Your voice goes unheard, masked by the raging wind and the cries of your staff, who are out of their minds. The flask strikes the rooftop, hard.
But it doesn't break. It lies on the roof, untouched amid the craziness all around.
Why should it break, after all? It is not a centuries-old artifact, but a replica of such an artifact, created with modern-day metals and plastics. As such, it is shatter-resistant. You break into a smile, suddenly wanting to commend—or possibly hug—your entire research staff.
But something is wrong. As you approach the flask, you hear it giving off a high-pitched whine. At first it is barely audible, but the sound is lowering down into your normal hearing frequency—and becoming much, much louder. You see a hair-thin crack along the flask's bottom half, from which a yellow light begins to spill out.
That's when you realize the truth. This flask was badly constructed. Somewhere, somehow, your research department made a mistake. It could never have contained a jinni indefinitely. That the vessel has held one for this long is remarkable.
You back off—and then the flask explodes. You are knocked backward by the blast of force and heat that follows, as the jinni within is set free.
A great swirl of smoke and ash twists and writhes, and becomes the jinni—a being of flame and anger, perched on MetaHuman's rooftop, almost as tall again as MetaHuman Tower. It gives a great roar of deafening laughter that shakes the city. Are there words within that laughter? It's too loud, too painful, for you to be sure. You wait for it to notice you—and when it does, your death will be inevitable. A quick squish with its foot should finish you. At least you won't suffer for long. So there's that.
But the jinni is in no mood for retribution today. Instead, it transforms into a shining ball of white heat, and then decides to seek out the hot fires at the center of the Earth as quickly as possible, by smashing down through the heart of MetaHuman Tower. It crashes down through the rooftop, and every other floor of the building. The tower cracks and wobbles under the immense destruction.
You peer down through the huge hole it has left in its wake. You can see right down your tower, to its foundations. You have no idea how many of your employees the jinni has just killed. Few of MetaHuman's little worker ants were present, which is probably a good thing—it might reflect badly on you if you managed to slaughter most of your own workforce.
The building wobbles, worryingly. This is bad. This is really bad.
At least no molten lava is bubbling up. And the Surgeons have yet to spill through from their own world. So maybe, in that sense, the situation is still salvageable.
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