8FOLD/ACRA: Jolt City # 23, "...Their Last Adventure!", Part 1 of 3

Tom Russell joltcity at gmail.com
Mon Sep 7 17:55:11 PDT 2015


Ten years ago, Jamie Rosen and I started the Eightfold Universe. Later
that same year, I began writing GREEN KNIGHT, the story of dying
superhero Ray Cradle and his estranged ex-sidekick Martin Rock. At the
conclusion of that series, Martin took on his mentor's mantle as sworn
protector of Jolt City-- a Midwestern metropolitan area overridden by
crime and drugs. He confided in a kindly priest, Roy Riddle, and began
operating out of a secret basement in Riddle's church (itself the
former hideout of another four-colour hero).
   Martin's first goal as the second Green Knight was taking down the
"untouchable" drug-lord Samson Snapp. Over the course of late 2006 and
early 2007, Martin worked closely with Detective Danielle "Dani"
Handler, bounty hunter Pam Bierce, mad scientist Doctor Fay, and
former Snapp dealer Derek Mason, to put Snapp behind bars. Along the
way, he fell into relationships with both Dani and Pam, and also took
Derek on as his own sidekick, the gadget-inclined Blue Boxer.
   The Snapp case led to Dani's elevation to the position of Jolt
City's Four-Colour Liaison, a position in which she was short-lived.
In the spring of 2008, several children with Doc-Class powers went on
a murderous rampage. Martin lost his hand in the battle, and Dani was
replaced by the ambitious Lacey Trimmer. In the wake of this disaster,
Martin drove away both Pam and Dani.
   Derek became friendly with one of Chicago's rising stars, Knockout
Mouse (Bethany Clayton), and the two of them stumbled onto the
existence of the mysterious terrorist group FEVER and its maniacal
leader Caracalla. Derek discovered that FEVER had installed one of
their deadly body control implants inside his own skull. To prevent
this from killing him, Derek and Doctor Fay rigged a time machine to
throw him randomly into the past whenever the implant was switched on.
Unbeknownst to Derek, Doctor Fay had also equipped Martin with a time
machine linked to Derek's so that the Green Knight could protect his
partner.
   FEVER made their move, using a global fear event to bring the alien
Dyzen'thari crashing into our world. In what was meant to be their
coup de grace, Caracalla switched on Derek's implant...
   ...sending the Blue Boxer and the Green Knight upon...


          "...THEIR LAST ADVENTURE!"

   EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS THE FINAL ISSUE OF
////////////// [8F-150] TOM RUSSELL'S
    ////  //////  /// //////  ////// /// ////// \  //
// ////  //  //  ///   //    ///    ///   //     \//# 23
//////  //////  ///// //    ////// ///   //      //PART 1


October twenty-fifth, twenty-aught-eight.
   The Day of Terror.
   The Vatican:
   Pope Benedict XVI holds his trembling fingers to his mouth. Why do
they tremble?, he wonders. He knew this day would come. Even before
his election, he had prepared himself every morning, just in case this
was the day that the dread Dyzen'thari would at last shatter the skies
with their terrible, twisting, searching tentacles and sharp, snapping
beaks. Fifteen years ago, when the Sacred Congregation under his
prefecture had found and placed the Mystery King, he knew that it
would happen in his lifetime. By the time of the death of his
predecessor, the Signs of Warning had multiplied; the College of
Cardinals knew that the next pope would be the one to see them through
the crisis. As the highest ranking member of the Secret Order of the
Aedifex, Ratzinger was the obvious choice.
   But he is weary; so weary. He is old. And he wonders, now that the
terrible moment at last has been thrust upon him, if he is up to the
task. He hopes he is. He prays that he is.
   His fingers still trembling, he picks up the phone.

Jolt City.
   Roy Riddle's manse.
   Riddle is about to pour his morning tea when his wall crucifix
begins to glow and beep. Riddle puts the tea kettle and cup back, not
without some longing.
