Ticker (30 page)

“In dire circumstances,” Nic said, helping me lower her to the floor. “You ran afoul of Warwick.”

Violet’s face paled, but her grip on us intensified. “I remember now. And Sebastian . . .” She ran her gaze over us, the same keen glance that took inventory of the bakery stockroom in less than ten seconds. “Sebastian ambushed me!”

“He wasn’t altogether himself,” was all I had time to say before Violet turned and flung herself at Nic.

“Never mind that now,” she said, blinking back tears. “You might have died, and all I’ve been able to think about was that stupid fight.”

Nic slipped his arms about her and murmured something in her ear as I crept away from the string of apologies that followed. Still, I caught snippets of “No, it was all my fault” and “I was afraid I’d never see you again” from both of them, followed by enough kissing to set my face ablaze.

As they made their amends, I located the smelling salts and turned my attention to Sebastian’s prone form. “Mister Stirling, it’s time to wake up.” Waving the bottle under his nose earned me a frown. A stiff and well-deserved slap to his cheek roused him the rest of the way.

“Penny, my darling,” he mumbled, “I hoped that someday I would wake to find you by my side. I just didn’t think it would be because you tried to kill me.”

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” I looked down at him. “Whatever you say next, don’t bother to be charming. I’m not in the mood.”

Sebastian’s eyes suddenly widened, and he jerked up as though I’d taken the Pixii to him again. “We have to warn Marcus.”

I caught hold of him by the shoulders. “About what?”

“A hundred SugarWerks Carry-Away Boxes distributed around the city. At the train terminals. The Meridian port. The airfield.” Sebastian heaved himself up, wincing as he jarred his Augmented knee. “I personally delivered the damn things to diplomats and government officials, every prominent aristocrat, shipping baron, manufacturer, and registered member of the Edoceon movement.”

Violet whirled about, looking as if she might strangle him. “You stole boxes from SugarWerks?”

Less concerned with the containers than the contents, I stared at Sebastian. “What’s in the boxes?”

“Mechanical Spiders. More than enough to bring the city to a standstill. Marcus needs to know before the timers go off.” Noticing that I wore only my shift, Sebastian shrugged off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

“We also need to get Mama and Papa,” I said. “What do we have in the way of weapons, other than my Pixii?”

As it turned out, there were plenty: razor-sharp scalpels, syringes of sedatives, and the metal legs off the operating tables, which would serve as clubs. Nic hastily patched the Pixii back together with some spare plates and wires, but the poor thing was prone to buzzing and sparking without warning now. Still, I felt safer with it at the ready.

“Let’s go,” Nic said once we were armed.

We tiptoed across the stage, eased open a door, and entered a long corridor. Unnatural quiet surrounded us, broken only by the sound of our muffled footsteps upon the rug. After the brilliant illumination of the operatory, my eyes struggled to adjust. Nic’s ocular Augmentations must have compensated for the lack of light, but he still moved with caution that matched my own.

Doors on either side of us bore small luminous nameplates identifying the contents of each alcove: film canisters, construction supplies, cleaning equipment. Warning signs marked the rooms containing nitrocellulose, and we gave those a wide berth. At the end of the hallway, Sebastian pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

The room beyond smelled of stale tea and sweat. A lantern with a red glass globe burned atop a table littered with overturned cups and crumbs. Blindfolded and bound, our parents huddled together on the floor. Their clothes were grimy and rumpled, like those of naughty children caught playing in a coal hole. Far from being chastened, though, our father reared up his head like a bull about to charge.

“Coward!” he roared. Despite the dried blood crackling in his beard and the rusty flecks decorating his linen, he vibrated with indignation and strength.

This wasn’t the empty shell sloshing with alcohol we’d known this last year. This was my
father
.

Nic closed the door as I flew across the room and pressed my fingers to Papa’s mouth.

“Quiet,” I ordered him. “It’s not Warwick.”

“Penny?” When I jerked his blindfold off, he flinched away from the light.

“By all the Bells!” Mama whispered, trying to twist closer to me.

