Chapter Sixteen

June 20, 2507, 11:55 p.m.

 

The prison security personnel questioned the reporter’s need for a midnight appointment, but they considered his reasons and relented. Thomas Huxley was the only journalist the prisoner would speak to, and as the execution grew closer, it was better for him to do an interview as soon as possible.

A protest had formed outside the prison, calling for the convicted assassin’s early execution, and it quieted as Thomas passed. He walked into the building, and they resumed their shouts.

The journalist flashed his ID, picked up a pass, and walked with a guard to the maximum-security section. The arrangement had changed since he last visited: Damien Martínez was on death row, and was under full guard.

The prisoner sat locked in Cell 19.

“You’re looking better than last time,” said Damien, from behind the bars.

“So are you.” Thomas grinned, pulled up a chair, and started the interview.

Damien talked candidly about his time with the rock band, and his memories of his family, but he skipped aside questions about the crime. Thomas wrote quick but detailed notes in a paper notebook, a habit he picked up in high school and never shook off.

“Is Zoë in Paris?” the prisoner asked finally.

Thomas faltered. “Leaving for Paris. She wanted to come, but ... the whole week’s been hard for her. People have been hard on her. She had to leave the city.”

Damien sat back. “Will you tell her I didn’t kill the king? Just that.”

“Whoa, is that on the record?”

“Yeah. Put it your notes.”

The guard shifted uncomfortably.

Thomas adjusted his black-framed specs. “Last week, you confessed to this crime.”

“Yeah, but ...” Damien shrugged. He was wearing regulation sea-green prison garb, and his cell was drab, and the dim light cast odd shadows. “They said it would just be easier to confess. They made pretty direct threats against me ... and Zoë.”

Thomas pulled off his specs. “Who did?”

“I would like to remind you that the prisoner would be willing to tell any lies to delay his fate,” said the guard.

“Excuse me?” said Thomas. “Oh, for a second I thought I was interviewing Damien. But I see that you know everything! Who’s in charge of interrogations here?”

“That information is classified.”

“It was the secret police,” said Damien.

Thomas had stopped taking notes. A memory flashed in his head: dim lights, a scream … and he remembered where how had seen this jail, years before.

The secret police had no accountability. If they saw fit to torture or execute someone, they could do it.

“Damien ... they didn’t suspect that you killed the king,” he said. “They knew you were innocent the whole time. They just couldn’t catch the real shooter.”

“A brilliant deduction, Huxley,” came a voice. Commander Edward Delacroix strode toward him, flanked by two guards. He raised his flashlight and shined it at the reporter.

Thomas moved a hand up to shield his eyes.

“Take him.”

He barely had time to open his mouth before the guards shoved him against a wall and clicked handcuffs onto him. He thrashed and fought, but they held him tight. “You can’t do this!” he yelled, before the soldiers pulled him away.

“Sorry for the disturbance,” Commander Delacroix said to the guard. He turned to the prisoner. “Nothing personal. You’re going to die for your country. Not many people have that honor.”

Damien didn’t say a word, just moved his eyes as the Commander walked away, then the guard. Then he screamed and kicked at the bars, again and again, but the sound only echoed off the walls.

So the plan had failed brilliantly, just minutes into it. Commander Delacroix hadn’t been away; Kira had led him into a trap.

The Commander walked behind the guards, who pulled Thomas along, but stopped when he heard a faint ringing.

“It’s his phone,” said the Commander.

They searched Thomas and found his cell phone, and one of the guards handed it to Delacroix, who pulled it open. “Hello?”

A pause, then a stern female voice: “Where’s Thomas?”

“He can’t answer his phone right now,” said Delacroix, watching Thomas try to pull away. “He’s a bit tied up at the moment. Can I take a message?”

No reply.

“Which one are you? Zoë, the intrepid pilot ... no, this must be the time traveler. Ariel Midori, isn’t it?”

“Let him go.”

“In four minutes he’ll be in Cell 45,” said Delacroix. “I hear you have a time machine. Meet us there.” He closed the phone, then pressed a button for the elevator. The doors slid open.

“At this point I don’t even see the benefit in keeping you alive,” said Delacroix, as the men shoved him in. “Tomorrow the public will wake up to find that Thomas Huxley, beloved journalist, is dead. Brain aneurysm. How sad, but not so unlikely after that accident a few years ago. And after all the stress he and his fiancée went through...”

Thomas’s eyes flashed. The guards shoved him into the elevator.

