“Monder has been making you map the rift?” Helen says.
“I think so,” Henry says. “I can see things—lines and circles and symbols. It’s like it’s already all there, inside my brain. They told me that if I don’t write it all down, they’ll shoot me full of venom. So, I wrote stuff down to get them to leave me alone. But I’ve also been studying the symbols, figuring out what they mean. “
“That means Monder already has his own maps of the labyrinth!” Helen says. “He might be able to find us at any time. It’s not your fault, Henry. He used you. He knew you had the Guild abilities. Someone told him.”
“Yeah, well, he won’t be able to use them very well,” Henry says.
Helen looks at her brother. “Why? Doesn’t he know how to read them?”
“Kind of,” Henry says. “I figured they wanted to use them to do bad, so I drew them all backwards,” Henry says, and grins.
“No way,” Helen says. “You are a genius. You are my genius brother.” She puts a palm in the air and Henry gives her a high five. “Seriously.” She shakes her head in amazement.
“So whatever way Monder or his creeps go should be exactly the wrong way,” Henry says. “Until they figure it out. Then I’m in for a butt-kicking by those stupid digital weird robed things.”
“Not if I can help it,” Helen says. “Do you think you could recreate the maps the right way around? Could we use them to look for a way out?”
“We can try it,” Henry says, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “I brought drawing supplies.”
Brother and sister sit down on the ground cross-legged facing each other, and Henry begins to draw.
“Okay, everybody ready?” Christopher asks. He’s sitting on the floor of the van holding a live wire in each hand.
The plan is to use a portal to find and open a time/space rift. They want to locate a relatively out-of-the-way rift, so as not to attract too much attention. Between the Chairman’s research on the hard drives and Daniel’s discovery with his uncle’s time maps, they might just have all the pieces they need to open one, navigate in, and get back out. This is what they will have to do to get Helen and Henry back. And to accomplish that, they must first learn how. Time for a dry run.
“Tell Daniel we’re ready,” Christopher says. “Send over the coordinates.”
Gabriel, squatting on the ground, types numbers into an improvised laptop computer with a jumble of wires running into the driver’s-side window.
“Okay, I sent them over,” Gabriel says. “How does this work, again?”
“Daniel says, first you have to locate a rift in three-dimensional space, and then at that junction you’ll find the two space-times in contact. It’s like a wormhole, I guess. Two things simultaneously changing in relation to each other. Or something like that.”
Gabriel will have to work with this sketchy explanation. With Mr. Brush out of commission, the brothers have to rely on Daniel’s limited knowledge and their own conjecture.
The van sits on a butte outside of a small Southwestern town. Reds and oranges smear across the sky. A single airplane leaves a trail of white heading north. Down in the valley, lighted signs glimmer in the dusk. GROCERIES. LIQUOR. GAS.
“Just to be clear,” Christopher says, “I dug these potential rift locations out of the old Chairman’s files, so I make no guarantee that they are still useful. It looks like something he tried. And according to the diagrams, this one rift appears less connected than the others. So I figured it’s kind of a boring one.”
“Good, we want a boring one,” Gabriel says. “We can make a few practice attempts before we get too fancy, figure this rift thing out, and then go get the kids. By the time Kate and Anna get back with the Shard, we should be ready for action.”
The device buzzes. It’s Daniel.
“Alright, he’s ready,” Gabriel says. “Give it a whirl.”
Christopher starts pounding the keyboard with his fingers. A few typos, a correction, and then it’s set to go.
“Scientific method,” Gabriel says. “What’s our hypothesis?”
“That we’ll locate this rift, travel to it, and pass an object through and back again,” Christopher says. He holds up a coffee mug, the intended object.
“Alternatives?” Gabriel asks.
“The rift is already closed for business, or obsolete, and nothing happens,” Christopher says.
“Other alternatives?”
“We blow up the universe.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. “Other other alternatives.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s see. That we find the rift, but it doesn’t behave the way we expect.”
“In which case we will have to think fast,” Gabriel says. “Fine, we’re ready. Let the experiment commence.”
