She’s so fast, the Doctor. So fast. I see her mind working and she’s so amazingly fast. She’s putting it all together because what else can Mrs. Van der Zee be doing here? In crime there are no coincidences and if Mrs. Van der Zee is here I have put her here and why would I do that? And she remembers emeralds and the smell on Evil Hansel at the art party and I see her get there without ever being told and I see her know what I have done.

But no one is fast enough to stop this now. Not even Doc. Not even if she wanted to, and deep down you know she does not. She wants to want to. But she’s a Demon. There are matters pertaining. There is old business.

You cannot go around shooting our friends with long guns.

Volodya is dead.

And this is how that goes.

The ground is shaking.

—

The ground is shaking. Doc looks at me and even the fury is gone now, just resignation like she should have known this.

And she should. This is what she asked for.

“What have you done Price?”

I look up at the mountains. From the far side of the valley, a line of burning white lights ignites. Searchlights. Spotlights. Picking out the Kircheisen Festung so that it shines in the dark like a radiant heavenly city. Between the lights you can just make out a flat patch of early snow and Ottavio Leopold Calvanese sitting on a very expensive chair as if to watch his favorite TV show. It looks like Rex went with the balik and it’s going down very well.

Ah shit Rex.

Shit.

“What have you done Price?”

“I took your contract Doc and delivery is due.”

—

The ground is shaking like vibrating and up on the plateau I guess there’s still a couple hundred people and the really smart ones right now are heading for the tree line and right now I guess Agent Hannah is telling the dumb ones to do the same and both of those groups are almost certainly going to live. The only fairly smart ones think Agent Hannah is wrong or evil and they are heading into the bank and those guys…yeah they’re likely not gonna make it. Figure there’s about thirty or forty of those.

Someone somewhere is calling in his helicopter to get him the fuck out and what the outcome is for him largely depends on the timing and I got no control over that now.

This is going down.

I can’t see it—in fact no one can see it except maybe Rex if he’s lasted this long in his suit, and I like to think that he has, so let’s say that’s what’s happening.