9~
The first of many red flags, that was raised in Marcie and her mother, was the fact that there wasn't an armed guard posted in front of the door that led back into the Hour Arch's assembly chamber.
Marcie reached for the door handle, but was stopped by Anne's words and her small hand.
"Careful," Anne warned. "It definitely feels like a trap."
"You're preaching to the choir, here, Mom, but we have to get in there," Marcie said, turning the handle. The duo walked across the threshold into an unexpectedly silent place.
The workers and technicians had all departed, as had Quest, Race, and the guards. The overhead lights remained on, but there was no one manning the other heavy machinery within. No sound of welders or cutters, of instructions being given or received. Just the heavy air of silence, and the dread anticipation of an ambush, hanging over the wary girls.
"Now, I know it's a trap," Anne whispered, her eyes trying to dissect every shadow that an unmanned vehicle or object cast, to find a hidden threat.
Marcie, for her part, kept her eyes sweeping the high ceiling and the floor for booby traps, and the prize they sought.
Ahead, the Hour Arch stood alone and inert. Its size, design, and very appearance made it look like some unearthed, technological alter waiting for its due of offerings.
Marcie gave a casual thought as to what would constitute as an offering. Her mother? In a way, yes. Even though she thought it foolish to look upon their actions as something so primitively ritualistic, by physically giving Anne up to the Arch, something of a religious causality would occur.
For a moment, the Arch would satisfy its existence by working, albeit, now well, and Anne would eventually become whole again, through the Arch, by sacrificing her younger years to it, as the ultimate payment for services rendered.
If an ancient people were to come across this towering wonder, how could they not think of this as the very pinnacle of magic.
The scientist in Marcie dispelled such notions from her mind, and focused on the task at hand, watching out for danger, as they closed in on the Arch. So far, they were the only people making a sound, their collective footfalls echoing, as they walked deeper into the chamber.
Of the row of on-line computer stations that faced the Arch, earlier, only one was active, now, its cooling fans humming loudly.
"This was the computer that operated the Arch," Marcie said. "I guess they left this one on for some reason."
Facing its keyboard, Marcie noticed a something on its monitor, a sheet of paper taped to its face, apparently put there for someone's benefit. A checklist of the computer's start-up.
While she continued to look at it, she frowned. Something was wrong about all of this.
"Keep your wits about you," Anne cautioned, fighting the youthful urge to run into the Arch's passenger cabin, flat-out. Living as long as she had gained her a patience and maturity that tempered her thoughts, now, and looked out of place within her girlish appearance.
The same couldn't have been said about her daughter, however. Oldest of the two, or no, Marcie's only thoughts, as they walked into the shadow of the Hour Arch, was to restore her mother, and that gave her the impetus to run up to the cabin without another thought to traps.
Anne sighed and shock her head worryingly, as her daughter jogged up to the cabin door. Impetuous youth. It could strike down even the most knowledgeable.
"We made it, Mom," Marcie said, grinning for her mother, triumphantly. "Now, we can get you fixed." Without another word, she opened the obsidian door, and ushered Anne inside.
"Are you going to be okay, Marcie?" Anne asked.
Marcie smirked. Only a mother would worry about her child's welfare, even though she was the one in dire straits.
"I'll be fine, Mom," Marcie coaxed. "I just hope this works. It would just be too weird to have a little girl as a mother. PTA meetings would be a blast, though."
"We can talk about all of that, once I'm...I can't believe I'm saying this...my old self, once again," said Anne, the anxiety of the moment touching her. "Although, for all of the pitfalls that come with it, science is magnificent, Marcie, and here, with us standing it its midst, is a true example of its majesty."
Marcie would have agreed, wholeheartedly, but only after this magnificent, majestic hunk of pig iron got her mother back to normal. "Okay, get comfy, Mom. I'm going to close you up. Wish me luck."
"All right, dear," Anne said. "But you don't need luck. You're a Fleach."
