Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) Page 16

  “If we do not meet again in this world. If we do…” she shrugged. “We have no further solutions, and all will be lost.”

  The uniformed Artemis turned and walked back to her car. Oliver watched as it drove away. “Was that you in there driving?” he asked Tyler.

  “I don’t know,” Tyler said. “I don’t remember it.”

  “What did she mean?” Oliver asked Artemis. “You didn’t expect to see me?”

  “Mr. Jones, forgive me for my directness, but I am in a great deal of pain. So…shut up. Surely we have more important things to concern ourselves with right now.”

  “Will you tell me later?”

  Artemis considered that. “Probably not.”

  Oliver cursed under his breath. “What do we do now?” Tyler asked.

  Artemis removed one of Seven’s tablet computers from the picnic basket and turned it on. “We wait,” she said. “It will not take long.”

  Chapter 20

  Not long turned out to be about twenty minutes, during which time Artemis entertained no further questions from either Oliver or Tyler. The girl spent most of the time massaging her temples with her fingers. At one point Tyler asked if she wanted him to run out to find something stronger than aspirin for her to take. “It will not matter,” she said. “The discomfort will continue until I no longer exist in two places at once.” She glanced at the tablet computer on her lap. It displayed a wireframe map of the city, but nothing more.

  “What exactly are we waiting for?” Oliver asked. He barely had the question out before two red dots appeared on the screen. Artemis studied them for a moment, then manipulated the touchscreen to zoom in on one.

  “What’s that?” Tyler asked.

  “It is Sally’s location.”

  “Why are there two of them?” Oliver asked. “Oh, I get it. One of them is the past her, and the other is the her we’re looking for?”

  “How fortunate that we saved you from the cyborgs,” Artemis said. “Who else would be here to point out the obvious to me if we had not?”

  Oliver blinked in surprise. “Um…okay.”

  Artemis shook her head. “I apologize, Mr. Jones. I am not feeling myself at the moment.” She tapped the screen. “You were correct in your assessment. This is Sally’s location.”

  “Where is it?” Tyler asked.

  “It is exactly where she would never think to look,” Artemis said. She sighed. “I could probably have guessed it myself, if I was able to think clearly.”

  “Where?” Oliver asked.

  “It is the house where she and her sister grew up.”

  “They don’t visit their parents much?”

  “Their parents are long dead,” Artemis said. “But that is not the point. They did not have a happy childhood. Sally hates that house more than…more than anything, I should imagine.” Artemis watched for a moment as another airship passed by overhead. “We will be needing the car, Mr. Jacobsen.”

  The Rain house was in the suburbs on the outskirts of the city, closer to the combat area than Oliver would have liked. The black smoke that he’d seen rising in the distance before was now uncomfortably close, although he knew it was still many miles from their position. Every now and then he saw military jets overhead, patrolling in groups of four. There didn’t seem to be any imminent danger, but he hoped this wouldn’t be a lengthy visit. Lieutenant Forrest hadn’t been exaggerating back at the hanger where they’d crossed into this world. The war really wasn’t going well.

  “Should we be armed for this?” Tyler asked. “I doubt Sally is going to be happy to see us.”

  “There is little point to that,” Artemis noted. “Even if you were willing to shoot her, which I know you are not, do you think you could outdraw her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “She shouldn’t be expecting us,” Oliver said. “She doesn’t know what happened back on our Earth.”

  “She will know the moment she sees us,” Artemis said. “I do not expect her to take it well. While I doubt there will be a physical confrontation, you should both prepare yourselves to attempt to restrain her. Your werewolf strength may be needed, Mr. Jacobsen.”

  “I doubt it would make any difference,” Tyler said.

  “She’s really that good?” Oliver asked.

  “You’ve seen her fight,” Tyler said. “She’d wipe the floor with me no matter what form I was in. I’d put money on her over pretty much anyone, except maybe Maria. That was another reason we wanted her with us.”

