by S. D. Stuart
“Rather than tell you, how about I show you.”
He nodded and the two men dragged her over to a small padded platform about the size of a table. They forced her onto the table and tied her down with leather straps.
She struggled to free herself from the leather straps. But they only grew tighter each time she moved.
Captain Myers stood next to the table and looked down at her.
“You would not believe the years of planning I had to do. All the people I had to pay off, bribe, or threaten so they would help me. Everything I put together, for the single purpose of kidnapping the East Marshal. And then you literally, land in my own backyard.”
She struggled against the leather straps making them even tighter. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m not going to do anything to you, Dorothy Gale.”
Her eyes grew wide in surprise.
Captain Myers chuckled. “Oh yes, I know exactly who you are. And I must say, you are your father’s daughter.”
She stopped struggling and stared at him in disbelief. “You know my father?”
He motioned to the equipment around them. “Who do you think built all of this?”
“I want to see my father now!”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry but he was stolen from me.”
“Stolen?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have time for your questions now. After we’re done, I promise to tell you whatever you want to know.”
Someone from behind Dorothy clamped a wooden box around her head and latched it shut. With only her head inside the box, her own scream made her ears ring. A rubber hose poked through a hole in the front of the box and brushed against her lips.
Captain Myers voice came to her muffled through the walls of the box. “I suggest you breathe through this for the duration. Please do not move during the procedure. I wouldn’t want to have to do this again.”
She started to say something in response but then she felt a warm liquid rise up from the back of her head and fill the box. Within seconds, she realized, it would cover her mouth and she would drown in whatever they were pouring into the box. She gripped the rubber tube in her mouth and breathed through it frantically as the warm liquid rose up to cover her face. She closed her eyes just as the liquid enveloped her entire head.
She was unable to gauge how long she had been laying there before someone loosened the leather straps and sat her up. Her head lolled to one side from the weight of the box before someone straightened it and unlatched it.
She felt the box being removed, but something still covered her head that kept her from opening your eyes.
A muted voice sounded like it was being spoken from the distance. “Hold still while we cut this off.”
She took a big breath and blinked the way the brightness as they peeled something off her face and removed the breathing tube from her mouth.
She looked around her, slightly disoriented. “What did you do to me?”
Captain Myers held up the plaster casting and inspected it for a moment before looking at her with a smile. “Thank you for not moving while it hardened.”
She looked at the plaster casting. It contained the perfect reverse image of her own face. “What are you going to do with that?”
He smiled. “Something amazing.”
He motioned to the two big men on either side of her. “Take her to the transfer.”
They grabbed her but she dug her heels in the floor and looked at Captain Myers. “You promised to answer my questions.”
He smiled. “And I will.”
His smile faded. “When we’re finished.”
The two men wrestled her over to another chair and sat her down again. They took great pleasure in making the straps a little too tight.
Captain Myers placed a leather strap around her head. Copper wires snaked from the strap on her head to a machine that took up half of the wall on one side of the barn. One of the men forced her mouth open while the other shoved a wooden dowel into it like the bit on a horse and strapped it in place around her head. “Only a precaution mind you. Wouldn’t want you biting your tongue off. I’ve found that the body usually spasms when hit with this much voltage.”
Tears formed in her eyes. The only thing she could think about was that Nero would somehow save her. He had asked her to put her trust in him. He sounded so sincere and she doubted it the minute he said it, but it was the only hope she could cling to as she waited for this lunatic to electrocute her to death.
Captain Myers walked over to a large switch and placed his hand on the handle. “This might sting a little.”
He pulled down on the handle and it felt like every cell in her body was suddenly on fire. The sensation only last for a second because, after that second, she blacked out.
Dorothy coughed in spasms causing dust to lift up from the ground that she was laying face down on. She tried to move, but her body refused to comply. She coughed a couple more times and finally felt the sharp rocks and scratchy straw resolve out of the general tingly sensation that she had felt over her entire body when she first woke up. She wiggled her fingers and, satisfied that she had regained control over her body, placed her hands on the ground and pushed herself up to seated position.
A slight wave of dizziness came over her and she looked down at her body; only to see that while she was unconscious another group of men had seen fit to remove her clothes and dress her in a tight-fitting leather catsuit that left only her neck, head and hands exposed.
This was getting ridiculous. What made everyone in OZ think that, while you were asleep, you needed a complete wardrobe makeover?
She looked around her and saw that she was back in her steel cage. Only this time she was not inside the barn, but outside in a fenced off section of a field. All along the fence, men leaned against it hooting and hollering.
A voice from behind her broke through the loud catcalls of the gathering crowd. “How do you feel?”
She twisted around and saw Captain Myers staring down at her.
