The steam carriage roared down the dirt road, but inside the cabin, Alex was freezing.
He sat at the heavy brass controls, pushing the steam throttle forward. The iron carriage shuddered, its massive wheels tearing through the damp English mud.
Then, his vision flickered.
Click. Whirr.
The golden gears in his eyes stuttered, skipping a rotation. The world outside the reinforced glass windshield blurred from crisp, thermal data back into the dreary grey fog of the countryside.
Alex's hands clamped tight around the steering levers.
Frost bloomed across his knuckles.
His internal temperature was plummeting. The heat he had generated to melt Major Thomas's pneumatic hammer had cost him massively. The biological furnace inside his chest was starving for fuel.
His core dropped from a stable 105 degrees down to a fragile 98. Then 96.
His muscles locked up like rusted iron. The carriage violently swerved toward a deep ditch on the right side of the road.
"Sire!" Napoleon shouted from the passenger seat.
Alex couldn't turn his head. His neck was rigid with sudden, agonizing cold. He reached out with a trembling, frostbitten left hand.
He grabbed Napoleon by the collar of his grey coat.
With a surge of failing strength, Alex yanked the General across the cramped cabin and shoved him into the driver's seat.
"Drive," Alex rasps.
His voice didn't sound human. It sounded like grinding gears and venting steam.
Napoleon slammed his boots onto the floorboards, grabbing the steering levers just as the carriage's heavy iron tires kissed the edge of the ditch. He wrenched the levers hard to the left.
The steam engine screamed. The carriage violently jerked back onto the center of the road, kicking up a rooster tail of black mud.
Alex collapsed into the passenger seat.
His chest heaved. A thin cloud of white vapor escaped his lips with every shallow breath. The Golden Ichor in his veins was thickening, slowing down as his body temperature crashed.
He was experiencing biological bankruptcy.
He needed calories. Now.
Alex reached under the velvet seat and dragged out a rough canvas sack. It was a burlap bag of British army rations they had confiscated from a smuggler's cache near the Dover docks.
He didn't open the bag delicately. He ripped the thick canvas apart with his bare hands.
Inside were blocks of hardtack, salted beef jerky, and clumps of unrefined brown sugar.
Alex grabbed a fistful of hardtack and sugar.
He didn't eat like a man. He unhinged his jaw slightly, tilting his head back. He shoved the dry, rock-hard biscuits and raw sugar past his teeth, swallowing them almost whole.
Napoleon kept his eyes on the road, but he couldn't ignore the horrifying sounds coming from the seat next to him.
Crunch. Gulp.
Alex's stomach churned violently. The sound was audible over the roar of the steam engine—a deep, wet rumbling as his hyper-accelerated metabolism instantly incinerated the food.
He grabbed a block of salted beef and tore into it, swallowing the dense meat in massive chunks.
Within seconds, the temperature inside the cabin began to rise.
Steam curled from the collar of Alex's damp coat. The frost on his knuckles melted into water droplets. The golden gears in his eyes snapped back into a smooth, infinite rotation.
His core temperature stabilized at 102 degrees and began climbing.
Charles sat perfectly still in the back seat.
The boy was wrapped in an oversized grey coat. He didn't look pale or sickly anymore. After draining the explosive heat from Major Thomas's boiler, Charles looked terrifyingly healthy.
His cheeks were flushed. His golden eyes glowed with a predatory sharpness.
Charles watched his father devour the raw rations.
The boy tilted his head, calculating the sheer volume of matter his father had to consume just to stay operational.
"You are inefficient, Father," Charles whispered.
The words cut through the noise of the carriage.
Alex stopped eating. He wiped a streak of grease from his chin with the back of his hand. He didn't look at Charles. He just stared out the windshield at the passing trees.
"Efficiency is relative to the task, Charles," Alex said coldly. "My heat is a renewable resource. Your hunger is a liability."
Charles frowned, looking like a disappointed predator. He pulled his coat tighter around his small shoulders, though he clearly wasn't cold.
Napoleon swallowed hard.
The General gripped the steering levers so tightly his knuckles turned white. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the drafty cabin.
The claustrophobia of the iron carriage pressed in on him.
He was sitting in a metal box hurtling toward London. The man beside him was a biological furnace that devoured raw meat like a feral dog. The boy behind him was a thermodynamic void that could freeze water by touching it.
