“A giant teleporting frog?” I am not sure if Devon is more disdainful of the quality of monster I am fighting, or my inability to do so proficiently.
I look at her sourly. I swear I can hear Jasmine snickering in the background.
“Oh, Arthur, I’m sorry.” Devon seizes me in a bear-crusher of a hug. Considering the residual frog spit covering me, it’s pretty decent of her.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say, once I can get air back in my lungs. “Just… being beaten up wasn’t the most fun.”
I’d been so excited about the sword too. I was looking forward to my Errol Flynn moment. Swinging on a chandelier and diving over a grand staircase.
That said, considering how this stuff normally goes, I’d be lucky to get a bare bulb and a stripper pole most days.
“Would it cheer you up if I told you I thought I could blow up disrupted space-time particles?”
I weigh this information. “How big of an explosion do they make?”
“Very small individually. But if you get a big pocket it could make quite the boom.”
“Let’s find a really big pocket.”
“Att-a-boy.”
We’re in the room where Nikolai died. Devon pauses at the small cross we made for him, mutters something under her breath. She’s holding a tangle of wires and circuitry attached to a naked speaker.
Aiko, Malcolm, and Jasmine have come along for the show too. Jasmine is headphone-less. She regards Devon’s messy little machine with something like hatred.
“The headphones were a worthy sacrifice,” I tell her.
“You, like, totally realize that frog was karma, right?” she asks me.
Devon looks at her sympathetically. “Would you like to blow something up too?”
Jasmine grimaces, then shrugs, defeated. “Sure.”
Devon holds out the wires to Jasmine. She takes the messy thing, then examines it, turning it over several times. Finally she looks up. “Like, how does it work?”
“Well,” Devon says, “you point the speaker at the disturbance.” Jasmine sorts the apparatus out from the tangle, and grips it delicately in one hand. “Then you take those buttons in the other.” Jasmine organizes an accretion of circuitry into her left hand. The wires connecting the two parts make it look something like an electronic nunchuk. “And you press play.”
Jasmine looks at her. “That’s it?”
“Wait,” says Aiko.
Jasmine huffs angrily.
Aiko won’t be distracted. “So if this works,” she says, “then it’s going to cause the disturbed space-time particles to detonate?”
I nod, keen to get to the exploding part. “Thereby posing less of a threat to the Chronometer and random bystanders.”
“Blowing shit up poses less of a threat?”
Aiko’s quizzical expression gives me pause for thought.
“Well,” Devon intercedes, the proud parent defending her child, “it’s a question of degrees. An explosion, in general terms, is not a wonderful, happy, shiny thing. Not the sort of thing one puts in a box, wraps in paper, and gives to a child, for example. Well, excepting certain children in the class of Mrs. Bradmoor around twenty-three years ago. Maybe Kenneth McWhirter, for example. For him and his derisive comments about a girl’s enthusiasm for chocolate custard, an exception could be made. But, yes, as I was saying, in general terms, that’s a no-no. But here we’re dealing with a more specific case, sort of a sliding scale from, say, nothing going wrong at all, to explosions, all the way to ungluing parts of people in time and space. And also, while I don’t want to be seen as the squeaky wheel demanding some oil, maybe we could all consider that I just retroengineered this from what was, quite frankly, some shitty math, written in a language that I don’t actually speak, so maybe a little slack is in order.”
We all contemplate that for a moment. “All right then.” Aiko nods. “Let’s blow some shit up.”
Jasmine crosses the room until she’s about five paces from the water. “Is this good?” she asks.
Devon nods.
Jasmine presses the button.
The thin sheet of plastic over the speaker ripples. At first I don’t hear anything, but then there’s a sound like muttering, like a record played backwards. It’s an ugly sound, tinny and raw. Jasmine makes a face.
“Is this—” she starts.
A ball of fire fills the air above the pool of water from which the catfish emerged. There’s a percussive clap that rocks Jasmine back on her feet and ruffles my hair. Steaming drops of water spray about the room.
“Yeah!” Jasmine whoops.
