The Last Adventure of Constance Verity (31 page)

“Do you think it'll work?” asked Tia.

“It was a compelling argument,” said Hiro, causing Tia to jump.

“It won't work,” said Connie. “Not for long. But maybe for a short while, they'll pretend to cooperate.”

The leaders stepped forward.

“Okay,” said Bonita. “We'll do things your way.”

“For now,” added the Countess with a sinister smile.

“Now, why would you say that?” asked Mr. Prado.

The Countess dropped her smile. “Say what?”

“You know what you said,” replied the sister. “That's practically admitting you're going to betray everyone.”

“I didn't say anything about betrayal.”

“Didn't you?” Prado stabbed the air with his finger. “I'm watching you.”

The Countess folded her arms across her chest. “Your suspicion wounds me.”

“I'm not the one dressed like a junior Nazi.”

The gathering erupted into argument.

Connie whistled. “We can all agree that everybody will betray everybody at some point. Just not right now.”

Everyone murmured and nodded.

“Good enough,” said Connie.

The Engine rumbled around them. The floor retracted and minions near the edge tumbled into smooth metal funnels hidden beneath. The wall moved, pushing everyone into the abyss. Like a giant sorting machine, the room shoved everyone into a tube. Connie lost sight of Tia in the crowd.

She plummeted down a smooth metallic slide and into the darkness below.

T
he slide carried Connie deeper into the Engine, depositing her in a small room. Root, his trusty giant butler Farnsworth, and his skull-helmeted soldiers had ended up there with her. Several of them pointed their rifles at her.

“Christ, already?” She didn't bother standing. “I thought we agreed to cooperate.”

Root smiled. “We all knew that was a lie.”

“Is this the part where you explain to me it's nothing personal?”

“If I'm being honest, it is very personal. I don't like you, Verity. It's nothing you've done to me. It's what you represent. You are an ever-present reminder that I am nothing, unimportant. Do you have any idea of how discouraging life can be when every day, you're reminded that there's a grand cosmic plan and you aren't worthy of being an important part of it? No, of course you don't.”

“Petty jealousy?” she asked. “That's your motivation?”

“There's nothing petty about it. I was like you once. When I was born, a fairy godmother came and blessed me with a life of adventure.”

“Hey, I thought you looked familiar,” said Thelma.

“It was glorious,” said Root. “I did extraordinary things. Like you do every day. And then, after a year, it stopped. Do you have any idea what it's like being a boy with a lifetime of adventure ahead of you, only to have that fade away? I'd had a taste of something grander, and then I was expected to simply forget about it and fall in line. It was maddening. I promised myself I'd find a way to get it back. And finally I have. Here, in the heart of the Engine, I will have the role permanently implanted in my soul. I shall ascend from a mere gear in the works to its master.”

“I don't think it works that way,” said Thelma.

“What do you know, you accursed godmother?” he replied. “I've spent decades researching the Engine and its secrets. The true purpose, unknown to anyone but myself, is the creation of a cosmic avatar, a godlike being who shall sit at the center of creation with absolute power. The caretaker spell is the final component, forged through thousands of years of—”

“I don't give a damn about whatever crazy theory you've decided upon.” Connie stood. “I don't have the spell on me.”

“You're lying.”

Connie held up her hands. “Search me.”

Root nodded to one of his soldiers, who gave her a quick frisking. He found nothing.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Don't know,” she lied. “I think my ninja ex-boyfriend stole it during the sorting fiasco.”

“Then you're no good to me,” he said.

She lowered her hands. “I hate to break it to you, but this isn't how I die. I'm fated for a glorious death.”

“You were.” Root chuckled. “You gave that up with your caretaker enchantment.”

Connie hadn't forgotten. She'd hoped Root had.

The room shuddered as a hole opened in the center and a pillar with a glittering white orb rose up. The orb bathed everything in a twinkling white light.

Root and his men turned toward the orb. He shielded his eyes with his hand.

“The heart,” he said with breathless reverence. “The soul that drives the Engine.”

Connie stepped back.

“It's beautiful.” He reached toward it.

It wasn't. It had the tacky appeal of a disco ball under a spotlight, but Root saw what he wanted to see. The orb cast a hypnotic glow. Connie felt it pulling at her, but she'd had enough experience to resist.

Root removed the orb from the pedestal and stared into the hypnotic depths that weren't there but that he imagined he saw. His men lowered their weapons and stood transfixed. The light burned brighter. Connie turned away and shut her eyes.

Everyone else started screaming. It didn't take long.

The light faded. Root's soldiers were nothing more than piles of ash. Root himself had been transformed into a twisted crystalline skeleton clutching the blackened orb booby trap in his clawed hands.

Farnsworth, the mountain of a butler Farnsworth, had resisted the trap. He touched the skeleton. It shattered into a thousand bits.

“He's dead now,” said Connie. “What kind of henchman are you? The kind that's in it for the paycheck? Or the kind that feels the needs to avenge his boss's death?”

“Hadn't thought about it. The first one, I suppose.”

Connie picked his hat off the floor and handed it to him. “So, we're good, then?”

Farnsworth nodded. “We're good.”

Tia clung to a giant gear, dangling over a long, long fall. She wasn't clear on how she'd ended up there. It was a slide, bouncing off other people, searching for anything to hold onto. When it ended, she'd been deposited on a slick platform. A soldier in front of her had too much momentum and plunged into the abyss of gears and cranks. Another clung for a few seconds before his grip gave out, and he cried out before getting caught between a giant pair of cogs and being squished between them.

