The world ended with a whistle, then a roar.
A mortar shell slammed into the outer wall of the prison yard. Concrete exploded into razor-sharp shrapnel.
Jason threw himself to the ground, covering his head.
Dust choked the air. It tasted like pulverized bone and old limestone.
"Get down!" O'Malley screamed, tackling Hemingway.
Another explosion rocked the island. This one was closer. The ground jumped three inches, rattling Jason's teeth.
Hemingway laughed. It was a manic, wet sound. He dusted concrete powder off his bottle of rum.
"They're bracketing us!" Hemingway yelled over the ringing in Jason's ears. "That was a sighting shot. The next volley lands in the cell block!"
Jason scrambled to his feet. His suit was torn at the knees.
"Inside!" Jason roared. "Everyone inside!"
The militia of writers—men who used to hold typewriters, now clutching bolt-action rifles—sprinted for the heavy iron doors of the main prison block.
Another whistle.
BOOM.
The guard tower disintegrated. A shower of brick and twisted iron rained down on the spot where Jason had been standing five seconds ago.
They dove through the doorway just as the debris wave hit.
The heavy steel doors slammed shut, muffling the chaos outside to a dull, terrifying thrum.
The prison block was dark. The emergency red lights flickered, powered by the dying diesel generator in the basement.
"Casualties?" Jason demanded, wiping grit from his eyes.
"Two wounded," O'Malley checked the corridor. "Broken ribs from the shockwave. But we're alive."
Jason didn't stop. He ran toward the infirmary cell.
"Sarah!"
He burst into the room.
The cot was rattling from the vibrations of the shelling. The medical equipment had tipped over, spilling glass vials across the floor.
Sarah was awake.
She wasn't pale anymore. She was flushed. A deep, unnatural red.
Jason touched her forehead. It was burning. Not a fever heat—it felt like touching a radiator. The Phosphorus-32 was cooking the virus, but it was cooking her too.
"I'm here," she rasped. Her voice was stronger, though. The drowning sound in her lungs was gone.
"We have to move you," Jason said, his voice trembling. "The walls won't hold."
"Stop it," Sarah grabbed his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "Stop looking at me like I'm a corpse, Jason."
"They're shelling us, Sarah. This isn't a business deal. It's a slaughter."
"Then stop shaking and lead them," she said sharply. She swung her legs off the cot. She winced, clutching her stomach. "I can't run, but I can listen."
"Listen?"
She pointed to the wall speaker. The old prison PA system.
"The shelling stopped," Sarah said.
Jason froze. She was right. The rhythmic thumping of artillery had ceased.
"They want something," Sarah whispered. "Turn on the receiver. The warden's office. It connects to the mainland frequencies."
Jason helped her stand. She leaned heavily on him, her skin radiating that terrifying heat.
They hobbled to the warden's office at the end of the block. Hemingway and O'Malley were already there, rifles trained on the heavy door.
Jason spun the dial on the shortwave radio.
Static. White noise. Then, a voice.
It wasn't a military commander. It was a preacher.
"...and the fire shall cleanse the wicked. The unseen plague is the breath of God, sent to choke the non-believers."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and utterly insane.
"William Dudley Pelley," Hemingway spat on the floor. "The Silver Shirt Messiah."
"But there is a demon among us," Pelley's voice crackled. "A man of metal and greed. A false prophet who brings the lightning."
Jason stared at the radio. He was talking about him.
"Jason Underwood," Pelley said. The name hung in the dusty air. "Or Ezra Prentice. The name matters not to the Lord. We know what you hold in your fortress of stone."
Jason grabbed the microphone. He hesitated, then keyed it.
"This is Prentice," Jason said. "Stop the shelling, or I dump the cure into the bay. You want the isotope? You let us leave."
Laughter bubbled over the speaker. Cold and genuine.
"The cure?" Pelley mused. "You misunderstand, Demon. We do not want to buy it. We are here to repossess it. It was bought and paid for."
"I made it," Jason snarled. "An hour ago. Nobody paid for anything."
"The funding for your destruction was provided weeks ago," Pelley said. "By a righteous woman. A mother grieving the soul of her daughter, stolen by a Monster."
Jason felt the blood drain from his face.
"The Widow of Detroit sends her regards," Pelley whispered. "Alta Rockefeller has tithed heavily to the Legion. She gave us your schematics. She gave us the locations. She wants you dead, son-in-law. But she wants her daughter back."
Jason slammed his hand down on the desk.
Alta.
Of course.
He had been so focused on Gates and Hitler that he forgot the woman who held the purse strings of the 20th century. She hadn't disappeared; she had just been shopping for a better hitman.
"You're working for Standard Oil," Jason mocked, trying to find an angle. "A fascist revolutionary on a corporate payroll?"
"Gold is gold," Pelley said. "Surrender the isotope. Surrender the girl. And we will make your death quick. You have one hour."
The radio clicked dead.
Jason stared at the receiver.
"She sold us out," Sarah whispered. She leaned against the desk, tears welling in her eyes. "My mother... she paid them to siege us."
"She thinks she's saving you," Jason said, his voice hollow. "She thinks I kidnapped you."
"We don't have an hour," O'Malley checked his revolver. "Those boys aren't waiting for a permission slip. They're reloading."
Jason turned around. The fear was gone. It had been replaced by a cold, hard anger.
"Get the others," Jason ordered. "War Room. Now."
