Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain

Chapter 177 - The end of Ryan

Chapter 177

Getting to the Convention Centre was a pain and a half and they had to throw the Sanctuary off of them multiple times as they insisted that they must have finished with their assignment because they had finished all the other assignments quickly. Even Ryan had pulled a face at that logic.

Once at the Convention Centre, Valkyrie followed Dexter and Tanith through security, having left all their weapons behind in the car, far away. A massive building like this had a lot of security and Valkyrie found it hard to believe that a bomb the size of a building had been brought in – that was, until they snuck out the back side and went over to the North Hall, a little out of the way of the main building, and they all saw the building work. It had all been abandoned for the holiday, which surprised Valkyrie considering how much money this construction must be costing, but she was very grateful. They just had to disarm the bomb and have it destroyed before Foe's gang did the opposite.

There were four halls, so it certainly took some time, but Valkyrie was the one to find it, Ryan practically stuck to her hip as she walked around. She pulled the tarp off the box, which was built into the back of a stage with room for performances before the grand finale of setting off the Machine. It was a monstrosity of a box but also a lot smaller than Valkyrie had been led to believe. It must have been the height of a lorry, and slightly wider in width but not massively. Very metallic and almost crude from the outside, very simple. It almost baffled Valkyrie that this box was enough to destroy the entire world, but she still pushed Ryan further behind her body, just in case he tripped into the control panel and ended them all.

"You found it," Tanith's voice echoed into the dark room. All the blinds were closed and they hadn't turned on the lights. "It's smaller than I expected."

"Same. We should call the Sanctuary to have them disassemble it. Maybe Kenspeckle would be willing to help."

"He is a genius," Tanith said in a sing-song voice, pulling out her phone to speak to the Sanctuary.

"Is this really it?" Ryan said after a moment of silence when Tanith had left the room.

Valkyrie looked over the Doomsday Machine, taking Ryan off the stage and down to the open floor. "Seems like it. We'll find out when it's taken apart, I suppose."

Ryan screwed his face up. "But... what if it isn't? And Foe's gang are somewhere else? Ready to, you know, capture me?"

"You can't think like that, Ryan," she said quietly, looking at the floor. "Right now, Nadia and Tanith's baby are at our hotel, alone. There's nothing Nadia can do to protect them both, she's not a fighter at all. She's a sweet girl, suited to being at the home and looking after her friends and family, maybe running a business and some employees. I'm not being mean to her, it's just that she's a home girl, strong in a lot of other ways, and that puts her in danger because people could seriously harm her and the baby to get to the rest of us. If I think about that for too long then I'd never be able to leave her alone. And that's not fair to either of us."

Ryan looked at her with a bit lip. "Has she been hurt before?"

"Yes. Recently. We're training her to be stronger but she'd never want to be at the level she'd need to be to stand against people like Foe's gang. Any one of them would have her dead in less than five seconds. They could have done that already and I wouldn't know for hours because I'm here with you instead, or any other mission. She knows the risks of dating me and so do I but – well, what else can I do but not think about the bad bits and focus on the positive?"

Ryan didn't seem to know what to say back to that so he just nodded. Tanith came back into the room and told them the Sanctuary was on the way and Dexter followed her, having already gotten Kenspeckle's agreeance to take apart the Machine.