But the fire hasn’t finished. A flickering flame lingers in the air, racing up the height of the little waterfall. It spits and sparkles, fiery strands of light spinning away and fizzling out.
“Oh shit,” Devon says.
We all turn to her.
“Why—” I start, and then the next explosion knocks me off my feet.
Water sprays across the room. I see something unfolding out of the water, massive and on fire. A shapeless blob of scales that expands and expands out before collapsing into nothing. Then suddenly bursts into existence again, still wreathed in fire. And it’s gone before it hits the wall.
Trails of fire are racing up and down through the hole the waterfall fell through.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Devon is cursing as she picks herself up.
“What’s happening?” Malcolm is not in the most amused mood.
“It’s propagating.” Devon is already moving toward the doors, the stairs up. “The particles of disturbed space-time are too densely packed. It’s like we’ve lit a match in a gunpowder factory.”
“And we didn’t think of this before we tried out the device?” Aiko is frozen by her outrage.
Devon is framed in the doorway. “They’re undetectable particles.” Devon is talking with her hands, and her hands are saying “Panic!”
“You know,” she adds, “you really should be running away right now.”
Another boom emphasizes the point. The floor shakes. We run.
We hit the stairs. More blasts, both above and below. The floor shakes. I rattle between wall and banister. The rusted thing creaks ominously. I think of teleporting frogs and find my balance.
We hit the first floor just as part of the ceiling gives way. The world becomes a stinking, rasping cloud trying to erase my lungs. I cough and spit. The sound of collapsing concrete races after me. I lose sight of Aiko in the swirling clouds. I call out and hear nothing.
Another explosion. More felt than heard. I pick up the pace. A wall looms out of nowhere. I crash into it, spin away, smash through a doorway. The room is clear but blank. Dead end. I back up. A blast spits fire at me, knocks me flying. I land on the floor. It’s not soft.
Another doorway ahead of me. A chance for an exit. I pump my legs, push my body toward it. Another explosion. The wall around the door quakes, ripples like water.
The door comes down, heavy concrete lintel smashing inches in front of my feet. I skid to a stop, graze my nose on rubble.
There’s more smoke than dust now.
Another explosion. Another.
And what a stupid bloody way to die after all this.
I spin around, try to retrace my steps. A window. I just need a window. Anything.
Another explosion. Another. Another.
I’m choking, coughing, blundering. I’m down on my hands and knees.
Something massive and gibbering scrambles out of smoke towards me. Some horror of fur and flesh, its form liquid and malleable. It’s past me before I can even figure out what it used to be.
Another explosion. Another. And then one more. It must be in the room next to me. As it lifts me off my feet, I think about that. Try to locate its point of origin. As I sail through the air I realize I was next to a door, and wonder if the thing was ripped off its hinges, if it’s going to hit me before I’m mashed against a wall. With adrenaline going, you really can think about a lot of things. About Felicity. About Aiko.
Glass shatters around me. I try and work out where it came from.
And then falling. And then the ground. Wet, and muddy, and not at all how I expected it. And then the smoke is pouring away from me. Pouring up into the sky.
The sky.
I can see the sky.
I am lying on my back, outside, staring at a window I just smashed through, staring at a Russian government facility, on fire and collapsing. And above it: the sky.
Strong hands grab me under my shoulders. I let them pull me away, let my head loll, my thoughts slowly arrange themselves back into something like cohesion.
“Thanks, Malcolm,” I manage to say as my feet bump over the twisted asphalt.
“Not quite a compliment,” Aiko replies.
I twist in her hands, almost forcing her to drop me. And it is her there. “You’re strong for your size,” I manage.
“Still not sure if that’s a compliment.”
I think I might have a slight concussion, but I start to laugh. Aiko laughs too. It lets a little of the terror wash out.
She drags me to where the others stand. We make a small tight knot, looking back at the damage we’ve caused. The building comes down piece by piece, collapsing in upon itself, choking the endless basement levels.
Slowly, carefully, Jasmine hands Devon back the little knot of wires and circuit boards.
“Well,” Devon says, “on the plus side, we know it works.”