As they head out the door, Deputy Crawford stops them with a hand on Spencer's arm.
"You boys heading out again?" she asks.
"We are," Spencer says. "And we're in a bit of a hurry."
"I should say so," Crawford tells them. "Another storm is rolling in."
"Another one?" Spencer asks, frowning.
She nods. "Be safe out there."
"We will," Spencer promises. Driving back to the barn, something niggles at him.
"What is it?" Rossi asks, eyes flicking from Spencer to the road and back.
"It's just… something that's been bugging me a little bit," he says. "When Seaver first called us after their fight, she mentioned that there was a risk of the woods catching fire."
"And?" Rossi prompts, clearly not following Spencer's logic.
Spencer motions around to the verdant woods lining nearly every road they pass once they're out of the town proper. "It's rained multiple times since we've been here. The woods here are saturated, but just an hour away, the woods are so dry that they're worried about fire? That's not how weather patterns usually work in this area. Usually they either blow in from the Atlantic and sweep across the state, or they come down from the north in Canada and sweep toward the coast. In either case, there's no way that an area just an hour from here should be tinder-dry when this place has 80% humidity and has had multiple storms just in the time we've been here."
He can see the wheels turning in Rossi's eyes while he keeps his attention on the road. "You're right," he says, sounding a little miffed about it. "We don't usually look for unusual weather patterns, so I didn't think anything of it."
Turning in his seat, Spencer looks back at Hughes. "Can alchemy affect the weather?"
Frowning, looking unusually serious, Hughes holds his chin. "I know that alchemists can affect weather, depending on their specialty and the scale of the transmutation they're working. But there aren't many alchemists I know who could do it, especially not over such a large area."
"Could Mustang?" Rossi asks, ahead of Spencer.
Hughes shrugs. "Maybe," he says, and he really doesn't sound entirely certain. "I've seen Roy's alchemy affect localized areas, but nothing on this scale. And never with storms being confined to areas."
Resisting the urge to curse, Spencer says, "So Kimblee couldn't do it?"
Snorting this time, Hughes says, "No. Maybe if he blew up a large enough body of water?" He didn't sound like he believed it though, and sure enough, he shakes his head after thinking on it further. "No," he says, firmer this time. "I'm no expert, but the kind of alchemy that would be needed to affect the weather would be alchemy that specializes in gases. Few alchemists touch the stuff, because it's devilishly difficult to manipulate."
"And Kimblee didn't specialize in gases?" Spencer asks.
Judging from the frustrated look that flashes across Hughes's face, he's well aware of the fact that he really isn't the person to be answering these questions, but there's not much Spencer can do about it. "I don't… think so," he says, looking like he's trying to recall information. "I'm almost certain that Kimblee didn't necessarily work with gases, but I'd have to ask Roy. I didn't work closely with him during the war, and no one who knew anything about him wanted to be near him anyway."
"But Mustang uses gases?" Spencer asks. "For the fire?"
Hughes nods. "Yeah," he admits. "But not on this scale. And not enough to cause consistent storms, I don't think…"
Spencer sighs. "So is it possible that it's the array in the barn causing localized weather systems?"
Scratching at his head, Hughes says, "I mean, your guess is really as good as mine. This is really Roy's area of expertise. I've certainly never heard of alchemy acting this way, but then again, I've also never heard of people jumping between worlds with alchemy or anyone being resurrected by it before. I'm afraid that we're in some serious no man's land here."
Sitting back, Spencer sighs. "I was afraid of something like that," he admits.
"I wish I could be more help. I'd rather leave this to Roy, but…" he trails off.
Rossi picks up the thread. "But we can't risk Kimblee getting that stone if it exists."
"Yeah," Hughes agrees.
They're silent the rest of the ride back to the barn. The first rumbles of thunder begin overhead as they pull up. The drive is still muddy, and Spencer and Rossi both pull out their guns as they begin to move in.
"I suppose it's too late for me to ask if I can have a gun?" Hughes asks, following close on their heels.
"Just a little," Rossi replies.
The air is heavy with humidity, and just walking in it makes Spencer feel like he needs to wipe his face.
"If you see anything, shoot first, ask questions later," Hughes advises from behind his shoulder.
"We can't just shoot," Rossi says.
"I'll say you said whatever you're supposed to," Hughes replies. "If you get a chance to shoot at Kimblee, it might be the only chance you get at him. Don't hold back."
The sky rumbles as they make their way back into the barn, both Spencer and Rossi having pulled out flashlights along with their guns, pointing toward the center of the floor where the array was. At the far end, the wood is still deeply stained with Tucker's blood on the far side, and the metal tray still sits in the middle of the array.