I reached out and pulled the cloth from her eyes. For a fleeting moment, I looked at a blurred picture of Dimitria, her copper hair falling over her shoulders, eyes filled with tears; then everything came into focus and I held my mother in my arms, breathing in the trace of rose water under the acrid scents of fear and fury. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“Get out, the lot of you, before he comes back—” A bout of coughing curtailed my father’s order. Apparently he hadn’t been taken without a fight, and Warwick must not have spared any Quick-Heal for him.

Nic landed alongside me, his Augmented fingers attacking the knots. “Save your strength. We’re going to need it to get out of this place.”

The moment Papa’s hands were free, he reached into his breast pocket for his spectacles. He wrapped the wires about his ears as Nic turned to Mama.

“Let me see what he did to you,” she demanded. When her ropes dropped to the floor, she grasped Nic’s Augmented hand and turned it over.

“I’m fine, I promise.” He averted his gaze before she could look into his eyes. “We’ve no time for an examination.”

“Where’s the nearest exit?” Mama asked, finding her feet and looking over the group like a hen counting her chicks.

“The stage door, but it’s rigged with sensors and explosives.” Sebastian led us out of the storeroom and down the hall. “The front entrance is farther, but at least we’ll leave with our limbs intact.”

I charged the Pixii to its full capacity as we hurried. “We need to get everyone out and signal Marcus for help. We still have the Carry-Away Boxes to worry about.”

“I expected the almighty Kingsley to be here by now, astride a white horse, colors flying,” Sebastian observed as we made our way up a twisting staircase.

The unexpected blast of a black-powder shot interrupted our progress. Papa hunched over with a groan, blood oozing from a bullet wound in his shoulder. With a wordless cry, Mama grabbed him by one lolling wrist and tried to pull him to the upper floor.

I shoved at Sebastian. “Go! Get them out.”

He obeyed, vaulting up the last few stairs to help my mother. Two more bullets tore through the spot where Sebastian had just been. I ducked down behind the iron railing with Nic and Violet just behind me. Peering through the bars, I saw Calvin Warwick aiming a revolver at us.

“You can’t leave,” he said flatly, firing once more. “It isn’t safe for you out there until I take care of the Edoceon and the city council. Once the Spiders are in place, the officials and the protestors will be more amenable to my methods. Nothing will impede my good work, helping others like you. Like Dimitria.”

Afraid he might take another shot at us, I reached out and jammed the Pixii into the nearest light switch. The energy transferred with a hiss and zing, mercifully into the outlet and not up my arm. A series of fireworks cascaded from the light fixtures before every incandescent bulb in the hall exploded.

“This has to end!” I shouted at the shadows pooling in the hallway.

“I agree.” Warwick’s voice twined about us like a specter. Hollow footsteps signaled his approach. “Don’t be unreasonable, Penny.”

“Unreasonable?! You shot my father!”

One plus two plus one
. . .

I counted four bullets fired; he had only two left.

“I’ve killed before to save you, and I’ll do it again,” was his chilling response. “Dimitria wanted it that way.”

Nic shifted behind me. “My sister never would have wanted any of this.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and do not know. I was the one who heard her breath stop. I was the one holding her when the light left her eyes.” Something cracked open, and all of Warwick’s grief poured out of him. “Dimitria’s last words weren’t for me—they were for Penny! And then she was
gone
!”

“My mother’s building a machine at the Flying Fortress,” I said, hoping such news could shine a bit of light to his heart. “The Grand Design. It lifts the veil between this world and the next. You can speak with Dimitria. She’ll tell you . . .”

His slow footsteps resumed. “Don’t try to trick me. I’m a man of science. A man of logic.”

“Then listen to yourself!” I shouted, more angry now than frightened. “You’re the one about to unleash mind-controlling devices on thousands of innocent people. You’re the one terrorizing the city and plotting to overthrow the government. It would be a mistake to call you mad. A mistake and a kindness both.”

“Stop,” he warned me, but I couldn’t.

“You might be able to correct the weaknesses of the flesh, but you can never mend a heart that’s broken the way yours is!”

To silence me, he fired off another shot. The bullet embedded itself in the plaster just over my head.

