Bitter Seeds

eleven

10-11 December 1940

Westminster, London, England

Reichsbehorde fur die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

Sunrise was a dull glow peeking over Downing Street when Marsh entered St. James' Park. The sleet and snow of the past few days had tapered off after coating London with slush. But the clouds had remained, shrouding the sky like a wet wool blanket.

A pair of sentries stopped him at the checkpoint on the east side of the park, just across from the Old Admiralty building. They recognized him, no doubt, but they did their jobs just the same. One of the sentries, a thumb under six feet tall with a blotchy face, stepped in front of Marsh, rifle held across his chest.

“Can't let you through, sir. Password?”

Marsh said, “Habakkuk.” And to the other sentry, he spoke the second half of the password: “Rookery.”

The guards stepped aside, nodding their approval. “Have a good day, sir.” They didn't know about Milkweed, or what it hoped to achieve from this impromptu base camp.

The park was silent. An early hour, and anybody with a modicum of sense would catch as much sleep as possible before to night. Later, Marsh would go back inside and try to do the same. But not now.

Ice water drizzled from the camouflage netting as Marsh picked his way between the tents. It dripped into his hair, trickled down his neck, down his back. Throughout the staging area, tarpaulins and tent tops had bowed inward under the weight of water, occasionally dumping it all without warning in torrents that doused the unaware and muddied the earth.

He went to the largest tent, in the center of the staging area. Pain twinged in his knee, strong enough to evoke a grimace. Marsh felt, for a moment, like an old man. He gritted his teeth and shrugged off the pain. It receded to a dull throb. More water dripped on his head and neck when he limped inside the tent.

Two rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle faced a table, a lectern, and two blackboards. This was where they'd deliver the final briefing before to night's mission.

Wood-and-Bakelite mockups of a battery were arranged along the table next to the lectern. These were models of the battery they'd taken from Gretel. Snipers had been training with these models for weeks, taking target practice on dummies wearing battery harnesses.

The battery they'd captured bore no identifying marks, not even a manufacturer's stamp. That by itself didn't rule out the possibility that the batteries were constructed under special contract by one of the chemical corporations within the IG Farben conglomerate. Agfa, perhaps, or BASF. But it seemed plausible, based on what little they knew of von Westarp and the massive construction work carried out on his family farm in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that he kept every aspect of the fiefdom under his direct control. So there was a possibility that the batteries were constructed on-site—perhaps by engineers on loan from IG Farben—meaning Milkweed could destroy the Reichsbehorde's ability to make new batteries. Failing that, they'd eliminate the stores.

Objective: Destroy the technology.

Rows of photographs had been affixed to one blackboard. The first was an enlarged version of the single photograph in von Westarp's dossier. The photo was thirty years out of date, but it was, Marsh hoped, better than nothing. Beneath the photo, somebody with a steady hand had printed DR. KARL HEINRICH VON WESTARP.

Objective: Get the research; capture the researchers.

Only one photograph other than von Westarp's had a name printed beneath it: Gretel, the olive-skinned girl. Hers was the clearest of all the photos. They'd photographed her from every angle. It had taken an entire box of film just to map in detail all her surgical scars.

The remaining photos were grainy reproductions of still frames from the Tarragona filmstrip. There was a photograph for each person featured in the film. Each had a single question mark chalked beneath it in place of a name. Even under the shot of Gretel's rescuer. In a few places, a key word or two had been chalked in a different color: Flight? Speed? Fire? Invisibility?

Objective: Kill or capture the subjects.

A crust of snow crunched under Klaus's boots as he walked the perimeter of the grounds with Reinhardt, Buhler, Pabst, and Doctor von Westarp. The doctor called a halt every thirty or forty yards to consult a map of the grounds. The map contained annotations in Pabst's hand, based on intense debriefing sessions with Gretel.

“One ... two ... heave. One ... two ... heave ...”

They watched a handful of mundane troops struggle to erect klieg lights inside the forest at the edge of the complex. The block and tackle clattered while the men ratcheted upright the heavy mast supporting the lights. The cables sang in a rising wind that smelled of cold snow and diesel fuel.

“Put your backs into it!” yelled Pabst. “I want these lights installed and tested before sundown.”

Farther back in the trees, more soldiers were busy hiding the generator that would power the lights. The bulk of the generator rested below ground level, in a hole they'd excavated. A buried cable ran from there to the lights. They'd also landscaped a fake thicket to hide the exposed portion of the generator.

In daylight, Klaus mused, the mess of boot prints and trampled snow around the thicket might have been a giveaway. But at night, in the pandemonium of combat, it wouldn't matter at all. The lights would stay off until the attackers arrived. Then the lights would illuminate their landing sites and make it impossible to hide.

Installations like these were going up on the south, west, and east sides of the Reichsbehorde. Each surrounded what Gretel claimed would be a landing site.

Assuming she could be trusted. Klaus had severe reservations on that point, but he kept them to himself. He'd known for months, at least since she had maneuvered to get herself captured, that she acted according to her own interests and motivations, what ever those might be. But until the failed invasion, and maybe even after that, he'd clung to the belief that her personal motives more or less aligned with the interests of the Reichsbehorde and the greater Reich. But what she'd done to Heike ...

When Rudolf had died, back in Spain, Gretel had used her prescience like a blunt instrument. But now she wielded it like one of Doctor von Westarp's scalpels. Heike's suicide had been engineered: the culmination of subtle, devious psychological manipulations that neatly excised the will to live from Heike's heart and mind.

Von Westarp muttered to himself, nodded. He made a mark on his map and then set off again through the blowing snow. The tattered hem of a dressing grown dangled beneath his long leather overcoat, tracing snake trails through the snow. Klaus and the others followed.

Wind hissed through bare boughs, as though the oak and ash trees were commenting upon the preparations. It carried a knife-edge chill that pierced the tiniest gaps in Klaus's clothing. The cold slipped through the buttonholes in his coat, sliced through the seams in his uniform, raked his skin with ice. His breath caught, trapped by the constriction in his chest.

He considered using his Willenskrafte, letting the snow and wind pass through him by virtue of the Gotterelektron, but the relief would last only until he rematerialized to breathe. It would waste his battery to no good effect.

No snow landed on Reinhardt, or in the steaming boot prints left by his passage.

Reinhardt the necrophiliac.

He was as arrogant and cocksure as ever, except around Gretel. Reinhardt avoided Klaus and Gretel as much as possible these days.

Klaus kept trying to avoid his sister, too, after Heike's suicide. Though it was somewhat pointless. She always knew where he'd pop up.

