Need something to pull me back.
Can’t swallow a pill right now. Can’t get it down. I’ll as likely choke.
Pocket, I say in my head.
Not with my mouth.
So I push harder, manage to croak it out.
Tamworth looks confused.
Jolt.
April 10, 1912, I stand on the dock at Southampton, the wind cool on my face, watching the Titanic disappear over the horizon, thinking about how I could have just told them to keep an eye out for icebergs and saved so many lives. But that’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to make sure Death does its job undisturbed. Look, don’t touch…
A hand grips my jaw, forcing my mouth open.
Jolt.
I don’t know the date, just that it’s nearing the end of the Pleistocene epoch, maybe twelve thousand years ago, and I stalk through patches of brown grass and heaps of snow, land that will one day become Alberta, Canada. An oxygen mask strapped to my face because the air is different, hunting a man who is hunting a saber-toothed tiger for his Florida zoo, and…
Jolt.
A little girl walks slowly toward me from the end of a long hallway. The closer she gets, the bigger she gets, until her head’s scraping the ceiling, and it blots out the light, hair hanging in her face so I can’t make out her features, and I am suddenly seized by a feeling I locked in a chest and threw into the sea a long time ago…
My mouth floods with the taste of cherries.
The taste of Mena.
I feel the room now. The table underneath me. The sheet of white crinkle paper. Tamworth is standing back, watching me roll the lollipop around in my mouth. I’m able to center myself. I try to sit up, but the restraints keep me down, so Tamworth struggles to get them undone, then takes the Retronim, breaking it in half, and hands me the two pieces. “Time-release coat,” he says, turning to the counter to get a cup of water. I put the pieces of pill on my tongue, wincing at the bitter medicinal taste, and wash them down. Lie back, put the lollipop in my mouth. Breathe long and deep. Filling my chest with air through my nose, then letting it out slowly through my mouth. The way Mena taught me.
Tamworth slumps in a seat in the corner, looking like he just ran a marathon. “The lollipop was smart. Sense memory is a powerful thing.” He looks down at his hands, then back up at me. “What does it remind you of?”
“None of your business,” I tell him. “How long was I out?”
“You weren’t so much out as you were thrashing and screaming. I’m sorry we had to tie you down like that, but you could have hurt yourself, or someone else.”
Hurt someone else. Brandon. I turn to Tamworth, a look of panic on my face, and he knows the question before I have to ask it.
“Couple of stitches.”
Small comfort, but I’ll take it.
I run my fingers along the grout between the tiles on the wall next to me, just trying to give my body a chance to relax. Then I push myself up, blood rushing to my head, and swing my legs off the table. Give the room a second to stop spinning.
“How do you feel?” Tamworth asks.
Better, actually. All day, my brain has felt like there was this low-key buzz somewhere at the base of it that I couldn’t turn off. For the first time today I feel somewhat settled. Maybe that Retronim tolerance is building up. Which is not good. The lollipop only got me stable enough to take the pill. It doesn’t fix the problem.
“Never been better,” I tell him. “I didn’t say anything too crazy while I was out, did I?”
“Well, you did keep reciting the first stanza of ‘Jabberwocky.’?”
“The what-er-whatey?”
“The poem.” He smiles at the memory. “I used to read it to my daughter when she was a baby. It’s all nonsense words. She loved it. Two decades later and I can still remember it.”
“Then hit me with that first line, Doc.”
“Don’t you know it?”
“Humor me.”
“?’Twas brillig and the slythy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”
Huh.
“That’s actually a huge help.”
Tamworth eyes me for a moment, confused, but then shrugs. “Danbridge wants to see you. I told him I would let him know when you were up. But if you’d like to rest for a bit, I can tell him you’re sleeping.”
“No, I’m good.”
He nods and leaves the room. As soon as he’s gone, I ask Ruby, “Tell me about that poem.”
“It’s from a book.”
“Is it from Through the Looking-Glass?”
“You are correct.”
Bingo. For as much as I ride this thing, credit where credit is due. It figured out a way to share classified intel with me. Probably would have figured it out quicker on a normal day, too, but this is the polar opposite of a normal day.
“Well, thanks for taking the long way around on that,” I tell it. “So now I have to find a jabberwocky. Whatever the hell that is.”
“You don’t have the required security clearance,” Ruby says, “but that’s certainly something you can ask Danbridge about.”
“And finally, you are good for something. And speaking of…”
* * *
—
Allyn is huddled with Drucker in the security office, and his face shifts from a smile to a frown in record speed as soon as I enter. Drucker’s face is already in a frown but I think that’s more of a perpetual thing.
“How are you feeling?” Allyn asks.
“High as a kite,” I tell him, “and ready to rock.”
Drucker smooths out her beige pantsuit. “I was just saying I have serious issues with you being on the premises.”
“And I’ve got nothing else to do to keep myself occupied, so I may as well work. Let’s talk postponing this summit.”
“Absolutely not,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because we’re here,” she says. “This doesn’t impact our ability to work.”
“People’s lives are in danger.”
“They’re in danger because you’re mentally unstable,” she says.
“Why are you so hot to sell this place? What are you getting out of it?”
“Do you even read the news?”
In fairness, not really, but still, rude. “Can you make that sound any less condescending?”
“If you did,” she said, “you’d know that the national deficit is on the verge of crippling us. China is coming to call on the debts we owe and we’ve got nothing to give them. Medicare and Social Security are insolvent. President Everett has tasked us with being creative. This is an opportunity to pump billions of dollars into the budget. It’s not a fix, but it’s a start.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter who gets hurt in the process.”
“Not my job,” she says. “That was your job. And you failed at it.”
Allyn looks over at her, then at me, and finally says, “Senator, please give us a moment.”
“No.”