A proud smirk played across Marcie's face, as she backed off and started to close the door. She made sure to take one good look at her mother before the door closed, in case, Heaven forbid, worse came to worse.
The glossy, black door sealed her in with a soft click, as Anne settled into her spot on the curved couch behind the cabin's control pedestal.
In the quiet dimness, she had a chance to collect her thoughts and reflect on what had happened. If all went well, Marcie would figure out how to operate the machine and gradually bring her back to her correct age. But that brought in a new line of questions. Or more to the point, notions. Disturbing ones.
The Hour Arch worked, she thought, then corrected herself. It was getting there. She was physical proof of that. But, even a intellect, like Quest, could eventually see the potential of a happy accident.
If he could somehow replicate the flaw in the machine's protections, he could produce the ultimate interrogation tool. Painless, yet capable of wiping a person from existence, if non-compliant.
It could also be weaponized. She imagined grenades releasing unshielded, limited-range temporal energy capable of erasing whole squads of enemies from space and time, in an instant. Assault rifles with that same effect across a father range, and then, the ultimate expression of this sanitized terror, a bomb, with enough radius to reduce a city into a ghost town, in less time that it took to detonate.
Hadji had gloated about Quest's technological dictatorship, that it would be eternal. By copying the effects of the Hour Arch's current condition, Quest and his family/ inner circle, could live indefinitely by entering this fountain of youth-in-disguise, and aging back to their prime and vigor.
And the cowed masses need never fear about Quest reinstating the draft, not when strong, loyal, mass-produced, military-grade Questoids could easily swell his ranks.
It was a nightmare scenario, to be sure, and, looking around, Anne knew that she was sitting in the very seed that would one day bear such horrific fruit.
She only hoped, while she waited, that with her returned age, would come the wisdom to figure out what to do, next.
Marcie went to the humming computer station, and hovered her delicate fingers over the keyboard, ready to type in the commands that would bring this behemoth to life, again. Then, her stomach twinged from a disquieting thought.
"Wait a minute. Only those people assigned to work on the Hour Arch's systems would know how to turn this thing on," Marcie posited. "So, why would anyone tape instructions on how to operate the computer, just for them? The only people who wouldn't know how to use it are my mother and me. Who would give us such an advantage?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" came a cocky male voice from behind.
The answer came in the form of a hand coming down onto her shoulder, followed by another hand grabbing her wrist on the opposite side. Before she could react, both hands found the leverage they needed, and effortlessly flung Marcie away from both the computer, where she crashed into a rolling heap.
However, in the middle of the martial arts throw, Marcie had gotten a look at the blonde boy who accosted her.
She shook her head to reorient herself from the toss, and saw him. A blond teenager who gave his stunned sparring partner a wise-acre grin, and walked up to her with all the self-confidence of a celebrity disembarking from a limousine.
"Not bad, huh?" asked the teenager. "Race taught me that. Heck, he taught me everything I know about fighting."
Marcie was flabbergasted. She didn't think he would be doing Quest's dirty work, as well, but then, she realized, like father, like son.
"Hey, how are you doin'? Jonny Quest. No autographs," he acknowledged with a casual point of his finger at her, the hand curling into the shape and pantomime of a gun. "Guess what? I just got a telepathic shout-out from Radio Free Hadji. He tells me that he failed catching the two of you, and that you had him walking in his own winter wonderland. So, I asked Pop if I could get a crack at it. Gave me my blessing, right there and then, and set it up so I can waste you two, without any interference!"
"Wonderful," Marcie muttered, recovering from the attack.
"I know!" Jonny crowed, as he approached. "What a dad! Right? Wait! I know you. You're that girl Pop's been talking about, lately. Little Miss Chemistry Set."
"Indeed!" Benton's voice intoned from above. Marcie looked up to see a red-headed man leaning over the catwalk's railing, calmly observing everything.
