Crucible Zero

  “Lives won’t need to be lost if you turn yourself in,” Sallyo said.

  “That’s not happening,” Right Ned said flatly. “We’re not coming with you to whomever you’re really working for in House Fire. So you’ll just have to hope that Slater fellow believes you delivered the letter, and get on out of here.”

  “Put the gun down, Abraham,” Quinten said.

  I’d forgotten Abraham’s gun was still aimed at me. I raised one eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m afraid of a gun?”

  He bit at the inside of his lip.

  “Would you be?” I asked.

  He twitched one eyebrow and tipped his head in a sort of shrug.

  Then a strange growl rose outside. All the hair on my arms stood up as that guttural hum rattled through the air. I knew that sound. That was the sound Lizard made right before it started killing things.

  The single growl was joined by another higher growl and a lower growl, echoed in the distance by more and more lizards, until the air was a painful clash of vibrating snarls.

  Cutting through it all was a man’s scream.

  3

  Good news: I’ve found a reason for living: revenge. I plan to destroy him before he destroys everything and everyone who is left. I’m still looking for you, Matilda.

  —W.Y.

  “Who’s out there?” I said.

  “No one important.” Quinten didn’t seem at all worried, even though the screaming suddenly stopped.

  “There were other bounty hunters headed this way,” Abraham said.

  “You didn’t want to mention that before now?” I asked.

  He shrugged his right shoulder and holstered his gun. “We killed three on the way here. I assumed you knew they were out there.”

  Everyone else was handling this like screaming bounty hunters and howling lizards were normal.

  I hurried to the window over the kitchen sink and looked out.

  I could see four lizards, the smallest about the size of a German shepherd, and the largest bigger than a rhino. They were made up of an oddly sleek hodgepodge of different animal parts—all reptilian—some with heavy bodies, some stretched out longer and more snakelike, and others bunched up and armored like a crocodile. Two of the lizards had enormous bat wings tipped with wicked hooked claws. The wings lifted and dropped in a predatory rhythm.

  The lizards all surrounded one man. He wasn’t screaming. He had a gun in his hand and looked like he’d been on the road for a bit, dressed in worn but sturdy pants, jacket, and boots. The gun in his hand was a huge lump of a thing. He eyed the lizards slowly closing in on him.

  At his feet was a lot of blood. Since I didn’t see anyone else out there screaming and he wasn’t bloody, I could only guess that the puddle was all that remained of his companion.

  Lizards were uncommonly fast when they got going, so I saw the crux of his situation. If he shot at one lizard, the rest would take him out in a snap. And that gun in his hand wasn’t enough firepower to destroy one stitched lizard, much less four.

  The largest lizard saved him the trouble of wasting bullets. It whipped its head forward and bit right through the middle of him like a hot knife through pudding. The gun fired once, uselessly, from his dead hand. And then he was gone, scooped up in big chunks and sent down the lizard’s gullet. Eaten, so whole and completely, that between two blinks, it was as if there’d never been a man standing there at all.

  “The lizards ate him,” I said.

  Yes, I’d seen the one huge lizard in my time do some terrible damage—tear down trees, destroy our barn, throw cars around like they were toys. And that lizard had done its fair share of eating people and things with the same quick scoops.

  But these four had swallowed two men—or so I assumed—in the matter of a minute.

  “Are we sure he was a bounty hunter?” I asked.

  “People know not to come knocking around our place if they haven’t contacted us first,” Quinten said. “Which makes the three of you a question. How did you get past the lizards?”

  Abraham shrugged. “They liked Foster.”

  All eyes turned to Foster.

  “I like them too,” he said as if that explained it all.

  “How many mercs are after us, Sallyo?” Left Ned asked.

  “Us? No one’s after you, Harris,” she said.

  “How many are headed to this property?”

  She looked up at the ceiling as if working out a list. “Just to be safe, I’d assume everyone. It was a very generous reward.”

  “Shit,” Right Ned breathed. “If we have every damn merc in the country looking for us . . .”

  “You’re screwed,” Abraham said.

  “Better to turn yourselves in. Come with us,” Sallyo said. “That will shut down the mercs. Shut down the bombing of House Earth. And we have a decent chance of keeping you alive until we reach House Fire.”

  “Or Slater will just bomb House Earth anyway,” I said.

  “We don’t know if he’s serious about that,” Quinten said.

  “Slater is serious about everything he threatens,” I said. “She’s right, Quinten. The best move would be to turn ourselves in.”

  “No. You just pointed out that there would be nothing to keep him from bombing the compounds,” he said. “House Fire and House Water have been looking for a reason to wipe out House Earth for years. But when Slater finds out I don’t have the cure, he’ll kill us and blame House Earth, and we’ll all be dead.”

  “I think he’ll just kill us to kill us,” I said, “cure or not.”

  “How much history do you have with Slater?” Abraham asked.

  “Too much,” I said. “He’s tried to kill me. A lot.”

  He frowned. “When? We galvanized knew each other from our reawakenings, and I’ve never met you after my reawakening, Matilda Case.”