Gretel had gone completely off the rails, and nobody knew it except Klaus. And, he supposed, Reinhardt. After all, in the eyes of Doctor von Westarp, Heike had taken her own life because she was weak. A failure. He spoke not of wasted resources, or of the de cades squandered creating the now-deceased invisible woman. He spoke only of the mistakes he'd made with Heike, and how he'd avoid these in the next batch of test subjects.

Pabst cleared his throat. “Respectfully, Herr Oberfuhrer, I would like to reiterate my recommendation that we install gun emplacements. And land mines. The enemy may be more numerous than we expect.”

“No! Save the glory for my children.”

Buhler dug out a cigarette while the two argued. He struggled to light it in the cold wind. After a few moments he gave up, and glared at Reinhardt. Reinhardt smirked; the tip of the cigarette flared a brilliant ruby red.

In the end, von Westarp won. As of course he would. There would be no emplacements, no mines.

The inspection tour continued. Seeing the preparations was almost enough to make Klaus pity the doomed men who planned to attack his home. He'd walked among them; breathed their air. They weren't so monstrous.

No, he thought, watching Reinhardt. This is where the monsters live.

On any given evening, the train that passed along these tracks en route to Edinburgh carried perhaps a hundred passengers. One hundred souls: men, women, and children.

Hargreaves recited these details very matter-of-factly, like a physician listing a patient's medical history, while he and Webber fastened an explosive charge to the iron rail. Their breath formed long wispy streamers as they labored in the lengthening shadows of evening. Both men pricked a finger; dribbles of blood froze instantly to the rail.

Will stood a little way off, sheltering from the wind in a stand of fir trees. He would have preferred to stay in the car and avoid the cold, or better yet to have avoided this trip altogether. That, of course, was out of the question. He had necessarily been a participant in the negotiation of the blood price, and as such, here he was, seeing that it be paid.

The cold made him numb, but it wasn't the all-encompassing numbness he yearned for. He'd have hurried that along with drink, but he'd be damn busy in a few hours. Focus was important. He promised himself a treat if he made it through the night in one piece. A doubtful result.

“William!” Hargreaves beckoned to him. “Come.”

“You know, it occurs to me,” said Will, tugging the bowler down over his ears as he stepped into the wind, “that by watching this activity and alerting neither the police nor the Home Guard, I am, legally speaking, an accessory to this deed.” Hargreaves and Webber stared at him blankly. Webber's bad eye, Will noted, matched the color of the fresh snow that dusted the gravel alongside the train tracks. “In other words,” Will continued, “I am, through the agency of my tacit consent, already a participant in the payment of this price.” He looked back and forth between the two. “You see.”

They didn't. Nor did they much care. The greedy bastards would butcher their own mothers if it meant half a chance to see a deed like the one slated for to night.

Will crossed the country lane to where the others knelt. They had chosen this intersection thirty miles outside the city for its seclusion. Their chances of getting caught were quite low. The tall trees lining the road swayed, the wind in their boughs sounding for all the world like crashing surf. It felt like they were funneling the wind straight down the road. It was a suffocating wind.

He loosened the scarf around his neck until the ends flapped like pennants. “In fact,” he added, “you might say that by doing nothing, I've done quite enough.”

The shriveled skin of Hargreaves's face twitched as it often did when the warlock was irritated. “Pull yourself together and do your duty,” he said. “We must head back soon.”

Will sighed, tugged up his trousers, and crouched next to the tracks. He double-checked their work. They'd placed the charge at the seam between two lengths of rail. It was a small thing, not strong enough to topple a train by itself, but more than enough to pry the seam apart. All it needed was a trigger. Webber anticipated him and pushed a leather satchel across the ground with the toe of his boot.

In Will's grandfather's day, a warlock's bag of tricks contained knives, wooden bits, leather cords, and bandages. Will's carpetbag back at the Kensington flat still contained a pair of bloodstained garden shears. But this was not his grandfather's war. Warlocks served the king now—though His Majesty didn't know it—and their tools for spilling blood had grown in sophistication along with their understanding of Enochian.

It's a strange kind of inflation, Will thought, always driving these prices up. Blades are outmoded, worthless; the ha'pennies of negotiation. Dynamite and priming cord, that's where the purchase power is.

Will fished inside Webber's satchel until he found a length of cord and a pressure switch. It took several tries to affix the switch to the rail. The ice-cold steel shrugged off the adhesive putty. He layered it on until he could be reasonably sure that vibrations from the train wouldn't dislodge the trigger before the wheels touched it.

How is it that in order to serve my country I practically had to become a fifth columnist?

Which was exactly the result Stephenson wanted, the charming pragmatist. The warlocks' actions in paying the Eidolons' blood prices could be blamed as the work of fifth columnists. Nazi sympathizers. Jerry saboteurs. It had to be that way. A more direct path would have been to extract the prices from condemned prisoners and the like—so-called undesirables. But that would have required paperwork; it would have left a trail back to the Crown. And, given how expensive things had become, using prisoners to pay the blood prices would have quickly reduced the warlocks to executing people for shoplifting.

Webber and Hargreaves retreated along the road to where Will had parked the car.

Yes, you left the dangerous bit for me, didn't you? A frisson of paranoia jolted Will. Was this deliberate? Part of a secondary negotiation of which he knew nothing? Were they hoping for a mistake?

He took extra care while arming the charge. He did it just as he'd been trained by the SOE: one wire at a time, taking care to avoid stray static charges.

That finished, he nicked a finger and squeezed out a few drops of blood. They froze to the rail, mingling with the blood Hargreaves and Webber had already shed. The warlocks' blood was a bridge, connecting the negotiated blood price with this act of violence. They'd done their parts. Somewhere in Surrey, Will knew, Shapley, Grafton, and White were doing something similar. Together all six warlocks were conegotiators. Coconspirators, too, if anybody ever learned about this.

After that there was nothing left to do but give it a quick once-over and hurry back to the car.

A train whistle echoed faintly through the trees. Will gunned the engine to drown out the noise, and promised himself a single drink when they returned to the Admiralty.

The wind died around sunset. Darkness and silence together descended upon London. A deepening cold gripped St. James' Park. It leeched warmth from tents, turned metal Nissen huts to iceboxes, and aggravated the twinge in Marsh's knee.

He stuffed an extra packet of aspirin into his kit. The pain hadn't hobbled him yet, though it threatened to. He'd get a medic to look at his knee after he came back, but there wasn't time enough for that now. There was also the danger that he might be sidelined from the raid. And that was unacceptable.