   "Well. I had better get my magic sword."

Bethany stands in her hotel room and stares for a moment, just for a
moment, at the spot where Derek used to be, before he was thrown back
into time to his almost certain death. She liked him. He was a smart
kid, but clumsy as hell, and with no one to watch his back, there's no
way he's coming back. "I'll miss you." [1]
   Then: she's out of the hotel room, down the stairs, and out the
door in a hop and a skip. There are masses of flesh writhing and
twisting through the sky, lashing at buildings and cars in a lazy,
groping fashion; there are mouth-parts and beaks snapping and
screeching out of the pavement; one of the mouth opens, wide and
rictus, and a fleeing woman falls clean into it before Bethany can
even take a step toward her. The woman screams; the mouth closes and
the sound cuts out; the mouth opens again, but the woman and her
scream are gone, as if they were never there.
   Bethany brings her right hand down hard on the pavement in
retribution. The faceless mouth spasms and crumbles, and becomes
pavement again.
   Suddenly, the sky-tentacles stop what they're doing, waving
silently like blades of grass in the wind, or (Bethany realizes with a
sickening twist of her gut) like snakes, weaving back and forth,
poised to strike. To converge. They all come rushing at her at once,
no longer blindly groping, but straight-on.
   "Big right hand," she whispers to herself. Her hand tenses in her
Singularity Gauntlet, and she dials it up, all the hell the way up.
The impact of the punch is incredible, like a thunderclap a thousand
times over, the sound itself shattering glass, cracking stone, sending
cars off the street. White light fills Bethany's eyeballs, light so
white it hurts, so white it fills her eyes with tears, so white she
thinks she's ended the world, so white she closes her eyes.
   Suddenly, the air is warm all around her. It's not a cool and crisp
October morning, but a soaking hot June afternoon. She opens her eyes
and she's in Portage Park, and the Fiddleback has his hands on her
face. She throws herself back, trying to pull away as death spreads
over her cheek, her flesh turning dead and black. She screams
involuntarily, as a reflex, not meaning to scream, not wanting to
scream, but not able to help herself. Her muscles go stiff, and though
her mouth is open, no sound comes out. Her lungs stiffen and still.
She's falling backwards now, quite dead. [2]
   When she opens them, her eyes are red and burning, soaking wet with
tears, but the damn light is gone. The tentacles aren't, though
they've pulled back some, swinging listlessly. Won't be too long
though before they get back their get-up-and-go. So, the
punch-to-end-all-punches didn't do very much. Not going to use that
trick again-- Bethany doubts the city would survive another one, not
to mention herself.
   Her vision's still blurry. Her body is aching. And there's a hell
of a ringing in her ears. She's in no shape for this. Of course, she
never has been, has she? What kind of superhero stammers and mumbles?
What kind of superhero is afraid to punch people? What kind of
superhero is afraid of people, period? She's not a hero, not really.
She's a science geek, a grad student who is going to very quietly,
very politely, very shyly do very pedestrian and very tedious work in
genetics labs for mad cash. What the hell is she doing, running around
in a miniskirt and a domino mask?
   But she knows where this is going, where this line of thought
always goes, and the last thing the world needs right now is her
table-of-one pity-party. She's not sure if the world really needs her
right now, if she's going to be good for much else other than punching
things while the real heroes find the real solution. But she knows the
world sure doesn't need her to be whining about how ugly and
insignificant she thinks she is. With her left glove, she rubs her
eyes until they're dry and burning instead of wet and burning. With
her right, she turns her fist into something that can take out a Mack
truck without bringing down any buildings.
   "Alright, you so-and-so's," she says. "Come and get some."
   But they don't. The Dyzen'thari are hanging in the air, completely
still, not even swaying or "breathing", if that sickening quivering
pulse could even be called breathing. They're also faded. Ghostly.
Like someone hit the pause button in the middle of a dissolve.
