Sonja leaned forward. “Do you actually know what’s going to happen?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
She sat back again. “So you have no idea at all.”
He held his hand out and Valentina passed him the resistor and capacitor. She’d already twisted two of their leads together to form a chain.
“There’s a sentry gun,” he said. “We have to disable it somehow. We’re out of explosives, and experimental physics is all we have.”
“Take it over,” snorted Sonja. “Take it over like you do a car.”
Tabletop peered over the top of the sphere she held while the glue dried. “We already thought of that. It comes with a manual override.”
“Which means it won’t be as smart, but it’ll be faster.” Petrovitch held the tube of glue up to the side of his head and fashioned a circuit from wire and the components he already had. “If it’d been programmed to fire through walls, this car would be a lot emptier.”
He glanced up as the car bumped and jogged his hand. There were bodies all over the road—in places, thick enough to resemble a carpet of torn cloth and broken flesh.
Outies, Oshicora conscripts, civilians, MEA militia: all mixed up. Vehicles embedded in shop fronts and sideways in doorways. Lamp-posts felled by collisions and burned-out wrecks.
They slowed to a crawl, and the thick rubber tires fought for grip on the uncertain surface. Petrovitch glanced behind him, and discovered that Valentina had already clamped her hand over Lucy’s eyes.
“She is too young.” A muscle in her face twitched. “And I am too old.”
Tabletop stared open-mouthed through the windscreen. When it looked like she was going to drop the sphere, Petrovitch reached across and put his hand under it, holding his work in the other and the tube of glue in his mouth.
It got worse the closer to Euston Station they got.
Eventually, Petrovitch was able to place the finished circuit on the dashboard and remove the glue from between his teeth.
“Angry yet?”
“What have we done?” murmured Tabletop.
“When the sun came up this morning, all these people were alive. Most of them would still have been alive by tonight if I hadn’t taken it on myself to fight back. So I take my part of the responsibility. Your masters can take the rest. I’ll make sure of that.”
“When this is over, what are you going to do with me? I thought I could help you build the future, but this, this…” Her voice trailed away and she scrubbed quickly at her cheek. “You’re going to put me against a wall with the others and shoot me.”
“Surprisingly enough, I’m not in charge. I don’t know how much say I get in this.”
Tabletop looked back at Sonja, who met her gaze with such unflinching hostility that she decided she’d rather look at the dead people they were about to run over.
“I would say, though, that if we get Maddy back now, and Pif later, there might be grounds for clemency.” Petrovitch handed her the sphere back. “Now hold this still.”
He concentrated on his work for the next few minutes, gluing and taping joints and wires, fixing the batteries together in a bundle, then chasing conducting glue across their terminals.
Slowly, the road became clearer, and the car’s wheels managed to steer around the obstacles. By the time they got out to the Caledonian Road, Valentina felt it safe to remove her hand.
Lucy blinked in the light. “I wouldn’t have looked,” she said.
“You cannot unsee what you have seen, little one,” said Valentina.
“Not true: I can’t remember what my parents look like,” said Tabletop. “Neither can I remember how the CIA made me forget; I just have to accept that they did, and that I agreed to it.”
In the wing mirror, one of the following cars pulled over against the curb, jerking to a halt. The driver fell from the door and was copiously sick on the road.
“Maybe,” said Petrovitch, “we should find out the answers to both those questions.” He carefully fitted the two black wires together, leaving the two red ones free. He deliberately taped over the bare ends to prevent their accidental contact.
“Is it done?” asked Lucy.
“I can’t test the continuity or how much juice is in the battery pack. But it’ll either work or it won’t.” He tucked the rest of the roll of tape inside his overalls.
“And what will it do?”
“He won’t tell you,” said Tabletop. “He didn’t tell me the first time.”
“Yeah, well. There is such a thing as being too full of your own
The women looked at each other. Tabletop looked at the mass of electrical tape in Petrovitch’s lap. “You want to make a singularity. With that.”
He equivocated for a second or two. “Pretty much.”
“How do you know you’re not going to level the entire Metrozone?”
“Because the instant it appears, the machine that made it is destroyed. I can show you my workings.” Petrovitch frowned and turned his camera back around. “Are you actually a physicist, because you always sounded like you knew what you were talking about?”
It was her turn to take a moment to think. “I must have been. The knowledge has to come from somewhere.”
“If I’ve got it wrong, I apologize in advance.” He glanced out the window. “Almost there.”
Valentina checked the magazine on her AK. It was as full of bullets as it was the last time she’d looked. “What is plan?”
“I’m going to try and get them to surrender.” Petrovitch scratched his hair. Scabs came away and caught under his fingernails. “Explain that their position is a whole world of
“Can I tell you it won’t work?” offered Tabletop. “Maccabee might have considered your offer, but Rhythm will refuse it out of hand. Just be glad it wasn’t Retread…”
Sonja said from the back seat. “We tasered her, then put her in a coma.”
“… because she would have shot your wife, the rest of her team, then herself, but not before setting the building on fire.”
“The other one. Slipper. Where is he? Epping Forest?”
“Yes. But he’s too far away to intervene.”
Petrovitch tutted. “I had attack helicopters not so long ago, but the EDF wanted them back. Shame.”
They were on the Seven Sisters Road, and the car glided to a halt. The three vehicles behind stopped too, blocking the street. Black-suited men with rifles started to emerge.
Petrovitch stepped out, device under his arm. He could see Chain’s front door in the distance. “Fiona, Tabletop, whatever I’m supposed to call you. I need to borrow you.”
She obediently joined him, and they walked a little way from the others.
“I’ll go in there and kill them for you. They won’t suspect anything, and they won’t have time to hurt your wife.”
“Tempting,” said Petrovitch. “But it’s been pointed out to me that I can’t really trust you.”
“You want me to contact them?”
“No. There are code-words you could use that I’d have no idea about that could mean anything. I just want the frequencies, encryption method, stuff like that. I’ll take it from there.” He sighed. “If I let you do something that means Maddy dies, I’ll want to lay waste to your entire country. So, it’s probably better if I screw up on my own.”
Her bodysuit had a series of switches along the inside of her left wrist, and she powered up for him. He
