He shrugged but said nothing.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sherise is maybe in the clear, but what about you?”
“Don’t give up on me. I’m not expecting any of this to go wrong. All of this is just in case, understand? But if I don’t come back by tomorrow night, keep opening the portal. I’ll come back eventually.”
“If you can.”
“I will, Guillermo. Like I said, don’t give up on me.” I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s get this thing going. Soon, this mess will all be behind us.”
The machine was humming loudly now, and I thought of Mulligan listening upstairs. To know what was happening down here in the garage and be forbidden from even coming downstairs to watch must have been torture for the crossover cultist, and I hoped he would keep his end of the bargain and not defy Beadle’s orders that he stay away. Like Jetpack’s garage, this space under the house had a wooden stairway leading up to a closed door; I assumed the kitchen was on the other side, just as it was in the neighboring house. The thought made me a little tense, as I pictured Mulligan coming down those stairs to harass Guillermo after I’d crossed over.
There was nothing for it, though. If the door to the kitchen was locked, it was from the other side, which meant I was powerless to keep Guillermo and Osvaldo safe if Mulligan changed his mind. It made me wish I’d brought an actual gun. I was tempted to leave one of the non-lethal weapons behind for Guillermo, but I knew it would be foolish to go up against Elsa without as much technology as I could bring.
To ease my paranoia a little, I went to the garage’s side door and made sure the bolt was secure. At least that would keep anyone from entering the garage from the street.
“She’s ready,” Guillermo said above the hum.
I turned from the door to see the glowing ring of lights on the machine, the opening big enough for me to step through. Guillermo stood next to the controls, the settings holding his attention for several seconds. When he looked up at me, I said, “You’re sure?”
“Yes. She’s set to the same world you were in before.”
“All right. You’ll open it every hour again? Like last time?”
“From five before to five after,” Guillermo said. He held up his wrist to show me his old watch on its leather band. The crystal was so scratched that it was like trying to tell time in a fog, but it worked for Guillermo.
“Good enough,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“Buena suerte,” he said with a solemn nod.
I stepped through without further ceremony and was in the dark. The only light in the garage came from the blue glow of the portal behind me, but that wasn’t enough to help me see what I was doing. Switching on Guillermo’s flashlight, I looked around the garage. There was no hovercar here. And no people either.
“So far, so good,” I muttered as I made my way to the garage’s side door. Turning the knob, I peeked outside. The street beyond the door was dark and quiet, but before stepping out, I waited until Guillermo closed the portal. Once the blue light blinked out, I killed the flashlight’s beam and stepped out into the night.
It was a short walk through the dark to Jetpack’s house. The street was off the beaten path, so I wasn’t surprised to see that no one was outside in the quiet neighborhood. I could hear the sounds of cars passing on the Coast Highway nearby and, farther away, the crashing of waves along the beach. Once I reached the side of Jetpack’s place, I stayed close to the walls in case other neighbors happened to be looking outside. It wouldn’t do to have some busybody call the cops on me now, as I doubted I’d be able to sweet talk this world’s Brenda O’Neal into bending the rules for me again.
The house was dark, no lights on in any of the windows. I considered the possibility that Jetpack and Elsa had relocated after their encounters with me and Elsa’s theft of a truckload of Chavezium-laden soil. If that had happened, I figured there wasn’t much chance I’d be able to track them down before the showdown with Andrik Hennigar.
It also seemed possible that the lights were out because everyone was asleep. I had learned that time didn’t necessarily match up neatly from one world to the next. It had been a little after sunset in the world I’d just left, but here it might be two in the morning.
I worked my way to the stairs that led up to the front door and climbed them as quickly and quietly as I could. At the top, I pulled out Jetpack’s keys. Had a world-jumping doppelganger of mine stolen my wallet and keys, bringing in a locksmith to secure my house would have been high on my list of priorities. Now, I’d get to see how closely Jetpack’s thought processes paralleled mine.
