The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,181
that business?”
It was a weighty question. Faraday knew he could come out of hiding and challenge the new order—he might even succeed in calming the current turmoil and bringing a semblance of decorum and integrity back to the scythedom. But why? The push and pull would still be the same. A new “new order” would eventually rise and cut the feet off all their ideals. It was time for another way.
On the panel before them, held in place by a double-ring lock, was a two-pronged switch marked simply TRANSMITTER ARRAY. It resembled, like the transmitter itself, a tuning fork. Faraday had to laugh. A joke on all of them, compliments of the deeply disillusioned founders.
“We still don’t know what it will do,” said Munira.
“Whatever it does,” he said, “it will be an imperfect solution. So let us embrace the imperfect.” Then he held the scythe ring out to her once more. “I know you have refused it… but I need you to be Scythe Bathsheba, just once, and never more. Then you may return to the Library of Alexandria, and I will make sure they treat you with the respect you deserve.”
“No,” said Munira. “I’ll make sure.”
She took the ring from him and slipped it on her finger. Then Scythe Faraday and Scythe Bathsheba closed their hands into fists, inserted their rings into the panel, and pulled the switch.
* * *
Up above, the island was in flames, courtesy of the first exploding ship. Buildings, trees, everything that could burn, were raging in the inferno as if the atoll was the rim of a volcano once more.
Then a heavy hatch on a plateau that hadn’t opened for hundreds of years slid to the side, and the two prongs of the giant transmitter rose through the flames. It locked in position and sent out its message. It was not meant for human ears, so it was neither heard nor felt. Even so, it was incredibly powerful. Penetrating.
The signal only lasted for a microsecond. A single sharp pulse of gamma radiation. G-rays. Although some would argue it was A-flat.
* * *
In the bunker, Faraday and Munira could feel a vibration, but it wasn’t coming from the transmitter.
It was coming from their hands.
Faraday looked down to see his ring developing hairline fractures like ice on a thawing pond. He realized what would happen an instant before it did.
“Look away!”
Like a high C shattering fine crystal, the gamma pulse shattered their diamonds, and when they looked down, the gems were gone. Only the empty settings remained, and a viscous, dark fluid with a faint metallic smell spilled down their knuckles.
“So what now?” Munira asked.
“Now,” said Faraday, “we wait and see.”
* * *
Scythe Sydney Possuelo was with his High Blade when their rings burst. He looked down at his hand, shocked; then, when he looked back at High Blade Tarsila, it seemed an entire side of her face had gone slack—not just that, but that entire side of her body, too—as if her brain had had some sort of massive hemorrhage that her nanites could not repair. Perhaps it was a piece of the diamond, he thought. Maybe it had ruptured with such force that a fragment had lodged in her brain—but there was no entry wound. She breathed out a last shuddering breath. How strange. How unfortunate. An ambudrone would be here soon, no doubt, to take her for revival. But an ambudrone never came.
* * *
In Fulcrum City, the entire chalet atop the scythedom tower shattered with the force of hundreds of thousands of scythe diamonds exploding from within. Shards of glass and fragments of crystalline carbon rained down on the streets below, and the dark liquid that had been at the core of each diamond evaporated into the wind.
* * *
Ezra Van Otterloo was nowhere near a scythe’s ring. And yet just a few hours after they shattered, he found his hand growing so stiff, he dropped his paintbrush. The stiffness became a pain in his arm and shoulder, then a heaviness in his back, expanding into his chest, and he couldn’t catch his breath.
Suddenly he was on the ground. He didn’t even remember falling; it was as if the ground had risen up to grab him and slam him down. The pain in his chest was growing, everything began to darken all around him, and in a moment of intuition, he realized that this was the end of his life, and something told him that he wouldn’t be coming back.