Grismer was being held, suspended by his arms and legs. Someone cradled his head.
Nausea stabbed his guts. His stomach clenched, and he heaved bile into his mouth. Swallowed it back as another cramp rolled through.
“What’s wrong with him?”
The world spun around him. The sun wheeled by overhead. He gritted his teeth against the vertigo that made him want to twist his head opposite the movement he saw. He closed his eyes, and the dizziness worsened.
He shot children. It made no difference that they opened fire on him, first. The SR6 was not non-lethal. It was less-lethal.
But they were children.
“Perhaps a reaction to the gravity migration. He is probably very susceptible to the changes.”
Grismer threw up into his mask.
The voices rose with panic. Fingers dug into the seals around his neck. He coughed and sputtered. Curled against the cramps.
They were going to expose him to the air. He slapped at their hands in a feeble attempt to stay locked inside the protection of the mask, but his vomit had pooled in the back of his hood, and more was threatening to come up.
The seals released with a gurgling hiss, and Grismer took an instinctive breath. Like a baby’s first moment out of the womb.
He didn’t need a slap, though he felt like he could have used one.
The air didn’t burn his mouth or lungs. Maybe the acid from his stomach had already burned the skin on his face, and he couldn’t yet feel the damage of Hollow Hills’ poisonous atmosphere.
The flashing light became shade, and he felt solid ground beneath him. He was in the front hall of the courthouse. The sun slid down the walls like the headlights of passing cars.
Roddie leaned over him. He saw his own sweaty pallor reflected back from her face shield. Stretched across the curve of her mask, his face looked like a screaming fun house clown.
She broke the seals around her collar.
He shook his head. “No.” His voice was a breathless whisper.
Her hood came off with a spit of compressed air. Her eyes met his, and the solid frame of reference curbed his nausea. He settled under her gaze. She wasn’t burned.
She blew a calming breath that made his eyelids flutter. “What do you want me to do?”
It was clear she hadn’t asked him. The general’s voice came from above him, from outside the protection of the courthouse roof. “He must feel the stone.”
She nodded. Tugged at the seals around her glove.
“No!” Anders shouted.
She paused. Confusion creased her brow, but she held Grismer’s gaze as she responded to the general. “What’s wrong?”
“You mustn't touch the stone with your bare skin. Only he can.”
Grismer nodded to himself. Staring into her eyes had calmed his body, but his mind wasn’t steady, yet. He should have told her the same thing.
She nodded. Moved her efforts to the seals of his gloves. Without breaking eye contact, she slid his right hand free, leaned forward, then reached into his pocket. “What am I looking for?”
Anders chuckled. “It will be the only one.”
She jerked her fist out of his pocket, sat back on her heels, then averted her gaze.
The nausea rolled back in. Became cramps as it dropped into his bowels.
He groaned, and Roddie leaned forward with her hand outstretched. In her palm was the Unity stone. Usually, it was plain with a pretty mineral glitter. Now, it glowed from within. Blue and gold.
His hand quivered as he held it out to receive the stone. He was perched on the edge of a fall, and everything seemed to draw back as if he pushed reality itself away.
The stone dropped into his hand. There was a Grismer on the floor in the courthouse of Hollow Hills. He suffered from GCS. An illness discovered when the first Stonecallers stepped through a temporal boundary.
Gravity Compression Syndrome started with a cramps and nausea, followed by dizziness and violent regurgitation. Pressure in the skull eventually forced the brain down into the spinal cavity, but by then, the victim was in the first stages of temporal dislocation.
His body would lose cellular cohesion, and he would fall apart, as if he had rotted on the spot.
It was rare, and he had never actually seen it happen. It was only possible if someone was strong enough to affect a new idiomatic temporality. Someone strong enough to change reality. It hadn’t been him, for here he was, dying on the floor.
But there was another Grismer. One trapped in possibility. One he wouldn’t even have seen without contact with the stone.
The possibility waited inside the idiom of the Unity. As if it were a spare Grismer held in reserve. In case of temporal distortion, break glass.
This Grismer was also on his back. He looked into Roddie’s eyes. He held the stone. But instead of his muscles tightening in response to the cramps, the muscles contracted in anger.
Why did the other Grismer seem so mad?
It was obvious this other Grismer would fit inside the idiom somebody had created around him, so Grismer stepped into the groove of that new reality.
He snatched his hand from Roddie’s then jumped to his feet. Spun to face Gabe Anders, who was standing on the landing outside the front doors. “Where’s your cane, General?”
Anders spread his hands. His smile was in his eyes. “Why keep what one doesn’t need?”
Grismer reached down for his SR6, but the weapon no longer hung at his side.
Anders laughed. “And what would you do, Bishop? Shoot me like those defenseless children?”
Grismer snarled. “Don’t call me Bishop. And they were hardly defenseless.”
Anders’ eyebrows shot up. “Hardly? Agent Grismer, I saw the struggle in your mind.”
Roddie stood with her hands held out as if to slow traffic. “Sir, what’s he talking about?”
Grismer wasn’t sure who she was talking to. He shrugged. Pointed to Anders. “He’s a Stonecaller. Like me.”
Anders laughed. “Not quite like you, no.”
Maggie Stanhope was leaning against the wall. She pushed off to stand straight. Pulled her attention from the clear air outside like she didn't want to see anything else ever again. “What’s a Stonecaller?”
Anders spread his hands. “It is beyond the scope of this discussion, for there are preparations to make.”
Roddie stepped to Grismer’s side. He almost sagged in relief. She still trusted him. Especially in the face of the legend. “What preparations?”
Anders grinned. “I have invited them inside.”
Berty came out of the shadows to stand next to his mother. He pointed a shaking hand to the ceiling. “Them? The fucking aliens?”