Marsh counted through his gear. The ritual helped him to focus, to find his center.

One combat knife, six-inch blade. Six Mills bombs. Four white phosphorus grenades. One Enfield double-action revolver (No. 2, Mk. I). Five six-round cylinders for same. One Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle (No. 4, Mk. I). Five ten-round magazines for same. One electric torch. One pair of handcuffs. One vial of ether. One garrote. Three magnesium flares. One compass. One medkit.

He filled the webbing pockets on his belt with still more cylinders and magazines. Then he rubbed burnt cork on the exposed skin of his hands and clean-shaven face, darkening himself until his flesh would blend into the shadows along with the black coverall he wore.

Throughout Milkweed's camp, he knew, dozens of men were going through the same ritual, if not with the same equipment. Mostly in groups, taking comfort in the camaraderie of false bravado, chasing off the collywobbles. Three huts, three teams. The plan was for the teams to retain the same geo graph i cal distribution—one each to the south, west, and east—when they landed in Germany.

Arrived in Germany. Marsh kept thinking of it as a landing, as though they were parachuting in, though he knew it was nothing of the sort.

He hefted the sack off the table and shrugged the straps over his shoulders. Then he checked his belt, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and stepped outside.

In peacetime, the glow of London, combined with humidity and smog, often erased even the brightest stars from the sky. But that was no longer the case, owing to the blackout and the crisp evening. Overhead, a wine-dark sky shimmered with points of blue and white. Even orange in places. The air felt so sharp, so crystalline, that Marsh found it easy to imagine there was nothing at all between himself and the stars.

The inconstant knee pain that had dogged him his entire adult life flared anew, sharper this time. Marsh leaned over to massage it. Not now. Please, just through to night.

Footsteps squelched in the slush around the side of the tent. The noise was so subtle that Marsh wouldn't have heard it at all if not for the stillness of the evening. It sounded like somebody hesitating in the shadows, wanting to approach him without disrupting his solitude.

Marsh straightened up. “Yes, I'm on my way, Will.”

No answer. Another squelch.

“Lorimer? Is that you?”

Something moved in the shadows. It created a rustling sound, like somebody brushing against a tent.

Marsh's hand went to the revolver at his belt. He crept forward. “Who's there?”

The shadows moved again at the same moment he stepped around the corner. He found himself face-to-face with a stranger. Both men started in unison; both had their weapons drawn.

Marsh couldn't make out the other man's eyes, but he was clearly surprised to see Marsh. A beard hid the stranger's face. Moonlight reflected wetly off a puckered furrow of scar tissue.

This wasn't one of Milkweed's men. The organization was small enough that Marsh knew every face, every name. Marsh knew that he'd never in his life seen this man, and yet there was something familiar about him. The revelation came in a flash: he'd heard this man's description before.

The intruder recovered before Marsh could raise his sidearm. His voice was a gravelly rasp. “You'll thank me for this later.”

He pointed his own revolver at Marsh's leg, but his eyes widened in surprise as he pulled the trigger.

“No! Blood—” The stranger fired and disappeared in the same instant.

Pop. Marsh's knee exploded in pain.

Oh, God, Liv, I should have seen you this morning—

Marsh crashed to the ground, clutching his leg with one hand while swinging his firearm in a wild arc toward where the assailant had stood. But the man was gone.

So, too, was the pain. Just like that, it evaporated, leaving nothing behind, not even the original twinge. And not just to night's pain, either; the constant trickle of discomfort from his knee, the ever-present ache that Marsh tuned out most of the time, was gone. The reversal was so complete that for a moment Marsh thought he'd gone into shock. But his hands were dry. No blood. And his coveralls were undamaged, with no hint of a bullet hole.

“Bloody fucking hell.”

Phantoms.

Marsh lay sprawled on the ground, panting. His breath sparkled. He flinched, expecting a surge of pain to follow every thud of his racing heart, but it never came. Only a slowly growing chill as the cold and wet seeped into him.

“Bugger me.”

He climbed to his feet, shakily, half-expecting his leg to give out. It didn't. But he did take a few moments to collect himself before joining the others.

All eyes turned to him when he entered the Nissen hut. Will, Hargreaves, and Webber stood around a workbench upon which rested a piece of Portland limestone somewhat smaller than a rugby ball. An iron chisel had been driven deep into the stone, not quite far enough to cleave it in two. The stone had been marked with a bloody handprint that straddled the fissure made by the chisel. A sledgehammer rested on the bench next to the stone.

Marsh understood that the stone was there for the benefit of the warlocks rather than for the Eidolons. It was an object to help them focus, in the same way that Will used fire. The cleaved stone would become a single object existing here and there simultaneously.

Waves of pent-up anticipation boiled out of the corner where the rest of Marsh's team milled around. Ten men: some younger, some older, every one a walking arsenal, every one replaying the Tarragona filmstrip over and over in his head. Marsh could see it in their eyes and in the hard, blank looks on their faces.

The snipers wore Ghillie suits, camouflage festooned with bits of foliage. The rest wore dark balaclavas to match their coveralls. The snipers carried Enfield rifles like Marsh's, with scopes; their spotters carried submachine guns. Everyone had corked their faces. It was the first time Marsh had ever seen Will in anything less than a suit.

Like Marsh, every man headed to Germany wore a small sticking plaster on the back of one hand: the warlocks had taken blood samples. The Eidolons had to see the men in order to move them. Marsh dreaded the thought of being scrutinized by those monsters again, but he'd tolerate it for the sake of hurting the Jerries.

Lorimer was inspecting the pair of tall, blocky wooden pillars that flanked the squad. Lorimer called them his “pixies.” Coils of copper wire wreathed the narrower center portion of each column. Ceramic endcaps covered the top and bottom of both machines. The gadgets had been designed to be as light as possible, so that two men could carry one at a dead run.

Stephenson stared at the mud stains on Marsh's coveralls. “What the blue pencil happened to you?”

Marsh shook his head. “Forget it. It's unimportant.”

Will shot Stephenson a pointed look. The old man frowned. He joined Lorimer.

Will came over. He didn't carry as much equipment as the rest of the squad. The knife, the revolver, and the rifle all looked absurdly out of place on him. The weapons were a last resort, in the case of self-defense.

Marsh asked, quietly, “What was that just now, between you and the old man?”

“Bit of a disagreement. What did happen to you, Pip? You took a fall, I can see that much.”

Marsh motioned him to a corner of the hut. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think I just saw your phantom.”

“My phantom?”

“The fellow you saw here in the park back in May, on the night our strange little guest escaped.”

