Mercury Shrugs

by Robert Kroese

  “Move,” said Mercury, ignoring the man. Christine felt him grabbing her arm. “Quick, while Lucifer’s distracted.”

  “Where?” asked Jacob, regarding the maze of boxes and equipment.

  “Anywhere,” said Mercury. “Just go!”

  Jacob set off down an aisle between two rows of machinery, Christine and Mercury following.

  “Who was that?” Christine asked, looking behind her.

  “That’s just Drekavac,” said Mercury. “He’s harmless. Keep moving.”

  They made their way through the maze. Christine had no idea where they were or how big this building was; she could only hope they would eventually reach an exit. But just when she began to suspect Jacob was leading them in circles, an explosion sounded somewhere behind her. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered out, and the building was suddenly dark except for minimal battery-powered emergency lighting. Another explosion sounded farther away, followed by distant shouts and the clattering of debris on the floor.

  Jacob stopped, holding his hands over his head. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “FBI is attacking the building,” said Mercury. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Where?” asked Jacob. “I can’t see anything!”

  “Just keep going as straight as you can. We’ll hit the perimeter wall eventually.”

  But as he spoke, someone came around a corner just ahead of them and stopped short. His face was obscured in the dim light.

  “There you are!” exclaimed the man. “Sorry, got turned around.”

  “Who the hell…?” Jacob started.

  “Balderhaz?” asked Mercury, slipping past Christine toward the small figure, who was barely visible in the dim light. “What are you doing back here?”

  “Wait,” said Christine. “You mean this is Balderhaz? The Balderhaz? As in—”

  “Who are these people, Mercury?” asked Balderhaz. “What happened to the other angel and the girl with the purple hair? I like her, she smells like cinnamon.”

  “It’s complicated, Balderhaz,” Mercury replied. “I’ll explain later. For now, we need to get out of here.”

  “You went through, didn’t you?” Balderhaz asked excitedly. “You went back in time!”

  “Yes,” said Mercury. “Again, if we could just move toward the exit—”

  “Pity,” said Balderhaz.

  “What?” asked Mercury. “What are you talking about?”

  “You should have found the shard and gotten rid of it while you were back there. Then Lucifer would never have been able to hook it up to the portal generator.”

  “We did!” said Mercury. “It’s all taken care of. I gave the shard to… oh, shit.”

  “What?” asked Christine.

  “You’re saying Lucifer hooked up the shard to the portal generator?”

  Balderhaz nodded.

  “Then we failed. Somehow Lucifer got the shard despite our efforts.”

  “You mean because of our efforts,” said Jacob. “You were right, Mercury. It was pointless to meddle. Whatever we chose to do, we would have ended up causing him to get the shard. Did end up causing him to get it. So much for free will.”

  “Ha!” cried Balderhaz. “Free will. The nutty ideas you people come up with. You’re stuck in a causal loop. Free will is an illusion. Right now, an earlier version of you is somewhere in this building, about to go back in time and go through everything you just went through to wind up here.”

  “Figures,” said Mercury. “Let’s just get out of here before the FBI levels this place.”

  “What if Mercury stops him?” said Christine. “Stops the other Mercury, I mean. Keep him from going back in time.”

  “I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” replied Balderhaz. “The universe is pretty stubborn about this sort of thing. You’ll probably get yourself blown to pieces.”

  “Well that’s just fucking fantastic,” said Christine. “So we did all that work for nothing. Nothing we do makes any difference.”

  “Cool your jets, princess,” said Balderhaz. “I said free will is bullshit, not that nothing you do makes a difference. The trick is to beat the universe at its own game.”

  “Seriously,” said Mercury. “Can we have this discussion outside? It’s getting kind of explodey in here.”

  “This will just take a second,” Balderhaz said, pulling something from his pocket.

  “What’s that?” asked Jacob. It was a disk made of some silvery metal, rather larger than a quarter. As Balderhaz held it up, Christine saw that it seemed to catch the light in a strange way, swirling and pulsing as if the coin had a mind of its own.

  “A quoin,” said Balderhaz. “My own invention.”

