Manning pumps three shells, not at Instancer but at the floor he stands on. The surface shreds, opening like a trapdoor.

Instancer plunges into the void.

A fury primeval roars upward from the center of the Earth. Manning’s shirt and trousers erupt into flame. He had started toward Ben-David, to drag him clear, but the blast bowls him backward. Then he sees:

Instancer.

One hand clutches the twisted corrugation that Manning’s shotgun had torn apart.

A second hand reaches up.

Instancer’s head and shoulders appear.

Ben-David squirts from his shelter, dashes along the wall to Rachel and me in the stairwell.

BEN-DAVID

Go! Go!

He grabs us both and pushes us toward the rungs leading up.

Rachel resists.

I do too.

Instancer hauls himself up out of the chasm. He’s half clear when Manning bull-rushes at him.

Manning flings himself full-speed, full-weight upon Instancer.

Heat is rising from the void in scarlet waves. Manning clutches Instancer from behind and above. It’s some kind of wrestler’s hold.

Manning hauls Instancer’s left hand off its grip. He pries with all his strength and leverage to free the right.

Instancer jack-knifes himself with impossible power. Both hands recover their grip. He rises, with Manning clinging to his back.

Something pushes me aside.

For a second I think it’s Ben-David.

Then I see Rachel, bending to retrieve the Zombie Killer.

She steps from our sheltered cove into the central arena.

She fires as she advances.

One shot.

Two.

Three.

Each successive impact blows Instancer rearward. But his grip on the rim never slackens.

Manning, hanging on to Instancer from behind, struggles to pry Instancer’s hands from their hold.

With a cry, Rachel flings the shotgun aside. She lowers her shoulders and charges with all her strength into Instancer.

Instancer’s grip fails.

The three, fused in fire, plunge as one into the inferno.

BEN-DAVID

Climb, Dewey! Get out of here!

When I reach the surface, every follicle of hair on my body, including those on my arms and legs, has been seared to the skin. My phone in my pocket has melted. It’s not till I recover my laptop from Ben-David’s truck that I can enter their cloud codes and retrieve my comrades’ status lines:

END RACHEL TRANSMISSION

END MANNING TRANSMISSION

BOOK EIGHT

CYPRUS

32

EARTH’S LAST CHANCE

OUR PARTY, absent Manning and Rachel (and Dana and her soldiers, who have remained in Israel), has crossed to Cyprus by sea from Haifa. Representatives of a hundred and seventy-four nations, including forty-seven heads of state, attend this climate conference billed without overstatement as “Earth’s Last Chance.”

The harbor at Nicosia has been converted into an exhibition space for two dozen tidal, sea current, and saltwater energy projects, including Ben-David’s SROG, Seawater Re-Oxygenation and Generation technology. Crowds in the thousands swarm the site in a celebratory mood. The emotion of the climate conference is one of long-awaited, overdue breakthrough.