Christopher punches the coordinates and shoves a portal into the machine. Nothing happens.
“Try it again,” Gabriel says.
Christopher enters the numbers again, pops the portal out and back in again, and waits. Both brothers wait.
Nothing. No sound, no readings.
“This one’s a dud,” Christopher says. “Let’s try a different one.”
A device buzzes in Gabriel’s pocket. He fishes it out. “It’s Daniel.”
“Put him on voice,” Christopher says.
Gabriel flips a switch. “Hey, Daniel, we’ve got a lot of nothing over here. You see anything?”
Daniel’s voice crackles through the tiny speaker. “No, I don’t see anything either. Let me take a look outside.”
The brothers wait.
“Nope, nothing,” Daniel says. “Just, wait—hold on. There’s…”
The line goes dead. “Daniel?” Gabriel says. “You there?”
“Ah, now we need another channel,” Christopher says. “Let me call one up.” He lies backward, reaches up with one hand and adjusts an antenna on a box mounted to the inside wall of the van. Green characters scroll across a horizontal screen and he reads them upside down.
“Okay let’s try this one…Daniel? You there? We lost you.”
No response.
“We’re going backwards,” Gabriel says. “This might be the most boring experiment ever conducted.”
“Well, everything is information,” Christopher says. “So let’s see…I mean…ugh.”
Christopher clutches his head with both hands, but Gabriel is pacing back and forth and doesn’t notice right away. When he turns and sees his brother’s posture, he rushes over and crouches down next to him.
“Chris? You all right?”
“Ah man, it hurts,” Christopher says. He rocks forward and back, legs crossed, arms wrapped around his head.
“Okay, okay,” Gabriel says, jumping up and fumbling around in the back of the van. “We’ve got painkillers here somewhere…let me find some. What works best? Chris?” He tosses bottles and cans around.
Christopher just keeps rocking with his head down and eyes clamped shut. He sees stars, and then flashing lights. The lights swirl, changing color from orange to red to yellow. And then, they come together to form two larger lights. Eyes. Huge, yellow eyes.
Christopher’s eyes snap open. “No! No, no, no! That guy again. I’m seeing the eyes again. Why can’t they leave me alone…”
Gabriel hands Christopher a pair of painkillers and a water canteen, but fears that these may not have much effect. Christopher’s head contains remnants of Tromindox occupation, a rare condition since so few people survive an attack the way he did. Gabriel feels helpless in the face of cellular-level damage.
He puts his hand on Christopher’s shoulder.
Clarence, who has been asleep in the front passenger’s seat of the van, rouses himself and comes to Christopher’s side, shoving a wet nose into his ear in a gesture of sympathy.
Suddenly Christopher looks up. “He’s here, Gabriel.”
“Who?” Gabriel says.
“Monder. He’s here, somewhere,” Christopher says. “It’s not good. I can see him.
Ah, man…” He wraps his arms around his head again and begins rocking again.
Gabriel has reached a point just short of panic. He paces back and forth, but Super Logic Mode isn’t going to make his brother’s head stop blowing up. “Hang in there,” he says. “Just hang in…”
That’s when he sees it.
“Uh, Chris?”
“Yeah,” Christopher says from inside of his arms.
“Maybe the experiment was slightly less boring than we thought. Look.”
On the other side of the van but still atop the butte, an imposing four-story stone building has appeared. It looks like a run-down hospital or maybe a school, massive and rectangular.
Christopher stands. His head is still pounding, but he squints through the pain. “Looks like we brought the rift to us instead of the other way around.”
“Looks like it,” Gabriel says. “You know what, I’ve seen that building before. I don’t know where. Where was it?” He sorts through memories. A place where he lived at some point?
Gabriel runs to the van and digs out a computer monitor. He pulls up a document on historic buildings and starts paging through it at high speed. He scrolls past picture after picture. No, not that one…not that one…
“There it is!” Gabriel says. “This is it.” He tries to run to Christopher to show him but the monitor is still wired to the van; the cord almost yanks him over backward. He hastily unplugs the cord from the computer. “Look!”