There were only three keys on the ring. I tried the first, and it met resistance. The second, though, slid right into the lock—almost silently, like the tumblers had just been oiled. Holding my breath, I put some pressure on the key and felt it turn. The lock clicked, and I pulled the key free as slowly as I could.
Pulling Guillermo’s gun from my pocket, I opened the door and stepped inside. I didn’t want to turn on the flashlight, as the beam would make me an easy target if Jetpack or Elsa was lurking in the dark. Instead, I closed the door with a soft click and then stood still in the big front room, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark.
I stood perfectly still for almost five minutes, long enough to let what little light came through the big picture window help me see a sofa and tables, lamps on stands, and shelves along the walls. The house was silent save for the ticking of a clock in another room.
Taking a deep breath, I ventured forth, working my way around the sofa and in the direction of the kitchen. The bedrooms were upstairs, and I assumed that if my quarry was in the house, she’d be asleep up there, probably in bed with my double. Before going up there, though, I wanted to check this level of the house to make sure the area was secure.
When I got to the kitchen, I froze. At the bottom of the door leading to the garage stairs, there was a narrow strip of light. It came through brightly, creating a sharp contrast with the darkness of the kitchen. Either someone was down in the garage, or whoever had been down there before had left a light on. Not sure which of these possibilities I’d rather face, I approached the door and gave the knob a slow twist.
The door opened with a bit of a squeak, and I cringed at the noise, expecting a voice from below—Elsa’s?—calling up to her visitor. I heard nothing, however. What did drift up was unmistakable though: the scent of Chavezium giving up its energy.
I could picture Elsa in the garage below me. What she was doing with the Chavezium she’d stolen from the rocketball stadium construction site, I couldn’t guess.
It didn’t matter.
The stairway hugged one wall of the garage but it was necessary to make a turn at the top before passing through the doorway into the kitchen. As a result, I couldn’t see the floor of the garage from where I stood. The landing was in the way. I could have edged forward to the wooden rail and leaned over to see the garage floor below, but doing so would have exposed me to whoever was down there. If I was lucky, my prey would be so engrossed in whatever was happening at the workbench that I wouldn’t be detected. I knew better than to count on luck, though. Worst case, the garage’s occupant was wary, maybe even expecting my return to this world, and was armed accordingly, so exposing myself to attack seemed like a terrible idea.
Stepping onto the landing, I pointed Guillermo’s gun downward and toward the railing in front of me. I figured I could get near the edge, point the gun over the side of the stairs, and pull the trigger, incapacitating whoever was below me.
It was a good plan, which was probably why it didn’t work out.
At the last moment, I caught a sound from behind me, a creaking floorboard. I turned and saw myself coming out of the dark as Jetpack Jed emerged with an 8-inch kitchen knife in his hand and murder in his eyes. He must have been stalking me silently in the dark, the floorboard being the only thing that saved me.
Realizing he’d been spotted, he lu
nged at me, moving so fast that I didn’t have time to raise the gun. If I pulled the trigger with the muzzle angled toward me, then I’d be the one knocked out rather than my attacker. Maybe we’d both go down, but that wouldn’t help me any if Elsa was at the bottom of the stairs.
Instead of firing on my double, I ducked to the side at the last moment. He tried to turn and thrust the knife to match my movement, but I was too fast for him, and he hit the wall at the end of the landing.
“Jed?” I heard Elsa call out from below, no doubt having heard us scuffling. She sounded more irritated than alarmed.
If I could have aimed and pulled the trigger at that moment, things would have worked out, but my efforts to avoid getting stabbed had caused me to lose my balance. I stumbled against the wall of the house beside the door to the kitchen and felt something give way a little under my shoulder.
Immediately, I heard a rattling of chains and a rumbling of gears from somewhere in the garage.
Jetpack had regained his balance and turned to lunge at me again. I pulled the trigger, heard the whoosh of the gun’s mechanism, and smelled the release of consumed Chavezium as my double crumpled to the wooden floor of the landing. The kitchen knife spilled from his loosened grip.
