I take a breath. I grab the sword. I heave.
Why the hell didn’t I move in with Felicity? What sort of jackass am I?
The blade starts to bow. Above me metal cracks and crunches, welds popping, girders buckling.
I got so caught up in dying. God, I really screwed MI37 over. They’re going to be rolled into MI6. Because of me. That’s my goddamn legacy. Jesus.
I heave harder on the blade. I reach the maximum pressure I can exert. I swing my legs up, mimicking Kayla, legs braced against the cross-beam, hanging almost upside down, heaving on the sword handle, punching metal with my legs.
Give. Give way, you bastard beam.
Hannah. I should have been better to Hannah. If I’d just listened to Felicity I could have left something so much better behind.
The blade bows further. The feel of something shifting beneath me.
Shit. Hannah. She has to shoot me. She has to… God, she has to kill me. I’ve lost track of her in the chaos. I search the crowd but it’s out of focus, the Uhrwerkgerät screaming too loudly in my head to let me see.
Can she see me? Can she take the shot? God, this could be an awful mess.
One last heave. And something gives. Something breaks. I feel it the instant before the consequences hit me. Time is warping, becoming strange and sluggish. The blade breaks. A clear ringing sound, a beautiful counterpoint to the static of the Uhrwerkgerät.
The beam beneath my feet gives way. With a noise to end the world.
I smash to the ground. Pieces of Kayla’s sword spatter the metal plates around me.
And above…
I see the first girder give way. It looks like it’s falling in slow motion. Clanging against another, knocking it free. Turning end over end. Another then another. All of the Uhrwerkgerät coming down on me.
And then, beyond that. A flicker of motion, up on the ledge of the stairs. Back where I left Clyde and Tabitha. But not a scruffy collegiate man. Not an angry Pakistani goth with her short hair molded into devil horns.
A beam hits the ground beside me. Plunges through an Uhrwerkmänn, unseaming it. Another strikes, crushes two of the robots.
I barely pay attention. I am trying to see. It’s someone else up there. A girl perhaps. Flowing hair. A bright yellow and pink summer dress billowing about her.
I pick myself up on one elbow, raise myself even as everything else collapses.
A girder eclipses my vision. A yard away. It is the face of oblivion.
And then Hannah’s bullet smashes against my temple and buries itself in my brain.