Madman's Dance (Time Rovers #3)(149)

That was the clincher. The only people who knew of Rover One’s real name were her contemporaries, or those ahead in the time stream. “Yes, it was Defoe. He and Adelaide Winston were lovers. He blames you for her death.”

Satyr shook his head. “It was Tobin, not me. He used my likeness. He’s the Ascendant’s favored man at present. Until I cut his throat, that is.”

“No little silver tube for him?”

“He doesn’t deserve that honor,” her escort snapped.

“How much did you know about the Lord Mayor’s Day plot?”

“Very little. I still don’t know all the details.”

She gave him the shortened version of how things had fallen out without mentioning the Futures.

“Good heavens,” Satyr said, shaking his head. “I have been blind. I should have confronted the Ascendant sooner.”

Cynda had to ask. “You’re obviously from…” she gave a vague wave. “Who are you?”

As he weighed the question, Satyr pushed aside the curtain and stared out into the darkness. With a nod, he turned back to her. “We have enough time. You’ve certainly earned that, Twig.” He drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “My name is Michael Gordon.”

“Sorry, never heard of you.”



He gave a bemused smile. “I’m surprised given my history. When I was five, my parents were told that I had a monster buried in my mind, and if I didn’t receive psychiatric treatment, that creature would break loose and kill people.”

Cynda blinked. “It did.”

“It needn’t have been that way. I was not a wicked child. If anything, I was rather benign, fond of reading books and grav-boarding.” There were the makings of a grin, but it didn’t quite come to life.

“I had one of those,” she said, dredging up a memory. “I modified it so it would go higher and faster. When I busted my arm, Dad took it away from me.”

“I never tampered with mine. I never tortured animals, or daydreamed how someone’s blood would feel on my hands.”

“So how did you—”

He frowned her into silence. “I had none of the usual markers of a serial killer. Still, I was snared by some innocuous test I took when I was in first grade. I was diagnosed with Pre-Emergent Sociopathic Disorder. That brought me to the attention of the Interventionalists. Are you aware of them?”

She would have spat on the ground in disgust if they hadn’t been in a carriage. “Yeah, I remember those creeps.” Shrinks who thought they could prune a kid and take them in a more “socially acceptable direction.”

“I failed the same test. They tried to pull that crap with my parents. They ignored them.”

Satyr’s face saddened. “My parents did not. To save their beloved son, they gave the psychiatrists carte blanche. By the time I was fifteen, I’d undergone medication regimes, behavioral modification, long stints in rehabilitation camps, even Electrical Stimulus Avoidance Therapy.”

Cynda shuddered. She’d heard about that. Attach a series of electrodes to a child, and if they thought or acted wrong, zap! The voltage went up each time. It was legalized torture masquerading as legitimate therapy.

“So let me guess—you killed them all, didn’t you?”



“My parents? Oh, no. I don’t hate them. They did what they felt was best. Instead, I killed the one man who went out of his way to persecute me—the psychiatrist in charge of my case. I took a great deal of time with him, no quick death for that fiend. Of course, then I’d validated all his work.” His expression darkened. “At least he didn’t live to collect the applause.”

“So how’d you get here?”

He waggled a finger. “Patience, Twig. This is my story, after all. After I canceled my psychiatrist, I turned myself in. There was the trial, conviction, then more tests, more medication, all of it. When none of it worked, they gave me the advanced treatment,” he said, pointing to his temple.

“They Null Mem’d you? Why? You’d only killed one person, not a city.”

“To reverse my psychopathic idiom, was the official explanation. In truth, they were furious I’d terminated my doctor, as if he were somehow inviolate. After they flushed my brain, I became part of a government study. The goal was to rehabilitate predators into polite members of society. I was put with another psychiatrist who patiently reconstructed me to ensure I wouldn’t feel the need to kill ever again.”

“Didn’t work,” she observed.

He grinned. “No, it didn’t. I rebuilt myself one memory at a time, and I learned from my mistakes. If I was supposed to be a monster, I would become the best there was.”

Cynda glowered at him. “With all you’d been through, how could you do that to me? You know what kind of hell that is!”

The grin faded. “It seemed right at the time. It still does.”

She slumped back in the seat, arms crossed over her chest. The ants were waking up. “Then just get on with it, will you?”

His expression hardened. “Once they realized the treatment only made me worse, my ESR Chip was removed, I was dressed in rags and put in a time pod.”

“They orphaned you on purpose?” She shivered involuntarily. “I figured maybe you’d stolen an interface or something.”