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Sergei. Be careful.
Sam heard his mother’s voice in his head. For ten years, he’d longed to hear that voice. But now that she was reprimanding him, it was, frankly, a little irritating.
I do what I like, he thought, unsure if his mother could hear it.
Don’t be a pisher.
Yep. She could hear him.
The Shadow Men escorted Sam and his mother to an elevator that rattled them up four floors to the very top, a button marked only S. When the doors opened on the long room, Sam had to blink against the brightness of the day shining through the glass roof. The majesty of it took his breath away for a minute. A solarium, rooms like this were called. Solarium. S.
Adams and Jefferson brought Sam and Miriam to an area cordoned off by curtains. “Wait here,” Adams said.
Sam snorted. “Oh, suuure. Let President Coolidge know I’ll be late for lunch, will ya?”
Adams smacked Sam across the face. “Watch your mouth.”
“Ow,” Sam said, genuinely surprised at how much it hurt.
“Mr. Adams. That was unnecessary,” Jake Marlowe said. America’s favorite millionaire son crossed the room with sure strides. A pair of strange leather goggles, like an aviator’s, hung around his neck.
“Yeah. Make him say he’s sorry,” Sam goaded.
“I’m sure he is,” Jake said with paternal disinterest.
Sam glared at Adams, who mouthed, I’m not sorry.
Marlowe drew back the curtains and Sam forgot about the Shadow Men as he took in the sight of an enormous golden sphere of a machine perched on six tall legs like some giant mechanical spider. A dizzying array of tubes and wires sprang from its top and wrapped around antennas that stretched up to a square of open space in the ceiling, reaching toward the sky. A small compartment in the thing’s side held a glass tube in which blue electricity crackled, as if Jake Marlowe had managed to capture lightning in a jar. On either side of the machine’s gleaming metal belly was a chair attached to a golden helmet full of more wires that looped back into the body of the machine. Sam had never seen anything like it. It was terrifying; it was beautiful.
“Gee, does it lay golden eggs?” Sam joked. He didn’t want those bastards to know how scared he was.
Miriam pulled at her chains. “No! Not my son! You promised!”
“We’ll keep him safe, Miriam,” Marlowe said.
“Safe from what?” Sam asked.
Miriam kept her steely gaze on Marlowe. “Like you did the others?”
“Regrettable,” Jefferson said. “But necessary for the good of the nation.”
“Safe from what?” Sam repeated.
Miriam shook her head. “I won’t do it.”
“Miriam…”
“Safe from wh—Hey, is this thing on? Am I broadcasting? Hello!”
Adams and Jefferson took hold of Sam’s arms and dragged him to one of the chairs. Adams strapped Sam’s arms down against the leather pads. “What’s the big idea? Is this an electric chair? Do I get a trial? A last meal? A coupla cookies?”
Sam tugged furiously at the restraints, but they were snug. “Are you gonna at least tell me what this meshuggunah thing is?”
Jake regarded the machine with a fondness Sam had never seen him bestow on another person. “This is the Eye of Providence.”
“This is the Eye? No offense, Mr. Marlowe, but it doesn’t even look like an eye. More like a cuckoo spider or, gee, I dunno, like something a crazed madman with delusions of grandeur would make.”
Marlowe ignored Sam as Jefferson and Adams strong-armed a struggling Miriam into the other chair.
