Delilah strapped herself in to the pilot's seat. She looked out the cockpit window as Rocket and Flash untethered the mooring ropes. Out the corner of her eye, a sensor picked up movement at the terminal doors, she craned her neck to see Chelsea aiding a stumbling Julian out on to the icy, windswept pier.
"Rocket, look!" Delilah directed over the comms.
"On it," Rocket replied, sprinting down the pier as Chelsea and Julian limped out of the passenger hall toward the Saskatoon. Rocket skidded along the deck and supported Julian on to his shoulder.
"What happened?" Rocket asked Chelsea, shifting Julian's weight and dragging him along as they lurched for the airship.
Col Rose waited at the hatch and Chelsea bound up the gangplank and jumped in to the arms of her father.
"We have to go back for Alistair," Chelsea shouted over the Saskatoon's engines as he carried her aboard.
"Why isn't he with you?" Col Rose argued as Rocket handed over Julian to Roxanne's care; she took the stricken man and secured him in a cot at the rear of the cabin. Impatiently, Delilah pushed off and Flash dived aboard as Rocket secured the cabin door.
"We can't abandon Alistair," Chelsea implored, disentangling herself from her father. "Where's his grand-dad? Oi, you, tell them to stop!" she demanded when she saw the old man.
"Let me at 'em," Archie growled, forming fists, but Rocket and Flash held him back.
"The whole building is rigged to go," Rocket argued.
The Tommies, beaten and bruised, stared at Chelsea and Archie with tired expressions.
"No!" Chelsea moaned as her father physically restrained her, preventing her from running to the hatch. "Don't leave him!"
**********************
"Snooze you lose," Alistair challenged as he cunningly zoomed around the Agency of Change, pushing Alice out of his way. Leaning, he scooped up his injured friend as he whizzed past and skimming to a halt, he flipped his board 180 degrees and hovered on the spot. Undeterred, Alice blocked his exit and reloaded a fresh bullet in to the chamber before aiming her revolver at Alistair, coaxing him towards her. Her impulses ensured the synapse controlling her itchy trigger finger didn't snap.
"Give me that crown," Alice sneered. "And I'll defer your termination until you're a lobotomised vegetable so you don't feel a thing."
"No thanks," Alistair snorted brazenly.
"I did warn you this would all end in tears," Alice reminded, before waving her gun again. "Do you think just because your grandfather is the Ravenmaster anyone is going to care if I exterminate you or not?"
"You didn't scare him," Alistair responded, thinking back to the stolen footage. "And you don't scare me now!"
"If he's so brave," Alice asked, "why isn't here saving you now?"
Alistair cradled Balderick and felt sick to the stomach.
Robert stood gingerly, swaying groggily and found his sidearm.
"What did you say? Ravenmaster?" he scowled, unsure if he had heard right.
"My dear Robert, I don't why I ever bothered keeping you on the payroll."
Robert rolled his tongue around his mouth and realised half his teeth had been loosened; he raised his gun in Alice's direction, and in retaliation, Alice responded in kind.
"Alistair here, his grandfather is the Ravenmaster," she revealed. Then it twigged. "Oh...you didn't know? Was young Alistair here keeping secrets from you?"
Robert spat blood on the tiles.
"Is this true?" Robert enquired of Alistair; the boy nodded in the affirmative.
"They've found him?" Robert cheered wanly. "My oh my!"
Alice spoke scathingly.
"Then my doubts in you are well founded. Pitiful really, my dear Robert, you're so conflicted you don't even know whose side you are on anymore. So what's it to be today Robert? A double-double agent? Go ahead; tell me now you're still playing for the Loyalists. Did you think I wouldn't guess? Did you think I wouldn't find out? Did you think you could serve two masters?"
"I'm my own man," Robert fired back.
"Don't make me laugh," Alice sneered.
"All that digging in the dirt, it took a boy to find the Crown of England. Some archaeologist you turned out to be."
"The crown's useless," Robert countered. "By next week, people will be emboldened by these Loyalists spoiling the Chancellor's soiree. So, permit this boy and I to walk out of here and I'll let you live."
"Pardon me?" Alice bristled. "You'll let me live? You deign to issue me an ultimatum?"
"You don't frighten me," Robert asserted, squaring his shoulders. "Ich bin ein Englander!"
Alice cracked a grin.
"That's quite tragic."
"Pah! I've been undercover so long I no longer know who I really am anymore," Robert confessed. "But my dear Alice Mould, there is one thing I do know...you are a soulless bitch!"
"Oh Robert, no need for compliments."
"As I said, it's all over," Robert reiterated as the floor rumbled and explosive force could be felt under their feet, deep below.
"They've lit the fuse," Robert chuckled. "Welcome to the new world."
"Your histrionics are laughable. I decide when this over," Alice roared. Robert squinted through his puffy eye and tightened his grip around the trigger, steadfastly defiant.
"Alice, have you ever played Russian Roulette?" Robert asked. "Because I know I have a full clip and you have a one in six chance."
Never once shifting his gaze he issued an instruction to the boy.
"Alistair, use the Emergency Exit back there and scoot to the roof...fly as fast as you can and wait for me there, I will collect you. Allow me a minute to take out this trash."
Alice tracked both targets, number crunching the survivability permutations of this irksome truel.
"Alice, I beg you, don't waste your shot," Robert smirked.
"Robert, should I stay or should I go?" Alistair pleaded as the pistol was refocussed at his beating heart.
"GO!" Robert ordered sternly, cocking his weapon. "And don't look back!"
Alistair needed no second invitation and he put his foot on the thruster and zipped a retreat to the exit where he yanked the door back, found the stairs and began HyperBoarding up them at a great rate of knots. All the while the emergency alarms chimed and a vacant voice encouraged all to evacuate immediately if not sooner.
"That boy, like you, is a traitor, you erring idiot," Alice seethed.
"To err is to be human, you moron," Robert confessed. "But clarity, just like payback, is a bitch!" Robert held his nerve, flared his nostrils as Alice's eyes fired with infernal glee.
"Ready when you are Robert," Alice smiled. "Count to three?"
Robert nodded.
"One..." they counted off in unison.
BANG!
Alice's bullet nestled itself into Robert's chest. He gasped, his eyes betraying such shock and surprise. Alice parted her leather jacket and returned the revolver to its holster. Robert clutched his heart and fell to his side with a thump.
Alice placed her hands on her hips and stood over Robert without a skerrick of pity or remorse.
"I reloaded, you idiot. Try not to stain the marble as your life flashes by," Alice appealed callously as she stepped over him and began to pursue the boy.