43

WHEN PLANS HIT THE FAN, RUN

ELIOT FOLLOWED THE FOUR MEN FOLLOWING her mother: through an arch, presenting pottery-shard tickets, up stairs and stairs and stairs. The crowds thinned inside the amphitheater, siphoning into seats. Empra climbed all the way to the fourth tier, its steep wooden bleachers reserved for women and the games’ poorest spectators. The Corps unit stood out like sore thumbs in their fresh-pressed togas. Marin motioned for them to fall back to a section where they could keep tabs on Empra without being so conspicuous.

Eliot hung back as well, watching her mother settle onto the bench, hands to bursting belly. Her youth glowed as she stared down the heights, eyes locked onto the Porta Sanavivaria. Was Far standing behind its towering latticework, armed for the slaughter? Could he hear the crowd’s growing roar, the swelling notes of the pompa—flute and horns and a water organ announcing the opening ceremonies? The emperor was due to arrive soon, amid elephants, acrobats, and Vestal Virgins. Weapons would be examined, bets placed, battles commenced.

Then came the bloodletting, the water broken, the end of worlds.

And maybe, just maybe, the start of a new one.

Eliot glanced at her wrist. The pocket universe was sealed—soundproof and unaffected by the laws of this dimension’s gravity. Neither fact stopped her from whispering, “Strap in, Dad. This invisible chariot’s about to go for a whirl.”

There was no need to smirk and wink to get the Corps’ attention. As soon as Eliot stepped into Marin’s line of sight, his face morphed into hunter mode. The rest of the unit mirrored their commander’s response, hands flying to stunrod holsters. Under no circumstances could Eliot allow them close enough to draw—the voltage wouldn’t just fry her, but Vera, too. Her interface was hard at work placing the Invictus’s memories onto the chip, along with Eliot’s current footage. Even a single zap would be disastrous.

Eliot spun on her heels and started running.

She’d mapped out her escape route on the way up, adding enough twists and turns to keep the Corps men from reaching a full sprint. Wall frescoes streaked past too fast to tell what their colors conveyed. Eliot didn’t dare look back, with the steps so steep and the vomitorium passageways so crammed. Duck, dodge, leap, twirl. She took the stairs four at a time, as spectators kept spewing past, opposite the way she needed to go. Size worked to Eliot’s advantage—where she slipped, her Corps pursuers smashed. Latin curses mixing with harsh Central yells.

Her veins were all pulse, high on the fact that this plan was working. Marin and his men had abandoned Empra, so intent on pursuit that they blazed past Gram in the second-tier corridor without registering his out-of-time outfit.

“Good job!” Imogen sang in Eliot’s ear. “All you have to do is keep them running like the wind!”

All. Ha! Were Eliot able to spare the oxygen, she would’ve laughed aloud. She was fast, yes, but speed came at a higher cost out in the open. There were no corners to turn here on the ground level, and the crowds around the amphitheater had thinned. Eliot was much too easy to see in these streets. Time to haul arse.

“McCarthy!” Marin and his unit spilled out of an arch. Their togas flapped as they ran, ready to take flight.

Eliot’s premeditated path had ended, but the chase had to keep going. She turned north, away from the Ab Aeterno and any route Gram and Empra might take to it, and began running. Hades licked her heels, hounding her until the Colosseum’s roar began to recede, deflected by a maze of red-tiled roofs. Other, more urgent sounds took over: heartbeat in her ears, Marin’s stunrod unsheathed, the air around the weapon crackling. It smelled of pennies and clean fire, too close for comfort. The man’s silver-hair-to-speed ratio was admirable, and Eliot figured she had only another minute or two before the ZAP.

TRANSFER OF “YOU RAT YOU BURN” FILE IS 90% COMPLETE.

“Not now, Vera!” The word Rat disappeared, but Eliot couldn’t help feeling like one, scrambling past palatial columns, up a road she saw no end to. She was tired of running. So hazing tired. The fact that this was her final dash only compounded her weariness. Without memories holding her up, her skeleton felt one step away from splintering. It would be such a relief to collapse, let the dust take her….

“The distraction’s working, Eliot! Keep going!” That voice became the only thing keeping her up. Imogen—pumpkin- swearing, cocktail-umbrella-wearing, aurora borealis girl who felt like family because she was—counted on her. All of Eliot’s friends did, and if she fell now, she wouldn’t be able to catch them. “You’ve got this!”

Ten meters ahead the air shuddered and Eliot’s insides with it. She knew that shimmer: atoms arranging into molecules, stacking into the shape of a man wearing a porkpie hat. He stood in the middle of the road, live stunrod in his fist.

