SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
WASHINGTON, DC
10 NOV 2011, 22:33:07 EST
Duncan stared at the growing fireball. “Damn, it’s moving awfully fast.”
“Go go go!” called Gwen. “Save yourselves.”
“But the Worldstone!”
“Do you have time to rescue it?”
They glanced at the stone, already glowing bright with the radiation pouring through it. The enchantments were already burning away. “Too late.”
A look around showed that the outer wall of the Smithsonian had already vaporized, and a wall of plasma was headed their way. It hadn’t yet hit the display hall, so they took a microsecond to memorize everything that was about to be lost, mourned briefly, then teleported to Gwen’s side.
Gwen and Donna watched in horror as the fireball grew. “We have to do something.”
“But magic censorship...” protested Gwen. “Wait. Can you feel it?”
“The Worldstone is gone. Censorship was part of the enchantment, and without the source it’s failing. But not fast enough, damn it. And force screens around something this big... it’s already a kilometer across.”
“You can do it. You saved thousands in California.”
“That was way, way smaller.”
“Stop trying to convince yourself it’s impossible,” exhorted Gwen. “There are no rules any more. Nothing is impossible, least of all for you.”
“There are still some rules,” protested Duncan, but Donna was already drawing them up above the city. The blast wave had reached the Washington Monument to the west, and was halfway to the Capitol building to the east. It hadn’t spread as far to the north and south, occluded as it was by a maze of office buildings.
Dia drew an ellipse around the shockfront, and a barrier of coruscating lunar power sprung up around it, stretching hundreds of meters into the sky. The tattered remnants of magic censorship tried to batter at their efforts, but they’d already had ample practice working around it, and were happy to shrug it off. Doing so hastened the worldspell’s collapse, but they had other things on their mind.
Several milliseconds later the shockwave ran up against Dia’s barrier. It belled outward as designed, tensing along its length and breadth to put pressure against pressure, using the shockwave’s energy against it. Much of the energy was dissipated into the barrier, and some of the rest deflected upward and away from the rest of the city. Unfortunately, the reflections on the inside of the barrier served to amplify the destruction there, tumbling the already rubbled buildings back toward the epicenter.
Two echoes later, the energy was largely dissipated, leaving only a plume of radioactive debris rising into the sky, and half a square kilometer of flattened rubble. While Duncan was working on transmuting the radioactive elements to harmless ones, Gwen darted up to them.
“What a mess. Now what?”
“Now we put it back.”
“Seriously? There’s nothing left but memories.”
“Memories are all we need.”
A whirlwind of activity took place below them as rubble reshaped into buildings, and collections of priceless art and artifacts were restored. Duncan took particular care with the Air and Space Museum, his favourite from his one prior visit to Washington.
“What about the people?” asked Gwen once her awe had worn off.
“Too much death, too fast. Their souls all departed before I even got started.”
“How many are gone?”
“I don’t know,” started Donna. “Four thousand, three hundred and twenty three,” reported Dia.
“Damn. They got off light, considering what just happened. Who would do such a thing?”
“Good question. I bet your contact has the answer.”
Gwen copied her communication crystal for Agent Cooper. “There. You can ask him yourself.”
*** *** ***
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO
10 NOV 2011, 20:33:08 MST
“Damn him all to hell,” cursed General Shepard. “How bad is it?”
“At that yield the whole city is toas... What the?”
As they stared at the satellite feed, the mushroom cloud just... vanished. As the dust cleared, they could see the rubble reform into familiar shapes once more.
“It would appear we owe Mr. Faulkner our thanks.”
Agent Brown held up his phone, in speakerphone mode. “You are welcome,” came Duncan’s voice. “I ask only one thing. Who the hell just nuked me?”
“Direct order of the President, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. And I suppose you can’t tell me where he is right now, though if he has direct command and is nuking DC, Looking Glass would be the most likely guess.”
“Uh...”
“Thanks. Now where would I be if I were a flying command center.”
“I won’t tell you that.”
“Never mind. There are only two birds up here with bright EM signatures, and one is an AWACS that should have given you plenty of warning.”
“The President ordered a stand down of the DC defences. I hope the one we did get operational didn’t hurt your friend too much.”
“Nah, not a scratch,” chirped Gwen.
“Time we had a little chat,” growled Donna.
“Please don’t do anything rash... and she can’t hear me, can she?”
“Sorry,” said Gwen. “I’ll try to catch up.”
*** *** ***
AIR FORCE ONE
FIVE MILES ABOVE VIRGINIA
10 NOV 2011, 22:34 EST
Donna formed a human body in an elegantly cut dress as she teleported onto the plane. “I’ve had about enough of you. What the hell was that about?”
“Who are you and how did you get on this plane?” barked a man with large amounts of gold braid on his shoulders. He brought up his sidearm, which promptly turned to dust.
“I am the person you just nuked. Twice. Where is the president?”
The worried looks told Donna all she needed. She turned around to see a haggard looking man standing in the doorway to a private cabin. “You’re too late.”