"Miss Fleach, I cleared everyone out of here for a reason, both to satisfy my son's eagerness to help, and to impress upon you what you have walked into," Quest explained. "I knew that because of your mother's unique condition, you would have to return here. You're correct about the sheet of paper on the computer. It is the very start-up sequence to activate the Hour Arch.
"So you left that there as, what, more bait for your trap?"
"Bait that you couldn't refuse, Miss Fleach. We both know that you couldn't work the time machine otherwise. You and your mother are caught, but, please, don't think of this place as a trap, but more like a gladiatorial crucible, a Coliseum of Science, where I can examine the invention I came up with, first-hand."
Jonny glanced up at the catwalk that circled under the ceiling. "Well, let's give him a good show. Don't wanna disappoint him, y'know?"
Marcie lifted her LabPak's gauntlet, but before she could utter a formula, Jonny raised his hand to halt her.
"Ah, ah, ah!" he admonished her. "Check this out."
He lifted his black T-shirt above the waist, revealing a boxy device clipped to his belt buckle. "Portable shield generator prototype. A little gift from my dad, while I'm testing it out. Sure, it looks like he's a little over-protective, but, hey, I'm worth it!"
Whatever Jonny would have said, next, came out as a tortured, echoed yelp, several octaves high, when Marcie stretched out a leg and whipped a fast kick into his groin that stopped his advance, and made him stumble back in pain.
"Hey, Quest!" Marcie called out. "I think I found your shield's weak spot!"
From above, Dr. Quest sighed aloud, "It won't work if you don't turn it on, Son!"
"Yeah. Sorry, Pop," Jonny groaned, trying to catch his breath.
Marcie gave a laugh, as she stood up. "You sound more like a Joannie, than a Jonny, just then!"
Still hunched over, he reached under his shirt, turned on the device, and then gave a moment to regard this impudent girl, while an aura of blue, the activation of the shield, could then be seen enveloping him.
"You're a nerd, but you've got sass. I like that," he told her, hoping to rile her up with what he said, next. "Your mom's a little too young for me, though, but I might be able to talk Dad into using that Hour Arch thing to age her up a little, once I'm done playing with you, that is."
The thought of his hands on her mother turned the girl into steel. "Young or old, she's still more mature than you are, you sociopath-in-training," Marcie countered.
Distance. That was the word that rang in her mind concerning Anne's safety. The farther away he was from her, the better off she would be. Considering that neither one could escape from the assembly room, at present, Marcie had to admit that the idea sounded good in her head, at the time.
"Besides," Marcie asked, tauntingly. "Why are you worried about her, anyway? Don't you want to play with me, Mister Lady Killer?"
"Actually, it's-" Jonny started to correct.
"Who cares? Come and get me!" Marcie yelled, giving a playful jog from the Arch, Anne and Jonny, over to a pile of equipment lying next to the side of a small crane.
"Hey! Don't run!" he mock-entreated her, walking from the Arch's external computer station, then saying to the cabin, "Look, you're her mother. Can you tell her to stop running?" He, then, looked back to Marcie. "They probably locked the door, already! Don't make me run! That's just not cool!"
Ignoring his jibes, and frantically fishing through the equipment, Marcie finally found and picked up a dented blowtorch, much to the amusement of her approaching pursuer.
"A blowtorch? Really? That's so cute!" Jonny cooed. "Little Miss Chemistry Set gonna toast me up?"
"No. I'm just going to give that shield of yours a good workout," she explained, pointing the blowtorch at him.
"C2H6O," Marcie said, quietly, not wanting his father to hear, and thus, warn him. A clear liquid soon sprayed from her gauntlet, to the floor by Jonny's feet, giving off a scent that he could recognize from all of his time spent with Race.
"What's that? Booze?" he laughed. "What are you trying to do, nerd girl? Get me drunk?"
"Nope, and that's not booze," Marcie corrected. "It's ethanol."
The spray coincided with her pointing the blowtorch into it, and hitting the chemical's flash point, a heavy gout of blue, smokeless, liquid flame immediately raced across the floor, just as he, and his father, above him, understood about the trap he just walked in.
