The guards who rushed through the side door weren’t scattered around Mike. They were gone. At least he was still on his feet. He changed his stance as she ran past him and slammed to a stop against a wall. She spun around.
Mike had blocked the guards who chased her. She wasn’t any good in a fight, but maybe she could find a club. Kim ducked as one of them sailed over her head and into the wall behind her. Mike used the throw’s momentum to send a backward kick into the other guard’s chin. The crack of his teeth made Kim’s jaw ache in sympathy. The man went down in a heap.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she panted. “You?”
“Likewise.”
A computerized voice announced, “Second stage ignition started. Portal activation in one minute.”
That wasn’t right. “June, you said it would take twenty minutes.”
“She’s activating the whole plant this time. It doesn’t take as long.”
Great.
A force field hummed to life around the duct, sealing it off from the outside. It connected to an enormous set of fans mounted in a framework bolted to the ceiling, then curved up and away, connecting with another duct entrance on the opposite wall.
Kim was officially out of time. “We have to stop the countdown. Where’s Anna?”
“The guards took her in there.” He pointed at the room Kim had seen them come out of. “Hang on.” Mike closed his eyes and touched the nearest console.
“June!” Kim shouted as she shared the channel with Mike. “How do we shut it off?”
“You can’t, not from there. All the generator rooms have to be shut down at the same time now. It’s too late.”
Kim couldn’t see Tonya and the rest from here, but she knew they were there.
“Power plant activation in forty-five seconds.”
Next to her, Mike said, “I’m in.”
“Can you stop it?”
“June’s right. I can slow it down, but there’s no way to stop it now.”
“Give my phone access to this network.”
“Thirty seconds.”
He had definitely slowed it down. It would have to do. She started the transformation the moment her phone connected.
There were lines of potential, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe.
Once Kim had gone through into the transit dimension she could go anywhere she wanted. That was only part of the solution. For the rest, she needed Mike.
“Twenty seconds.”
Kim walked up to him. This was going to be close. “Mike.”
He opened his eyes. Deep brown. She watched as concern transformed into realization, and then a glow that made her knees weak. She had missed those eyes so much. “Catch me.”
Kim lunged at him, opening her lips as she dove deep into the realm and gave herself up to the transformation. The blazing pain of his touch faded quickly, leaving Kim to only imagine the kiss he was planting on her now-numb lips.
“Ten seconds.”
Then she was not imagining it, but her lips were wrong. They were too smooth, too hard. She opened her eyes and could see the gleam of their pink fire reflected off his face in the darkness of the transit dimension. She had the armor of their last battle on this time, styled like an ancient Greek soldier. Her spear and shield were in her hands, wrapped around his neck. As before when they fought Ozzie in this place, he was gloriously naked, and Kim did not shy away from the view.
But only for a moment. She pulled back. “Let’s go.”
He grinned and turned into a torrent of sparkling threads that enveloped her, and one Kim became many who…
Opened a hole into the side of the duct. Spencer’s shotgun was shattered on the floor by the door, which had been scarred but not damaged. He and Tonya were working furiously over a pile of rods and electronics that were the disassembled parts of their climbing harnesses. “The fucking batteries will work this time,” Spencer shouted as another Kim…
Opened a hole into June’s workspace, hidden elsewhere in the plant. The astonished woman stood up, towering over Kim. “Jislaaik!”
Holy shit! was the closest English translation.
“Indeed,” Kim said as two dozen of her…
Stepped from their own holes into the remaining duct rooms, mercifully empty of any staff, or portals for that matter, as another of her…
Stepped through a hole into the room Anna was hiding in with her extra guards. Will was laid out on a high-definition realm table. The guards turned and fired as more of her…
Came through that hole, dropping their shields and spears to fight hand to hand as one more…
Grabbed Anna by the throat and slammed her against the wall.
She spoke to June first. “I can do it all at once now. How do I shut it off?”
Kim shouted at Spencer, Tonya, and Emily. “Guys! Follow me!”
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Spencer said. “That’s real?”
“I told you,” Tonya said. “My fist still hurts.”
Kim could feel the heat growing in the tunnel. June said, “They’ve got seconds before the bottom of the conduit opens.”
“Not now, guys,” Kim said as she connected this entrance to the one in June’s room. “Move it!”
As she moved in realspace, Mike moved with her. There was no disorientation, no confusion. It felt natural to be doing all these different things at the same time. “Is this what it’s like for you?”
“Doing it in realspace is pretty crazy, but otherwise yeah. This is me. Smaller, though. I can already feel the strain from just these couple dozen instances. Must be the mass.”
Almost all of their threads were local, right here, but there was one thread that seemed to stretch off into the distance. “What’s this?” she asked.
“That leads to Gonzo.”
“Gonzo?”
The image he showed her was of a graceful centaurlike being, pretty but realistic, not at all like what was common in fantasy realms.
“She helped me,” he said. “I’ll talk about it when we’re done. You need to get in position in the portal control room, too.”
