The Engine Room hummed with the sound of a thousand angry hornets.
The green light from the reactor sphere washed over us, turning our skin sickly pale.
I stood by the control console. My hand hovered over the Emergency Vent lever.
Twelve British Redcoats had their muskets aimed at my chest.
Colonel Shrapnel stood in front of them. He held the Rosetta Shard like a holy relic.
"Step away, boy," Shrapnel rasped. "I won't ask twice."
He signaled one of his men. The soldier grabbed Champollion by the collar and shoved a pistol against his temple.
"Do it," Shrapnel said. "Or the linguist dies."
I looked at Champollion. He was terrified, trembling.
I looked at Shrapnel.
"Why?" I asked. "Why do you want it? It's a reactor, Colonel. It's leaking radiation. If you stand here too long, your DNA will unravel."
Shrapnel laughed. A wet, gurgling sound behind the leather mask.
"Unravel?"
He reached up. He unbuckled the straps of his mask.
He pulled it off.
I didn't flinch. I had seen death before. But this...
His face was a ruin. The skin was gone from his left cheek, revealing the teeth and jawbone. His nose was a scab. But it wasn't just burned. It was rotting.
"The Green Fire," Shrapnel whispered. "I was at the salt mine. I was the first one in after Cagliostro died. I inhaled the dust."
He touched the exposed bone of his jaw.
"I am dying, little accountant. My cells are dying faster than they can replicate. I am a walking corpse."
He pointed to the Engine.
"But that... that is life. Pure, concentrated life force. The texts say it can regrow a limb. It can make the desert bloom. It can fix me."
"It's terraforming technology," I said. "It's meant for soil, not biology. If you expose yourself to the direct beam, it won't cure you. It will overload you."
"I'll take the risk," Shrapnel said.
He stepped forward.
"Now give me the console."
I stepped back. I kept my hand on the lever.
"No," I said.
Shrapnel raised his pistol. "Then you die."
"If you shoot me," I said calmly, "my hand pulls this lever. It opens the containment vents. The reactor goes critical. We all vaporize in 0.4 seconds."
Shrapnel paused. He looked at the lever. He knew I wasn't bluffing. He recognized the look in my eyes. The calculation.
"A standoff," Shrapnel sneered. "How boring."
"A negotiation," I corrected.
"What do you want?"
"I can stabilize the math," I lied. "I can tune the output. You get the cure. I get the Engine."
Shrapnel considered it. He looked at the reactor, pulsing hungrily. He felt the sickness in his bones. He was desperate.
"Fine," Shrapnel said. "Tune it. But if you try anything—"
THWACK.
A sound like a butcher chopping meat.
Shrapnel screamed. He dropped the Shard.
A boarding axe was buried in his right shoulder.
Jean Chouan.
The smuggler had been slumped against the wall, playing dead. He had thrown the axe left-handed while Shrapnel was distracted.
"Now!" Chouan roared. He drew his knife and charged the Redcoats.
"Kill them!" Shrapnel shrieked, clutching his shoulder.
The room exploded into chaos.
Muskets flashed. The roar was deafening in the enclosed space.
I didn't shoot. I dove.
Not for cover. For the Shard.
The black stone had skidded across the glass floor. It was sliding toward the edge of the pit. Toward the open reactor core.
"No!" Shrapnel saw it too.
He ignored the pain. He ignored Chouan. He lunged for the stone.
We collided at the edge of the abyss.
He was stronger. He backhanded me across the face. I tasted blood.
My hand scrabbled for the stone. I touched it. It was hot. Burning hot.
"It's mine!" Shrapnel screamed. He grabbed my wrist. He squeezed. Bones ground together.
I kicked him in the knee. He grunted but didn't let go.
The Shard slipped from my fingers.
It teetered on the edge of the glass bridge.
Then it fell.
We both froze. We watched it tumble down into the green fire.
It hit the spinning energy core.
CRACK.
It didn't break. It merged.
The reactor stopped spinning.
Silence.