The makeshift flamethrower's fiery stream broke against a confident Jonny's outstretched palm, like a wave on a rock, washing over his hand, and over the rest of his body.
While she looked victorious, Marcie fretted inside. Jonny was still in the center of this conflagration, and his eventual death would just be one more thing Dr. Quest would want to chisel on her tombstone.
However, as steady as her glove was in producing the fuel for the torch to burn off, Marcie could now see that the most the stream could do was be deflected off of his palm, and puddle by his feet, where it settled, growing into a widening inferno.
Chagrined, she moved her hands apart, quickly realizing the danger she was causing, as the fire began to spread towards the vehicles and their vulnerable fuel tanks.
"H2O," she spoke, allowing the LabPak to create water, which she proceeded to spray all over the floor, killing the flames.
Jonny Quest's death, also, wasn't to be an issue, it seemed, as he neatly stepped over the dying flames, untouched, and faced her, still smiling that cocky grin of his. A light blue aura shimmering around his body.
"Forgot about my shield generator, have we?" he asked, mockingly.
"Nope, but I was hoping I could overload it with a high enough amount of thermal energy," Marcie admitted.
"No chance, babe," Jonny bragged. "I'm hotter than any fire, and it still works."
"A clever ploy, Miss Fleach. You are certainly putting my shield generator through its paces," Dr. Quest commended, while she continued to back away. "However, the shield absorbs kinetic energy, which means that as the burning stream of ethanol struck the shield, the kinetic energy of its splash was consumed on contact, causing the stream to simply fall to the floor, due to a lack of momentum, on its part. Kinetic energy, Miss Fleach, strengthens the shield, protecting him."
That was bad, and she was running out of options. "Mom! Mom! Start the machine up!" Marcie yelled, hoping she could hear her. "The computer outside operates it!"
"Yeah, Mom!" Jonny mocked, still stalking her with a casual stroll. "For all the good that'll do her."
"My son is correct, Miss Fleach," added the doctor. "The external computer stations temporarily take the place of the controls that will, eventually, be installed in the cabin. However, safeguards in the system will not allow passengers to operate the machine while the cabin door is open. So, your mother, like you, has quite the conundrum. She can't work the computer station, and be in the cabin, at the same time. The moment she opens that door, to go in, or out, the system shuts off."
Jonny shook his head, morosely, and sucked his teeth to punctuate that point, as he followed Marcie with a patient, creepy menace. To him, this was the best part of his playtime with girls who had the misfortune of running into him. Their fear and confusion, his anticipation, and the quiet build-up before...they were no longer fun to play with.
So, as Marcie would periodically jog away when she deemed Jonny too close for comfort, he would just smiled and continued his slow-motion hunt.
Anne, however, had heard everything that transpired outside the door, even her daughter's yell, although she could barely hear everything else, due to distance.
"Marcie must have run into trouble before starting up the computer," Anne figured. "Meaning that I'm going to have to get things rolling, instead."
She opened the door and jogged out of the cabin, and to the sound of the still running station.
Taking the start-up sheet from the monitor and studying it for a few seconds, her small fingers began to fly across the keyboard, bringing the system to life. She sighed in deep relief at the sound of generators awakening and feeding power to the Arch's internal computers, sensors, and overhead core, just as text in green flowed along the monitor, giving digital commands that would not be countermanded by the time machine.
Thoughts of being her correct age buoyed her in the midst of her daughter leading that disturbed teenager away. She only hoped she could help her, in time, with her returned size and relative strength, after she was set right.
And then those thoughts began to die, her joy slipping from her fingers, at the sight of the single, blinking, blood-red word, that read, "Warning."
From the information she read from underneath it, she began to understand what Jonny meant when he mocked her efforts. Saving Marcie was always more important, but, now, to do so, could ultimately save her, as well.
