Tyler sat in another chair, no longer in wolf form. He’d changed into one of his myriad Hawaiian shirts. Oliver had wondered in the past how many of those shirts Tyler owned. Every time he “wolfed out” whatever clothes he was wearing at the time were torn apart. He suspected Tyler shopped in bulk.
Tyler perked up when he saw Oliver awake. “How are you feeling, buddy?”
Oliver had a splitting headache. “Like I got blackout drunk last night.”
“Yeah. I get that.” He took a sip from one of Artemis’s teacups. “It wasn’t pleasant for me, either, but you had it worse. You had longer to catch up on.”
“Catch up?”
“To the right time.”
Oliver shook his head. He’d been offered LSD once in college and turned it down. If the effects had been anything like this, he was glad he had.
Artemis entered the room carrying a tray with a bowl of steaming hot soup on top. Jeffrey followed her closely, watching the tray with barely-disguised intent. She put the tray down on the table next to Oliver while Jeffrey hopped up onto his lap. “You should eat, Mr. Jones.”
“I’m not really hungry. I think I might be sick, actually.”
“I can imagine you don’t feel like eating, but you need your energy.”
“I’ll help you eat it,” Jeffrey said. “It has chicken and shrimp.”
Artemis took a third chair and studied Oliver’s face. “Tell me. What do you remember?”
That was a question Oliver had been struggling with for the past few moments. “I remember another life.”
Artemis nodded. “Let me be more specific. What is the very last thing you remember?”
“We were in the office. I had a hangover. There was a…timequake, you said. That’s what you called it.”
“Very good. And what happened then?”
Oliver looked around. “I woke up here. In this chair. But…I have other memories. There was a cyborg invasion. They took me prisoner and ran tests on me. Maria showed up and broke me out.” He looked at Artemis. “Did I just imagine all of that?”
“No, not at all. That happened.”
“But I also remember it not happening. I met you six months ago. There were no cyborgs. Not until that one in the parking garage who wanted to kill Sally.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Sally?”
Tyler grimaced. “If she is still alive, she’s back on her world,” Artemis said. “While her deception of you was, in some respects, quite clever, her plan on the whole was remarkably stupid.”
“Her plan?”
“She tried to change the past,” Tyler said.
“Changing the past is bad news!” Jeffrey intoned dramatically. “It is the one thing you must never do!” Oliver stared at the cat in surprise. “I’ve been cooped up in here for weeks,” Jeffrey said. “I learned all about this stuff.”
“Weeks?” Oliver asked.
“It is a bit of a long story, Mr. Jones,” Artemis said. “In some respects, I am a bit like this house. Time does not affect me in that same way it affects other things. However, I do know when time is wrong. I recognized the timeline fracture when the cyborgs crossed over and I activated our contingency plan, which was for all team members to come to this house in order that they would be restored to their correct timelines.”
“Okay…”
“Being a fixed point in time, the house is unconcerned with what goes on outside. It only cares about its own timeline, which happens to be the same as ours. When you came inside, your memories of the correct timeline were restored, even though that timeline does not currently exist.”
“Are you saying the house is conscious?” Oliver asked.
“Not in any sense you would understand consciousness,” Artemis said.
“Are you confused yet?” Tyler asked.
“Yes,” Oliver said.
“Try to keep up, boss,” Jeffrey said.
“You’re the expert now?” Oliver asked the cat.
“Compared to you I’m the Doctor.”
Oliver was beginning to rethink Jeffrey’s television privileges. Letting an intelligent cat watch Doctor Who might not be the best idea. He might start getting dangerous ideas. He looked back at Artemis. “So what’s going on outside? Are the cyborgs gone?”
“No. At this very moment they are attempting to locate you and Mr. Jacobsen. They should lack the capacity to discern the existence of this house, however.”
“But what if they do…discern the existence of this house?”
Artemis shrugged. “I truly do not know. In the house’s timeline they never existed on this planet, so they might simply cease to exist if they cross into it. Or the entire universe might explode. I am fairly certain it would be one or the other.”
“Oh,” Oliver said. “Of course.” He looked around. “Where’s Seven?”
“Dead,” Tyler said. “They got him when Santa Fe fell. The rest of us barely made it out of there.”
“But I thought you came straight here…”
“We were not in San Francisco at the time of the invasion,” Artemis said. “Getting here took a great deal of time and work, and was not without significant losses.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Seven hadn’t been the cuddliest person Oliver had ever met, but he’d liked the man. The others had worked with him for far longer, of course.
“It is no matter,” Artemis said. “He will be restored when we correct the timeline. Everything will go back to the way it was.”
“And the others come back, too,” Tyler said. “Maria. God, we really could have used her.”
“So you brought her here?” Oliver asked. “She knew who I was, so obviously you did. How did you recruit her?”
“She was on a one woman, or I guess one vampire mission to destroy the cyborgs after they killed John Blackwell and the others,” Tyler said.
“They got the vampires,” Oliver said quietly.
