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She shifted so they could both look at the street. He didn’t blame her. The view of the door was uninspiring and quickly assimilated. He was pleased she did it without breaking the clasping. At the present moment, she was all that felt real.

“There aren’t any kids and the clothes and stuff are wrong.” Her tone sobered. “It’s a bit creepy.” She shifted closer to him, which he had not thought possible until she did it.

No horses, or dogs or other animals either, or none that could be seen. He didn’t want to be accused of drawing conclusions on flimsy evidence, but he felt no disagreement at Emily’s characterization of the scene as creepy. It was the word for it. He didn’t need his sister’s skills to suspect they were in trouble, though he was glad to have them. His peeps agreed, huddling inside him with no desire to go out and explore. One of the metal men, similar—though much larger than those that had attacked at the museum appeared around a corner. It clanked their direction, upping the creepy factor by more than he wished to calculate. Giving into the same instinct to hide as the peeps, he pulled them back into the shadow cast by the doorway at their backs, but when he should have bumped into the door, he felt nothing.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and tugged.

He went into automatic defense mode, sweeping Emily to his back as he prepared to defend them against—

A man in what looked to be colonial garb peered out of the small opening.

“You need to get out of sight now. The ’ton is after you.”

Neither sentence sounded colonial, nor did the warning for that matter. Robert hesitated, but the heavy, measured, thump of approaching footsteps felt and sounded ominous. Add to it that they’d attacked them in the museum—and they’d been on Smith’s team—had Robert throwing in with the Colonial. He lifted Emily through the opening, following her from light to dark. The man shut the door behind them.

“That was an automaton.” In the murk she still managed to sound awed. “Don’t panic, but I think I love you.”

The smell of her was the only pleasant one in a place where the stench was concentrated by being enclosed. His eyes adjusted, but it was no blessing. Trash littered both sides of the narrow hallway, leaving an ill-defined path down the center. Her arms crept around her neck, causing the bad to become indistinct around the edges. His arms tightened around her waist, her duster bunching at her back.

“I won’t panic if you won’t panic that I think I love you back,” Robert murmured into her ear reached with just a minor alteration to the angle of his head and neck. The angle also brought his nose into her hair. It itched a bit, but helped blunt the stench some more.

Her head lifted off his chest, only her pale face visible. “It’s really going to suck when I wake up.”

It would probably suck more when she didn’t and would she still think she loved him when she realized how thoroughly he’d messed with her life?

“If the ’ton gets a hold of you, it will suck more,” the Colonial said, his voice dry as the Sahara, well, as dry as Robert believed the Sahara would be. “You’ll wish you were dreaming.”

Robert frowned, but without more data, had no response.

“You need to follow me.”

Light clawed its way in through chinks in the brickwork and ill-fitting wood slats, giving them just enough illumination to wish it gone. Robert exchanged a look with Emily, who shrugged and then nodded the “why not” she couldn’t say, since it would be a question. How she felt about the Colonial’s insistence she wasn’t dreaming was unclear. Her belief that this was a dream explained the lack of hysterics—maybe. If she believed the Colonial’s assertion she wasn’t dreaming, she still had it together.

He lifted Emily over an obstacle, grateful for his enhanced physical abilities. They helped him keep them both on their feet as they went up. As they went down. As they went through. Behind them, the sound of the ’ton’s heavy steps faded without losing their persistence. This dogged quality kept him following on the heels of the Colonial as conditions went from bad to worse.

He had questions, lots of them, but it seemed wise to achieve whatever place their guide sought before trying to seek answers. At one point Emily paused in a shaft of light from what might have been a grille or hole in the waterless, yet still damp pipe system that had followed the dingy hallway of the tenement and even more depressing back alley.

“What?” He looked around as their guide paused, too. Saw her touch the pipe.

“Steam engine somewhere.” She sniffed, perhaps pulling something out of the air besides sewage.

“Keep moving. Don’t want to be in here when they divert the water back in.”