  “I’ve just recently awakened.”

  “Then how exactly do you know Slater?” His voice was low and measured. “How could you have spent time with him, enough that he would try to kill you?”

  I glanced at Quinten. The only way to explain it all was to tell the truth. Which I was pretty sure no one would believe.

  Quinten shook his head just slightly. He didn’t want them to know what I was. I didn’t blame him. Finding out that Quinten could transfer a modern person’s thoughts, memories, and personality into a galvanized body was exactly how Slater had ended up taking over the galvanized body he was currently inhabiting.

  “Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Why are you here, Abraham? I thought Sallyo was the one who took the delivery job.”

  “I was looking for you.”

  “Right. Searching the whole world. So you could turn me in to Slater?”

  He tipped his head down just a bit, and the stitches at the corner of his mouth pulled hard against his scowl, stretching the skin there into white creases.

  “I will never help that vile, soul-rotted filth of a man,” he said.

  Good to know we had similar opinions of him.

  “Why did you come out here with Sallyo?”

  “When I heard she was looking for Matilda Case, I volunteered.”

  “For a cut of her fee?”

  “Volunteered, Matilda,” he said very plainly.

  “You aren’t intending to take us in to Slater?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re on our side.”

  “I am on my own side.”

  “But you’re not on Sallyo’s side?”

  Sallyo chuckled.

  “Not exactly. No,” he said.

  I looked over at Sallyo. She was staring at her nails like she might want to get them done soon. “Do you really think you can drag both my brother and me in on your own?” I asked.

  My long-sleeved shirt did not hide the sti
tches across the back of my hands, nor the line of thread tracing the edge of my neck like a grim necklace.

  I was galvanized, and I was not hiding it.

  Sallyo had made herself a person to be feared in my time. Her name was whispered amid furtive glances over shoulders. She hadn’t been a smuggler, she had been the smuggler, the queen of all black-market deals who had undermined the Houses to establish her own underground rules of commerce.

  But as proven by the Neds and my brother, it didn’t look like the personalities of the people I’d known from my time had changed much in this time. If Sallyo had been a ruthless, clever, brutal woman in my time, she was all those things here too.

  But she would be sorely wrong to underestimate me.

  “I, of course, didn’t have full information on the Case family,” she said. “Dragging you all in would take more effort than anyone’s paying me for. Letter’s delivered. I made my dime.”

  “Will your contact believe you delivered the letter?” I asked.

  “My contact doesn’t have to believe anything. I know how to stand aside until the bullets are spent.”

  “Then you should leave,” Quinten said. “Now. Night’s only a few hours off.”

  I thought the night thing was an odd detail to bring up, but Sallyo pursed her lips. “I suppose. I suppose I should. You coming, Bram?” she asked Abraham.

  “No, I don’t think I am.”

  That surprised me. I think it surprised Sallyo too.

  Quinten shifted the barrel of his gun toward Abraham.

  These people sure did seem comfortable standing around a kitchen table, waving loaded firearms at each other.

  “Foster will also stay with me,” Abraham added.

  “I didn’t invite either of you to stay, as I recall,” Quinten said.

  “Then consider this an offer of my services.” Abraham held his wide hands out to either side of him. “I was not hired to bring you in. I came here looking for Matilda. And now that I’ve found her, and you, I offer—I volunteer—my services.”

  “For what?” Left Ned said. “We don’t need a farmhand.”

  Abraham ignored him. “I will help you warn House Earth. If you travel, I offer protection.”

  “Still not seeing your play in this,” Quinten said. “What do you want?”

  “Do I need an ulterior motive for wanting to help people who are in the firing line of a fight they didn’t bring upon themselves, Mr. Case?”

  Oh. There. That was the man I knew and loved. The man who would stand up for what was right even if it meant doing the hardest thing. A man who would stand for those who couldn’t stand for themselves.

  “Yes,” I said into the silence. “Yes. You can help, Abraham. We accept your offer. Don’t we, Quinten? And Foster too.”

  I stared at Quinten, begging him to trust me on this. Begging him to trust his not-sister who knew zero about this world and the workings of it. Willed him to let the mercenary we’d just met be a part of our plan to keep the people of House Brown—I mean, Earth—alive.

  “Agreed,” he said, after what felt like a very long pause.

  My heart went back to a more normal beat.

  “Well, then,” Sallyo said, “isn’t this cozy? Maybe I should stay as well.”

  “Nope.” Neds advanced on her. He’d secured his weapon too. “You’ll be leaving right about now, Sallyo.”

  “With all those hungry dragons out there?” she said.

  “And plenty of other ferals that will eat your skin off your bones. So you’d best be going now, before dark.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but there was a small smile playing on her lips. “You’re not at all concerned that I might die?”

  Neds hesitated. And when Right Ned spoke, it was with the evenness of old pain. “You don’t need my help, remember?”

  That, finally, seemed to get through her devil-may-care exterior.

  “Isn’t it sad how two men with one body don’t even have a single heart between them?” she said.

  “Good-bye, Sallyo,” Right Ned said.

