She looks back toward him, her face etched with infinite patience. “You’re trying to outgame the universe. You realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?”
“C’mon,” he says with a smirk, “you’ve gotta be getting used to it by now.”
Eva smiles that little wry smile he’s come to love. But it passes quickly when the ground begins to shake. The tempo of the vibrations rises. The ground rolls, undulating. All around, people struggle to keep their footing. Some fail. Storefront windows shatter outward, spraying glass. Off in the distance, sirens bleat and echo.
Eva stumbles, but Jonas catches her. “Okay, maybe it’s not so ridiculous,” she deadpans.
“C’mon.” Jonas takes her hand, and they run as well as they can with the ground quivering under their feet. They pass people being rag-dolled by the tremors, but Jonas’s drive is singular. And Eva won’t let herself lose him. They dodge toppling lampposts and hurdle cars beached up on sidewalks. They avoid the geyser of a ruptured water main. The world tips ninety degrees.
“If the universe won’t even let you get there, how is this going to work?” Eva asks, doubt infecting her voice.
“We’re getting there,” he insists, willing it to happen.
Sure enough, they do. Day turns to night as they enter the massive shadow cast by the Spire’s enormity.
“My point is,” Eva insists, “security could stop us, the equipment could fail. A million other things could go wrong.”
“One step at a time.” It’s all Jonas has to guide him in this moment. Three PhDs and a Nobel, and this is all he knows. One step at a time.
The thought has barely taken form when a car attacks him, jumping up from the street toward the sidewalk. He hears Eva scream his name, her voice laced with panic, as he clocks its approach, instantly filled with an overwhelming urge to jump—a primal survival instinct—though he barely manages to leave the ground before the car barrels into him.
Jonas has only jumped eight inches, maybe a foot, but it’s enough to save his life. Rather than being rooted in place when the front end strikes him, he’s just barely airborne, and the impact causes him to tumble like a gymnast.
When he falls, the sharp crack is the loudest sound he’s ever heard. Louder than the metallic cries of the limousine launched off the Centralbron. Louder than the gunshots sparking off the steel railings at CERN. Louder even than the single shot that sent Amanda crumpling to the sidewalk.
His first thought is that it’s the crack of his bones. His ribs, most likely. But then he realizes it’s the sound of the car’s windshield spiderwebbing against his form as it charges into him. The collision hurls Jonas skyward again. He pinballs off the car’s roof before careening off the rear and smashing to the street. Behind him, the car clambers through a store window.
The sidewalk’s concrete claws at Jonas as he lands. Pain rockets through him. He has no idea if this is the aggravation of old injuries, a symptom of the quantum energies leaving his body, or merely the result of this newest series of assaults. It’s all he can do to keep from passing out. He wills himself to breathe. Something akin to sleep starts to grip him, and he commands himself to stay awake.
Then, hands are on him, trying to pull him up, but he’s too heavy. He regains communication with his legs and discovers they still work. He eases himself up, guided by what he assumes are Eva’s hands.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” she asks. He was just hit by a car, but the question doesn’t strike either of them as stupid.
Jonas tries to speak but can’t, so he just nods his head.
“Is anything broken?” Eva asks.
He shakes his head, though in truth, he has no idea. It feels like every bone in his body is broken.
The ground is still shaking. The city has become an ocean, and they’re being buffeted by the undulating street. Everything is swaying, and Jonas feels like a tiny figure in a snow globe being shaken vigorously by a child.
Pain is only a signal, he reminds himself, just neurons communicating with themselves. He reaches for Eva’s hand and pulls her behind him. They don’t run so much as fall in the Spire’s direction.
“It’s a matter of will,” he says.
“Are you talking to yourself or the universe?”
Jonas truly doesn’t know. “Is one more sane than the other?”
“Good point.”
The earth moves and shifts and rumbles, protesting Jonas’s defiance. If this truly is a battle of wills, then it’s simply a matter of refusing to surrender. The tremors become so violent that Jonas and Eva can no longer run. It’s all they can do to keep their balance, to keep moving forward, each step an act of cosmic rebellion.
With chaos blooming all around them, they press on, swimming against the tide of people flowing from the Spire in a chorus of frightened screams. Jonas pushes them aside, Eva following in his wake, until they land in a plaza of steel and greenery. Water that normally jets up from carefully designed fountains now erupts in errant, wayward volleys that smack against the polished concrete.
Overhead, the Spire looms and sways. Jonas knows that its frame is threaded with massive springs designed to buttress the huge structure against such assaults from the earth. He looks up and can barely see its summit.
They are so close. So close.
He grips Eva’s hand tighter and pulls them both inside. And the moment—the exact second—they spill into the granite and travertine lobby, a marvel of bleeding edge architecture and design, the earthquake ceases. It happens so fast, it’s as if a switch has been thrown.
“This doesn’t make any kind of scientific sense,” Eva says, disbelieving.
“That’s what every scientist says,” Jonas answers her. “Right before it does.”
Eva looks over to the reception desk, where a guard dutifully remains at his post. He barks at them in urgent Japanese.
“I’ll deal with him,” Jonas tells Eva. “Find Kobayashi.”
“You’re assuming he didn’t evacuate with the others,” she cautions.
“More like hoping like hell,” Jonas corrects as he makes for the reception desk.
Minutes later, Jonas and Eva ride an elevator in solitude. The tower’s technology makes the ascent whisper quiet and conveys the feeling that they are ascending to heaven itself. While CERN’s Large Hadron Collider had been constructed horizontally and spanned two countries, the Spire’s Linear Accelerator has been built vertically, running down the core of the massive tower and deep into the earth.
“Lucky the elevator is working,” Eva remarks.