“You try to drown me in plaster and then electrocute me. How am I supposed to feel?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Good enough to fight.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pointed over her shoulder. “In the cage across the field is your duplicate. She looks like you, talks like you and even behaves like you. As far as everyone else is concerned, she is you. The only difference between you and her is, she will be under my control.”
His smile was not warm. “And when she kills you, she will be the East Marshal. That is unless you think you can defeat somebody that is faster, stronger and, dare I say it, better than you.
Dorothy stood up and glared at him. “I will not play your game.”
He motioned behind her with a wave of his hand.
“Your Marshal star is on a little podium in the middle of the field. The first one who gets it and returns to her cage becomes the Marshal.”
From somewhere a loud horn sounded and the door to her cage swung open. She looked across the field and saw her intended replacement already running for the podium.
She took off in a flash and forced herself to run as fast as her aching muscles would allow. They were still a bit unresponsive from the electrocution she had endured, but her father’s words drifted in from a distant memory, from a time long before she landed in OZ.
Mind over body.
She surged forward and reached the podium half a second after her doppelgänger snatched up the marshal star and started running back toward her cage.
Dorothy launched herself in the air and tackled the automaton that looked exactly like her.
The star flew into the tall grass as they collapsed to the ground in a heap.
They both sprung to their feet and faced each other.
And froze.
Dorothy studied the automaton. It was like looking in a mirror, only her reflection was backward.
The automaton spun aroun
d to kick her, but Dorothy had anticipated this exact move. She was thinking of using it herself.
She countered by grabbing the leg and throwing her opponent off balance and down to the ground. The automaton obviously expected that counter-move and rolled with the momentum back on to her feet.
They both attacked and counter-attacked in a flurry of punches and kicks, neither really landing anything substantial on the other. It was clear they would be unable to surprise each other since they appeared to be the exact same person on the inside.
But how could this be?
She remembered Captain Myers had mentioned her father built all the equipment in the barn. Had he been successful in transferring the human consciousness to an automaton?
Even if he had, why had he done it for the psychotic Captain Myers?
She and her doppelgänger circled each other in the middle of the field, both staring at the other. The automaton moved exactly as she moved. The same mannerisms, the same facial expressions. The couple of times she had come in contact with the automaton’s face or hands she noticed the skin was warm and soft. Just like the Alice automaton back at Nero’s casino.
They were so much alike she barely had to think when she deflected the attacks from the automaton.
They could do this all day.
Unfortunately, they both couldn’t do this all day. She would get tired long before the automaton. She had to do something different. Something she wouldn’t think of doing normally. And she had to do it quickly.
While she was trying to think of something, anything, the automaton suddenly changed tactics and ran away from her. In the briefest of moments, she realized it was going for the marshal star.
She dashed after it and tackled it to the ground by its feet.
They wrestled around in the dirt until Dorothy caught a break and got an arm under the head of the automaton. The voice of Mr. Bart echoed in her head. Subject the joints to strains that they are anatomically and mechanically unable to resist.
She pulled back as hard as she could, the automaton choking and writhing under her killing force.
It was unnerving how human-like the automatons in OZ had become. They could even be killed like humans.
A gunshot echoed over the valley and Dorothy looked up to see Nero holding a revolver in the air. Smoke curled from the tip of the barrel.
“That’ll be enough Dorothy.”
She released the automaton, which gasped and choked just like a real human. She looked around and saw that Nero’s men had rounded up all the farmers and held them together at gunpoint.
Nero holstered his revolver and bent down to pick something up out of the tall grass.
He inspected the star for moment and then looked up at Dorothy. He studied her face and then looked at the automaton and back again to her.
He turned to face Captain Myers. “Which one’s which?”
Captain Myers smiled. “You tell me?”
Nero studied them. “Standup. Both of you.”
Dorothy stood up slowly, every muscle screaming in agony from the battle she had almost won. She watched as the automaton slowly got to its feet, trying to act as human as possible.
Nero circled them a couple of times, poking and prodding at their faces and inspecting their hands.
“Excellent artisanship, Captain Myers. I am impressed with what you have achieved in so short a time. I can barely tell them apart.”
He circled around behind them and looked between them at Captain Myers. “But what about up here?” he said as he poked at the automaton’s head. The automaton jerked its head away in reflex just like a human would.
Captain Myers smiled. “Go ahead. Ask them anything.”
He circled back around and faced the both of them.
“What is your name?”
The automaton was a split-second quicker in responding as they both answered simultaneously. “Dorothy Gale.”
Nero looked seriously from one to the other before locking his eyes on Dorothy. “What was your father’s name?”
This time, neither of them let him finish the sentence before they both answered simultaneously, “Benjamin Gale.”
