The Flux Engine by Dan Willis Page B

course, John’s stubborn refusal to give up the broom only served to make the large, angry deputy even angrier.
    The old man had called it the monkey trap, after the old fable where you catch monkeys because they won’t let go of a handful of pebbles hidden in a small hole. It was instinct that made us want to hold on to something when someone tried to take it away. The old man had spent considerable time training that instinct out of Robi.
    John didn’t have the advantage of a master thief’s tutelage.
    Swearing like an airshipman, the deputy shifted his grip on the broom. Robi saw the muscles in his shoulder tense.
    “Let go!” she yelled.
    Enraged, the deputy put his foot against the cage and pulled with all his strength. Apparently the rational part of John’s brain chose that moment to begin working again. He released the broom, holding his hands up in an effort to placate the deputy.
    The broom snapped free from John’s hands and the deputy flew backward, holding the suddenly free broom. Arms cartwheeling as he staggered back, he fell against the charged bars of Robi’s cell.
    Muscles contracting in asymmetric jerks, the deputy appeared to dance as the shocker crystal pulsed with light, its energy pouring through the bars to the unfortunate man’s body. His mouth hung open as though he wanted to scream, but his contracting chest had forced the air from his lungs. The air smelled of ozone and burnt hair and the bars sizzled and popped. This might have lasted all of ten seconds, but as Robi looked on in sickening fascination, it seemed to take forever.
    The energy crystal sparked, sending out one final pulse of energy, then its light faded. The deputy, freed from the hold of the electrified cage, staggered forward. For a horrifying moment, Robi thought the big man would simply shrug off his encounter with the shocker box. After a single step, however, he dropped to his knees, then fell forward onto his face.
    Time seemed to hang, suspended, in the cell block as Robi looked at John in stunned disbelief.
    Move. The old man’s voice screamed in her mind.
    She dove for the cell door, jamming her memory-wire pick inside. Scrapstalker cages were designed to prevent escape, but they relied on the shocker box for that. The lock was a simple one-pin tumbler like any other cell.
    Easy.
    As she turned the wire back and forth, seeking the lock’s single pin, the crystal in the shocker box crackled and popped. That couldn’t be good.
    Click.
    The wire found the tumbler pin as the hair began standing up on her arm. Robi twisted her wrist and pulled hard.
    Clack.
    She felt the tumbler start to turn and heard the bolt moving, then a mule kicked her in the arm. The room turned suddenly sideways and she could hear John’s voice as if from far away.
    “W-what?” she said as the multiple images of the ceiling slowly resolved themselves into a single one.
    “I said, are you okay?” John’s voice seemed to come from much closer this time. Robi wasn’t sure. But she didn’t want to show weakness to a stranger. She tried to push herself up but her arm stubbornly refused to move. As she focused her attention on it, pain raced up from her wrist to her elbow. It felt as if stinging ants were crawling all over it.
    “What’s the matter?” John asked.
    “Cage got me,” Robi said. “My arm’s numb clear up to my elbow. There’s no way I can pick the lock now.”
    John swore. He wasn’t good at it and the obscenity sounded almost comical coming from him.
    “Any chance you can get him to fry himself again?” Robi asked. John shrugged.
    “I don’t see how. You know, he’s going to be powerful mad when he wakes up.”
    “You bet he will,” Robi said. “We need to be gone by then.”
    “How? The broom landed clear over there and I doubt I can lift the deputy up to the …”
    John’s voice just trailed off as he looked in disbelief at the deputy sprawled out between the two cells. Then his face split into a wide