Will's eyes widened in surprise. It didn't, Marsh noticed, soften the dark weariness in his features. “You're certain? That would be rather odd, you and I seeing the same apparition months apart.”

“He matched your description. Down to the voice.”

“Hmm. The ghost of St. James'.” He shook his head. “You know, Pip, there's still time to call this off... .”

Stephenson clapped twice. “Gentlemen. It's time.”

Will and Marsh joined Lorimer and the others. They stretched, limbered up, tightened their belts, checked their kit yet again. Marsh did the same. He clenched and released the muscles in his arms, legs, and back. He concentrated on his legs, banishing the cold so he wouldn't cramp up. His knee felt solid. The pain didn't return.

The elder warlocks launched into the shrieks and rumbles of Enochian. The earth seemed to shift slightly and assume an impossible cant, much like the floor in the Admiralty building had done so many times over the past seven months. An ozone crackle filled the room. And just for a moment, Marsh caught a fleeting whiff of baby powder.

Focus. Focus. He cracked his knuckles.

The rest of the squad watched and listened with expressions that ranged from hostility to something just short of abject terror. They'd all heard Enochian dozens of times, but to night would be something different.

The stone spoke. Will cocked his head, as though eavesdropping on a hard-to-follow conversation. Which, Marsh supposed, he was.

The Eidolon's presence swept over them in a wave that threatened to rip the Nissen apart at the seams, so vast was the sense of its being. A boundless intellect swirled through the hut as though it were inspecting every atom. The men squirmed under its attention.

It lingered on Marsh for a microsecond eternity. The naked, inside-out feeling flashed through him again, just as it had when he'd severed Will's finger. More Enochian emanated from the stone as it withdrew.

Will inhaled sharply. “There it is again.”

“There's what again?”

“Your name,” he said.

Marsh started to inquire, but Will shushed him. He nodded at the stone, and the chanting warlocks around it. “Here it comes.”

The warlocks stopped. Hargreaves pointed at Will. “Now,” he said.

Will lifted the sledgehammer. “Ready yourselves, everyone.”

Stephenson said, “Godspeed and good hunting, gentlemen.”

Will flexed his knees, preparing his swing. He counted backwards. “Three ... Two ...”

On one, Will shouted something in Enochian, the hammer landed square on the chisel, and then—

Will felt the bifurcation of space in every particle of his being. His body was an impossible construct held together by the whim of an Eidolon. He was a riddle, a paradox, a rift in the cosmos within which here and there held no meaning.

He cried out. But sound, he discovered, did not carry through the crawlspaces of the universe.

“Ah.” Gretel put down her spoon.

“What?” said Klaus around a mouthful of black bread.

She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “They're here.”

—darkness.

The Eidolon withdrew. Marsh occupied a single space once more. This space was colder and darker than the Nissen from which he'd departed, all those eons ago.

It took several long moments to regain his bearings, to become reacquainted with the claustrophobic confines of body and mind, space and time.

First, he noticed the breeze tickling his face, and the creaking of tree boughs. He looked up. Stars twinkled overhead just as they had in London. Wherever they were, their latitude hadn't changed appreciably.

Then he noticed moonlight on a snow-dappled field. Across the field, yellow light spilled from the windows of a three-story farmhouse perhaps a hundred yards away. Silhouettes paced behind gauzy curtains on the third floor. It appeared to be the same farmhouse featured in the photograph that Marsh had salvaged from Krasnopolsky's valise. The farmhouse and field were flanked by other buildings. He checked his compass. Marsh's team had arrived in the tree line along the south edge of the field, at the top of a U. The field constituted the center of the U, and the farmhouse was the base.

I'll be damned. It actually worked.

Only then did he hear the sobbing. He took a quick head count. Most of his men had come through looking pale and shaken. One member of the squad lay in the snow in the fetal position, crying and sucking his thumb. Another man—Ritter; he'd served with distinction in Norway—hugged his knees, rocking back and forth, muttering loudly, “I can't exist. I can't exist. I can't exist.”

“Lorimer, where are you?” Marsh whispered.

“Back here,” said a voice in the shadows.

“Shut that man up or knock him back to his senses.”

“Damnation,” said Will. “I tried to tell you this would happen.” He dropped the sledgehammer. It thudded to the ground alongside the cleft stone at his feet.

Lorimer's machines appeared to have weathered the passage with no ill effects. Marsh gestured at his squad. “You two, and you two, get ready to move those pixies into position. Everyone else prepare to cover them.”

The first man had just grabbed a handhold on one of the pixies when a blinding white light flooded the world. Marsh reeled. At first he thought the transit had failed after all, and that they had ricocheted back to London.

Then he heard the yells emanating from across the field. “Beeil dich!”

They hadn't moved. But they were pinned under a ring of spotlights.

“Well,” said Lorimer, unslinging his rifle, “I'd say we're fucked harder than an East End whore.”

The quiet night erupted into gunfire and explosions almost as soon as Pabst gave the order to activate the klieg lights. Doctor von Westarp waited for the lights before giving the order to attack. Otherwise, of course, he wouldn't have been able to watch the proceedings from the comfort of his parlor. And the cameramen wouldn't have been able to film the night's events.

According to Gretel, the attackers had arrived in three teams. Klaus, Kammler, and Reinhardt were assigned the defense of the west, south, and east sides of the Reichsbehorde, respectively.

Klaus charged through the ice house, past Heike's remains. The doctor had dissected her, laying her open like the illustrations in an anatomy textbook as he cataloged the physiological alterations the Gotterelektron had wrought upon her body.

He wore two batteries to night, on a special double harness designed to distribute the weight evenly across his shoulders. It didn't. Every step jolted the batteries; it felt like getting punched in the kidneys.

He emerged through the west wall of the ice house into blinding, deafening chaos. Light shone through the trees on the edge of the grounds, highlighting perhaps a dozen men. Some were curled up on the ground, unmoving. Others yelled to each other in English, or fired at the lights.

The men dived for cover, hands over their heads. The crack of a fragmentation grenade echoed back and forth across the grounds. Soil erupted from the forest floor near the base of one of the light masts. It toppled over like a great steel oak, making shadows swirl through the trees until it smashed its crown of glass against the earth.

The invaders didn't see Klaus. The men were too preoccupied with the remaining lights to notice that they weren't, in fact, under attack.

Well, at least this will be over quickly, thought Klaus. He sighed, wondering who would get stuck digging the graves for these men. Or perhaps the doctor would test the ovens on their corpses.

Klaus pulled out a grenade and rushed the invaders.

Marsh yelled, “Somebody kill those goddamn lights!”

