The Impossible Cube

out of their sockets. Feng clutched her forearm with the power she had ordered him to use. She couldn’t keep this up.

The dreadful force increased again. Alice screamed, still holding on.

“Let go!” Feng shouted. His words came out framed by the horrible spider on his face. “Alice, let me go! If you don’t, we’ll all die!”

The idea was unthinkable. Guilt overwhelmed her. It was her fault Feng was in this position in the first place. She could save him. She would save him. Both him and Gavin.

“No!” she shouted back. “I won’t let you die!”

“You can’t save us both,” he said. “Some people don’t want to be saved. Let go!”

Her arms burned like lava and her fingers quivered. Dr. Clef huddled at the table, able to use his arms and legs to resist the power of the arc. Alice swallowed. She had been forced to give up her mother, her brother, and her father. Why should she give up her friend?

“Let me go, Alice!” Feng shouted. “I can help!”

A tear formed in her eye and leaped across the room into the boiling water of the arc. She didn’t have the strength to save them both, to save everyone. Either a few would die, or everyone would die. It wasn’t fair, but it would be even worse to let everyone perish because she couldn’t let go. She looked at Gavin again, and he nodded. With a scream of agony and anger, she let Feng go.

Feng flew backward, straight toward the arc. But as he fell, he angled his body so that he struck the table. Even over the wind, Alice heard bone snap, though Feng’s face remained stoic. He bounced sideways and managed to latch on to Dr. Clef.

“Was, denn?” Dr. Clef sputtered.

Feng snap-punched him twice. Dr. Clef’s eyes glazed over, and he let go of the table. Together Feng and Dr. Clef fell toward the arc and hit the eye. Alice wanted to look away, but couldn’t. When the two men struck the eye, flesh and bone shredded as if forced through a sieve made of razors. A cloud of blood and meat misted before the arc, hung for a tiny moment, and was sucked into the boiling water beyond. Alice cried out again.

Do whatever it takes to help! Gavin had ordered. Feng had done exactly that and gotten just what he had wanted. Alice felt only heart-wrenching sorrow.

Gavin grabbed hold of Alice’s free hand, the one with the spider on it, and the spider’s eyes glowed red. It was easier to hold on to one person, though she couldn’t do it indefinitely, and whatever force was pulling them toward the arc showed no signs of abating. Her desperation grew, as did the fear on Gavin’s face.

“What do we do?” she shouted.

He shook his head. His feet were trying to find purchase on the brick floor, but they were continually drawn out from under him. His hand slipped, and Alice forced herself to grab harder, though she was growing more and more tired.

“You have the cure,” he yelled. “Let me go and save yourself!”

A cold fist clutched her heart and her breath came hard. “Not you. Never you!”

“Alice—”

And then Susan Phipps was there. A rope was wrapped around her waist and she was playing it out with her mechanical hand like a mountain climber. Her silver-streaked hair streamed out like Alice’s. The sight was so surprising, it took Alice a moment to understand what—who—she was looking at.

“You’re both idiots,” Phipps shouted. From a holster at her waist, she drew a fat pistol.

Alice’s heart sank, though she didn’t dare loosen her grip on Gavin to defend herself. Still, it was too much. “Damn you!” she shouted back. “Kill us, then! See if it makes you feel better.”

“Phipps!” Gavin cried. “Don’t!”

Phipps fired—straight at the top of the turbine. A red beam lanced through the air and struck the spot where the shaft met the generator. Smoke formed and was pulled into the boiling arc. Then the generator shaft jumped away from the turbine shaft with a terrible grinding noise. Deprived of its energy source, the generator powered down. The arc’s glow faded, the eye and the boiling water vanished. Gavin dropped on top of Alice as the force abruptly ceased. The Impossible Cube trembled for a moment, went still, then released a burst of red energy. Alice braced herself for another slamming, but the energy went through her with only a strange sensation, as if something briefly crawled over all her bones at once. The Cube darkened, though it continued to give off a faint phosphorescent blue light.

Alice lay panting beneath Gavin. His weight was both welcome and crushing at the same time. Her arms had the strength of wet string, and she couldn’t even summon the energy to ask him to move. At last he heaved himself aside and dragged himself upright on trembling limbs to face Phipps, who was calmly untying the rope from around her waist and winding her hair back into a twist.

“If you had done that from the start, none of this would have happened,” Phipps said. “For all your talent, you’re still a rookie, Agent Ennock.”

“Why?” Gavin gasped, echoing Alice’s thoughts.

“I don’t answer to you,” Phipps replied coolly. “And you are welcome.”

“Er… thank you.” Alice felt like an admonished schoolgirl.

“We shouldn’t stay,” Phipps added. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

Alice summoned the strength to sit up. “Oh, come now! After everything you put us through, you owe us an explanation and you damned well know it!”

Phipps sighed and thawed a little. “If I can make the great Alice, Baroness Michaels, curse, I suppose I can offer an explanation.” She looked away for a moment. “Into the Doomsday Vault, I’ve put clockworker inventions that could uproot islands, let people move instantly from place to place, and make the human race immortal. But an invention that would stop time…” She shook her head. “I was so worried about justice itself that I lost sight of