Page 5

5

Present Day

P ROCTOR REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS SLOWLY. His first sensation was of being horizontal, on a hard floor of concrete. His second was of pain.

He did not move. Instinct and training had taught him that when in unexpected danger of this sort, consciousness should not be betrayed until one had gathered as much situational awareness as possible.

He used the pain as a tool to take his measure. He ran his tongue gingerly around the inside of his mouth, tasting blood and dirt. A tooth was chipped, and his nose felt like it might be broken.

Without betraying any perceptible movement, he stiffened his limbs, one at a time, from elbows to fingertips and from hips to toes. He appeared to be fully functional; nothing seemed broken other than his nose and, perhaps, the zygomatic arch of one cheek.

Now, slowly, he drew in a deep breath. No pneumothorax.

Even more slowly, he unshuttered one eye, then the other. Despite being caked in blood, his eyes were fine and his vision unimpaired. The same with his hearing.

He lay without moving for another ten minutes as his senses grew fully alert and his last memories of consciousness returned. Ferenc, that bastard. He’d booby-trapped Proctor’s console with some kind of anesthetic or nerve agent… while the machine was running at full power, its portal open.

He was confident Ferenc was not nearby, that the man had used the machine. The room was still—in fact, all too still, and a foul odor of burnt wiring and scorched electronics hung in the air.

Proctor readied himself. Then he rolled over at speed, balling his fists and tenting up his knees, keeping his head raised slightly off the ground to minimize the pain of his cheek and nose. Nevertheless, the agony of sudden movement was extreme. Ignoring it, he glanced around quickly. No sign of Ferenc.

Now Proctor knew he’d used the machine. Gingerly, he rose to his feet, checked his weapon, and pulled the chair from his worktable into the middle of the room and sat down.

He stared at the machine. It was a smoking ruin.

It did not matter that he’d successfully transported every piece of that machine, in its original configuration, from Savannah to this basement room of the Riverside Drive mansion. It didn’t matter that he’d retrieved a scientist who could repair it—Ferenc—not only convincing him to do the work, but keeping an eye on him until Pendergast and his friend D’Agosta could go through the portal. It didn’t matter, because he had failed his employer. He’d allowed that worm Ferenc to outsmart him, render him unconscious long enough to use the machine.

And because of his failure, Pendergast and the rest were stranded in a parallel universe in the year 1880.

He checked his watch. He’d been out for hours. Why hadn’t Ferenc returned? The machine remained turned up to its highest setting… and beyond. Perhaps the weasel had been delayed on the far side of the portal. Perhaps he’d died. In any case, he couldn’t come back now: the machine had red-lined, overheated, and imploded. Proctor’s knowledge of the device was limited to the controls on its front panels. Ferenc had been the only one to work the guts of the machine, the only one who knew enough to repair it.

Not that repair appeared to be a possibility.

Proctor sat another minute, gaze fixed on the wreckage. Then he stood and—without looking back—made his way to the door, opened it, and disappeared into the dim confines of the mansion’s basement.