The Scarecrow of OZ (25 page)

“I’m not in the habit of apologizing, and I’m not going to start now.”

He didn’t bother to mask the sarcasm in his own voice. “You sure do have a funny way of apologizing.”

“Everything I do serves a purpose.”

He turned on her. “What was the purpose in giving me a fake Dorothy? You didn’t think I was going to figure it out sooner or later?”

She shrugged. “Given enough time, you would have figured it out. But the time we had was short, and you were distracted with the quest. I fully expected all of you to return. I would have disposed of the scarecrow Dorothy, and you would have been reunited with the real one, under the claim that her memories were restored. You quite possibly might never have found out.”

“Why go through all of that?”

“Because of the genetic requirements, Dorothy and her father are the only two people in the world who can operate the Tin Man suit. It was actually Dorothy’s idea to bring a clone of her along to keep you distracted.”

“Well it worked. I fell hook, line, and sinker for your deception.”

She didn’t, nor did she need to, respond.

His eyes traced the distant mountain ranges. “She’s out there, somewhere, with the ultimate weapon and wearing a powered armor suit that is slowly driving her mad. Unless, of course, you’re lying about that too?”

“The Dorothy you knew could never have killed those men in cold blood. But the Dorothy inside that suit, is not the Dorothy any of us remember.”

He shook his head. “Why even invent something that would take you to the brink of insanity, and then push you over the edge the more you used it?”

“I don’t have an answer for that.”

OZ seemed both too large and too small at the same time. Dorothy could be on the other side of the continent, or she could just be on the other side of those mountains.

The Southern Marshal rested a hand on his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, but she wouldn’t be just anywhere. I don’t know where she is, but I do know where she will be. She’s coming here.”

Caleb was simultaneously jerked left and right, and forward and back, as an entire crew of individuals tightened the straps to the thin, and overly light, armor that had been wrapped around him in successive layers. If he ever accepted his position as king over the hybrids, he would have to get used to being dressed by a gaggle of attendants. This whole experience was making him second-guess ever wanting to become royalty.

Benjamin Gale, Dorothy’s father, rolled to a stop in front of him and held up a stubby brass key.

“This will force the Tin Man suit to open from the outside. It’s an emergency safety release, should the operator be too injured to open the suit themselves. The keyhole is at the base of the neck on the back of the suit.”

Caleb took the key and slipped it into the front pocket built into the suit of armor. “Wouldn’t it have been better to make a suit that wouldn’t drive her crazy?”

Benjamin didn’t bother to respond.

Beyond his silence, there was still something he wasn’t saying. The silence dragged out for a few moments until he decided to ask the important question.

“So, how do I get close enough to use the key?”

Benjamin seemed to be struggling with an internal conflict that didn’t seem to fully resolve itself before he replied “I don’t have anything that can disable the suit.”

The realization dawned on him what Benjamin was actually saying. It wasn’t good.

“I have to somehow get on the back of the Tin Man while she’s trying to kill me?”

Benjamin waved his hands about in a chopping motion. “It’s best to think of the Tin Man as a he. Dorothy’s not the one doing this, the suit has changed her.”

“Well, neither of them is going to make this easy.”

“I didn’t say this was going to be easy…”

He joined Benjamin mid-sentence as they both said, “but it has to be done.”

Benjamin almost cracked a smile. Almost, but not quite.

“Dorothy said you were a bit of a smart ass.”

“You should meet Jasper.”

The group finished pulling him in all directions and backed away simultaneously without a word, as if they had done this many times before and didn’t need to speak to know what they should all be doing.

Benjamin rolled backward to look him up and down. Now he smiled.

“How does it feel?”

Caleb flexed his arms, rolled his neck, and alternated standing on one foot and then the next. Despite how tightly the armor plating was strapped to him, he could move as freely as if he were naked.

He inspected the seams between the armor plates. The layering method the dressing crew had used did the job far better than he had expected. There was not a single part of him exposed, except his face.

As if they could read his mind, one of the dressing crew held up the faceplate that would snap into place to seal him inside the suit.

Benjamin seemed very pleased with himself. “Once the faceplate is secure, nothing can touch you. It uses the same flexible armor in the first suit I gave you, which you lost, but can withstand a greater impact due to the layering effect. And it is much lighter than any of my previous designs. You should have no problem holding your own against the Tin Man, but still have the agility to get behind him, use the key, and get my daughter out.”

The Southern Marshal rushed into the room, flanked by six personal bodyguards on either side who did their best to keep up with her and still maintain a level of decorum.

She stopped in front of Benjamin, her guards snapping to attention as they stopped with her.

“She’s here.”

The Tin Man suit was not designed for sneaking around or stealth operations. Why bother with any of that when the Tin Man was designed to withstand every type of conventional weapon known to man? And even some that hadn’t been invented yet.

Forget about sneaking in to the Southern Marshal’s castle. Dorothy could just walk, or more accurately crash, through the front gates and demanded the release of her father.

This is exactly what she did.

Smoke filled the air, along with the accompanying reports of gunfire, from single-shot flintlock pistols, all the way to large-bore cannons. All but the largest cannonballs were useless in slowing her down. Those, she made an effort to dodge after the first one knocked her flat on her back.

She didn’t need to use her grappling craws to clear the way before her. Everybody who stood between her and the castle, fired on her with all manner of weaponry until she got close. Then they scattered in all directions, leaving a clear path for her in the road ahead.

Getting to the castle was proving to be no challenge at all.

It was also no fun at all.

She had enjoyed killing the men who tried to keep her from the weapon. It was exhilarating. No, that wasn’t right. It was…

It was liberating.