Kim moved one of her that was in the room with Anna into the portal room, confronting what she and Mike looked like in the moment. They were frozen in the kiss, more like a standing version of Rodin’s statue than a recreation of the WWII picture. They were both covered in the lightning that coruscated over her transformed skin, and she could see the same coral-colored light leaking out of his eyes.
“Five seconds.”
“Tell me how to turn it off, June,” she said as she closed the tunnel between their room and the duct.
“But you need to be—”
Kim opened all the channels in all the controls rooms. “I’m where I need to be. Tell me how to shut it down.”
“Four.”
“Anna was right, we can’t stop it now. We’ll have to wait and shut it down after it finishes.”
“Not good enough.” She turned to Anna. The security guards were now all down, and she was securing them with their own restraints. The other woman seemed not to know what to be more frightened of, Kim’s appearance, that there were multiple copies of the same woman all in the room with her, or that the one holding her off her feet with one hand was made of glass.
“I think you might want to put her down. I’m not sure she can breathe like that,” Mike said.
In the room with June, Emily asked, “Where’s Will?”
Kim turned another one of her to look at him. He seemed peaceful but had been pulled deep into the realm. The rig was similar to the ones they had at home. Kim quickly initiated an exit routine. “He’s fine. I’m getting him out now.”
“The hell you are,” Anna choked out.
“Control released to local commands. All duct commanders to your stations.”
June swore in Afrikaans. “That madwoman! Kim. She’s turned off the duct harmonizer, and there’s nobody but you in the control rooms to take ove
r. You have to work quickly to keep them in balance while I stand up a new instance.” She reeled off a set of instructions so fast Kim could barely keep up with it. She had to keep half a dozen needles—each in two dozen different places—from moving away from their zero points.
Kim set Anna down on her feet. “It won’t work. I can handle the load.”
“I’m counting on it.”
But the truth was she was falling behind the curve. The needles moved too fast, and the ducts all affected each other. Kim could see a feedback loop setting up. “Mike, I need help.”
“On it.”
She turned back to Anna, who now wore a smug grin that Kim wanted to knock off her face.
Kim asked June, “How do I cut her access to the controls?”
“Does she have a phone on?”
“No.”
“I was afraid of that. She must have an implanted interface. You’re not denying her access without surgery.”
“Or cracking her skull,” Tonya said.
“Not a good idea,” June replied. “She’s bound to have set up booby traps.”
“Power plant activation complete.”
In each control room, a rumble set up that rattled her guts. A substance like water rushed through each of the ducts. The one in the portal control room hit the framework full of fans, which rocked back in response. Inside, the fans spun as the flow went past them.
“Tertiary generation started. Activation capacity in one minute.” The voice was different this time, and it only happened in their control room.
It also made the difficult task of balancing all the duct rooms even harder. “Mike, where’s that help?”
“Coming online in three…two…one.”
The needles stopped swinging as wildly, but Kim still couldn’t take her hands off the controls. “This is help?”
“It’s a start.”
Kim hadn’t noticed Anna sauntering into the portal room until she was standing in it. “Not as easy to handle as you thought, am I?”
“It still won’t work.” The effort, and the noise, was now giving her a headache. Kim thought this would be a sprint, not a marathon, and the effort it took to hold it all together was becoming hard to bear.
“Once it was explained to me how capable you are, I didn’t think it would. And thank you, Shonda and Silas. You may go now.”
Kim had lost track of the scientists, another show of how tired she was. They stood at the other end of the room holding duffle bags stuffed so full of cash some of it threatened to fall out.
“Our pleasure,” the man, Silas said.
“And happy trails,” Shonda, the woman in the bot suit, said. “You lunatic.” They disappeared around the corner.
“Activation capacity in thirty seconds.”
When Kim turned around, Anna had retrieved a backpack from a locker. Kim was losing perspective—and time. “Mike, I can’t stay split like this any longer.”
“We’ve almost got the real one finished.”
“Activation capacity reached. Activate when ready.”
“Goodbye, Miss Trayne.”
The portal activated, and Kim caught a glimpse of an empty field of grass inside of it just before the substance reached out and took Anna Treacher.
It also created a powerful attraction in Kim. She wanted to go to it, go through it, and would’ve if she’d been whole.
Then she saw Will running as fast as he could at it.
“No!” Now that Kim needed to move more than her hands, she couldn’t move at all. “Mike!” The effort made her vision go gray, but she had to stop him. At once, more than two dozen Kims made the same motion, trying desperately to get between Will and the portal.
Everything went black before she could take a second step.
Chapter 62
Mike
He’d known Kim was exhausting herself but could do nothing more to help her. It was draining him as well, much more than his regular splitting or even the distance split he had just recovered from. He could now sense Gonzo on the other side. She seemed almost amused. Mike had other priorities.