His was a broken-record question: “Where’s the catalyst?”

“Ackerman? Take off that hat!” Marin bellowed. Never mind that the rest of the man’s wardrobe was just as ill-suited to 95 AD. The hat was the heart of the offense. “You call yourself a Corps man?”

The Bureau agent hadn’t just tipped off the Corps. He’d hitched a fexing ride with them! His teleportation systems must have rebooted, for when Eliot veered to avoid getting trapped, Ackerman bloomed out of the ground in front of her like a hazing beanstalk. She could still see the blood on his sleeve, a streak he seemed determined to lengthen.

“Warning!” Imogen screamed. “Evil man ahead!”

“Take me to the boy, and this ends!” the Bureau agent snarled.

Eliot had the perfect Yiddish curse—A zisn toyt zolstu hobn a trok mit tsuker zoldid iberforn. “I wish you a sweet death: a truck full of sugar should run over you.”—and no time to say it. Stunrods barricaded her back and chest, each just a few steps from scrambling her systems. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t run.

Teleporting was her only option.

Random coordinate numbers wiped away Marin’s shout when she jumped, arranging a whole new scene. Well-groomed paths, hedges wrapped in the cool of the morning, sunlit quiet punctuated by birdsong. The garden Eliot had landed in seemed a peaceful place, somewhere to get acquainted with deep philosophical thoughts. Any other hour she would have taken a seat beside the marble peacock fountain, let herself get lulled by the water streaming from beak to basin.

But her bones could not be stilled, for five seconds later a new set of feet crunched the gravel. Electricity tugged at the air and sparks flirted with Eliot’s shoulder as Ackerman swiped his stunrod. She threw herself into some bushes, collecting a leg full of thorns. Nothing was singed. Not much was saved, either. The Bureau agent materialized in front of Eliot, causing her to double back.

This wasn’t a chase. She was already cornered.

“Can you turn off your beacon thingy?” Imogen asked.

Eliot dodged Agent Ackerman’s second jab by teleporting to the other side of the garden. “Dunno. Vera, shut off the beacon.”

I AM UNABLE TO COMPLY, the computer told her. TRANSFER OF “YOU RAT YOU BURN” FILE IS 93% COMPLETE.

Et tu, Vera? The interface wanted the Multiverse Bureau to track her down. As long as Vera stayed online, Eliot was a moving target. Jump, jump, always in the crosshairs. Shutting off her interface wasn’t an option, either—it would cut Eliot’s link with the Invictus, stranding her with no way to flee from Ackerman.

The agent appeared on Eliot’s side of the garden, stunrod in full swing.

She scrambled her coordinates.

Sparks showered across the frescoed wall, not a girl to be found.

The garden vanished, Eliot had landed… underground? She couldn’t see much in the swampy darkness, except for open-flame lamps lining tunnel walls. These offered more heat than light, temperatures that ripened the smells of urine, feces, and blood. Noise raged above, at a volume matching her nausea, which had already been stirred by the previous two jumps. Eliot’s insides boiled with bile as she stumbled down the passage. This place couldn’t get any more hellish—

She saw Ackerman’s stunrod before she saw him. The scepter’s crackling light cut farther than any flame, revealing cages filled with lions. A sure sign they were underneath the Colosseum. The beasts rippled behind the bars, muscles and honeyed fur; yawns peeled back into fangs. One of the big cats roared.

The Bureau agent froze at the sound. Eliot teleported behind him, managing a kick to the back of his knee. Ackerman yelled and a whole line of lions snarled, ready for this fight, any fight, fangs at the ready, take him down! Her second strike found nothing but air. The target had evaporated, realigning on her. She lunged two steps ahead, missing Ackerman’s reappearance by centimeters.

Run, jump, a bathhouse. Run, jump, a field. Run, jump, a temple. Wherever Eliot went, Agent Ackerman appeared five seconds later, automatically locked onto her coordinates. There was no way to shake him.

“I can’t keep this up,” Eliot croaked on the seventh jump. Her body wasn’t used to so much rearranging. She was an overloved ragdoll, limp and coming apart at the joints. “If he hits me with that stunrod I’m done.”

“Can you jump to a different time?” Imogen asked.

“That won’t help.” Not in the long run. Eliot might get a breather, but the consequences would be the same as shutting off Vera—Gaius wouldn’t get to say good-bye to Empra, the Invictus’s memories would not pass through the pivot point. Even worse, the Bureau agent might find his way into the next universe and kill the new Far. Countersignature or no. Who would’ve thought a man with fexing feathers in his hat could be so dangerous?

“This only stops if he does.”