hoebe rocketed up the front steps of the manor and flung open the doors. The foyer was still and thick with shadows. Where was all the brightness and activity? Where was everybody? The hairs on her arms rose and she hugged her body tight, wishing she had something warmer to wear than just this short-sleeved blouse and loose skirt. She crept across the slices of moonlight splayed across the copper plank floor. The silence was heavy, save for the hollow heartbeat tick of the grandfather clock.

“Daddy?” Her voice cracked with uncertainty.

Phoebe’s thin oval suitcase of crosshatched aluminum sat beside the front door.

Footsteps approached from the study. She tensed. The sound grew loud, pounding across the metal floor and reverberating through the massive hall.

Her father rushed forward, arms wide.

She leaped into his embrace. Her confusion over the last few months, the terror of the stranger with the bowler hat, all dissolved so fast that they might as well have never existed. He grasped her tight, lifting her until her feet dangled off the ground. She buried her face in his collar. He smelled like a machinist—the scent of sweat, grit, and smoky iron. It was always stronger when he returned from one of his trips, though he usually tried to cover it up with lemon-lavender aftershave. He seemed to have forgotten it this time, but she could not have cared less.

Phoebe felt a swell in her throat but fought it down. She hadn’t cried in nearly three years and was not about to start. Not in front of him.

“Cricket,” her father whispered.

Normally, she hated when he called her that—it made her feel like a five-year-old. Not now. She savored the word.

“You’re here,” she said. “But why are you all alone? Where is everyone?”

“I sent them to their quarters. It’s just you and me.” He looked over her shoulder at Micah, who was standing in the doorway and watching the reunion with nosey insistence. “That’ll be all, son.”

She hadn’t heard Micah enter, and she didn’t bother to look. Her world started and stopped within her dad’s embrace, and not even the Tanner twerp could ruin it. The boy lingered as if he wanted to say something, but her father’s stare made it clear he had been dismissed. He wandered out the front door, scuffing his feet in that lazy way that normally drove Phoebe up the wall.

But at this moment, she couldn’t care less about Micah.

When Phoebe’s dad lowered her to the ground, she saw that he was filthy, his features now haunted and severe. But then he smiled. His tired eyes crinkled gently, the worry seemed to fade, and he was her father again.

“I—I thought you weren’t coming back this time,” Phoebe confessed.

His smile vanished, and he placed his hand on her shoulder.

“We have to go,” he insisted. “We have to get away from here. We’re leaving everything behind. Do you understand?”

Phoebe shook her head no—she did not understand.

“Of course you don’t. How could you?”

His grip tightened on her shoulder, and she looked down at it. His right hand was covered in a mottled green bruise and wrapped in a filthy bandage. Her dad pulled it away and gestured to Phoebe’s suitcase.

“I had Mrs. Tanner pack our bags. We have to go,” he said.

“But she’s not permitted to touch my things. I need to check it to see if—”

A muted rustle of bushes outside. Her father looked up sharply and put a finger to his lips. A long silence choked the room. Phoebe fidgeted.

“Now,” he said at last. “Through the sitting room. They’re probably watching the front door.”

“Who?” Phoebe whispered. “The man in black?”

“What man?”

“With the dark glasses. A hat and curly mustache.”

His eyes widened. “It couldn’t be. Not here in the city.”

“He’s been following me. He chased me.”

“If they are here…Come, Phoebe. Now!”

Her father dragged her across the threshold and through the adjacent sitting room, suitcase in hand. He swept open the curtained glass doors that led to the side yard.

The stranger in the bowler hat stood blocking their way.

He looked like a corpse in the twilight.

Phoebe screamed, and her dad slammed the doors. The panes shattered, sending the intruder backward in a shower of glass. Her father grabbed her and ran. Their pounding steps thundered through the house as they dashed for the front door. But it swung open before they could reach it.

“Hello, doctor.”

The words pierced the shadows with ice-pick precision. Phoebe felt her dad’s hand slacken. They both took a trembling step back, and her father dropped the suitcase.