“Oh, yeah. They went down fighting, though. Blackwell’s group took an entire battalion of cyborgs with them but in the end they were just too outnumbered. Maria got away and was still out there ripping heads off every night. We brought her here and she got her memories of the world where Blackwell didn’t die. She said she’d do anything for us if it meant fixing the timeline and getting her master back.”
“And I was there, too,” Jeffrey said.
“You were with the vampires?” Oliver asked, surprised.
“No,” Jeffrey said. “I was a few blocks away hunting for mice. Those damn robot people never throw anything away, so leftover food got pretty scarce. That dog,” he nodded at Tyler, “scooped me up and brought me in here. I don’t mind telling you I was pretty freaked out when I found out there were human dogs.”
“He scratched the shit out of me,” Tyler said.
“But then once I got inside here, I got my memories back and I could talk and think again. It was pretty great.”
Oliver scratched the cat behind the ears. “Good job,” he said. Jeffrey purred.
“Good job?” Tyler asked. “I’m the one who found him. And he never apologized for scratching me.”
“Did someone say something?” Jeffrey asked. “I can’t hear it when dogs talk.”
“So what was Sally’s plan?” Oliver asked Artemis. “I know she felt pretty bad about what she did to the cyborgs after the war. So…she went back in time and didn’t kill them?”
“That would have been problematic enough,” Artemis said. “It appears that she took the time machine back to a point before the mirror here had been destroyed, so that she was able to return home. But from Seven’s analysis of the cyborgs we managed to capture before his death, we know that not only were the cyborgs not destroyed by the nanobot virus, but that the cure was never deployed, either. This leads me to believe Sally removed her sister from the research facility where she had been working on it.”
“The facility where she died,” Oliver said.
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “With no cure, the cyborgs won.
They probably took over the whole planet.”
“And found the mirror there?” Oliver asked.
“We believe the mirror on their world was destroyed,” Artemis said. “At some point before the invasion here we found we could no longer use ours to travel and assumed they’d lost the war. Besides, if the cyborgs had used it to get here, they would have been contained in Vault 3. However, if they analyzed the remains of their world’s mirror, they may have incorporated some aspects of it into their developing teleportation technology.”
“Which explains why they can move world-to-world but not place-to-place,” Jeffrey said. “See? I really have been paying attention.”
Oliver nodded. “It makes sense. Well, as much sense as any of this makes. They got close to us, like the cyborg that attacked Sally in the garage.”
“Indeed,” Jeffrey said. Oliver blinked at him in surprise. “That was my Artemis impression,” the cat whispered loudly.
“If you’re done?” Artemis asked.
“He’s done,” Oliver said. “So how do we fix any of this?”
“There is only one possibility,” Artemis said, “as much as I detest it. We must stop Sally from changing the past. Once the timeline is set right in her world, ours will revert to normal.”
“And how we do that?”
“It’s kinda complicated,” Tyler said.
Oliver resisted the urge to laugh. “More complicated than any of this?”
Artemis nodded. “We must go back in time, Mr. Jones. If we are to save our world, it is the only option open to us.”
“We have to get back to Vault 3,” Tyler said.
“You guys are screwed,” Jeffrey said.
Chapter 15
Oliver had an idea where this conversation was going. “You want to go get the time machine,” he said. “We’re going after Sally?” Artemis nodded. “Why do you even think it’s still there?”
“The time machine itself does not move,” Artemis said. “It has no form of propulsion. It will be exactly where Sally left it.”
“Then it’s still in Santa Clara. Okay. You do realize that’s an hour away from here by freeway? And that’s on a good day.”
“I do recall the location of the vault, Mr. Jones.”
“It’s impossible,” Oliver said. “We barely made it here from Geary Street, and that’s only about 30 blocks or so. How are we going to get to Santa Clara? How did you even get here from…wherever you were.”
“We had help,” Tyler said. “The San Diego Resistance fighters are some serious badasses.”
“So they’re around here somewhere waiting for us?”
“No,” Artemis said. “While I was able to convince Commander James to smuggle us into the city, it was with the caveat that it was a one-way trip.”
“Then how?” Oliver asked.
“Perhaps I will perform one of my many miracles, Mr. Jones.”
“I don’t think sleight of hand is going to help us this time.”
“We have a plan,” Tyler said. “Check this out.” He left his chair and went upstairs. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to return immediately, Oliver took the time to eat some of the soup Artemis had brought for him. Jeffrey stared at the bowl longingly until Oliver bit a piece of shrimp in half and offered him some. Jeffrey downed it with much gusto.
“This really is good,” Oliver said to Artemis.
“Inform Mr. Jacobsen of your approval,” she said. “It is another of his family recipes. There are also muffins in the kitchen for you to enjoy.” Oliver nodded. He’d get to those in a minute. Tyler also happened to be an excellent baker.
After about ten minutes Tyler came back down the stairs, now dressed in a black bodysuit covered with cyborg armor plating. He turned around once so Oliver could get a good look. The suit was remarkably convincing, although Tyler lacked the glowing blue eye all cyborgs had. Oliver pointed that out and Tyler shrugged. “It’s not perfect, but from a distance it’ll fool them. I’ve made a couple trips out wearing it without anyone looking twice.”
