Prologue

by Greg Ahlgren

  Black responded, “B7–B5.”

  It can’t be real, she thought. The whole thing is crazy and just can’t be. Trembling, she slowly typed in, “F3–F7,” and held her breath until the computer flashed, “Congratulations! You have checkmated me in four moves.” Amanda never saw the end of the message. By the time it had flashed she had already wrenched her telephone receiver off the wall and was desperately punching numbers as she mumbled, “Fool’s Checkmate, Good God, no,” under her breath.

  “I said NOW, goddamnit,” Amanda Hutch shouted into the phone as she wove through traffic back toward MIT. “The program was tripped, Lewis, for God’s sake. There’s no way I beat a level seven in four fucking moves! It’s set to default to a kindergarten chess level if any unauthorized user downloads any Intervention files, even if they reset every one of the trips. You tell me if that’s a goddamn emergency or not!”

  “O.K., O.K., Amanda, don’t blow a gasket. But what do you mean by ‘Intervention files?’ What the hell is anything doing stored on your hard drive? I told you, floppy disks only.”

  Amanda heard a female voice ask in an alarming voice, “What’s happening?”

  “Oh for… Lewis, get out of bed and get over here immediately. Clothes optional.”

  “Hang on a sec, willya’?” Lewis said. He covered the phone for a few seconds and then said, “All right, we’ll be right over.”

  “We’ll?’ What the hell do you mean ‘we’ll?” Amanda slammed her phone down when she realized that Lewis had already hung up.

  “Shit!” She said as she swerved around a Chevy wagon pulling out in front of her, and leaned on her horn. “Shit, shit, shit!” DeVere should still be in the area, she prayed, and hopefully she could raise him on his cell, security risk or no. What did that matter now? But there was no way Lewis would have time to get to Lynn to get anything else. The communicators would be lost. Amanda wondered just how valuable they would be. She checked her watch. She should be at the lab in seven minutes. Ginter lived close enough. Amanda figured five minutes to get ready, 15 minutes to travel. Not much time, especially if whoever had downloaded the files was acting fast.

  When the traffic in front of her cleared, she began punching numbers into her cell again.

  At his room at the Copley Igor’s cell phone beeped. He clicked it on. “Yes?”

  “Igor,” Natasha said. “Where are you?”

  “At the Copley. I told you that. Getting lonely?”

  “We’ve got to get to the lab.”

  “What? Look, Natasha, if this is your way of playing coy-”

  “They’re going back in that time machine tonight.”

  “They–don’t be stupid, Comrade.”

  “You tripped some sort of alarm when you downloaded Hutch’s files. They’re on to you. They’re dashing to the lab right now. Let me call Petrovchenko from here and get us some help.”

  “No!” Igor screamed.

  “What? Listen, Igor, they’re about to go and-”

  “We can handle this ourselves.”

  Natasha paused a moment and considered. “Igor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t have authority to hack directly into the MIT line, did you? An IM2 can’t reset trips, can it?”

  When there was no response Natasha continued hurriedly, “It doesn’t matter. It’s my ass too. I let you do it from my apartment. We’ve got to stop them. No matter how.”

  She took a deep breath. “Bring the red backpack. You must have brought it. It may be the only way if they’re too far ahead of us in the building.”

  Natasha counted the seconds until Igor responded. “Excellent thinking, Comrade Nikitin.”

  Natasha breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m on my way.”

  She clicked the phone off. Good thing I’m already dressed, she told herself. One useful thing they’d taught her at the Agency was to keep a bag packed at all times.

  She grabbed the bag, snatched the Subaru’s keys from the table and headed out the door. She heard footsteps rattling on the stairs above her–two sets of footsteps, a man and woman. The man was talking urgently, the woman protesting.

  She raced down the iron stairs and burst into the building’s parking garage. She’d only been living in the building, what, six days? She searched frantically until she saw the gleaming yellow fender against the far wall. As she dashed across the floor she heard the metal door slam behind her and turned to see the two people–Ginter and a woman–rushing to the far corner of the garage. Who was the woman? she wondered as she paused at the Subaru’s door. Natasha watched as Ginter pushed the woman into what appeared to be an antique car of some sort. He seemed to be in a terrible rush to get the woman in and get on his way…to the lab. Of course. They knew. They must all know by now. Hutch would have called them all.

  She whirled and ducked into the Subaru. She thrust her key into the ignition. In the six days she had possessed the car she hadn’t had time to reset the retinal scan starter and so she turned the key hoping, as she always did, that the quaint starting mechanism would work. It did and she relaxed a bit upon hearing the throaty roar. She shot a glance at Ginter’s midnight blue antique with the shiny metallic finish. She smirked as she heard Ginter desperately crank the starter.

  She threw the Subaru into reverse and backed out and around, pointing toward the exit. She was much closer to it and Ginter still hadn’t gotten his car started. She put her car into drive, and then reached down and fastened her lap and shoulder belt. Easing off the brake she marveled as the computer-controlled accelerator eased her effortlessly toward the exit. The gate was up and she barely slowed as she turned left out of the garage and then spun another quick left at the corner and coasted up to Commonwealth Avenue.

