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She may not be a genius, but she’d read books about geniuses. There were lots of them, geniuses
and
books, in the science fiction and steampunk genres. And she’d been hanging with a really smart, if not a total, genius. Some of it might have rubbed off on her and if hadn’t, who would know inside her head?
Okay, genius time, Em
. If someone pinned time, then unpinning time was probably a bad idea or they wouldn’t try to pin it in the first place. Or second place. She wasn’t sure of course, but she sensed that time probably should stay pinned. Cause unpinned time sounded messy. Messy was bad. Everyone knew that. She almost wished she’d asked the nanites about how unpinning worked. That seemed like a question she could get behind—if you removed a real pin or a nail, it wasn’t there, it was gone until or unless you put it back—could unpinning involve dying for the pin? Didn’t seem to be any other way to remove a person from time that she knew of, so she’d have to go with dead. Dead wasn’t good, whether pinning was involved or not. If they were pins, then the evil overload might not need weapons, because they were
the
weapon, if they were pins, which they had said they were, at least the un-zombie ones said they were. Only what were they aimed at, if they were pins?

“What are they doing?”

Em was glad Carig asked the question she couldn’t get out. One by shambling one, they topped the rise and started across the wide lawn toward…nothing she could see—the horizon did a shimmy and then there was something they were aimed for.

Automatons.
And these had arms
and
arms.

Unless the pins had serious ninja skills or a good supply of wrenches, they might be in trouble. Hard to get behind the notion of them having wrenches. Or ninja skills when walking involved the zombie shamble. All the ninjas she’d seen never shambled, they, well, ninja walked or something.

Both Carig and Glarmere reeled back from the automatons, thus confirming they were total girls. Being an actual girl, Em felt a need to reel with them, but if the zombies kept on their current course, they were going to shamble right into that line of automatons and get hosed. Hosed was bad and could result in pulling, i.e. dead.
Crap on a cracker.
She had to save the zombies. A violation of every steampunk rule she knew and how was she supposed to—

Double crap on a cracker
. She had to get out the bug.

* * * *

“Delilah?” Hel sounded far away, a galaxy at least, kept there by the pain, though she felt him grip her arms. Only two warm spots on a body turned to ice. Her muscles cramped. A brief silence inside her head. And then a thousand demons loosed from peep restraint yowled into the void.
They
were back. She tried to expect the unexpected, but she hadn’t expected this—

He shook her. “You are strong enough to fight this, Delilah. The Chameleon did it once, she can do it again.”

Right. The Chameleon. She was…the chameleon. She’d functioned like this for most of her life, done the impossible over and over. And done it alone. Not alone now. Had Hel. Her nails dug in her palms. No peeps moved in to ease the pain. With some effort she uncurled her fists, forced herself to breathe in, to breathe out. She lifted her lids. Even that hurt. She used to know pain, not happy to know it again. Peeps had spoiled her. Every muscle in her body ached. Hel wavered in front of her, then her vision steadied as her breathing began to even out. She could do this. She had to.

“We have more urgent concerns than the nanites right now.” His hands dug into her arms, willing her to focus. “Outpost defenses are down. Shields. Weapons. Transport systems. Anything that uses nanites.”

His head angled toward his radio, listening, but his gaze was locked on her. Her radio squawked like a schoolyard at recess. She turned it down. Didn’t need chaos inside and out.
Chaos.
Her mind locked on that. She rubbed her face. It didn’t help, but it felt like it did, so she did it again. Data ramped up even more, the streams no longer tidy and organized, but coming at her from all directions, like multiple blows. A problem to sort helped some, would help more when she got control again. It was why she’d become the Chameleon in the first place. Out of the morass, she found a question she could ask, though she felt like a stroke patient trying out her first words. “Is this the attack?”

No HUD, no mental connection to the outpost’s defenses. No big picture to study. And a horizon that appeared to be pulsing…between two times? Or two realities? Or three? She’d done alternate realities and did not want to go there again. Might not have a choice. She hated not having a choice.

“Doc?” the general sounded almost concerned. And didn’t like it. Was better at annoyed.

