The Flux Engine Read online

The sisters at Saint Archimedes took great pains to teach their charges right from wrong. As a result, John didn’t approve of criminal activities, but he didn’t want Robi to stop talking, so he held his tongue. Still his disapproval must have shown on his face.

  “I was only going to take a couple,” she said, defensively. “Just enough to get by.”

  “What happened?”

  “The sneaky bastard covered the floor in front of the safe with a little rug that had some chemical soaked into it.” Her expression darkened. “The safe was filled with a heavier-than-air gas that activated the chemical in the rug and turned it into glue.”

  John was impressed. The man’s trap was simple but effective and all he had to do to avoid it himself was to pick up the rug.

  “Where was your father during all this?”

  Robi’s smile slipped for the second time and her eyes looked right through the spot where John sat.

  “He’s dead,” John guessed. “Isn’t he?”

  Robi looked away but he could see the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. She seemed to tremble for a moment, striving to bring her emotions under control, then nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” John said, not really knowing what to say. He had no memories at all of his own father. Robi’s pain was much more recent.

  “Never work for someone else,” Robi said softly. “That was his first rule. He used to tell me that the minute you bring on a partner you have to sleep with a knife in your hand. Partners are nothing but trouble, he said.”

  “What happened?”

  Robi wiped her eyes and turned back to face him. Her eyes regarded him with a hard flat stare, regarding him skeptically. John shrugged.

  “Who am I going to tell?” he said. “Who’d believe me anyway?” That made her smile again for a brief second before she continued.

  “A man approached my father about acquiring something out of a secure Alliance Lab. The money was enough for two lifetimes, so my father agreed. He wanted to settle down on a little homestead somewhere and raise goats.” She chuckled to herself, a hollow, humorless sound. “Can you believe that?” she asked. “The world’s greatest thief raising goats? Mostly, I think he just wanted me have a normal life,” Robi went on.

  “What happened at the lab?”

  “Nothing.” Robi shook her head. “Everything went like clockwork. We were in and out in thirty-eight minutes.” She paused and took a deep breath, steeling herself for the rest. “We were supposed to meet the buyer in a warehouse to make the exchange, but Dad didn’t like it. When we got there, he told me to hide. Turns out his instincts were right.” Robi drew a great shuddering breath. “The buyer never intended to pay us. When he arrived, he walked right up and shot my father dead, without any warning.”

  John didn’t know what to say. He’d heard that there was no honor among thieves, but this was shocking. It was as if the senseless nature of the act rendered it even more immoral. It felt irrational that such men existed in the world.

  “What did he have you steal?” John asked before his better judgement could silence him.

  “Sand,” Robi said, shaking her head in disgust. “A bag of red sand.”

  “What’s so special about a bag of sand?”

  “I don’t care,” Robi said, the tenor of her voice turning cold. “Someday I’m going to find that bastard and when I do …”

  Robi squeezed her eyes shut, and turned away again.

  “You’ll kill him,” John finished for her.

  “No,” Robi said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “My father taught me that the dead feel no pain. When I find him, I’m going to take everything—everything he loves, everything that’s important to him. I’m going to destroy it all and leave him with nothing. Just like he did to me.”

  John had heard people swear vengeance before. Usually the words were meaningless expressions of frustration wrapped in hollow threats. Robi’s declaration sent shivers down his back. She had considered those words carefully, and she meant each and every one.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after the silence between them had stretched out to fill several minutes. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s all right,” John said, automatically. “Doctor Shultz, my mentor, says that it can help to tell your troubles to someone.”

  “So you’re training to be a surgeon?” Robi asked.

  “What?”

  “You said your mentor was a doctor.”

  John laughed. It had been a while and it felt good.

  “He’s not that kind of doctor. Doctor Shultz has a PhD in Thurgery, you know, crystal growing. I’m his apprentice.”

  “So, what’s an apprentice Thurger doing in here?” Robi asked.

  “It’s complicated.” John shrugged.

  “Hey, you owe me,” Robi said. “After all, I told you mine.”

  He sat down on his cot and sighed, wondering where to begin.

  “Well, I sort of sent most of the Tommys in Sprocketville on a rampage,” he said. He didn’t realize just how crazy it sounded until he said it out loud. Robi gasped.

  “That was you? What are you, some kind of Architect or something?”

  John had always been told he was smart, but no one had ever accused him of being Architect smart. Architects were geniuses and usually more than a little crazy. As his brain briefly considered the possibility, he decided it really wasn’t much of a compliment.

  “No,” he said. “I had this special crystal …” He paused, not knowing if he should go on. He’d never talked about his mother’s crystal before, but now he just—needed to. It felt as if he had to talk about what happened in Doc’s lab or it would drive him mad. He wanted to talk to Hickok, the Enforcer, but he knew he couldn’t risk it. Robi, on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere.

  “What kind of crystal?” Robi asked, prompting him to go on with his story.

  “Nobody knows,” John said. “My mother gave it to me before she disappeared and as far as anyone can tell, it’s one of a kind.”

  John took a deep breath and plowed ahead, telling Robi the whole story of his mother and the crystal and how he’d tried to contact her with the handler box. Robi whistled when he was done.