   Someone's running toward her, out of breath and holding a sword
over his head.
   "Whoa, whoa, whoa," says Bethany, dialing her fist back down to
(what she hopes) is safe for humans. "Back it up, sword-guy."
   "No, no, no, friend, friend," wheezes the man. He lowers his sword,
bending over, looking like he's about to faint. Not used to exercise,
this one. At his neck, she can see a priest's collar. "Here to help.
Are you. Are you the Bethany?"
   "...What?"
   "The Bethany," he says. "Are you the Bethany? Is your name, is your
name Bethany?"
   "I'm not going to..."
   "Are you the black mouse," well, gee, that's vaguely racist, "that
comes from the hill? Have you been touched by death? Do you wield the
stuff of stars?" [3]
   Before Bethany can answer, she's knee-deep in snow, in Nebraska,
fifteen years old, middle of the night, chasing a comet she saw from
her window. She's close now. If she did her math right, she's close
now, and she's always been good at math. The snow is crisp and frozen
and sparkling, her boot breaking the surface with a satisfying crunch
with every step, until one step is wet and soft and mush, soaking into
her boots.
   And then she sees it, a white disc, white on white, hot on cold.
Not a meteor. Not a comet. A spaceship! She reaches for it, her
fingers trembling. She feels heat coming off of it, and hesitates. You
just found a spaceship, but let's not be stupid, girl. You need to let
it cool, otherwise your hand's going to sizzle and burn away like spit
on a griddle.
   But it's not getting cooler. It's getting hotter? Why is it, and
what is that noise, oh Lord it's so bright and hot and I'm on fire and
it hurts why does it hurt
   "Miss, are you alright?" says the priest.
   "Yes. Yes, I just had a... a..."
   "...a flashback?"
   "...Yes. Sort of."
   "But it was wrong. You died in it."
   "How did you...?"
   "Time is collapsing. And pulling apart." The priest smiles,
privately and sadly. "It's only going to get worse. Until you stop
it."
   "Me?"
   "The Bethany. The black mouse that comes from the hill, who has
been touched by death, who wields the stuff of stars. Your name is
Bethany...?"
   She looks at his face. There's something weirdly calming about it,
something open and honest. Something that makes her trust him.
"...Yes."
   "Then I'm afraid that you are the Bethany," he says.
   "This sounds like some heavy prophecy-destiny stuff."
   "It is," he says. "We've been waiting for this day, for you, and
for... them," here he waves his sword rather carelessly to indicate
the Dyzen'thari, "for over a thousand years."
   "Who's we?"
   "The one true Catholic Church. More specifically, a secret order
within the church, the Order of the Aedifex. Right now, my order is
buying us a little time. Buying you a little time, rather. Giving the
world a breather so you can save it."
   "But I don't even know what I'm supposed to do."
   "That's why I'm here," he says. "My name is Roy Riddle, and my job
is to tell you everything we've learned over the last millennium."

Riddle's manse.
   "So, what do you know about the Dyzen'thari?"
   "They're from some other place," says Bethany. "This fear, this
mass panic, it's allowed them to break through the walls to our
universe."
   "Not just the walls," says Riddle. "Not just space, but time
itself. They're not beings that are meant to exist in time; there's no
such thing as time in their universe. They're not only here and now,
but also there and then, attacking all points of time at once. You've
never heard of them before because it didn't happen then until now,
but now that it's happening now, it's also happening then. They're...
they're breaking time. They're breaking it now, and have always been
breaking it ever since now, and at a certain point, maybe a handful of
hours from now, they will have broken time, and because they've broken
it in the future, time will break now, time will break in the past,
time will always be broken. The universe is unraveling at the seams,
and never would have raveled together in the first place. It's a
threat to all Creation, Bethany."
   Bethany nods. "Makes sense. Sort of. How do you know about all this?"
   "The Aedifex," says Riddle.
   "Latin? Builder?"