Will tried to untangle himself from his rifle. The light, the noise, the confusion and panic all melded into a fog. He fumbled with the rifle. How had the strap become wrapped around his arm like this? He couldn't unsling it gracefully. He gave up and took instead the revolver from his belt.

He stood, squinting up in the direction of the lights. Somebody tackled him. His shot pinged off the metal light boom and went caroming into the woods.

Lorimer bellowed in his ear. “Don't! Stand! Up!” His hot breath cascaded over Will's face. “Unless you want your chinless head blown apart, you worthless toff.”

Somebody yelled, “Take cover!”

Will rolled over, facedown, covering his head and ears with his hands, just as he'd been trained to do. There was a crack and then the ground shook. Clods of earth pelted him. He rolled over just in time to see one of the light booms lean over with much creaking and groaning. It stopped after tipping a few feet out of true. But the night was just as bright as ever.

He realized that part of the chaos filling his head came from elsewhere, a cacophony of gunfire and explosions. And screaming.

Is this what you had planned, Pip? Is this how you imagined it?

Will crawled on his stomach behind the line of men who had taken position at the edge of the tree line. Those who had recovered their senses after the transit from London lay under bare bushes, or hid behind trees, the barrels of their rifles and Bren guns pointed toward the buildings.

But they weren't, he noticed, firing. They were waiting.

A wave of dread swept over Will. We haven't been attacked yet and this whole operation has already gone pear-shaped. Snow funneled into his collar as he pulled himself across the ground. Damn you, Stephenson.

Somebody tossed another Mills bomb. The tilted light boom toppled the rest of the way, crashing to the ground in an eruption of glass and sparks. But two spotlights still highlighted their position.

Will scuttled over to where Lorimer and Marsh were huddled together. “This isn't working,” said Marsh. “We have to move out.”

“The pixies will make short work of those lights,” said the Scot.

Marsh shook his head urgently. “They know our position. Tell the men to move out.”

“Aye.”

Marsh crawled over to Will while Lorimer spread the word. “Where's your magic rock?”

Shit. Will cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “It's, uh, back there.”

“Don't you dare lose that bloody thing!”

Marsh was right. Without the stone, they couldn't get back. Will turned and crawled back to where he'd come from.

Closer to the tree line, Lorimer yelled, “Oy! You lot first! Then the pixies! Twenty meter—”

He crumpled up like a rag doll, shot into the air, and slammed back down again. The impact rattled Will's bones. Lorimer's body pounded the earth again before spinning off into the forest. It smacked into an oak tree, knocking snow from the boughs. What was left of Lorimer rained to the ground as an unrecognizable mass of bone and meat.

Marsh noticed, too late, two men standing in the center of the field. He recognized them from the Tarragona filmstrip. One wore a collar; the other stood behind him, yanking on his leash and screaming in his ear.

Marsh dived for cover. “Fire on those two!” He ordered the squad. “Aim for the battery,” he reminded the snipers.

They unleashed a volley. It achieved nothing. The rounds stopped in midair a few feet from the leashed man, and tinkled to his feet. The squad's cover started to disappear as trees and shrubs disintegrated explosively, showering them with splinters. The night smelled like sawdust and smokeless powder.

One man stood and lobbed a Mills bomb at the duo. It stopped a few feet over the leashed man's head, hovered, and then made a snap sound no louder than a Christmas cracker. The fragments of shrapnel fell unceremoniously to the earth.

Marsh reached for one of the phosphorus grenades on his belt. Just as he prepared to yank the pin, the man who had tossed the Mills got plucked from his hiding spot and rammed into the earth—headfirst—like a tent peg. Marsh opted to stay down instead.

Time for drastic measures. “Fire a pixie!”

Lorimer had designed the pixies for use in the heat of combat. Which meant that each had a bright red Bakelite panic button on its base, where it could be tripped by foot or hand, depending on the circumstances. A sniper rolled over to the pixie and kicked the button. “Everybody take cover!” he yelled.

The pixie emitted a high-pitched whine. The squad made a hasty retreat into the woods.

Marsh counted backwards. “Ten ... nine ...” He grabbed Will, who was sprawled on the ground clutching the stone to his chest. “Eight ... seven ...” Marsh shoved Will along in front of him. Trees erupted in their wake. “Six ... five ...” More than one man screamed as he got caught up in the destruction. “Four ... three ...” Marsh pushed Will down into the hollow behind a tree stump and landed next to him. “Two ... one.”

Somewhere in the bowels of Lorimer's machine, an electrical relay clicked shut. It caused a capacitor bank to discharge its hoarded electrical energy through a wire coil. This turned the pixie, ever so briefly, into an electromagnet. A microsecond later, as special circuitry shaped the time profile of the electrical current, a second relay clicked shut. This activated detonators at both ends of a high-explosive cylinder in the center of the coil. This created a pair of convergent shock waves that squeezed the coil and crushed the magnetic field.

The end result was an electromagnetic pulse tuned to the electrical characteristics of the battery that Milkweed had obtained.

Bullets sprayed through Klaus's insubstantial body, pattering harmlessly against the brick wall of the ice house behind him. He'd lobbied Doctor von Westarp for a new assignment, something real to do, for months. Now he had a new task, but it didn't fill him with pride as he'd hoped.

One of the attackers yelled, “It's one of them! It's one of them!” as he fired. He watched, unbelieving, as Klaus approached the submachine gun leveled at his chest.

Klaus stopped just short of the barrel. He shot the panicky, trigger-happy soldier in the forehead.

He advanced on the rest of the soldiers. Though they'd watched him kill their companion, they continued to try to shoot him. Klaus imagined it was panic making them dull. Until he heard one of the British order his colleagues:

“Disable his battery!”

Somebody yelled something about a “pixie,” but Klaus couldn't make it out over the noise of the gunfire directed at him. One man broke off and ran for a tall pillar of wood and copper wire that the British had apparently brought with them from England. He slapped a large red switch. The pillar started to whine.

Klaus pulled the pin and dropped the grenade he'd been carrying. It became substantial again when it left his touch. The grenade bounced in the slush at his ghostly feet. It had a four-second fuse.

The shooters dived for cover behind trees and underbrush. The man who'd gone for the pillar didn't see what Klaus had done. The concussion drove shrapnel through his chest and cracked the pillar in half.

A blinding flash erupted on the far side of the complex. It came from the east, like a sunrise, but Klaus knew it was Reinhardt blazing brighter than the sun. Klaus was too far away to hear the screams of the men he cooked.