Then, a sound like the world inhaling.
ZOOOOOOM.
A shockwave of green light blasted out of the pit.
It hit us.
It threw me back against the console.
But Shrapnel... Shrapnel was closer. He took the full force of the beam.
"The cure!" he screamed. "It's working!"
He held up his hands.
The rotting flesh was knitting together. The bone was covered. Skin grew back in seconds.
But it didn't stop.
The cells kept dividing. Uncontrolled. Exponential.
"Too much!" Shrapnel gasped. "Too much!"
Tumors erupted from his arms. His face bulged, shifting, growing new eyes, new mouths. His uniform ripped as his body expanded into a fleshy, cancerous mass.
"Make it stop!" the thing that was Shrapnel gurgled.
He stumbled backward.
He fell into the pit.
His screams were cut short as the reactor consumed him. The biomass fueled the fire. The green light turned a violent, bloody red.
"Critical mass!" Champollion shouted. "The reaction is cascading!"
The cavern shook. Stalactites fell from the ceiling.
"We have to shut it down!" Chouan yelled, firing his pistol at the remaining terrified Redcoats.
"I can't!" I shouted, pulling myself up to the console. "The key is fused! The system is locked!"
I looked at the gauges. The pressure was rising.
If it exploded, it wouldn't just destroy the library. It would crack the continental shelf. It would trigger earthquakes from Cairo to Crete.
"Redirect it!" I thought. "Vent the pressure!"
I looked at the schematic. There was only one vent large enough.
The Sky Vent.
"I have to fire the main gun," I yelled.
"Gun?" Champollion asked. "What gun?"
"The Lighthouse!" I said. "The tower isn't a lighthouse. It's the exhaust port!"
I grabbed the wheel. I spun it.
CLANK-CLANK-CLANK.
The baffles opened.
The red light from the pit shot upward. Through the ceiling. Through the shaft of the Pharos.
Up into the sky.
Outside, the beam punched through the clouds. It hit the ionosphere.
CRACK-BOOM.
A flash of light brighter than the sun blinded us.
The air in the room ionized. Sparks flew from every metal surface.
My hair stood on end.
"EMP!" I realized. "Electro-Magnetic Pulse!"
The beam wasn't just light. It was a massive discharge of static energy.
It hit the atmosphere and spread out. A global wave of disruption.
The lights on the console died.
The hum of the reactor faded to a dull thrum.
The Redcoats dropped their muskets. They ran. They didn't want to fight anymore. They just wanted to get away from the demon light.
I slumped against the dead console.
Chouan limped over to me. He looked at the pit. The green glow was returning, stable now. The overload had been vented.
"Did we win?" Chouan asked.
I looked at my pocket watch. It had stopped. The gears were fused.
"We saved the city," I said.
I looked up at the shaft leading to the sky.
"But I think we just broke something else."
"What?"
"The telegraphs," I whispered.
I imagined the wave hitting the wires in Europe. The sparks. The fires.
"The pulse would fry every electrical coil within two thousand miles," I said. "Paris. London. Vienna."
I looked at Champollion.
"The world just went dark."
Champollion looked horrified.
"No communication?"
"None," I said. "The age of information is over. We are back to horses and letters."
I thought of my father. Alex.
Sitting in his chair in Paris. Waiting for the code. The Dead Man's Switch.
"The clock," I whispered. "The clock will stop."
If the telegraphs are dead, the signal can't go out. The blackmail files are trapped in the machine.
Fouché and Talleyrand were safe.
But Alex... Alex was alone in the dark.
"We have to go back," I said. "Now."
"The ship is grounded," Chouan said. "We need high tide."
"Push it!" I screamed. "Push it into the sea! I have to get to Paris!"
I ran up the ramp.
I didn't care about the Engine anymore. I didn't care about the British.
I just cared about the man in the wheelchair.
Because without the telegraph, he had no leverage. And without leverage, the Vultures would eat him alive.
"Hold on, Father," I whispered as I ran into the blinding sun. "Just hold on."