   Riddle nods. "Legendary figure that shows up in different places
and times, with different names in different languages, each of which
roughly translates to something like 'builder'. Being the Church, we
settled on the Latin form. But each time, he tells us about the
Dyzen'thari, and about the Bethany whose brilliance will save the
world."
   "So, no pressure or anything."
   "The Church has been preparing for your coming ever since," says
Riddle. "We've studied the Dyzen'thari-- admittedly difficult, since
until now they didn't exist then-- and we think the emotional
vibration is the key. They vibrate in sympathy with certain emotions,
such as fear, terror, and panic. So everyone goes crazy like this, it
let them in. We can push them back though..."
   "...with the opposite vibration?" says Bethany. She twists her
face. "What, hope and love and faith?"
   "That's the idea, yes," says Riddle. "And it's working. Sort of.
That's what's holding the Dyzen'thari in place. The Vatican is
amplifying latent Hope. The, uh, the magic sword is part of that. (I,
uh, we don't carry them  around normally.) But there's not enough of
it right now to drive them back completely. My guess is that's where
you come in. Maybe you're, you're supposed to inspire hope, calm
everybody down?"
   "You'd have better luck with Senator Obama," says Bethany. "And
that's even assuming that you can get everyone to pay attention long
enough to calm them down."
   "It's not Obama, it's you," says Riddle. "It has to be you. The prophecy..."
   "How do you know it's me? I mean, yeah, I fit your parameters, but
so could someone else. Maybe I'm not the Bethany you're looking for."
   "You were here," says Riddle.
   "Meaning what?"
   "The Aedifex gave us numbers," says Riddle. "For hundreds of years,
we struggled to figure out what they meant. In the eighteenth century,
it finally became clear; they were coordinates. Latitude, longitude.
Pointing here. The place where we would find you. In the early
nineteenth century, the Church founded a settlement to prepare for
your coming, the town of Saint Juliet, which was corrupted to Saint
Jult, and then..."
   "Jolt City," says Bethany. "But I'm not even from Jolt City, I'm from..."
   "From the hill."
   "Pill Hill. Calumet Heights."
   "Through dummy companies and sympathetic philanthropists, the Order
of the Aedifex has been pumping money into Jolt City for decades,"
continues Riddle. "Over half of the Kistler Building's budget comes
from the Church. To give you any tools you might need. And this church
here in Jolt City was built to house all of our research, all of our
findings, so that it would be on hand when the time came. Pharos, one
of the original Seven Wonders, he was a member of the Order of the
Aedifex. He lived and worked out of the Church, protecting and
compiling the research. I'm quite familiar with all of it." [4]
   "But... I mean, this is great, and I'll try, but you have the wrong
person. You absolutely have the wrong person. How do you know that the
Bethany is actually named Bethany? It sounds like a title. Maybe it's
a reference to Lazarus, someone who will come back from the dead?"
   Riddle smiles somewhat nervously. "There is another figure whose
coming is foretold. Someone who would help the Bethany, and give her a
message from the Aedifex. A priest. The Church calls him the Mystery
King, but the Aedifex didn't actually say that. The Aedifex called him
the royal riddle." He blushes boyishly.
   "Like you? You're this Mystery King?"
   "Apparently."
   "Because your name is Roy Riddle?"
   "Because my name is Royal Riddle. As soon as I joined the Church, I
was recruited into the Order of the Aedifex, and stationed here in
Jolt City. It follows, then. If the Aedifex says we're to be saved by
the Bethany, it's going to be someone named Bethany. And that's you."
   "But it's not," says Bethany. How thick can this guy be? "If this
prophecy is real, then you need to find the real person and not waste
time on me! I'm not important. I've never been important. I'm nobody.
I'm nothing!"
   "That's not true," says Riddle gently. "None of us, not even the
least of us, are nothing. And you're very far from the least of us,
Bethany. The Aedifex thought you were important. Thought that you are
brilliant. That's his message. The message I'm supposed to give to
you, from him, over the span of a thousand years."
