Any doubt of the arrival of a singular event vanished as Laurent completed his performance.

Back in the Berlin presidential tower, Emilio walked to the mirror of his bathroom and removed the contact lenses. He placed the small pieces of plastic on the recharging pod. He changed his shirt and then walked back to the office to looked at the Berlin darkness. It was still night. The night's gloom was palpably humid, but there was no rain. The President's plan to take control of this situation ran ceaselessly through his mind. In truth, it underwhelmed the President. He was missing something; he had to do more.

The Visconti, these old pale monsters were preparing for nothing short of global annihilation. They were building an underground bunker, and he now knew why; the world was ending in a month. They somehow knew this interstellar war was coming. Mankind had finally met other lifeforms, and they were not simply Martians, they were from a different dimension altogether. Emilio knew in his heart that Electoral was not bluffing. She'd wanted this information to become public. He shook his head in annoyance at the emergence one of his chief science fiction pet peeves. The alien spoke English; how very convenient. In every science-fiction movie, aliens magically spoke English. That made most books or movies to him unwatchable.

Something important was on the horizon, he felt it. He needed to adapt part of his plan, if only he knew how. What also gave him pause was how Marilyn quickly had adapted to each new surprise. She'd stood there, in front of the boy and made the most of the rapidly evolving situation. She reacted with speed, calm, and though lacking her usual complete control; she'd also employed empathy and reason. That was a good sign. Marilyn was often temperamental. She could have easily shut down the broadcast. At least he assumed so; the boy's overriding control of the simulation surely couldn't reach that far. At least, the President hoped not.

There was also the issue of the software glitch when Laurent and the boy released each other's hands. He could only imagine the battle that had happened in the heart of the servers on Mars, where a second was an eternity. What he'd give to know what transpired; it appeared the boy was stronger than Marilyn. At the very least he'd surprised her. Emilio knew the computer was trying to manage this situation. To demonstrate her control, she offered to play the next round in the boy's world. Additionally, there was the apparent fact that Marilyn had mastered extra-dimensional travel. That was troubling, to say the least.

The offer to play the in Purple was brilliant. It would calm the general population and show the extent of her knowledge. If her goal was to boost her audience, she would achieve it. Every soul on Earth now knew that they were at apparently at war with aliens from another dimension, and each one would want to know as much as they could about their newfound enemy.

Emilio knew the vortex of events was the first paint strokes of a much larger canvas than he and his SAC had ever anticipated. Before he walked out of his office, the President grabbed the hand-written card drafted by a member of the SAC. Bent in half in the form of a V, the paper read, "Find what is truly unique about Sophie, find the cause of her power and you will discover the source of your problems." God, he loved the SAC. It was the only place his crazy mind slowed down. The physicist was right; Sophie was the key. Marilyn called the girl an Attractor; the word had to mean something.

He smelled the Scotch in his left hand. What did Sophie attract? Around her on Mars was a gathering of the oddest creatures ever assembled in this world. He walked out of his office and into the private elevator. As the doors opened, he took a deep breath and stepped onto what he felt was sure death. As usual, his mind flooded with all the possible scenarios in which he fell to his death. The President saw the cables of the elevator snap ten times. He heard the metallic noises, the crashes and even felt the weightlessness.

He smelled the scotch and closed his eyes as he pushed the number 21.

With age, he expected these visions to soften. They hadn't. He also expected himself to become desensitized to them. That also never happened. With time, his foresight was getting out of control and pushing him to more extremes. The images were gaining in crispness to a point they seemed like reality. He knew alcohol would work to calm his mind, but now was not the time to turn off his gift. He grabbed the glass with both hands and took a long and deep smell as the doors closed.

***

Then, as part of the kaleidoscope of images, he saw in his mind, one version was simply black.

The blank page in this book of images shocked him.

It felt like someone had censured this path forward, or that he saw a ripped page of a book. On then another hand, he was happy for the pause, but in the context of the Electoral competition, this newness was a problem. The images resumed confirming only one page was missing.

As he began to make his way down the tall building along the elevator shaft, a hundred more timelines poured into his hyperactive mind. None were black. There was simply too much information to untangle. Whatever was going on with the human race, this was only the beginning. The game still had a month to go. There was time, but he could barely imagine what would come next.

There were some facts he had kept to himself. The first Martian bobble-doll with the mind-control sand was sent to Earth a week before the Visconti began the construction of its Ark. That package had been sent by Marilyn to Nick, so it was a good bet Nick's mind was compromised. There was an excellent chance that Marilyn was the Ark's true architect.