“Yes, Deputy Stanhope. The aliens.”
Grismer shook his head. “Why?”
“They have given me life.”
Then Grismer understood. “That’s why you changed it.”
“I was dying, Agent Grismer.”
“So are we all, sir.”
Anders sighed and put his hands behind his back. “Not like I was. The incrementalization of local temporality kept the cancer from spreading too quickly, but the pain? You can’t possibly imagine it. The mesenchymal stem cell protocol repaired some of the damage. And there were the blood transfusions and the drug therapy. All to extend my life long enough to take advantage of this forced idiom.”
Maggie rubbed her forehead. “This is making my brain hurt.”
Grismer pointed at the old man and realized he was no longer old. “Even after Drop Side?”
Anders waved his hand in dismissal. “The lives I saved are insignificant in the face of judgment. Don’t you understand, Agent Grismer? How can one have any meaning if that meaning is stolen?”
“You were a hero.”
Anders drew himself up straight. “I want to live, Agent Grismer. I give not a damn for the royal blood that pushed me aside even after I protected them from an assault that could have ended their reign. The Mullah had long infiltrated the moon by the time I arrived to stop their attack. It was the Rysoft power cell I attempted to save that gave me the cancer the Nine refused to treat after it exploded.”
“My father was there.”
Anders drew back in unguarded surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
“You saved his life.”
“I apologize, Agent Grismer, for I regret it.”
“Why?”
“He has died anyway, has he not? And if not, he will. Like the rest of the world when the Astrals move on. Like the children, whether you fire on them or not.”
Roddie stepped forward. “Where are they?”
Anders raised an eyebrow. “To whom do you refer?”
Despite the frustration obvious in the set of her shoulders, she kept her voice level. “The children.”
Anders closed his eyes. Tipped his head back. Rose to his full height, his feet barely on the ground. “They are back in the Hall of the Mountain King.”
That meant nothing to Grismer, but Maggie nodded. “Makes sense.”
Anders rose higher, until an inch of air was between his feet and the ground. Roddie stepped back with her mouth hanging open. Berty retreated to stand behind his mother. Grismer looked to see Sahger’s reaction, but the other agent wasn’t there. The muscle chick was gone, too.
When Anders settled back to the ground, there were fewer lines on his face, less gray in his hair. More body filled out his suit. “The Dark Father has hidden himself to obscure his plans from the other collectives. There is a moment of stasis developing. A tipping point which I can influence.”
Grismer shook his head. “For what purpose?”
“My own.”
“And the sergeants?”
“Jessup and Stanley support my cause.”
“I bet.”
Anders looked at Grismer with pity. “Why did I make sure they brought you here?”
Grismer shrugged. “I don’t know, General.”
“To give you the chance to save as many as you can.”
“Because you won’t?”
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
Anders leaned back in surprise. “Because, Agent Grismer, it was not part of the deal.”
“The deal you made with them?” Grismer pointed at the ceiling like Berty had.
Anders narrowed his eyes. “That is correct.”
“What makes you think they’ll hold up their end?”
“They are of one mind. Noble and pure.”
Maggie chuckled. “Yeah, but we ain’t.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
Her chuckle became a laugh. “Should have cured your blindness when you worked on your cancer.”
Anders put his hands behind his back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Maggie stepped forward and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Every terrible thing we’ve done to each other since they landed, they’ve been watching. If there’s one thing they could learn from humans, it ain’t just how to break a deal. It’s how to fuck the other one up for every deal down the line.”
Grismer thought the general was going to relent, but his teeth beamed out of his grin instead. “But I have an ace up my sleeve, Deputy Sheriff Stanhope.”
He spread his hands, and his feet once again came off the ground.
Berty looked up with his eyes closed. Wrinkled his nose. “Y’all smell gas?”
Anders spun in the air. Like so many Christs before, he looked ready for crucifixion.
Grismer rushed to the door with the others right behind him. As he stepped into the shifting sunlight, he smelled the rotten egg additive in the natural gas. It screamed in the distance, a sound no human throat could produce.
It was the howl of escaping pressure.
Anders let his arms fall. “This is not right.”
Maggie thrust her head between Grismer’s shoulder and the door jamb. “I told you, Gabe!”
Grismer tightened his fingers around the Unity stone. He extended his senses to find the stacked possibilities — one that wasn’t full of fire.
Anders backed away from the south then floated toward the Makers Association building. His toes scraped the ground, his clothes fluttered in the breeze.
Before turning into the alley, he looked at Grismer with pity. “I didn’t know.”
Grismer felt probability shift into reality. He tried to hold it back, but Anders wasn’t there to help. The new idiom dropped over them like a falling shroud, then the gas ignited.
The ground bucked, and everything south of Holsterman exploded.
The roaring fire rolled up from the Hollow Hills Estates. It curled under the surface of the dome. Swallowed everything in its path as it advanced.
Grismer stood for the people cowering behind him. He found a possibility where the front entry remained untouched by flames. It felt like stumbling onto a dollar in the street. He forced the possibility into his mind. Held onto the possibility until it became probable. By the time the weakening fireball hit the courthouse steps, the new reality was fixed in his mind as real.
The flames washed over them with the roar of a passing train then guttered out, as the tail didn’t have enough fuel to keep burning.
The wake of the compression wave blew out the blaze as it expanded and rebounded off the energy of the dome.
A blackened wasteland stretched before Grismer. Air in the distance rippled with the intensity of the heat from the jet of fire shooting straight up.
The flames hadn’t killed them, but the burning gas leak would use all the oxygen. Anders said he was free to try to save the rest, but he didn’t know what he was saving them from.
Something jabbed his palm, stung like a cut. He opened his hand, afraid to look down.
The Unity stone was broken.