He checked his battery gauge while the four remaining men climbed to their feet to renew the attack. The battery retained nearly 75 percent of its charge. That was more than enough to finish off these men.

First, he tried to goad them into shooting each other while he stood between them. To their credit, they didn't fall for it. He jumped through one man, spun, stuck his pistol through a second man's chest, fired at a third. The man through whom he'd shot dropped his gun, screaming incoherently as he stared at Klaus's arm protruding from his chest. Klaus withdrew and shot him in the back of the head. The two remaining men tried to empty their magazines into Klaus. He reached into one man's rib cage and squeezed. The dead man collapsed.

The lights went dead without warning, followed by the thunder of a distant explosion that shook the earth a moment later. A strange and painful surge from his battery left Klaus reeling. The sudden return of night disoriented him; his eyes had adjusted to the glare of the klieg lights.

The last man took advantage of the distraction and fled into the woods. Klaus tried to give chase by leaping through an ash tree.

And crashed facefirst into the bole.

The impact sent him sprawling backwards. He tasted blood, but not the copper tingle of the Gotterelektron. All he could feel was the searing pain of an exposed nerve in his jaw. He'd cracked a tooth in half.

He rolled over to check his battery gauge. It was dead. It had lost nearly three-quarters of its charge in an instant. Head pounding, he climbed to his feet and switched over to his second battery. This one was low, too, but usable.

Klaus turned to run after the man who had fled. He stopped short, and almost fell for a second time, because Gretel had come up behind him.

“Careful, brother.”

“Gretel? What are you doing out here? It's not safe.”

“Kammler needs your help. Go, quickly now.”

As Klaus set off to cut through the battery stores, he said over his shoulder, “Go back inside the farmhouse, Gretel. It's safe there.”

She might have responded with her accursed little half smile, but it was too dark to see for certain.

The pixie emitted a burst of violet light when it exploded. The spotlights died in the same instant. The combination left Will blinking furiously, trying to banish the spots behind his eyes.

The tree stump behind which he and Marsh huddled hadn't disintegrated yet. Nor had any of the adjacent underbrush.

Next, he noticed the smells: ozone, sharp enough to sting, and entrails. Poor Lorimer.

“Scheisse!”

“T-t-t-t—”

“SCHEISSE!”

Will peeked over the stump. The yellow glow from the farmhouse windows silhouetted their assailants. The pixies, he knew, were tailored to knock out the batteries. The farmhouse appeared unaffected. The spotlights had been much closer, and had taken the brunt of the EMP.

The leash-holder cursed in a constant stream of German while he fidgeted with something on the belt of the collared man. His battery, presumably. He was having trouble because the collared man wouldn't stand still. He ambled back and forth, stuttering.

Marsh took a shooting position. He rested his rifle on the stump and sighted along the barrel. He hardly seemed to breathe.

Will had seen men die to night, and more men than that had died by his own hand these past months. Always at a distance, of course. But Marsh didn't flinch from killing. It showed Will a side of the man he'd never known. The same sense of focus was there, but now it was alloyed with something dispassionate, too.

No. Not dispassionate. A deceptively quiet rage. The man carried thoughts of his daughter. The look on his face made that much clear. It was a look that Will hoped Marsh would never direct at him.

Marsh fired. The side of the leash-holder's head erupted in a fine mist. He fell to the snow, unmoving.

“Damn it! Damn it, damn it,” Marsh muttered as he worked the bolt.

The collared man stuttered more loudly. It was a mournful, distraught kind of sound.

“B-b-b-b-b—”

Marsh prepared another shot. While he aimed, another figure emerged through the wall of a long, low building and dashed across the field. “Kammler!” He leapt and grabbed the stutterer just as Marsh fired. A window behind the pair shattered.

The insubstantial man did something to the stutterer's belt. The stutterer—his name was Kammler, apparently—knelt next to the body of his companion. “Bu-buh-g-g-g-”. It sounded like he was crying. He seemed to have lost his interest in fighting.

The insubstantial man turned and headed for Will and Marsh's position. Somebody behind and to the right of them fired—the squad had been whittled down three or four people by now—but it had no effect.

Will looked around for the second pixie. It was nowhere to be seen. It had been caught up in the destruction of the woods.

Marsh recognized the man advancing on his position. The very same bastard had rescued Gretel, and in the process led Marsh on a wide-ranging chase through the Admiralty.

Marsh scanned through the mental list of things he'd learned from that experience. Weaknesses: He can't breathe when he's insubstantial. He has to monitor his battery.

Why didn't the pixie knock out his battery as it had with the stutterer? It seemed they were carrying spares. The man Marsh had shot—why did I have to miss?— must have been trying to swap out his companion's battery.

With luck, the pixie had taken a toll on the spare, too, although Lorimer and the science boffins had designed the pixies assuming the batteries would be in use when the pulse hit them. They'd have to drain it the hard way.

“Everybody, fire!” Gunfire echoed from two positions in the wood behind him. Marsh lobbed a Mills bomb at the advancing fellow, but of course it had no effect other than to force him to stay incorporeal.

“Maybe, Pip,” said Will, “this would be a good time to leave.”

Will was huddled behind the stump, watching the man coming closer and closer. One hand held the cleft stone to his chest; the other held his revolver. Both hands shook.

If Will died, there'd be no going home for anybody.

Shit.

“Stay down,” said Marsh. “Don't let them see you. And for God's sake, don't lose that bloody stone.”

Marsh stood.

Will said, “Are you daft? What are you doing?”

“If you die, we all do. Now stay down and shut up.”

Marsh took off at a dead run along the edge of the wood. He hoped the Jerry bastard would recognize him, and that he had a taste for irony. He did. On both counts.

Marsh ran east, drawing his pursuer away from Will. His best hope—a feeble, fleeing hope—was to lose himself in the shadows between the buildings. With luck, he might find the battery store house before they caught him.

Pop. Crack. A tree bole splintered above Marsh's head. Apparently the Jerry could still fire his gun while in his altered state. Marsh peeled away from the trees and headed north, along the east side of the complex. He squeezed off a couple of shots from his revolver now and then to keep his pursuer insubstantial and thus, Marsh hoped, desperate for air.

Once around the corner and out of sight, he took a phosphorus grenade from his belt and lobbed it toward the outer wall of the closest building. Toward where, if he could walk through walls, he would have taken a shortcut to catch himself. Toward where he'd probably take a deep breath when he emerged.

The grenade hissed out hot, dense white smoke that glistened like a pea-soup fog in the moonlight. Moments later a human figure emerged through the wall. The cloud eddied around him.

