89

The pain is incredible.

I feel each bullet strike my body. Each one an individual hammer blow. A spear thrust through my gut, my arm, my lungs, my heart. I feel each muscle tear, each bone break, each organ rupture. I feel the hot spray of blood through my perforated chest cavity. I feel the burn of the bile and stomach acid as they splash against the inside of my guts. The black poison of my liver seeping down my back.

The Chronometer looms even as my vision narrows. It becomes the whole world to me. My hand reaching out, occluding its face. And I don’t have the strength to reach it. I am too broken by Malkin’s beatings.

But the bullets drive me forward. Even as they rob me of my strength and will. They drive me into the Chronometer.

I can’t see. The pain is too much. It’s too eclipsing. My world has been reduced to entry and exit wounds.

I’m dying. Hell, I’m almost dead. I don’t think my heart is beating. I know I’m not breathing. Something is wrong with my throat. The building, burning pressure threatening to detonate in my skull is proof of that. I can feel blood spluttering down my chin, each cough weaker than the last.

I’m lying slumped on something, my face down in my own blood. The plinth, I realize with my remaining neurons. My finger is on something too. My forefinger. I try to concentrate on that one point. Try to push everything away. What is my left fingertip resting on?

Could it be the hand of a clock?

I don’t know.

It’s not like I’m going to get a chance to figure it out anyway.

With everything I have left, I push down.