Free Quantum Break by Cam Rogers Page B

masks each of these six men with French-made weapons was still human. None of them questioned what they were about to do. Their armor looked so heavy and clean and important. Kevlar-gloved fingers squeezed.
    Jack said, “Stop.”
    They did.
    Jack opened his eyes, his fingers splayed at the end of his outstretched arm. Beyond his fingers, the men, frozen in mid-action. Around the men a dome shimmered, like water. Like the distortion field that had sheathed the time machine.
    “Is it weird that I’m getting comfortable with miracles?”
    Will took a careful step forward, risked a closer look. “Do you know what you’ve done? You have deformed a very localized pocket of the Meyer-Joyce field.” Will extended a hand toward the shimmering bubble.
    “Don’t touch it! What if it bursts?”
    Will stopped. “We have to replicate this. Can you do it again?”
    “Not if these guys wake up, no. We have to…” The bubble began to flicker, shimmer. “It’s breaking.”
    Jack turned, snapped three shots into the window. Will yelped, and Jack kicked the panel out of its frame. It clattered and skidded off the dome outside. “Out the window.”
    Will hesitated. Jack grabbed Will, reached into the bubble—it didn’t break—and yanked something from the nearest belt.
    “Go!” He shoved Will toward the window. Jack’s brother, Will, braced against the frame. Behind them the ministutter failed.
    Jack shouldered Will out the window, then tumbled after, gracelessly, followed by a stream of reanimated bullets. Falling five feet he hit the laminated glass, hard, and then the grenade on the trooper’s belt detonated.
    Screams erupted from inside the building.
    Will was in his face, terrified. “Are you okay?”
    “Just glad the glass didn’t break.”
    “It’s reinforced. How do we get down from here? They’re going to kill us!”
    The canopy was an undulating design that tapered toward the ground on the far side. Three hundred feet beneath their shoes waited the hard, polished floor of the atrium. Two panels of glass—reinforced or not—between them and about two seconds of terror.
    Will was transfixed, staring at the ground below with an expression of total horror.
    “Will? Hey, Will.” Tucking the handgun into the back of his jeans Jack shook Will by the shoulder. Will reacted violently, stance wide, struggling for balance. “Will! We’re fine. We walk across this, to the far side, into your car, and we’re gone. Easy.” Will clearly wasn’t convinced. “C’mon, this’ll be fun.”
    “Fun?” And then, “Oh, this is your coping strategy manifesting again. I understand.”
    “I’ll go first, you follow.” Jack walked twenty feet to the next segmented glass panel, held in place by the ornate geometrical webwork of steel beams. He jumped up and down. “Totally safe.”
    “Please don’t do that.” Will took a breath, followed.
    *   *   *
    The old physics building—that redbrick relic of a bygone era—was mostly enclosed by the crystalline shell of the Monarch Innovations Quantum Physics complex. Only its new top levels jutted above the glass dome, the levels that held the lab and Monarch’s time machine. It was from the ground floor of this building that Senior Operative Randall Gibson emerged, into the vast domed lobby of the Quantum Physics complex. On his earpiece was his second-in-command, Donny, now in charge of the squad Gibson had left in the time lab.
    Gibson’s ear mic pinged—a call from the Tower. “Actual to C-1, activate rescue rigs.”
    Beneath their armor Gibson’s crew wore delicate wire-and-brace filament exoskeletons, wired to the portable chronon battery on their back. Simultaneously slapping a small chrome plate on each hip brought Gibson’s battery online. His skin stung sharply along the lines of the wiring.
    “Donny, you copy that?”
    Donny was a good guy. Gibson had worked with him for years: easy to get along with, happiest when taking orders, reliable in a