I think, were just random acts of madness.”

Odell nodded slowly as he walked toward the group, his muscles weighed down as if with lead. Of course, this had all been about revenge, an abused child’s payback. But then Odette, the one Lillian had meant to injure so grievously, to whom she wished to transfer her pain, wasn’t here to see it.

And then she was. A glittering void opened with a vortex of wind blowing extraneous material around the room. The occupants were so traumatized they hardly blinked at the otherworldly woman who stepped from its center. She was followed by a bewildered Ettie, her bandaged arm hanging useless at her side.

Evelyn stared dumbfounded at her mother, her eyes swollen with crying, bloodstained hands pressing hard on the gaping wound in her father’s chest. Odell watched as Odette checked her impulse to run to them, instead turning her steady gaze upon the wretched woman at the parlor door.

She stood before Lillian, whose eyes now glittered with satisfaction.

“You see now, don’t you?” she jeered. “You know how it feels!”