  Oliver recalled seeing what the vampire had done to a room full of cyborgs. He wondered what it would have been like if she and Sally had come to blows. Regardless of who won, the collateral damage would probably have been fairly impressive.

  Artemis pointed to a small, two-story house with a “for sale” sign on the front yard. The house and the entire neighborhood appeared abandoned. Oliver hadn’t seen a single person outside and nearly every house on this block had its windows boarded up. The proximity to the war front had probably driven most of the people here away, he thought. Nobody wanted to be home when the cyborgs came marching through backyards, converting everyone they could get their hands on and shooting everyone else. Oliver found it hard to blame them. He wondered where the refugees had gone, not that the answer would have meant much to him. This world was similar to his own in many ways, but he had no idea exactly what territory the American Federation encompassed, or how much of it had been conquered.

  Tyler pulled the car up to the front of the house and killed the engine. “I really don’t want to be doing this.”

  “We can’t have everything we want in life,” Artemis snapped. “I know I certainly haven’t.” She stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut behind her.

  “What was that?” Oliver asked.

  “Her head is really messing with her,” Tyler said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

  “Is there something we can do?”

  Tyler sighed. “I don’t understand what’s going on with her,” he said, “but I know there’s something strange about how she interacts with time.” He watched as the girl started up the steps to the house. “I don’t think it’s so much that she’s lived a long time. I think time just forgot about her at some point, and being here, it’s remembering her.”

  “That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Oliver said.

  “I just told you I don’t understand it,” Tyler said. “You know what my job here is? I eat too much, I geek out over aliens, and I turn into a big-ass wolf when somebody needs to get smacked around. This shit is way above my pay grade.”

  Oliver stared at him. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Tyler said. “I don’t want to be here right now. I would rather fight the whole damn cyborg army by myself than walk in there and tell Sally her sister has to die.”

  “Wait…that’s what we’re doing?” Oliver didn’t recall hearing this part of the plan, but then again, he wasn’t exactly sure what their plan was supposed to have been.

  “Why the hell do you think we’re here?” Tyler asked. He got out of the car.

  Oliver followed him a moment later and they joined Artemis at the front door. Artemis rang the doorbell. A minute passed with no response. Oliver took a step back and looked at the house. All of the blinds were shut, and he couldn’t see anything that looked like someone peeking out at them. “You sure she’s here?” he asked.

  “Quite sure, Mr. Jones.” She rang the bell again. “Open the door, Salera!”

  After another moment the door slowly opened. Sally Rain stood there in camouflage pants and a white tank top, looking as if she’d neither slept nor bathed in quite some time. She looked at the three of them in turn, finally turning to Artemis with a sigh. “Damn it,” she said quietly. “It didn’t work.”

  “Might we come in, Salera?” Artemis asked.

  Sally stepped aside and Artemis brushed past her into the house. “Hi,” Oliver said.

  “Hi.” She gave him a small
smile. “Hey there, T.”

  Tyler shoved his hands into his pockets and went inside the house. After a moment, Oliver followed him. Sally closed the door behind them.

  The front door led straight into the house’s living room. There was little furniture other than an old couch, a dusty coffee table, and a few mismatched chairs that looked like they’d been collected from other rooms. A military radio unit sat on the coffee table, squawking every now and again with chatter. Next to it sat a holstered pistol. Oliver wasn’t particularly surprised that a house for sale in a neighborhood where nobody wanted to live didn’t exactly look like a home. Nor was he surprised to see a red-haired woman with her right wrist handcuffed to one of the chairs. She wore a blue lab coat and also looked as if she hadn’t been sleeping much lately, or at least not sleeping very well.

  “Artemis,” the woman said. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Hello, Linnea. It is refreshing to see you again, although I regret these circumstances. You already know Mr. Jacobsen,” she said, nodding at Tyler. “This other gentleman is our associate, Mr. Jones.” She took a seat near Linnea across from the couch. Tyler sat down next to her.