Marsh heard a gasp, a violent cough, and then his pursuer leapt back inside.

Hope you got a lungful, you son of a bitch.

A Mills could have finished the bastard off for certain, but it might have turned out to be a waste of good explosives. Marsh wanted to save what little he had left in case he could find the battery stores.

He set off to do that. And tripped over something very warm that crumbled under his weight. Marsh had to stare for a moment before recognizing it as a human body, charcoal-black and curled tightly in the fetal position. It smelled like charred pork. Bodies like this littered the field.

Somewhere, back toward where he'd first arrived, where he'd left Will, a roar shook the earth. The cacophony of gunfire and explosions started anew.

He considered going for the dead squad's pixies, but the ground had been seared into ash for fifty feet in all directions. No doubt their pixies had burned, too. But where was the man who had done this? He thought back to the Tarragona filmstrip, and a man with pale, pale eyes.

Marsh crept through a cluster of darkened buildings, looking for anything that might have suggested a storeroom. The thin layer of snow squeaked under his boots and left a record of his movements. He tried to step lightly, and he paid attention to the wind-shadows of the buildings where snow hadn't dusted the ground. He could tiptoe through these areas without leaving prints.

Watching the snow saved his life. Marsh was turning a corner when the snow in front of him evaporated. He leapt back. Flames erupted from the ground where he'd been about to step.

A man stepped around the corner, laughing, wreathed in blue fire. The light illuminated the adjacent buildings and made Marsh squint. He scuttled frantically backwards through mud that had been snow and frozen earth seconds earlier.

“You're quick,” said the burning man in English, over the crackle of his fiery aura. “Quicker than your comrades. I'll grant you that much.”

Marsh emptied his revolver. The first shot went wide, scarring the bricks alongside the burning man. The second bullet flared purple when it touched the man's aura. The man took a step back to steady himself, still burning.

Marsh scrambled to his feet, trying to steady his hands so he could reload. But his assailant recovered before Marsh could pull out a new cylinder. The man clutched his shoulder, wincing.

“All done? I'd—”

A woman yelled: “Reinhardt! Reinhardt, come quickly!”

Marsh knew that voice. It was Gretel. He had replayed it in his head countless times. Congratulations. It's a girl.

The burning man—Reinhardt—hesitated. Marsh ran. Behind him, he heard Gretel yelling, “Reinhardt, please, this instant!”

Marsh weaved between a few buildings before pressing up against a wall and plucking a Mills from his belt, in case he was being followed. But the snow didn't melt behind him, and the earth didn't spit forth new flames.

By distracting Reinhardt, Gretel had inadvertently saved Marsh's life.

He took the opportunity to catch his breath and reload. He gulped cold winter air that chilled his throat. Rivulets of sweat stung his eyes with salt. He leaned against the wall, listening to shouts, dwindling gunfire, and the whoosh sound of disintegrating forest. The earth shook again. The remnants of his squad had engaged Kammler again.

He found himself staring up at the three-story farmhouse as he placed a new cylinder in his revolver. Von Westarp's farmhouse. A silhouette still paced in front of the windows on the top floor. Marsh couldn't see any details, but he had a hunch as to who owned that shadow.

More noise echoed across the grounds from the battle with Kammler. It gave Marsh an idea.

Klaus stumbled through a darkened laboratory, coughing convulsively. He fell to all fours. A tray of medical implements crashed to the floor when he banged against a surgical table.

The coughs came out so violently that they irritated the back of his throat and caused him to gag. He vomited rabbit stew on the tile floor of an operating room.

His eyes and sinuses burned. His throat burned, too, from the surge of stomach acids. But his skin wasn't blistering, and he couldn't smell garlic or fresh hay. So he hadn't inhaled mustard gas or phosgene. And the cloud had been white, not yellowish like chlorine.

The coughing fit receded. His eyes still burned, but he could open them now. It seemed he'd emerged in the middle of a smoke screen, but not into a poison gas cloud.

Sweat ran down Klaus's face, mingling with the tears from his watering eyes. Profuse sweating was a natural result of intense exertion while insubstantial; his body built up heat in that state and couldn't convect it away until he rematerialized.

But it was a cold sweat, too, because he knew he'd nearly killed himself. One little misstep, but he could have died. A terrifying reminder of his mortality.

Then again, Gretel would have warned him had he been in true jeopardy. Wouldn't she?

He had to pinch the tears from watery eyes several times before he could read the gauge on his remaining battery. Less than a quarter of the charge left; the needle rested just above the red. It was enough, if he was careful. It would have to be. There wasn't time to go to the stores.

Klaus wiped his mouth on his sleeve, trailing spit and vomit, as he headed for the conventional exit. He had to conserve his battery as much as possible. He stepped carefully; he didn't know the laboratory well enough to navigate it in the dark.

It was lighter outside than in the laboratory, owing to moonlight and the glow from the farmhouse windows. But Klaus's eyesight was blurry still. Cold air scraped at his raw sinuses, threatening to make him cough again. He doubled over, fighting another episode.

The night was alive with the noise of combat. Gunfire. Explosions. The ground rumbled. Kammler howled.

From somewhere off to Klaus's right came two reports like gunshots from a sidearm. Much like the revolver of the man Klaus had chased. Klaus headed in that direction.

“Reinhardt! Reinhardt, come quickly!”

Klaus skidded to a halt. His sister called for help from somewhere behind him.

She called again, more frantic this time. “Reinhardt, please, this instant!”

Klaus hurried toward the sound of her voice.

Will watched all hell break loose after Marsh ran off.

First, another squad member came crashing through the woods from the west. He appeared to be the only survivor of that team.

Then the earth rippled. Furrows appeared in the field, racing across the ground at random. Snow, topsoil, and oak trees fountained into the air. Windows shattered. Will watched the tall metal masts of the dead spotlights coil up like so much ribbon on a spool. The screech of tortured metal was deafening.

Kammler howled. A cry of inchoate despair.

The new arrival fired wildly at Kammler. It achieved nothing.

Kammler jumped to his feet. Trees exploded into sawdust and splinters.

The rest of the men fired. Some lobbed their Mills bombs. All with no effect.

Before, there had been an orderliness to the destruction. It had been controlled. Logical. Methodical. But now, with nobody to control Kammler, it was chaotic.

Will retreated. So did the others. Random parcels of forest kept disintegrating around them. This was hopeless. They had to leave.

He had the stone. But what he needed was a quiet place to concentrate. How in the hell was he supposed to do that in the middle of a war zone? Another thing they hadn't thought through very carefully.

