The rescue rig was good to go.
“You could have searched this place anytime you liked. Why now?”
“We did. There was nothing here at the time, but this”-Paul glanced about-“much of this is new.” He opened the nearest box, dug deep, pulling aside papers and folders. “Have you seen any diagrams or schematics of a device like a twelve-sided sphere? I need you to think: this is very important.”
Jack let himself rest against the desk. “Sure,” he said. “Yeah. In the corner over there.”
“Where?”
“Far corner. Near the stuffed elephant.”
Jack had loved that house. It wasn’t much without a family in it, though. “Y’know, Paul,” Jack said. “You dropped a building on my brother.” Reaching behind the flat-screen, he found the panic button: a palm-sized metal box with a plastic idiot shield covering a fat red detonator. He flipped it up.
Paul shifted sideways, peered deep into the stacks of magazines and papers.
Saw the gallon jug. Knew immediately what it was. Reacted accordingly.
“Seems fair that he return the favor.”
The detonator went click.
There were two hearts in that attic. Both stopped for an instant. From behind a stack of plastic storage tubs something popped, then hissed. Concealed wiring along the ceiling join blackened and fritzed. That was it.
Jack rolled back his head, exasperated. “For Christ’s sake, Will.”
Paul went for his sidearm, Jack reacted…
Then the attic exploded.
Gibson vaulted the fence in time to see the attic window spit glass, unrolling a tongue of thick flame across the yard.
Then the stutter hit and the whole of the Lord’s Creation… stopped: sounds Randall Gibson hadn’t even noticed-the rasp of leaves in a morning breeze, the distant hush of traffic, the trill of a lonely bird trying to get laid-all drew out, alien and discordant, beneath a boom turned to a roar turned to a whine turned to nought but the tinnitus pinging in his ears.
That rolling column of glass-speckled flame hung absurdly, like a mistake, across a bright-blue sky.
The chronon gauge on his rescue rig read a full charge, all good. Designed by the Merlins at Monarch, the rig was a brace across his waist and shoulders that fit neatly beneath his jacket. It afforded him a discreet profile, better than the ’roidy NASA-looking crap the Strikers wore. Downside: the charge sucked.
If Paul Serene was still alive in there he’d be mobile; moving unassisted through a stutter was just one of the things that cold-eyed freak could do.
Nah, the Consultant would be fine. Best check on that little hardbody in the barn.
A God-clap vanished Jack’s past beneath an all-consuming tidal wave of flame. It lunged from all corners, the attic filled and gone in a roaring instant. From within his bubble of suspended time Jack watched as all that was left of his former life died in less time than it took to blink.
The flames hesitated, paused, backtracked, resumed.
Within a thermosphere of frozen time even the dust on the boards beneath his feet remained undisturbed, as was the section of wall caught in the bubble.
All else: Hades.
On the far side of an immobile wall of flame something shimmered through the suspended smoke and haze.
A man-sized dome of suspended time.
Within it, shaken and furious, Paul Serene stood up.
Gibson slipped into the barn, strolled to the ladder, and climbed on up. What a dump: cans, shelves, crap. All of it older than he was.
There she was: back pressed to the rusty shelf by the hayloft doors, rifle in hand, still as a statue.
“Hey there. You waitin’ for me?” He liked the way her T-shirt hugged her, beneath that canvas jacket that was spoiling the view. Her head was down, focused on the rifle, red hair tied back in a ponytail. He ducked his head, angling for a peek of her face beneath that cap.
He noted the ShotSpotter taped to her weapon. An unusual piece of equipment. That told Gibson she knew what she was getting into, but taped to a cheap old deer rifle? Couldn’t be civilian, the way she zeroed in on the Guardian squad shooter. So who was this warm little slice of pie?
Examining the rifle meant Gibson noticed her hands-specifically her fingers, which were capped with rubberized thimbles.
Like the ones he wore, attached to his rescue rig.
The hardbody glanced at him from beneath the rim of her cap.
She put her shoulder into a swing straight at the bridge of his nose, but Gibson was ready, shifting his weight and angling away. That put a big old smile on his face. She spun with the wasted momentum and he leaped on her for the split second her back was to him. He grabbed the rifle and yanked it like a crossbar for her throat.
She surprised him. She let go immediately and dropped. Weight displaced, Gibson lurched backward, rebounding off a rack of flimsy yet unmoving iron shelves.
Turned out she had a pistol. That figured. He-
Holy shit. It was Washout Wilder.
“Drop the rifle,” she said.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Drop it!”
“You have fucked your life up masterfully, Wilder. I stand before you in awe.”
He tossed it away. Ten feet out the rifle lost whatever chronon charge it had picked up from either of them and froze, suspended in mid-air.
“Spare me. I know all about you, Gibson.”
“Want me to sign your tits?”
“I want you to deactivate your rig.”
“Yeah, and I want you to s-”
She cut him off with a barely tolerant, “Don’t.” And a very slow shake of the head.
Gibson racked up a checklist of things to work through once he got that gun off her.
“Deactivate it,” she said.
“Why? You on a clock?”
“You have a kid.”
“So? You just shot Larry, his sister’s got diabetes.”
“Lorelei doesn’t have to grow up without her dad. Three.”
“Or what? You’ll murder me?”
“Killed Larry. Two.”
“Okay. Okay.” He took that moment to catalog her: height, weight, complexion, hair, eyes, build, accent, distinctive features. “You should have shot me.” Gibson slapped release plates on both hips, the power supply disconnected. Gibson froze.
She lowered her weapon, hands shaking.
Gibson was frozen, no longer a threat, rig deactivated. Even immobile, locked into that self-dividing moment, his expression told her this wasn’t over.
This was a mistake. Once the stutter broke Gibson would radio in and blow her cover. Or kill her. Or worse. If he could.
She should kill him. He wouldn’t be the first, or the last, but killing him meant killing the love and joy she had seen in Lorelei’s eyes. Beth knew it meant condemning that little girl to becoming someone too much like herself: wounded and robbed, full of questions that would never be answered.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Paul said.
The stutter rolled forward, slowly, excruciatingly, seething.
“It was worth a shot.”
Paul looked at the stolen gun in his hand, like he had never seen it before. Then he checked the mag. “We recover quite quickly, don’t we? From injuries. Our relationship to the chronon field constitutes a kind of secondary immune system-one that keeps us alive, protected not from infection but misadventure. But it still allows us to feel the pain of our mistakes; permits them to scar us. I myself have many scars.” The bullet impacted against Jack’s stutter shield before he registered that Paul had raised the gun. “Some injuries our privilege cannot save us from.” The bullet hovered, impatient, two feet away from Jack’s head. “Do not confuse your new state of being with being invulnerable, Jack. You are anything but.”