The chronon battery erupted. Then the fuel tank kicked off.
As Jack leaped clear, the BearCat exploded, the rear of the vehicle leaping skyward.
Everything went black.
Paul came out shooting, keeping the faces of those he loved-Sofia, the Jack he remembered, his own mother-at the forefront of his mind. These talismans would keep the darkness, the fear and horror, at bay. These-
The first shot took the nearest Shifter in the head. Paul caught a glimpse of a human face beneath the distortion, the spray of blood, but it made no difference. In less than a second the creature had phased through half a dozen versions of itself-all of them alive and furious.
He fired again and again, each death rendered meaningless by each Shifter’s infinite litany of potential selves.
There were not enough bullets in the world to kill even one of them.
They did not seem to mind his attempted murder. The assembled Shifters didn’t react; they didn’t move. Paul jagged right and altered course, aiming for the house, just beyond the thinning tree line ahead.
They did not pursue, but he knew they would not let him go.
Most of the barn team was dead. Those who survived were getting their shit together. Beth saw Gibson book it out the back of the barn, headed for the house. She presumed he’d be looking for Serene, looking to confirm for his boss, Hatch, that Paul was either alive or dead.
Her big problem was that Gibson had positively ID’d her. Once the stutter broke comms would be working again, and Gibson would immediately blow her cover. She should have killed him, she knew that, but she’d met his daughter. She was a sweet kid and she loved her dad. She deserved a family.
The thought flashed: Who are we really talking about here, Beth?
She had to kill him. Grabbing the lower lip of the hayloft door she bounced out, braked her boots against the outside wall, and dropped to the ground, glancing only once at the frozen, semi-exploded BearCat in front of her-Jack static, unconscious, in mid-air, at the top of that flame plume. Several men behind the garage were in the same state. The rest were falling back toward the woods.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised Jack, and ran for the house.
She came in through the front door, pushing past falling and burning debris suspended in space. That’s how Gibson got the drop on her, leaping at her through the chaos to her left with a knife in his hand.
Beth feinted left, swung the rifle right, and both combatants missed each other. Gibson landed low, pivoted, and leaped again before Beth could swing her rifle around.
The stutter vibrated, the death-thunder of the house a blast of deafening, stop-start sound. Beth shielded her head; Gibson didn’t hesitate. He got close, slashed, as a chunk of burning plaster dropped hard on the back of his head. The blade was off-target but still opened a small cut in her bicep. Beth danced out of the way.
The stutter shuddered again, harder. She had to save Jack before the BearCat exploded properly, killing him.
“Consultant! Are you here, sir?”
“You had a family, Gibson,” she said. “Instead you wanted this.”
Gibson spun, jabbed. Beth avoided the attack easily, closed in. “It’s over.”
A rabbit-punch to the jaw sent him staggering backward, the back of his leg connecting with the couch. With one move she slapped both hip-plates-locking him solid. The ceiling overhead bulged under the weight of its own burning collapse. In about four relative seconds the room would be an inferno.
Beth got the hell out of there, cleared the distance between stoop and BearCat. The truck was balancing on its front-left tire, the rear underside of the vehicle cracked open and exploding. Jack had been hit by the blast wave as he leaped off, knocking him out and deactivating his powers, leaving him frozen.
Beth managed to get a toehold near the windshield, then leaped for Jack’s ankle. Grabbing it, she pulled herself up onto the angled roof of the vehicle, hanging on to Jack the whole while. Hoping this was going to work, she double-pumped her hands and channeled her rescue rig’s charge into him. The bars on her belt ticked off one by one, and-
Jack reanimated, all dead weight, and crashed onto her. They tumbled back over the hood and hit the dirt, hard. Beth rolled over, got herself upright. The rig had a single bar left out of five.
Jack lay insensible on the ground, barely conscious. She grabbed his jacket with both hands, dragging him toward the cover of the barn. The stutter pulsed, the house exploding outward a fraction, double-time, before retracting, then rolling out again in excruciating slow motion.
She needed to get them both behind the barn before the house gas mains went up, but Jack was a lot of dead weight. She dropped him, then got around front and hauled him upright.
“You…” Jack managed to take in enough to make an assessment. “You… saved me?”
“Not yet.” She said, pulling him off the ground. “C’mon, Trouble, get up or we’re dead.”
Jack focused. He saw the house suck itself back in, and tremble. He felt the same motion in his own bloodstream; the motion that told him the stutter was about to break. That was all he needed.
On his feet now and stumbling they cleared the barn and garage and kept sprinting, straight through the sycamores. Once they got close to the fence line Jack grabbed her arm. “Wait, wait.” Jack had stopped, was looking back at the house.
The facade of the building continued to roll outward, then stopped. Juddered. Then, all at once, drew itself right back in, in one disconcerting move. Exploded wood and shattered windows rewound perfectly, peacefully and completely, closing behind a final belch of spark and flame. Sealed.
Leaving the Joyce family home intact.
The place where he had grown up, whole and complete, for the last time.
The stutter broke. The house erupted upward and outward as the brakes released and causality leaped forward. The shock wave knocked Jack and Beth to the ground, the detonation of ether, C-4, and the gas mains blasting the building to kindling-kindling that rained down around them.
The barn had taken a fatal blow and, after a moment, it creaked and collapsed away from them.
Sycamores burned. It was all gone.
The other Shifters moved aside, flashing to new locations throughout the woods, allowing Shining Palm to come forward. To close in. To claim the man it had been stalking for so long.
Paul stared into the oncoming glare of something worse than death, his legs and mind betraying him instantly, clinging to those last moments of himness, of being Paul. These were his last breaths, his last thoughts. All he was, all he had built, was about to be turned on himself, corrupted and inverted and perverted. His was an eternity of chaos and loss. An eternity.
It flashed to forty feet closer. To twenty.
Paul couldn’t move. He couldn’t look.
He could feel it, radiating, mere feet from him now.
It roared, demanding to be seen.
He couldn’t open his eyes. His teeth, crushed against each other, strangled a scream.
The ground shuddered with a terrible roar as the Joyce house detonated. Birds shrieked to life, flying free from the forest canopy. Paul felt the wave of heat push through the trees to wash across his face.
Chronon-flow normal. Causality returned. The stutter broke.
The stutter broke, and he was alone.
Alive.
Weakly, gratefully, Paul Serene collapsed to the wet earth and wept.
13
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 9:30 A.M. Riverport, Massachusetts.
“It’s really quiet out there.”