   He clears his throat, and recites: "Bethany, you're a genius. So
save the world."
   "Derek?"
   "...Excuse me?"
   "Derek said that before..."
   Riddle grabs her arm. "Derek Mason?"
   "You know," says Bethany. "You know." Riddle nods. "Jesus, does
everybody know?" [5]
   "He's a friend. What about Derek?"
   "He, he went back in time," says Bethany. "Just when all this
started. It's a long story."
   "But time is falling apart," says Riddle. "If he went back in time,
he'd be scattered into a million pieces."
   "Or a million Dereks. Each being thrown back to a random place and
time. Alternate timelines, alternate pasts, all converging and echoing
and mixing up with each other because time is breaking. Each Derek
sees the Dyzen'thari..."
   "The Mason," says Riddle. "The Aedifex. His name in English is the Mason!"
   "It's Derek," says Bethany, beaming.
   "And Martin," says Riddle.
   "What?"
   "Uh, a friend. Sometimes the Aedifex appears with a sort of
bodyguard. A... a knight. He usually..." Riddle wipes at his eyes with
his sleeves. "He always dies, protecting the Aedifex. The Aedifex dies
too."
   Bethany shakes her head. "A million possible Dereks, in a million
possible timelines, with a one-in-a-million chance of getting back to
the present. Just one of them. Just one of them has to survive long
enough to get back to the present. And just one Martin. That's
possible. Right?"
   Riddle nods, not entirely convinced. "So, it's not a prophecy."
   "It's better than that," says Bethany. "It's a message from a
friend. Think about it. Pretend you're Derek. You get to whenever and
you put two-and-two together. You know that because we're in the thick
of it, we have no frame of reference. We wouldn't have any way to know
that they're anywhen else but now, and it'd all be over, and always
have been over before we even begin to get a handle on it. But if he
can let us know, if he can send a message a thousand years in the
future to let us know that these things are attacking all points of
time simultaneously...
   "You need something that will hold onto that message intact.
Kingdoms fall, borders get redrawn, but the Catholic Church stays the
same. Far as Europe is concerned, it's the only thing that stays the
same. The Catholic Church has the wealth and the power and the
influence and the resources to spend one thousand years working on
this problem, a thousand years head-start. You had brilliant
scientists, at least the ones you didn't excommunicate."
   "Well, I didn't do that personally," says Riddle, a bit defensively.
   "So, I'm the Bethany," she says. "Not because of destiny or it was
foretold or blah-blah-blah, because even if that stuff was real, you
could have it wrong, I could be a red herring. And it's not because of
something special I have to do, just me, everything on my shoulders.
It's because Derek's my friend, and he trusts me. Which means I don't
have to save the world all on my own. I don't even have to be the
person to do the heavy-lifting."
   She stops for a moment, closes her eyes: vibrations, frequencies,
but Derek had to jump back in time, he couldn't go to another
dimension because of the new model implant, but why did Caracalla
change it? Why did FEVER bother to spread its victims around the globe
if it was the fear itself that got the world ending? Both questions
have the same answer. It's to counter the counter-frequency. To stifle
the vibration.
   She opens her eyes. "I know what we need to do. I know who we need
to save the world, and it's not me. Padre, I need you to make a phone
call."
   "Neither one of us is Spanish."
   "Do you know Dr. Fay?"
   "Fay Tarif?" says Riddle. "Yeah, she's on my inter-faith bowling team."
   "Call her up, let her know we're on our way. I need to make another
call." She dials. "Kate?"
   "Bethany Two! You still in Jolt City?" [6]
   "Yes. I kinda need you here, too. End-of-the-world stuff."
   "Sounds great, but," ZAP!, "I'm pretty much well and truly stuck in
Chicago. Tentacles in the sky, and some so-called heroes have nothing
better to do than harass me." [7]
   "Hang tight, I'll get you out of there."