The two-dozen sites were designed with the assumption that the pressures would be symmetrical and that adjustments could be made to compensate any imbalance thousands of times a second. Not only was the pressure imbalanced, but they also had to rely on human reflexes to make the corrections. He couldn’t believe how well she was doing, but any delay in restarting the automated system could allow a disastrous feedback loop to manifest, and the results would not be pretty.
Then Will made a run for the portal.
“Edmund,” he said as he ran threads from the portal’s network to the wireless interface on the transport box. “You’re up. Take over from Kim while June finishes restarting the automation.”
“Me, do that? Are you mad? You’d have better luck finding an honest merchant on Cheapside.”
Then Kim passed out. He felt it more than saw it, a sudden decrease in pressure across all the threads she was using. Imbalance alarms started wailing. “There’s no time. Go now.” He routed the still-protesting AI across the network bridge.
“June,” he said over a shared channel in her room, “help Edmund. Spencer, take over for June.”
In the portal room, Will picked up speed. It must be pulling at him the way it pulled at Kim. He felt her sudden compulsion as clearly as he had her other emotions while they’d been melded like this. Mike felt when it turned on too, but it was different, and the difference was critical. When it turned on, the portal created a manifold in the interstitial dimension exactly like the one that sucked him into Tal’s world. If he hadn’t been spread out with Kim, it might’ve sucked him into wherever this one went.
Kim wouldn’t wake up. Mike couldn’t move in realspace. There was nothing to stop Will from making it to the portal, and whatever was beyond it.
There was no other choice. He pushed at his remote thread hard. The numbness flashed briefly to pain, but then he felt it giving way, clearing up. “Za-Nafalia!”
She was in the control room, staring at his thread anchor. It gave him a sudden urge to cover himself with his realspace hands.
“Mike? Well very done! I able some that to of watch! You your mate and are—”
“I don’t have the time. I’ve got a portal open next to me. I need to change the destination now. Can you help?”
She stiffened, and he recognized it as surprise. “I you way again to in that travel again. You trip raw manifold will a through an again not survive.”
“It’s not me, it’s someone else. An actual human. I need him to come to you.” They were communicating much faster than realspace would normally allow, but he still only had seconds. “Can you help?”
She worked a console next to his thread anchor. “Here. These coordinates the are. Manifold manner in this the manipulate. Fall in do not.”
The instructions were subconscious urges, knowledge that he’d never learned. Mike wrapped as many threads as he could spare around the construct’s opening and started bending it. He couldn’t visualize the directions—the coordinate grid had thirteen axes—so he worked by feel. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. There was no time. Mike couldn’t get this wrong, but he didn’t understand how it worked, and there was no way to be sure. He wasn’t going to make it.
The final fold happened with a snick, and a screen activated in Za-Nafalia’s control room. On it, he saw Will run forward into an exact duplicate of her control room.
He made it.
And then Will fell face-first onto the ground and didn’t move. “Is he alive?”
“Yes, but Mike. This human supplies no has. He protection no has. No shelter.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I had to do it. Can you help?”
On the screen, robots moved into view. “I can, it everything I have require but. This dead system a is. Resources few are, and what little left Al Detanra are what by the is harvested. I communicate properly you to with will not be able. No
lessons. You lessons those need.”
“I need Will kept alive and protected. It won’t be for long.” Once he got Kim conscious and moving they could undo all this and go get him together. “Can you do that?”
“Yes, required long for as. You him and but have to come get. I strong enough him my own to am not move.”
That made it sound like they’d have to come get him on their own. “That’s the plan.”
The contact faded as he watched a centaur-shaped robot pick Will up gently and place him on a rolling cot. It was better than him ending up alone with Anna, wherever she had gone. Mike released the construct, careful not to get any of his threads in front of the openings until they were well clear of the mysterious pull it exerted on them.
When he checked on Edmund, he was greeted with a bedlam of alarms. “Edmund, what’s wrong?”
“It would be a bloody lot easier to tell you what’s not wrong. Which is to say, nothing. The instabilities have cascaded. A feedback loop is inevitable if we can’t regain control.”
It wouldn’t activate the caldera, but it would turn the plant into a smoking crater along with who knew how many thousands of people in it. Including them.
He’d left Spencer in charge of the fix. “Where’s our control program?”
His face was deathly pale. “We’re fucked, man. We all are.”
“What does that mean?”
“She didn’t just turn the central junction off. She overloaded it. We can’t put the fucking thing back together in time because the hardware that runs it is a goddamned slag pile somewhere in the middle of the plant. I don’t know where it is.”
He sent bundles of threads to check on all the Kims. They were beginning to wake up and move around.
“June, give me options.”
“An emergency vent is all we have left. But you have to evacuate the duct rooms in case the containment fields fail.”
Mike looked at the portal. It was directly below the containment field. “I need a different option, at least for this room. We have to protect the portal.”
Kim brought all of her instances into the portal room. Each one punched a hole in the wall to make their way in, spaced evenly, leaving a path clear to the transit dimension. The space that let them do all this gave him some hope. They now had lots of places to run.
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