She came hurtling up and over the side, but collided with him, unleashing a shockwave that floored Caleb and Phoebe. Dazed, Tesla tried to regain control, free his hands, but the best he could do was gain one foot, and then clasp her wrists. The two of them, face to face, struggled amidst the whipping plasma and crackling electrical impulses.
“It’s time for us to leave,” Caleb yelled over the roaring in the chamber.
As if agreeing, Tesla turned his glowing face to Phoebe. “You must go!”
“Wait!”
He made a sparking, sputtering sound, overcome by the high-pitched screech of his opponent, trying to pull away. Her head turned toward the bell, spinning faster now. She seemed to breathe in and suck out some its residual energy, then expelled it a short distance away, attempting to create a portal.
“No,” Phoebe heard Tesla say as she followed Caleb and ran for the door at their level.
“No escape,” came Tesla's enhanced voice, blaring like a loudspeaker at a concert.
“Not talking to us,” Montross shouted, pulling Diana along ahead of Phoebe and Caleb now, leading the way. In seconds they were out the door. Slammed it shut.
In the hallway, ten steps to the elevator.
He jammed the button as Caleb came limping over, helped by Phoebe. “We’ll never make it. The exit is probably twenty floors above us…”
“Oh, don’t say never,” Montross quipped. “Besides, I’m sensing I’m going to live another day, so if you stick with me…”
The doors open, and he turned and smiled, waving them inside with his free hand.
Diana slammed the top button as soon as they were in. “Twenty floors you say? What’s the range of an underground nuclear detonation?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Caleb said, still leaning on Phoebe.
“That’s a first, big brother.” Phoebe rested him against the wall so she could catch her breath. “You not knowing something?” She looked at the floor beneath her feet, expecting a rumble and a blast that would drop the car to their fiery deaths.
“Tesla…” Caleb said, and closed his eyes, seeing…
The two glowing forms struggle amidst the elemental chaos. The bell rattles violently, spilling and gushing energy, the chains cracking. The newly created portal is collapsing, but Miriam, the flimsy tatters of a blue suit clinging to her disintegrating form, floats toward it, only to have her ankle snagged at the last moment by Tesla — whose own body has been shredded below the waist, just a streaming gas collection of golden numbers dissipating into the whirlwind of energy as—
Miriam’s hand closes on emptiness. The portal snaps shut an instant before the chains holding the bell shatter, and it plummets. It’s still spinning as it crashes down three hundred feet into a pit.
For a moment in the ensuing silence, Tesla’s attention is drawn upward, to the form of a beautiful white bird, so out of place amidst the carnage down here. Fluttering, weaving up and down and in graceful circles. He reaches for it and then everything turns—
Perfect WHITE.
29
Caleb snapped back to the present to find himself being helped into the back seat of a Range Rover under the shadow of a lighthouse. He looked up and out, squinting, just as the engine roared to life, the doors slammed, and the tower cracked and started to crumble.
For an instant, he was back in the first century, on the shore looking up at the once-mighty Pharos, jarred by another earthquake as the ground jealously and violently rid itself of this proud thorn in its rocky flesh.
The concrete shattered and the small building itself dropped out of sight.
“Go, go GO!” someone shouted, and it seemed the vehicle tried but was caught ineffectively spinning its wheels up a steep hill. Then it was level again and swerving for control, shooting ahead at excessive speed.
Caleb continued to watch as the lighthouse tower sunk into a cloud of debris, and the pavement behind them shattered and dropped twenty or thirty feet. The trees fell and were consumed by the hungry earth.
He continued to watch as the winds buffeted the car and the clouds rolled by in silence and the waves out to the east drove up high and collapsed backwards in a soundless but devastating seismic eruption.
He continued to watch as nothing else happened, and sighed in relief as Phoebe took his hand.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Montross said.
“Yeah,” Diana agreed. “Is it over? Stopped her? The Tablet is gone, right, and now this shield…?”
“It’s still up,” Caleb said. “And will be. I don’t know if it can be shut down once activated, except through the use of the Tablet’s power again. The generator sites are self sustaining, I would think.”
“Well, that’s good. So we’re protected, right?”
“I don’t know,” Montross asked while driving. “Why did she want that shield?” Reducing speed to a more normal level as they approached a residential section, beautiful mansions on either side of the road. “What was so bloody important that she had to trick us into going that route instead of destroying the comet pieces as they became a threat? What—? Diana?”
She was grunting, holding her head and doubled over. She gasped suddenly and looked up, screaming as her eyes went completely wide and white.
“What is it?” Phoebe yelled, clutching her.
Montross slammed on the brakes. He got out of the car, helped Diana outside, but she was still screaming and grabbing her temples. “Make it stop, stop, stop!!”
“What?” Caleb and Phoebe came out to help.
Montross looked up helplessly. “What’s the problem, why aren’t we affected by whatever…?”
He trailed off, and his attention went from Caleb and Phoebe to behind them — to the driveway they had just past. To the woman and a teenager who had just come running outside.
They were screeching in absolute horror — or pain, or both. Fell to the ground. Heads up, howling at the sky in agony. More screams, and Caleb and Phoebe saw other doors opening, more people rushing out onto their lawns, to the driveways, running into the street. One man emerged from his upstairs window, onto the roof and simply threw himself over, headfirst.
“What…”
Phoebe clutched Caleb’s arm. “Tesla warned me, said his shield could have some sort of horrible side effect and should never be used. That’s why he destroyed the notes that the government was looking for.”
Caleb’s mouth went dry, and he remembered the vision…
Far, far in the ancient past, when just such a shield was up, seemingly protecting them before Icarus’s last attack…until someone wrenched the Tablet free, ending the connection and shutting it all down.
“Oh my god… they knew.”
“What?” Montross snapped, holding Diana’s face to his chest, trying to soothe her.
“In the past, the last time before hell rained down on us, they chose Armageddon over whatever this is.”
“What is it? What the hell is it!?”
“Whatever it is,” Phoebe said, “it’s only affecting…them. The others, the ones like Diana…People who…”
“Aren’t already psychic.” Caleb said it in a near-whisper.
Diana, gasping, trying to control herself, maybe in less pain and shock than others, tried to speak. “Everything…I hear. I see…everything. God, please…Can’t…stop it…”
Montross held her tighter. “That Custodian woman was trying to do something on a smaller scale, with Tesla pylons and charging the ether, granting subjects psychic abilities, trying to create…well — us. I thought it was to have others find the Tablet, but…”