The Paris Stock Exchange was a cage of screaming animals.
"Buy Railway! Sell Canal!"
"Two hundred francs on Lyon Steel!"
Paper flew through the air like confetti. Men in expensive coats pushed and shoved, sweat dripping from their foreheads.
This was my cathedral. The temple of the Franc.
Robespierre stood on the balcony overlooking the trading floor. He hated it. To him, this chaos was inefficient. It was gambling.
"Auditing the trades," he muttered, checking his pocket watch. 8:45 AM.
He walked down the stairs to the basement archives. He needed to verify the bond issuance for the new Steam Works.
The basement was quiet. Cool. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light coming from the street-level grates.
Robespierre walked past rows of shelves.
Then he stopped.
He cocked his head.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It was faint. Rhythmic. Mechanical.
Steam engines hissed. Looms clattered. Telegraphs clicked.
Nothing in this building ticked.
Robespierre followed the sound. It led him to the back corner, behind a stack of rejected tax forms.
A wooden crate.
The lid was loose.
Robespierre lifted it.
He froze.
Inside was a brass mechanism. Gears turned slowly. A small hammer was poised over a flint striker.
But it wasn't the clockwork that made Robespierre's blood run cold.
It was the liquid.
Six glass vials were strapped to the mechanism. They contained a thick, oily, yellowish fluid.
Robespierre leaned closer. He smelled almonds.
He saw a chemical formula scrawled in chalk on the side of the crate.
C3H5N3O9.
He didn't know what it meant. But he knew chemistry. He knew that oily liquids connected to timers were not intended for decoration.
He looked at the clock face on the device.
8:53 AM.
Seven minutes.
Robespierre didn't scream. He didn't run. He calculated.
If he ran, he might survive. But the building would fall. The economy would crash. The Administrator would fail.
He turned and sprinted for the stairs.
"Out of the way!"
Robespierre burst onto the trading floor. He didn't look like a librarian anymore. He looked like a madman.
He grabbed a clerk by the collar.
"Evacuate!" he screamed. "Get out! Now!"
The clerk stared at him. "But the market opens in—"
"Fire!" Robespierre bellowed. "Fire in the basement!"
Panic is contagious.
The screaming started instantly. The herd stampeded for the doors. Men trampled each other to get out.
Robespierre ignored them. He ran to the window. He saw a carriage pulling up.
The Administrator. Me.
I stepped out of the carriage, adjusting my coat. I looked up at the commotion.
"What is happening?" I asked Danton, who was waiting for me.
"Robespierre," Danton said, pointing. "He's clearing the building."
Robespierre saw me. He waved frantically.
"Stay back!" he yelled. "Liquid Fire!"
I froze.
Liquid Fire.
Greek Fire? No. That was ancient history.
Then a thought hit me. A cold, impossible thought.
I ran toward the building.
"Alex!" Danton shouted. "Don't!"
I pushed past him. I pushed through the fleeing traders. I met Robespierre in the lobby.
"Where is it?" I demanded.
"Basement. Five minutes."
"Show me."
We ran down the stairs. The silence of the basement was heavy after the chaos upstairs.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It was louder now.
We reached the crate.
I looked at the vials. I looked at the formula.
C3H5N3O9.
My breath caught in my throat.
"Nitroglycerin," I whispered.
"What?" Robespierre asked.
"Dynamite. Or the precursor to it."
I looked at the timer. 8:56 AM.
"This is impossible," I said. My voice shook. "Ascanio Sobrero won't invent this for another fifty years. Alfred Nobel won't stabilize it for another twenty."
"Someone invented it today," Robespierre said grimly. "Can we stop it?"
I looked at the mechanism.
It was complex. Anti-tamper wires. If I cut the wrong one, the hammer dropped.
"I can't disarm it," I said. "I don't know the schematic."
"Then we run."
