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“Not today, Satan!”
Hot winds from the explosion rippled their coats and hair as their helicopter shot up into the sky. Marty arched his eyebrow at Doc. Marlene snorted between them; she never once regretted teaching her godfather modern lingo.
“Did I use it right this time?” he asked her.
“You did, actually,” Marlene laughed, waving down at Griff’s men before a second explosion scattered them across the skyscraper’s rooftop.
Marty heard himself huff out a laugh as Verne banked them away from the inferno.
“Did we just do that?”
Marlene pulled out a ruby the size of a softball and tossed it in her hand with a satisfied smirk.
“Yep.” She clapped her dad on the back on her way to the copilot’s chair. “You’re pretty spry for a guy in his fifties, Dad. I didn’t think you could hustle that hard anymore.”
“Neither did I,” Marty chuckled. Improvising a slapdash Molotov cocktail, diving through doorways from gunfire, putting some guy in a chokehold; Marty hardly recognized himself.
“That must have been one hell of a rejuvenation clinic,” Doc needled as he overlooked the shrinking commotion with Marty. “I certainly couldn’t flip a man twice my size off my back before my first treatment, let alone after.”
“Doc, a man twice your size would be a half-giant,” Marty said, helping him slide the door shut. “Besides,” – he mimicked the motion of flipping his attacker – “it’s just physics, right? Momentum and stuff? Did you ever think a thing or two you’ve taught me might have stuck after all this time?”
Doc narrowed his eyes.
“You opted for the post-cleanse course of revita-mins, didn’t you?”
“Damn right, I did,” Marty muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Up front, Marlene punched the date into the time circuits. Verne steered them over open water and turned south, watching the dark smoke pump into the blue sky above Griff’s base of operations. The wind was with them and carried the highest wisps of smoke to the east. Immediate dangers cleared, Verne started to laugh.
“That was some Die-Hard, Indiana-Jones, Ocean’s-Eleven bullshit, Marlene.”
She popped a green Lifesaver into her mouth and smiled, poking her tongue through its center. “And here I was going for Mission Impossible.”
Verne nodded to the time circuits.
“Is that where we’re going?”
“That’s it,” Marlene said, collecting her hair and laying it over her shoulder. “We should have some time before they catch up, too.”
Verne drummed his fingers on the cyclic control.
“What do we do if they’re there waiting for us?”
“Griff doesn’t know where I’m going,” Marlene reassured him. “If he took two seconds to care about anything that had to do with me, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“…What?”
“Nothing.” She slumped into the back of the chair. “We’re good, I promise. He doesn’t know.”
At Verne’s silence, Marlene slowly looked up from inspecting her reflection in the massive gemstone. Her honorary uncle’s wide eyes and pointed lips stared straight ahead at the glittering ocean, and the bottom of Marlene’s stomach dropped out.
“Verne?”
“Alright, look, don’t—don’t do that thing you do when you’re angry,” Verne warned. “We’re in a helicopter. We’ll crash.”
Marlene’s eyes grew blacker with each incredulous blink. “We’re going to crash because I throw my pilot out of the helicopter if you don’t tell me how Griff knows where I’m going!”
“We…we may have been compromised.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Verne shook his head, starting several nonsensical sentences. “I made a mistake –”
“Well, just change the date, then!”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll know!”
“How will they know?!” Marlene demanded.
A series of thumps came from behind them. Chills swept up Marlene’s spine as her father and godfather fell into a tangled, motionless heap. Somewhere beyond the sound of the blood rushing in her ears, she heard the radio bleep.
“Griffin Four, what’s your status?”
Verne met Marlene’s shell-shocked eyes with contrition, picked up the radio, and responded.
“Cargo secured. Approaching temporal displacement.”
Marlene shielded her eyes as her world went white, distantly grappling with the possibility that Verne was communicating not just with the enemy, but that the incoming message was somehow coming from a different year, which should be impossible. What else had the Tannens managed to do with her father’s research?
As the ocean reappeared, Marlene’s adrenaline spiked at the materialization of an aircraft carrier bearing the Tannen Enterprises logo.
The helicopter began to descend on the flight deck.
“Verne? Verne!” Marlene shrieked. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting my brother back.”