"Trimmer." [8]
   "Lacey, this is Knockout Mouse. I thought about it, and I'm yours."
   "Glad to hear it, but this isn't really the time..."
   "Dyzen'thari," says Bethany. "Yes, I know. I'm taking care of that.
Me and the Catholic Church and my time-travelling sort-of-boyfriend.
And you."
   "I'm listening."
   "I need Dr. Metronome at the Kistler Building ASAP. She's in Chicago."
   "You want me to arrange transport for an illegal unregistered
four-colour from Chicago, fucking Chicago? I'm going to have Rosenberg
and Whaley breathing down my neck for a year. It's career suicide."
[9]
   "The world ends, it's suicide-suicide," says Bethany.
   "Point," says Trimmer. "I'm not sure if you know what you're asking though."
   "You want me to be your superstar, I need you to, to treat me like
a superstar. I need you to move mountains. To get stuff done. To be
the, the, the bitch that doesn't ever back down. I thought that was
you. Is it?"
   Bethany can almost hear Trimmer smile on the other end. "That would
have been really bad-ass and impressive if you hadn't been mumbling
the entire time." (Well, she's a bitch, alright.) "Yeah, I can get it
done."
   "Great," says Bethany. "I'm going to get you in touch with her..."
   "No need," says Trimmer. "I got Kate on speed dial." She hangs up.
   "I..."

JCU, the world-famous Kistler Building.
   One second, the doorway is empty, and the next (zip!), Brian
Clipper is setting down Dr. Metronome. Brian greets each of them in
turn with a little nod: "Dr. Fay. KO Mouse. Some priest guy."
   "Hey Brian," says Dr. Fay. "You are like the absolute worst at
retiring." [10]
   "I know."
   "Not a bad thing to be bad at," adds Dr. Fay.
   Bethany smiles at Kate. "Glad you could make it. You up to speed on
what's going on?"
   "More-or-less," says Kate. "Though what we're going to do about it,
and what you need me for..."
   "Yes," says Dr. Fay. "I'm curious as well."
   "I have a plan," says Bethany. "But it's kinda nuts. So, the
Dyzen'thari are vibrating at a specific frequency, an emotional
frequency, and that's what brought them through. The fear. And you,"
she says to Roy, "you've been sending out, amplifying, other emotions,
positive emotions, opposite emotions, care-bear-stare kinda stuff, to
keep them at bay. But I wonder if it's a little less wishy-washy than
that. At least I hope it is, because we're not going to get everyone
on the planet to feel Hope or whatever right now. Emotional, whatever,
a frequency is a frequency. It's vibrating one way, we can vibrate
another. A physical, actual, concrete, palpable vibration. We can
build a machine to vibrate at the counter-frequency." [11]
   "You'd need to vibrate the whole planet," says Dr. Fay. "Brian,
could you do that?"
   "I could, but I can't," says Brian. "There's something wrong,
something in the air. It's stopping me from vibrating. I almost ran
into a building on the way here."
   "Almost ran me into a building on the way here," corrects Kate quietly.
   "I think I know why," says Bethany. "It's the implants. The
new-and-improved FEVER implants that have Dr. Fay's vibrational
dampening device installed." [12]
   Dr. Fay nods. "If there's enough of them out there-- doesn't even
need to be twenty thousand or whatever FEVER said they had. If they
even had just a couple thousand, if the victims are properly spread
out across the Earth, they could be used to amplify the frequency, the
fear, to broadcast it."
   "And that's why it's happening," says Bethany. "The world has shit
its pants before, and we never had all this Lovecraft stuff going on.
It's the true purpose of the implants."
   Brian holds up his hand. "But what does that have to do with my
vibrating not working?"
   Dr. Fay answers. "Because they're also broadcasting that signal on
top of the fear, that anti-speedster signal that stops you from
vibrating."
