Newsies fell over one another as they tried to evade armed feds, livid BATF officers, residents trying to get away through the chaos, Shangri-La Security arriving too late to prevent disaster, screaming Angels, and panic-stricken tourists. As the tear gas spread, the inbound traffic arriving through Primary disintegrated into a shambles.

Skeeter grabbed Rachel's wrist and hauled her bodily toward Edo Castletown. They had to get clear of this insanity. Weird, distorted shouts and cries rose on all sides. He couldn't see Molly anywhere. He could barely see, at all. They slithered feet-first into a goldfish pond and nearly fell, then splashed through knee-deep water and ran into screaming, wailing tourists and floating timbers where one of the Edo Castletown bridge railings had collapsed. Skeeter scrambled up the other side of the pond, pulling Rachel up behind him, and half-fell through a screen of shrubbery, then they stumbled into a miraculous pocket of clear air. Skeeter dragged down a double lungful of it, coughing violently. He tried to keep Rachel on her feet, but was hardly able to keep his own.

"Let me help!"

The familiar voice rang practically in his ear. Someone got an arm around Rachel and drew her forward, then somebody grasped Skeeter's elbow and hauled him out of the chaos on tottering feet. Blinded by the tear gas, Skeeter allowed himself to be propelled along. Noise and confusion faded. Then someone else got an arm around him and a few moments later, he found his face buried in blessedly cool, running water. He coughed again and again, blinked streaming, burning eyes. He managed to choke out, "Rachel?"

"She's all right, Skeeter. Damned good job you did, getting her out of that mess."

He heard her coughing somewhere beside him and wondered with an anxious jolt what had become of Molly. Skeeter rinsed his eyes again, swearing under his breath, furious with himself for failing yet again to protect a friend in the middle of a station riot. He was finally able to blink his eyes and keep them open without burning pain sending new tears streaming down his face.

Skeeter was standing, improbably, in what looked like the bathrooms off the Neo Edo Hotel lobby. The mirror showed him a sodden mess that had once been his face. He shook his head, spraying water, and started to scrub his face with both hands. Someone grabbed his wrists and said hastily, "Wash them off, first. They're covered with CS." Slippery liquid soap cascaded across his fingers.

That voice sounded so familiar, Skeeter glanced up, startled. And found himself staring eyeball to reddened eyeball with Kit Carson.

Skeeter's mouth fell open. The lean and grizzled former time scout smiled, a trifle grimly. "Wash your hands, Skeeter. Before you rub tear gas into your eyes again." Behind Kit's shoulder, Robert Li, the station's resident antiquarian, bent over another sink, helping Rachel rinse tear gas out of her eyes. Belatedly, Skeeter noticed the floppy rubber gas mask dangling from Kit's neck. Where the devil had Kit Carson found a gas mask? Surely he hadn't bought one from that Templar selling them down in Little Agora? Wherever he'd stashed it—probably that fabled safe of his, up in the Neo Edo Hotel's office—there'd been two of ‘em, because Robert Li wore one, too. Well, maybe Kit had bought them from that Templar, after all. He was smart enough to prepare for any kind of trouble. Wordlessly, Skeeter washed his hands.

When he'd completed the ritual, which helped him regain his composure and some measure of his equilibrium, he straightened up and met Kit's gaze again. He was startled by the respect he found there. "Thanks," Skeeter mumbled, embarrassed.

Kit merely nodded. "Better strip off those clothes. The Neo Edo's laundry staff can clean the tear gas out of them."

Well, why not? Skeeter had done stranger things in his life than strip naked in front of Kit Carson and the station's leading antiquities expert in the middle of the most expensive bathroom in Shangri-La Station while a riot raged outside. He was down to his skivvies when Hashim Ibn Fahd, a down-time teenager who'd stumbled, shocked, through the new Arabian Nights gate, arrived. Dressed in Neo Edo Hotel bellhop livery, which startled Skeeter, since Hashim hadn't been employed two days previously, the boy carried a bundle of clothing under one arm and a large plastic sack.

"Here," Hashim said, holding out the sack. "Put everything inside, Skeeter."

"Have you seen Molly?"

"No, Skeeter. But I will search, if Mr. Carson allows?"

Kit nodded. "I didn't realize she was caught in that mess, too, or I'd have pulled her out along with Skeeter and Rachel."

The down-timer boy handed over his plastic sack and ran for the door. Skeeter dumped in his dress slacks and his shirt, the one the irate construction worker had ripped not thirty minutes previously. The jingle of important things rattled in his pockets. "Uh, my stuff's in there."

"We'll salvage everything, Skeeter," Kit assured him. "There's an emergency shower in that last stall, back there. Sluice off and get dressed. This is going to get mighty ugly, mighty fast. I don't want you anyplace where that asshole out there," he nodded toward the riot still underway outside the Neo Edo, "can lay hands on you. Not without witnesses."

That sounded even more ominous than the riot.

"Uh, Kit?" he asked uncertainly.

The retired time scout glanced around. "Yes?"

Skeeter swallowed nervously. "Just who was that guy, anyway? He looked sorta familiar..."

Kit's eyes widened. "You didn't recognize him? Good God. And here I thought you had a set the size of Everest. That was Senator John Caddrick."

Skeeter's knees jellied.

Kit gripped his shoulder. "Buck up, man. I don't think you'll be going to jail anytime in next ten minutes, anyway, so shower that stuff off. We'll convene a council of war, after, shall we?"

There being nothing of intelligence Skeeter could say in response to that, he simply padded off barefooted across the marble floor of the Neo Edo's luxurious bathroom, wondering how in hell Kit Carson proposed to get Skeeter out of this one. He groaned. Oh, God, this was all they needed, with Ianira Cassondra's suspicious disappearance, fatal shootings on station during two major station riots, not counting today's multiple disasters...

Why Senator Caddrick, of all people? And why now? If Caddrick was here, did that mean his missing, kidnapped kid had been brought here, too? By the Ansar Majlis? Skeeter held back a groan. He had an awful feeling Shangri-La Station was in fatal trouble.

Where that left Skeeter's adopted, down-timer family...

Skeeter ground his molars and turned on the emergency shower. Shangri-La Station wasn't going down without a fight! If Senator Caddrick meant to shut them down, he was in for the biggest battle of his life. Skeeter Jackson was fighting for the very survival of his adopted clan, for everything he held sacred and decent in the world.

Yakka Mongols, even adopted ones, were notoriously dirty fighters.

And they did not like to lose.

Chief Inspector Conroy Melvyn, as head of the Ripper Watch Team, had the right to tell Malcolm what he wanted to try when it came to searching for the Ripper's identity, and what Conroy Melvyn wanted was to know who this mysterious doctor was, assisting James Maybrick. Malcolm, exhausted by days of searching for Benny Catlin, didn't think Melvyn's latest scheme was going to work. But he was, as they said in the States, the boss, and what the boss wanted...

Nor could Margo tackle this particular guiding job. Not even Douglas Tanglewood was properly qualified. But Malcolm was. So Malcolm Moore dressed to the nines and ordered the best carriage Time Tours' Gatehouse maintained, and set his teeth against weariness as they jolted through the evening toward Pall Mall and the gentlemen's clubs for some trace of a doctor answering their mystery Ripper's description.