“Matt! Good to see you, mate!” Hugo embraced his colleague with a genuine hug.

“You too, Hugo. And all of you. I’m glad you’re all okay,” he placed a hefty briefcase on the ground. “I come bearing gifts. So what’s the plan?”

“Well, we found his route in and out of the building,” Jessa began.

“It’s a pretty big distance,” Hugo followed up. “What’s our range?”

“Probably up to eighty feet. I could only get the cable stuff, you know?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, that’ll work. We can lace the stairwell and the balcony with that, no problem.”

“How long will it take to set up?” Flynn asked.

“Not long, maybe an hour or two,” Matt replied, patting Flynn on the shoulder. “It’s getting late, though, so we should get started.”

Jessa was surprised to see inside the suitcase. It mostly contained a large wire, nothing like the red sticks of dynamite she’d been expecting. The only explosive devices she’d ever seen were in movies and cartoons, and despite Matt’s precursor that he had brought “the cable stuff,” she still hadn’t expected something so pedestrian.

“Are you sure this’ll do it?” she asked, trying not to sound doubtful. “I mean, it doesn’t look very powerful.”

“Don’t be too quick to judge. This is good stuff, I promise,” Matt said. “They use this a lot in controlled demolitions. It’s a really localised blast. Nice and clean.”

They laid the cable along the edge of the steps and up to the balcony, positioning it all around the skirt of the balcony before trailing it back down the other side of the stairs. Matt explained that it had to be carefully pinned into place, making full contact with the receiving surface, and that it had to retain maximum tautness for the signals to travel through the wiring. He explained it all so matter-of-factly that they didn’t even stop to consider what they were setting up for. Explosion. Destruction. Murder.

“I keep thinking…” Audrey said, hushedly, “should we be worried that he’s around here somewhere? Right now, I mean. That he knows what we’re doing, or that he can see us?”

“Doubtful,” said Felicia. “I don’t believe he would waste his energy coming out here prematurely. He’s around, somewhere. But far enough.”

Slowly, the cable was affixed. Each pin had to be knocked into the stone, which was tiring and precise work. There was only one mallet, too, which meant it was also slow progress. The weary group took the chance to rest while Matt and Hugo took turns hammering. Audrey pulled out a miniature first aid kit from the backpack and found a sanitary wipe.

“Hold still,” she said.

“What is it?” Jessa asked.

“Nothing, you’re just a little grubby.”

Jessa looked at Audrey’s face. Her skin looked less porcelain than usual. Her eyes were tired, and her lips looked dry and glossless. Audrey rubbed the wet wipe over Jessa’s hands like a mother would a toddler after petting animals at the zoo. Caring, concerned, calming.

“All right, I think we’re almost done,” Matt stood back, admiring their work. The cable was so perfectly flush with the wall that it was almost invisible against the centuries-old interior that they were preparing to devastate.

“Now I have to assemble the important bit.” He attached a few small boxes to each end of the cable, which fortunately were far enough inside the stairwell that they were completely veiled by darkness. Then he pulled out a strange laptop computer and connected it to one of the little boxes. “I just have to program it, then we’ll be ready to rock.”

They sat without conversation, listening to the sound of Matt’s typing and tapping and humming and haaing.

“Done,” he closed the mini computer, put it back in the briefcase, and took out one last object.

“Here,” he offered something to Hugo. “Detonator. Hold the underneath button for five seconds to activate. Let go. Press three times to confirm activation. Then press the red button on the top when you’re ready to—” he imitated a bomb going off.

They wandered away from the balcony and walked around on the ground level of St Paul’s Old Cathedral, where they came across an entire wing of the building that had become a storage area for staging blocks and large structures of folded tiered seating. They pulled apart a few obstacles and crawled into a space just large enough for the six of them to sit. Protected by a giant wall of the vacant audience seats on one side, and a cold stone wall of the building on the other, they took a moment to relax, as much as relaxing was possible. Hugo and Matt both sat with loaded weapons close at hand.

“Now what?” asked Flynn. “Should we go outside?”

“No way,” Matt said quickly. “It’s chaos out there.”

“Really?” said Audrey. “Did it get worse?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Matt answered. “Fires, riots, stabbings, gunfights. There have been a few street fights between groups of parapsychs and laterals.”

“That’s absurd!” Audrey burst angrily. “People need to come together in a time like this, not fight over petty differences! Why is that happening?”

“I don’t really know,” Matt shrugged. “Seems that there’s some kind of parapsych-a-phobia catching on. Some people seem to think that every parapsych knew about Lynch and all this stuff.”

“But it’s not as though every parapsych is like him,” said Flynn.

“Silas believes every parapsych could be as powerful as he is,” said Felicia. “And he might be right. If laterals realised that, the world as we know it could change in an instant.”

“But every parapsych isn’t just going to suddenly be like “yeah, great, please make me powerful and evil,” though,” Flynn replied.

“I guess if you’re a lateral then maybe you just don’t really understand how it works,” Matt said. “They’re not thinking logically. All they know is, they now have a reason to be scared.”

“But I’m a lateral and I’m not scared of parapsychs, and I know plenty of people who will be very reasonable,” said Audrey.

“I hope you’re right,” said Matt.