Marsh came around the side of the farmhouse, waving his arms. “Hey! Over here!” The collared man turned. Marsh tossed something at the body of the man he'd shot.

Will jumped into a shallow streambed. He pulled his knife, sliced his hand, and concentrated.

The man called Kammler stood inside a maelstrom of devastation. Marsh understood why they kept him on a leash. Without someone to guide him, Kammler was capable only of unfocused destruction. There was no intelligence, no plan, no meaning behind it.

God almighty. How did they learn to control something like that?

“Hey!” Marsh waved his arms, trying to get Kammler's attention. “Over here!” Kammler turned, the look on his face pathetic and puzzled. Soil, glass, steel, and wood swirled around him. The creature was too confused to understand that Marsh was a threat. All he knew was rage at the loss of his companion.

Marsh tried a different tactic. Instead of attacking Kammler, he attacked the dead man. He lobbed a Mills at the body and then ran like hell. Kammler automatically protected his dead companion, as Marsh suspected he would. The grenade imploded in midair, pulverized into dust with a little pop.

That got Kammler's attention. He followed Marsh, still wrapped in his furious cyclone. It tore a swath of damage through the grounds.

Marsh ran, turned, taunted Kammler, then ran farther.

That's it. Follow me.

Klaus followed Gretel's pleas for help around to the north side of the farmhouse. She was far from the action. Far enough that they could speak without straining to be heard over the combat noises.

Running in the cold had created a wheeze in his chest by the time he found her. He leaned over with hands on his knees to clear his throat and spit out the blood before he tried to speak. “Gretel?” he panted, “I thought you were hurt.” He caught his breath, then asked, “Why are you out here? I told you to go inside, where it's safe.”

“I'm waiting.”

Reinhardt ran from another direction before Klaus could ask the obvious question. He stopped short when he saw the two of them.

“What the hell is this?” Reinhardt pointed at Gretel. “I thought you needed help.”

“I'm waiting,” said Gretel.

“You crazy bitch. I thought this was an emergency. I had him, too—”

She put a finger to her lips. “Shhh.” When she had his attention, she said, “Reinhardt. I've given you the one thing you wanted more than anything in the world. Isn't that enough to make you trust me?”

She looked to Klaus, repeating, “Trust me.”

“What are you waiting for, Gretel?” he rasped.

“That,” she said, pointing at the farmhouse.

The roof flew off. Bricks and timbers disintegrated along one side of the building, and then the rest collapsed like a gingerbread house beneath a hammer.

Will fought a rising tide of panic. He hadn't packed a lexicon, in order to prevent it falling into German hands. But he wasn't supposed to need one. Going home was supposed to be easy. It wasn't.

The return journey had been included in the original negotiation. It was a round-trip ticket purchased up front with a pair of derailed trains.

But now the Eidolons were changing the deal.

They spoke through the stone, the earth, the bare trees and the ice in the streambed. And Will couldn't follow what they were saying. Frazzled, terrified, shivering in the cold and half-deaf from the noise of the battle, he could pick out only bits and pieces from the stream of animus.

... DISPLACEMENT-REDRESS-SOUL-VOLITION-FUTURE ...

It made no sense. Soul? This was an impossible price. He couldn't hand over a soul, even if he wanted to. Future? Worse yet, they wanted to take their pound of flesh after all was said and done. They wanted free rein to extract their own price.

Will stammered. In Enochian, that felt like swallowing a shattered wineglass.

Negation-redress-satisfied-volition-displacement.

The Eidolons repeated their incoherent demand. Their intent included something else, too, but it was washed out by a tremendous crash. Will chanced a peek at the battleground.

Something had extinguished the glow from the farmhouse windows, so Will had only starlight and a sliver of moon to see by. A cloud of dust and smoke billowed from the far end of the field, near the farmhouse, where Marsh had been.

Pip? He squinted, straining to make out details. Darkness and distance confounded him.

For the second time that night, his eyes flared in pain as the darkness gave way to brilliance. Will squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. Purple spots danced in his field of view. He looked back at the scene slowly, in stages, to let his eyes adjust.

He thought it was another string of spotlights until he saw the source: a human figure, wreathed in fire, blazing like the midday sun. His nimbus illuminated the scene with sharp edges and deep shadows, like an endless camera flash.

The farmhouse had been reduced to a pile of rubble. Marsh stood a few yards off to one side. He raised his revolver, then Kammler sprawled backwards. Will heard the gunshot a second later.

The burning man and the insubstantial man advanced on Marsh from behind the ruins of the farmhouse. Their rage was evident, even at this distance.

“God in heaven.”

The Eidolons repeated themselves. SOUL-VOLITION-FUTURE ...

Yes, yes, yes, fine, what ever you want, just get us the hell out of here.

Agreement-volition-congruent.

In the instant before the world fell away, Will finally heard the entirety of the Eidolons' demand. He heard soul, he heard future, and he heard child.

The soul of an unborn child.

“Wait!” He screamed, trying to refute this atrocity, but he was—

The air around Marsh shimmered with heat, growing warmer by the second. Reinhardt charged at him over the rubble pile of the demolished farmhouse. The air grew hotter still, like a blast furnace. It burned his sinuses. He couldn't breathe.

But then space peeled apart, and breathing didn't matter, because he had no body. He was an abstract concept sliding through the cracks in the universe.

Eidolons infused him; twined themselves through him. They sifted through his essence: past, present, and future.

—too late.

The cleft stone yanked Will back to its twin like a rubber band snapping back together. He was solid again. Substantial. The Eidolons had squeezed him back into what human beings called reality.

Where generations of children yet unborn would live and die. Except the one he'd given to the Eidolons.

“Beauclerk? What happened?” asked a voice he hadn't heard in eons.

Will studied his surroundings. The Nissen hut had blinked into existence around him. Stephenson, Webber, and Hargreaves stared at him.

Will dropped the stone. It sounded strangely insubstantial when it banged against the wooden floor of the hut. He walked to the door on unsteady legs.

“Where are they? Where's the rest?”

Somewhere, in the distance, a car horn blared.

Will paused at the door. He glanced over his shoulder. “I brought them home,” he said. “I brought them all home.”

Somewhere nearby, within the park, a sentry shouted.

Will wandered without purpose between the tents and huts. The first body he found had been charred beyond recognition. He kept walking. The second body he found had been crushed into a pulp. More shouts of alarm went up throughout the staging area as more bodies were discovered.

Down by the lake, Will found a body mostly intact. He flipped the dead man over and rummaged through his pack, searching for a medkit.

Will stuffed a morphine syrette in his pocket before heading off into the darkness.