With that incentive, no one stopped again until they reached the end of the pipe at the river’s edge. Their guide paused in the opening, head tilted listening for what felt long but was only twenty-five point three seconds, before signaling them forward. Robert declined to take his sign for it and paused in his turn, checking all approaches for signs of trouble—even though he wasn’t sure he’d know what trouble looked like in this place. In the end, he drew Emily out into the open with him. They climbed out of the trough that ran to the river and looked around. The day appeared to be in retreat, though Robert had no way of knowing if he was right or what laws of nature ruled here.

For the first time their guide appeared hesitant.

“What?” The chill of unease mixed with the thick, damp, metallic tasting, chilly yet not-chilly-air.

“I need to check the backs of your heads.” He indicted a spot on his own head, just inside the hairline.

Robert looked at Emily who looked at him. She shrugged. “I scrubbed mine this morning.” She presented hers for inspection. The sight of her bare neck sent some nice heat in against the chill. The Colonial took, in Robert’s view, a little longer than he needed to, checking her out. Then he turned to Robert.

“What are you looking for?”

“A surgical scar, just inside the hairline. If those taken by the ’tons come back, they have them. And they are different in a bad way. ”

“I think we need to see your neck, too,” Emily said, her calm seeming to imply she still believed she dreamed.

The Colonial looked startled, then thoughtful. He turned, presenting his neck. Though Robert wasn’t sure he trusted the man about the scars, it was a relief to find nothing there all the same. There was a pause, as if no one knew what to do next. Above them the sky still sparked with lightning in that odd, curved pattern and the whole flickered now and then, like something out of phase. It bothered him that their path appeared to lead toward the bent horizon.

“Like being caught in a snow globe, isn’t it?”

Snow globe? Did they have snow globes in colonial times? Robert didn’t know, but the way the man phrased his words once again lacked colonial overtones. Their guide sounded more resigned than angry, while sounding not-colonial.

“Someone is shaking it.” Emily and her duster had picked up a lot of grime along the way. Her face had a smear of something along the top of her cheek. He rubbed it with his thumb, remembering the way she’d rubbed her lipstick from his mouth. He used his also less-than-pristine jeans to remove the smudge from his thumb, while wishing they were back in the bug. Or back in her uncle’s workshop. Anywhere but here.

“The storms are new, started just after you two appeared. The tremors, too.”

As if to punctuate his statement, the ground underfoot rumbled. Robert was glad it had refrained while they were in the tunnel. Not cool to scream like a girl in a space designed to amplify and echo sound. Out in the open, he managed to contain any exclamation to the barely perceptible. He frowned. How could their arrival affect the weather or the plate tectonics?
Never assume
. He could do that, while acknowledging there might be a connection. “How did you know we’d arrived?”

It was an odd question for an odd moment.

“We try to be ready, watch for the flash. You were lucky I was close. Most days the ’tons get there first.”

Were they lucky?
Never assume. Never believe what you’re told
. And still no data from his peeps. They huddled as deep inside as they could get. For the first time, he felt able to devote a thought stream to wondering why.

This place is hostile to us. We can’t reach out, can’t connect.

I’m not sure what you’d connect with.
Perhaps that’s the problem? He felt a mental shake. Felt their reluctance when they admitted,
Nod is not with us
.

What? Where is he?
He almost asked the question out loud, wasn’t sure he’d kept his shock under cover.

He emigrated to Miss Emily when you kissed her. Now we are cut off.

Robert felt—and dismissed—the urge to chew them out. It was done. Nod was in Emily’s head, lucky peep. Reasons didn’t matter at the moment, though he still had a hold of her hand. Surely the peeps could connect through their connection—

There seems to be a dampening field that prevents contact.

Which left Nod stuck in Emily. He looked at her. Did she know? Was she mentally chatting with Nod while she looked around with an interest that wasn’t scared enough to match circumstances. Evidenced suggested she still believed in her dream theory. Robert wished he did, as well.

She smiled a bit uneasily. “Hello.”

