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“It wasn’t by design,” Bart Young said, “although it did convince me we needed to conduct some field experiments to test the strange matter’s destructive potential. Samoa, and particularly the deserted island your friend was living on, sit over a mantle plume. We’d had a secret collection facility there for years. We found the little monk on one of our security s
weeps of the island and evicted him. If I’d known then that he’d make so much trouble I would have just had him killed.”
“But how was the island destroyed?” Riley asked.
“There was an earthquake almost immediately after the monk left. We accidentally lost the magnetic field, and some of the strange matter was released. I managed to escape with Tin Man.”
Emerson had raised eyebrows. “And everyone else working there?”
Bart Young shrugged. “Casualties of war. If you want to make an omelette, you have to be prepared to break a few eggs.”
“Enough talking,” Tin Man said. “They’re just stalling until their army arrives…if there even is an army. This is obviously an impasse, so maybe I should just put a hatchet in the Penning trap he’s holding and get on with it.”
“You’re an idiot,” Bart Young said to Tin Man. “You’re a psychopathic imbecile. Let me handle this.”
Tin Man swung his hatchet and in one fluid movement he sliced Bart Young’s head from his neck. The head fell to the ground and lay there with its eyes still open. The rest of the body went over like rigor had already set in. Crash.
“I’m not an imbecile,” Tin Man said. “Nobody calls me names like that and lives.”
“He was a bit of a bully,” Emerson said, holding tight to the Penning trap, “but decapitation seems extreme.”
“He was the imbecile,” Tin Man said. “He had small goals, motivated by greed. I have no interest in anything as profane and temporal as power and wealth.”
“What then?” Emerson asked.
“Armageddon. The end of the world. Rulers and conquerors come and go with the passage of time. Some are remembered. Most are forgotten. There is only one way to truly be eternal and omnipotent. Destroy that which God created, and you become as a god yourself.”
This isn’t good, Riley thought. He wasn’t just evil. He was insane. And evil and insanity was a bad combination.
“I’ll give you a choice,” Tin Man said. “I’ll allow you to die as a gift to the strange matter. Or I can bury my hatchet in you.”
“I can’t let you do either of those things,” Emerson said, carefully inching away from Tin Man.
“You can’t escape me,” Tin Man said. “I have an army. They’re watching. They’ll advance if I give the signal. You have no way out. My army controls your access to the road, and to the west there’s nothing but ocean.”
Emerson was moving in the direction of the ocean. He was backing up across the meadow behind the house, keeping his eyes on Tin Man.
Riley was following, walking parallel to Tin Man.
“Thinking of suicide?” Tin Man asked. “Maybe leaping off the cliff with the trap? That would be interesting. I could watch it swallow the ocean and the cliff and work its way up to me inch by inch. And then there would be the glory of the ultimate death and rebirth.”
“There might not be rebirth,” Emerson said. “It’s one of those things that’s open to debate. And from what I’ve seen, the death part isn’t good.”
“The pain will be exquisite,” Tin Man said. “And it’s inevitable. I have you trapped.”
Emerson stopped and stood his ground. He and Tin Man were of similar height and build. Emerson was the younger of the two. Neither man showed any fear.
“I can’t give you the trap,” Emerson said.
Tin Man smiled. “Then I suppose I have to kill you.”
Emerson set the trap on the ground and moved between the trap and Tin Man.
“Take the trap back to the car,” Emerson said to Riley. “I’ll join you when I’m done here.”
Riley rushed in and grabbed the trap. She wasn’t a cream puff. She went to the gym and worked with free weights, but the Penning trap was heavy and awkwardly shaped. She hugged it to herself and backed away until she was at a safe distance.
Tin Man crooked his finger at Riley. “Bring it here.”
