Veyre looked offended. “That was discourteous, Dirk. Gloves off, then. Good.”
The strange being then split into three copies. Dirk fired wildly at all of them.
“What did he just do?” Jack asked.
“Looks like Paladin mirror projections,” Madelaine said as she examined the Mechanism. The socket was lit up, but the timer was down to just over a minute.
She started toward the Mechanism.
Each shot from Dirk’s gun passed through illusions. “What are you?!” Dirk shouted.
“I’m helping Madelaine and her husband, Jack,” Veyre said.
“No. You are not,” Dirk whined and kept firing, to no avail.
Over her shoulder, Madelaine saw Dirk swing his gun arm toward the Mechanism. And her.
Jack tackled him and down he went.
Madelaine pulled the backpack off her shoulder to retrieve the device as Jack and Veyre fought Dirk.
Jack had basically brought a mini Maglite to a gun fight, but Madelaine hoped Veyre could help him keep Dirk occupied so she could get the device inside the socket before the timer ran out.
She closed the space to the Mechanism. The speedy, disappearing countdown clock numbers had reached under a minute. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight…
The socket space was lit up, ready for the device. Madelaine fished it out the large backpack and settled it into the space where it was meant to go.
Once the Mechanism and the device made contact, Madelaine gripped the silver bauxite nugget, twisting it one click to the right and counting out three seconds. “One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.”
Madelaine turned the silver bauxite nugget to the left two clicks. Again, she held the nugget and counted down three seconds. “One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.”
The countdown clock dropped below fifty seconds, not stopping.
The center of the silver bauxite nugget lit up. Madelaine pressed her thumb into the center. It warmed beneath her touch. She held it there for anotherthree seconds. Nothing happened. The countdown clock continued. Forty-five, forty-four…
Madelaine glanced to see what was happening behind her. As she watched, Dirk scuffled with Veyre and managed to fire his weapon, hitting Veyre center mass.
Veyre went down in a pile of black robes as a few puffs of blue and black smoke roiled away from him.
Jack took over the battle with Dirk. Madelaine worried that he was about to get shot, too. Unfortunately, she could not help him.
With her thumb pressed firmly into the silver bauxite nugget, Madelaine was not sure what she needed to do next. There must be something else. What was it?
Jack pinned Dirk to the ground as Veyre’s smoke show dissipated. Did that mean he was gone? Madelaine’s eyes teared up. She watched helplessly as the numbers on the countdown clock continued to get smaller and smaller.
“What?!” Dirk screamed from his prone position beneath Jack.
Madelaine saw Jack’s face morph into something like disbelief at what he was seeing.
What is going on over there?
“It can’t be true! You’re dead!” Dirk screamed. “You need to be dead!”
Veyre sat up, hood thrown back, mask gone, and Madeline was shocked to see the being was not a man at all.
“As usual, Dirk, you thought wrong. I am alive. I have been alive all this time. And you will fail. Just like I always planned that you would.”
The former Veyre must have constrained Dirk in some way because she stood next to him, leaving him panting in the dirt at her feet.
