Roman lifted a hand, stopping her. “I don’t actually care about your relationship status. In order to get past these men, we’ll need to get to the control room and override the complex’s central security system.” He pressed a button on his device and a new image appeared: one soldier, standing at attention in an otherwise empty hallway. “With just a few lines of code, I can send this place into chaos. No lights. No locks. No cameras. I believe there’s some sort of horrible buzzing sound, too.” He lifted his gun, drawing circles in the air with the muzzle. “In any case, everyone will be running around, terrified. It’ll be glorious.”
“Glorious,” Dorothy repeated, staring at the soldier. She touched the screen with one finger, her eyes flicking up to Roman’s. “And how do you propose we get past him?”
Roman’s smile was chilling. “That’s where you come in.”
A half an hour later, they were crouched at the end of a hallway, peering down at the flickering security image on Roman’s device. The soldier in front of the control room appeared not to have moved.
“You understand the plan?” Roman asked.
Dorothy nodded. It was fairly simple, as far as cons go. She was still dressed in fatigues, so she was to walk up to the soldier on duty and inform him that she was there to relieve him of his post. Roman had even found a code word for her to use. Dorothy didn’t know the slightest thing about army culture, but Roman seemed to think that saying the word phoenix would convince the soldier on duty that her orders had come from . . .
Well. Whoever was in charge.
“All right then.” Roman jerked his chin toward the hallway. “You’re up.”
Dorothy stood. She didn’t like this plan. It hinged on her ability to accurately impersonate a soldier, which seemed a rather large thing to expect of someone who’d never even met a soldier before today.
But she hadn’t been able to come up with something better, and Roman seemed to think the code word was all they needed.
She hoped he was right.
She stepped around the corner, forcing a smile onto her lips as if she wasn’t nervous. The soldier’s eyes passed over her face without seeming to see it. In an instant, his gun was off his shoulder and angled across his chest like a warning. “Do you have clearance to be down here?”
Dorothy felt her smile falter. Was she supposed to say the code word now? Or would that look suspicious?
“I’m, um, here to relieve you of your post,” she said. And then, remembering what the soldier in the gateroom called her, she added, “Private.”
She took another step toward the soldier, and he tightened his grip on the gun. “This is a classified area. I’m going to need you to return the way you came.”
Dorothy could feel Roman behind her, watching her fail. She wetted her lips. “Phoenix,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
The soldier didn’t even blink. “You’re going to need to go back the way you came.”
Dorothy’s heart started beating too fast. He didn’t seem at all inclined to let her through. She took another step forward, and the soldier whipped the gun into his hands, pointing it directly at her.
She lifted both hands in front of her chest, horrified. Her heart was vibrating, and she couldn’t manage to catch her breath.
“Ph-phoenix,” she said again, louder. “Phoenix.”
A black hole appeared in the soldier’s forehead. Dorothy didn’t register the sound of a gunshot until a fraction of a second later, when the soldier’s expression went blank. He dropped to his knees and then lurched forward. Dead.
Fear crept over Dorothy in a cold fog. For a moment it obscured all other emotion so that her actions felt strangely disjointed, like she was performing in a play. She threw both hands over her mouth and staggered backward, gasping.
She replayed the moment the black hole appeared. The hollow expression that’d leaped to the soldier’s eyes. The smack of his knees hitting concrete.
Oh God oh God oh God . . .
A thick pool of blood oozed out from beneath the soldier’s head.
Roman lowered a hand to her shoulder, and Dorothy flinched, moving quickly away from him.
“You killed him,” she said. She could taste something sour rising in her throat. “Why did you kill him?”
“We need to get through the door.”
“But I had him.” Even as the words left her mouth, Dorothy knew they weren’t true. Her silly con wasn’t working. The soldier would have killed her if Roman hadn’t shot him first. She shook her head, not wanting to believe it. “I was working on him. I . . . I’d just said the code word!”
Roman knelt beside the soldier, lowering a hand to his neck to check for a pulse. Dorothy had the sudden, ridiculous urge to laugh. The bullet went through the man’s forehead. How could he possibly be alive?
“There was no code word. I made that up,” Roman said, wiping his hand on his coat. “This is the military. Their policy is to shoot first and ask questions later. There’s no such thing as a magical code word that will get you through a locked and guarded door.”
Dorothy opened her mouth and then closed it again as understanding settled over her. “This was your plan all along.”
She didn’t bother making it sound like a question. She already knew the answer. Roman looked up at her, something crafty in his eyes.
“You were meant to distract him long enough for me to get into position and take the shot. Without you here, he would’ve spotted me long before I took aim. You should be proud.”
Proud.
Dorothy had always known she wasn’t particularly moral. A person couldn’t make her living lying and cheating and still believe herself to be the hero of the story. But Dorothy had never actually thought of herself as a villain before. Not until just now.
She stared at the dead soldier as a nasty shiver went up her neck. She’d never known someone who’d killed another person before. Her mother carried a tiny, pearl-handled pistol in her purse but, to Dorothy’s knowledge, she’d never actually used it.
