Chapter 48

Cascade

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over

‎ Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,

‎ There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,

‎ There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,

‎ There in the sudden blackness the black pall

‎ Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

- Archibald MacLeish, “The End of the World”

The Apocalypse Machine towered above him, aimed at the cloudy night sky. The dust from the explosions had mostly settled; boulders and debris lay heaped in piles on the steel floor around the great machine. Blowing a hole in the top of the mountain was not an elegant solution. But it didn’t matter. The Apocalypse Machine could see the sky.

Riley McFinn stood still and quiet, alone, shaded by the vast dish of his greatest achievement. He gazed at his hands, turning them over and back again. Nobody knew whose fault it really was, way back at the beginning. Neither he nor Raschez knew. But Riley thought that probably it was him. His own fault.

The Apocalypse Machine. Riley McFinn spoke into the great empty space, “Most people think ‘apocalypse’ means ‘the end of the world.’” His voice was tiny, insignificant in the shade.

No need to be dramatic about it. Not anymore. He activated the console beside him. He input his code, placed his hand on the scanner, placed his finger on a pad that pricked it, sucked up the blood, analyzed it. Useless precautions, all of them.

His headset beeped.

“Ready?” said a voice from the other end without preamble. A voice he hardly recognized.

McFinn sighed and looked up at the skies. He laughed at himself—unable to resist this last bit of drama? Well, it was dramatic. He was about to end the world.

“Riley?” said the voice in his headset, sounding concerned.

“It’s too much,” said Riley. “Too much even for me.”

“Me too,” said the voice, old and weary. “But we can’t give up. We have to end it, one way or another.”

Riley McFinn took a deep breath. “Right.” He’d never let Raschez beat him in a game of resolve. Nicholas Carter, yes, often, but not Raschez. “Ready.”

The voice spoke: “Then do it now.”

Riley sighed. He whispered a secret comfort to himself. “From stardust…to stardust.”

He typed a simple command into the console and pressed enter. The computer processed the command, relayed it to the Apocalypse Machine. The great dish hummed to life. It trembled; the steel floor shook.

Riley McFinn turned and strode away. For the first time, he didn’t want to watch the result of all his hard work.

A great light bloomed behind him as he reached the exit, casting his shadow sharp and clear against the steel door. A strange sound of chimes filled the air, almost too loud, almost too beautiful.

Something snapped as he opened the door. It was not an audible sound. It vibrated through his bones, yet was not a physical sensation. It made Riley McFinn wince, although it was not painful. It was the strange feeling he sometimes got when around the McFinnium crystals for extended periods—that sense of otherness, of warping reality—condensed and compressed into a sharp spike of sensation.

Something cracked: reality itself, and it was as much a shock to the mind as a loud noise to the ears, equally confusing and startling.

“Old friend,” said Riley. “What have we done?”

“We have ended everything. For the last time.” Even Raschez could not resist the drama of the moment.

Riley McFinn left the great space and shut the door behind him.

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It means ‘revelation.’

In Nevada, a small caravan of grey and orange vehicles screeched to a halt. The passenger of the lead van stepped out and gazed up at the sky. Ezekiel was his name. He gritted his teeth. Too soon. Damn him.

A crack propagated across the sky above at astonishing speed. Each leap forward sent spasms of shock and confusion through Ezekiel’s mind even though he knew perfectly well what it was.

Well. The kid was right up ahead. The time frame had just moved up, that’s all. He jumped back into the van and shouted a command. The sound of rounds being chambered filled the rear of the vehicle.

In Montana, Isaac and Jacob, on the sidewalk of a street near his house, looked up at the sky. Charlie fluttered about in agitation. Isaac no longer needed the lens in his pocket to see the shining crack in the sky to the north. And he saw another fracture branching off from that one, extending from the north to the south across the entire sky.

It was under the clouds now, somehow. The cottony clouds distorted when they passed through the crack, not quite matching up, as though the crack lay in a huge sheet of glass in front of the whole sky.

“We need to hurry,” said Jacob.

“I’d shay sho,” said a voice nearby.

In Pennsylvania, Elmer Sky staggered and fell sideways from the kitchen table. Elizabeth and Amelia jumped to their feet in surprise and concern, but Amelia then went very still and turned her gaze upward, peering through the ceiling. Callie began to hiss and snarl. In a flash of white she disappeared. Elizabeth felt a chill in the moment of silence that followed, and wished that AJ had not just left for town.

“I remember…” said Elmer from the floor, not bothering to attempt to stand. Elizabeth went to him and saw him stare vacantly upwards. No longer cheerful, no longer smiling, no longer with a twinkle in his eye. “I remember this.”

Amelia turned to Elizabeth. “You need to leave.”

Also in Pennsylvania, a man named Shadrach, wearing a dark grey coat, raised his binoculars to the skies. Through the branches of the trees overhead he saw the fractures spreading. He turned his magnified gaze back down, toward the fine old house which lay in the clearing ahead. They were in there. Two of the variations and the girl.

Shadrach lowered the binoculars, looked through smoky lenses at the old house, its garden, the bicycle out front. He took a moment to puff on his pipe and to peruse the leatherbound book in his hands. Around him, men and women shifted uneasily among the undergrowth. But there was no need to rush. Nohow.

Shadrach snapped the book shut after a good minute of thought. He raised his right hand in a fist, then extended his fingers and made a swift chopping motion at the house. A half dozen other people in grey and orange coats slipped from the treeline and descended with speed toward the house.

In Chicago, at O’Hare airport, Alan Sheppard exited from the very same doors as Kaitlyn Carter just a short time before. Something was wrong with the sky above, and people around him were noticing.

He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he had seen it before, on a smaller scale, in January. Piecing together hints from Kate and McFinn, what had happened before was just a small taste of what was happening now. Now it was happening everywhere. This time the destruction would be terrible. This time the world would end. Riley McFinn had been right.

He had to find Heidi.

Also in Chicago, a tall black woman named Jordan closed her eyes, hissed through her teeth, and pressed the radio transmitter against her head. Shade had just killed another three of her men—despite, apparently, having lost his future-sight sunglasses. If only she could go hunt him down…

Jordan watched the building across the street through a cracked windshield. She gave the order to forget Shade and regroup here.

Then she felt it. The sensation compared to hearing, but made itself known on some instinctual, visceral level. Something was breaking. Reality itself cracked under the pressure. No mistaking it: this could only be the Cascade. Too soon, much too soon. The angels had not been secured. Was this the work of McFinn?

“Shit,” she said. “Change of plans. We move in now.”

Somewhere in American airspace, Rebecca Carter gripped the armrests of the pilot seat with white knuckles. She had flown a number of small aircraft in her days—and without any formal training, either—but Riley McFinn’s personal jet was something else. She sat in the cockpit, for little room existed elsewhere. Clouds rushed past. According to the speedometer they rushed past at well over 2,000 kilometers per hour. She had left Scotland facing into sunset, but the sun had gradually risen in her view. It would be late afternoon when she arrived in Chicago.

And then something happened, something confusing. The sky cracked. She felt it in her bones, like the satisfying crunch of a thick sheet of glass. But she felt it not with her ears, and this was a strange thing.

Then she saw the fractures in her vision, and at first she feared that the cockpit of the jet was shattering. But the cracks passed by; she flew beyond them as though they were cracks in the clouds outside. But the cracks passed through not only the clouds, but the blue sky beyond.

She gritted her teeth. She only liked flying as long as she was in control.