“That’s the ancient Silverwood clan seat,” Christopher says. “That doesn’t exist any-more.”
Gabriel’s eyes widen. Christopher is right, that’s exactly what it is. And this building, the one now in front of them, was destroyed a long time ago. He holds the monitor up next to it. It’s the same one.
It is also the location of the trial and conviction of Monder, the place where the Tromindox was banished out of time.
Daniel frantically punches the buttons on the side of his device, but it has gone dead. He can’t reach Gabriel or Christopher anymore. And he has a feeling that he really needs to talk to them. Now.
He’s standing in the ruins of a building of which only the outline of the foundation remains visible. He can see the shapes of rooms and the stone front steps still sit in their original position. The rest is overgrown with grass and weeds.
Brokeneck is nowhere to be seen.
Two pairs of wheels screech around curve after curve, black-and-chrome motorcycles leaning close to the ground to one side and then the other. The centerline of the road snakes under the tires. Anna and Kate shift their body weight to take the tightest turns they can without losing speed. Push down with the outside foot, move shoulders to the side, lean. Repeat. Anna’s red braid flies out underneath her beat-up copper helmet. Kate’s helmet is sleek black, smooth with a simple visor. Thick boots protect their lower legs.
Anna keeps a close eye on the display mounted between her handlebars. There’s a pair of dots at the center, which represent herself and Kate on their bikes, and then red lines running down the left and right sides. As long as they keep their bikes between the red lines, the route remains safe from wayward time breaks or other disturbances that would be disastrous if brought in contact with the concentrated energy of the Shard strapped to Kate’s back.
The terrain consists of a vast, bleak expanse of weedy fields rimmed with beat-up barbed-wire fences. The horizon is rimmed by rolling hills dotted with collections of trees. Not much to look at, but Anna and Kate can’t see much anyway. The scenery is a blur at this speed.
All seems well on the road, until suddenly the display shifts and indicates that they must veer to the right in order to remain on a safe course. Anna slows and pulls to the side of the road to be sure. Kate pulls up next to her.
“Again?” Kate says into the intercom in her helmet.
“Yeah,” Anna replies. “Looks like we’re going off this direction. We’ll need to cut the fence.”
Kate hops off her bike and takes a pair of pliers to the barbed wire, leaving a gap large enough for the bikes. There are no cows or other livestock anywhere in the visible area that would escape by way of this fence anyway.
The two bikers roll through the fence and continue on over rough dirt and rocks for some distance. The off-road portions of their trip pose a unique danger due to the plume of dust that rises behind them, increasing their visibility by a factor of ten. They must not waste too much time on this type of ground.
Soon they can see a collection of buildings in the distance. As they draw closer lights and signs atop posts appear. Looks like a wide spot in the road–the road they are not on, because Winston insists that they travel across this dirt instead. It’s dusk; neon signs flash bright against the dim backdrop of the hills.
There’s no time to stop for a visit. Anna and Kate must cover as much distance as they can.
When they reach the edge of the town, Anna slows. “There are quite a few disturbances around here,” she says. “We might have to get creative.” The lines on her display are flitting back and forth, indicating a convoluted path forward.
“Fine,” Kate says.
They pass through the town without any major problems, other than having to detour behind several buildings and maneuver between trash bins. As they leave, though, their route steers them straight through a barn from one end to the other. Inside, horses’ heads turn to follow them as they go by. They leave behind a cloud of straw bits.
The women must move quickly because of both what lies ahead and what lies behind. They have no time to lose bringing the Shard back, since it represents their best chance to close up Monder’s rift for good and to get Helen and Henry back. And behind them, well, it would seem that there is one of just about every creature and contraption in pursuit. Just as Winston warned, there are many parties interested in getting hands–or tentacles–on the Shard.