Napoleon realized, with crystal clarity, that he was no longer commanding an army. He was escorting an apocalypse.
He glanced up.
A small, rectangular brass mirror was mounted above the dashboard, designed for the driver to check the rear exhaust valves.
Napoleon looked into the mirror.
He didn't look at the exhaust. He looked at Alex.
Alex was staring blankly ahead, his chest rising and falling rhythmically as the heat radiated off him in waves.
Napoleon's right hand rested on his thigh.
Slowly, unconsciously, his thumb slid toward the heavy flintlock pistol tucked into his waist sash.
It was a loaded cavalry pistol. Fifty-caliber. A lead ball big enough to shatter a horse's skull.
Napoleon calculated the distance. Two feet. Point-blank range. If he drew the pistol and fired it directly into the side of Alex's head, it might be enough to scramble the golden gears.
It would be treason. It would be regicide.
But it might save France from the monster sitting next to him.
Napoleon's thumb brushed the cold steel hammer of the pistol.
In the brass mirror, Alex's golden eyes snapped up.
They locked onto Napoleon's reflection.
Alex didn't turn his head. He didn't reach for a weapon. He simply sat perfectly still, the heat radiating from his coat.
His golden eyes spun, analyzing the micro-expressions on Napoleon's sweating face. Analyzing the slight tension in the General's right shoulder. Analyzing the proximity of the thumb to the flintlock hammer.
Alex tilted his head, just a fraction of an inch.
It wasn't a threat. It was an audit.
Alex was calculating the exact millisecond it would take for Napoleon to draw, and the exact millisecond it would take for Alex to crush the General's throat.
Napoleon felt a spike of primal terror shoot down his spine.
His hand moved away from the pistol. He placed both hands firmly back on the steering levers.
"Keep your eyes on the road, General," Alex said softly.
"Yes, Sire," Napoleon whispered.
The silent, terrifying acknowledgment of potential treason settled heavily over the cabin. The absolute trust between the Emperor and the Sword was gone. They were simply two assets operating in the same vehicle, waiting for a margin call.
The suffocating tension held for three agonizing minutes.
Then, it was shattered by a sound that shouldn't exist in 1804.
A sharp, synthetic noise cut through the roar of the steam engine and the clattering of the iron wheels.
BEEP-BEEP.
Napoleon flinched, instinctively ducking his head.
Charles leaned forward, his glowing eyes widening in curiosity.
Alex reached into the inner pocket of his coat.
He pulled out the cheap, black plastic object he had taken from the shattered remains of Alice the Drifter.
The digital Casio watch.
The tiny LCD screen was illuminated. The numbers were no longer ticking backward in a steady, rhythmic countdown.
They were flashing wildly.
BEEP-BEEP.
Alex stared at the plastic screen. The numbers glitched, jumping erratically.
72:00:00.
A sudden drop.
48:15:22.
Another violent flash.
11:59:59.
The numbers locked in. The flashing stopped.
The steady, downward tick resumed.
11:59:58.
11:59:57.
The air pressure inside the small cabin dropped violently. Napoleon winced, his hands flying to his ears as they popped.
Charles gasped, clutching his chest. "Father," the boy rasped, his breath suddenly turning to white vapor again. "The air is thin."
Alex didn't blink. He kept his golden eyes locked on the digital screen.
He understood the math instantly.
The destruction of the Babbage Engine. The assassination of Major Thomas. The hyperinflation of the currency in Dover.
Alex had pushed the timeline too hard. He had altered too many variables in too short a time.
The system was rejecting him faster than before.
The Drifters weren't days away. The timeline collapse wasn't a distant threat.
The margin call had been moved up.
He had exactly twelve hours before whatever catastrophic temporal event Alice had predicted arrived in London.
Alex shoved the plastic watch back into his coat pocket.
He looked at Napoleon. The General was pale, fighting the heavy steering levers as the road curved sharply ahead.
"Full throttle, General," Alex ordered.
"The boiler pressure is already in the red, Sire!" Napoleon yelled over the engine. "If we push it, the iron will crack!"
"Let it crack," Alex said, his voice cold and flat.
He looked out the reinforced windshield. The grey fog was beginning to part, revealing the sprawling, smog-choked outskirts of the capital.
"We are officially on the clock."