Her eyes flicked, instead, to the rearview mirror. Mac’s face was bathed in shadow, but the silver gun on his lap reflected the green light of the control panel. It glowed, menacingly, in the dark.

Dorothy was staring at the gun when his voice reached out for her from the darkness. “Well. This doesn’t look like the 1700s.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Roman said easily, “There must be a problem with the ship’s navigational controls. Let me go take a look.”

And then, with a heavy sigh, he pushed the door open and stepped outside.

Dorothy threw her door open, too, and followed him. She didn’t want to spend a single moment alone with Mac.

Roman was waiting for her in the circle of the time machine’s headlights. Cold wind bit into her cheeks and blew through her coat as she came to stand beside him. She gritted her teeth, pulling her collar tighter around her neck.

Roman looked terrified. He dragged a hand over his sweaty forehead and whispered, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I thought it would be easier to take him out here, where no one could interrupt us.”

“Stay calm,” Dorothy hissed back. Her daggers rustled inside her sleeves, restless.

Mac’s shadow reached the circle of the headlights a second before the man himself, and this was how Dorothy knew he had his gun out and aimed at them. The shape of it stretched across the ground, larger than it was in real life.

In an instant, Dorothy’s hands were on the daggers hidden up her sleeves. She spun around, her heart crashing wildly inside her chest.

“Hands where I can see them, Miss Fox,” Mac said, and she froze, fingers twitching. He had his gun aimed at her face. She was fast with her daggers, but she doubted she was faster than a bullet.

“I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” Roman said. “It’s two on one, old man.”

“I’ve done the math, thanks,” Mac said. “According to my calculations I’m the only one holding a gun.”

There seemed to be a smile playing at Roman’s lips, as though the thought that they could be so easily disposed amused him. “You have to know we won’t go down without a fight.”

“Fight?” Mac laughed, swinging the gun around so that it pointed at Roman now. “Who said anything about a fight? I could just leave the two of you here to rot. I was planning on doing that once we all got to the past, but this works, too.”

And, with that, he took a step toward the time machine’s cockpit. He was closer than they were, Dorothy saw. He’d get there first.

“You don’t know how to fly it,” Roman pointed out, but he didn’t sound nearly as confident as he had a moment ago. His eyes darted, nervously, to the gun pointed at his chest.

Mac looked between the two of them, his smile hardening into a sneer. “Yeah, well I only need one of you for that, don’t I?”