Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

Gloves’s eyes flutter closed, then fling open.

“Stills!” he growls.

We look around, as we’ve been so focused on Gloves that we didn’t realize that a large man had joined our concerned group. Ember and Ethan gasp. Stewart Stills doesn’t have a face. All that sits atop his shoulders is a brass dome with two black portals for eyes. He looks like a bedpost knob with two hollow eye sockets. He doesn’t hesitate. After reaching up, he extracts a speaker from the side of his head. Steam hisses out.

Is he going to deflate? I wonder.

The flat speaker is attached to four wires that stay connected to the so-called ear. Like manipulating a toy transformer, he disengages the round speaker into four distinct parts, handing the small pieces to Ember, Gloves, Stein, and me. The small pieces remind me of tiny black bits of tar hooked to wires.

“Hold them…” Gloves says with a rattling wheeze, “up to your ears.”

Almost in unison, we take the wedge pieces and hold them to our ears. Stein kneels beside Nobel, sharing her speaker with him.

“Good afternoon,” Stills says in a very rich British accent. “I am Stewart Stills. Consider me the property manager of secret loops in the time stream.”

“You can respond any time,” Gloves says, coughing again. He isn’t looking good.

“I rifted back here because we are in quite a quandary. The Tesla Institute has waged war against us. We have lost many good Rifters and now we are losing Gloves as well.”

“Is Claymore with you?” I ask.

“He is at the main safe house in 1986 Los Angeles, right now. We are trying to adapt a helmet like mine for him. We require Nobel’s assistance.”

Gloves coughs again, this time spewing droplets of blood on the side of Stein’s face. She doesn’t move.

“Lex,” Gloves says, looking at me. “It is very important to fix this.”

“Me?” Fix this? How could this ever be fixed? How could the world ever be right again?

“Yes, I am going to commission you on one last assignment.”

“Okay, Gloves, anything,” I say, hoping his plan includes some serious payback.

“The Dox didn’t work,” he says. I nod. “The tear remains open and chaos has completely consumed the time stream.”

He coughs again. His breathing is becoming more labored. His eyes flutter closed for a moment too long.

“Gloves!” Ember yells and he blinks.

“Lex, you need to rift to Tesla’s lab in New York in 1898 and get the original Dox. It is your last chance to set things right. That is your last mission from me.” The words rush out in one long, rattling breath. The blood drains from his face.

“No, Gloves, it won’t work. We need directions or something. How do we use the Dox?”

“Notes. Tesla will have notes. Find them.” He coughs and winces in pain. “They were looking for you. He said—” Gloves coughs again. “Flynn said you’d never get it to work without the key.” He opens his hand and his fingers go limp. In his palm is a pile of green pills. The last of the Contra, or rather whatever didn’t burn in the fire. Also in his hand is the Amber Room beetle.

Gloves’s eyes glaze over and his chair slowly stops chugging. I put my head down and fight back the tears. Behind me, Stein rubs my back in slow circles. I grab the pile of Contra and the beetle from Gloves’s hand and stand up, wiping the moisture from my eyes before anyone can see it.

Stills kneels down and closes Gloves’s eyes. He then taps on the side of his polished brass dome. We respond by putting the small black speakers back up to our ears.

“We need you to complete this last mission,” Stills says. “There is a key, a missing piece to making the Dox work properly.”

“A key?” Ethan shouts, pulling his hands through his hair. “Are you kidding me? How did you miss that?” He looks at me angrily. I step forward, more than happy to go a few rounds with him right now, but Ember pushes between us.

“What key?” she asks. “What does it look like?”

Stills describes it and Ember turns, putting a hand on Ethan’s chest.

“It’s my key. My first key.”

Stills holds out his brass-gloved hand.

“I don’t have it. I didn’t bring it with me,” she responds, biting down on her lip. “But I know where it is. I gave it to Flynn.”

She frowns.

“No problem, Ember,” Ethan soothes. “We will just go back to the Institute and get it. We can go back the day after the Trials, when everyone is taking the oath. I’ll ransack Flynn’s room and—”

She cuts him off. “No. It won’t be there. I didn’t give it to that Flynn. I gave it to a Flynn from a different timeline.”

We all stare at her stupidly for a minute. She rolls her eyes. “Oh. This is going to be bad.”

I grab her arm. “Do you know where the key is or not?”

She nods. “I used it to create a fixed loop. I don’t know if we can get it. Everything inside a fixed loop is sealed.”

Stills cuts in. “Has there ever, in your memory, been a time when your key was missing?”

She pauses, tilting her head to the side. “Yeah. A few months ago. I thought I’d lost it, but I found it under my bed a few days later. I figured it fell off the wall somehow.”

Stills nods. “That is your window. Take the key during that time and return it when you have used it. It will preserve the Fixed Point.”

“Can we do that?” I ask. Following his logic feels a lot like banging my head into a brick wall.

It’s Stein who answers. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Either someone already stole the key once and it’s part of the Fixed Point, or we’ll get our butts bounced back to next Tuesday when we try for it. Either way, it’s our only shot.”

“Let’s do it then,” I jump in, ready to go.

“What are the risks?” Ember asks Stills quietly.

“Honestly, it’s hard to say. But it still has to happen.”

She swallows hard and takes a step back.

“I’ll go with you, Ember,” Ethan says, holding her hand.

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” I say. “No offense and all, but there’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight. I’ll go with her.”

“Really?” Stein adds. “You’ll go with her? And I’ll do what? Stay here and make you a sandwich?”

“She’s right. You should go with your girlfriend, keep her safe, and I can go with Ember and do the same,” Ethan says.

If there was a stupid comment cow pie on the burnt grass of the courtyard, Ethan just stepped in it.

“Keep me safe?” Stein challenges.

Ember folds her arms over her chest and moves to Stein’s side. “In case you’ve forgotten, I stabbed you in the leg the first time we sparred, and I wasn’t even trying then. You wanna give it a whirl right now? Then we’ll see which of us needs protection.”

“That’s not what I meant. Just that—” Ethan says.

I nudge him. “Shut up.”

Stein glares at me. “Why don’t we do this, tough guys. Ember shouldn’t go back into her own timeline. I think there have been enough potentially world-ending hijinks for one week, don’t you? She and I will go together to get the Dox, and you boys can go protect each other,” she says. “Unless, of course, you don’t trust us to go without male supervision?”

It’s a trap. Some kind of weird secret girl code. Ethan sputters.

“Good job, Ethan,” I hiss.

Reluctantly, I hand them their Contra.

“You boys can go get the key, if you think you can handle that?” With that, Stein and Ember hand their speakers back to Stewart Stills and walk away.

Ethan has the dumbest look on his face—like he just had an accident in his pants. Ember turns and shouts to him, “Three months ago, the day I almost broke your leg in sparring practice? That’s the day I noticed it missing. It’s in my room.”