Turning to my right, I saw the switch on the wall that my shoulder had hit. It wasn’t a light switch. It took only a moment for me to remember what had happened the night I’d first been here; the garage door had opened, seemingly of its own accord. I had figured out later that Elsa had switched on the garage door opener from the top of the stairs, no doubt flipping the same switch I’d just accidentally activated now.
“Damn,” I whispered as I bent to pick up the knife. Then, I stood perfectly still for a few seconds, waiting to see if Elsa would call up again, or possibly start up the stairs to investigate.
“It’s all right,” I called down, knowing she wouldn’t be able to tell my voice from Jetpack’s. “I was going to surprise you down there, but I tripped over my own feet and hit the opener. You all right?”
Silence was all the response I got.
Though I knew it was too late, I went to the edge of the landing anyway and pointed the gun’s muzzle over the side. I squeezed the trigger and then changed the angle before squeezing it again. Then, the gun still held at the ready, I descended the stairs, moving cautiously and scanning the space below me as I went.
Halfway down the steps, I paused to survey the scene. The garage door was open, a rectangle of darkness beyond it. Jetpack Jed’s hovercar was parked in its spot in the middle of the garage floor. Next to the wall in the front corner of the garage was a workbench with a bright light aimed at its top, a metal stool a foot away. There’d been a slim chance that I would spot Elsa’s prone form on the floor beside the workbench, but I saw now that she had gotten away. Alerted by the sound of a struggle on the landing, she might have opted to come bounding up the stairs with a weapon in her hand to try setting things right. But then the garage door had opened, providing her with something better—the cover of darkness, from which to better assess the situation. She was out there now, beyond the rectangle of light that spilled out of the garage and into the narrow road. And she was probably armed.
Hugging the wall, I worked my way around the back of the garage, always with one eye on the open door and with the gun pointed in that direction. I circled around the hovercar and approached the workbench, toying with the idea of firing the gun out the door a few more times in hopes of its rays catching Elsa sneaking around in the night. I’d probably just zap a few stray cats or maybe a prowling coyote. It certainly wouldn’t be good if I hit one of Jetpack’s wealthy neighbors with a bolt of Chavezium-powered energy, so I decided to wait until I had an actual target.
When I got to the workbench, I wedged myself as far into the corner of the garage as I could get, the open door next to me. I stood that way for several seconds, gun at the ready, listening for any sign of movement from outside. There was nothing—just the distant traffic and the even more distant sound of the surf.
Turning my attention away from the door for a moment, I saw that I’d interrupted Elsa’s work. A bright bulb still burned in a little gooseneck lamp, the light shining down on a disassembled device not unlike things I was used to seeing in Guillermo’s workshop. About three inches long and two wide, it had a metal housing whose cover had been removed and flipped over under the light. The two halves of the thing were sitting there with their guts on display—intricate circuits and other components I couldn’t guess at. A soldering iron was next to the work in progress along with a roll of solder and one more component I didn’t have to guess at—a little chip of blue crystal.
Chavezium.
It had come from the stolen dump truck. I was sure of it.
And this meant that there was more somewhere in the house.
I thought I heard a noise in the darkness outside, maybe a footstep. Turning my head sharply away from the workbench, I intended to raise Guillermo’s gun and pull the trigger whether I knew who—or what—was out there or not. But I was able to turn my head only part of the way before it froze in place. As for raising my arm or pulling the trigger, both were impossible.
Something had me frozen in place, paralyzed.
I could still breathe, fortunately, and my legs seemed to have no problem holding my weight. But sending a signal to any part of my body that it should move was out of the question.
Fear and anger welled up in me in equal parts. I felt a claustrophobic urge to rush out into the night, to do something—anything—to restore my ability to move.
But no matter how I struggled to move or writhe or flee, I was trapped, frozen in place.
