Kiryn! The world mind intruded in his thoughts. Her normally calm tone was agitated.
“What happened?” He pulled Belynn to a halt while the others stared at him in confusion.
“It’s another intifada. You’re all in danger—”
The rest was lost to him as green light and pain sang in his mind. He tried to block it out. Not again!
Kiryn—what’s wrong?
He thrust Belynn out of his head. He couldn’t let them take her too.
Chanting filled his mind, a nasty replay of the events in the church long years before.
He fought them, marshaling his considerable resources and pushing back the sickly light. This is bad. No coven, no laying of hands, and yet they were striking out at him from a distance nonetheless.
He felt hands lowering him from Elly to the ground, laying him in the grass.
Then he lost sight of the outside world as he fought for his life.
SOMETHING PUSHED hard in Dax’s head—an intrusion—but he forced it back.
He sought out Aine. What’s wrong with him?
The world mind’s voice came back, calm. Too calm. He’s under attack by the invaders again. This one is bad. I think all the Liminals are feeling it.
I can feel the pressure, but it’s bearable. His own abilities were limited. He could speak to the world mind, and to other Liminals if they were close enough. That was about it.
Those abilities had surfaced after his contact with Kiryn. Passed on to him by his absent father, most likely. What do I do?
I don’t know. I am trying to block them.
He and Belynn reached out to help Kiryn down into the grass.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Dax frowned. “It’s an intifada attack. Can you feel it?”
Her face went white. “It’s happening again?”
“It’s happened a couple times. But not like this.”
She shuddered and opened her carry sack to rummage around inside. After a few seconds she pulled out her flask.
“Belynn, this is hardly the time….”
She shook her head. “It blocks them. Here, help me get his mouth open.”
Spin be damned. She might just be right.
They knelt next to Kiryn.
As Destiny and Gordy watched, Dax managed to get Kiryn’s mouth open.
Belynn tried to pour some of the spirits into Kiryn’s mouth, but he growled at her and turned away, his face twisted in a grimace of pain.
“Hold him still!
“I’m trying!” Dax climbed on top of Kiryn’s chest, pulling open his jaw again, and this time she managed to get some into his mouth.
Kiryn coughed up a storm but then swallowed.
“Again!”
They repeated the exercise. “I’m sorry, Kir,” Dax whispered as the coughing once again subsided. He ran his fingers through Kiryn’s damp hair. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Belynn took a sip of her own and held it out to him.
“I think they can only reach him like this because he was possessed before.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you sure about that?”
Dax stared at her hand for a moment, then took a couple of sips.
In less than a minute, the pressure faded from his skull. “I can see why you like that stuff,” he said with a harsh laugh.
Belynn shrugged. “It has its uses.”
They turned to Destiny.
Dax frowned. “Se’s a Liminal too.”
“You feel okay?” Belynn stood to take Destiny’s hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine. What happened to him?” Se stared at Kiryn’s prone form.
He was breathing more easily now.
What’s happening? Kiryn’s voice was weak in his mind, but steady.
We’re okay. Alcohol seems to block them. Thank Belynn for that one. He knelt, checking Kiryn’s pulse.
“The inthworld—they tried to take Kiryn and me over again.” Belynn’s face was recovering some of its color.
Dax nodded. “It started with a Liminal the first time too. Della.”
“It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It was like someone raping my soul.” Belynn looked away.
Dax remembered how she’d looked afterward. He couldn’t imagine. He looked down to find Kiryn’s hazel eyes looking up at his. “Hey, you okay?”
“I think so.” His hand went to his forehead. “What happened?”
“The invaders. You were attacked.”
“Belynn!” He tried to push himself up and then teetered.
Dax put his arm around Kiryn’s back and eased him to the ground in a sitting position. “Belynn is fine. It was her quick thinking that saved you.”
Kiryn licked his lips. “Red berry wine?”
Belynn knelt next to him. “From the Estate.” She hugged him. “I was so scared for you.”
“Yeah, well… I’m stronger than you think.”
“More hard-headed, anyhow.”
He stuck his tongue out at her.
Dax stepped away, letting them have their moment. It did his heart good to see them drop the walls they’d raised between them, even just for a moment. He had Kiryn with him all the time. He could let Belynn have him for a moment or two.
You need to move. Aine’s thought hit Dax like a lightning bolt. The invaders have taken at least a hundred Liminals. We don’t know what they’re planning, but it can’t be good.
Couldn’t you just destroy them? He had never understood why she would leave such a clear and present danger when she had the means to do something about it.
As a last resort. I don’t want to kill all those life-forms.
They’re just virtual copies—He bit his tongue as soon as the thought passed out of his head. What else was the world mind, if not a virtual copy of Andy and Shandra? I’m sorry. I didn’t think—
She was quiet for a long moment, and he was afraid he had offended her. He hadn’t even known that was possible.
Then Aine’s voice came back to him, fainter than before. You’re right. They are not real. Not by human standards, anyhow. If necessary, I will destroy the inthworld.
She was offended.
