“So you do know what it is.”
“I just try not to break anything angels steal from deities. Call it a fetish.”
“He says it’s a weapon,” says Alice.
Mason catches it with a flourish, like a juggler.
“When I couldn’t get the key to work, Aelita told me about the Singularity. It’s been my private project ever since.”
“If you want to blow up everything, you have what you need right there. Go ahead and do it.”
He holds up the crystal.
“With this? It will just start another universe and all the whole humans-versus-God-and-monsters game will start all over again. No. When this place goes I don’t want anything coming back.”
“Neshamah never said it could do that.”
“It can’t. I can. That’s why it was easy to duck out when Baphomet turned the generals against me.”
Mason puts the Singularity in his pocket.
“The trick is to contain the explosion. Allowing the blast to happen, but preventing it from coalescing back into a new universe.”
“How can you do that?”
He walks behind Alice.
“By setting the Singularity off within a divine object. Say a soul fresh from Heaven.”
He puts his hands on Alice’s shoulders.
“Her divine spark will increase the strength of the new Big Bang so that the new universe will blow itself apart before any of it can come together.”
“I bet I can yank out your spine before you do anything with Alice and that goose egg.”
“I don’t need long. I was hoping for just a few more minutes before you got here.”
“Where’s Aelita? Did she desert you in your hour of need?”
He rolls his eyes.
“The silly bitch went back to Heaven. You know her obsession with killing God? She got Neshamah but she wants the brother still in Heaven. Ruach.”
“She knew all about the Singularity,” says Alice. “She said Ruach told her.”
“Why would he give her something that could wipe out everything, including him?”
Mason wipes a few spots of hydraulic fluid from his cheek.
“Apparently, he thinks he’s figured out a way to survive the blast. It’s not possible, but he believes it and it got me what I wanted.”
“So, you’ve got Alice, the Singularity, and the big knife. But you haven’t done anything with any of it yet. What do you think happens now?”
“I’m going to set off my bomb and you’re going to try and stop me, which means that one of us is going to kill the other one. Or we kill each other.”
“I vote for the first one.”
“Me, too.”