Hughes goes to the wall, pulling down some sort of broom. "I think the blood is enough to disrupt the array," he says, but goes to it to begin sweeping at some of the outer lines. "But I'd rather be safe than sorry."
"Do you know what these red stones look like?" Rossi asks. Spencer is almost surprised that the edge of the array vanishes under the broom.
"Chalk?" he asks, watching it disappear.
"Looks like," Hughes says. "Thankfully."
"You expected it to be chalk," Spencer says.
Hughes brushes harshly at the design some more then says, "Yeah. Most alchemists work in chalk unless they've got a mastered array of some sort—like the kind Roy has stitched onto his gloves."
"A lot of trial and error in alchemy then?" Rossi asks, moving the flashlight around.
"Well, that and drawing a perfect circle on your first go isn't easy. It's a lot easier to make an error that you can scrub out and correct." He leans over, erasing as much of the array as far as he can reach without actually stepping foot into it.
Rossi finds the fusebox and turns the lights on, which reveals the scene in grimy, yellow light again. It's not the worst they've ever seen, not by a longshot, especially with the body and clothing removed, but the area still feels ominous.
"Should that be good enough?" Spencer asks, repressing the urge to tell Hughes off for ruining the crime scene.
Straightening and eyeing the array like it might actually activate and harm him. "It should," he says, but he sounds almost dubious about it, doubtful. "I, uh, hope you don't mind being the one to look." Spencer meets his eyes and raises his eyebrows in surprise.
"You want me to look?"
"I don't really know exactly what it looks like any more than you do," Hughes says reasonably, leaning on the broom. "And I think that Roy might actually, literally murder me if I step foot inside that array," he adds.
"But it's okay if Reid steps in it?" Rossi challenges, sounding tired.
Hughes shrugs. "We know that I've been in that array, know that it somehow brought me back. You belong to this world and shouldn't have any residual energy about you to possibly activate the damn thing."
Frowning, Spencer asks, "Is that really how this works?"
Grinning in reply, Hughes says, "I have no idea, but it would be just my damn luck to have the thing activate because I stepped into it again."
Spencer debates telling him about the nature of luck and how it's just humanity's way of trying to find meaning in the genuine chaos of the world, but he figures that, at least in this case, he's probably better off just keeping his mouth shut. Hughes will probably just dismiss him, and it won't change anything. Besides, for all Spencer knows, Hughes's logic about the array is sound. Schrodinger's array, he chuckles to himself. Is it active or is it dead? Only one way to find out.
He doesn't let himself hesitate, holstering his weapon and flashlight. Hughes has swept away nearly a quarter of the array design, so it's probably neutralized. He does grab the broom from Hughes as he passes by, walking in the path Hughes cleared, erring on the side of caution and avoiding touching the lines of the array themselves. When he reaches the end of where Hughes could reach, he lifts the broom, drops it down, managing to hook the edge of the tray on his first try, then pulls it toward him.
"Nice," Hughes compliments. "I should have thought of that."
Probably, but Spencer doesn't see the value in berating him for it. Hughes has been slightly off-kilter, ever so slightly off-balance since they realized they needed to come back. There's no reason to further antagonize the man.
There's a soft rattling sound in the tray, and when it's in Spencer's reach, he sees it. A red stone.
"Anything?" Rossi asks, also being cautious and staying on the edge of the array.
"Yeah," he says, picking up the tray and walking back to the edge. The stone rolls around in the bottom of it, but none of them reach for it.
"It's definitely red," Rossi says.
It is. It's the same red that Mustang's tattoo glows, the red he calls soul red. It's a red that Spencer thinks most people mean when they say the word "red," only it's deeper, more pure, even more red than fresh blood, and something about that color is unnerving.
"We got the stone, then," Rossi says. "We should get out of here." He holsters his gun for a moment, pulls an evidence bag out of his pocket, and shakes it open. None of them want to touch the stone. Spencer isn't particularly superstitious, but with everything that's gone on the last few days, he thinks a little more caution than usual is only sensible. Rossi holds the bag open and Hughes tries to help steady the tray to drop the stone into it.
"I think you have something of mine there," a thin, reedy voice says from the doorway. They all turn to look, but he doesn't think any of them are surprised when they see the man Mustang and Hughes call "Kimblee" standing there.
"Kimblee…" Hughes says, low and unhappy, almost a growl. The stone drops to the floor, missing the bag, and Spencer scrambles after it.
"Colonel Hughes," Kimblee says, a smug, arrogant drawl in his voice that Spencer recognizes from other sociopaths, and it's not a good sign.
"FBI! Hands up!" Rossi demands, pulling his gun back out.
Spencer's bare hand closes over the red stone. Time slows. A blink feels heavy, like effort, as though the world has gone so thick that he's moving through transparent mud. He feels… powerful, there's really no other word for it. He feels like he can sense the very stones beneath him, like he knows their composition like he's aware of the composition in the air around him.