Marilyn was helping the ghosts protect themselves from harm. The Ark project had extended invitations to some important humans, and it included a large depot of supplies. Apparently, it was to serve as mankind's failsafe. Emilio had to untangle this strange series of events. While he loved the complexity of the situation, this giant stellar chess board was now cluttered with dangerous pieces, and he could not afford to remove any one blindly.

His Jester was in play. Patrick confirmed Christian, the mass murderer, had decided to infiltrate the Visconti. To do so, the man wanted to kidnap one of the highest paid prostitutes in the world. The creature was a 'new-Siamese.' Body mutilation had reached new heights these days, and many surgeries were highly controversial. Some doctors agreed to amputate limbs and organs from healthy people for use on sick patients. The donors, enriched by millions, were stitched together as Siamese and shared organs. One such pair even went as far as to donate one healthy heart to science and merge most of their organs. Few new-Siamese awoke from surgery, but no one seemed to care.

This strange practice was morally repugnant to most; but now legal. Understandably, it was also the topic of many hours of prime-time television. Two identical twins from the Balkans used surgery to have one hand removed before stitched as a pair. The resulting creature had two of everything and having sex with the pair was the envy of many. Unsurprisingly, the Chairman of the Visconti found the creature exciting. Nick was attracted to the new-Siamese with the stage name of "Cotton-Candy."

At first, the Jester wanted to kidnap the new-Siamese and use a mind-implant to control that body remotely. But since there were two minds, the Jester needed an accomplice. Patrick had refused and negotiated a compromise with the Jester. Cotton-Candy was asked, and agreed, to loan her/their body in exchange for nine million credits. Emilio got a chuckle thinking Patrick and Christian both would use a computer and slip into these minds like puppet masters controlling a drone. Patrick and Christian would have to seduce and even touch the Chairman; a thought not without its humor.

Emilio laughed. He had compassion for Patrick. His friend would now awake in a strange female body, have to speak with the Jester, and worse, having to work his way into the bed of the Visconti Chairman. Christian, the Jester, was right. His angle was perfect. If for any reason the connection was lost, or the Siamese body was killed, the two men would simply awaken downstairs with the memories intact. Emilio still had a couple of days to find a great pun to use on Patrick as he regained consciousness.

Thinking of the amusing situation helped the President reach the 21st floor. He walked out, and seconds later, he was at the guarded vault door. The two guards let him in. Inside, aside from the twelve regular members of the committee, two men were nervously waiting. They were sitting on what seemed to be very uncomfortable wooden chairs. Everyone seemed lost in gloomy thought. The sunshine returned as the President walked in.

"I see everyone watched the latest exciting developments. I can read the headlines tomorrow: "Marilyn hosts an Alien." There was a long silence.

"How about Laurent's secret weapon to win Electoral 2072?" offered Francois Cleveland, the Mandelbrot recipient.

"Did you see me talk to Takeda, the virologist?" No one had. “Good.” Emilio smiled at the two guests in the room and then gestured the guards to close the door behind him. "This physical protection against Electoral feels a bit pointless by now. If she can see all the way into other dimensions, we're probably kidding ourselves with this box made of metal." The group smiled nervously. The President continued, "I am starting to feel like Marilyn may well be on our side here. Let's start with simple things. Before we talk with our guests," he unfolded the little card and threw it in the middle of the table. It slid as it turned and slowly came to rest. "This group wrote this a week ago. It says that Sophie is the key, not Marilyn. Now we have aliens, but I still think this is correct. I rarely put a restriction on this group; I am now. It's my opinion this card is right on the nose. Sophie is the key. Why?" Emilio looked at the men waiting patiently. "Francois, can you make the introductions? Who are these two gentlemen?"

Francois stood up. "One is my guest. Dr. David Lipvitch works at my university in the particle physics department. He is the man behind the theory of Heliocorium."

"Very well. Thank you for coming on such short notice." The man was clearly in awe of the President. "I'll call you David, call me Emilio. You're the father of the theory on Heliocorium. It's the theory that says fusion within the Sun can generate every heavy elements within the periodic table as part of secondary fusion chains. Your theory says this kind of debris float in the Sun's plasma, correct?"

The man was impressed by the President's understanding. "Correct," he answered in heavily accented Russian, "but we have a problem." The man simply could not pronounce the letter R.

"Please explain. No time to dumb this down. These people," he gestured at the group around the table, "have made me very knowledgeable in particle physics over the years."

