43
As King dashed back into the Louvre, the earth began to move beneath his feet. He careened back down the tunnel, but the violent shaking sent him bouncing off the walls. Chunks of debris fell from overhead to land directly in his path. A few pieces struck him, knocking him flat, but thankfully none were large enough to pin him down or cause unconsciousness.
He reached the edge of the crater just in time to see Chesler evaporate. The man’s abrupt demise sent a shudder through him. He’d witnessed every manner of death and knew that rarely was the final passing ever truly instantaneous. He had always wondered if death would be like that old Ambrose Bierce story, where the final moments of consciousness stretched out into a wondrous dream. But what went through your mind when every atom of your body came apart in a nanosecond?
King ventured out into the crater, and immediately felt the black hole’s gravity pulling at him. It was much stronger now; at least as powerful as the G force he felt when Chess Team’s supersonic stealth plane, Crescent, took off. The difference here was that instead of being pushed back into an acceleration seat, the force here was trying to yank him off his feet and into the crater. He leaned into the wall and, with as much speed as he could muster, headed out after the basilisk, but even as he did, he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time.
He hauled the Uzi around and took aim. Maybe he could distract the thing, get it to come after him the way it had Chesler, and give Fiona a few more seconds.
The basilisk filled the Uzi’s sights, but in the corner of his eye, he saw Suvorov make a move. Even from a distance, he could see what the Russian was about to do, and threw him a mental salute as he waited for explosive package to detonate.
The Russian disappeared from view but after a few seconds, the dark shape advanced again, and King saw Suvorov standing motionless with the satchel still clutched in his hands. The Spetsnaz leader did not move. The IEDs in the satchel did not explode, and King knew with sickening certainty the man and the devices had been transformed into stone.
Now nothing at all stood between the basilisk and Fiona.
King pulled the trigger on the Uzi. The suppressor muted the violence of the discharge, but a stream of lead arced out across the crater and vanished into the basilisk’s bulk. “Come on,” he shouted as the bolt slid forward against the last spent cartridge. “You wanted me, remember?”
The basilisk ignored him and oozed ever closer to Fiona and the others.
If it gets to her, we’re all finished. There was only one way he could think of to save Fiona.
He let the useless pistol fall, not even noticing as it was pulled away in the gravity storm, and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Fiona!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Stop!”
44
Through the earthquake, Fiona had managed to keep up the chant, but it seemed like all they were accomplishing was to really piss off the black hole. Now the basilisk was heading their way.
She concentrated on uttering the mantra, but fear stole her breath and she could only manage a few seconds of humming with each inhalation. Alexander’s hand gripped her arm, a forceful but silent exhortation to ignore the threat and stay focused, but she knew it wasn’t going to work. The basilisk was going to kill them all.
And then King’s voice reached out to her, telling her to stop.
She did.
“No Fiona,” Alexander rasped. “You must keep going. It’s the only way.”
Sara fell silent as well and then hugged Fiona protectively, as if silently encouraging her to trust her decision in the face of Alexander’s growing rage.
“You must keep going,” Alexander repeated urgently, “Or all will be lost.”
Fiona felt her heart torn in two. Alexander knew what he was talking about; he’d stopped the black hole once before. But she trusted King implicitly, and if he said to stop… But what if he was wrong?
The basilisk halted its advance, shadowy tentacles poised mere inches from where they sat. Fiona wanted to retreat from it, but her limbs were leaden and the ground was still shaking violently beneath her. She feared that any attempt to move might send her plunging into the crater.
King’s voice continued to reach out across the ominous grinding noise of the debris shifting into the black hole and the groan of the Louvre coming apart all around them, but he wasn’t talking to Fiona anymore. He held up a phone and waved it. “This is what you want, you bastard. Right here. Come and get it.”
Fiona wasn’t sure she could trust what she was seeing; the basilisk was moving away.
“Now,” Alexander roared. “It’s leaving. We must resume the mantra.”
“No.” The word was barely audible, a timid breath that seemed to falter before she could get it past her lips. She gathered her courage and tried again. “No. King said to stop. He knows what he’s doing.”
“He knows nothing!” Alexander’s rage was as overpowering as the black hole itself.
Fiona hugged Sara tighter, and when she spoke, her words were directed only at herself. “I believe in him.”
For a fleeting second, she thought Alexander’s anger might turn physical. But if such was ever his intent, he didn’t get a chance to act, for at that moment, a section of wall broke free behind them and sailed toward the black hole like a kite caught in a gale force wind. Fiona caught just a glimpse of it before it slammed into all three of them, sweeping them toward oblivion.
When the word ceased to be spoken, the speaker winked out of the entity’s awareness. Without the word to guide it, the manifestation halted, poised to act the instant the sound resumed and all the while aware of the close proximity of the remaining fragment of the consciousness.
The entity waited. Its consciousness, incomplete though it was, understood the causal nature of the world it now inhabited. It understood what would happen if the word continued to be spoken, and it understood that the speaker of the word intended exactly that outcome.
Why then had the speaking stopped?
The entity could not comprehend this, and was, for a few brief nanoseconds, caught in an endless logic loop. Failing to find an explanation for the cessation of the word, the entity returned the manifestation to its original purpose. Perhaps all would be clear when the final piece of its consciousness was added.
The manifestation moved immediately for its original goal and reached out with a finger of its strange essence. It embraced the item that contained the last fragment without changing it, and immediately as it made contact, the entity’s sense of satisfaction multiplied. With the assimilation of the final piece, its mind was made complete.
Now, there remained but one final task for the manifestation: return the complete mind to the entity. The entity’s awesome power to change the very fabric of reality would be joined to the limitless possibilities of awareness…of thought.
Though it did not grasp that ancient villagers had once thought it to be a devil, the entity now understood that it had become what the insignificant inhabitants of this world would call a god.
45
King remained motionless in the face of the basilisk’s advance. It seemed to be moving faster now, but that was probably just an illusion caused by the fact that it was coming straight at him. Even if he had wanted to flee, it would have been impossible with the black hole’s gravity exerting an almost irresistible pull that threatened to send him tumbling down into the crater.