The dark figure that entered was uncommonly tall, like he had been painfully stretched. As the man stepped into a shaft of moonlight, Phoebe shuddered at the sickly sight of him. He was broad-shouldered with a sinewy neck, wound as tight as a rope, and his dark eyes were buried deep in shadowed sockets. Every move he made was sharp and deliberate. Beneath his unbuttoned overcoat he wore a flak jacket of finely woven bronze fibers and olive-colored military fatigues, and his gloves and high boots were black leather. His splotchy complexion was the color of disease, and the skin was pulled so tight across his angular cheekbones and hairless skull that it gleamed.

But it was his mouth that held Phoebe’s gaze. His chapped lips pulled back in a malevolent sneer to reveal tiny grayish teeth spaced too far apart in his gums, like a sparse graveyard of weathered tombstones.

“Kaspar.” Her father’s voice faltered.

Another figure appeared in the doorway behind the menacing soldier. It was the stranger in the bowler hat. He should have been sprawled out unconscious in the side yard. How had he gotten around the house so quickly? Phoebe backpedaled but bumped up against something.

No. It was impossible. The stranger stood behind her as well, glass shards dusting his black suit. She looked from one to the other—the two men were identical in every way, from their cadaverous color to the symmetrical curl of their smiling mustaches. They ignored Phoebe, their impenetrable black spectacles focused on her dad.

“Your files,” Kaspar rumbled.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Strength had returned to her dad’s voice. “Breaking into my home, threatening my family. This is low even for you. Does Goodwin know his little lapdog has released Watchmen into Albright City?”

There was no longer any trace of fear in her father. Had he looked frail before? Now he seemed to rise before her very eyes, emanating resolve.

Kaspar nodded to the Watchmen. One grabbed Phoebe by the collar, and the other seized her dad’s arm, twisting it hard behind his back. She stamped on her captor’s feet and swung her bony elbows wildly, but the Watchman didn’t budge.

“Don’t you touch a hair on her head,” her father warned.

“Your files,” Kaspar repeated.

“Explain yourself. Or so help me—”

Kaspar nodded to the Watchman holding Phoebe. A cold, white-gloved hand clamped her mouth as another wrapped around her throat, squeezing her windpipe. She thrashed and tore at his hands, but his grip was unbreakable. Her dad broke away from the Watchman restraining him but was yanked back viciously.

She couldn’t breathe. The world swam before her eyes.

“Stop!” her dad shouted, pointing to the dimpled copper door at the end of the foyer. “Through there.” The pressure on her throat released, and she sucked in a blessed lungful of air. She looked to her father for some kind of answer.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Cricket.”

Phoebe nodded, wanting desperately to believe him, but the glimmer in Kaspar’s eyes made her think otherwise. As he strode past, she could smell the oiled leather of his gloves and boots, masking a bitter scent of decay. He kicked open the door to the study and marched inside as the Watchmen dragged Phoebe and her father along.

Moonbeams poked feebly through the stained glass window but did little to penetrate the shadows.

“I warned Goodwin that you were nothing more than a common thug,” her father snapped. “Do you really think you can get away with this?”

Kaspar looked at the flames and curled ashes in the fireplace. “What did you destroy?”

“My documents are classified, and you have no authority. When I inform Goodwin what you have—”

“Who do you think sent me, doctor?”

Her dad drew back. Then he clenched his jaw and composed himself. “Release her. Then we can talk.”

The Watchman holding her father kicked the back of his legs, dropping him to his knees. Kaspar grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back painfully. Phoebe wanted to scream, but the sound died in her throat.

Another two identical men in bowler hats appeared at the study door.

Was she going crazy? It seemed like the world had been replaced by a hall of mirrors. Phoebe was beginning to wonder if she could trust her senses.

The Watchmen ripped open cabinets and seized files, gathering them into bundles. They carefully collected the ashes and burned fragments of paper from the fireplace, then unplugged the Computator and hauled it all away.

“I’ll ask once more,” Kaspar said, with a yank of her dad’s hair.

Phoebe clenched her jaw.

Think.

No one was going to come to their rescue. She had to find a way to help them escape.

Phoebe looked around the room, searching for a weapon or a distraction of any kind. Perhaps she could throw one of those burning logs in Kaspar’s rotten face or light the rug on fire with it or something. No, they would grab her before she even got close. Maybe there was something in her sniping pockets that could help. She tried to focus. What did she have? Firecrackers? No, she used the last one a week ago. There was a packet of itching powder. It would keep her captor busy for a little while, but she didn’t have enough to use on all of them.