The Russian spoke very loudly, "The living computer, validated my theory by showing in her introduction of the stupid game the presence of Heliocorium within the sun. It was part of the animation of the last round. But she showed it assembled at the heart of our star in the shape of a ball. After much calculation, she may be correct, and we have confirmed such an agglomeration is now happening. Heliocorium is not iron which generates the supernovas. Over a week ago, our star's internal combustion cycle changed and began to produce more heavy neutrinos. I measured them. They are well above 3 MeV." These were very energetic particles.

"Professor, David," corrected the President with his trademarked grin, "I can get journalists to give me these facts. In this room, your opinion is what matters, not the theory. What is going on? Are we fine?"

The scientist was stunned by the directness, but he was ready for the discussion. There was no mistaking; he was in the company of geniuses. For the first time in decades, someone important cared about his theories. For a long time he had tried to warn the world, today he did not need to shout. The President was his idol. David braced, "Something in the fabric of our star has changed. Like the physics of the universe itself. The change is only in the center of the sun. Other bodies with fusion, like Jupiter, are unchanged. With this local phenomenon, the speed of generation of Heliocorium in the sun is multiplied by several million. This figure is conservative. At this rate, I fear there will be saturation rather quickly. The floating matter will concentrate and form the ball. A large body made of Heliocorium will have too much energy to stay in the heart of our sun and will be spat out from our star, the same way our skin rejects a splinter."

Everyone but Emilio seemed impressed by the words. The President was smiling ear to ear. David continued, "depending on the energy level and the volume of the mass; the Heliocorium will spin out and find an orbit. We will see the formation of a gas or a liquid body. Either way, our system should quickly have one more planet."

Then there was silence. Emilio broke the awkward pause, "If such a body is ejected, what are its chances of impacting earth?"

"Very improbable," came the Russian scientist's instinctual answer. The men in the room cringed at the answer. Emilio hated that word. He saw the mistake. "You want to know how probable?" he corrected.

"Yes." Emilio was serious.

The man grabbed a wet pen on the ledge below the whiteboard. He uncapped it with one hand as any good teacher could. "It will depend on its size and its speed." He began to scribble numbers. "If its energy is weak enough, it will stay close to Mercury and will not venture out, so in this part of the summation the answer is zero."

Francois felt like he needed to guide his guest. "David, answer the man, please. This is not CNN."

The Russian researcher was nervous. "Our orbit is about 940 million kilometers long, and our planet is about 13,000 kilometers wide on that orbit. Even if we move at 100,000 km/h so each hour, we advance about eight times our size. So, a ratio of about twelve minutes over one year. How much is that?"

"One over 70,000 or about 0.01 percent at most," offered one of the other scientists at the table. A fraction of one percent."

"I don't buy it," said Emilio. "This is no random act. There is a war between worlds, possibly dimensions of existence, and if someone located in a different dimension wanted to reduce our kind to powder, this is frankly the best way to accomplish mass destruction without getting your hands wet. You don't create a weapon if you can't deliver it where you want. This natural disaster would also explain the Visconti's need to hide underground by the end of next month. It's as if these ghosts have been warned and were asked to keep us alive. David, do you have any way to measure where the Heliocorum mass is going?"

"We could try. As the mass assembles, there will be a shift in the gravitational field. The closer the event, the better the capacity to determine its location."

"What if these creatures have a problem with Electoral and want to destroy Mars?" offered the detective.

"Doubtful. I doubt anything can touch Sophie; she is the variable here. No wonder Electoral wanted her on Mars as close as possible to her."

David was surprised. Everyone in the room believed him. There was no debate or pushback. Emilio just concluded, "We all assumed in the case of war, there would be an enemy to fight, not simply neutrinos. That would also explain why Electoral got her sweet ass off our planet. Who is our second guest? He's bound to have better news, correct?"

A biologist around the table got up and introduced the large man. "I invited Dr. Lalancette; most call him Big Pete or Pierre. His sister is playing on Mars. He is the world's expert in Rho Waves. After last week's broadcast from Mars, I figured he could bring some needed perspective."

"Pierre?" Emilio said to himself out loud. The name rung a bell. Moments before, Takeda had used the name.

"We knew about the Rho Waves before last week's broadcast?" asked Francois Copland innocently. The six-foot-five man stood up. Even from a distance, he towered over the group. He had to swing his heavy torso forward to shift his weight, using both hands on his knees to push himself up.