  “A coin?” said Christine. “You didn’t invent coins.”

  “Quoin,” said Balderhaz. “Kwuh-oin. As in quantum coin. You flip it, but the final resting position of a quoin is determined by subatomic quantum phenomena. It’s truly random.”

  “How is that different from a regular coin?” asked Christine.

  “Coin tosses aren’t truly random,” said Jacob. “Their behavior can be described using classical—”

  “Can we have the philosophical discussion later?” asked Mercury. “We get it. Truly random. So what?”

  “So we pick two actions, one associated with heads and the other with tails—”

  “We know how a coin toss works, Balderhaz. Please get to the freaking point.”

  Balderhaz sniffed. “Heads, Mercury goes and warns himself not to go back in time. Tails, Mercury doesn’t warn himself and leaves with us. Two incompatible results. Mercury can’t both cause Lucifer to get the shard by going back in time and cause him to get the shard by not going back in time. The quantum randomness allows us to break free from the causal loop. There’s a fifty percent chance he will succeed in preventing Lucifer from getting the shard.”

  “And a fifty percent chance he will fail,” said Christine.

  “Yes, sweetie,” said Balderhaz. “That’s how percentages work.”

  “This is insane,” said Jacob. “We can’t leave the fate of the universe to a coin toss.”

  “Quoin toss,” said Balderhaz. “And if you don’t, you have a hundred percent chance of failing.”

  “What the hell,” said Mercury. “It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever done. Let’s try it. Whatever happens, the rest of you get the hell out of this building.”

  “Excellent,” said Balderhaz. “Here goes nothing!” He tossed the quoin in the air and caught it in his palm, then slapped it onto the back of his other hand. He pulled his hand away and looked at it.

  “Well?” said Christine. Mercury and Jacob stared dumbly at Balderhaz, unable to see the quoin’s surface in the dim light.

  Balderhaz looked up at them and grinned.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Tails!” Balderhaz announced.

  “Great,” said Mercury. “So I let myself go back in time and everything happens just like it already happened. Truly a groundbreaking strategy. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Good luck!” said Balderhaz, ducking down a side alley.

  “Where are you going?” Christine called. But Balderhaz was already gone.

  “Should we go after him?” Jacob asked.

  “He’s fine,” said Mercury. “Keep going.”

  Another explosion sounded somewhere to their right. Jacob, Christine and Mercury continued straight until the aisle widened into a larger open area. The lighting was a bit better here.

  “There!” said Mercury, pointing to their left. An EXIT sign glowed in the distance. Mercury looked to his left and then to his right, but saw no signs of Lucifer’s minions. “The coast appears to be clear,” he said. “I’ll go first. Stay right behind me. And when you go out the door, put your hands up. Ready?”

  Christine and Jacob nodded. Mercury took a deep breath and sprinted toward the exit. He slammed into the door, throwing it open, and stumbled outside, his hands in the
air. He grimaced, anticipating a hail of bullets. But it didn’t come.

  “STEP AWAY FROM THE BUILDING,” the voice of the FBI said from somewhere behind a bank of blinding floodlights. Mercury, Christine and Jacob did so, their hands still in the air. When they were fifty feet or so from the building, dark-clad men appeared and seized them. They were dragged into a large black trailer which looked ominous from the outside but turned out to resemble an upscale dentist’s waiting room on the inside, complete with black leather couches and outdated copies of Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated. John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change” leaked almost inaudibly from unseen speakers.

  The black-garbed men instructed them to sit, and they did so. The black-garbed men left.

  “I don’t get it,” said Jacob. “Are they arresting us? What’s going on?”

  “Not arresting us,” said Mercury. “Charming us. They know I’m an angel, and they probably think you two are as well. They’ve lost control over Tiamat, so they’re desperate for allies. That’s why we’re getting the soft touch. They’re going to try to convince us to cooperate with them against Lucifer.”

  “And are we going to?” asked Christine.

  “The question,” said Mercury, “is whether they are going to cooperate with us.”