He almost said “hello,” but a mental yank from his remaining peeps stopped him.

Nod might be trying to open a dialog with her.

Robert wasn’t sure Nod should, but he had no way to stop it from communicating with Emily.
Hostile?
What did that mean? Not that he thought this place would be that great for any of them. He considered thinking something about expecting the unexpected, but it felt like a low blow when the peeps had helped bring them both safely to…here.

That wasn’t what you were going to think.

It was true, but it wasn’t their fault they’d landed in semi-steampunk hell. It seemed appropriate that the air was thick with moisture, as if the strange sky trapped it against the land. The temperature hovered some place between hot and cold—an uncomfortable place.

“Are you all right?” He needed to get new material—and wondered why he’d phrased it like that—as he watched her face. Looking at her was the only bright spot in a lot of not bright and the downright terrifying. He felt a longing to tell her everything, despite a flinch of horror from his unnaturally acquired instincts. If they’d been alone, he might have given into that longing or perhaps given in to the urge to kiss her again. It was no more inappropriate than anything else happening. If she’d been looking at him, he might have kissed her even though they weren’t alone, but she wasn’t. She seemed to be studying the river.

“The river’s flowing the wrong way.” She looked both directions.

The Colonial stared at her. “How can you tell?”

“East River flows the other way.”

“You think this is New York?” Robert looked around.

Instead of answering, Emily looked at the Colonial, with both brows arched.

“We believe it is a version of New York sometime in the 1890’s,” he admitted. He consulted a pocket watch, then turned to face the river. “Wait for it.”

The flow of the water slowed and finally stopped. After sixty-two seconds it quivered, then began to flow in the other direction.

“And you think this isn’t a dream.” Emily shook her head.

The Colonial started to speak, looked at Robert, then at Emily again, and refrained. It was the better choice. Credibility was difficult to establish under present circumstances.

* * * *

Time pulsed on the sensor display, forming, dissolving, and reforming into new patterns, closer to, but still not the
right
pattern. He knew how long it had taken him to learn how time worked, what the shifts and patterns meant, how to read them, how to mark them so he could keep track of them, how to hear the subtle symphony being played, but he resisted focusing on it, particularly here on the base where time moved so slow. He’d learned much in his long apprenticeship, in particular, not to risk a time spiral by focusing too closely on his personal paradoxes, though he would never forget what he’d lost. No, he wouldn’t forget that.

This pattern, this composition was
his
symphony, though to other ears it might seem discordant and harsh—

“So this is where you do it, how you do it. I wondered.” Glarmere’s voice was too calm, his carefully dramatic pause indicating the imminent arrival of another big reveal. “
Faustus
.”

He sounded so sure that he had the upper hand. The outraged were easier to manipulate, but Glarmere’s weakness was power and always had been. His family had it, but he never got what he considered his fair share. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know each other’s names, but he knew a lot of things he shouldn’t. For the moment, he’d allow Glarmere to think he controlled the board. It would make the moment when Glarmere found he didn’t control anything that much sweeter.

With care, Faustus spun his chair to face Glarmere, his hands resting lightly on the arms—and over the control panels on each—and found two weapons pointed at him. Head Council Carig, too? That was a play he hadn’t expected, and an unexpected bonus. It wasn’t often he got two for the price of one. He arched his brows, matching their calm and raising it.

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

“Other than your crimes against the time line?”

“We’ve suspected you for some time.” Carig let more than a hint of triumph color his voice.

He’d always been the weak link in any situation. Not that Glarmere was a tower of strength. It was tempting to toy with them, tempt them with power they’d never get, but there were more amusing ways to neutralize them.

Glarmere—who was venal but not stupid—noted the change in his expression and fired. The blast tracked toward him, almost in slow motion thanks to the slow time on the base, and then passed through him, hitting but not harming the stone walls. There was only one place he felt it safe to be physically present and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t his fault his virtual presence looked more real than theirs. Before they could recover from the shock, he dropped the snare, trapping them both.