“Where is the rest?” Kaspar asked, his voice unwavering. “Tell me, or I will break her fingers.”

The Watchman holding Phoebe snatched her hand in one white-gloved fist and spread her fingers wide.

She couldn’t think straight. Her father turned to her, his darkened eyes suddenly drained of hope. His expression seared her heart.

Everything was not going to be okay.

Her dad croaked, “Behind the mirror.”

The Watchman held her fast while another crossed to the six-foot mirror framed with etched iron and lifted it. She flinched as he hurled it to the ground. A cascade of shards splashed across the floor, and a wave of mirrored glass slid to her feet. She caught a glimpse of her broken reflection in the twinkling daggers, the image of her own shocked face broken into a thousand shattered pieces.

Embedded in the wall was a black iron safe.

“The combination is—” began her father, but Kaspar wasn’t listening. He seized the handle, and with slow and deliberate effort, he peeled the front of the safe off of its hinges. The metal twisted in his gloved hands like wet paper. There was a series of loud pops as the steel bolts of the lock snapped.

This isn’t happening.

Kaspar took his time, enjoying the horrific screech of the shearing metal. He hefted the door, which was several inches thick, then tossed it aside to grab the documents within.

“Now we go,” said Kaspar in a maddeningly calm voice. “Mr. Goodwin awaits.” A sick gray grin cut across his face as he leaned in close. “And he knows everything.”

The Watchmen dragged them through the dark manor and out the front door. She kicked and writhed, but her captor’s grip didn’t yield in the slightest.

“Phoebe!” her dad called back to her.

Two stretched Auto-mobiles were parked in front of the house, their engines softly purring. They were identical to the one she had seen that morning, glossy black with a stripe of bronze. Watchmen sat placidly in each driver’s seat. Dr. Plumm was hurled into one vehicle, Phoebe into the other. Two Watchmen climbed into the backseat on either side of her, and Kaspar leaned his head through the window.

“Take her to the pen,” he said. “Wait for further instruction.”

Her flickering fear congealed into something more definitive—a cold and sickening dread. Her throat constricted, and she couldn’t breathe. It was as if the Watchman were choking her all over again. Reality finally sank in.

There was no escape.

The two Autos rolled down the driveway, leaving Plumm Estate shrouded in silence behind them.

Then the bushes rustled.

Micah stumbled out from the shrubs, scratching furiously after sitting still for so long. He had been wandering out front, trying to dodge his chores, when the Autos pulled up. As soon as those creeps in the hats appeared, Micah hid.

But he hadn’t been expecting this.

What should he do? Going to the cops was a waste of time. And sure, it would take a while for those two Autos to wind down the switchbacks of Shimmering Crest, but not that long. The Doc needed help now.

Micah raced around to the servants’ quarters at the back of the estate and peered through the window of the Tanner cottage. There was Ma, passed out on the couch with a half-drained bottle of cherry wine in her hand, snoring like a wildebeest. Fat lotta good she’d be.

Should he go find Randy? By the time his brother got through popping his zits, slicking back his hair, and putting his stupid cadet uniform on, the Doc would be long gone.

Micah ran to his work shed and flung open the doors.

A lopsided smile spread across his face.

He snatched his jacket off the hook and slipped it on. It was a souvenir replica of a real-life MIM pilot’s jacket. When this was all over, and the Televiewer news crews came to talk to him about his daring rescue of Dr. Jules Plumm, Micah wanted to look the part.

A thrill rippled through him, and his mind started to race. He was going to be famous. He was going to be a hero. They’d probably let him into cadet school early just for the publicity!

Of course, what he was about to do would put him in a whole new category of trouble, earning him a kind of punishment that hadn’t even been invented yet. It was stupider than anything he had ever done in his entire life.

Micah tore away the tarp.

For safety reasons, the drive motors on Cable Bikes came installed with a limiter bolt that capped their speed. No good if he wanted to catch those Autos. Micah ripped off the bolt with a wrench and slid the tool into his back pocket.

This bad boy was the Doc’s only hope.

Just like Maddox. No guts, no glory.