  “I thought I had problems,” she said, her wolfish smile shifting into a crooked grin. “Why don’t you tell that enforcer?” she asked. “It sounds like he knows you’re not guilty.”

  “If I tell him the truth, I lose the crystal,” John said. “If I don’t tell him, then Batts will keep me here until I confess or blame someone else.”

  Robi had been sitting cross-legged on her bunk, resting her elbow on her knee with her head in her hand. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side and a smile spread across her face.

  “I think we can help each other,” she said.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in partners.”

  “Do you want to get out of here or not?” She fixed him with a level stare.

  “You mean escape? How?”

  “You said you were a Thurger, right?”

  He nodded and she went on.

  “What do you know about shocker boxes?”

  There weren’t many in Sprocketville, but John had seen one or two before. It was a First Order device. Simple. Just an energy crystal with a flux reservoir set to drip onto it regularly. As long as it had flux, the crystal would maintain a charge that would stun anyone touching it.

  “How long does it take the box to recharge after it shocks someone?” Robi asked.

  “A couple seconds, maybe three,” John said. “It’s not very long.”

  Robi reached into her mouth and pulled out a small ring. With practiced precision, she tapped it on the end of an iron nail that protruded from the frame of her cot. The ring made a sound like a tiny bell, then began to twist in Robi’s fingers, uncoiling and straightening on its own. A second later, it had changed from a ring to a long, slender tool with a hooked tip.

  “Memory metal,” Robi said with a smile. “It
looks like a ring until I tap it on something hard, then it changes to a lock pick.”

  “How long have you had that in your mouth?” John asked.

  “Ever since I got captured,” she said with a shrug. “About a week.”

  The thought of holding something in his mouth that long made John a little sick. He wondered how she kept from swallowing it when she slept. He wondered how he would catch the tattooed woman now that she had a week’s head start. The thought made him sick and he pushed it away.

  “I think I can pick the lock in under three seconds,” Robi was saying. “But I need you to disable the shocker box. Can you do that?”

  John doubted it highly but he peered through the bars at Robi’s cell before answering. The little box attached to it was missing its faceplate and John could see the mechanism inside. The purplish-blue energy crystal sat in a copper collar with wires running to the cell bars. A glass bottle of iridescent-blue flux hung from the top of the box with a brass tube running down over the crystal. A rubber-handled valve at the tube’s end controlled how fast the flux dripped onto the crystal. John guessed the rubber valve was the only part of the box that was safe to touch.

  “I don’t see any way to disrupt it,” John said. “You can’t even touch the box without getting shocked, and the only way to disable it would be to turn off the flow …”

  The words faded from his lips as John stared at the open box.

  He had an idea.

  A wonderfully devious idea.

  It was so simple it just might work. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t touch the box; he didn’t need to. If he could stop the flux from dripping on the crystal, it would lose its charge in a few minutes.

  “If I disable the shocker box, will you take me with you?”

  Robi’s face split into a devious grin.

  “You figured it out, didn’t you?” The excitement was plain in her voice. “If you help me get out of here, I swear on my father’s grave that I’ll take you with me.”

  “Deal.”

  He crossed his cell to the corner and reached out for the old broom. It was an ancient thing with a crooked handle, polished black by the oil of countless hands. At the bottom, it had a mass of broken and twisted straw, bound together to form the brush. He took hold of the brush and, passing it through the bars, held the broom handle out toward Robi’s cell. Moving slowly, he eased the top end of the handle into the open shocker box, pressing it against the brass tube that delivered flux to the energy crystal. All he had to do now was bend the tube, just a little, and the flux would stop dripping on the crystal.

  Trying not to shake, John pressed the broom handle forward. He could feel the brass tube beginning to bend. It wouldn’t be long now.

  “Hey!” the rough voice of one of Batt’s deputies rang out through the cell block. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter 6

  The Not-So-Great Escape

  Robi actually thought John’s idea would work. She didn’t have the first clue how to deactivate a shocker box and he’d made it sound easy. She hated to admit it, but she was impressed.

  That was bad.

  Her focus slipped because of it. Just for a few seconds to be sure, but that was all the time needed for a deputy to discover their newborn escape attempt. The first indication Robi had of the man’s presence was his angry shout, then the unmistakable pounding of running feet.

  Hurry.

  The broom handle wavered, and the thunder of the deputy’s running feet grew louder. Robi resisted the urge to look up. She didn’t need to know which of Batts’ deputies had discovered them. She’d observed them closely when they escorted her here. Big, so they could handle the work. Mean, so they would carry out even the most unpleasant orders without complaint. And all without the brainpower necessary for betrayal. The perfect minion.

  A bead of sweat rolled down from John’s sandy hair and over his cheek. The broom handle wavered again.

  “Gimme that,” the Deputy roared, his figure suddenly filling the space between the cages, forcing Robi to stand on her bunk to see.

  As the deputy seized the handle, John jerked the broom through the bars, intending to keep it away from the man. The deputy’s beefy hand wrapped around the handle the same instant that John pulled. Unprepared and off balance, the deputy staggered against John’s cell.