“Aren’t you a bit overqualified to be murdering reporters?” Thomas snapped. “Go on then, shoot me. Wouldn’t be the first time someone did. Ariel knows what you’re up to, and she’ll stop you.”

Delacroix raised his gun.

Thomas’s heart thudded. He was backed up against the wall.

“Stop!” A brunette in full officer’s dress stood in the hallway. Lt. Kira Watson. “Don’t kill him,” she said, her eyes wide.

The Commander turned, enraged. “Do you make the decisions here, lieutenant?” And as Kira gasped, he aimed the pistol at Thomas, and fired.

A single gunshot lit up the elevator car; a sudden pain ripped through Thomas’s shoulder and radiated down his arm. Caught off balance, especially with his hands cuffed behind him, he toppled over, on the floor, bleeding, gasping. But he couldn’t die. Not when he’d survived a bullet through his head.

Delacroix strode over, looking down at him. “If I were you,” he said, “I would start being a lot more cooperative right now.”

 

2.

 

Ariel lifted the map. They were actually blueprints, but they were a map to her. The architect (who had designed the prison hundreds of years ago) had either been very absentminded, or several secret parts had been built into the prison.

Probably the latter.

Dimitri had once drawn her the plans of a jail that made it easy for secret agents to get in and out if they knew the way. These looked strikingly similar.

“Put an office building across the street,” he had said. “In the cellar of that, there could be a door to an underground passageway to the jail. Put a fingerprint reader on the door; only secret police can get in and out.”

Ariel stared at the door. She stood in a dusty basement, with piles of boxes stacked everywhere.

A fingerprint reader stood between her and the tunnel.

She looked down at Jamie’s pocket watch. It ticked softly, but she knew it could be tracked whenever she moved in time. She had to save it for when she really needed it.

The plan was that Thomas would get inside, find out Damien’s location, and text her. The shift change occurred from 11:00 to 11:30, and it would not be extraordinarily difficult to sneak Damien out through the secret police’s tunnels, if they had to.

Yet here she was, blocked by the first barrier.

She heard a creak behind her; someone had opened the door to the cellar. Ariel turned off her flashlight, but the intruder pulled out his own.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Lt. Watson sent me to help you.”

Ariel put a hand over her eyes and stood blinking in the dusty light.

“I’m John Caxton,” said the sandy-haired man. “An agent of the covert ops.” He stepped off the stairs, edging closer.

She didn’t reply.

“Or, rather, kind of a liaison between the covert ops and the uniformed—”

“All right, I get it. What are you doing here?”

He strode over to the door, put his hand on the fingerprint reader, and the steel door slid open, revealing a dark tunnel.

Ariel stared at him.

“This passageway has been abandoned for awhile,” he said. “We’ve got newer facilities for holding our suspects.”

“Uh-huh. Why are you helping me?”

He strode forward, and she followed him.

The door clicked shut. Locked. No matter. She would have a different, more trustworthy agent to help her get out.

Caxton’s flashlight lit their path. Pipes dripped above in the stone passageway. “This was all built at Dimitri Reynolds’ request,” he said. “You should be very proud.”

“You know who I am?”

“I’m the lieutenant’s assistant now. I know all her projects.” He shined the light. “The ghost. That’s what they call you. They’re still looking for you.”

Ariel pulled out the map. “Then I’ll need to be careful.”

The flashlight shined for a moment on the inner walls’ graffiti. Beside numerous curse words in various languages, someone had scrawled Kilroy was here.

Ariel saw the metal ladder and rushed up to it. She took out her phone, dialed, then waited. A pause, and she looked up, wide-eyed. “Where’s Thomas?” she asked the voice on the other end of the line.

She stared at Caxton as she listened. “Let him go.” After a moment she snapped her phone shut, then put a hand to her mouth and turned away.

“Were you expecting that?” Caxton asked.

She climbed up the ladder. “They’re arresting him to try to get me to give myself up.”

Caxton didn’t reply.

“Why are you helping me?” Ariel asked. “Kira must have ordered you to arrest me.”

“I have my doubts about Damien’s guilt,” he replied. “Kira will keep Huxley safe.”

“Right.” Ariel climbed off the ladder and onto the next level—a hidden part of the first floor of the prison. “And why not release him yourself? You’re in the secret police.”

“Delacroix is tightly supervising the prison. But I informed the guards to let a red-haired intruder through,” he called.

“And if they don’t?”

He shrugged. “Do what you have to. You’ll need that watch to get out, in any case.”

She nodded and sprinted down the hall.