Equivalent exchange was the phrase Mustang used. He's a high school chemistry teacher, someone who works closely with the science of balancing equations.
Arrays are equations, he realizes. Alchemy is all math.
To be more precise, alchemy is like advanced stoichiometry, the transformation of one substance into another. He realizes that the air around him, which feels so viscous and heavy, is almost like him experiencing the atoms and elements in it.
Is this what Mustang always sees? There are slight distortions in it, as if looking through wavy glass, and Spencer is relatively sure that those distortions are related to gases in the air, clusters of elements that are more densely packed than evenly dispersed, and he can see them moving and shifting all around him.
If this is how all alchemists experience the world, it's no wonder few try to work with gases. Spencer almost feels like he can reach out and touch them, mold them, reform them into something new, but he also has the sense that if he does, they'll behave like sand, slipping through his fingers.
He's drawn out of his fascinating introspection when Hughes yanks him aside, flattening himself over Spencer, just in time to miss the explosion heading his way. It reverberates in the barn, and Spencer isn't sure whether the boom is because of the explosion or if it's the thunder outside.
Ears ringing, he looks up to see Kimblee standing over him. On his palms, arrays are drawn. Spencer doesn't understand the symbols, not in the way he needs to in order to make sense of them, but he knows where they are.
They are in the Pennsylvania foothills, and beneath their feet, beneath the ground here lies ancient sedimentary stone, even volcanic stone, and that means there's even a good chance of coal in the ground below them. Quartz, feldspar, and carbon.
Holding the red stone in his fist, Spencer imagines an equation, one that changes the stone beneath their feet to a more refined, tighter-grained granite, and he does the equation to balance the two. In his hand, the stone warms for a moment, and then something Spencer can only describe as power rushes through him, a thrum of life and being alive and being connected to everything for a single, beautiful instant.
White-blue lighting dances across his hand, but it doesn't even really feel like static, even though it generates its own wind. He wills the equation down. Down, into the bedrock below them.
A stone wall crashes through the wooden floor they're laying on and a thick barrier stands between them and Kimblee, one that blasts up through the roof the barn, sending broken bits of wood raining down on them along with actual raindrops that have begun to come down.
Spencer hears something like a chuckle, but his ears are still ringing, and he is staring at the huge wall before them, between them.
Hughes starts to drag him away, and for a moment, Spencer feels invincible, like Kimblee can't possibly touch him. The math seems to unfold in his mind, as beautiful as any piece of art he's ever seen, as if he understands it all, understands how to tell the stone to make what he wants. Surely Kimblee doesn't have that knowledge.
His stone wall shatters, and he realizes that he has no idea what he's doing and what they need to do is get out of here.
"Go!" he hears Hughes yelling in his ear, the ringing clearing. "Go, go, go!"
The hand fumbling at his waist pulls Spencer's gun and aims it at Kimblee, getting several shots off before they're both thrown outside into the beginning of what promises to be another downpour. The mud serves to break their falls surprisingly well, but it also hinders them from getting to their feet.
"We need to go!" Hughes yells, managing to gain his footing first and trying to drag Spencer with him.
"I know! I know!" Spencer yells back, his feet slipping in the mud, but he still has a death grip on the stone. "Maybe I could…"
"No!" Hughes says emphatically.
"Wait, where's Rossi?" Spencer asks, looking around, but there's not much to see. His wall must have knocked out the power in the barn, because its light is gone. The rain is coming down hard enough and it's late enough that the storm has made it almost as good as true night. It's near impossible to see anything.
A gun goes off. Spencer opens his mouth to yell for Rossi, but Hughes covers it with a wet, muddy hand, hauling him toward the car with surprising strength.
"We can't take Kimblee," he says low and gruff, certainly too quiet to be heard beyond them. "We need to get out of here."
Hughes doesn't fight when Spencer pulls his hand away. "We can't leave Rossi," Spencer insists, then asks, "Did you hit him?"
"I don't know," Hughes admits, sounding grim. Headlights are coming down the road as they reach the car. "How far behind us did you say that Roy and the others might be?"
"I didn't," Spencer says. "But maybe fifteen, twenty minutes?" They'd been here at least that long, and the car turns onto the drive.
Spencer feels Hughes tense up behind him, and realizes that the car, with its blazing high beams in the pouring rain, is both a spotlight and a beacon. It lights up the doors of the barn as Kimblee steps out, carefree, as if he has no concerns at all. He claps his hands together, then drops to the ground.
An incomplete calculation races through Spencer's mind, too slow, far too slow, but he slaps the ground as well.
The world explodes.