  At the light she smiled to herself. She had taken that last corner at 45 km/hour without slowing and the Subaru had barely swayed. It was indeed a nice car.

  When the light turned green she turned right on to Comm Ave., as the locals called it, and purposely chirped the tires. With her ID no District cop would dare give her a ticket. She let the smooth acceleration push her back into the seat. The people in Vodkaville don’t know what they’re missing.

  As she slid the WRX into the passing lane heading east on Storrow Drive, she first noticed it in her left side mirror. It was about a quarter of a mile back and its large rear airfoil was unmistakable. She checked her speedometer: 85 km. She frowned and pressed down on the accelerator. The WRX jumped to 95 without a murmur. She guided her car back into the right lane. At the Deerneck exchange bend, she cruised by a Saab turbo. As she approached the MIT boathouse she checked again. The Roadrunner had closed the gap to less than 300 yards.

  “No way,” she muttered to herself. She eased up on the gas as she overtook a delivery truck, waited for a break in the left lane, and then deftly looped out and back in before taking the Subaru up to over 100. Nearing the BU Bridge turnoff, she again checked the rearview mirror and gasped when she saw the hulking midnight blue Roadrunner barely 100 yards behind.

  “Let’s see how you do in town,” she muttered, and dragged her brakes as she decelerated into the BU traffic circle. She slowed momentarily to gain the circle, and then cruised the 270-degree turn at close to 80. Coming out of the turn she was about to accelerate across the bridge but was delayed by a minivan in the right lane and a rusting pick-up in the left. Halfway across the river she darted hard into the breakdown lane and passed the minivan on the right, cutting back in front of the Jersey barriers that protected a parked utility truck.

  Natasha glanced down at the sailboats out of the Cambridge boathouse that plied the waters beneath her. So tranquil, she thought. Little do they know.

  In the rear view mirror she saw that the Roadrunner had passed the pick-up and was gaining on her still.

  Damn! What is this thing? She couldn’t accelerate beyond the 75 she was now doing as the Charles Street turnoff was approaching quickly. For the first time since she left her apartment, she began to feel
uncertain. How the hell is an antique American piece of shit keeping up with me?

  She kept her speed up as long as she could before slamming on her brakes just before the Charles Street diagonal turnoff and pulling her joystick hard to the right. The computer-controlled brakes tightened harder on the right wheels and the car slid easily into the turn. She came out of the turn in the left lane and again checked her mirror. The Roadrunner was gone. With a momentary panic she checked the passenger side mirror. There was no car in sight. She smiled smugly and let her shoulders relax.

  After a few moments she leaned forward to activate the car’s stereo system. As she touched the power button she heard a deep rumbling gurgle. For a split second she thought that something was wrong with the stereo, or even worse, with the Subaru itself. In a panic she scanned her gauges, but the WRX was humming perfectly. Then, out of the corner of her right eye she saw the midnight blue hood with the gigantic scoop slowly pull alongside her.

  Natasha swore loudly. No way. The Plymouth had been in her blind spot in the turn and was now pulling even. Even as she slammed her right foot to the floor and felt the Subaru’s computer generated downshift kick in she saw the Plymouth visibly jerk as Ginter manually downshifted from fourth to second gear. Hah! Too low! she thought triumphantly of Ginter’s move, but the Superbird’s rear end crouched low and the muscle car inched ahead of her. Then in one wrenching motion she felt, rather than saw, Ginter shift up to third and pop the clutch. There was a squeal of tires, the Plymouth momentarily swerved left with the torque, and then, in a swirl of blue smoke from the screeching rear tires, the Plymouth surged ahead of the Subaru and swung hard in front of it. Ginter downshifted again forcing Natasha to again brake–no time to swerve to the right–and in a moment Ginter was back in third gear, the mammoth hood scoop was sucking in all the air that Cambridge had to offer, and the antique was roaring away from her.

  In a matter of seconds Ginter had slammed on his brakes and skidded into the Astrophysics parking lot by smashing through the wooden gate. Natasha had no choice but to follow him in, clearly in second place. At the granite pillars at the mouth of the main entrance’s walkway the Plymouth jerked to an abrupt stop. Ginter and the woman fled from the car leaving both doors open as they raced across the plaza.

  Natasha was blocked. She skidded up alongside the Roadrunner and watched helplessly. The pair ducked inside the building and pulled the main door shut after them.

  Natasha slammed her hand on the Subaru’s joystick. She knew that once inside Ginter would immediately change the codes. She’d have to wait.

  A yellow cab pulled into the parking lot and slowly circled to where she was parked. When the taxi stopped, Igor Rostov exited from the rear seat and paid the driver, all the while looking over at Natasha curiously.

  “I trust you have some explanation, Comrade,” he began in an officious tone as he approached.