“I’m fine, sir.” She rubbed her face again. If she said it enough, maybe it would be the truth. “You say the
Doolittle’s
equipment is still fine?” A sharp nod. “Can you get me on with someone who can feed me real time sensor data?” Eyes-on didn’t help that much without the peeps feeding her raw data. He gave her the channel and a calm, somewhat apologetic—probably because of how bizarre the data was—voice began feeding her information.

Ground troops, Gadi and Marines, began to move into defensive positions, and the fighter squadrons buzzed past the central cluster of buildings, their sensors adding to the data flow provided by the voice. All that information didn’t help as much as she’d hoped. A shuttle landed on the lawn in front of the command center and a couple of geeks emerged carrying data pads. Doc grabbed one, glad to see something tangible, even if the data was whacked. The horizon appeared to steady, to come back into sharp focus, bringing the uneven line of people into focus, too. The airships had also stopped phasing in and out. Only they didn’t show up on sensors. Either her eyes were deceiving her or…she picked through the multiple hypothesis thrown at her by her hellhounds…latched on to one that made a sort of sense. What if they were looking into another reality? Could the twit have tried to split realities, tried to divert the incoming wave into one?

“Delilah.” Hel’s voice was quiet, down into his scary quiet range. “Look.”

She scanned the line of people, shambling toward them, or so they appeared. Granted, they were odd, but—her thoughts broke and reformed. “Your icky cousin and Carig. Are they involved in this—” She looked again. Their clothes were wrong. No one now wore anything like that. Though she wasn’t surprised the clothes were still pretty. A love of pretty was the most persistent characteristic about the Gadi. And who were they talking to? She looked…wrong, like a street person without the defeated look.

“What is that? Who are those…people? Why is the outpost down?” Halliwell was having a tough time staying in grim.

“The nanites accessed a previously unknown laboratory. It was—” Hel hesitated, perhaps unsure of the right standard word for it.

“Booby-trapped,” Doc said. “It was a trap.” Why? The twit had mentioned the anti-nanite stuff, but why here? Why now? Doc had the hounds circle the question. If it had been her op, she’d set a trap to stop someone from messing with any future plans.
I should have thought of that. I’ve lost my edge.
The silence, both from the peeps and Hel, seemed to mock her, while her hellhounds danced with glee.

“We triggered some form of nanite-targeted virus,” Hel finished.

“We need to get into that lab,” Doc said. Had her head hurt this much before the peeps? “It has to be secured.” Her gaze homed in on Fyn.

“Okay.”

Did he look happy? He did stoic so well, Doc thought about him, tried to mimic him when she needed to go there. “Maybe a small team, sir?” Halliwell nodded, but before he could give the order, the chugging of the airships ramped up. They were close enough to count now. “I count twenty.”

Halliwell snorted. “I could take one down with my sidearm.”

It’s a trap.
She hesitated.
Or a diversion?
In any case, “Yeah, but maybe we shouldn’t shoot them down. Maybe that’s what someone wants us to do.”

Halliwell managed to look resigned and wry. “And you never do what anyone wants you to do.”

Doc managed a strained grin. “I wouldn’t say never. I’ve obeyed you more than once, sir.” Though at the moment she couldn’t recall if any of them had occurred in this reality. “I do try to frustrate the bad guys.”

As if they heard her, puffs of smoke bloomed from the sides of the airships. The whistle of incoming warred with the growl of steam engines.

“Cannon fire?” He looked offended. “At that distance? Are they kidding?”

The shells arced ponderously toward them, the whistle rising in pitch as they closed—as if they hit an invisible wall, the shells disappeared.

She blinked and nothing changed.

“Weird.” Fyn lowered the weapon he’d pulled.

“Doc?” The general’s voice yanked her attention the other direction. The line of automatons now closed on their position and they showed up on tracking. If they were in their reality—

“Those are bigger than the ones in the museum,” Fyn said, not sounding particularly concerned by this fact.

“Can we shoot at
them?”

“Please. Sir.”

Halliwell barked something and three squadrons of fighters shot toward them like dogs released from a leash. They streaked across the turbulent sky, lines of fire erupting from each craft. Contrails from fighters and missiles looked like cornrows against the darkening sky and then automatons, fighters and missiles vanished.

