She fell feetfirst through the bubble, through the door and hit the carpeted floor inside, slamming into the closed starboard-side passenger door. White pain flooded from leg to brain and Beth skimmed right across the surface of a total blackout. Back in the game, Wilder; back in the game. “Get the doctor!”
Jack dumped a chronon burst as Chronon-1 hit Hatch’s Romanesque atrium, catching the incoming fire. He took the lip of the platform at a run, leaping across the space-“Sorry, Doctor”-landing boots-first onto the chest of Dr. Sofia Amaral. She didn’t move a micron and Jack’s feet went out from under him. His back connected with her sternum and he bounced off. One flailing hand seized onto Sofia’s outstretched forearm, leaving Jack’s feet flailing fifty stories above Riverport’s streets.
Beth had already scrambled halfway over the cream-colored calf leather passenger seats, dealing with the inconvenience of having to do so with a gun taking up one hand while screaming at the pilot.
Dangling, Jack reached out for the upper rim of the helicopter door, grabbed it, and began to will Sofia loose from the hold of the stutter bubble. As her stasis softened he pulled in farther, one foot finding purchase inside the door. He drew her forward, grabbing on to a more secure safety loop bolted into the ceiling.
Sofia found her voice-a sound that went from silence to bass-syrup to a human scream-and suddenly she was so much deadweight, falling straight down.
Jack held her hand in a tight monkey-grip, shoulder wrenching as he caught her full weight. From the helipad Gibson was shouting for blood. Chronon-1 was almost to the edge of the pad.
Beth glanced back over her shoulder. “Get her inside!”
Jack hauled her up, Sofia clawing at the carpet, panicking as her sheer evening gown kept her leg from swinging up and in to the chopper. Someone started shooting, slugs vip-vip-ing into the shield. Donny, red faced and furious, glared down at them, then vanished from the edge of the pad.
Beth buckled herself in one-handed. To the pilot: “All right, asshole. Sit tight and you’ll be home in time for Kimmel.” She put her gun away and took the second stick.
Jack heard Gibson call Donny’s name, just as he hauled Sofia inside the chopper. Sofia fumbled her way into a jump seat, wrestling with the safety belt.
“Beth! Take the stick!”
Donny vaulted off the edge of the helipad, his trajectory taking him straight for the open passenger door, handgun pointed square at Jack’s face.
Jack threw his arms wide and nullified the field.
The helicopter sprang to sudden life and Jack was flipped off his feet as the blades threw Donny in two directions at once.
Gibson saw it all, his face a disfigured mess, contorted by an obliterating rage at the loss of his best friend and second-in-command. His weapon unloaded right at them, without a second thought.
The stick had bucked suddenly in Beth’s hand as the helicopter kicked back to life, but she wasn’t letting it win. Jack scuttled back from the open door as the chopper’s frame swerved and tilted, grabbing hard onto a jumpseat support as Beth sent the bird into a dive.
Beth had a death grip on the stick. Keeping the bird low, she swung it out over the Mystic River. Once their flight was stable and level Beth thumbed a contact on her phone, piped it to her earpiece.
“Horatio. You in the Tower? I need a favor.”
Inside Monarch Tower, on the thirty-fifth-floor mezzanine, Nick watched a gathering of the world’s wealthiest and brightest freak the hell out.
Everything needed a security card, and he didn’t have one. He was trapped.
“Hey. You.”
A man marched toward Nick along the curve of the mezzanine.
Handlebar moustache, loud bowling shirt under which was something about theater sports.
“Horatio,” he said. “Friend of Beth’s. Looks like today’s my last day. Let’s get out of here.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Nick said.
“One stop first. Super important. Floor fifty.”
15
News reports started coming in less than thirty minutes after the stutter broke.
Simultaneously, at locations across the globe, impossibilities occurred. All of them were captured on video. Intentionally.
9:12:42 P.M. Pier 14, San Francisco.
Civilian witnesses filmed two police officers closing in on a suspect, their Tasers drawn. The suspect, a man in his thirties of African descent, offers no resistance.
In the space of a single frame the entire scene changes: two strangers have materialized. They are dressed head to toe in black, save for Smiley masks. The white letters on their shirts read PEACE. They wave, friendly.
The strangers, somehow, are suddenly in possession of the police officers’ Tasers. The officers’ faces are painted with clown makeup, their belts have been loosened, their pants are around their ankles. Still moving forward at a brisk pace the cops trip and crash to the pavement.
The suspect shouts, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” repeatedly.
The strangers mime laughter, then Taser the two cops.
In the space of a frame, they are gone.
The incident was filmed by three separate witnesses.
9:12:42 P.M. Outside Melisse Restaurant, Santa Monica.
Security footage captured a celebrity socialite exiting the restaurant with a male companion. Their gunmetal Infiniti Q60 pulls up. The valet exits the car, holding the passenger-side door open for the socialite, as her companion walks around the rear of the vehicle to enter the driver side.
In the span of a single frame the vehicle, and the socialite, are gone. Footage shows the male companion accosting the valet. Footage ends.
9:12:42 P.M. The Viper Room, West Hollywood. Eight miles from Melisse Restaurant.
The venue was playing host to a well-known heavy metal act.
Security footage and handheld recordings uploaded by a dozen attendees at the concert show the headline act onstage, mid-performance. In the span of a single frame the disappearing socialite appears onstage-flanked by two black-clad figures in PEACE shirts and Smiley masks. The cartoonish figures wave animatedly at the crowd. After a moment the socialite collapses in high distress.
The band, now realizing what is occurring, summons security. The two masked suspects run to the edge of the stage, leap toward the crowd… and vanish in midair.
7:12:42 A.M. Al-Salamiyah, Syria.
Footage from a single stationary camera.
Twenty bound men kneel, facing away from ten hooded men carrying automatic weapons. One hooded man delivers a short, curt speech to the camera. The ten men then level their weapons at the back of their captives’ heads.
A figure appears mid-frame, wearing the now-distinctive PEACE garb. She waves happily at the camera. Within a second she is gone. The captors are given a second to react to this intrusion, before, in the space of a single frame, the weapons they were holding vanish from their hands.
At the same time their kneecaps simultaneously explode and all ten hooded men collapse, screaming, to the ground.
Notably the captives’ hands are now freed, and the missing automatic weapons have been laid before them.
This scene was uploaded to a wide spectrum of sites across the Middle East. By the time Western media picked it up the file had been viewed an estimated 489,000 times.
12:12:42 A.M. Washington, D.C.
The simplest incident of them all.
The United States President, in the final months of his administration, calls a late-night press conference to address the mass shooting at Riverport University and now the attack on Monarch Tower itself.