Twisted Fates Read online

  The anil, on the other hand, reacts exactly how he expected it to.

  I won’t bore you with the details. All you need to know is that Tesla was right; he just didn’t know what he was right about. Most scientists working today believe that there are actually a great many more anils all over the world, but they’re buried deep within the earth’s crust. The working theory is that the Puget Sound anil was only made visible by the movement of tectonic plates and that, given another couple hundred years and further erosion of the earth’s crust, more tunnels through time will appear. If that’s true, it’s possible that Tesla actually managed to connect his original experiments with some underground anil that he didn’t even know was there.

  So, in effect, Tesla was the very first time traveler. He’s even quoted as saying that he’s seen the future. Once, after being struck by a jolt of electricity coming off his coil, he said, “I saw the Past, Present, and Future at the same time.”

  If that’s true, if he did see the past, present, and future at the same time, then he, somehow, managed to travel through time without access to an anil, without any exotic matter, and without a vessel.

  It’s imperative that I speak with him.

  5

  Dorothy

  The Fairmont’s garage was dark when they landed, and empty. Roman and Dorothy gathered the stolen artwork from the back of the time machine and headed down the stairs in silence, stopping in front of a heavy, unmarked door deep in the Fairmont’s basement.

  Roman dug an old key out from under his coat, and Dorothy heard the click of metal in a lock. The door creaked open, revealing a deeper, velvety darkness beyond.

  Another click and the room was illuminated.

  As always, Dorothy felt her breath catch. It was hard to know where to look first. There was the stack of scrolls gathering dust in the corner, stolen from the Library of Alexandria moments before the siege in 48 BCE. The missing panels from the Bayeux Tapestry hung from the wall before her, showing William the Conqueror’s Christmas Day coronation, in 1066. On a table below sat the long-lost crown jewels of King John.

  Dorothy smiled as she looked at the jewels, remembering the week she and Roman had spent on the Wash in 1216. There’d been a lot of discussion throughout history about how the fool king had managed to lose his jewels, but it turned out that the luggage containing them had simply fallen off of the back of his carriage as he rode beneath the Sutton Bridge. Dorothy and Roman had waited for the king and his soldiers to gallop past, and then they’d taken the abandoned luggage for themselves. Roman had worn the magnificently jeweled crown the entire ride home.

  “It’s already half past nine,” Roman said, interrupting the memory. “Are you ready for the broadcast?”

  Ah yes. The broadcast.

  Ironically, Ash was the one who’d given her the idea.

  “The Black Cirkus wants to go back in time,” he’d told her once. “They seem to think that’s the key to fixing all our problems.”

  He’d said this like it was an idiotic thing to think, but Dorothy had found herself disagreeing. Because, really, what sort of problems couldn’t be solved with time travel?

  She’d started thinking about how she might go about changing some things. At the very least, the city needed power, access to medication and food. Too many people were hungry, and cold, and sick.

  Dorothy had been a con artist before landing here. She’d never really been one for good deeds. But, for the first time in her life, she had all this power. And she knew how to fix this.

  The problem was that the people of New Seattle disliked the Black Cirkus. They remembered them as the violent gang of thugs and thieves who’d taken over the city in the days just after the mega-quake. But Dorothy knew they could be so much more and so, several months ago, she’d told Roman her plan.

  “Let’s speak to the people directly. We can have a . . . a broadcast.” She’d stumbled over the word broadcast, which she’d only just learned. “The people in this city don’t realize what’s being kept from them. They don’t know that time travel is still possible. Let me bring them to our side.”

  They’d built a makeshift studio in the corner of the Fairmont basement, with real cameras and spotlights, which Dorothy and Roman had stolen from a defunct television station in 2044, and a backdrop made from a tattered American flag that Roman had insisted made them look like rebels.

  Dorothy, naive, had thought the campaign would be easy. Just go on television (another new word!) and tell the people what they could do. But, of course, it was much more complicated than that. Distrust of the Cirkus ran deep. It had taken over two hundred broadcasts—one every single night—and the better part of a year to plant the seeds. Now, though. Now, they were close.

  Dorothy took her place before the flag. The sudden glare of the spotlights made her squint, but no one would see her eyes beneath the hood that hid her face. Roman stood behind the equipment, all in shadow, and she heard the telltale sound of buttons flipping and dials turning as he worked the switchboard.

  “Three . . . ,” said Roman, his voice cutting through the oppressive spotlights.

  Dorothy took a deep breath.

  “. . . two . . .”

  Here we go.

  Roman held up a single finger, and then, after a beat, he pointed at her.

  Go.

  “Friends,” Dorothy said, her heart beating hard and fast in her throat. “Do not attempt to adjust your television. Our broadcast has taken over every channel.”

  6

  Ash

  Ash usually avoided wandering around New Seattle at night. It was far too likely that he’d run into someone unsavory; a Cirkus Freak searching for an easy mark, or some jerk who recognized Ash from the days before the mega-quake and wanted to start a fight. The city was only safe for those who had the cash to pay off the thieves and lowlifes who prowled the docks after dark. Ash didn’t have that kind of money, and, even if he did, he had far too much pride to pay for his own safety.