"You know you gotta stop this cha-cha-cha-ing you're doing," Jonny purred. "You just gonna be tired when I get you, and that's no fun. For me."
Marcie ignored him and glanced back to where they came in. She wondered if she could get to the door and lead Jonny out, so she could buy Anne even more time to operate the machine. That sounded very unlikely in her mind, which was a shame. It seemed so doable when she though of it, beforehand.
In a strange bit of inspiration, Anne had the computer sheltered under an open tent made of a tarp held up on either side by a mop sitting in its individual bucket. Once that was finished, she left it.
For Marcie's sake, all Anne could do was watch out for her daughter, worry and slowly follow the two of them, more out of a lack of quick invention, at the moment, than from any fear she might of had of Jonny.
Her troubled trek took Anne past some of the equipment that the workers had set aside by a far wall, and with an absent glance towards them, Anne immediately recalled seeing a pair of arc welders sitting by a small crane, when Marcie and she first entered the assembly chamber, looking for ambush.
Thinking upon the nature of Jonny's shield, and its constructed biases on what could get through-atmospheric oxygen and visual light particles, a beautifully effective and desperate plan seized young Anne's brain, sending an electric thrill through her legs.
'It's been a long time since I felt that,' she thought, as she quickly and quietly jogged over to the equipment.
Nervously, Marcie happened to glance down and spot a hammer that a worker left by accident. She hopped over and scooped it up, causing Jonny to stop to see what she would do with it.
She cranked her arm back and whipped a pitch into his chest. The hammer got to within an inch of his sternum, then fell, literally, straight to the floor. Its forward momentum and kinetic energy halted dead by the properties of the shielding.
"Didn't you hear my pop? The stronger I'm hit, the stronger the shield. At least, my dad said so. Honestly, I can't get my head around all of that science stuff, but I bet you can appreciate it, right now, can't you?"
"Can't blame a girl for trying," Marcie said, wishing she had something to overload the shield. Just to wipe that wretchedly insufferable grin off of his smug face.
Finishing her handiwork, Anne looked up to see that Jonny was getting too close to Marcie for her liking. It was time to act.
"Hey, Jonny!" Anne called from her end of the chamber, hoping he would stop to hear, and more importantly, that Marcie would, as well. "I've got to admit that your shield is top-notch! Being able to selectively bias air and light, but keep away kinetic energies? That's pretty cool."
Jonny halted his stalking to regard the girl. "What can I say? My dad's an artist, and I know he's getting a hoot outta seeing his little invention perform. Don't worry, though. Once I'm through with Little Miss Chemistry Set, I'll focus all my attention on you."
"You touch my mother, and I'll motivate your father to get that time machine working to bring you back," Marcie swore, wondering why Anne would say what she did. She should have hidden, or tried to escape.
Marcie had up-close-and-personal experience with the workings of the shield generator, so far. Things she threw at him simply dropped away, with a thud. That was in keeping with Dr. Quest's words on its absorption of kinetic energy. But that part about air and light confused her.
It would just make sense for Dr. Quest to design shielding that one could see out of and breath through...
And with that, Marcie gave a smile of pride for her mother so wide, her face hurt. Whatever Anne was doing far behind Jonny, she hoped it was worth the distraction that she decided to continue with.
"I don't know what your mother was talking about, exactly, but I just want to let you know that you're almost backed up against this room's door," Jonny announced, pleasantly, watching Marcie notice a glint of malice in his eyes. "Just sayin'."
'I hope this works,' she thought as she, at last, stopped backing away.
"If you're thinking about whether this'll hurt, don't worry," Jonny soothed, his fingers eagerly curling. "I've done this plenty of times, and it doesn't hurt me, at all. Besides, I've been trained by Race, so I can make this quick."
"You're too kind," Marcie quipped, then said, calmly raising her gloved hand, "CCI2F2."
An icy blast of pressurized gas, that lightly smelled of sweet ether, surged from the finger-nozzles and obscured Jonny's face, blinding him and making him cough violently.