Look, I’m really sorry.
No, you’re right. I have to look after my human charges before anything or anyone else. But there’s another concern.
What? He wished he knew another way to say he was sorry.
I don’t know what will happen to the Liminals who are possessed if I destroy their world.
Fuck and Forever. Okay, got it. We’ll get on our way.
That would be good. Her presence was gone before he could reply.
Damn, I fucked that one up. “We have to go,” he said out loud to the other inthnauts.
Belynn shook her head. “Kiryn’s not in any shape to go on. Not yet.”
“We have no choice. The world mind says at least a hundred Liminals fell in the attack. The ints are up to something, and it can’t be good.”
“I’m okay,” Kiryn signed. He stood slowly, managing to stay on his feet. “We can ride to where we’re going. I can manage on Elly.”
“Are you sure?” Belynn put a hand to his forehead. “You still feel warm.”
He put a hand on her cheek and closed his eyes.
Something passed between them.
“Okay. But be careful. If you start to feel anything—”
“I’ll tell you.”
Destiny pushed ser way past Dax, and ser hands burst into a flurry of signing.
Belynn’s eyes went wide. “Se can sign?”
Dax nodded. “Se learned from Kiryn. It’s one of ser abilities.”
“One of them?” Belynn stared at Destiny as se embraced Kiryn.
“Yup. Makes you and me not seem quite so special after all, huh?”
Chapter Three: Down to the Stars
AINE WAS under attack.
At least a hundred Liminal minds flooded her consciousness, each one trying to worm its way into the world mind.
; Thank Saint Ana that the defenses of the world mind had been fortified to protect it, and the world, from the worst potential abuses. Still, it was like death from a thousand cuts.
Her awareness was spread thinly across the world, blocking access for the interlopers one at a time.
Another broke through, and she felt a trove of data punctured and drained out of her mind. A piece of her spun furiously toward this new attack and blocked it, but not without cost.
She had a choice. Keep fighting these attacks and eventually she would lose. Or withdraw from the world, closing off all access to the outside. It was a drastic step, but she was fighting a nearly impossible battle, with many of her supposed allies turned against her.
Cutting herself off would buy her some time. At least until they came looking for her in person. In mind.
She gathered herself and pushed one last message through the chaos to her sister self, Andy. Then she pulled back into herself, letting go of all her connections into the world, blocking them out like a crazy woman plastering paper on all her windows.
When it was done, she had peace. It was a deathly still peace, a void that might drive her crazy if it lasted too long. But at least the attacks had ceased and she could think again.
She needed a plan, before her opponent came to find her.
Perhaps she had been rash to allow the inthworld to live. Perhaps it would be her undoing now.
But maybe, just maybe, there was a way to change the odds.
ANDY FROZE in her tracks, her knife blade poised against one of her berry bushes, ready to trim off a runner that was growing from the base of the plant.
At sixty-two, this kind of on-her-knees work was no longer easy, but it kept her alive in a way that doing the household chores or tallying their income or expenses didn’t.
Something flashed through her mind, a howl of pain and anger.
She sat back on her haunches and let the knife go as the images exploded in her brain:
Belynn and Kiryn entering a dark tunnel on horseback, followed by three others.
Aine fighting for her life in the world mind as countless others attacked.
One word. Intifada.
ANDY’S EYES flew open, and she scrambled to her feet, shoving her knife in its sheath at her waist. She ran back toward the house where Shandra was preparing lunch.
Intifada.
Lilith had come back to try to finish her sordid game.
Why didn’t they try to take me? Were Belynn and Kiryn safe? She tried to reach out to the world mind but met only emptiness.
Andy climbed up the stairs to the porch, out of breath from running. She wasn’t the young thing she’d once been, able to run and leap and ride horseback across half the world.
She pushed open the front door. “Shandra!”
Her wife’s voice came from the back of the house. “In the kitchen.” The smell of a hearty vegetarian stew wafted through the open doorway.
Andy made it to the doorway and took a ragged breath. “It’s… intifada.”
Shandra looked up from stirring the pot. “How bad?”
“Bad enough. At least a hundred Liminals this time. All attacking Aine.” It had become easier to separate themselves from the world mind as it had evolved and changed. No longer was it like speaking to her mirror image when she engaged Andy in her mind.
Shandra pulled the heavy pot off the hook that held it over the fire. A burst of steam shot up through the air, dissipating as it met the outside air through the open hole in the ceiling.
She set it down on the stone rest next to the pit and put a lid on it.
She took Andy in her arms. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. We’ve been through worse before.”
Andy hugged her back. “Marissa. I have to try to reach Marissa.” She reached out, but the world mind was no longer there to assist her. The whole network was just gone.
“What happened?”
“The world mind. She’s—withdrawn, or worse. I don’t know. I can’t reach Marissa or anyone.”
Shandra frowned. “That means they can’t reach you either, right?”
“No. But there might be a way.” She hated to try it. Doing so went against everything they believed in and could show their enemies it was possible. But she’d saved this for an emergency, and if this didn’t fit the bill, what did?