“How do you like my new device, Mr. Strait?” I heard Elsa Schwartz say from out in dark.
My head was still pointed at a spot halfway between the workbench and the open door, so I couldn’t see her coming out of the dark. I could only hear her approaching footsteps.
“That was essentially a rhetorical question,” she said. “As I know you cannot answer.”
A moment later, she crossed into my peripheral vision and then stopped right in front of me. She wore a black dress of the same sort of stiff material she seemed to favor. Her dark hair framed her face, a cruel smile on her red lips and in her dark eyes. In her right hand, she held a device identical to the one she’d been assembling on the workbench. This one, though, was not just in one piece but also had another component I hadn’t been able to observe in the disassembled version—a little red bulb at its end, not unlike the kind Osvaldo used on the toy wands he built. The bulb was pointed right at me, and it looked like the device had a red button on its side that Elsa was holding down with her thumb.
“You like my paralyzer?” she asked. “Such a thing was theorized in the Reich. I worked on the plans myself. But the issue of a power source both strong enough to be effective and light enough to be practical was a roadblock that meant the device could be nothing more than a theory. Until now, of course.” She took a few more steps closer, clearly unconcerned about Guillermo’s gun still in my hand, and didn’t stop until the muzzle was pressed into her abdomen. Her smile grew wider. “It allows the autonomic nervous system to function, so the victim doesn’t die of heart failure, but something as simple as willing your finger to squeeze a trigger is now beyond you.”
She laughed a little, looked up toward the stairway landing, and said, “I suppose you’ve left poor Jed up there. Alive I take it?”
If I could have spoken, it wouldn’t have taken the form of a polite answer.
We both heard a noise from out in the road, but only Elsa could turn her head to see what it was. It was the sound of someone running, and then laughter. A man laughing gleefully. The sound was so incongruous with what was happening to me there in the garage that I thought for a moment that I might be dreaming.
But then the source of the noise came into view.
Cosmo Beadle passed by the open garage door, still laughing. He wasn’t
exactly running. His gait was more of a rapid shuffle—a pudgy old man’s version of a run. He stopped when he was halfway past the garage door, and I could see enough of him in my peripheral vision to be able to recognize him.
The sight of the old man—madly grinning without his trademark mustache—filled me with anger as I imagined what he must have done to cross over from the world where we both belonged and into the nightmare I was now frozen in. But, of course, I could only look at the old fool as he stood in the road, laughing as he appraised what must have been an absurd tableau: Elsa Schwartz with what looked like a gun pointed at her midsection, and Jed Strait looking at her. He couldn’t know that I was helpless and paralyzed.
“You found her, Strait!” he said between chortles. “You can have her!”
Then he ran off into the night, still laughing.
Elsa’s hand never wavered from keeping her little device aimed at me. Now she turned her head back in my direction, one eyebrow raised and a hint of a smile on her thin lips. Then a thought seemed to strike as the smile grew broader.
Still aiming the beam at me, she backed out into the road and glanced to her left in the direction of Mulligan’s house. The smile transformed immediately into a sign of smug victory.
From above me, I heard Jetpack call down, “Elsa! He’s in the house!”
“Idiot,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, she responded, “I know. I have him. Get down here. We need to go. Now.”
“Where are we going?” Jetpack answered.
“Home,” she said as she came forward and pried Guillermo’s gun from my frozen hand. It took some effort, but by the time I could hear footsteps descending the stairs, I was unarmed.
She didn’t bother saying anything else to me—just pulled the trigger, and then the lights went out.
Chapter Eight
I regained consciousness maybe ten minutes later. During that time, the pair had gotten me stripped down to my boxer shorts and undershirt. They had also sat me on the floor of the garage with my back against the hovercar. By the time I woke up, Elsa had taken a length of wire from the workbench and wrapped it around her device so the pressure from the wire kept the red button engaged. This way, she and Jetpack were able to move about the garage freely while I was left to watch helplessly.
The Fedora Fandango: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 5) Page 9