Ten minutes later, the "War Room"—the prison cafeteria—was filled with the greatest minds of the century.
They looked like hell.
Albert Einstein was wiping his glasses with a dirty rag. Robert Oppenheimer was smoking a cigarette, his hands shaking. Howard Hughes was pacing in circles, muttering about drag coefficients.
"Here's the situation," Jason slammed a map of the bay onto the metal table. "We are trapped. The Icarus cannot fly. The electronics are fried. We are surrounded by fascists funded by the richest woman on Earth."
"We surrender?" Einstein suggested softly. "They want the cure. Give it to them."
"They want to execute us," Hemingway corrected, sharpening a bayonet. "Fascists don't make deals with 'demons.' They kill the demon and take the prize."
"We need to leave," Jason said. "Hughes. The ship."
Howard Hughes stopped pacing. He looked at Jason with wide, terrified eyes.
"She's dead, Jason! The circuits are slag! The bird can't sing!"
"She doesn't need to sing," Jason walked over and grabbed Hughes by the lapels of his aviator jacket. "She needs to float."
"Float?" Hughes blinked.
"It's a rigid airship," Jason said. "Sealed hull. If we strip the armor... if we seal the vents... she's a submarine."
Hughes's mouth fell open. He ran the calculations in his head. You could see his eyes darting.
"Displacement..." Hughes muttered. "The reactor weight is the problem. But if we ditch the gold... seal the intake valves..."
He looked up. A manic grin spread across his face.
"It's insane," Hughes said. "It's an abomination against aerodynamics."
"Can you do it?"
"I need two hours," Hughes said, already pulling a slide rule from his pocket. "And I need every tube of sealant you can find."
"You have one hour," Jason said. "Go."
Hughes sprinted out of the cafeteria.
Jason turned to Tesla and Oppenheimer.
"Nikola," Jason said. "Robert. You're defense."
"With what?" Oppenheimer asked, flicking ash onto the floor. "We have rifles. They have artillery."
"We have a nuclear reactor," Jason pointed toward the hangar. "And we have the magnetic levitation coils from the ship."
Tesla's eyes narrowed. The old Serbian genius stroked his mustache.
"The coils are designed to push against the Earth's magnetic field," Tesla said. "To lift the ship."
"Reverse the polarity," Jason said. He felt like he was reciting a bad sci-fi movie script, but the physics were real. "Turn the ship into an electromagnet. A big one."
"If we run the reactor directly into the coils..." Oppenheimer did the math. He went pale. "Jason, that's not a magnet. That's a gravity well. It will pull anything ferrous toward us with the force of a freight train."
"Exactly," Jason said. "They have tanks. Tanks are made of steel. I want you to build me a trap."
"Without a regulator?" Oppenheimer shook his head. "We'd have to throw the switch manually. The heat..."
"Just build it!" Jason snapped.
Sudden shouts echoed from the courtyard.
"Contact!" A writer yelled from the door.
Jason drew his pistol. He ran to the window.
The shelling hadn't started again.
Instead, a small motorboat was bobbing in the surf, fifty yards out. It flew a white flag.
A soldier in a silver shirt stood up. He held a wooden crate.
"A delivery!" The soldier shouted. "From General Pelley!"
He threw the crate onto the rocky shore. Then he gunned the engine and sped away.
"Don't touch it!" O'Malley yelled as a young writer ran toward the box. "It could be a bomb!"
The writer froze.
Jason walked out into the yard. The wind whipped his coat around his legs.
The box sat on the wet rocks. It was a simple ammunition crate. It wasn't ticking.
Jason pried the lid open with his knife.
The smell hit him first. Copper and rot.
He looked inside.
Jason's stomach turned over. He gagged, stumbling back.
Inside the box was a head.
It belonged to the Soviet medic. The man who had given Jason the centrifuge an hour ago. His glasses were shattered. His mouth was sewn shut with silver wire.
Pinned to his forehead with a nail was a note.
Jason forced himself to reach in. He pulled the bloody paper free.
He read it aloud.
"The Cure belongs to the Pure. There are no deals with the unclean. Surrender the Witch, or we kill every soul on this rock."
Hemingway looked at the head. His face hardened. The adventurous glint in his eyes was gone. This wasn't a story anymore.
"They killed the Reds," Hemingway said quietly. "All of them?"
"Likely," Jason said, crumpling the note. "They wiped out the survivors on the Red October just to send a message."
He looked up at the Presidio. He could see the black flag snapping in the distance.
They weren't fighting soldiers. They were fighting butchers.
Jason turned to the crew.
"Change of plans," Jason's voice was low, dangerous. "We aren't just leaving."
He looked at Tesla.
"Strip the copper from the prison walls," Jason ordered. "Tear out the electric chair if you have to. I want that magnet online in forty minutes."
"Jason," Sarah stood in the doorway of the cell block. She had seen the head. She was trembling. "What are you going to do?"
Jason looked at her. He looked at the blood on his hands.
"I'm going to break their toys," Jason said.
He racked the slide of his pistol.
"Get to work! Strip everything! If it conducts electricity, I want it in the hangar!"
The yard exploded into activity. Writers smashed walls with sledgehammers. O'Malley began ripping conduit pipe from the ground.
Jason stood alone for a moment, staring across the water.
You want a demon, Pelley? Jason thought. I'll show you what happens when you mess with the devil's family.
He turned and marched toward the hangar. The sun was setting, casting the island in blood-red light.
The siege was over. The counter-attack had begun.