   Bethany picks up the ball and runs with it. "Caracalla was planning
on you, Brian, she was planning on speedsters vibrating the Earth in
exact counter to the Dyzen'thari, or on a machine that replicates
speedsters. She didn't care about keeping her victims from wriggling
away because she doesn't care about her victims, about living people.
It was all part of the larger purpose. But she didn't plan for you."
She points at Kate. [13]
   Kate nods. "My phasing doesn't work the same way. Speedsters
squeeze through the holes between atoms. I pull the suckers apart. So
this field that FEVER created doesn't stop me." As if to demonstrate,
she passes her hand lazily through a countertop. "But I'm not a
speedster. I can't vibrate the earth, Mouse. I had a hard enough time
with that train. It's not even so much that I would die. I mean, yeah,
it is that, don't get me wrong, seriously, I'm totally and I think
legitimately scared of dying; it's that I wouldn't last long enough to
even get it started." [14]
   "I know," says Bethany gently. "I know what I'm asking. But this is
where it gets good. Because we're going to do what Caracalla did.
We're going to do what the Gorgon tried to do. We're going to
weaponize the internet." [15]
   "Like a meme?" says Brian.
   "No, no one's going to pay attention, not now," says Bethany.
"We're not going to vibrate the earth. We're going to vibrate the
internet. A wireless network that surrounds the planet, information
pinging up and down satellites, we're going to send that vibrating in
opposition to the Dyzen'thari."
   Dr. Fay holds up a finger. "That's... that's not really a thing."
   Bethany takes a deep breath, then starts to take off her glove.
"This is the Singularity Gauntlet. It's... it's the source of my
powers. It's what lets me turn my fist as light as air or as dense as
a dwarf star. I've had it for years now, and I know everything about
it. And I think, with a little bit of help," and here she nods to Dr.
Fay, "I think we can use this to make the internet just tangible
enough that a machine powered by Dr. Metronome can grab hold of it and
give it a good, hard shake." Bethany, you're a genius; so save the
world.
   Kate, Roy, and Brian all look at Dr. Fay. She thinks for a moment,
then nods. "Yes. Yes... Yes! This could work! This is brilliant! Oh,
Knockout Mouse, I could kiss you for this."
   "Not if I kiss you first," says Bethany. Dr. Fay starts to smile,
but then (oh my gosh, am I really doing this?) Bethany plants one on
her, right on the lips. Dr. Fay flails her arms, her eyes big and
white. Bethany releases the clincher.
   Dr. Fay is dumbstruck.  "I... um, okay. Let's... Um. Huh. Let's
build some machines, now."

Two hours later.
   "I think," says an atypically exhausted Dr. Fay, surveying the mass
of sprawling wires, dials, levers, and buttons, "I think that's it.
Mouse? Do your thing, girl."
   The Singularity Gauntlet hangs in the air, suspended by coils
stretched taut, its own wires spilling out like innards. (For a
moment, weirdly, it takes Bethany back to high school, reminding her
of Cicero, who had cut open his belly upon hearing of Caesar's victory
in the civil wars, so as to deny his enemy the chance to forgive him.
A doctor tried to save Cicero's life, but defiantly, stubbornly,
Cicero pushed him away, reaching into his own gut and pulling out his
intestines like oily, greasy strings. Bethany starts to retch, but
chokes it back.) [16]
   She slides her hand into the gauntlet, and the gauntlet into her
hand, feeling the easy and familiar tingle, a simple and secret
pleasure. But it's not just in her fingers and her palm anymore. It's
amplified now. Every inch of her becomes like gooseflesh, taut and
alive. She closes her eyes; she breathes in; she breathes out; in
again; she holds it. Her lips part imperceptibly, and through the
narrow little nook the air seeps out like a pinprick in a tire. She
opens her eyes and makes a fist, not just with her hand, but with the
air. She can feel the internet in the air, thick like a hot day in
August, wet and oppressive.