"Mr. President, it is an honor being here today." The man's voice was deep and powerful. He articulated his words with precision.

"Most kind. As you have just heard from our previous speaker, matters are rather dire. Nothing you can say will shock at this point. What are those waves? More importantly, why the girl?"

The man took a deep breath. He was nervous. Meeting the mythical President was intimidating to anyone with half a brain. Scientists adored the man. "Heu," he began with great hesitation, "over twenty years ago, Marilyn Monroe discovered these waves. She published her theories in a peer article. This document is the heart of my work. The Mind Pater, as it is titled, was released just before she stopped publishing. The backlash to the patent war, you see. As she authored her only very cryptic document on this topic, her intellectual quotient was already well above 300, by anything measurable.

"For decades I have tried to make sense of these pages. No one has yet been able to measure these hypothetical waves. In fact, I cannot confirm their existence. I do believe they exist and are the key to our future." The cat was out of the bag. "Marilyn once had a fascination for the human brain. It was part of her work to discover her own humanity."

The audience in the room was very attentive. The tall man tugged down on his vest one more time, pulled a tissue and wiped his forehead before he continued. "Last week's events and today's games validate part of my conclusions." The wide-eyed group was anxiously awaiting what came next. "Hidden in the electromagnetic field of our brain are waves which define us. They are used to transport our feelings, our empathy, and are at the heart of our capacity to love. They travel, hidden, in the noise created by higher function waves like alpha waves.

"Imagine using sonar to distinguish a song sung by a naval officer crewing a submarine. In my lab, we have nicknamed the Rho Waves the soul energy. We think Marilyn can read these waves by filtering all other noise. Her paper suggests a simple equation controls these waves. That is doubtful.

"Rho waves define who we truly are and what makes us sentient. The brain creates a pattern which interferes or syncs with another person's brain pattern. Identical twins would have a profound Rho connection, like family members or animals with their masters. Rho waves are the reason we assemble and why we feel refreshed as we collectively cheer for a football team or pray in Church. What we know is that Rho waves are faint. The suggestion that a human, a little girl, could generate only high-intensity Rho waves must be false." Pierre wiped his forehead, sweating openly now. He'd just contradicted Marilyn Monroe twice in as many minutes. To say he was on dangerous ground was a colossal understatement.

"Professor, for the moment, assume that it's possible, and Sophie has such power," said Emilio.

"What you suggest is impossible," said Big Pete. "The physics alone do not support it."

"David here just told us another dimension is sending part of the sun our way. Trust me, if that makes any sense, you can safely assume little Sophie Lapierre can, in fact, generate these waves. In that case, what does it mean? You saw the broadcasts."

"I apologize, sir, I did not mean to..."

"I did not mean to come out as rude."

"You did not."

"We're all in new territory Pierre. Just tell us, to the best of your ability, what could a person with such a brain do?"

"Well," the researcher knew he had to think out loud. "Marilyn's article says one thing which at first made no sense to us, but with time, has been proven to be possible..." There was a long silence. Pierre glanced at David, who's theory regarding Heliocorium hadn't been immediately torn apart, to give himself courage. "Rho waves have a negative attenuation, not a positive attenuation." Half the people in the room stopped breathing. The other half had no clue what the man had just said. Emilio looked around. He was part of those in the dark.

"Somebody?" Emilio asked for an explanation. Pierre offered the response.

"Attenuation is the property of any energy to become less efficient with time or distance. Light released from a lamp attenuates with distance. Sound attenuates from your mouth. The farther way you are from the lamp, the weaker the illumination. This is attenuation, positive attenuation. The principle of negative attenuation has been to this day, impossible to prove. If a lamp's light had a negative attenuation, the brightness would increase the farther away you stood from the source. At a minimum, such a lamp would violate the law of conservation of energy and create at the other end of the known universe a light brighter than any star.

"Often, everything attenuates with the square of the distance from the source, or the cube. Energy in water, for example, attenuates even more rapidly. Some rare forces attenuate in a lesser way. Gravity forces attenuation in a much different way, to use another example. That is why gravity has incalculable reach.

"Some rare things in life do not attenuate. Water flowing downhill has the same speed irrespective of where it is. Similarly, unless the variables of the stream change, a fish swimming in that stream will keep going the same speed. Regardless of time or distance, the velocity of water in a stable environment does not attenuate, either positively or negatively.

"That, however, is a far cry from negative attenuation. Negative attenuation means with distance or time, the effect becomes more powerful. We know of one thing with negative attenuation,” spoke the large man to the general surprise in the room. “Rumors, the father from their source the greater their power.”

