Rex fell down over the ledge into the dark and the suit kept him alive exactly this long and he knows—he knows, down there under all that water—that he is no way getting out and the only question is whether the suit fails or he runs out of air and that is a shitty way to go either way.

But he’s not alone down there.

Down there under a bajillion tons of water at a squidzillion atmospheres there is a pile of boxes with a coffin on the top.

Volodya’s coffin of course.

And under him well under Volodya there is a bunch of boxes of Swiss junk ground up really small to powder. And I mean really a lot.

About a hundred tons of it.

And I threw in some magnesium from the fireworks Rex bought, and Flavia—yeah that Flavia who was hanging with Mozart—Flavia gave me some Z-Vat so that whole thing is kinda stuffed up together in a giant spiderball.

Copper oxide.

Aluminum.

Magnesium.

That is a mixture I have mentioned at certain times in other contexts. It is volatile and it is not your friend unless you like having dangerous and exothermic friends.

Which I do.

So here is what Rex sees in this last moment:

He sees a burst of light like a white basketball made of fire is eating into a tea crate. And then the greedy aluminum starts ripping oxygen away from the copper and the copper is not giving it up easy no sir. Not at all. That copper is stubborn Swiss cow copper it has seen life and it has done its military service and it will not be fucked with but in the end well there are laws and it has to comply.

In the dark heart of the mountain there is a miniature sun.

That is the moment at which Rex unquestionably dies and you know he was a Demon and he dies in a literal blaze of glory so there is that.

Now I am absolutely an amateur at this explosives stuff and if I still had an explosives guy on my team, I’d have known not to do it with a hundred tons of the mixture but you know, man, that’s what happens in the world, people just aren’t there when you need them, right, I mean they just wander off or marry a stripper with neck-down volitional alopecia or they get swept away by a death trap in a bank robbery. I mean that is just how things are and when those things happen there are echoes in the world and sometimes the echoes are small and sad and sometimes they are really loud and that is just the butterfly effect is what.

Tragic onward consequences here is what I’m saying.

Motherfucking tragic.