The Flux Engine by Dan Willis

asked.
    “It’s complicated.” John shrugged.
    “Hey, you owe me,” Robi said. “After all, I told you mine.”
    He sat down on his cot and sighed, wondering where to begin.
    “Well, I sort of sent most of the Tommys in Sprocketville on a rampage,” he said. He didn’t realize just how crazy it sounded until he said it out loud. Robi gasped.
    “That was you? What are you, some kind of Architect or something?”
    John had always been told he was smart, but no one had ever accused him of being Architect smart. Architects were geniuses and usually more than a little crazy. As his brain briefly considered the possibility, he decided it really wasn’t much of a compliment.
    “No,” he said. “I had this special crystal …” He paused, not knowing if he should go on. He’d never talked about his mother’s crystal before, but now he just—needed to. It felt as if he had to talk about what happened in Doc’s lab or it would drive him mad. He wanted to talk to Hickok, the Enforcer, but he knew he couldn’t risk it. Robi, on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere.
    “What kind of crystal?” Robi asked, prompting him to go on with his story.
    “Nobody knows,” John said. “My mother gave it to me before she disappeared and as far as anyone can tell, it’s one of a kind.”
    John took a deep breath and plowed ahead, telling Robi the whole story of his mother and the crystal and how he’d tried to contact her with the handler box. Robi whistled when he was done.
    “I thought I had problems,” she said, her wolfish smile shifting into a crooked grin. “Why don’t you tell that enforcer?” she asked. “It sounds like he knows you’re not guilty.”
    “If I tell him the truth, I lose the crystal,” John said. “If I don’t tell him, then Batts will keep me here until I confess or blame someone else.”
    Robi had been sitting cross-legged on her bunk, resting her elbow on her knee with her head in her hand. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side and a smile spread across her face.
    “I think we can help each other,” she said.
    “I thought you didn’t believe in partners.”
    “Do you want to get out of here or not?” She fixed him with a level stare.
    “You mean escape? How?”
    “You said you were a Thurger, right?”
    He nodded and she went on.
    “What do you know about shocker boxes?”
    There weren’t many in Sprocketville, but John had seen one or two before. It was a First Order device. Simple. Just an energy crystal with a flux reservoir set to drip onto it regularly. As long as it had flux, the crystal would maintain a charge that would stun anyone touching it.
    “How long does it take the box to recharge after it shocks someone?” Robi asked.
    “A couple seconds, maybe three,” John said. “It’s not very long.”
    Robi reached into her mouth and pulled out a small ring. With practiced precision, she tapped it on the end of an iron nail that protruded from the frame of her cot. The ring made a sound like a tiny bell, then began to twist in Robi’s fingers, uncoiling and straightening on its own. A second later, it had changed from a ring to a long, slender tool with a hooked tip.
    “Memory metal,” Robi said with a smile. “It looks like a ring until I tap it on something hard, then it changes to a lock pick.”
    “How long have you had that in your mouth?” John asked.
    “Ever since I got captured,” she said with a shrug. “About a week.”
    The thought of holding something in his mouth that long made John a little sick. He wondered how she kept from swallowing it when she slept. He wondered how he would catch the tattooed woman now that she had a week’s head start. The thought made him sick and he pushed it away.
    “I think I can pick the lock in under three seconds,” Robi was saying. “But I need you to disable the shocker box. Can you do that?”
    John doubted it highly but he peered through the bars at Robi’s cell before answering. The little box