She felt like she’d crossed a line. Like something had changed and there was no changing it back again.
She tried very hard to ignore that feeling as she followed Roman around the body and into the control room.
They were greeted by a dizzying array of tangled wires, buttons, and cords. One entire wall was made up of screens much like the ones on Roman’s device, all flashing black-and-white images of narrow halls and closed doors. A table curved beneath the wall of screens, covered in rows of metal switches and flashing red and green buttons. The remains of someone’s meal sat in the corner.
“Take a seat,” Roman said, nodding at a chair.
Dorothy felt like telling him no just to be contrary, but her knees were weak with nerves. If she didn’t sit down she might actually collapse, like some ninny who’d tied her corset too tight.
Something sticky had dried on the floor, making her boots squeak as she moved toward the chair. The room was small enough that she and Roman were shoulder to shoulder, practically touching no matter where she stood. She perched at the edge of her seat, carefully angling her knees to the side. “Will this take long?”
“Not at all.” Grunting, Roman pulled a screen away from the wall and began doing something complicated with a tangle of tiny blue and red cords. “During the late 2000s, a bunch of hacker kids got really into posting threads telling you exactly how to dismantle old military security onto the internet.”
He peeled the blue bits of the cords away, revealing even smaller, copper-colored wires below. He did the same to the red ones, and then twisted a few copper wires together. “Cover your ears.”
Dorothy had just managed to press her hands over her ears when Roman reached for a switch at the upper right-hand corner of the desk and flicked it. The lights in the control room all switched off immediately, and a distant, whooping alarm began to blare.
“God, I love the eighties,” Roman said.
36
Ash
“Executed?” Zora’s voice sounded hollow, and it chilled Ash more deeply than if she’d yelled. “What do you mean, executed? What did you do?”
Ash’s eyes shuttered closed. He didn’t think he could listen to the details.
Did they shoot the Professor in the back as he was running away? Was it just one bullet? Did the greatest scientific mind in history say anything before he died?
Ash was overcome with the desire to hit something. It was all he could do not to stomp his feet and slam his cuffed hands against the back of the chair, just to make some noise.
When he opened his eyes again, he found Gross studying him, his mouth twisted in a sneer that Ash longed to knock right off his face.
Gross said, “As I’ve already explained, the gentleman was apprehended on the roof, just over fifteen minutes ago. He—”
“What did you do to him?” Zora pushed the words through clenched teeth, and Ash felt his heartbeat ratchet up a notch.
“Zora—” he said, warning.
Gross’s eyes slid back to Zora. “You, young lady, are in no position to—”
“You’re a liar!” Zora threw herself against her restraints, and the sound of metal biting metal filled the small room. Gross didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. “He’s not dead! What did you do to him? What did you do?”
A soldier stepped forward and drew his arm back—
Ash saw what was going to happen a second before it did. “No!” he shouted, trying to stand, but he was still cuffed to the chair, and the chair was bolted to the ground. Metal dug into his wrists, yanking him back down.
The soldier’s fist came down hard across Zora’s cheek, and her head whipped violently to the side.
Anger exploded in Ash’s chest.
“You son of a bitch!” He lunged forward, not caring that the cold metal dug into his wrists, or that something wet clung sticky and hot beneath them.
They hurt Zora. He was going to kill them.
Zora was shouting again, but her words didn’t register. Ash couldn’t hear anything over the blood pumping in his ears. He was dimly aware that Zora was thrashing against her restraints in the chair next to him, screaming—
Gross’s voice cut through the noise: “Get her out of here.”
It wasn’t a request.
One of the soldiers moved toward Zora, one hand resting on the butt of his gun.
Ash didn’t know what they were going to do with her, only that he couldn’t let them take her, couldn’t let her out of his sight.
The soldier knelt behind Zora’s seat. Ash heard the click of her handcuffs opening—
And then the lights flicked off, bathing them in darkness.
For a fraction of a second it was like everyone in the room was holding their breath. And then a siren began to howl, the low, whooping sound reminding Ash of wind in an anil.
A red light flashed on and off, on and off.
Ash saw, as though in slow motion, Zora pull her arm loose and whip around, one fist connecting with the kneeling soldier’s temple.
Ash couldn’t hear anything over the wailing alarm, but he saw the soldier blink, dazed. His fingers loosened their grip on the gun, and then the weapon was falling. It clattered to the floor but didn’t go off, and then Zora was stopping it with her boot, and crouching, and the gun was in her hand. The handcuffs dangled from her wrist.
The second soldier fired. The bullet whizzed close to Zora’s face, and Ash sucked in a breath, certain it was a hit, but Zora moved out of its path a second before it landed. She charged forward, grunting as she slammed the top of her head into the soldier’s chest. She hit him again as he struggled to regain his balance.
“Don’t move!” Gross slid the gun from the belt at his hips in one motion, easy. “I said don’t—”
He fired and Zora ducked, the bullet exploding into the wall behind her. She tucked and rolled across the floor, one leg flying at Gross’s shin and then jerking upward, into his knee. Her foot connected twice—pop, pop.