  Besides, tonight was different. Tonight, he felt hyperalive and also, strangely, like he was caught in a dream he couldn’t wake up from. He practically salivated at the thought of throwing a punch, of feeling his knuckles connect with something hard and warm.

  But there was no one around to fight with him. His skin tingled, uselessly.

  He made his way to the end of the dock, stopping where it forked. One path led deeper into the dark water, bordered by ghostly white trees and mossy rooftops, while the other twisted toward the city. The buildings weren’t lit up—the only electricity downtown was used to power televisions for the nightly broadcast—but Ash could make out the shape of them against the black sky.

  He almost felt like laughing. It couldn’t be any clearer than this: there was a good path and a bad path. He could turn right and wander around in the dark for half an hour, cool down before, eventually, making his way back to Dante’s, where his friends would be on their second drink.

  Or he could turn left and head downtown, where the Cirkus Freaks and the people who paid them off partied.

  He heard the distant call of voices. It stoked his anger, the knowledge that there were some people in this town who could still walk around at night without being afraid.

  Seven days, he thought.

  Out loud, he muttered, “What the hell?”

  Left. Definitely left.

  He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and lowered his head against the hammering wind. It was cold for November in the Pacific Northwest, but he found himself relishing the chill. It was a welcome respite from the burning inside him.

  The voices grew louder as the buildings got closer together. A crowd of kids in nice coats stumbled out of a bar.

  “No, that one,” one of them was saying, his voice rising in exasperation. “She was looking at you, didn’t you see?”

  His friend snorted. “Not a chance.”

  “We could go back tomorrow,” said the first. “Ask her.”

  Ash
slowed to let them move past. They irritated him for reasons he couldn’t name. Maybe it was that they clearly had money, or maybe it was just that they were obnoxious but not obnoxious enough to start a fight with.

  They were just . . . happy.

  Ash watched them, every muscle in his body wound tight. Their voices faded as they walked down the dock and, when they were gone, he pushed through the door of the bar they’d just come out of without bothering to glance at the sign hanging over it.

  It was dark inside, with black walls and stainless-steel countertops and black leather barstools. There was a television above the bar, but it wasn’t turned on.

  A crowd of people milled around the cramped space, shoulder to shoulder in the dark. He thought he saw one or two look his way, but he didn’t have the energy to worry about whether they’d recognized him or if they’d been Black Cirkus sympathizers before the mega-quake.

  Before the Professor had disappeared, he and his time travelers had been a bit . . . controversial.

  Some thought the Professor was a genius, the future of science and technology.

  Others thought he was an out-of-touch intellectual, content to let the world around him fall to ruins while he focused on his books and experiments.

  Neither side was entirely wrong.

  Ash wove through the small, crowded room, keeping his head ducked, and found an empty stool near the bar.

  A bartender appeared before him, staring for a beat too long before asking, in a resigned voice, “What do you want?”

  “Beer?” Ash said, his eyes going wide as he read the chalkboard menu behind the bartender’s head. “You guys got beer?”

  Most bars in New Seattle hadn’t had real beer since before the mega-quake. At least, the bars that Ash frequented hadn’t had beer since before the mega-quake. Too expensive.

  The bartender hesitated, and his eyes flicked to the crowd behind him. Ash resisted the urge to check over his shoulder, see whether anyone was staring at him, whispering. It had been a long while since he’d been inside a bar that wouldn’t serve him.

  “Come on, man, one pint,” he said, digging around in his jacket. A pint of beer would cost him half the money in the envelope of cash he’d stolen back from Mac after Chandra shot him, but, just now, it seemed worth it. “I promise, I’ll be good—”

  The television hanging above the bar flickered on and Ash froze, hand still shoved down his pocket.

  A shadowy figure appeared on the screen. She wore a hood that covered her face, and stood in front of a tattered American flag, a sketchy fox painted on the front of her coat.

  “Friends,” Quinn said, in her heavily distorted voice. “Do not attempt to adjust your television. Our broadcast has taken over every channel.”

  “You still want that pint?” the bartender asked.

  Ash realized he’d frozen, one hand still gripping the cash envelope. He nodded and handed over a slightly damp bill, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  Quinn continued. “I come to you this evening with happy news. For the past year, the Black Cirkus has been attempting to uncover the secrets of time travel, secrets that have long been kept from us by the scientist Professor Zacharias Walker.

  “Tonight, I am glad to say that Professor Walker has been thwarted. Time travel is ours, at long last.”

  All talk in the bar ceased. Someone catcalled, while another called out, “About damn time!”

  Ash realized he was holding the cash envelope so tightly that his fingers had started to cramp. He tucked it back into his jacket and began cracking his knuckles.

  He’d known the Cirkus could travel through time. Or, at least, he’d suspected. He’d seen their time machine himself, and he’d thought he’d seen Roman and Quinn in 1980, at the Fort Hunter complex.

  But he’d never been able to figure out how they were able to go back in time without any exotic matter and, over the last few weeks, he’d been able to push that question to the back of his mind. There’d always been other, more pressing things to focus on.

  Not anymore.