  “Oliver,” he introduced himself, looking into Linnea’s emerald eyes. The family resemblance was striking. Linnea could nearly have been Sally’s twin, except that she was at least five years younger and somehow didn’t seem to have the edge that Sally did. Sally was a lioness always ready to pounce. Linnea was a lioness who had better things to do with her time.

  Sally took a seat on the couch. “There’s food in the kitchen,” she said to Tyler. “It’s all convenience store stuff I picked up. Nothing good.”

  “We had sausage rolls,” Tyler said, not looking at her.

  “You had sausage rolls,” Oliver noted.

  Sally smiled faintly. “You always did like those.” She sighed. “So,” she said to Artemis. “What went wrong?”

  “Might you release your sister from confinement before we speak? She looks quite uncomfortable.”

  Linnea rattled the handcuffs binding her to the chair. “That would be nice.”

  Sally looked her sister in the eyes. “Only if you promise not to try to run away again. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Linnea rattled the handcuffs again. “I’m not entertaining the idea I could get past you,” she glanced at Artemis briefly. “At least not while you’re conscious. Take these damn things off me.”

  Sally stood up, crossed over to where her sister sat, and uncuffed her. Linnea rubbed her wrist with her left hand. “Thank you.”

  “Please sit down,” Artemis said. Sally took her seat on the couch again. “I will not pretend I do not understand your motivations here, Salera…”

  “Don’t call me that,” Sally said. “Only my sister gets to use that name.”

  “Very well.” Artemis looked at Linnea. “What did she tell you?”

  “Everything,” Linnea said. “I can’t say I believed any of it, at first. I thought she’d finally lost her mind. And then I heard her voice on that radio saying I’d gone missing, when I was sitting right here with her.” She shook her head. “Time travel. I had enough trouble believing you were from another world, until I saw you walk through that mirror with my own eyes. I’m not sure why I was so surprised you had a time machine, too.”

  Artemis nodded. “And I’m not sure why I was so surprised your sister used it to try to save you. Well, tea seems in order. Do you have any?”

  “There’s some in the kitchen,” Sally said. “I think you got me hooked on the stuff. I missed it when I got over here.”

  Artemis nodded at Tyler, who disappeared into the kitchen. Oliver, who hadn’t been entirely sure what to do with himself up until this point, took one of the empty chairs. “You tricked me,” he said to Sally.

  “Yeah.” Sally looked away. “I’m…I’m sorry about that, Oliver. I really am. I would have just asked you to help me, but…”

  “You thought I wouldn’t?”

  “No. I know you would have. You’re that kind of guy. But you said you had to believe.” She shook her head. “You said you had to believe, so I told you the time machine worked. I hid its number tag in the warehouse so you couldn’t look it up and see that it didn’t.”

  Oliver nodded. “I’d sort of guessed that. It seemed weird that everything else was in place but that one number was nowhere to be found.”

  “It was an ambitious plan, Sally,” Artemis said. “I won’t deny that. How did you imagine it would succeed?”

  “The Kholon facility should have been bombed yesterday,” Sally said. “It wasn’t. I must have gotten the timing wrong. We just have to wait now. They’re so close to the cure, as soon as they finish it…”

  “I’m close to the cure, Sal,” Linnea said. “Me. I don’t want to sound arrogant here, but…” she glanced at Artemis. “I guess this isn’t the place for false modesty, is it?”

  “It is not.”

  “My research is years ahead of everybody else’s.” Linnea left her chair and went to sit next to Sally on the couch. “Even if the rest of my team understood my notes, which they don’t, they wouldn’t know where to start with it. Hell, I wasn’t even sure it would work, myself. Now that I know it does, I could finish it in a few hours.”

  Sally nodded. Oliver saw tears starting to form in her eyes. “Then they just need to get to work,” she said. “Radio them and tell them what to do.”

  “You’re asking me to explain algebra to a monkey. Over the phone.” Linnea shook her head. “It has to be me.”

  “Sally?” Oliver asked. “Look, I’m sorry, but this plan…it didn’t work. You lost.”

