Chapter 409 — Forty-Eight Hours II

Chapter 409: Chapter 409 — Forty-Eight Hours II

Then the King’s face softened.

He looked down the lens with an expression of something very close to sympathy.

"I know this will have frightened a great many people tonight," he said. "Particularly in Ireland. So I want to say this to the ordinary people of Ireland, directly. I bear you no ill will. None at all. You are not my enemy. You never have been."

He held out his hand toward the camera, palm up.

"You can end this. You don’t need to suffer. You need only tell your leaders to accept what is being offered. Encourage them. Write to them. Stand outside their offices, if you like. The safety of your families is in your hands."

Behind James, his mother made a sound that was not a word.

James had watched Alice smile at people she was about to kill, on a floor where she meant every bit of it. He had never once watched anything as false as that hand.

The King had promised to blow up a building full of Irish people tomorrow. Now he was telling them, kindly, that he was offering them safety.

"Forty-eight hours," said the King. "It should be more than enough time to make the right decision."

He stood up.

He came forward a step toward the camera, close enough that his face filled the screen. He did not raise his voice.

"The first twenty-four hours have already begun," he said quietly. "If Dublin is silent, you’ll all see the cost of that silence when they’re over."

He smiled, a small polite smile, as if he had just finished opening a hospital wing.

"Thank you for your time. Good evening."

The screen went black.

---

For several seconds nothing happened at all.

The television was black and silent. James’s phone in his hand was black. Nyra was still holding the remote out. His mother stood in the doorway with the tea towel twisted in both hands.

Then, with a jolt and a burst of sound, the news came back.

It was the same BBC World studio as before. One of the journalists was half out of her chair. The presenter had one hand pressed to his earpiece and a look on his face James had never seen on a newsreader, a man who had lost the thread of his own programme and could not find it.

"We—we are getting reports," the presenter said, "that the transmission you’ve just seen appeared on connected screens in—it would appear, in a great many countries, simultaneously. We have no explanation for how that happened. Governments are urgently seeking—" He stopped, and listened. "I’m being told we have confirmation the broadcast was seen in Seoul, in New York, in—"

The second presenter had a sheet of paper. "We’re told Irish authorities are preparing an official response—"

"—and that the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin has already been contacted by—"

"—just to recap what the King appeared to say, for anyone—"

It fell apart into overlapping voices.

James looked at his phone.

It was everywhere already. Clips of the speech were going up in thirty-second pieces with captions in every language, *KING CLAIMS DUBLIN BOMBING*, *48 HOURS*, *ANOTHER EXPLOSION EVERY DAY*. Millions of views were going up in front of him, and Irish accounts were posting faster than he could read them.

**@GalwayGoblin:** we are NOT handing ourselves over to that man. never. not one inch

**@saoirse_k:** my mam is crying in the kitchen. what are we supposed to do. what are we supposed to DO

**@dub_zero_fan:** if surrendering stops another bomb then honestly maybe

**@GalwayGoblin:** are you out of your mind

**@FloorTheoryIE:** less than 24 hours. less than 24 hours until the first one. why is nobody talking about the clock

**@tower_facts_daily:** HOW did that go out on every device on earth at once. can anyone actually explain that. anyone

**@NotABot_Honest:** he just admitted to terrorism on live tv. where is the UN. where is ANYONE

**@kellyb_nyc:** i’m american and i’m watching this in a bar and the whole room went silent

**@London_Raider:** i’m british and i didn’t vote for any of this. how is our own monarch allowed to threaten to murder civilians. is anybody in westminster going to say something

Every second or third clip was about the broadcast itself. It showed the same speech on a billboard in Tokyo, on the screens in a London railway station, on a laptop in a library in Lagos, and on the back of a seat on a plane. Every one of them had gone black at the same moment and come up on the same dark room.

Nobody could explain it. Nobody on the news, nobody online. People were guessing about satellites, hackers and some kind of ability, and none of them knew.

---

"Could you stop him?"

James looked up. Nyra had turned all the way round on the sofa to face him.

"If you went over there. You could, couldn’t you? You’ve killed—" She waved at the television. "You’ve killed things that were way scarier than a king."

He understood why she was asking. She had watched him on a stream kill things that flattened soldiers. In her head, the King of the United Kingdom was a man in a chair.

"It’s not one man, Nyra," he said. "Even if I could get to him, which I couldn’t, not without starting a war on my own. The people who did the festival, the woman at the hotel, they’re not him. They’re already here. Whatever he’s set up for tomorrow is already set up. Getting to him doesn’t tell me where any of it is."

"So what do we *do*, then?"

"I don’t know yet."

"James."

It was his mother. She had come into the room at last and was standing behind the armchair with her hands on its back.

