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Maddock grinned as the light moved away from him. He threaded one arm through the ring and hugged it to his chest as Bones began reeling him in. He could just make out the outline of the RIB, maybe twenty feet away, and his friend hauling him in like a prize catch.
“Always gotta do things the hard way,” said Bones as he leaned out and pulled Maddock up and over the gunwale.
“Believe me, it wasn’t by choice.” Maddock decided not to share the news about the identity of the man he had just fought with. That could wait until later. “Any sign of the others?”
“Not really. Just that big flash and then nothing. Did you see it?”
Maddock nodded but did not articulate his fears about what it signified. He struggled to a sitting position. “Get me ashore. I’ll go check it out.”
“Thought you might want to do that. Here. I found this—well, inherited it would be more accurate. Might come in handy.” Bones passed over an assault weapon—an M4 carbine if Maddock was not mistaken—and then turned to take his place at the console. The RIB lurched as Bones engaged the screws and a few seconds later, Maddock was in the water again, splashing up onto the storm barrier.
Once he was above the surf, he brought the carbine to the low ready and made his way up the sloping breakwater. He paused just below the crest, scanning the path before him for any sign of activity, hostile or otherwise. Every few seconds, a flash from the lighthouse obliquely illumed the foreground but aside from the crashing sea and the persistent rain splattering on the paving stones, all was still.
He brought the weapon up, staring through its attached EOTech holographic sight, finger poised alongside the trigger, and started toward the towering structure. He moved quickly, with short strides, rolling his feet heel-to-toe to maintain traction and avoid stumbling over unseen obstacles, and reached the base of the lighthouse in less than a minute. He turned left, intending to make a clockwise circle, but after only a few degrees of the arc, he heard something over the din of the storm.
Jade’s voice. She was counting. And cursing.
“Five... Six... Seven... Eight... Breathe, damn it.”
Maddock hastened in the direction of the sound, lowering the weapon, but remaining poised to revert to a more aggressive stance at the first sign of danger.
There was no need however. As he came around to the south side of the tower, he spotted them in the intermittent flash of the beacon. Rose stood by helplessly as a kneeling Jade pumped Kismet’s chest with her crossed hands, and counted and cursed. When she reached fifteen, she bent over and breathed into his mouth.
The orb lay a few feet away from them, looking about as deadly as a concrete lawn ornament.
Maddock ran to them, shouting. “What happened?”
Rose started at the sound of his approach, but then fell into his arms, openly weeping. “The rain. When he tried to use it...” She faltered, words failing her, but Maddock had already figured it out. As Rose had feared, Kismet’s attempt to use the orb to create an electrical force field had backfired. Evidently, it had not been a complete failure. The Prometheus gunmen had been swept away, probably blasted into the ocean, but Kismet had paid the ultimate price for that victory. The current had ripped through him, blasting him like an actual bolt of lightning, stopping his heart.
Maddock shook himself into action. Jade had done the right thing in starting CPR, but that alone wouldn’t save Kismet’s life. Despite what happened in movies, chest compressions could not start a stopped heart. Even the ubiquitous flatline on the EKG monitor was a complete fiction; the heart beat its life-sustaining rhythm because of electrical impulses from the brain, impulses that continued in some form even after death. The EKG was a representation of the electrical signals that kept the heart beating, not the actual activity of the heart muscle. Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation primarily served to forestall brain death by sustaining the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and organs, but the only way to restore the heart’s normal rhythm was with a jolt from a defibrillator, and the nearest one of those was back in Plymouth harbor.
He turned to Rose. “The orb did this, right? Maybe we can use it to jump start his heart again.”
Rose gaped at him, horrified. “And end up just like him?”
Maddock wasn’t so sure. Kismet had some kind of affinity for the orb and the other elemental artifacts, an affinity nobody else seemed to have. Except for TBH, of course.
Ask my brother....
Maddock didn’t know how to put that into words, so he chose instead to simply act. He stepped forward and, bracing himself for the possibility that he was about to make a fatal mistake, scooped up the orb
Nothing. Not even a tingle of current.
“So far, so good.” He turned, faced Jade and Kismet. “Get clear,” he warned.
Jade looked up, her lips moving as she continued counting, and shook her head.
Rose ran forward, putting herself in between him and the others. “Maddock, don’t.”
Maddock was about to attempt an explanation, but just then, Kismet’s entire body spasmed, like someone waking from a dream of falling, and he gasped loudly.
Jade backpedaled away, as if uncertain whether this was a miraculous recovery, or some kind of zombie-like reanimation. Maddock was similarly wary, but Kismet merely sat up, looking bewildered. He met Maddock’s gaze and raised a hopeful eyebrow. “Did it work?”
You were dead... It didn’t take... Ask my brother.
Maddock extended a hand and helped Kismet to his feet. The latter bounded up, as if his near-death experience was nothing but a refreshing nap. Maddock maintained the handclasp pulling Kismet even closer.
“I ran into your brother,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper. “We need to talk.”