  Cursing, the deputy pulled back; he had at least a hundred pounds on John, yanking him easily off his feet and slamming him into the bars. Robi winced as John staggered back. Determination on his face, he tightened his grip and pulled. The deputy shot forward with a surprised grunt, hitting his face with enough force to make the bars ring. Of course, John’s stubborn refusal to give up the broom only served to make the large, angry deputy even angrier.

  The old man had called it the monkey trap, after the old fable where you catch monkeys because they won’t let go of a handful of pebbles hidden in a small hole. It was instinct that made us want to hold on to something when someone tried to take it away. The old man had spent considerable time training that instinct out of Robi.

  John didn’t have the advantage of a master thief’s tutelage.

  Swearing like an airshipman, the deputy shifted his grip on the broom. Robi saw the muscles in his shoulder tense.

  “Let go!” she yelled.

  Enraged, the deputy put his foot against the cage and pulled with all his strength. Apparently the rational part of John’s brain chose that moment to begin working again. He released the broom, holding his hands up in an effort to placate the deputy.

  The broom snapped free from John’s hands and the deputy flew backward, holding the suddenly free broom. Arms cartwheeling as he staggered back, he fell against the charged bars of Robi’s cell.

  Muscles contracting in asymmetric jerks, the deputy appeared to dance as the shocker crystal pulsed with light, its energy pouring through the bars to the unfortunate man’s body. His mouth hung open as though he wanted to scream, but his contracting chest had forced the air from his lungs. The air smelled of ozone and burnt hair and the bars sizzled and popped. This might have lasted all of ten seconds, but as Robi looked on in sickening fascination, it seemed to take forever.

  The energy crystal sparked, sending out one final pulse of energy, then its light faded. The deputy, freed from the hold of the electrified cage, staggered forward. For a horrifying moment, Robi thought the big man would simply shrug off his encounter with the shocker box. After a single step, however, he dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto his face.

  Time seemed to hang, suspended, in the cell block as Robi looked at John in stunned disbelief.

  Move. The old man’s voice screamed in her mind.

  She dove for the cell door, jamming her memory-wire pick inside. Scrapstalker cages were designed to prevent escape, but they relied on the shocker box for that. The lock was a simple one-pin tumbler like any other cell.

  Easy.

  As she turned the wire back and forth, seeking the lock’s single pin, the crystal in the shocker box crackled and popped. That couldn’t be good.

  Click.

  The wire found the tumbler pin as the hair began standing up on her arm. Robi twisted her wrist and pulled hard.

  Clack.

  She felt the tumbler start to turn and heard the bolt moving, then a mule kicked her in the arm. The room turned suddenly sideways and she could hear John’s voice as if from far away.

  “W-what?” she said as the multiple images of the ceiling slowly resolved themselves into a single one.

  “I said, are you okay?” John’s voice seemed to come from much closer this time. Robi wasn’t sure. But she didn’t want to show weakness to a stranger. She tried to push herself up but her arm stubbornly refused to move. As she focused her attention on it, pain raced up from her wrist to her elbow. It felt as if stinging ants were crawling all over it.

  “What’s the matter?” John asked.

  “Cage got me,” Robi said. “My arm’s numb clea
r up to my elbow. There’s no way I can pick the lock now.”

  John swore. He wasn’t good at it and the obscenity sounded almost comical coming from him.

  “Any chance you can get him to fry himself again?” Robi asked. John shrugged.

  “I don’t see how. You know, he’s going to be powerful mad when he wakes up.”

  “You bet he will,” Robi said. “We need to be gone by then.”

  “How? The broom landed clear over there and I doubt I can lift the deputy up to the …”

  John’s voice just trailed off as he looked in disbelief at the deputy sprawled out between the two cells. Then his face split into a wide grin.

  Damnation.

  He’d done it again—figured something out before Robi had seen it. It was getting annoying, especially from someone trained to be a lab monkey. She resolved to keep an eye on John for the foreseeable future.

  “Well?” she said, expectantly.

  Without answering, John reached through the bars of his cell and took hold of the deputy’s arm. He braced himself against the iron bars and pulled, sliding the unconscious man next to the cell. With that done, he removed the deputy’s key ring from his belt.

  Robi felt her mouth fall open for a second. She’d been so fixated on picking the lock on the Scrapstalker cage that she forgot there were other ways out. John told her that the shocker box could be simply turned off if he could just reach it.

  After a few moments of fumbling, John selected a long iron key and stepped to his cell door. One deft twist of the key later, and John stood outside the cell.

  “It will take a minute for the cell to lose its charge,” he said, moving to the open shocker box.

  Robi nodded her approval.

  “I should have seen that,” she said. “You’re pretty bright—even if you didn’t grow up on the streets.”

  “You’re right,” John said, fixing her with his eyes.

  Green eyes.

  Stop that!

  “What are you waiting for?” Robi asked when John didn’t move. “He won’t be out forever.”

  “I’m not street smart,” John went on. “I know about growing crystals and I can repair Lantian machines but I don’t know the first thing about finding people. I’ll let you out, but only if you promise to help me track down the woman who stole my crystal.”