  Linnea looked at Artemis. “You wouldn’t be here if we’d won the war,” she said. “How bad was it?”

  “This planet was conquered,” Artemis said. “I would expect that, two months from now, there will not be a single unconverted human left alive.”

  “Gods,” Linnea whispered. “I knew we were losing, but…” she shook her head. “I still had some hope.”

  “Unfortunately, you were the hope, Linnea, and your sister has removed you from the equation. In the correct timeline, you cured the cyborg contagion and saved the world. And, in effect, my own.” Artemis looked at Sally. “When the cyborgs finished conquering this world, they used their teleportation technology to invade ours. Their victory is assured there, as well. It is only a matter of time.”

  Sally wrung her hands together. “There has to be another way.”

  “How long has it been since you slept?” Oliver asked.

  “A while.” She nodded at Linnea. “This one keeps yelling at me.”

  “You tricked me into coming out here and handcuffed me to a chair.”

  “You kept trying to run away!”

  “Imagine that!”

  “Enough,” Artemis said. She rubbed her temples as Tyler returned from the kitchen with two Styrofoam cups full of tea. He sat them down on the table and headed back for more. Artemis picked up her cup, sniffed it, and made a face. “I suppose this will have to do.”

  “It was all they had at the store,” Sally said.

  Artemis sipped the tea and put her cup back down. “It is time we end this, Sally.”

  “I’m not letting her go until after the bombing,” Sally said. “She can go somewhere else and finish her work then.”

  “I’d have to start over. Everything I have is at Kholon,” Linnea said. “The war will be over by the time I’m done.”

  “Then somebody else can do it.”

  “We just went over this,” Linnea sighed. “Do you really think if anyone else could do it I wouldn’t be on that radio right now?” She looked at Artemis. “Maybe since I know there’s an attack coming, there’s a chance? I don’t need long to make it work. I could get in and get out, or at least evacuate the others.”

  “The weapon,” Sally said. “Use the weapon, instead. You finished that.”

  Linnea’s eyes widened sl
ightly. “How do you even know about that thing?”

  “It was…”

  “Your code was discovered at a later time,” Artemis interrupted. “After the cure was deployed.”

  Linnea took a deep breath. “Well, thank god for that. I was never going to release it, not unless it was the last thing standing between the human race and extinction. It’s monstrous, Sal. It doesn’t just shut down the A.I.; it kills the bots and the hosts die. There’s no way to bring them back.”

  “So what?” Sally asked. “You’ll live. The cyborgs will be dead. The other world never gets invaded. We win.” She looked at Artemis. “Would that satisfy you?”

  “Do you think this is about my satisfaction?” Artemis asked. “I assure you, regardless of what happens next, I will not be satisfied in any sense of the word.”

  Linnea took her sister by the shoulder. “Look at me, Sal. There are twenty million cyborgs out there. Do you really think I’d murder all of them just to save my own skin? Really?”

  “They aren’t people anymore,” Sally said. “They’re robots.”

  “They’re really not,” Linnea shook her head. “They’re just lost.”

  Sally grimaced. “You can’t make her go,” she said to Artemis. “I won’t let you.”

  “I have no intention of making her do anything,” Artemis said. “I have only advised you of the facts of the situation. You may do as you please, Linnea, but I suspect you have already made your decision.” Artemis went back to drinking her horrible tea. Tyler returned to the room with two more Styrofoam cups, handing one to Oliver and putting the other down in front of Linnea. Oliver sipped his tea. He had never been much of a tea drinker before he’d met Artemis and didn’t have much of a palate for it, but even he knew what was in his cup was awful. Tyler took a seat next to Artemis and waited.

  “You’re not leaving,” Sally said to Linnea. “I don’t care. I’ll let the world burn before I lose you again.”

  Linnea sighed. “Those really are the only two choices here, aren’t they? You really would, wouldn’t you? Let our world burn?”

  “Of course I would. You’re my sister.”