It was Black Scott who had found them first. He strode into the room, glanced at Will and Zoey, then looked over the random collection of objects the machine had spat out. He absently picked up a narrow hunk of pipe to examine it. Will walked to a nearby table and poured himself a drink.
“You want one?”
Scott said, “Man, you got a drinking problem. You people know you got a living severed head out in your courtyard? Thing is out there chewin’ on the snow. Gonna give me nightmares.”
Zoey said, “It’s been a weird week.”
Into some unseen communicator, Scott said, “They’re here. Ballroom.” Then he looked at Will and shook his head. “A fake bomb? What, did you make it out of papier-mâché? You know, you guys seem to have spent a long time on this plan and I got to say I got no clue whatsoever what it was tryin’ to accomplish.”
Will shrugged. “It looked better on paper.” Will made a show of looking at his watch. “Speaking of which, we should go stand somewhere else. Sooner rather than later. Like, say, in the next six minutes.”
Scott said, “I sense you’re just waitin’ for me to ask you what happens in six minutes. So…”
“A very big boom. The nuke was fake, of course, the fabricator doesn’t have the ability to create a city-destroying device. But the blast that vaporized Arthur’s warehouse, we can both agree that was real?”
Scott said, “Mmm hmm.”
“That’s because the fabricator does have, in its memory, the ability to fabricate a self-destruct device—one big enough to turn a city block into a crater. After Molech broke into his warehouse, Arthur set his machine to make just such a device. Well, about ten minutes ago, we set this machine to do the same.”
Zoey studied Scott’s face. It was interesting to watch all of the various stages of emotion wash over it. On one hand, the guy knew for a fact that Will Blackwater was a world-class liar and con man. He had no doubt been told by his own boss to automatically dismiss anything Will said as a falsehood or some other attempt at manipulation, no matter what it was. So the first expression was mild amusement, the way you react to the clumsy lie of a child.
But here’s the thing—lying would have become useless thousands of years ago if countering it was as simple as dismissing the liars completely. The really good liars were like chemists, brewing formulas that were mostly truth, the toxins undetectable in the mixture. So in just three seconds, Zoey watched Scott’s face transition from amusement to concern, as he started to weigh the possibility that Will was in fact telling the truth—after all, it was perfectly possible, and even logical, to do what he was claiming to have done. It would prevent the mansion from falling into Molech’s hands, along with whatever valuables or secrets were stored within, and would force Scott to make a call about what to do with his hostages. It was totally the kind of thing Will Blackwater would do.
To help drive it home, Will said, “I’m not going to let Molech move in and sleep in Arthur’s bed. Five minutes from now, this is going to be a crater, no matter what we do. So let’s not be stupid. Let’s get out of the blast radius and plug our ears. I liked Arthur a lot, but I have no intention of dying the same way he did. But I will, if you insist—as you said yourself, the alternative is months of slow torture at the hands of your rotbrain employer. An instant death that I don’t even feel? That’s pretty much my best-case scenario at this point. So which of us has something to lose?”
Scott shook his head, grinning. “I mean this with all honesty. People say Molech is bad, but you, Blackwater, you’re ten times worse. We may burn in hell but the devil gonna greet you like an old friend.”
Will sipped his drink. “You’re a smart man, Scott, and I respect you. You could have probably worked for us, under other circumstances. So I say, forget Molech. Let’s you and I work out an agreement to—”
Scott swung the pipe, and smashed it into Will Blackwater’s skull.
Blood sprayed across a nearby marshmallow snowman, and Will Blackwater collapsed to the floor with a sickening thud.
He did not move.
Zoey screamed.