“No,” I say. “No. Please no.” And… no… I just… I try to process it. I try to understand. It’s too big, too much.
She’s dead.
Clyde’s dead.
But… but… Felicity. Oh God, she’s dead.
And, God, this can’t be happening again. Someone I… God, did I love her? I think I loved her. And she’s dead.
And Clyde. I can’t even… What did I even feel for him? I’m still caught in the muddle of who he was and who he is, who he was becoming.
Was. Jesus.
I can’t deal with the past tense. I can’t…
“Big Ben.” Aiko’s face is aghast, she’s staring at the bodies, but she’s talking about Malkin, about what’s left to be done. “He’s in Big Ben.”
And I try to care, try to give a shit about the end of the world.
She’s just lying there. She doesn’t even look like herself. Blackened, bloody. A rictus of pain. She died in pain. Leo Malkin killed her. He fucking roasted her.
The red is starting to fill my vision.
“It’s over,” someone says. And I know they’re right. It’s too late. I will never get to revenge this. I will never get to make this right. The world is going to end to the soundtrack of Tabitha’s screams.
“It’s motherfeckin’ not.”
Kayla’s arm is about my waist. I’m off my feet. I’m twenty feet from where I stood. The distance is increasing. There’s the confused, terrified-looking policeman between us and Big Ben. He holds up an open palm.
Kayla’s backhand breaks the sound barrier. He flies from our path, another useless rag doll.
Felicity’s dead.
Malkin killed her.
Two other policemen are between Kayla and Big Ben. They heave out pistols. In this post 9/11 world, the London police force takes its monuments’ safety seriously. She leaps, plants a foot in one man’s throat. She launches off him as he drops gurgling. Her other foot swings, connects beneath the second copper’s chin. He flies away, dismissed.
And I’m still in her spare hand. Still bundled up like so much luggage.
We’re fighting. We’re fighting for what’s right.
She crashes through a door I couldn’t make out in the dark. We’re in a tiny black space. A yell from someone. The crunch of flesh against flesh. Something, someone, falling past me.
I don’t know how Kayla’s doing what she’s doing. The physics of it defy me. I am lost in her violent ballet. A mere accessory of her ferocity. But I don’t care. Because she’s getting me closer to Malkin. Closer to his death.
And I know revenge won’t bring her back—
God I can’t…
She’s dead…
I can’t breathe.
I need to focus on the red. I need to cling to my rage. I need to make that fucker pay. Pay, and pay, and pay.
Pounding feet. More shouts. Kayla leaps, gazelle-like. Her feet fly out. Bodies spin away. Light reflects from the blade of her sword. Flat steel twangs against skulls. Bodies fall. Gunshots boom, but they never sound near, always seem to be retreating, even as their echoes rattle in my ears.
We go faster. Faster. It’s hard to breathe, as if my head is jammed out the car window again. Kayla’s arm makes the garotting seatbelt seem like a loving embrace. Screams. Shouts. More people now. The whirl of glimpsed violence is thicker about me.
Felicity is dead. Clyde is dead.
And I can’t think about it. All I can think is that Leo Malkin must pay.
And then a sudden screeching halt. My neck cracks as the g-forces reverse. My vision blurs. I can hear Kayla panting hard, her breath short and ragged. I can hear shouts and yells, pounding feet echoing up behind us. I hear something else. A mechanical noise, repeated and repeated. The same action happening over and over all at the same time.
My vision clears.
Oh shit and balls.
Machine guns. Men and women ratcheting the action on their machine guns. Hundreds of them. That was what that noise was.
We’re in the doorway of a room perhaps thirty yards wide, and twenty yards deep, and it is full. Literally full. Metal concert mosh pit full. Soldiers pack the place. Row upon row of them. An ugly crush of people. The place is hot with the sweat of them all. They wear black sweaters, and black bullet proof vests, and black night vision goggles, each head marked by two bright green LEDs.
And every last one of them has a very large black machine gun. And every last one of them is pointing that very large black machine gun at Kayla and me.
My brain tries to dissociate, to enter denial. It wonders how the night vision goggles survived. I find myself thinking that they probably weren’t needed until Coleman set off the EMP. They probably weren’t on at the time.
“You still got them wires?” Kayla sets me down, brings me back to reality. This is not the end of our journey. This will not stop us. We are MI37. We will not allow it. We cannot.
I glance down at my left hand. Devon’s tangle of wires. Still wrapped around my fingers. Something to blow up the space-time distortion. Something to save the Chronometer. Something to blow the living crap out of Malkin with.
“Got it.”
“Through there.” Kayla nods at a door beyond the soldiers. Dark blue. Copper hinges. Something intricate carved into the whorls of wood. I can’t make it out in the half-light.
I stare at the soldiers. Clyde’s military ninjas. They stare implacably back.
Clyde’s dead.
Felicity’s dead.
“Let’s do this.”
I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die. There is no way I can fight these soldiers and live. But that doesn’t matter. I have to fight them. I have to try to get to him.
And then something happens and I only piece it together as I’m sailing through the air. The sensation of a hand on my collar. Of a great force heaving me. Of my feet leaving the ground. As Kayla throws me bodily over the heads of the soldiers, kicking and flailing, headfirst toward the dark blue door and the end of all things.