My laboratory at the Tuileries was a mess of timelines.
On one table, 18th-century maps. On another, blueprints for steam engines. And under the microscope, a pocket watch that defied physics.
I adjusted the lens.
"Look at the escapement," I said.
Robespierre peered through the eyepiece. "It's blue."
"Titanium alloy," I said. "Anodized. High tensile strength. Corrosion resistant. We can't make this, Maximilien. No forge in Europe can melt titanium."
"So he is like you," Robespierre said, stepping back. "A traveler."
"No," I corrected. "He's not like me. I came here to work. He came here to play."
I picked up the watch. A.C. 1785.
Alessandro Cagliostro. The charlatan who charmed the court of Louis XVI. The man who claimed to be two thousand years old. The man who vanished from a locked cell in the Bastille.
I had assumed he was a clever con artist.
I was wrong. He was a tourist.
"Citizen Administrator."
Fouché entered the lab. He held a piece of bloodstained velvet—a scrap from a Harlequin's suit.
"We found something in the lining," Fouché said.
He handed me a slip of paper. It was heavy cardstock, embossed with a seal of a snake eating its own tail. Ouroboros.
Written on it were coordinates.
48.86° N, 2.39° E. Midnight. Bring the rose.
"Père Lachaise Cemetery," I translated. "The Dead Drop."
"It's a trap," Robespierre said immediately. "He wants to finish what the Confessor started."
"Maybe," I said. "But he left this on a dead man. He knew we would find it. It's an invitation."
I looked at the watch. The hands were still spinning backward.
"He expects a spy," I said. "He expects Fouché."
I put the watch in my pocket.
"He's going to get the Administrator."
The fog had settled into the cemetery like a shroud.
Père Lachaise was a city of the dead. Mausoleums loomed like miniature palaces in the mist. Statues of weeping angels stared with blind eyes.
I sat on a flat tombstone near the coordinates.
I was alone.
Or so it seemed.
Fifty yards away, hidden in the crypts and trees, were twenty of Fouché's best marksmen. They had instructions: If anyone other than me moves, kill them.
I checked my pocket watch. Midnight.
The silence was absolute.
"You're early, Alex. Or are you late? It's hard to tell."
I didn't turn. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Cagliostro," I said.
A figure stepped out from behind a mausoleum.
He wasn't wearing the golden mask. He wore a simple black coat, cut in a style that was fashionable thirty years ago.
He looked young. Perhaps thirty. He had dark, curly hair and eyes that sparkled with manic energy.
"Alessandro, please," he smiled. "Count Cagliostro is a stage name. Like 'The Administrator'."
He walked toward me, swinging a cane. The same cane that had deflected a bullet.
"You have snipers," Cagliostro noted, glancing at a tree to his left. "Very 20th century of you. Guerilla tactics."
"You have titanium," I countered. "Very 21st century."
"22nd, actually," he winked. "The alloy is printed, not forged."
He stopped ten feet away. He leaned on his cane.
"So," he said. "You're the one fixing the timeline. Patching the holes. Balancing the books."
"Someone has to," I said. "You're trying to burn the bank."
"The bank is boring, Alex! It's just paper! I wanted to see the panic. Did you see the Harlequins? I choreographed that fight myself."
"Why?" I asked. "Why come here just to break things?"
Cagliostro sighed. He looked disappointed.
"Because it's beautiful, Alex. Chaos is the only true art. You're trying to turn history into a spreadsheet. I'm trying to turn it into a Jackson Pollock painting."
He stepped closer.
"Do you know why the fog is here?"
"You brought it."
"I merely suggested it. The timeline is rejecting you, Alex. You're a foreign body. A virus. The universe is running a fever trying to kill you."
He pointed his cane at my chest.
"Your heart. It's not disease. It's incompatibility. Your cells are vibrating at a different frequency than this century. You are literally falling apart."
I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach.
"I have time," I said.
"You have months," Cagliostro laughed. "Maybe weeks. And you're spending them building steam engines? How pedestrian."
He reached into his coat.
I tensed. I raised my hand—the signal to fire.
"Relax," Cagliostro said. "I brought the rose."
He pulled out a single white rose.
But it wasn't a normal flower. It was frozen. Solid. Encased in ice that didn't melt.
He placed it on the tombstone I was sitting on.
I looked at the grave.
The inscription was worn, but legible.
Here lies Louis Capet. 1754-1793.
My grave. The real King's grave.
"He died in the timeline you came from," Cagliostro whispered. "Guillotined. You stole his death. You stole his grave."
"I saved his country," I said.
"You saved a corpse!" Cagliostro shouted. His eyes flared with sudden anger. "History has a shape, Alex! You can't just bend it because you know Excel!"
He stepped back.
"I'm going to reset it," he said. "I'm going to burn your bank. I'm going to break your telegraph. I'm going to give the Pope a machine gun."
"Fire!" I screamed.
Twenty muskets cracked simultaneously.
The fog lit up with muzzle flashes.
Bullets ripped through the air. They struck Cagliostro in the chest, the head, the stomach.
He didn't fall.
The bullets passed through him. They hit the mausoleum wall behind him, kicking up stone dust.
He shimmered. Like a glitch in a video video.
"Hologram," I realized.
The image of Cagliostro smiled. It flickered.
"Game on, Administrator," the voice echoed, distorted and digital.
The image vanished.
Silence returned to the cemetery.
Fouché ran out from the crypts, pistol drawn. He looked at the empty space.
"Where is he?" Fouché demanded. "I saw the bullets hit him!"
"He wasn't here," I said. "He was never here."
I looked down at the tombstone.
The white rose was still there.
I reached out and touched it. It was incredibly cold. It burned my fingertips.
Liquid nitrogen frozen.
"He knows," I whispered. "He knows I'm dying. He knows I'm an imposter."
I picked up the frozen rose. It was heavy, like stone.
"He's not playing chess," I said to Fouché. "He's playing God."
I crushed the rose in my hand. It shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
"But God doesn't have a budget," I said. "And Cagliostro just overspent."
I turned and walked out of the graveyard.
"Find his power source," I ordered. "A hologram needs a projector. Find it. And burn it."
The fog swirled around us, thicker than ever.
The enemy was invisible. He was from the future. He was insane.
And I was the only thing standing between him and the end of the world.
My heart gave a painful thump.
"Hold on," I told my chest. "Just a little longer."