  “Oh, we’ll see each other again. I still owe you on that promise. And I am a woman of my word.”

  “Looking forward to it.” Left Ned opened the door and held it for her.

  She searched his face, as if she expected him to change his mind. But if she knew him enough to say he was two men with one body—which he was—instead of one body with two heads, she must know he never unmade his mind once it was made.

  She glanced over at my brother. “You’d do yourself a favor if you’d just surrender to Slater, Quinten Case. A head of a House is the worst enemy a man can have, and denying his orders is just an invitation to an early death.”

  “There might be a death,” Quinten agreed. “But it won’t be mine.”

  That made her smile, a quick flash of teeth and delight that softened her features and made her already lovely face come alive. “Well, then, good luck to you. Good luck to all of you.”

  She stepped through the door, and Neds strolled out after her.

  “Is she going to get eaten?” I asked Quinten. “Because I don’t think she deserves that for delivering a letter.”

  “No. Neds will tell the lizards not to eat her. This time.”

  He started pacing slowly, the unfolded paper in his hand. “I want you to know that I do not share my sister’s trust in you, Abraham,” he said, not looking away from the paper. “But we could use some information and contacts, and I imagine a person in your position, who knows who you know, could be very helpful.”

  “As long as our goals remain in agreement,” Abraham said, “I will tell you anything you need to know.”

  “Good,” Quinten said, as if they’d just given a verbal handshake. “We have a lot of things to take care of and not a lot of time. Evelyn, would you check on Grandma, please? Tell her I’m going to call the Grubens to come stay with her for a bit. She’s probably in her room.”

  Grandma! I’d almost forgotten she was here. I glanced in the corner where I’d last seen her knitting and her chair was empty, the little light blue pocket sheep that followed her around nowhere to be seen.

  I didn’t know exactly who the Grubens were, but hopefully Grandma would.

  “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

  The kitchen had two doors, one to the outside, and one leading to the hall that stretched between the two wings of the house that contained the bedrooms, and the stairs leading down to the basement and up to the attic. Through the hallway was the living room, sitting room, and door to the front porch.

  I hoped.

  I walked down the hall to where Grandma’s room used to be and paused with my hand on the latch.

  * * *

  Dizziness swept over me again. A rush of roses filled my nose and lungs as a distant bell toned.

  The door in front of me was gone, replaced by what I’d seen before—a pile of rubble instead of a house. The explosive blast that had sent me back in time and the bullets and whatever bombs the Houses had set upon our property to try to bring me, Abraham, Foster, and Quinten in to justice had destroyed our home.

  “This is a surprise,” a familiar voice said behind me. “Evelyn.”

  I spun.

  Slater Orange stood there in Robert’s galvanized body. He wore a fine dark suit. The stitching that had run across his shaved skull was now covered with light brown hair kept short and combed back from his high forehead. His other visible stitches were carefully covered in flesh-colored makeup. Robert’s bird-sharp features twisted with Slater’s disdain.

  “Slater,” I said.

  His eyebrows slipped upward. “Ah. I see. Perhaps you are no longer the innocent.” He tipped his head down, fixing me with his brittle blue gaze. “Is that finally you behind those pretty brown eyes, Matilda Case?”

  “What ar
e you doing here? How are you doing this?”

  “This?” He raised his hand to indicate the world around us. “Surely you aren’t so conceited as to think you made no mistakes in your attempt to change the Wings of Mercury experiment? Your brother and Welton may have been brilliant, but time is a very delicate and contrary thing. Any slight adjustment, and worlds collide. Man was not meant to play with the toys of the gods, dear Matilda.” He tsked. “Look at the mess you’ve made.”

  “This isn’t real,” I said.

  “But it is. This is the timeway you and I were born into. The timeway you nearly destroyed. Well, you and your brother. Here, the Houses rule as they have always meant to rule. Here, the galvanized are rotting away in prison for breaking treaty and murdering a head of House.”

  “You were the one who murdered Oscar,” I said. “Not the galvanized. You tried to kill Abraham. You killed Robert and took over his body, and framed the galvanized. You have destroyed the world.”

  “I repaired a broken and flawed world,” he snarled. “A world you never belonged to, Matilda. You should have died young, like all weak things.”

  “No,” I said. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t. You and I are locked in this struggle. Until only one of us remains. And I shall rule. No matter who I have to kill. No matter which timeway I decide will become the set reality.”

  I still had my gun on me. I pulled it from the holster.

  The world went dizzy and I couldn’t move, couldn’t squeeze the trigger, as Slater was whisked away. The strong scent of roses lingered, and a ringing filled my ears.

  * * *

  I was in the hallway, still in front of Grandma’s door. The gun was in my hand.

  Holy crap.

  I holstered the gun and pressed my fingers over my eyes, breathing until I could push the mix of panic, anger, and fear away.

  Slater was alive. And he knew I was alive too. Or at least he knew I was alive in that . . . What had he called it? A timeway.

  Too many questions crowded my head. How had he known about the timeway? What did he mean about choosing which one became a set reality? And why were he and I locked together in this?