  As he spoke, the door to the trailer opened and three more people—two men and a woman—shuffled in, prodded by more black-garbed men. Christine recognized the men. The first was a cherub named Eddie, who was a sort-of friend of Mercury’s. The other was Balderhaz. The woman was cute, in pudgy, purple-haired sort of way.

  The black-garbed men instructed the newcomers to sit, which they did. The black-garbed men then left again.

  The three angels, one man, and two women sat for a moment, regarding each other nervously.

  “Wow,” said Mercury after a moment. “This is really awkward. And I say that as someone who recently witnessed his own death. Okay, let’s do this. We’ll go around in a circle, clockwise. Say your name, a sentence or two about yourself, and your favorite Gilmore Girls character. I’ll start. My name is Mercury, I’m an angel probably best known for imploding the Moon, and I refuse to answer the question on the grounds that there are too many great characters on that show to pick just one.” He turned to Christine, on his left.

  “Uh, Christine Temetri,” she said. “I used to be a journalist. Then I was sort of a focal point for the Apocalypse for a while. Lately I’ve been focusing on hunting and gathering.”

  “I’m Balderhaz,” said Balderhaz. The group sat for a moment, staring at him, but it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else.

  “Oh,” said Eddie. “I’m Eddie, AKA Ederatz. I’m a cherub. I used to work for the Mundane Observation Corps. I, um, helped Mercury save the world a few times. And, um, Rory I guess?”

  “Suzy Cilbrith,” said Suzy. “Former software developer turned whistleblower turned girl Friday, I suppose.”

  “I’m—unck—Jacob Slater,” said Jacob. “I was a forensic analyst for the FBI. Lately I’ve been hanging out in prehistoric Africa with Christine, mostly just trying to survive. Oh, and I always kind of liked Luke.”

  “I forgot to answer that part,” said Suzy. “I like Luke too.” She smiled sheepishly at Jacob, who smiled back.

  “Glad we have that settled,” said a man entering the trailer. “I was always partial to Sookie.”

  “Special Agent Burton,” said Mercury. “Surprised to see you up and around, considering how determined your coworkers seem to be to kill you.”

  “Don’t get up,” replied Burton, sinking into a plush chair. “We’re going for a ride.”

  “Where?” asked Christine.

  “Not far,” said Burton. “Just outside the blast radius.”

  “Blast radius of—unck—what?” asked Jacob.

  “Ten kiloton bunker-buster,” said Burton. “Non-nuclear, but it has a hell of kick.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” said Mercury. “Even if that thing gets through Lucifer’s defenses, you won’t kill him. You’ll just scatter him and his minions to the wind. They’ll reincorporate somewhere else and go back to their evil plans.” As he spoke, the trailer began to move slowly over the rough ground.

  “But without the portal generator,” said Burton. “And now that we know what to look for, we can prevent them from building another one.”

  “Also,” Jacob interjected. “Unck.”

  “It’s a bad idea,” said Mercury. “Let me go back in there. Maybe I can still stop him from going back. Failing that, I can follow him back in time and thwart his plan there. I always do.”

  Jacob tried again, “And didn’t you say, unck, that—”

  “Out of my hands,” said Burton. “I only brought you all here because I thought you might be interested in working as consultants for the new division of the FBI that I’ll be heading. From what I’ve been able to gather, you’ve all had quite a bit of experience with—”

  “Unck!” Jacob shouted, and everyone turned to face him. He held up his hand and took a deep breath. “The shard,” he said finally. “Mercury said that—”

  “Oh shit,” said Mercury. “He’s right. If you blow up that place, you’ll destroy the shard.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Burton.

  “Meaning you might tear a hole in the space-time continuum. At the very least, you’re going to kill everyone within several miles.”

  “Ubiquium,” said Balderhaz, nodding thoughtfully. “Powerful stuff.”

  Burton looked from Mercury to Jacob to Balderhaz, a dubious look on his face. “That’s what Tiamat said before she escaped and freed Lucifer from prison.”

  “And the fact that you can’t tell the difference between an actual threat and one of Tiamat’s bluffs is a compelling argument for keeping the FBI the hell out of things you don’t understand,” said Mercury. “Call off the attack.”