Gross’s face crumbled and he stumbled backward, dropping his gun.
Zora stood, her own gun leveled at his head.
“Keys,” she said.
Gross eyed her like he might a wild animal. “You listen here, girl. Every soldier in this base will be looking for you after this. You don’t stand—”
Zora slammed the butt of the gun against his temple and he crumpled to the ground with the others.
“That was impressive,” Ash said, but he wasn’t sure Zora heard him over the wailing of the alarm.
She knelt beside Gross, glancing at the door as she rifled through his pockets, as though she expected soldiers to come pouring through at any moment. She removed a silver key from his pocket and got to work on Ash’s handcuffs.
Ash jerked his chin at the unconscious Gross. “He’s right, you know. The entire base is going to be on lockdown after this.”
The cuffs snapped off and Ash groaned, rolling his wrists. “If we want to get out of here alive, we’ll need a plan.”
Zora lifted her chin. Red lights danced across her face, gathering in the shadows under her eyes and along her cheekbones.
She said, bitter, “Do you honestly think any of us are getting out of here alive?”
37
Dorothy
Boots thudded outside. Dorothy couldn’t hear them over the wailing siren, but she felt the floor tremble. She inched the door open a crack and squinted into the hallway. Several soldiers had appeared, already staring down the sights of bulky, black guns. The flashing red light painted their faces with deep shadows. They looked like devils.
“I thought the idea was to keep the soldiers from finding us,” she whispered, irritated. “Not shout our location to half the base!”
Roman was staring down at the images on his device. “The idea was to move them away from the room where they were holding Ash and Zora. Look.”
He angled the screen toward her, but she was too distracted by what was going on in the hallway and waved it away without looking. She had her face pressed so close to the door that she could feel the wood creasing her skin.
The soldier at the front of the group froze when he saw the dead man lying across the floor at the door to the control room. He lifted one hand to alert the men behind him, and then his eyes moved from the dead man to the door Dorothy was peering out of.
She felt herself go still. It was impossible, but it seemed, for a moment, like he was able to see through the flashing red lights and the shadows to locate her on the other side of the cracked door. Her breath caught.
Then, Roman’s hand was on her arm and he was yanking her down to the floor, one finger pressing to her lips.
His eyes shifted to the crack in the door. Shadows moved beyond the sliver of open space. Roman swore silently and motioned for Dorothy to hide beneath the desk. He crawled in beside her.
They were close now, their faces just inches apart. Dorothy could smell the mint on Roman’s breath. She could count the freckles that dotted the skin between the bottom of his nose and his upper lip. It was all achingly familiar and, for a moment, she just stared, her pulse fluttering inside of her chest.
This is it. The moment from her vision.
Now that she realized what was about to happen, she found herself impatient to get it over with. How did it start again? Roman was going to lean toward her, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He was going to say, You shouldn’t trust them.
The memory felt so real that Dorothy could almost believe it had just happened. The word why lingered on her lips. . . .
Roman turned to her, and Dorothy felt something inside her chest catch. Her heart thudded with anticipation.
His body was pressed against her arm, the warmth of his skin spreading through the fabric of her stolen uniform.
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
She couldn’t take it anymore—
“Why shouldn’t I trust them?” she blurted out.
It was such a small
change—her saying the words instead of Roman—but Dorothy felt it ripple through the air. Now, the moment she’d seen wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen.
She’d stolen Roman’s line.
Roman blinked at her. “How did you know what I was going to say?”
“I—I saw it,” Dorothy admitted. “On the way here, in the time machine. It was like a vision.”
He frowned. “And it happened just like this?”
“Well, no, not exactly. In the vision you said that I shouldn’t trust Ash and the others, and I asked you why, but it ended before you could explain. But just now I could tell it was about to happen and, well, I suppose I got impatient.”
“Fascinating,” Roman said, his eyes glittering.
Dorothy didn’t care much about whether she’d succeeded in changing a future she knew nothing about. People changed the future all the time, just by living.
But Roman’s warning still haunted her.
“Are you going to tell me why you would say something like that?” she asked.
“But I didn’t say it.”
Dorothy studied him for a long moment. He stared back, his smile sharp. She was hit again with the strange déjà vu feeling. This moment felt like the echo of another, one she might remember if only she tried hard enough.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t trust them.”
Roman shook his head, relenting. “You’re an outsider. They’re a team, one for all and all for one, and all that crap. But you aren’t on the team, and you never will be. You haven’t proven yourself.”
Dorothy thought of the ripped photograph on the wall in Ash’s kitchen. Roman Estrada. “Is that why you betrayed them? Because they didn’t think of you as part of the team.”
In an instant, all the careful charisma and lighthearted mischievousness drained from Roman’s face. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“Then why?”
“I’m afraid we haven’t been acquainted long enough for that story,” he said, clearing his throat. “But who knows? Maybe one day I’ll let you in on all my secrets.”
He pulled something small and black out of the pocket of his coat. “This is a smoke bomb.”
Stolen Time Page 23