"Don’t you go doing anything," she said. "Do you hear me? Don’t you go over there. I’ve had people from that country trying to take you off me before. I’ve had men in cars outside this house. I’m not having you go and—" Her voice caught. She steadied it. "You’re not a whole army. You’re one boy."

"I’m not going anywhere," said James.

He went round the armchair and put his hand over hers.

"I’m not going to England to look for him. I don’t even know what’s happening yet. First thing is you two stay safe, and I find out what the government’s going to do. That’s all."

She looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded.

"You both stay in," he said. "Don’t go out unless you have to. Not till somebody knows something."

Nyra did not argue this time.

---

His phone rang. It was Maeve.

"You saw," she said. It was not a question.

"I saw."

"The staff are terrified. Half the building’s been ringing me. People want to know if they should take their kids out of school tomorrow, or leave the city, or—" She breathed out. "Finn wants to know if we should get everyone in tonight. He’s ready to go now. Cillian’s been on the international feeds for the last ten minutes trying to work out what’s real and what’s people panicking."

"Don’t get everyone in," said James. "Don’t do anything on our own. Just make sure every one of our people is accounted for, staff and families. Keep the line open to the Bureau and the Gardaí, and do whatever they ask through the proper channels."

"And Finn?"

"Tell Finn not yet. We’re a guild, Maeve. We’re not the army. This isn’t ours to run."

There was a pause.

"I know," she said. "I just wanted to hear you say it."

"I’ll ring you back when I know more."

He hung up. Ciara’s name was further down the screen, in a message he had not opened. He left it. There was nowhere to put that today.

He put the phone down on the arm of the sofa.

Before he had even turned back to his mother, it rang again.

*O’Shea.*

---

James answered on the first ring.

"Ganner." O’Shea sounded exhausted, but he did not sound rattled. "I’m not going to ask you if you saw it. Everyone on Earth saw it."

"Yeah."

"Then I’ll be quick." James heard paper being moved somewhere behind him, and other voices. "The government is treating that as an immediate national-security crisis. It changes everything. Yesterday we had three words and no proof. Tonight the King of the United Kingdom sat in a chair and told the world it was him, and promised to do it again tomorrow."

"What’s happening?"

"The Taoiseach’s convening an emergency response now. Senior security, Defence Forces, everybody. The military are assessing the threat of a direct British move. The Gardaí and every security agency we have are working on one thing tonight, finding the next bomb before the first twenty-four hours run out." A pause. "I don’t run any of that. I’m the Bureau. I’m not a general, and I’m not the government."

James waited.

"Why are you ringing me?" he said.

"Because the government’s putting together a picture of what this country has. Not just soldiers. Everything. That includes our strongest Challengers, and whatever resources could be mobilised if this goes the way it might." O’Shea’s voice did not change. "You’ve just cleared Floor 40. You’ve got two Fallen Angels on a contract. You’re at the top of that list whether you want to be or not."

James did not say anything.

"I want to be clear about something," said O’Shea. "This isn’t Langford any more. This isn’t England trying to poach one useful kid or knock a guild off its feet. That man just threatened the entire country."

"Do they want me to fight Britain?"

He heard O’Shea breathe in.

"I’m not going to promise you there won’t be a war," O’Shea said. "I’d be lying, and I’ve not lied to you yet. But I’m also not going to hand you an order down the phone at ten o’clock at night. I want you in a room with the people who actually know what’s going on. There’s an emergency briefing. They’ll tell you what we know and what we might need. Then you decide what you’re prepared to do."

James looked at the television. The King’s face was back on it already, a frozen frame under a red banner, while a panel argued underneath.

He knew what walking into that room could mean. It meant Guild Zero in something that was not a floor and was not a Tower and did not have a Waiting Room at the end of it.

He thought about Ronan, standing sideways with one arm hanging off him. He thought about four coffins, and four people round a table only days ago who still had not decided whether they were ready to climb again.

He thought about a girl in a yellow raincoat clapping on the wrong beat, and a man in a dark room saying *tomorrow*.

"Where?" he said.

O’Shea told him. A time, a building and a gate to use.

"It’ll probably have changed by the time you get here," O’Shea added. "Everything else has tonight."

The line went dead.

---

James stood beside the sofa with the phone in his hand.

"What did he want?" said his mother.

"The government’s getting ready," James said. "In case it’s a war. They want to talk to me."

His mother did not say anything. She looked at him for a long time with her hands still on the back of the armchair.

Nyra had turned back to the television. The King’s face was on it again. They were replaying it from the beginning, the dark room and the chair and the smile, and *Hi, everyone*.

James picked up his car keys from the bowl by the door.

He was not going to promise anyone he would beat Britain. He was not going to promise he would save the country. He did not even know yet what they were going to ask him to do.

But tomorrow, somewhere in Ireland, there was going to be another explosion.

And the clock had already started.