“Marilyn wrote of negative attenuation, and at first, we imagined she was mistaken. We now know better. Alpha brain waves, like light, attenuate away from the center of the head. But a very faint part of the wave does seem to increase in power as you get more distant to a person."

The room was silent. Pierre continued, "I'm sure you have all heard the old saying that 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' We all felt the unusual bond that most of us share with Sophie increase as the girl traveled to Mars. Sophie is millions of miles away, and her sway over humanity has never been stronger. If we assume she is a pure source of Rho waves, her influence over everyone on a subconscious level has been multiplied by a thousand."

Emilio added, "So if you wanted to neutralize her effects on you, the best way is to get her as close to yourself as possible. These waves give a new meaning to the expression 'keep your enemies closer.'" He tossed in one of his trademark grins.

Big Pete continued, "Indeed. If you are correct, Sophie's Rho waves must be millions of times more concentrated than those of other humans. Electoral said she played an especially meaningful song for Sophie during their flight from the Mars Holiday Inn to the Electoral Center. Music that was designed to amplify and focus the girl's wave output. Music, smell, and some images are the most powerful tools in existence to stimulate a brain.

"If we accept all of the preceding, Sophie is a catalyst, a battery of some type. This could very well explain why her father is still alive after his ordeals. She may be the one thing keeping Laurent alive. She transforms the world around her to her benefit. That would explain why the computer is careful and fearful of the girl." The big man sat down with an audible thud. His knees felt weak. So much of it was unprovable as of yet, but so much of it made sense.

"You said she 'transforms the world'? Do you mean to say she's altering reality according to her whims?"

"Laurent died. His brain cannot generate any wave. It is biologically impossible for a deceased brain, having gone a week without even the most basic physiological support, to continue operation without deterioration. The brain was rotten; nothing could have survived, no matter what bogus scientific excuses were thrown about. Laurent is alive because Sophie does not want to be an orphan. If the girl can manipulate life and death, if she is the one who keeps her father alive, surely she can do much more if she tried. If Laurent were on Earth, I would not fear this ball of magma David was speaking of. Luckily for the computer, Sophie is on Mars in the thing's lair. How convenient."

"Big Pete, is it?" said Emilio.

"Yes."

"We were able to download the software upgrades made by Marilyn last week to the medical scanners of Doctor Shin, Laurent's private physician. A working prototype is down on floor 17 of this very building. We can't unscramble the code and extract the way the Rho waves are isolated from normal activity, but at least we can use the sensor to measure the waves. Could that be helpful to your research?"

"Incredibly so," smiled the large man.

"Gentlemen," said the President, "your presence is, as always, priceless. This Committee now has work to do. David, find a way to determine what's coming out of our sun and develop a timeline of what we can expect to see as the Heliocorium continues to grow. Pierre... " As Emilio said the man's name, he recalled his recent encounter with Takeda inside the software, during Round 26. The virologist had referred to a second person in charge of a genocide called Pierre. He was able to replay the encounter in his mind.

The President's mind began to run hundreds of potential outcomes. Could Emilio finally have caught a break? Was this man the other scientist tasked by Nick to destroy the world? In Emilio's mind, he saw himself question his guest about the Visconti. As the images flowed through him, he felt increasingly sure that Big Pete was withholding information. Information that Emilio needed.

"Mr. President?" asked the large man. He'd caught Emilio's slightly too-long gaze.

Emilio's ignored the question, allowing his gift to take over. He saw himself ask the man hundreds of question and each time get a different reaction. His gift did not put words into the man's mouth, but it allowed him to feel if the question created fear or any other emotion within Pierre. In his mind, each time he talked about the Visconti's Chairman, Pierre stiffened. Yes, Pierre was the man involved.

"Professor," he began, "you know it is a felony to lie to me as I investigate issues of global security."

"I do."

"Don't lie to me."

"I won't."

"Does the name Nick Schmidbauer mean anything to you?"

"It does. My lab is a division of Blackberry, so in theory, Mr. Schmidbauer is my boss."

"Has he asked you to deliver something unique recently?"

"He has. I have." There was a long silence in the room. Pierre let out a ragged breath. "I was commissioned to deliver a weapon, one which, in theory, would annihilate the human race."

"Did you deliver such a weapon?"

"Are you asking me if I gave a homicidal maniac a weapon capable of killing everyone I love, including myself? If that is the question, the answer is no. I did deliver a box, and in my humble opinion, Mr. Schmidbauer does imagine he has what he requested. I was rather convincing when we last spoke."

