The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(87)
Melissa had kept silent at the time. She saw no purpose in drawing out a futile conversation.
“I don’t care what the documents say,” Sir Edgar insisted. “England will always be your home.”
England had stopped being her home a long time ago, since the military began using her research to improve their temporic arsenal. She feared it’d be a matter of years, not decades, before His Majesty’s Armed Forces managed to squeeze an entire Cataclysm into the nose of a long-range missile. God help their enemies then. God damn her if she ever played a part in that.
The policemen watched the Deps assemble their devices on the highway—four black obelisks, each eight feet tall and covered in glass lenses. They were placed forty feet apart in a perfect square. Thick cables connected them to a portable computer.
As Melissa helped prep the towers, two state patrolmen eyed her through slitted eyes.
“Huh. I didn’t even know they had duskers in England.”
“Yeah. The limers set their flag in a bunch of savage countries. Guess they brought a few back.”
Melissa ignored them. In her thoughts, Sir Edgar Ballott raised a smug eyebrow.
A half hour later, the ghost drills were ready. Each system cost two million dollars and required five technicians to operate, at a taxpayer cost of seventeen thousand dollars per hour. All that expense and effort to achieve what David Dormer could do with a wave of his hand.
Inside the perimeter of the towers, the recent past came to light. The dilapidated Salgado van reappeared in front of a disembodied strip of white tempic barrier. The projections were as brown and grainy as a Civil War photograph until the technicians made their adjustments. Soon the van could almost pass as the real thing.
Cahill pointed at the ethereal vehicle. “Why are the back doors transparent?”
Melissa squinted at them. “I’ve only seen that effect during a double-echo, when you view the ghost of a ghosted image.”
“Ghosted van doors? We don’t even have that technology. What’s it doing on a ten-year-old junker?”
While setting up the drills, Melissa had kept an ear on the discussion between Cahill and Bond. She listened with great interest about the phantom truck that appeared on the highway, sending one police cruiser into opposite lanes. The ability to create a three-dimensional image of that size—on a fast-moving freeway, no less—was far beyond the capability of any lumic projector.
Suddenly a colorful streak emerged from the passenger side of the van, disappearing beyond the confines of the ghost field.
“Whoa! Did you see that?”
“Rewind and replay,” Melissa told her teammate. “Tenth speed.”
Even at slow playback, it took three attempts for the technicians to catch Hannah in motion, and then another twelve adjustments to achieve an unblurred freeze-frame. Now every law enforcer fixed their stare on the frightened young thing with the nightstick in her hand, a woman who moved at triple-digit velocity.
The Deps crossed into the image field, studying Hannah up close. Like breathing underwater or walking through fire, speeding was a perfectly mundane accomplishment with the proper gear. But in her flimsy cotton tank top and grass-stained running shorts, this woman did not have the equipment to do what she was currently doing.
Cahill tossed a muddled glance at Melissa. “I fig you never saw anything like this in Europe.”
“No, sir. Nothing even close.”
While Hannah’s speedy feat was enough to rattle all investigators, her sister’s angry hands truly shook their world.
Thirty-two more seconds of playback passed before Amanda emerged from the van. Though the ghosts were soundless, the lip-reader on the team relayed the tense words exchanged between the redhead and the two local policemen. A short teenage girl suddenly burst through the ghosted rear doors. One of the officers fired his gun in surprise. Then things got weird.
Now all the cops and Deps on scene stared in muted wonder at the frozen image of Amanda’s tempic outburst. The technician paused playback just as the policemen were slammed down to the pavement by her shimmering white hands, each one the size of a coffee table.
Melissa walked a slow, shambling circle around Amanda, straining her mind to find a sensible explanation. To accept this sight at face value involved pushing her skeptical boundaries five yards away from reason, toward the land of aliens and vampires.
She made several notes in her handtop before rejoining Cahill at the edge of the ghost field.
“So what are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking the Bureau may owe Wingo an apology, sir.”
Cahill chuckled. Alexander Wingo was a dark legend among the Deps. He’d been a rising star at DP-1, known all throughout the Bureau for his deductive brilliance and flamboyant eccentricities. Thirty-six years ago, a perplexing homicide investigation took him into strange territory, and he became obsessed with a secret society of time-bending superpeople he dubbed the Gothams.
Wingo soon quit the Bureau to become a full-time crusader. His best-selling book, Children of the Halo, inspired a generation of rumors, myths, and hoaxes. To this day, the Gothams remained a favored topic among the crackpot fringe.
“Let’s table the crazy stuff for a moment,” said Cahill. “What do you make of the people?”
“They’re all young and frightened. Given the state of the van, as well as their injuries, it’s clear they engaged in battle before the police discovered them. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find more casualties in their wake.”