“We don’t know they’re dead. We don’t know what happened here.”
“Couldn’t have been good.”
Finn looked at him. Some kind of new hope flickered in his eyes. “It’s enough that it worked at all. And if I search this place for even a few hours, I can probably find out what happened to it. Find out how to avoid the problem.”
“We could’ve found this place bustling and it still wouldn’t be worth killing the world for it,” Travis said.
“The world’s going to kill itself sooner or later. Why shouldn’t at least some of us live?”
“Neither of us is going to convince the other. If you want to stay here, feel free. But I’m taking the cylinder with me. I’m going to New York to get my friends.”
“You’re not,” Finn said. “I really am sorry, but you’re not. You don’t have time, anyway. Look.”
He held the cylinder toward Travis, showing him the side opposite the row of buttons. In the harsh light it took Travis a few seconds to see what the man was talking about.
Along part of the casing’s length ran a line of blue lights, pencil-eraser-sized and spaced at centimeter intervals. They shone softly and diffused from just beneath the black surface, and extended to a little over a third of the cylinder’s long dimension.
“They appeared last night,” Finn said. “Right after your friends broke the other cylinder. At that time the lights covered the whole length, but they’ve been disappearing steadily since, like a countdown. Whoever built these things must not have wanted anyone using one without the other. My guess is, when the last one of these lights goes out, this thing becomes a paperweight.”
Travis’s mind was already doing the math. The other cylinder had broken maybe nine hours ago. If that amount of time had burned not-quite-two-thirds of the countdown, he had something like five hours left.
Five hours to reach New York and find Paige and Bethany.
He thought of flight time, and search time, and shit-happens time. Five hours. Was it even close to enough?
“You’re wasting your time thinking about it,” Finn said. “I’m not giving this to you. Not now that I’ve seen this place.” The man took another step back. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“So am I,” Travis said, and pulled the trigger the rest of the way.
Nothing happened.
Chapter Forty-Four
The MP7 didn’t even click. It wasn’t empty—Travis had loaded it himself and chambered the first round. When he applied the last two ounces to the trigger, the mechanism simply froze.
He squeezed harder. Nothing.
His eyes dropped from Finn and focused on the MP7’s action. There was a stress ripple in the metal, where the weapon had hit the paver blocks earlier.
He looked back up at Finn.
The man knew. Even without a click, Travis’s body language had said everything.
Finn advanced two steps, his eyes narrowing. The .38 trembled a little in his hand, but he held it tightly.
“Put it down,” Finn said. “Then turn around and get on your knees.”
Travis exhaled, the breath almost a laugh. “Why the hell would I do any of that? If you’re gonna shoot me, just do it.”
Finn made no move to come closer, but he took a breath and the gun went still in his hand.
“I hope you don’t feel it,” Finn said, and Travis saw his forearm tense for the pull.
Then Finn’s head came apart, the sides of his skull blowing out like a shaped charge had gone off inside it. A split-second later the flat crack of a high-powered rifle broke across the plaza, and Travis flinched against his will and turned toward the sound.
Thirty yards away, a figure dressed in white rose from concealment behind another planter box.
In his peripheral vision, Travis saw Finn crumple to the ground. The .38 hit with a soft clink and didn’t fire. The cylinder rolled out of his other hand and settled gently onto his abdomen, as if his body’s last impulse had been to protect the thing.
Travis dropped the MP7 and raised his arms at his sides, and kept his eyes on the shooter.
The newcomer held the rifle at ready without aiming it, and for a moment simply stared, assessing the situation. Travis could make out no detail of the face: the body was covered in white from top to bottom, including a loose hood with some kind of mesh screen at the front. The outfit seemed designed to reflect away sunlight while letting in the breeze. Probably a necessity in this place.
The figure stared a moment longer, then slung the rifle on a strap and stepped out from behind the concrete box. It strode across the plaza toward Travis, its movements measured, unhurried.