The calm, female voice fell only on inhuman ears.

A circuit that ran the length and width of the estate connected.

As the incredible peal of booming sound rolled across the forest and died away, the wreckage started to burn.

With an earth-shaking thunderclap of motion and sound, the Spencer estate exploded. Devices went off simultaneously in the basement of the mansion, beneath the reservoir, behind a plain, uninteresting fireplace in the guardhouse and in the third level of the basement laboratories. Marble walls tumbled down over the disintegrating floors of the fine old mansion. Rock collapsed and concrete blew into a fine blackened dust. Massive fireballs rose up into the early morning sky and could be seen from miles away in their few brief seconds of brilliant life.

"You have five seconds, three, two, one. System activation now."