attention, and it took one great hop toward the handkerchief-flapper, making a slurping sound as it landed. Once the grasshopper was a safe distance from the bubbling pool of Exunge, the hunter with the flamethrower touched the edge of the creature’s wing with a thin stream of fire. It ignited in an eyeblink, exploding into a screaming, popping column of blue and gold flame. The crowd oohed and aahed like children on the Fourth of July.
“I told you it was flammable,” Stanton said, as if Emily had stubbornly refused to believe him. He scratched the back of his head. “Had no idea they were attracted to the color red, though.”
Emily considered reminding him about his ill-considered red poncho, the one that she’d once coveted. But it seemed so long ago. So many things had happened since then, it wouldn’t even be like teasing the same person. Instead, she watched the hunters douse the smoldering grasshopper with shovelfuls of prairie dirt. When the grasshopper excitement had passed, she pointed at a pair of hunters who were kneeling near the fountain, fitting a silver apparatus over it.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re capping it, just like they’d cap a well of crude oil,” Stanton said. “It will allow them to pump out the Exunge.”
“And then what?”
“It will be stored in steel containers, like those …” Stanton pointed to a large supply of bullet-shaped containers lined up on the ground nearby. They were marked ominously with a skull-and-crossbones insignia.
“And what happens to the containers?”
“They are taken to government storage facilities,” Stanton said.
“And what does the government do with it? Is there some way to neutralize it?”
“After a fashion,” Stanton said. “When Exunge comes in contact with living matter, its destructive qualities are fixed and thus neutralized. So you can sacrifice living things to it, like goats or chickens, and render it harmless. How many goats or chickens depends on how much Exunge needs neutralizing.”
Emily looked at the pile of containers. There had to be at least fifty of them.
“I’m guessing that’s a lot of goats and chickens,” she observed.
“I don’t quite know what the government does with all the Exunge they store,” Stanton admitted, “but I’m sure they have a rational plan for its disposal.”
“Oh, sure. For the public good,” Emily said. “Just like the Maelstroms.”
The look in Stanton’s eyes indicated that he hadn’t ever quite made that connection before.
Two Aberrancy hunters were rolling a large, box-shaped cart over the ground. They came toward the crowd in an unswerving straight line; the crowd parted to let them through.
“What are they doing?”
“Following ley lines, looking for other weak spots where Exunge might be released,” Stanton said. He pointed at the boxy cart. “That’s a Potentiator. It measures the potential for—”
There was an extremely loud alarm from the box as it passed in front of Emily. She pulled back, startled. The hunters looked up. One of them jiggled the machinery.
“Get back!” one of the Aberrancy hunters cried loudly, his voice muffled behind the green glass of his visor. “There’s a bolus right underneath!”
Emily and Stanton were swept back as the crowd retreated in one panicked mass, shrieks and shouts peppering the air. Once the area was cleared, however, the alarm stopped. The men moved the Potentiator over the spot again, but the alarm did not repeat.
Stanton seemed to find this failure of unfathomable interest. He watched the man with the Potentiator closely. He put a hand on Emily’s shoulder.
“I want you to do something.” He pointed to the man who was fiddling with the Potentiator. “Go ask him for the time.”
“Are you insane?” Emily wrinkled her nose. “You think he’s going to stop and pull out a pocket watch?”
“Just go ask.” Stanton pushed her forward. She glared back at him, but went over to the hunter nonetheless. Before she could open her mouth to make Stanton’s ridiculous request, the alarm on the Potentiator went off with an ear-piercing shriek. She clapped her hands over her ears and stepped back. She felt Stanton’s hand wrap around her upper arm, and he pulled her back away from the crowd briskly, walking back toward the train. She heard the alarm stop again, and someone say, “Damn thing must be broken …”
They came to an abrupt halt when they were about fifty feet from the crowd. When she looked up at Stanton’s face, she knew that something was very wrong. He was extremely pale, and he had a hand over his mouth—a gesture she associated with periods when he was lost