Timebound(116)

“I told you no one at CHRONOS can know about this, Katherine. Have you thought about what happens to me if you pull in HQ? Or to Kiernan? Do you think CHRONOS will be willing to let him go, no questions asked, given what he’s seen and heard?”

“He’s only seen me open a diary, Kate, and heard a conversation that he doesn’t understand in the slightest. And if you’d shut up and hand the book back to me, we can end that conversation so that he—”

“It’s not the firs’ time I seen one of those things, Miss Kate,” Kiernan interrupted. “It’s like the one of me dad’s, the thing I used to send a message to—”

I yanked his arm a bit and he took the hint, but it was too late. Katherine reached into the handbag and pulled out the CHRONOS key I’d been wearing earlier. The glow from the key lit the room with pale blue and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking of using it as a flashlight earlier.

“What color is this?” Katherine asked, holding the medallion close to Kiernan’s face.

“I canna really see it in the dark, ma’am,” he answered, glancing up nervously at me.

Katherine’s eyebrow shot up. “You’re a smooth little liar, kid, but you’re not fooling me.” She grabbed his free hand and pressed it against the center of the medallion. The display wasn’t clear—it was really little more than static, with the occasional visible word or button, but it provided her with the answer she needed.

“How?” she asked me. “How is he able to do that? They don’t even start training kids this young.”

“I can’t really tell you that,” I said. “It’s part of what we’re trying to correct.”

That was a blatant lie and I hoped that my poker face was better than Kiernan’s, at least in the dim light. A truthful response would have been that I was asking her to go back and start the very chain of events that would lead to Kiernan, myself, and who knew how many others being able to activate that equipment. But that chain of events was the one that I knew and the only one that seemed to promise any hope, however small, of stopping the Cyrists.

“So what do you suggest, Kate?” she asked, tucking the medallion back inside her dress. “I don’t think there’s any way out of this room, and our only other option is to sit here and wait for Holmes to return. It would be three against one, but one of us is pretty small, and I think the gun puts the odds slightly in his favor.”

“There is a way for one of us to get out of here,” I said. “And it only takes one person to open that bolt and get us all out. Your return trip may be restricted to the stable point on the Wooded Island, but mine isn’t. I can jump to any stable point from here. Didn’t you say there’s one on the third floor?”

“Yes, but how can you—”

“I can’t explain any further, Katherine.” It was, admittedly, a bit of a kick to be the one restricting her knowledge on a need-to-know basis, but we really didn’t have the time for a detailed discussion on the matter. And each bit of information I gave her was another string that she’d be tempted to pull, potentially unraveling the events that needed to transpire over the next few months.

“I only familiarized myself with the stable points inside the fair and near the entrances,” I said, removing my CHRONOS key from the inner pocket and handing it to her. “I knew there were others, but—well, I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. If you can pull the location up on the key so that I can see it and lock it in, I should be able to make the jump and get back here in a couple of minutes. I’m just not sure how we’re going to get out the front door with both Holmes and Minnie lurking at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Miss Kate?” Kiernan said, tugging my arm. “Maybe we don’ hafta take the stairs. Maybe we could take the ladder?”

“What ladder? There’s a fire escape?” I hadn’t even considered that possibility—I mean, really, what homicidal maniac would include fire escapes in the design plan for his torture castle?

“I don’ know if you’d call it a fire escape, but there’s a ladder from a window on the top floor, goin’ down to the roof of the buildin’ next door. I saw it when I was waitin’ all that time in the alley. Instead of goin’ home.”

I couldn’t help but grin at the note of sarcasm in his voice on the last sentence. If Katherine noticed, however, she didn’t let on. She just reached over and took my hand, placing the activated medallion in my palm.

“The kid and I will put our heads together while you’re gone,” she said, “and try to see if we can figure out which window is most likely to lead to the ladder.”