23. Chapter 23
Chapter 23
F or Will, his father’s study had always been a room for reprieve and research. Before he’d left for Boston, and when he came back during breaks, they could spend hours here, just the two of them, reading and debating and bouncing design ideas off each other. This and the little working room at the back of his father’s shop were Will’s favorite two places in Hartford.
Now, with six people in it, the bookshelf-lined study seemed too crowded and too small. Will’s parents were behind the desk, with his father sitting down; across from it sat Sylvia, with James standing behind her and clutching her shoulders. Emily lounged on the window shelf, arms folded. Will took a corner behind the desk, where he could inspect their expressions.
“We all know the basics,” his father began. He brought out Eggy and the pendant and displayed them on the desk. Will had given them to him to examine earlier, and Father confirmed what Will had already figured out—that a device like Eggy was used to reshape and repair almonite barrels, and this one could create them. The pendant, indeed, appeared to be raw almonite. “Sir Richard Ross designed this device. With it, he could revive time travel—as long as he found people already able to travel. However, he appears less interested in the device and more in his wife.”
“And not in the right way,” Mother murmured.
Sylvia kept her eyes on the floor.
“Then we have this.” Father added a third item to the desk—a vial of dark liquid Emily had snatched in the lab. “Lady Ross. I know it was a traumatic experience for you, but we’ll need the details. Can you tell us?”
Sylvia nodded and raised her eyes. “He didn’t explain much, but he talked with his partner. The thing I was strapped to, they called the extraction machine. It was experimental, but my husband insisted they use it. They kept me drugged, so I don’t remember much … but it had spikes, tiny needles, and they’d eat into my hand, and they’d leave it there …” She sniffled, and Will hid to use all of his strength not to go to her and try to console her. Instead, James rubbed her shoulders and whispered something in her ear.
“She was still on it when I found her,” Emily said. “If I overheard correctly, they’d already gotten some of the liquid out of her. I think Ross was taking the sample away when I snuck in.”
James whipped his head around. “Out of her?”
Emily nodded. “That thing in the vial came straight from Sylvia. Maybe it was refined or extracted on the way, but there were needles in her arms, and tubes leading to a box, and this came out.”
“Well, that is a curious problem.” Father rubbed his chin. “Because this thing is almonite.”
A rush of murmurs passed over the study.
Will held up the vial to his eye level. “The same almonite as the serum? ”
“I have no means to examine it, but I think not quite,” his father responded. “It is almonite, but a variation I’d never seen before. I have a friend in Washington who could help with a detailed chemical analysis. But we’ll need to take precautions, and it could take days, if not weeks.”
“But Lady Ross is not a time traveler.”
“Pardon my ignorance,” James said, “but how do we know she’s not?”
“She’d need to have almonite serum injected at some point in her life,” Father said. “But that’s improbable, if not impossible. Serum injections had been strictly regulated by the Watchers. All supplies had been destroyed before Lady Ross was even born.”
“Well, some survived.” Mother gave Will a sly, secretive smile.
“Some?” James asked.
Father cleared his throat and rifled through his desk drawers, pulling out a long, thin vial, its bottom still smudged dark blue from a dried drop of remaining liquid.
Emily unglued herself from the window. “What is it?”
“It was in the stack of the almonite serum Henson was using on me,” Mother said. “This was a slight alteration to the original—it worked only temporary, for emergencies, I believe?”
Father nodded.
“I accidentally took one when we were, uh, conducting some research. Brayden never returned it.”
“I didn’t get the opportunity,” Father grumbled.
“Sure you didn’t, honey.” Mother leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.
Feeling his own cheeks color slightly, Will redirected his gaze to Emily. “It was the one I took. That’s how I became a time traveler.”
“But you said it was only temporary. ”
“Apparently, when the virus mutates to create Leaders, it doesn’t matter. The mutation is permanent.”
“All right, so there may have been other vials,” James said. “But I’m pretty sure Sylvia never got one. I’d never seen any, and I’ll be damned if my parents were time travelers. Mother would have a fit. Father only cared about gambling and horses.”
Emily’s eyes grew wide, and she spun around in a circle. “No, but that’s not the only way to get infected!” She clapped her hands together. “Will, remember what you told me? Before they learned to extricate the serum, people would deliberately infect themselves with raw almonite. It could harm them, even kill them, but if they survived and adapted to the virus, they became time travelers.”
“Yes,” Will said cautiously.
Emily touched Sylvia’s shoulder to get her attention. “You said you were sick recently. When your hair fell out.”