Caxton took out a radio, and flicked it on, hearing a buzz of static. He could just arrest her now ... but she would use that pocket watch to escape. He lifted the radio to his lips.

“Kira,” he said, “she’s headed your way.”

 

3.

 

The Halcyon drifted through the sky, making its way across the cities below, where lights flashed like jewels among the darkened streets.

“It’s beautiful,” Emily murmured. She sat in the co-pilot’s seat, and Jack stood off to the side.

“You’ll like France. I spent some time there as a teenager. My dad was a diplomat.”

“Yes. I knew him.”

Zoë smiled faintly. “You would’ve been about twelve when he died.”

“I still remember him. I’ve been meeting public officials since I was baby.”

“Ah.” The pilot’s smile widened. “Always on top of everything, huh? You’d make a good queen.”

Emily stared out at the sky.

The ship’s radio sputtered. “Pilot, what is your direction?”

“East, to Paris.” Zoë read the navigation directions on the screen for him.

A pause. “You need authorization to fly out of North American airspace. How many passengers are you carrying?”

“None.” Zoë gestured for Emily to get out of the pilot’s cabin. Emily clicked off her seat belt and scrambled out.

“What is the purpose of the flight?”

“A vacation.”

“Pilot, reduce speed. Prepare to be boarded and searched.”

Zoë saw a Celestial ship approaching on one of the main screens.

“Oh no, not again,” she groaned. She grabbed the thruster. “Jack, has anyone resisted a Celestial ship and won?”

Jack’s eyes flashed. “You are piloting a Celestial ship, Miss Martínez.”

Her eyes turned toward the screen, and she pushed in the thruster.

The ship blasted off into the sky.

 

4.

 

Ariel rushed up a stairwell and pushed the door open. Five minutes remained until the end of the shift change.

She managed to skirt past guards’ blasts until now, but when she turned a corner and skidded to a stop, she stood face-to-face with a dozen guards.

“I—” she started.

They fired.

Ariel’s hologram blinked out, revealing, instead of dark clothing: her actual attire: a white jacket over a flak vest, jeans, and Converse shoes. She didn’t flinch. “Anything else?” she said.

None of them moved.

“Right. Here goes.”

She went into a rage. A flashlight clicked on from the other end of the room, and the guards only saw the girl spinning and whipping her sword in the air, a silhouette that danced and struck. She only had to strike two or three to send the rest running. When she had cleared them, she leaned against one wall, catching her breath.

Caxton stood on the other end of the wall. “Nice work. How’d you survive those blasts? No one should be conscious after that...”

“Long story,” she replied. She darted up a stairwell.

He followed. “You can’t expect to make it, kid. Let it go. Kira won’t let them hurt Huxley.”

Ariel ignored him, and emerged from the stairs in a hallway. It was completely deserted. She took a breath and walked through, taking hesitant steps.

“Do you—”

“Shh!” She held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

She could hear heavy breathing—no, gasps. She started to run, and saw someone sitting in the hall up ahead, against the wall. Thomas.

“Don’t,” he said, but she came closer and dropped to her knees.

“Oh my God.”

Thomas’s right hand was cuffed to a pipe, and he’d been shot in the left shoulder; he was bleeding profusely. All thoughts of Damien evaporated from her mind.

“Ariel, get out of here, they’re going to surround you—”

She blinked, and everything froze around her. The pipe had been leaking, but a drop of water hung suspended in the air. She turned, and saw guards who had been in the shadows now half in step toward her, still as statues. The only thing she could hear was Thomas’s ragged breathing.

“Huh,” she said. “My grip’s slipping.” She stumbled, leaning against the wall for support; she dropped her sword, and it clattered onto the linoleum.

“Ariel, go. Just leave me and get Damien.” Thomas was wide-eyed. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m getting worse.” She swallowed and looked at his wound. Not fatal, but it had damaged the bone. It had to be extremely painful, and required immediate medical attention. “I’ll get you to a doctor.”

“Ariel, the soldiers, they’re moving—!”

Before she could react, someone grabbed her from behind, slipping a gloved hand over her mouth.

“Well, well,” said Commander Delacroix. Several guards appeared around her; the watch had apparently slipped back to the normal timestream. “You’re going to be very helpful to us, Miss Midori,” said Commander Delacroix.

“Let her go,” said Thomas. “She’s sick, for God’s sake—”

Ariel, dazed, couldn’t form any resistance. They injected her with a sedative, but their efforts were unnecessary. She had the falling-sickness, and was lapsing into the falling stage: complete unconsciousness.

The last thing she heard was Thomas yelling her name.