She felt free.

She felt powerful.

She had power.

The same power reserved for gods and governments.

She had the power over life and death.

She alone decided who lived and who died.

Without the Tin Man suit, she was at the mercy of everyone around her. She had been weak and had no choice but to trust everyone in a place filled with criminals.

She no longer had to trust anyone but herself.

That was freedom.

Her father warned her that spending too long in the suit would cloud her thinking.

It was just the opposite.

She was now thinking more clearly than she ever had before. She was indestructible and might never take off the suit again.

Caleb used the roofs of the city to maintain a parallel course with the Tin Man…Dorothy. He couldn’t separate the two in his mind once he found out it was Dorothy inside the machine. It was best to think of her as the Tin Man until she was separated from the suit.

She was, after all, the heart of the Tin Man. But that heart was being turned black by the very same machine that gave her strength. The only way to save her was to separate her from the Tin Man. Only then could she begin the road to recovery.

He finally understood what she was talking about when they were first back together at the Southern Marshal’s castle. She had told him she needed someone she could trust to save her when no one else could. She failed to tell him he needed to save her from herself. And that she would try to kill him when he did.

With very little that could stop the Tin Man, or even slow him down, he was working his way through the city at a quicker pace than Caleb was. Caleb would have to run faster if he wanted to keep up with the death machine bearing down on the castle.

He slipped on a loose tile and his foot shot out from under him.

He landed on his side, his momentum propelling him forward toward the edge of the roof. He flailed his arms and legs, trying to catch some purchase with his hands or feet. He flew off the roof and dropped like a rock.

His suit hardened on impact and kept him from being killed after falling five stories, but colliding so sharply with the ground still stunned him for a brief moment. A crowd quickly gathered as he lay unmoving on his back.

He looked up at the faces that peered down from the crowd that huddled around him.

“Do you think he’s dead?” someone asked.

His armored suit softened and he could move again. The crowd shrunk away as he rolled over to his stomach, up to his hands and knees, and stood again. He wobbled slightly as he re-calibrated his bearings and then took off running in the direction of the castle.

“Hey!” Someone shouted from the crowd behind him. “You dropped this.”

A boy held up a stubby brass key, the same key he needed to unlock the Tin Man. He felt his front pocket. It was empty. The key had fallen out when he hit the ground.

He ran back and retrieved the key from the kid, losing precious seconds. Precious seconds that allowed the Tin Man to get closer to the wide open field that separated the castle from the surrounding city. If the Tin Man reached the field before he reached the Tin Man, he would never be able to sneak up behind him unnoticed.

This new suit he was wearing was agile and light, and protected him from blunt force trauma. But, unlike his previous suits, he had no integrated swords, no guns, and no jet pack. The only weapon he had was the element of surprise.

He would lose that if the Tin Man made it to the field first.

He gripped the key tightly; he wasn’t going to trust that to the pocket a second time, and sprinted through the city.

He used the sound of echoing gunfire to gauge the location of the Tin Man. Ahead of him, the tallest spires of the Southern Marshal’s castle were visible above the city rooftops. He kept running until he burst out of the city proper and into the open field.

The gunfire still echoed from inside the city.

Finally, things were looking up for change.

He had made it here ahead of the Tin Man.

Dorothy strolled casually through the streets of the city toward the castle where her father was being held prisoner. The Tin Man suit deflected everything they shot at her.

They had fallen into a steady, if not redundant, rhythm. Defend, retreat. Defend, retreat. Defend, retreat. If her mission wasn’t so serious, it would have been comical. Maybe someday she’d look back on all this and laugh.

The city opened up to reveal the Southern Marshal’s castle on the other side of a wide open field.

Her voice sounded muted and hollow inside the suit as she spoke to herself.

“I’m coming for you, Father.”

All the years wasted.

Her mother had died in her arms, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Every time she went out to find her father, she was returned to Aunt Em’s farm, and there was nothing she could do about that.

She easily, maybe too easily, trusted everyone she met after crashing into the world’s largest prison, only to be betrayed.

And there was nothing she could do about that either.

She felt the bulk of the Tin Man suit around her. The pain and discomfort she first experienced had shifted to numbness the longer she was inside. Her father warned her about staying in the suit too long.

He was wrong.

The suit wasn’t just changing her. It was improving her.

Her father would see. She would make him see.

She would show him she was a better human being when she was the Tin Man.

She didn’t need anybody else. She finally had someone she could rely on who would never betray her.

She had herself.

Nothing would stop her. Nothing could stop her. She was invincible now that she had the hybrid weapon integrated into the suit. A finger played with the button that matched the symbol on the pyramid. She looked at the burn on her hand and then across the field to the thick stone walls that protected the castle.

It was time to see just how much power she had.

She pushed the button and the clockwork mechanisms inside the suit twisted the capstone on the pyramid.

There was no loud sound. There was no blinding light. There was nothing at all.

But a section of castle wall crumbled to dust as if it had aged a thousand years in a second. She held her finger down until the hole in the wall was big enough for her to walk through unhindered. She released the button and the castle wall stopped breaking apart. A few pieces broke off and fell, but it was no longer aging before her eyes.

She looked again at the burn on her hand. Now that she had seen the weapon in action, she regarded her own hand with different eyes. It didn’t look so much burned as it looked like that part of her hand was a hundred years old and her skin had begun the process of decay while she was still alive.

This weapon could alter the course of human history.

It’s a good thing it was in her hands and not someone else’s. At least she could control it.

On a rooftop, just above the Tin Man, Caleb watched the castle wall crumble on the other side of the field.