The wormhole opened like a drain of light, a little smaller than Chevie had expected, if she was honest, yet it was big enough to slurp down the atoms of the hazmat team and their leader. The bubbles spiraled down, forcing themselves into the pulsating white circle at the pod’s base. It shone like a silver dollar, then spun as though someone had flipped it, each revolution sending a blinding beam across the basement.

Chevie closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the wormhole had closed, leaving behind a wisp of smoke in the shape of a rough question mark.

You and me both, Chevie thought, stepping forward warily, around the bank of computers, and peering into the pod’s belly. It was cold in there, and blobs of orange gel shivered on the steel walls.

I hope those blobs weren’t important body parts.

Smart and his team were gone, there was no doubt about it.

I didn’t believe Orange’s story until this moment, Chevie realized. Not for a second. I am not sure if I believe it now.

But there was no denying that her partner had disappeared, whether into a wormhole as planned, or boiled to jelly by old-school laser beams.

I can worry about all of this when I am home in Malibu. Until then: act like a professional.

Chevie decided to use the ten minutes to check through the video on Smart Sr.’s Timekey. See if there was anything more she could add to her report. And, you never know, there was always the ghost of a chance that Riley was telling the truth. But even if he was, there was no way the bogeyman he was so afraid of could make it to the future.

Chevie suddenly saw a flash of Riley’s face: blue eyes wide, soot-blackened brow.

No way in heaven, but perhaps a way in hell.

She shivered. Maybe that boy was lying, but he sure believed he was telling the truth.

Alt-Tek

BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. 1898

Albert Garrick hummed a nursery rhyme he’d learned on the knee of an Irish woman who had nannied for half of the Old Nichol back in the dark times. If there was one truth that Garrick held like iron in his core, it was that he would never return to the Old Nichol, not even to dodge the noose.

“I would swing before I’d go back to that cesspit,” he vowed quietly through clenched teeth, as he did most nights.