“Who is this?” the idiot on the line demanded again.
Lifeboat’s success required him to be a non-entity, but it never ceased to be an indignity.
“Do you copy?”
A pause on the line. “The code checks out.”
“Twenty Technicians, chronon enabled. Ground floor. Extreme prejudice. You will have stutter cover. Double time.”
“Whoever this is, we’re not gonna need twenty men to stop one girl.”
That neatly put-together redhead was a woman Paul had met once, a very long time ago, a long time from now.
“They won’t be able to stop her,” Paul told the security chief, getting out of his seat. “But they might slow her down.”
Cutting the line he ran for the elevator.
The elevator hushed open, parallel to the main stage. The crowd was loving it, freezing and unfreezing. This was entertainment to them, a show, not cutting-edge science that could change the world. The elevators were outside the pylons’ bracket and remained unaffected by the demonstration.
“Beth, we’ve got ten, maybe fifteen seconds before the stutter hits.”
The second elevator with Gibson’s goons was right behind them.
Beth exited. “Get Sofia. She’s Brazilian. Five eight, about a buck twenty. Dark hair, cut in a bob. Carrying a tablet. She’ll be backstage. Check the wings. I’ll draw them off.”
She ducked into the assembly before Jack could protest.
The second elevator opened and Chronon-1 fanned out, by which time Jack had warped toward the cover of side-stage: scaffolding, black cloth drapes, security barricades.
He was over and up the aluminum stairs in a blink, backstage.
The stutter slammed into being, disorienting. The entire world went still.
The area for the demonstration had been boxed out in yellow, with audience members asked to space out evenly. The Monarch performers were getting off the stage and taking up positions next to audience members, intending to wow them once the stutter broke.
Gibson silently signaled his crew to hold up. Hatch was onstage, waiting for the stutter to break before he could wrap up the performance. Gibson didn’t want him tipped off that something was up.
“No shooting,” Gibson said. “Mr. Hatch needs this to go well.”
“She’s got a gun, boss. You really want to bring blades to a gunfight?” Irene said.
“She won’t shoot. She knows as well as we do: these people are bulletproof while immobile, but once that stutter breaks and the bullets start flying… heads pop.”
Irene sighed, unclipped her knife.
The elevator came to sudden life, heading back up to retrieve a passenger. Someone upstairs had channeled chronon flow from the Regulator to the elevator’s rig-part of the Tower’s emergency system. That took authority. The elevator headed back up.
“Emergency system. Someone with clout’s coming down.” Gibson drew his knife. “Work fast.”
From the wings Jack could tell the stage was clear. The operatives were in position in the crowd, ready to surprise a few randomly selected guests by materializing in front of them.
Jack saw Sofia in the wings, frozen in the act of checking her watch.
Folding into a submoment he jetted across the space, unseen, right up next to her.
“All right, Doctor. I’m gonna need you to work with me here.” Jack stepped behind her, placed one hand around her waist and one over her mouth-everything about her as hard as stone. “I’m really sorry about this.”
With a little concentration he extended his chronon field across her and felt her begin to cohere into the frozen moment.
Sofia came to with a hand over her mouth and freaked out.
“Ssh! I’m not gonna hurt you, but I can’t let you go. You gotta listen to me.”
That didn’t work. She elbowed Jack hard in the ribs, driving one stilettoed heel hard into his foot. Jack bit down on the pain.
“I’m a friend!” he hissed. “My name is Jack Joyce. William Joyce was my brother.”
Beth moved low through the forest of still bodies, stealing glances toward the stage. Hatch was immobile. She couldn’t see Jack. Chronon-1 was entirely focused on her.
“We need you to help us,” Jack continued.
Sofia twisted in his grip-“I do not care!”-then stopped. It dawned on her that the world about her had stopped moving entirely. The demonstration was to encapsulate the audience-not the entire building.
“You admired Will. Believed in his work. He mentioned you in his notes.”
Sofia wasn’t listening. She was taking it all in, like a kid in their first snowfall. “Zero state,” she breathed. “We exist within a deformation in the Meyer-Joyce field. Yet we see. We hear. We breathe. Move.” She wheeled on him, twisting round in his arms. “You must come with me. Paul needs you.”
Sofia glanced behind herself, at Hatch, as static as all those gleeful faces before him.
“Paul’s mistaken. Will had a Countermeasure, you understand? We can stop the end before it happens.”
“Countermeasure,” Sofia cut him off. “To repair the fracture in the Meyer-Joyce field. To-”
“To save us,” Jack said. “From the end of time.”
“You!” It was Paul-a portrait of fury at the far side of the stage.
Every chronon operative in the audience turned reflexively-with no idea what to make of the scene onstage. Performers to soldiers: weapons up.
The jumpsuited Technician barked, “On your knees!”
Weapons were pointed at all of them-Paul included.
Paul had no time for them, stalked across the stage toward Jack. “Get away from her!”
Jack realized they had no idea who Paul was.
“On your knees!” the Tech shouted. Weapons tensed in all hands. “Final warning!”
Gibson risked a glance and saw the morons from the stage show pointing assault weapons at the Consultant.
“Hold fire! Hold fire! Target: male, left! All others high-value friendlies! Strikers, go!”
The two armored Strikers-soda can fuses flaring sun-hot-flashed up from the audience, boiling energy tracing from their back units. Sofia shrieked as they tore past. Jack let go of Sofia and dashed fifteen feet out onto the stage as the Strikers snapped to a halt. A lucky swing saw a rifle butt glance across his forehead.
Paul darted across the stage, driving his shoulder into Jack’s back and continuing on his way to stop in front of Sofia.
Jack spun with Paul’s passing blow, the pistol slipping from his hand to skid across the stage, his back on fire.
Paul took Sofia’s hand. “Come with me.”
The Strikers flashed forward, each one taking a lock hold on one of Jack’s arms, jetting him across the stage, headfirst, toward a Marshall stack.
Jack warped backward-just a nudge-the reverse momentum swinging the two Strikers into each other’s faces. There was a crack of shattering faceplates and Jack’s arms were almost ripped off in the process.
He turned to see Paul spiriting Sofia into the shadows of the wings.
Beth saw Paul take Sofia through stage right-Beth’s left. She moved fast and low, aiming to circle around the back of the stage and intercept.
The jumpsuited Technician had her handgun out, while the Juggernauts awkwardly angled for a shot that wouldn’t endanger Hatch-still frozen onstage as the satisfied host. But they were having trouble navigating through a sea of smiling people who might as well have been made of concrete.