“Yes, last year. I had a fever, body aches, I was constantly fatigued … it would not go away for months.” Sylvia clutched her brother’s hand. “Doctor told Mama he wasn’t sure if I’d make it. He could not figure out what was wrong with me. Then, suddenly, the symptoms disappeared. Nothing changed in medications, environment, I just … got better.”
“And you’ve always worn that pendant.” Emily waited for Sylvia’s confirmation, then added, “Did you ever get a scratch near it? Could it have come in contact with your blood?”
Sylvia frowned. “Shortly before the disease began, I got scratched by a branch while riding. The scratch was somewhere”—she touched her collarbone—“here.”
“When I was little and got infected, I got sick, too,” Emily said. “Sylvia could’ve gotten the virus through the pendant, and because she survived it—”
“She’s now a time traveler,” Will concluded.
“What?” Sylvia shot from the chair. “No, I’m not.”
“You wouldn’t know if you were. We can test it with a watch,” Emily said.
Sylvia shook her head wildly. “I won’t do any such thing.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Will said. “Whether she can or not is not important. Ross didn’t intend to use her in that manner. He wanted to get the almonite out of her.”
“Does he want to use it himself? Do we know if he is a time traveler or just an enthusiast?” Emily asked.
“Two problems.” Father tapped his fingers on the smooth surface of the desk. “One, you can’t extract almonite from someone’s body and expect it to work as a serum. Once injected and mutated, it’s done—useful only to the person in whose body it is. Two, Ross is too young to be initiated into the Watchers when they still existed. So unless he found other means, he’s not a time traveler.”
“He didn’t use my pendant,” Sylvia said. “I would’ve known if he’d gotten ill.”
“But he did see it? And did he know you’d been sick?” Emily asked. Sylvia nodded. “Then he put two and two together, like we did. And he carted Sylvia off to Boston so his partner could stick her into the machine.”
Sylvia creased her eyebrows. “And Ralkin also said …”
The rest of her words faded as Will’s mind gripped and solely focused on that word. Ralkin .
“Ralkin?” His loud voice immediately drew everyone else’s attention. “You said Ralkin?”
Sylvia nodded.
“Have you seen him? How did he look like?”
“Seen? She’d hit him on the head, real good,” Emily snorted. “In his forties, dark hair, bit of a beard like this …” She drew on her face with her fingers.
“Sir Richard called him Professor once,” Sylvia added.
“And his house, where he kept you—is it in Back Bay?”
Emily nodded.
Will shifted from his friend to the concerned looks of his parents.
“What’s wrong?” Mother asked.
“Ralkin is—was—my professor at Boston Tech. He’s … I should be working for him right now as a part of the university’s research team. If it weren’t for this time travel business …” Will shook his head. “He teaches electrical engineering. I never would’ve thought …”
“I don’t remember any Ralkin being in the Watchers,” Father said. “But only the American branch had over a hundred members, and I didn’t know all of them. If he’s in his forties, he would’ve been young when the Watchers fell apart. It’s possible he’d only been initiated.”
“Well, I’d be pissed if someone offered me time travel and didn’t deliver on it,” Emily muttered. “Maybe he’s doing it for revenge? Trying to get more almonite to create his own group?”
“Professor Ralkin is not like that.”
“He kidnapped and tortured my sister,” James said sharply. “Clearly, you don’t know him that well.”
The accusation stung, but Will also recognized the truth in it. How blind had he been? How many other things had he also perceived wrong ?
“What is done is done,” Mother said, giving Will a small, consoling smile. “Perhaps it’s best you didn’t know. You could’ve gotten yourself in danger.”
“Sneaky professors aside,” Emily said, “what do we do with Sylvia? I reckon they’re still gonna want her.”
“We can hide,” James said. “We’ll go somewhere else. We won’t tell anyone, not even you. We’ll change names, appearances—it’s going to be fine. We can go to Asia or South America—I’ve heard of gold in Bolivia …”
Will’s chest squeezed at the thought. Sylvia would leave. Disappear. Forever. He didn’t dare to look at her, but from the corner of his eye, he caught her shaking off James’s hand.
“No!” She burst. “I know you mean well, James, but I’m tired of this. I won’t be carted around like some desirable object. I want my life back.” With a gaze more fiery and decisive than Will had ever seen in her, she swept over the gathered company. “Sir Richard intended to take this thing out of me and was succeeding. If he could do it, could we not? I want it out. Please.”
Father stroked his chin. “I never came across a design that could extricate almonite, but medicine is not my specialty. However, it is a specialty of an old colleague of mine. Dr. Deniau. She was a member of the Watchers, and we’d worked on a project once that combined almonite with medicine, healing. If you want this procedure, she’s your best chance to figure it out. However, the last I heard of her, she was in France. Paris.”
