“Where’s Leo?” came the muffled cry of a very agitated Klaus from the other side of the glass. “Why isn’t he riding with you guys?”
Her heart thumping wildly from the sudden noise, Max gestured to the overhead luggage rack.
“You made him ride all the way from London in his box?” Klaus sounded horrified. “Monsters!”
The blustery Klaus—who, at one point, wanted to take over Max’s role as CMI team leader—had mellowed ever since they’d taken the robot Lenard from the Corp. His entire focus had shifted to making technological magic with his amazing new electronic toy that he renamed Leo.
Max and Siobhan quickly pulled down the boy-bot’s rolling travel box, grabbed their things, and hurried off the train. Klaus immediately opened Leo’s box to make sure he “hadn’t suffocated” on the ride, even though robots don’t breathe.
Charl and Isabl, the security team charged with protecting the CMI field team, were on the platform, too. Neither Charl nor Isabl had a last name that they cared to share with anyone, but they were both very skilled in the martial arts and the use of tactical weapons. They were like a two-person commando unit.
“I trust your journey was unremarkable?” said Charl with his hard-to-place, somewhere-in-Eastern-Europe accent.
Max nodded. “Once we got on the train.”
“Max’s cover was blown in London,” said Siobhan.
“We know,” said Isabl. Her accent was slightly more exotic than Charl’s.
“The Corp might be under the impression I’m on my way to Rome,” said Max with a smirk.
Charl nodded. “They sent a two-member strike team to Heathrow. Caused a bit of a row. They also alerted their assets in Italy.”
“Good,” said Siobhan. “Just so long as they don’t know we’re here.”
“They don’t,” said Isabl. “You two can peel those stickers off your faces now.”
“Oh, right,” said Siobhan. “Duh.”
“All threats within the confines of the United Kingdom have been neutralized,” said Leo. Klaus had hauled him out of his box and powered him up.
“Let’s go,” said Charl. “We have an electric-powered SUV.”
“And Leo is not being stowed in the rear cargo area,” said Klaus. He gave Max and Siobhan a squinty eyed look of disgust. “Animals.”
The city of Oxford, fifty-one miles outside of London, was home to what was probably the most famous university in the whole world. Its first colleges opened more than eight hundred years ago inside medieval buildings that looked like castles and cathedrals, causing one poet to call Oxford the “City of Dreaming Spires.”
Isabl was behind the wheel of the SUV. She was a very skilled driver. In fact, she was so good, she could’ve been a stunt driver in the Fast and Furious movies.
As they drove through the awe-inspiring city, goose bumps sprung up on Max’s arms. Not because of all the incredible architecture but because she realized she was in another space where Albert Einstein had visited at a different time. He gave a series of lectures at the renowned university in the early 1930s. The deans and dons of the college were so impressed that they kept the blackboard he used during his lectures, along with all his chalk notes. It was now on display at the university’s Museum of the History of Science. Max hoped there’d be time in her schedule to go see it.