Dorothy shot a hard look at the automaton standing next to her. They had managed to copy her memories and personality into the robot. She had to do something else to prove that she was the real Dorothy.
Nero looked over at Captain Myers who was grinning from ear to ear. “This is proving more difficult than I would’ve expected. You’ve eliminated the delay for the processing of information.”
He looked back at Dorothy as he asked the next question. It was obvious he had already decided who the real Dorothy was.
“What was the last thing I said to you?”
This time, she was a split-second quicker than the automaton. “You told me to trust you.”
The other Dorothy responded. “Actually, you winked at me and told me to remember what you said.”
He turned to Captain Myers. “Looks like we’ve got a discrepancy.”
Captain Myers was no longer smiling. “It’s minor. Do you remember the last thing you said to her?”
Nero looked back to the two Dorothys. “Can’t say that I do.”
“There you go then, Nero. Still a near-perfect copy.”
“Let’s try a question that’s a little less ordinary.”
Dorothy swallowed hard and knew that she needed to do something other than answer questions to prove who she was. She glanced down and saw a sharp rock in the dirt in front of her. She bent down, snatched it up in a fluid motion, and held it up for everyone to see. “I can prove who I am right now.”
She rolled up the sleeve on her catsuit and scratched the rock across her arm, cutting through skin and drawing blood.
Her adrenaline was running so high; she barely even felt the self-inflicted wound.
She held up her arm for everyone to see but maintained her focus on Captain Myers. “I’d like to see your automaton do that!”
Nero drew his revolver so quickly, she barely even registered his hand had moved when the bullet caught her in the shoulder and spun her down to the ground.
Hot searing pain tore through her body as she gripped her bleeding shoulder.
Nero walked over and looked down at her with a frown. He pointed the revolver at her head and pulled back on the cocking lever.
“I thought I told you to trust me Dorothy.”
She barely felt the bullet enter through her eye socket before everything became nothing.
Chapter 17
Dorothy stared down at the hole in the head of the other Dorothy. Copper wires protruded out the gaping gunshot wound Nero had inflicted on the automaton.
What had made him decide the other one wasn’t the real Dorothy? That little trick with the rock even had her doubting her own self. Right before Nero shot her, Dorothy was starting to believe that maybe she was the automaton and, because of the memory transfer, only thought she was the real Dorothy.
She looked at Nero who winked at her. “Remember what I said.”
“How did you know she was the automaton?”
Nero laughed. “I didn’t.”
He started to turn away but Dorothy grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “You mean to tell me you decided to shoot first and ask questions later?”
He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “I had a 50-50 chance of getting it right.”
“You had a 50-50 chance of getting it wrong!”
He held out the East Marshal star to her. “You still want to see the Wizard?”
Dorothy took the star and searched his face for anything that might tell her she was about to be betrayed again.
“I thought you said you couldn’t help me directly.”
He hooked a thumb toward the rounded up farmers. “I couldn’t let these yokels kill you off before you met with the Wizard now, could I?”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because Caleb asked me to and any debt he owes is a debt I o
we.”
She couldn’t believe how people in OZ switched from savagery to nobility in the blink of an eye.
Thinking about savagery reminded her how he had treated her the last time. “You told me to trust you but it really looked like you were trying to kill me back in your coliseum.”
He smiled a warm smile at her. “Caleb and I had that situation well in hand. Why do you think the control box on your Woodsman was so easy to destroy? Besides, I have the image of a ruthless tyrant to uphold.”
“So that whole thing about Caleb disappointing you and sentencing him to die with me was all an act?”
“My mother always wanted me to go into theater. But it would have interfered with my plans to rule the world.”
He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Now let’s see about getting you and the Wizard in the same room together.”
Nero and Dorothy stood in front of the Flying Monkey Tavern. Nearly all of the paint on the sign had peeled away from years of neglect. The last few bits of faded color were cracked and curled around the edges.
It didn’t look like much, but Nero insisted that this was the place they had to go if she wanted to meet the Wizard.
It had taken several hours for Nero and his men to sneak her and her group into Center City unnoticed. During that time, she tried to think about nothing. But there was too much to think about.
A few times Jasper tried to strike up a conversation with her but she waved him away. She was relieved when Nero took her to meet his contact and left the rest of her group with his men in an inn on the outskirts of Center City. It meant she no longer had to respond to questions she did not know the answers to.
Besides, she had plenty of questions of her own.
“Are you sure that someone here can get me in to see the Wizard?”
He looked at Dorothy. “You let me do all the talking in there. And make sure to keep that star hidden. The marshals are not very welcome in Center City.”
Dorothy gripped her cloak tighter with one hand.
After everyone seemed to be trying to prevent her from meeting the Wizard, someone was finally helping her.