   "We good?" says Bethany.
   "We're good," says Fay. "Metronome."
   Kate nods. She stands before the ad-hoc glass-enclosed chamber Dr.
Fay constructed from one of her Apelantian assistant's spare water
tanks. "Mouse?"
   "Hmm?"
   "If anything happens to me..."
   "Nothing's going to happen to you," says Bethany.
   "If it does. Well, you know."
   Kate's sister and brother. Kate's all they have. Who does Bethany
have? No one, really. She supposes that's what's made it easy to focus
on her twin careers, on genetics and on punching things. [17]
   Kate starts to shake, her molecules pulling apart like the filings
in an etch-a-sketch. She passes inside the chamber, and now the
chamber itself starts to shake, the glass and the air and the Kate all
bouncing around against each other.
   Bethany feels the thickness in the air start to shake. "It's
working. Right? Is it working?"
   Dr. Fay doesn't say anything; instead, she throws a lever. The
quivering all around them increases suddenly, like a car going from
ten to fifty in the time it takes to spit. Then, just as suddenly, the
shaking becomes less intense. And yet the glass chamber looks less
like an object, or even an approximation of one, and has become
scattered bits of color all around them. Now nothing looks like an
object.
   "Is it working?" says Bethany tersely.
   "Something's wrong," says Dr. Fay.
   "Bethany," says Kate in a thousand places at once. (Way to spoil my
secret identity, Kate.)
   "They're fighting back," says Dr. Fay. "The Dyzen'thari are fighting back..."
   "Bethany...!"
   "She sounds like she's in pain!"
   "That's because she is," says Dr. Fay. "They're tearing her apart!"
   "Get her out of the machine," says Bethany.
   "We can't," says Dr. Fay.
   "They're killing her!" says Bethany.
   "We'll all be dead anyway," says Roy gently. "It might still work."
   (Bethany, help me!)
   "I don't think so," says Dr. Fay. "They're too strong."
   "Then get her out!"
   "There isn't any way to do it!" snaps Dr. Fay. "If I could, I would!"
   This is all my fault. Bethany starts to feel dizzy. The lights, the
atoms, the Kate all around her, it's too much. She closes her eyes,
and the second before she does, she sees Kate whole and in front of
her for a split-second.
   "Wait," says Dr. Fay. "Something... something's happening..."
   Bethany opens her eyes. Kate is still scattered in a
thousand-thousand little balls of light, tumbling around with a
thousand-thousand pieces of glass and steel, but all of them are
contained within the box. Slowly, the shaking of the air all around
them begins to pick up speed again.
   "... tremendous build-up of energy in Nevada," Dr. Fay is saying.
"Something pulling at the Dyzen'thari! Keep going, Metronome!" [18]
   "have much Don't a choice," says Kate.
   "What's happening to her?" demands Bethany.
   "Her thoughts are being scattered too," says Dr. Fay softly. (This
is all my fault.) Fay throws another switch; the speed kicks up. "I
don't know if we're helping Nevada, or they're helping us, but
together..." Then another; and again. "If I time this right..." And
another. "If we build-up at the same time Nevada does..." And another.
"We might just..."
   The shaking stops.
   "We did it," says Dr. Fay.
   The tank takes a moment to become itself again, and slowly,
something Kate-like comes together and staggers out of the box.
Bethany blinks and Kate has become solid. Kate pitches over, puking
profusely and with gusto.
   Bethany has her arms around her. "It's okay. It's okay. You did
great, by the way."
   "I feel great," says Kate, her throat scratched all to hell.
   "Fay, we did do it, right?"
   "I'm not getting any readings," says Dr. Fay. "But it's not
official until it's on CNN." She snaps her fingers, and a TV remote
flies toward her. She catches it and flicks the television on.
   Yes, the Dyzen'thari are gone. But so is Las Vegas. [19]

(TO BE CONTINUED IN JOLT CITY # 23, PART TWO)


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