And the whirlwind dropped on them like the wrath of God.

* * * *

A lovesick evil overlord? No, this guy wasn’t capable of love, Robert realized as quick as the thought formed. Love wasn’t selfish. This was about lust. Robert looked at the unconscious, younger version just as he opened his eyes. No anger, just cool calculation. Even trapped, he held it together.
Motive
. Power and lust? The outpost had given him the means, the portal the opportunity.
Motive, means, opportunity
might help solve a murder, but this was time the guy was getting ready to FUBAR all of time and every person who had lived or would live. How were they supposed to stop him?
Any ideas yet?

Still scanning databanks…
Blynken sounded young and almost scared.

Robert stared at the spot where Halane had been, though he managed to watch Faustus, too. Waiting for…what? She flickered into view again, stayed for half a second longer, long enough for Robert to really see her.

“She looks,” Robert hesitated long enough to erase surprise from his tone, “nice.” Still no progress on the expectations problem. What would that woman see in an evil overlord?

“Yes.”

Nothing changed in tone, so why did Robert sense despair in the single syllable? “So, you were like, an item?” That was some Em channeling. Almost he smiled at the thought.

“Friends.” His tone sharpened. “We were—we are friends.”

“Just good friends. Right. I get it.” Before Em, he’d never have been able to mix belief and disbelief in the same sentence.

It earned Robert an annoyed look, but Faustus immediately turned back to his data pad. A pulse began to beat at his neck. He sat, resting the pad on his knee so he could tap with one hand and keep Robert covered with other, but the gun wavered now and again. He’d forgotten Chameleon was dangerous. Robert’s muscles wanted to bunch for the spring—

Not yet.
Not from Blynken, no, this thought came from deep inside. Was this how Delilah felt, this homing in on a target, waiting for good tone before striking?

“It can’t be a perfect process. What if you bring back a version of her that doesn’t remember you?” Drip, drip, water on rock, was the hope. Now he channeled a bit of Em and a lot of Delilah. The horizon pulsed slower now and the air felt thick, as if it pushed against an obstacle. “But I suppose she’ll be glad to be back, well, glad when she realizes she was gone. Assuming she believes you—how close were you, did you say? Will she believe you?”

“Halane is not the kind of person to doubt.” The weapon steadied. “I can silence you, if you can’t be quiet.”

“But you don’t want to. You need an audience for your big moment. And not just any audience. You want, have always wanted, the Chameleon to see it.”

“You overestimate your importance.” But the weapon wavered just a bit. “You are nothing but an interesting specimen for me to study later, when my work here is done. I thought you might be interested in the process, but if you can’t be silent, I can stun you. Your choice.”

Specimen
. The word chilled but the barrel hadn’t lifted yet. Robert mimed zipping his lips. The small, apparent retreat allowed him to remove one hand from the back of his neck.

“I knew you’d see reason.” Faustus turned his gaze back to the data pad.

Robert lowered his arm to his side. When Faustus didn’t notice, he slipped the weapon out that he’d taken from Smith, and had his hands back behind his head by the time Faustus glanced at him again. Robert felt better with his fingers pressing the weapon to his upper back.

Halane’s image continued to flicker in and out of view, something that appeared to frustrate Faustus. Robert almost spoke, felt a pull back from his Delilah channeling.
Wait for it. Let him feel compelled to fill the silence. He’s less likely to shoot you.
The silence built, grew heavy. Robert felt Faustus’ growing need to fill it. He shifted once and Robert knew he had him.

“It’s quite a complicated process,” Faustus spoke as if Robert had asked. “There are key points in time, and key places where pressure can be applied. It’s taken me several tries to isolate those times, those places.” He paused. “Time to determine the right people to remove.”

The time pins in the alternate reality.

“You can’t imagine my shock when I realized this outpost is like time’s heart, though I’ve never been able to ascertain why or how. The Garradians either did it or realized its potential, and exploited it. Time spins around it, spirals out from it. If I have timed the impact right this time, well,” Faustus smiled down at the pad, his face glowing pale from the dim light, “then time will spin around me.”