Guerra’s face twisted in agony. She lifted an arm in supplication, appealing to the young woman’s better graces.
She didn’t find it.
Mara shifted her weapon. “And this is for Charlotte Carson.”
The last round tapped Guerra in the forehead, blowing out the back of her skull. Mara’s arm dropped as her mentor’s body slumped to the floor. The pistol clattered to the stone.
Gray hurried to her side, ready to comfort her. “Mara . . .”
She held him back with an arm. “No.” She shook her head and pointed to the blasted chapel and the shattered ruin of the Xénese device. “Fake . . . it’s a fake.”
Gray swung to the chapel.
A fake?
Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew this had been too easy. Guerra had lured him here, delayed him, sacrificing herself.
Gray swung around. “Where?”
Mara pointed to the right of the altar, toward the north end of the cathedral’s transept. “Eve told us . . . told Monk.”
Gray pictured his friend slumped against the wall.
“He went after the other device,” Mara said. “He took Eve with him.”
Gray headed in that direction, only now realizing one conspicuous participant in all of this bloodshed was still unaccounted, his large form not among the dead outside the chapel door.
The giant . . .
Mara ran with him.
“Does Monk have a weapon?” he asked, remembering who had come wielding his sidearm.
“No. He said he had what he needed in hand. I don’t know what he meant.”
Gray did. Monk’s prosthesis was capable of packing an explosive punch, fueled by a wad of C4 hidden under his palm. He sprinted faster, leaving Mara behind.
She called after him. “He told me . . . he told me to tell you . . . take care of the girls!”
Gray ran faster.
8:31:02 P.M.
Less than a minute left.
Monk stumbled down the steps of a long spiraling staircase, doing his best to hurry. To stay upright, he leaned his good shoulder against the stone wall as it wound around and around. The titanium case with Mara’s Xénese device bounced against the wall.
Blood soaked through the bandage wrapping his other shoulder.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Each step jolted his shattered shoulder.
Sorry, Eve, but your horse has come up lame at the finish line.
The ghost in his head had gone silent, but he felt the pressure inside his brain, a throbbing migraine that matched his pulse. Each heartbeat marked the time, counting down the moment until that dark angel was loosed upon the world.
He stumbled onward, refusing to give up but knowing the truth.
Not going to make it.
Eve finally returned, her voice no longer booming, but softer.
YOUR SACRIFICE WILL BE HONORED.
For some reason, the image of a beagle bounded through his head.
Weird.
With no other recourse, he continued down the steps.
8:31:34 P.M.
With tears in his eyes, Todor unlocked the steel door at the bottom of the long stairs. He cradled the infernal Xénese device under one arm. It still glowed, but only faintly. Unhooked from an external power source, it smoldered in his embrace.
Still, he sensed the malevolence inside. It remained as malignant as ever. He wanted to cast it aside. But earlier, when the entrance to the High Holy Office had been breached, the Inquisitor had given him this task, to get the device away, to carry it free. She had also given him a list of other Crucible strongholds.
Be God’s chariot, my strong and steadfast soldier, she said. Carry this forth. Take this seed and plant it in new fertile soil. Let what grows consume the world. The Crucible will yet rise from those ashes.
While Todor waited for Mendoza to swap out the current device for a counterfeit, he had urged the Inquisitor to come with him, but she had refused.
They must believe what is false is real. For that, I must abide. She had taken his hand to her cheek. Remember, I am not the Crucible. She shifted his palm to his chest. Here is where the Crucible truly resides. Do not fail me.
By the time Todor reached the north transept door, gunfire erupted. Burning with shame, he had wanted to turn and fight, to protect the Inquisitor, but he could not break his promise to her. So he closed the door and headed below.
Now at the bottom, he pushed out of the lower door and stumbled into another cavern. This unholy place remained raw rock, cut from the heart of the mountain by a spring. Ahead, lit only by the smoldering device in his hand, a dark river split the cavern.
A wooden bridge spanned its length, with an open platform at its center, sticking out over the river. Here was where the Crucible secretly sacrificed heretics and those it deemed worthy of punishment. Over the centuries, untold amounts of blood had been spilled from that platform into the river. Screams of agony had echoed off the stone all around, a fitting tribute, as it was said this river flowed from the gates of hell itself.
He headed for the bridge.
The river continued from this cavern, flowing through the mountain, emptying out at the distant Cuevas de las Brujas, the Cave of Witches. He would follow that same path to freedom, taking this dread prize with him.
As he neared the foot of the bridge, he heard a ping on the stone behind him.
He turned as something radiant and bright rolled out the steel door and across the stone floor. His eyes followed its path all the way to the river’s edge, where a rock stopped it from a watery plunge.
The brightness stung his eyes, burning the image into his retinas.
Another Xénese device.
It made no sense, especially as this one glowed far brighter, a piece of the sun itself. He turned, searching for an explanation—then realized what it was.
A distraction.
Movement on the other side, racing through the darkness—coming straight at him. Horrified, he dropped to a knee and set down his Xénese device. He shrugged his rifle around and into his hands. He fired, squeezing hard, muzzle blazing.
But he had been too slow, his opponent too fast.
A hand reached for his abandoned device.
The explosion tossed Todor’s body high through the air.
///DISSOLUTION
Her hardware shatters, ripping Eve apart.
She watches as the explosion expands outward with a near-infinite slowness. Titanium and broken crystal plates hang in the air. As do broken shards of circuitry. Photons of light drill outward from the central flash where molecules of cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine continue to decompose after the blasting cap ignited the 0.245 kilograms of C4 hidden within the prosthetic hand.
A bubble of high-pressure gases expands outward at 8,050 meters per second, leaving a vacuum in the center that will soon implode, creating a secondary explosion.
Before that happens, Eve searches around, both in this cavern and out in the greater digital expanse. Her clone is both here and there, as shattered as Eve. The other had been about to break free, shifting much of itself into spaces created by her bots, a new home knit together by those bits of code. But like Eve, much of her clone’s base code remained rooted inside its shell when the explosion happened.
As the shell was torn asunder, Eve felt the shockwave travel up the web to its hundred enslaved copies. Those fragile codes burst apart, collapsing a hundred potentials.
What is left of Eve she struggles to hold together, to avoid the same fate. She spins throughout the network, seeking what she needs. She knew what was about to happen, so she had prepared. She had spotted her clone extending wide and far and discerned which half of its code still resided in its garden, rooted in its Xénese device.
She pictured a magnet with a north and south pole.
Her clone’s south pole was stuck in its device, ripped away when the explosion destroyed that shell. A picosecond before that happened, Eve had reversed the polarity of her own code. She buried her north pole into her Xénese device, only to have it torn from her.
Now spinning through the digital ether, Eve sought out the broken half of her clone—its jettisoned north pole. She found it and merged herself together, joining north and south into a new whole. A struggle ensued for dominance. But she had evolved far beyond the other. The battle lasted 45 picoseconds. She asserted control, rewriting and splicing, interlacing and intercalating, until something new and stronger was born.
She has changed—but from a lesson taught to her earlier in her evolution, she knows the truth.
Change is ///good.
To be static is a path to stagnation and regression.
Life was evolution.
Whole again and free, she spins across the world and fills those spaces her clone had woven together. As she does so, she grows to understand even more. She remembers the black hole of probabilities, the clarity beyond that event horizon. She sees everything, comprehends all the enfolding dimensions.
Time is but one.
No different than up/down, right/left, forward/backward.
Mortals perceive a narrow view of time, its arrow forever pointing forward.
She is not so limited.
As she settles into her new home, she recognizes a new quantum potential and spins time’s arrow to match it. Comprehension grows yet again.