Jessa opened her eyes and released the tension from her hunched neck as she looked up. She was still surrounded by a crowd of chaos, and the dead eyes still looked down on her from above. Flynn, Hugo, Felicia, Audrey and Matt all wore scowls on their faces. Something wasn’t right. Their plan had failed. Again and again, Hugo’s thumb jammed into the top of the detonator. Nothing.

“We’re in range, this has to be close enough,” he said desperately.

Silas remained on the balcony, looking down at the mass below. His mouth hung slightly open, breathing long breaths, taking in the sight and the sound of the madness he created.

“No!” Jessa held back tears of frustration. “This is the only plan we had! Maybe we need to be closer?”

“I just don’t know,” Hugo said, helpless.

Jessa seized the detonator and ran before any of them could stop her. With all her strength she pushed and squeezed through the crowd to get closer to the stairwell. Suddenly, the sound of bullets ripped through the air. Jessa cowered amid shrieks around her. Again, another round of bullets machined from the barrel of a high-powered weapon, and Jessa knew it must be the others trying a more conventional way to bring Silas down. To the amazement of the crowd, Silas didn’t even flinch at the bullets. They ricocheted off the forcefield around him and scattered down below.

Jessa realised the extent to which Silas had prepared for this occasion, and at the same time realised that they could not eradicate him with their shoddy on-the-fly traps or weaponry. He was smarter than that. He was completely prepared and totally unreachable.

Finally, he spoke.

“Welcome to the revolution.”

His voice not only carried through the vaulted ceiling of St Paul’s, but also spoke out through the mouths of his chosen, speaking down to the onlookers like a surround sound system.

“The Age of the Parapsych begins tonight. People, citizens, realise unto me your faith in the parapsych and the unstoppable force of human evolution.”

All around, stunned faces stared and sobbed and begged for it to stop.

“Let me lead you all in this new beginning.”

“Please… please, no…” the beseeching voices whispered in response.

Silas’ arms rose up, as did the floating bodies above the crowd. His jaw hung low in an inhuman gasp as a deathly groan escaped the mouths of the children. Their small frames shook and shivered as Silas began to suck the life from them, pulling all the energy from their barely conscious bodies.

He shuddered. His face turned psychotically gleeful as the power took over him, running through his veins like electricity.

Then, in a second, he changed. A different expression flew over him. Shock, confusion. Jessa squinted, focusing hard on what was happening in the balcony above.

Pain. He was in pain. The children continued to tremble violently in the air, but as Silas tried to steal the life from them, his reality came crashing down.

Cecily turned her attention to him. Her face panicked, her hands gripped at Silas, trying to help him stand. Silas’s other two companions looked on, flummoxed and impotent.

Silas clutched at his chest, gasping for air. Pounding at his heart with one hand, he leaned against the balcony with the other, desperately trying to hold himself up. It looked like he was trying to speak, but anything he could say was drowned out by wails and shouts from the sea of confused and fearful onlookers below, their arms outstretched to the children above.

Jessa couldn’t take her eyes off Silas Lynch.

In an instant that took everyone in the room by surprise, a lightning strike of energy shot from his outreached fingertips and cracked across the expansive room. The crowd below screamed and instinctively shielded their heads. Cecily and the two men jumped back.

A silvery white beam shattered again through Silas’ body and up into the ceiling, fracturing stonework that crumbled down onto the heads of people below. Jessa could only look on as Silas battled between frantic writhing and spontaneous outbursts of energy that fizzled visibly below his skin before escaping his body and violently shooting outward into the high ceiling, showering the audience with dust and stone.

The children’s shuddering grew more intense, but their eyes regained a terrified focus, as each shake seemed to bring them back from the brink of death. Several of the younger and smaller children began to gasp in long, deliberate breaths, then the older ones followed suit.

Silas’ movement became intermittent, though the electric bursts continued to rip from his body.

Suddenly, the children choked one giant gulp together, taking in air like they’d been rescued from underwater. They fell back down to the earth, crashing into arms and heads below that pulled them into the crowd tightly and protectively.

And in one final burst of crackling energy, Silas’s form slumped over the balcony, his arms hanging down, his head dangling, his body dead and human.

The crowd roared, and many of them pushed toward the balcony entrance. The two men grabbed hold of the body and disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell. By the time the crowd rushed in, the men, Cecily Graves, and Silas’ lifeless body were all gone. Vanished.