  “Nothing I can do about it,” said Burton. “The order comes from the President himself. Neutralize the threat at any cost. We’ve tried smaller scale explosives, but Lucifer has put up some kind of invisible barrier. Nothing gets through it.”

  “That’s the problem!” cried Mercury. “This isn’t a conventional enemy. You can’t neutralize him by—”

  Half a dozen explosions sounded outside, in rapid succession. The trailer continued to roll slowly away from the scene.

  “What was that?” asked Suzy.

  “Sounds like RPGs,” said Jacob.

  “They’re distracting him,” said Mercury. “Trying to lull him into a false sense of security, so when the bunker buster comes, he’ll let it detonate on the shield like the rest of the bombs.”

  “Except the bunker buster will detonate twice,” said Jacob. “Once when it hits the shield, and then again, a split-second later—with a hundred times the force. It’ll level that place.”

  “How long do we have?” Mercury asked.

  Burton glanced at his watch. “The bomber is three minutes out.”

  Mercury leapt from his chair and gripped Burton by his lapels. “Call it off, you psychopath!”

  “Sit down,” said Burton coolly. He was pointing a gun at Mercury with his right hand. In his left was the Balderhaz cube, which he had evidently retrieved from Suzy.

  Mercury sighed and stood up, nearly losing his balance as the trailer went over a bump. “So the veneer of civility turns out to be pretty thin,” he said. “One little bump and the pistol comes out. I don’t see a future in this relationship, Special Agent Burton.”

  “Sit down and we’ll talk it over,” said Burton.

  “You know what your problem is, Burton?” said Mercury, still standing, his head brushing the ceiling of the trailer. “You’re a reactor. You react to situations based on previous experiences. And you’re a quick learner, I’ll give you that. But your methodology prevents you from reacting appropriately to unprecedented situations. And what we have here—” As he spoke, the trailer went over another bump, causing Burton’s
aim to drift wide for a moment. Mercury went limp, spinning around and falling into Burton’s lap while seizing Burton’s wrist with his right hand. He squeezed hard, and there was a crack. Burton grunted and the gun fell out of his hand into Mercury’s. “—is an unprecedented situation,” Mercury finished. He kissed Burton on the cheek, stood up and shot the latch on the trailer’s rear doors twelve times. The doors fell open, revealing the portal facility against the night sky. A dirt road rolled away beneath them.

  “It was unlocked,” Burton said.

  “Also?” Mercury said, taking a step toward the opening. “You have no style.” He tossed the gun to Burton and leapt out of the truck.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mercury sprinted at top speed toward the portal facility, praying nobody took a shot at him until he was out of range of the Balderhaz cube—which was still receding along the road along with Special Agent Burton and the others. Fortunately, the feds didn’t seem terribly interested in a madman running toward the target of the bunker buster bomb; they were preoccupied with getting out of the way of the blast. The helicopters too were arcing away from the scene. As far as Mercury could tell, the only human beings still present were two dozen or so agents ringing the building at a distance of about a hundred yards, firing rocket-propelled grenades from shoulder launchers. They seem to firing at random locations; the grenades mostly exploded harmlessly a few yards from the roof or somewhere near the perimeter of the building. Occasionally one would get a little closer, doing minor damage to some section of the building. Lucifer didn’t have enough demons inside to maintain a full barrier; they were having to shift their efforts from place to place to react to the attacks. There was no way they were going to be able to repel the bunker buster. Maybe if they knew it was coming, one of the demons could redirect the bomb away from the building, but that required more effort than simply putting up a semi-solid shield for the bombs to detonate against.

  Lucifer had to know that the FBI would eventually graduate to weapons he wouldn’t be able to repel. That’s all the feds knew how to do: escalate the situation until was resolved, one way or another. Lucifer’s goal was obviously to go through the portal before there was nothing left of the facility but gaping crater. Mercury could only hope the portal was too damaged for him to escape. Of course, it didn’t really matter what Lucifer did if the bunker buster destroyed the shard, annihilating the Earth. If Mercury couldn’t stop Lucifer, he had to at least get the shard out of harm’s way.