“I think you have to.”
Shandra always had been good at reading her mind.
Here they were, a couple old biddies running a glorified farm, so far from who and what they had once been.
I grew up on a space station.
And yet Shandra was still as beautiful to her as the day they’d met.
Andy reached out to push a kinky lock of dark hair behind Shandra’s ear. “I think you’re right.” She gave Shandra a kiss and gathered herself to do what had to be done.
She left the house with Shandra trailing behind her and settled herself on a glowing patch of grass. She crossed her legs, concentrating her attention and energy, and put her hand on the ground, reaching down into the earth.
This was her secret.
The ability Lanya—the previous world mind—had allowed Andy to keep when she had taken it away from all the others. Down, down, down she went, her awareness seeking the world mind, seeking her pathways that continued to run with autonomous traffic even when Aine was away.
Then she pulled them up, up, up to her.
The ground rumbled beneath her, and a root burst forth in front of her, showering her with dirt and grass. It quested about in the air, as if seeking its summoner.
She reached out her palm and touched it, and an electric shock ran through her as she bonded with it, letting herself flow into the network in search of Marissa.
Andy hoped she was safe here. This part of the network was literally beneath notice, embedded in the fabric of the world.
She expanded her awareness, flowing along trunks large and small, along filaments so tiny they could barely be seen by the naked human eye.
In a moment, she had crossed the world and back.
There.
She sent herself upward, questing for her former charge. She burst through the ground, finding and touching Marissa’s hand with another root just like the one she held.
Marissa!
For a second she could see through the woman’s eyes, see the inside of the farmhouse. See someone’s body sprawled on the floor. Matt, Marissa’s husband.
Marissa! What happened?
Something was wrong.
Whoever replied, it wasn’t Marissa. It was someone—or something—else. Who are you?
She recoiled from that strange mind. She had the wrong person. It couldn’t be Marissa. This mind was angry, dark. Alien. She tried to back away—
Andy. The voice changed. It’s me, Andy. Marissa.
Andy paused. It sounded like her. Maybe—
It’s not her. Andy wasn’t sure how she knew. She just did.
She fled, her consciousness tumbling along the network, and shot into her own body. She flew backward, landing hard on the grass, the wind knocked out of her. She gasped for breath.
Shandra ran to her side. “Be calm.” Her hand was warm on Andy’s chest. “You’re okay. Just close your eyes and let yourself breathe.”
Can’t you see I’m suffocating? But Andy let Shandra calm her, doing as she was told.
The air came back into her lungs in a sudden inhalation, and she gulped at it gratefully.
Shandra put a warm hand on her cheek. “You okay?”
Andy nodded. “I will be.” She could still feel the touch of the thing that was inside Marissa.
“What happened?”
“They took her. The intifada. Marissa’s under their control…. It was dark in her mind. Dark as night.”
Shandra helped her sit up.
“Matt. Matt was on the floor, facedown. I think he might be—”
“Don’t say it. We don’t know anything yet.”
Andy si
ghed. “You’re right.”
“So what do we do?”
“We get packed. We old ladies have a journey to take.”
KIRYN SLUMPED in his saddle, fighting his exhaustion. Fighting his fear too.
The scent of moist soil hung heavily in the air, the primal dirt of the world feeling like it might clog his lungs. He chafed at the need to ride slowly, but the lantern he carried only extended its light a couple of meters ahead of them.
It was frightening how quickly he’d lost his grip on his own mind, on his body too. It brought back in an instant the horrible feeling of helplessness… of being unable to even wiggle his fingers or toes, let alone turn his head or move.
Only the most autonomous, automatic bits of himself had been at his disposal, and only in a moment of distraction.
How much worse had it been for Belynn when Lilith had invaded her mind?
You okay?
As if he’d summoned her, his sister was there in his head. Some of his tension drained away. Belynn, I’m so sorry….
Don’t be. You were right. You were just trying to help me help myself.
I was. But you weren’t ready. Their eyes met. I shouldn’t have pushed you. If she hadn’t had the flask of berry wine with her, they would all have been lost.
She turned away and was silent for a moment.
They rode on down the newly excavated tunnel. Kiryn wondered how Aine had found the inthworld, and what they were supposed to do about it once they reached it. Her instructions had been vague—go inside and find out what you can.
And then what? Forever was under attack once again, a concerted attack that seemed much more dangerous than the last few times. Perhaps those were tests to find our weaknesses.
I have an idea. Belynn sounded animated. Intense.
Kiryn turned to look at her. “What?”
These are Jackson’s memories, right? His worlds?
He nodded.
Then pieces of him must be in each of them, right?
Following.
What if we could find him?
It was crazy. Go into an unknown, virtual world and search out ghosts of their great-grandfather? I don’t know—
What’s the plan, then?
Fair point. Belynn’s idea was crazy, and yet…. Jackson’s mind was the one thing that united the various parts of the inthworld. In the last several years, when they’d put out uprisings like brushfires, they’d interrogated some of the ints before sending them home.
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