"Yet you are alive, despite having exhausted your value to him."

"Delusional maniacs are easy to convince that others share their delusions. It is similar to the scientific concept of "confirmation bias," where one has chosen a desired result and tends to ignore any proof to the contrary. To this man, any superior mind must share his ambitions." Big Pete spoke calmly, but more and more, Emilio could sense this was a man being overtaken by fear.

"Would you please elaborate on all of this?" asked Emilio.

"Do you mind if i sit while I continue? My knees are not what they once were."

"Not at all." Emilio's intensity at times such as these was disturbing to most. He grabbed Lipvitch's chair, flipped it around and slid it as to mount it back against his chest. Emilio crossed his arms on the wood and tilted the chair, so it rested only on its back legs, leaving his face mere inches away from Big Pete's. The Committee had grown very silent in the background.

"Twelve years ago the CEO of a large corporation acquired our lab. It came very much as a surprise. We imagined that our purpose would be to somehow pervert our research for profit. The reverse happened. I was given an open line of credit and no obligation to produce tangible results. We only had one requirement: absolute secrecy. We were unable to publish, but in truth, our only worthy discoveries were related to higher brain waves. It is well established that the human brain generates alpha waves capable of numerous commercial applications. We also found new uses for beta waves. Our current focus is directed to gamma waves, the third layer of energy produced by the mind. As you know, Rho is the seventieth letter of the Greek alphabet. It is entirely possible, even likely, that Marilyn has discovered all of the missing mind patterns between Alpha and Rho."

If it weren't for the physical proximity of his host, Pierre would be enjoying himself. There was a warming feeling in the heart of any scientist to watch the best minds on earth working to guard the human race. Pierre had heard of the SAC, but seeing it in action was humbling. He continued, "In one way or another, we all expected what came earlier this summer. We had no illusion that the funding came with no strings attached. One day in late August, Mr. Schmidbauer came to visit. He had read every line we had ever written and had a profound passion for our work. He had many questions about the attenuation of our gamma waves when compared with alpha or beta waves.

"The questions were fundamental and legitimate. The body of our work showed, or rather suggested, that the higher the waves, the greater their sophistication and the weaker their attenuation. Alpha waves, the strongest, can barely be measured an inch away from the skull. Beta waves can be measured several feet away from a person, and our new gamma waves seemed to travel greater distances. Those are only the first three. That is the reason we feel as if Rho waves, 67 iterations forward, could have a negative attenuation.

"The higher the type of brain waves, the more difficult they are to produce. A brain flooded with gamma waves will, in the right circumstances, short circuit. The CEO asked for a weapon which would not only kill every human but cause unceasing agony as the subject died."

"Did you produce this weapon?" Pierre produced a sickly-looking smile and looked around the room. He did not speak. Emilio spoke again to reassure him. "I trust these people. Like you, they are intelligent enough to understand their role in protecting mankind, along with the stakes at hand."

"Yes," Big Pete finally answered, "such a weapon exists. Nick does not know. Moreover, he must not know the weapon cannot work as designed."

"You lost me there, Professor."

"Completely understandable. The beauty of waves is their capacity to be canceled when mixed with other waves. We all know of sound waves and sound reduction systems. Two waves of opposite amplitude cancel each other. The weapon has a built-in system of 'noise reduction' over a certain range. It works fine to kill everyone in a room, but not much more." Pierre's face took on a deeply shamed cast. "I feared he would severely dampen its power source just to test it. I had to make sure it... worked. At least in a manner of speaking."

Emilio immediately understood: Pierre suspected he was already complicit in the loss of human life. He was probably right; that sounded exactly like something Nick would do. "You delivered the Visconti a weapon that would pass small-scale inspection, but made certain it was crippled enough not to do widespread harm?"

"Correct."

"Once he uses it and sees it doesn't work, you'll be killed. Your life is already in danger."

"I understand. My opinions were rather limited. Any hesitation to help would have resulted in not only my demise, but the Visconti would have continued and perhaps found another source for what they needed. I would be most grateful if, from this point on, you will offer my loved ones and me some type of protection."

"We must not give Nick the impression your weapon is useless or that I know about his plan. Aside from that, we will help. I thank you for the courage you've shown, as does the human race. Many others in your situation would have acted differently. Can you wait for me outside for the moment?"

"Mr. President, may I ask for a favor?"

"Of course."

"My nephew Lorick would love a picture."