Tia held on. She had experience with this. She'd clung to ledges, hung over yawning chasms more than any normal person should. Tia struggled to pull herself up, but every kick
of her legs only loosened her grip. She didn't panic. Connie would be there. She was always there. She didn't have her spell, but she was Connie.

The gear she held onto slowly cranked its way toward an interlocking cog. In a few moments, she'd have to go up or down to avoid being pulped.

Connie was taking her sweet time.

Tia aimed for the giant pendulum. If she was lucky, she might make it. If not, she'd probably land in a grinding collection of cogs and gears, but it was a chance she'd have to take.

Connie grabbed Tia by the arm and pulled her up. Except it wasn't Connie.

“I've got you,” said Hiro.

She took hold of his sleeve. Hiro slipped, almost plummeting off the edge with her. After a minute of swearing and grunting and several near-fatal missteps, Tia managed to get on solid ground. She lay on her back and caught her breath.

“Thanks.”

He knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Just give me a minute.”

“I'm afraid that is a minute you don't have,” said the Countess as a platform lowered from above. She stepped onto their gear.

Hiro threw a dart. The Countess plucked it from her neck, remaining on her feet.

“Charming. After our last encounter, I had an antitoxin created for your poison.”

“Now, that's not very fair,” he said. “But I should warn you that I am a master ninja.”

She improbably pulled a rapier from her long coat and pointed it at him. “Very well, master ninja. Show me what you've got.”

He unleashed a leaping kick. She sidestepped it, slashed a cut across his side. He threw several punches. She avoided them with ease and stabbed him in the stomach. The wounds were shallow, but only because she was enjoying playing with him. She drew her blade across his shoulder and another across his cheek.

“I've never killed a ninja before,” she said. “I was hoping it would be more of a challenge.”

She stabbed as Hiro disappeared in a puff of smoke. The smoke cleared. He was nowhere to be seen, but there was an awful lot of blood on her sword.

Tia put up her fists.

“Oh, how cute.” The Countess removed a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the blood from her weapon. “I'll be with you in one moment.”

She whirled around and placed the tip of her sword on Hiro's throat.

“Sneaky, sneaky.” The Countess took a step toward him. Her blade drew a trickle of red as he moved back, toward the edge of the cog. “You continue to disappoint me, master ninja. You should've kept hiding.”

Tia plowed into the Countess with mixed results. The
Countess herself barely budged, but her sword nicked Hiro's throat. He kicked her in the chest. It pushed her a few feet, but he felt like he'd broken a few toes.

“Damn it, lady,” said Hiro. “What are you made of?”

“She can't take both of us,” said Tia.

“I'm trying to protect you,” he said.

“I don't need your protection,” said Tia. “I am not a damsel in distress.”

“Didn't I just save you from a long fall?”

“Didn't I just save you from having your throat ripped open?”

“I was handling it,” said Hiro.

“You can't take her,” said Tia.

“Well, you certainly can't take her if I can't take her. Don't you usually hide behind Connie in situations like this?”

“Don't you?”

The Countess cleared her throat. “Can we get on with this?”

Tia and Hiro rushed the Countess, who knocked them both off their feet. Tia wasn't certain how, but that was happening a lot today.

The Countess placed her foot on Hiro's chest and pressed her blade against his chest. “You were a dreadful disappointment.”

The Engine chimed. A hammer swept through the air, missing the gear by a few precious feet. Tia and Hiro, lying prone, avoided the deadly pendulum. The Countess was smashed with enough force to hurl her unceremoniously into the machinery.

“I was just about to take her out,” he said.

“Sure you were, tiger.” Tia helped him to his feet.

He leaned heavily on her. Most of the wounds were shallow, but they bled. And there was a gash in his lower abdomen that looked bad. Tia didn't ask him about it. He would've only put on a macho act for her.

“Son of a bitch.” He groaned. “Would you be careful? That hurts like hell.”

Or not.

The Engine gonged. They braced themselves for a flying saw blade or crushing block. Instead, the gear stopped rotating and descended deeper into the heart of the Engine.

“That was a brave thing you did,” said Tia. “Stupid, but brave.”

“There comes a time in every ninja-slash-thief's life when he has to make a stand.”

“I wouldn't make a habit of it.”

“I wasn't planning on it,” he said with a pained smile.

C
onnie was confronted by a deadly series of traps and puzzles as she moved deeper into the Engine. There was a poisonous gas room, which she beat by simply holding her breath. She shimmied through a grid of lasers and ran across a fall-away floor. She opened a locked door by knowing the actual equation for relativity rather than Einstein's near miss. She solved a fifth-dimensional holograph jigsaw puzzle, wrestled a mechanical shark, and avoided being impaled on shooting spikes. She navigated a maze of black holes and jumped through erupting flames.

None of it was difficult. Not for her. She'd run across dangers of this sort before. The gauntlet was a series of tests. Only someone who had lived Connie's life could navigate them all easily.

She didn't think about Tia and Hiro. They could take care of themselves. There was only one way through the Engine, and she expected to meet them when she reached the end of this trial. She had to believe that to keep her head in the game.

In a room with a narrow walkway over a pool of bubbling acid, she was just in time to see one Twin inevitably betray the other.

“No hard feelings, brother dear,” said Harmony, “but in the end, only one of us can be chosen to save the universe.”

She shoved him into the acid. Shrieking, he disappeared beneath the corrosive pool.

Harmony turned to Connie. “Oh, hello. Turns out you were right about the betrayal.”

“I always am.”