"That's what Mom was talking about. You still have to breath through your shield, don't you, tough guy," Marcie taunted. "Let's see you do that while good ol' Freon freezes your lungs!"
"At least my lungs'll still...be in my body when I get...through with you, Little Miss... Chemistry Set," Jonny hacked, waving his arms through the miasma to clear his vision, and moving in on the girl's last seen location.
"Jonny!" Dr. Quest yelled above him. "Stop her!"
Marcie dodged the cold, heavy gas cloud, and ran, hell bent-for-leather, back towards the Arch, goaded, she could see from one side of the room, by Anne, who curiously stood next to a plugged-in arc welder.
Fighting against pondering that scene too much, Marcie focused on her run, knowing that Jonny would not be far behind.
A caution that Jonny was all too happy to confirm, as he tore, half-blind and gasping, after Marcie, red thoughts of what he would do to her, when caught, fueling him.
"C'mon, Marcie!" Anne yelled, as if this were a track and field event she was watching, instead of where they truly were. "Run!"
Marcie couldn't help but think the same way, when she saw the hastily made x made out of duct tape on the floor ahead of her. She could hear the athletic Jonny manically huffing closer to her. She needed to cross that x, first.
Marcie flew across the marker and turned her head to see what the meaning of the x was. It wasn't long in coming.
Jonny was mere feet from the marker, his sneakers moving in a blur of motion so fast, Anne was hard pressed to time what she had prepared, but just when one of his feet closed within inches before the marker, she struck.
Anne depressed the power button on the arc welder that she modified, on her side of the room, and a stream of electricity leaped across the span of the room, to connect to the end of the other powered and modified welder's wand.
Both arc welders instantly became one crude, yet massive Van de Graff generator, with poor Jonny caught in the middle of its ferocious circuit, as the entire chamber illuminated with the glowing strobe of a lightning stroke.
The stepped-up high voltage clothesline was powerful enough to do in the larger sense, what it once did in the smaller, strip the surrounding air molecules of their electrons, transforming them into an elemental envelope of superheated matter-plasma.
A lance of it easily pierced Jonny's shielding, exploiting the same bias that allowed air molecules to reach him, and for that selfsame instant, the new plasma was created from his shield-contained oxygen, and he became gloriously, albeit, painfully, incandescent.
The natural buzz of the artificial lightning echoed throughout the chamber, and almost drowned out the tortured yelp and anguished cry that came from both Jonny, the human light bulb, and his shocked and outraged father.
Anne turned off her welder a second after she turned it on. She didn't want to kill the boy, but she had to come up with a way to knock out his protection and incapacitate him, simultaneously. The whole event took just a moment to pass, and when it was done, it left Jonny a whimpering, smoking wreck.
The fire sprinklers quickly came alive, quickly, drenching everyone and everything below it.
"Oops," Marcie muttered, while she moved her wet, sticky hair from her equally wet face.
Seeing the two girls head towards him to, no doubt, admire their handiwork, Jonny tried to smile in his cocky fashion. He wound up grimacing, instead.
"Well…think of it this way," Jonny joked in pained gasps, the water mercifully cooling him. "With…all of this water…you won't leave that…big a mess…when my dad…gets through with the two of you."
Anne reached down and grabbed his T-shirt collar. "You're still talking?" she asked, as she began to tug at him. Then, she glanced over at a confused Marcie. "Give me a hand, dear."
Marcie reluctantly obeyed, but had to ask, "Uh, why are we dragging him and where are we dragging him to?"
"To the Arch," Anne huffed, knowing that Benton was watching from above, intently. "I feel like negotiating."
With the floor beginning to pool slightly, it was becoming easier to move the inert teenager, while his father looked on, fearfully. What was their game?
Eventually, the two girls hauled Jonny up the Arch's dais, opened the cabin door, dumped him on the floor, and then slammed the door on him. Anne, then went to the tented computer.