“You see?” Artemis asked. “Dressed in this manner, you should have no problems finding a vehicle. With it, we will make the trip to the vault.”
Oliver thought it over. “I haven’t seen any cyborgs your size,” he said to Artemis.
“There are none,” she said. “They do not convert children, as they find the physical growth that is typical in younger humans incompatible with the process. Rather, children are held in guarded facilities until they are fully grown. Once they determine that physical maturation is complete, the conversion process is initiated.”
Oliver had trouble believing what he was hearing. “Are you saying they have kids in concentration camps?”
“I might have not chosen that terminology, but you are not incorrect.” She sipped her tea. “You are thinking of liberating them, of course. Tyler felt the same way. Put that thought from your mind. We have no more use for children than the cyborgs do.”
Oliver’s mouth dropped open. “Did you really just say that?” he asked. “That’s…that’s inhuman.”
Artemis stared at him. “And what exactly do you think I am, Mr. Jones?”
“I don’t know. You won’t tell me.”
“Not today. Perhaps I will tomorrow. One never knows. Calm yourself, Mr. Jones. Understand that when we fix the timeline, those camps will never have existed.”
“I didn’t like it either, Oliver, but it makes sense,” Tyler said. “The only way to save everyone is by keeping this whole thing from happening in the first place.”
Oliver went to the front window and looked outside. Two cyborgs stood in the street less than a dozen feet away, staring directly at him. Oliver jerked, but the cyborgs had no reaction to his presence. After a moment they turned away and began marching down Filbert Street in the direction Oliver had come from.
“They really can’t see us in here,” Oliver said.
“Nope,” Jeffrey said, coming up behind him. “Sometimes I get up there and put my butt on the glass. ‘Look at my butt, you jerks!’ I say.” Oliver gave him a skeptical look. “What else am I going to do?” the cat asked. “I’m stuck in here all day. I get bored.”
“If we may return to the subject, we will not need a suit for me,” Artemis said. “You and Tyler will obtain and operate the vehicle. I can stay hidden inside until we reach Santa Clara. Once at the vault, it will be irrelevant whether they become aware of our presence. When we are below ground, I will destroy the access point, if need be. Even if any cyborgs should manage to make it inside, the security system there will be more than they can easily deal with. It is quite efficient.”
“If you destroy the elevator we’ll be trapped down there,” Oliver said.
“If we fail in our mission, it will not matter much whether we are trapped or not.”
Oliver found that difficult to argue with. “I suppose you have another one of those suits for me?”
“Upstairs,” Tyler said. “Well, we’ll have to put one together, I mean. We have a lot of parts lying around.” He frowned. “You know, it seems like there should have been a more delicate way to say that.”
“You have parts?” Oliver asked.
“Maria amused herself by hunting at night,” Artemis said. “She did need to eat, after all, although she killed rather more of them than she required for sustenance, and the killings were quite…I suppose the word I am looking for is dramatic.”
“She was pretty pissed off,” Tyler said. “She took John Blackwell’s death really hard.”
“I heard her crying sometimes,” Jeffrey said. “She was sad a lot. I let her pet me, even though she was a dark fiend of the night.”
Oliver reached down to scratch the cat. “That was very nice of you.”
“I know. Her hands were cold.”
“In any case, Maria brought us a variety of pieces we will be able to use to provide you with a suitable disguise,” Artemis said.
“You know how sometimes I bring you a
dead mouse and you get all cranky?” Jeffrey asked. “Some people like when you bring them presents.”
“It’s not quite the same thing,” Oliver said.
“I don’t see how it’s not,” the cat noted. “You could wear the mouse as a little hat, if you wanted to. I don’t judge.”
“We have their weapons, too,” Tyler said. “As long as we don’t get too close to anyone, we’ll be able to pass as a patrol.”
Oliver sighed. “Okay. So when are we going to do this?”
“Tomorrow,” Artemis said. “Things will have quieted down outside by then, once the cyborgs have directed their search for you and Mr. Jacobsen elsewhere. Tonight you should eat and get some rest. Things are about to become rather more complicated for us.”
“That may be the understatement of the century,” Oliver said.
“Not at all, Mr. Jones. I believe the understatement of the century was…” she trailed off. “Never mind. It hardly seems relevant right now. Finish your soup, Mr. Jones.”
“Did she tell you I made muffins?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ll go grab one…”
“Soup first, Mr. Jones,” Artemis said sternly.
Oliver ate his soup.
Chapter 16
The next morning dawned foggy and cold. Oliver stood at the living room window as he sipped his morning tea. No cyborgs passed by outside, and he couldn’t see anything overhead to indicate the area was still being searched. If the cyborgs were still looking for a werewolf carrying a man in a hospital gown, they were doing it somewhere else. It increased their odds of success, Oliver thought, if only by a little bit. At this point, though, he was willing to take what he could get.
When breakfast was finished Oliver and Tyler dressed up as cyborgs. Tyler had his own suit ready, and Oliver had a wide assortment of pieces to choose from; the room Maria had been sleeping in looked like an abattoir. Jeffrey watched them closely. “You guys look ridiculous,” he said.
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