"If this goes off," I said, staring at the oily liquid, "it levels the building. It destroys the gold reserves in the vault. The Franc goes to zero. The government collapses."
I looked at Robespierre.
"We can't run."
"Then what do we do? Pray?"
I looked at the vials.
"It's unstable," I muttered. "Heat sets it off. Shock sets it off."
I looked around the basement. My eyes landed on a maintenance closet.
"Ice!" I shouted.
"What?"
"The kitchen upstairs! They were prepping for the gala! Go get the ice! All of it!"
Robespierre didn't ask questions. He ran.
I knelt by the bomb. 8:57 AM.
I took off my coat. I tried to steady my hands.
"Think, Alex. Think."
Thermodynamics.
Nitroglycerin freezes at 13 degrees Celsius. When it freezes, it becomes less sensitive. But more importantly...
If I could freeze the mechanism.
Metal contracts when cold. Oil thickens. Friction increases.
If I could freeze the gears, the timer would jam.
Robespierre returned. He was dragging a canvas sack.
"Ice!" he gasped. "From the champagne buckets!"
He dumped the ice onto the floor.
"Pack it!" I ordered. "Pack it around the clockwork! Not the vials! Just the clock!"
We shoveled handfuls of ice around the brass gears.
8:58 AM.
The ticking didn't stop.
"It's not cold enough," I hissed. "We need to lower the temperature faster."
I looked at the maintenance closet again. I saw a canister.
Compressed Air. Used for cleaning the telegraph tubes.
"Give me that!"
I grabbed the canister.
"This is going to get cold," I warned.
I pointed the nozzle at the ice. I pulled the trigger.
The air hissed out. Expanding gas cools rapidly. The Joule-Thomson effect.
Frost formed instantly on the ice. The temperature plummeted.
The brass gears turned white with frost.
Tick... Tick... Tick...
The rhythm slowed.
The oil in the mechanism was turning to sludge. The metal was shrinking, tightening the tolerances until they seized.
8:59 AM.
The hammer was raised. It was seconds away from dropping.
I sprayed the last of the air directly onto the main spring.
Creaaaaak.
The sound of metal groaning under stress.
Tick...
...
Silence.
The hammer froze in mid-air, encased in a thin layer of frost.
The ticking stopped.
I dropped the canister. It clattered on the floor.
I slumped back against the wall, gasping for air. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it would explode. Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Robespierre wiped sweat from his forehead. He looked at the frozen bomb.
"You knew," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"You knew the formula," Robespierre said, turning to face me. "You knew the freezing point. You knew the name 'Nobel'."
I looked at him.
I couldn't lie. Not to him. Not now.
"I read a lot," I said weakly.
"No book in France has that formula," Robespierre said. His eyes were sharp, dangerous. "You aren't just an accountant from Versailles, are you?"
I didn't answer.
He looked at the bomb casing.
"There's a note," he said.
He reached carefully over the ice and plucked a piece of paper from the side of the crate.
He handed it to me.
I unfolded it. The handwriting was precise. Mechanical.
You are accelerating the timeline. The friction will burn you. Reset, or be deleted.
— The Watchmaker.
I stared at the words.
"Delete me?" I whispered.
I laughed. It was a jagged, hysterical sound.
"He wants to delete me?"
I stood up. I grabbed the note and crumpled it in my fist.
"I'm the Administrator!" I shouted at the silent basement. "I'm the one who deletes!"
I turned to Robespierre.
"Seal this room. Move the bomb to a safe location. And find out who rented this basement."
"And the Watchmaker?" Robespierre asked.
"He's a rival," I said. "A competitor."
I walked to the stairs. My legs felt like lead, but my mind was racing.
"And in this market," I said, "hostile takeovers are my specialty."
I climbed the stairs, leaving the frozen death behind me.
The market was safe. The money was safe.
But the war had just changed. It wasn't about politics anymore. It wasn't about armies.
It was about Time.
And I was running out of it.