  Natasha’s eyes moved to the pack slung over his right shoulder. “Ginter and some woman are already inside.”

  “Ginter? Some woman? Who is she?” Rostov asked.

  Natasha reached over and shut off the engine. She flung open her door and got out.

  “I don’t know,” she said disgustedly. “Probably some tart he picked up.” She grabbed her bag off the seat and strode toward the building. Rostov followed along behind.

  As she expected her card didn’t work–the door wouldn’t open. She pulled angrily at the latch and swore softly. Behind her she heard, “I can open it!”

  Rostov whipped a card out of his pocket. He waved it in front of the scanner. The doors clicked open and they raced into the lobby.

  “Where’s the lab?” he demanded.

  “Elevators are here, if he hasn’t disabled them…shit,” Natasha said, jabbing her finger at the button with no response. “Stairs are over there.”

  “What floor is it on?”

  “Twenty-first.”

  Rostov groaned, turned, and ran after Natasha.

  “This is too heavy to carry,” he said, shifting the pack.

  “Wimp, you can’t leave it in the goddamn lobby. We may need it. Bring it.”

  Amanda met Paul deVere at the door of the lab. “You made it O.K.?” she asked, smiling wanly.

  “I hope this works,” Paul said, hurrying past her. “That’s all I can say. Where’s Lewis?”

  “He should be here by now,” Amanda answered. “There, that car…oh no. Who’s that woman?”

  Paul looked out the window. “That’s Natasha, the intern. What’s she doing, following him?”

  “Not her. That woman!” Amanda said, pointing at the woman Lewis was running with to the door.

  Paul looked back out. “I can’t believe he brought her. It must be that woman from the Descendants. Today was their meeting.”

  Together they watched as a cab pulled up, a man emerged and began engaging in animated conversation with Natasha.

  “Who’s that guy and what’s he got?” Amanda asked.

  “They can’t get in if Lewis remembered to scramble the codes when he came in,” Paul said. They watched as Natasha rattled the doors in vain, but recoiled when the man opened them.

  “Whoever that guy is, he’s good,” Paul said. “Come on, Lewis.”

  “Can we go back tonight?” Amanda asked anxiously. “Before that guy gets upstairs?”

  Paul didn’t look at her. “We can try. But our wormhole doesn’t open until September first. Lewis will have to find another one.”

  The elevator opened behind them and Ginter and a woman tumbled out.

  “What is this all about?” she whined, but stopped when she saw Amanda and Paul. “Oh,” she said brushing back her tousled bangs with one hand. “Hello.”

  They ignored her. “Lewis, what the hell is this?” Amanda barked.

  Ginter took a moment to compose himself. “This is Pamela. From Portland, Maine.”

  “Lewis.”

  Ginter ignored her. “What the hell is going on? And why was Nikitin racing me here?”

  “They’re on to us,” Amanda panted. “We’ve got to go back tonight.”

  Ginter turned to deVere. “What happened?”

  Paul deVere appeared not to hear. Instead, he stared nervously down the hallway.

  “I changed the front door code and disabled the elevators,” Ginter said, following deVere’s gaze. “They’ll have to walk up 20 flights. Now, what the hell is she talking about?”

  “Apparently it’s so. Amanda says that they hacked into her computer and know we’re going back. We’ve got to go back now.”

  “Go back now?” Ginter was incredulous. “Are you crazy? What about all the tests you want done?”

  DeVere cut him off. “There’s no time. I’ve opened up the search mode at your terminal and turned on the Accelechron. I know we don’t have the original wormhole but we’ve got to find the closest one and just go. If we stay here we’re cooked.”

  DeVere pointed to the terminal in the lab.

  Ginter walked over to it. “You’re all crazy. It took hours to find the wormhole to 1962. We don’t have hours.”

  “You were being careful not to get caught. We don’t have time for caution now. We’ve got to just go. Do it.”

  Lewis Ginter sat at his terminal and began entering data. Paul deVere leaned over his shoulder.

  “Where to?” Ginter asked no one in particular. Amanda stood with her eyes riveted on the front door of the lab. Pamela Rhodes appeared dazed as she wandered around the room, apparently unable to comprehend what was happening.

  “A park,” deVere said. “You said a park was a safe place to arrive in. A nice city park. And let’s get anywhere in the old U.S. in 1962. Try to find someplace one of us will recognize.”

  “A park it is,” Ginter answered without looking up as he kept typing.

  Natasha let Rostov lead the way up the stairs. She reached into the side compartment of her shoulder bag and brought out a .38 snub nosed revolver. With practiced hands she opened the
barrel and checked the cylinder. She reached into the zippered compartment in her purse and pulled out cartridges. She slid them into the open cylinder and snapped the revolver shut.

  “Give it to me,” Rostov panted, holding out his hand.

  Natasha hesitated only a moment before handing over the revolver. Rostov slipped it into his belt.

  At floor ten Rostov started to tire. “Should’ve kept up with the physical fitness recommendations,” he said, pausing to bend over and grab his knees.