“Excuse me?” Donna replied in puzzlement.
“The war is over. You lose.”
“I’m still here.” Donna’s eyes narrowed as she felt something tugging at her shields. “What are you?” Lunar magic coruscated around the president’s body, dispelling the illusion of health. What remained was a rotted corpse that promptly fell to the floor. Hovering where the President’s head had been was a convoluted blot of darkness, perhaps the size of a golf ball.
“A new nightmare for a new war,” said the thing, in a voice that sounded like an icepick to the brain. “You started things earlier than planned, so there weren’t enough of us to go around. We showed them! Subtlety is the way, not brute force.”
“Showed who?”
The dark clot hovered closer. “It doesn’t matter, now that we are all free.”
Donna felt the tug grow stronger, slipping past her defences and tearing at something essential. “Demon!”
It laughed then, and lunged at her. Donna blinked away to the other end of the cabin, and flicked a bolt of power at it. The bolt passed through the clot as if it wasn’t there, and burned a hole through the bulkhead. The demon turned with alarming speed, and raced toward her.
Dia blinked their essence away, leaving the body behind as a distraction. When the clot emerged to confront them once more, a speck of antimatter lanced out at it. To their wondering eyes, the detonation missed the demon by a foot. Even so, the explosion was violent enough to disrupt it badly.
“Displacment effect. Nice touch,” called out Duncan as he busily added a seeker to the next weapon. Dia helpfully enlarged the charge while he was at it.
“Doesn’t matter,” grated the thing. “Killing me won’t stop them.”
A moment later, the large charge detonated dead center, and the demon was gone. The shockwave also tore Air Force One in half, sending burning wreckage through the sky. Donna reached out for the people aboard the plane, then recoiled in horror. “They’re all soulless.”
“What?” asked Gwen, racing up to their side. “Are you sure?”
“Just like the Windsor Syndrome patients.”
Gwen scanned the plane quickly. “What does this have to do with Detroit?”
“Bloody hell. Demons.”
“What?”
“The worldspell. Walt tied his copyright protection to it. But there were prohibited shapes before he ever touched it. And... Damn it, Archimedes. Too damn clever for your own or anyone else’s good.”
“Okay, I’m lost. How does Archimedes enter into it?”
“The Worldstone wasn’t a single enchantment. There were layers and layers built up within it. Each one added a new forbidden shape. Two magic reversals ago, a very clever Greek was responsible for the fix. And instead of just adding a new layer, oh no, he had to go and improve things to make adding a new forbidden form simple.”
“Okay, but how do you know it was Archimedes?”
“He signed it.”
Gwen chuckled softly. “Figures. But how do you get from there to...”
“All the old forbidden shapes are very reminiscent of demons of legend. And the figures I saw in the footage of the portal in Detroit.”
“So if the prohibition is gone...”
“We need to get to Detroit. Fast.”
*** *** ***
AN UNDISCLOSED SECURE LOCATION
TWO MILES OUTSIDE THE DETROIT EXCLUSION ZONE
10 NOV 2011, 22:35 EST
“Sir, there’s an urgent message from CentCom. Washington just got nuked.”
“Ah. What do they want with me, then? That’s a Presidential problem.” The speaker’s voice was bitter. “And I’m just the Vice President.”
“That might change at any moment. We need to get you somewhere more secure.”
The Vice President glanced around at the bunker. “More secure than my little spider hole here? I’ve come to enjoy its comforts. I’d rather stay and watch.” He turned back to the video feeds, showing the activity at the portal in Detroit. “Something is going on.”
As they watched, one of the figures that looked somewhat like a misshapen monkey with wings approached the portal. It pushed through the barrier, and stepped out into their world. “Brave, this one. They don’t seem to like getting snapped... back?”
Unlike every prior time, the monkey-thing did not immediately get shoved back through the portal. It stood, looking as surprised as they were. Then it did a little dance, spun about and flared its wings.
The Vice President keyed a microphone. “Hello there. Something has changed. Can you tell me what?”
The monkey scampered up to one of the cameras, looking at it directly. Its toothy grin showed dark rows of teeth, which promptly closed around the camera. The image in that monitor went dark. “How rude.”
“Sir, the canaries.”
“Hm?”
One of the soldiers pointed to a separate bank of four monitors, each with a distance marked above it. The first was labelled “100 yards from death zone”, the next 800 yards, then one and 1.5 miles. In each could be seen a cage filled with half a dozen yellow canaries. In the first screen, all of them were dead. A moment later, the ones in the 800 yard monitor fell over, one falling down mid-flight.
“The dead zone is expanding. We need to evac, now!”
The one mile birds died as the Vice President was still staring at the monitors. “Right. Time to go.”
As they left the room, he glanced back. All the birds were dead. And as they ran for the helicopter, he saw winged, misshapen monkeys had already landed about it. The motor was spooling down, and the pilot was slumped in his seat.
“Aw, hell.”