"That's why you set that tarp over the computer," Marcie said, nodding in understanding.
"Yep," Anne explained, restarting the start-up sequence, again. "I knew, with the kind of temperatures we'd be dealing with, the sprinklers would turn on."
She raised her head to look up at the stricken father. "Dr. Quest, I would like to tender my resignation, but before I do, I would like to make a deal with you."
There was a heavy silence coming from the catwalk, but eventually, Quest spoke. "I'm listening."
"I know what you plan to do with this time machine. I feel for the loss of your wife, but that's not all you'll use this machine for. For the sake of the world, I can't let that happen."
A cold chuckle echoed above her. "Ever the heroic Lab Rat, eh, Miss Fleach?" he asked. "And how would you plan to stop me from achieving my goals? Concoct some exotic formula to make me change my mind?"
"No," she joked, coolly. "I was thinking of either turning your son back into a twinkle in your eye, or a Natural History exhibit."
Quest understood, immediately. "No! Not my son! You don't have to hurt him. If you want, I can come down there and reverse the de-aging effects on you, myself."
"Because I don't trust you, you'll understand if I say no."
Marcie stared at her mother, speechless. If there was any logical reason for this course of action, it was drowned out by the age-old fear of losing her again, somehow.
Forgetting herself, she grabbed Anne tightly by both arms. "What? Why are you doing this? I want you to...Don't you want to get back to normal?"
Ignoring the pain of her daughter's surprisingly strong grip, Anne gave a sad smile. "Oh, Marcie, what is normal, really? Isn't it subjective to-"
"Stop it!" Tears were budding in Marcie's eyes. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because it has to done," her mother sighed. "You heard Hadji, earlier. That time machine must not be used to create Quest's new future. I'm going to force him to destroy it. I just hope he loves his son more than he loves global conquest."
She looked up at Quest. "Listen to me. I know that you have installed self-destructs in all of your hidden labs, in case you're discovered. You will let me and my daughter go, and then set this lab to detonate, or else you will lose your son."
The sound of the assembly room's door swung open, and a squad of guards ran into the place. Two stood by the door and the others sprinted up to the girls and created a perimeter around them. Anne stared at Quest, looking unperturbed.
"What's it going to be? All I have to do is push one button, and you outlive your son," she said, icily.
Marcie stood silent, stopped by the dire logic of the situation, and let it play out before her. She was also perversely fascinated at this other side of her mother. She knew she was doing this to save theirs and as many people's lives as possible, but to witness a coldness to her that would have put her Insta-Ice to shame, was incredible to watch.
Inside, Anne held her breath, and waited. She had not intention of killing Jonny, despite what he was intending on the two of them. She was no monster, but this was the most dangerous moment of the game, the bluff. Would he call hers, or not?
The moment hung on the silence of Quest's decision, and Marcie was genuinely surprised that he was taking as long as he was at that decision. It should have been an no-brainer.
"Let them go," came the weary voice of Doctor Quest, and the guards moved back to give the girls space. That was part one done.
"The self-destruct, Quest," Anne reminded.
Quest raised a wrist holding a high-tech watch. He gave a quiet command, then said to her, "It is done."
Marcie wondered how far they could get to the door before the guards descended on them like wolves on a calf. There were no assurances made that Quest would keep his word, once they left the room.
Those thoughts were more or less answered by the deep and distant rumble being heard that made the guards look around nervously. A gradually built up vibration could be felt through everyone's legs.
"I think we should go, now," Anne told Marcie.
They started to run for the exit, Marcie looking up to see what the good doctor was up to, but the catwalk was deserted. She turned her head to see that they now followed by the guards, who were now, to her relief, passing the girls, instead of chasing them down.
Soon, everyone, guards and former captives, flew from the doorway, down a corridor, and into the nearest elevator, as claxons howled through every hall of the complex, and recorded messages pertaining to closest exits and blast radii were barely heard over the panicked screams of scientists, workers, and security, alike.