  “And now, we would like to invite you all to a revel of sorts.” Quinn announced. “Tomorrow evening, the Black Cirkus will host a masquerade at the Fairmont hotel, at seven o’clock pm.

  “Join us, and see how we will use time travel to build a better present, a better future. Join the Black Cirkus, and we’ll show you a new and better world.”

  The image froze, the broadcast over.

  Conversations leaped back to life. Ash heard someone say, “Quinn Fox,” but they sounded excited rather than terrified. A first.

  Another added, tone casual, like they were repeating something they weren’t sure they still believed, “But, she’s the cannibal, right?”

  And, “Didn’t you hear her? She says she wants to help. To fix things.”

  Meanwhile, another conversation seemed to be going on at the same time, this one about the Professor and the Chronology Protection Agency. About him.

  “Selfish,” someone was saying. “The group of them, thinking they could keep all that technology for themselves.”

  “Time travel should be for everyone,” said someone else. “Quinn Fox will make it right.”

  Ash bristled, tuning them out. How quickly people forgot. All Quinn had to do was dangle a carrot on a stick and, all at once, years of Black Cirkus violence was wiped away.

  He lifted a hand to his face, remembering the heat of Quinn’s blade on his skin. He’d spoken to her in person only once, while standing on a dock outside the Fairmont.

  “We’re leaving,” he’d said, backing away.

  And she’d responded, “It’s too late for that.”

  And then she’d cut him across the cheek with a freaking dagger.

  He could still feel the metal against his skin, the flaring of nerve endings, the way his heart had sputtered with shock, and then adrenaline. Not exactly a good first impression.

  And yet, somehow, he was supposed to fall in love with her. Prememories didn’t lie, and Ash had been seeing the same prememory every single time he’d entered an anil for the last year: a girl with white hair in a boat, water spread out around her, white trees interrupting the darkness. She would kiss him, and then she would kill him. He would love her, and she would betray him.

  Quinn Fox had white hair. Quinn Fox was that girl.

  He closed his eyes, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. His blood pumped hot and fast beneath his skin.

  The prememory was real, as real to him as any memory could be. He could still smell the brine and salt smell of the water. He could taste the heat of Quinn Fox’s lips.

  He leaned forward without making the conscious decision to do so, one hand reaching for his back pocket. His fingers enclosed the creased and worn leather book and tugged it loose.

  The Professor’s old journal looked like hell. Ash must’ve thumbed through its pages a hundred times over the last three weeks, reading and rereading his mentor’s entries, looking for hidden meaning behind the anecdotes and sketches and jotted notes. He no longer believed there was a way to keep his prememory from coming true, but he would have settled for something simpler. Advice, maybe. Or a promise that everything was going to be okay.

  He exhaled through his teeth, wishing that the Professor were here, sitting on the barstool next to him.

  But the Professor was dead. He’d died at Fort Hunter complex, on March 17, 1980. All that was left of him was this worn, leather journal.

  Ash paused as he flipped through the book, finding a ragged edge of paper peeking out of the journal’s binding. It looked like a page was missing but, when he looked closer, he saw that there were several sheets of paper ripped out, almost like someone had removed a whole entry. He ran his thumb through the torn pages, frowning. Had the Professor ripped them out himself? Why?

  The bartender was suddenly before him, again, looking dubious. “Look, man, I let you have one, but—”

  “I’ll take another,” Ash said, cut
ting him off. When the bartender frowned, he fished the cash envelope out of his jacket pocket and slammed it on the bar. What was the point of savings if he was going to die in less than a week?

  Cautiously, like he thought it might contain something poisonous, the bartender opened the envelope, one eyebrow raising, appreciatively, as he counted the bills inside. Nothing made friends like good, hard cash. He slipped the envelope into his pocket and turned around to pour Ash a beer.

  “Keep ’em coming,” Ash said.

  LOG ENTRY—AUGUST 27, 1899

  16:24 HOURS

  JUST OUTSIDE COLORADO SPRINGS

  I have to write quickly, so this will be a rather short entry. Nikola Tesla has just run back to the house in the hopes of finding a bottle of bourbon, and I don’t want to be scribbling away in a notebook upon his return.

  He’s a bit paranoid, Nikola . . . I don’t want to give him reason to be suspicious.

  I’m currently sitting on a wooden stool inside of his experimental station outside Colorado Springs. The main workspace is little more than a monstrous barn, dominated by the largest Tesla coil I’ve ever seen. There’s other equipment, too. Generators and light bulbs, among other things, but very little in terms of what you’d call “creature comforts.” I asked Nikola when he broke for meals or, indeed, what he actually ate, and he looked at me like I actually was a martian.

  That’s the other thing. He doesn’t believe me about time travel. In fact, he seems far more comfortable with the idea that I’m some sort of extraterrestrial.

  This, I believe, is my fault. I landed a bit too close to the workshop and, as such, Nikola saw my ship. Successful air travel isn’t achieved until 1903, remember, so it’s four years too early for me to go whizzing about in a flying machine. There’s that and, of course, the fact that my ship is a bit advanced-looking for the turn of the nineteenth century. In any case, the jump to “alien” isn’t totally out of nowhere.