“Then I shall go to Paris,” Sylvia said determinedly.
“And I’ll go with you,” James added.
“I should mention that Dr. Deniau is an acquired taste,” Father said. “She is … very passionate about science. Up to the point where she may sometimes value it over human life. ”
James and Sylvia exchanged a worried look. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“It means someone with the knowledge of time travel and the workings of almonite might be necessary, so they can double-check and rein her in if needed.”
All the eyes, except for Sylvia’s, turned to Will. His pulse picked up. His heart leaped at the thought of accompanying Sylvia—but everything else in his body resisted. You know it’s bad idea. It would’ve been better if she left and disappeared.
“I’ll go,” he choked out. Avoiding looking at her, he instead focused on his father. “You can tell me everything you know of Dr. Deniau.”
“Good.” Father tapped on the desk again, then swiveled to Sylvia. “That leaves one problem. Going to France and getting this sorted out doesn’t mean your husband and Ralkin will cease to exist. Something must be done about them.”
“If Sylvia’s going to Paris, maybe we can spy after them. Gather evidence.” Slightly uncertain, Emily looked around the room and shrugged. “I can’t go to France. I might as well do something here.”
“I’ve met Ross before, and I know something of his work in London,” James said. “If we get proof of his misdeeds, maybe even the murder he’s committed, we could put him away for good.”
“I’ll see if I can get something on Ralkin if he used to be one of us,” Father said.
“And I can spy after them,” Emily said.
James rolled his shoulders. “And if everything else fails, I guess I can shoot them.”
“James!” Sylvia exclaimed indignantly. “You will not! Besides, you’re going with me. ”
“Silly, if Marshall knows what needs to be done, you don’t need me. I was terrible at science at university, anyway.”
“But …” Sylvia’s gaze finally met Will, and she colored slightly.
“This seems like a great plan to me,” Mother said. “Will and Lady Ross will go to Paris to get the almonite out. Mr. Winters and Emily will stand guard in Boston. Brayden and I will try to get more info on our friends.”
Father rubbed her hand. “Does everyone agree with this?”
Emily and James nodded. Sylvia followed with a brief delay. Again, all eyes turned to Will.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you wait a few days?” Father said. “We’ll try to arrange you a passage under different names. And not from Boston.”
“Besides, Lorraine is hosting a dinner tomorrow,” Mother added, smiling to disperse the tense mood. “If you don’t come, she’ll have to assume I chased all my guests away.”
With a bit more chitchat and discussion of plans, the room cleared out. Only Emily lingered and approached Will and his father. “Can I talk to you about something?”
Father gestured to the empty chair.
“When I was trying to save Sylvia, I froze time,” Emily began as she sat down. “I tried to time travel on my own because Ralkin had taken my watch—and yes, I know that’s dangerous,” she added as Will opened his mouth, “but I would’ve preferred any other era at that point, even the dinosaurs. Anyway, it’s moot, because it didn’t happen. Instead, I kind of … started passing through objects. My hand slipped through the cuffs. Straight through the metal. And then again through a drawer. The other almonite things I touched—like the bag—also came with me, but regular th ings didn’t.” She wrung her hands in her lap. “Will, you never told me about anything like this.”
“I’d never heard of it.”
“Me neither,” Father said. “But we can assume it’s a consequence of your time stop. When you stop time, you don’t actually do that—you only alter your body, adjust it to a different frequency. Not many people ever tried time freezing, which is why this may not have happened before.”
“But what did happen?” Emily asked.
“You may have shifted to a different frequency. One even beyond those you use in time stopping. Thanks to almonite, you’d altered your body into a state where it could pass through solid objects.”
“Did it hurt?” Will asked.
“No, but it felt weird when I passed through. I could taste the metal.”
“I’d be very careful with it,” Father said. “You were not harmed this time, but we don’t know what could happen.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” Emily stood. “If it’s time travel related, then I’ve got it all under control.” Her lips quivered, like she was trying to hold back a smile.
“Anything else?” Will asked.
She waved her hand. “Nothing, just … god, you two look like clones.” She pointed from Will to his father, then gestured around her face. “I spied after you once, you know. Behind the stables,” she said to Father, then turned to Will. “If I’d have seen him then, there’s no way you could’ve convinced me he’s not your dad.”
She stood, headed for the door, and winked at them as she left.
“Are you sure she’s related to us?” Father asked.
“Hers is a very different time. Anyway, I should … well, surely there’s something I must do.” Will followed in Emily’s tracks .
“Will,” his father’s voice stopped him as he was at the door. “Are you fine with this? Taking Lady Ross to France?”
“Of course. No problem.” And he left before his father could question the tremble in his voice or point out his strange behavior.