One bullet left.

Violet squeaked, shoving me up the last three stairs and into the lobby. There was nowhere to hide in the cavernous space. Sebastian had unlocked the revolving door and helped my parents out to the terrace. I could see Papa leaning against a marble column with my mother bent over him. Nic grasped Violet’s hand and made a run for it. The parquet floor spread out before us, dark wood against light like a chessboard. No time for subtleness, strategy, Knight’s Maneuvers, or trying to spare the Queen.

We reached the exit, and I ducked into the compartment behind Nic and Violet, momentum carrying us forward until Warwick grasped the back of my borrowed jacket. The fabric caught between the revolving panels and the wall; the door ceased to turn. I was trapped, with only a pane of glass between us.

“Hold on!” Nic tugged at the metal frame, forcing it to yield by inches.

“Stay with me, Penny,” Warwick pleaded, jerking the jacket and the door back toward him. “You’re not like them. You understand . . .”

Full up with loathing, I rounded on him. “I understand this: It’s
over
, Warwick. We know how to deactivate the Spiders. If we want to fight the Edoceon, we’ll do it in a courtroom. You kept your promise to Dimitria, and now you have to stop! What would she say, if she could see you now?”

Warwick looked past me to my father bleeding on the terrace, Sebastian in the street waving at the rapidly approaching Ferrum Viriae, then down at the gun in his hand.

One shot left.
I dragged in a panicked breath, waiting for him to raise the revolver.

“You lived,” he said.

“I did.”

He let go of me and reached for his pocket watch. His thumb traced the gold case, then he wound the intricate braid of Dimitria’s hair about his fingers. “I saved you.”

“Yes,” I choked out. “You did just as she asked.”

Warwick’s terrifying anger slipped away, and something akin to peace spread across his face. Whatever else he might have said was drowned out by the wheeze of brakes and the screech of tires. Marcus bailed out of the vehicle like it was on fire, taking the stairs three at a time. When I looked back to Warwick, he gave me a sad smile before opening his pocket watch and disgorging a dozen gold Spiders. He kept his eyes on mine as the mechanical bugs crawled up his sleeve, over his collar, across his face, and into his ears.

Dimitria.

His mouth formed the name as his smile faded, exactly the way the light does only moments after the sun sets. I watched the last vestiges of the man I’d known disappear into the darkness, leaving an empty shell behind.

“Get her out of there,” said Marcus from just outside. When the door yielded with a final desperate jerk, he caught me in his arms.

“It’s about damn time, Kingsley,” Nic said. “What took you so long?”

“I got here as fast as I could. There’s a tracking device in Penny’s bracelets, but we couldn’t activate it until after we discovered and dismantled the device blocking all the communications systems at the courthouse.” Marcus peered over my shoulder at the catatonic form of Calvin Warwick. “It seems I missed the exciting bit?”

As tired as I was, there were explanations to be made about the SugarWerks Boxes and how the Spiders could be neutralized with different levels of electrical current. Sebastian ran through all the information, with Marcus relaying everything he said to the
Communications Center. An ambulance arrived, and two soldiers placed Papa inside. Mama climbed in after him and closed the doors herself.

Watching them go, I finally exhaled. Not even the most brazen of the tabloids would fully believe this story. Oh, they would tell the tale and sell the papers, but they wouldn’t believe it.

Marcus trailed a gentle hand down my back. “I seem to be forever catching you in your undergarments, Tesseraria. What is this? Three times in as many days?”

“We do seem to be making a habit of it.” Leaning against him, my ear to his chest, I could hear his heart beating, a rhythm now more familiar than any piece of music. My new Ticker paused for just a moment, and I panicked, wondering if it, too, were faulty. Then it thudded once, twice, in perfect time with the heart of the man standing before me.

Just as steady. Just as strong.

“Silver denarii for your thoughts, Tesseraria.”

“Surely you know me better than that by now, Legatus?” I smiled up at Marcus, welcoming the sunshine on my upturned face and neck. “My thoughts are worth a golden aureii, every one.”

FOURTEEN

In Which There Are More Stories Than Those Reported in the Papers