Kate and Anna have managed to open up some distance between themselves and most of the ‘toms currently following them. Anna put a dampening field in place, but they have nothing strong enough to obscure the Shard’s presence completely. Any properly motivated creature or machine out there can track them with the right equipment.
Eventually the road straightens out, so Anna and Kate can both increase their speed and prepare their equipment and weapons systems for the next onslaught. Anna flips open a panel beneath her screen and tweaks the dampening field. It may not hide them completely, but it gives them a precious few extra seconds to react.
“More ‘toms, out back,” Kate says into her helmet intercom. The motorcycles’ engines mask the low buzz of the cyborgs, but an unmistakable cloud fills her rear-view monitor.
“Got ‘em,” Anna says. “Locking on now. Keep a steady speed.”
Anna waits until the ‘toms pull within about fifty feet, flying in pursuit above the roadway. She charges up her weapon—a combination explosive and hacking device. What it doesn’t blow apart it will embed with fatal code, a volley of signals sent to scramble the brains of any ‘toms within a reasonable distance – disabling their navigation and sending them crashing to the ground. For good measure, the code also commands the ‘toms to erase their own memories.
“Here we go!” Anna says. She flips the weapon backwards and rests its barrel on her shoulder, checking the digital scope on her dashboard to ensure accuracy. She squeezes the trigger with her thumb. An array of programmed darts blast out and swoop toward the ‘toms like attacking birds.
Kate, riding alongside, checks to be sure that her ammunition is fully charged. Her weapon is smaller and easier to maneuver so she can pick off any ‘toms that Anna misses. Kate must also fire backward in order to keep her eyes on the road.
Anna’s missiles detonate and bits of ‘toms fly off in all directions. A few chunks of metal are propelled forward at high speed, bouncing off of the pavement and forcing the two bikes to swerve. Kate powers up and raises her weapon.
Three of the larger ‘toms remain undeterred, pursuing Kate and A
nna like car-sized insects. The ‘toms come in a variety of shapes, each of them built by blending ex-Tromindox prey with mechanical components and sophisticated programming. One ‘tom trails behind it a long, snakelike tail made up of pieced-together vertebrae and bike chains. The others look to be based on human frames and have had hydraulic and jet components added to their backs and legs. Each ‘tom presents a unique target shape and pattern of movement.
Kate calibrates her weapon by first capturing the shape of each ‘tom in her viewer. One, two, then three – the third one evades her first try, but then she catches it and the scope lights up with a hit. Next Kate sets up for three shots one after the other. She squeezes the trigger and fires, programmed missiles whistling out behind her and searching for their targets. One after the other the ‘toms blow apart; first the snake, then the two humanoids. Kate has carefully calibrated to use a minimum amount of power; she can’t afford to drain her batteries.
Anna straightens in her seat, the air behind them clear for the moment. “We can’t keep this up forever,” she says into her intercom. “I wish we could just jump a portal and get this over with.”
“You’re right; this is taking too long,” Kate says. “And as the Shard gets closer to the fragments, it’s going to send out more and more noise. Pretty soon our trip is going to degenerate into one giant battle. What if we can’t get there before the rift breaks open? What if Helen doesn’t even have the fragment anymore?”
“There’s no way to be sure,” Anna says, “but I imagine if Monder got hold of the fragment we would know about it pretty quick. Once he gets his hands on that, you can bet that the first thing he’s going to do is come looking for Kate Silverwood. And that hasn’t happened. Yet.”
Kate says nothing. She knows that what Anna says is true. Monder blames Kate for his imprisonment. He holds her responsible for the murder of Anna’s mother; or rather, the creature that used to be Anna’s mother, hideously disfigured and absorbed by the Tromindox thought to be Monder’s lifelong partner and mate. Kate remembers the moment Monder was banished, when the Council, in a rare show of solidarity, pooled their resources and threw the Tromindox into a little-understood time rift controlled by a broken portal. On that day, Monder vowed he would take revenge not only on Kate, but on the entire Silverwood clan. That he would find a way to exterminate them the way humans had nearly exterminated the Tromindox.
Silver Shard Page 17