“We’ll have ample evidence to prove our case to the rest of Orion once we disable her.” He still gives me a wary look. “And besides, we really don’t have much choice. Once Augustus resurrects, we’ll be in a much worse position.”
Grayson grimaces but doesn’t object.
I close my eyes and slip into the fugue. With both Hypatia and potentially Augustus even more enhanced than before, I don’t know if even Lenora and Marcus combined will be enough. I’m playing with all kinds of ascender-level fire here, but as Marcus says, we’re short on options.
I imagine Hypatia’s key again, holding up my hand and picturing it hovering above my palm. She will have changed it by the time we arrive, but this should provide a basis to work from. Personal keys are mathematical, a system of interlocking quantum states that fluctuate, writhing in the fugue state and shining almost like a living thing. In a way, it’s an echo of the cognition that gives rise to it. Hypatia could change her personal key, but not wildly—it’s part of who she is. Which reminds me of an ancient superstition about knowing the name of one’s enemies and thus being able to conquer them.
I know Hypatia’s name.
She can change its quantum state, but she can’t change who she is. I hope.
I slowly reach the key toward Lenora’s fugue-state form. She and Marcus are both standing above my body, which is slumped in the chair. Grayson has a hand on my shoulder to keep me from falling out. I focus on Hypatia’s key and the small distance between it and Lenora’s form. I’m not sure where the intersection truly begins—is it measured in microns or milliseconds? Is there truly such a thing as space and time in the fugue state? I don’t know, but I can feel the gap close between the key and Lenora’s form, which reacts to this invasion of her mind, even at the periphery. She steels herself and accepts what I’m offering, sucking the key into her cognition. I move closer and just barely graze my hand across her forehead—suddenly, I’m squeezed into a tight space and sucked straight up out of the citadel with her.
We’re flying through Orion, the familiar thick soup of it choking me. The substance of the network is utterly foreign, but I recognize the flickering billions of lights darting and buzzing as Lenora and I shoot toward Hypatia’s citadel. I sense Marcus behind us, reduced to a pulsing bluish-white orb like the rest of the minds in Orion. I’m leading them both, drawn to Hypatia’s essence by the pull of her personal key. We arrive at a transparent wall in the strange mind-spectrum that is Orion. Hypatia’s essence glows within the citadel. The wall itself has a dull glow, like the sentries—a rudimentary cognition. The maximum allowed by law, Marcus said, and I guess it’s enough to have a fugue-state form. What does it mean? That thought train threatens to derail my focus.
Lenora and Marcus hover in front of the wall—I sense their bewilderment and Marcus’s anger. Orion doesn’t operate on language, just a flood of information and images and sensations. It takes me a weird ascender-time-stretched moment, but I finally realize: they can’t see through the wall. They don’t sense Hypatia on the other side. I intercept a transmission between them, through the milky soup, and send a wordless message of calm. At the same time, I reach into the wall itself—I could easily move through it, but I need the key so Marcus and Lenora can get inside. The citadel’s cognition is somehow familiar with a strange metallic aftertaste. It tastes like Hypatia. Did she leave an imprint of herself when she created it? Or is the citadel a distant artificial cousin? Hypatia’s mind must be artificial in some sense, the same as the citadel—some aspect that doesn’t originate in her original nanite-enhanced human mind. I’m not even sure what that means, but it feels foreign in a way that’s close to terrifying.
I don’t have time to ponder that—I grab the key for the citadel and pass it back to Lenora. She unlocks it, and they dive through, heading straight for Hypatia. She’s instantly aware, and the clash between them feels like suns colliding. Gravity waves pulse through Orion and pull me into the citadel. I fight against it, keeping out of the swirling vortex that Lenora and Marcus are spinning up around her. They’re circling and circling, and Hypatia’s key—with its vibrating blue jewel form—is spinning with them. They’re moving so fast—at ascender thought-speed—that I can hardly perceive what’s happening. The blurry haze that is the three of them seems to elongate repeatedly, as if the orbs of their beings are being thrown out and yanked back by the gravity of the fight. I’m so mesmerized that I barely notice the citadel wall has begun to flicker. It’s pulsing between opaque and transparent with the fight.
Hypatia is trying to lock us in.
I focus on the citadel cognition—its key is being changed, again and again. Somehow, Hypatia and Marcus and Lenora are all fighting over that, instead of invading Hypatia’s mind and taking it over, which was the plan.
Ascender keys—even-lower cognition ones—are my specialty, so I reach into the wall and hold the key fixed. I sense Hypatia coming after me, but Lenora blocks her with a pulse of energy I don’t really understand. Hypatia retreats, but then something happens that momentarily blinds me in the middle of all the chaos…
A searing white light blazes into existence.
It’s near Hypatia, burning like a new sun. It spins and collapses down to sear my senses even more. With a sickening dread, I know exactly what it is—Augustus.
Lenora and Marcus recoil from it. Augustus rushes at me, the light of his cognition like an incoming comet. I’m frozen, still holding the citadel’s key, keeping it open for Lenora and Marcus, when Augustus blasts through me…
…I’m blown out to the void.
I’m floating, my mind eased into an instant laziness of a million pieces floating in formless mist. I haven’t been this shattered since I tackled the Mind and had to absorb it, plus a dozen more lives, at once. But that was when I was merely Eli the Human. Before I understood what I was capable of. And if there’s one thing I know how to do now, it’s pull myself together.
It takes a while.
A slow gathering of particles, swirling around the gravity of my being, drawn by the knowledge that I have a purpose in all of this. I don’t know if it’s some kind of destiny the universe has decided I must fulfill or simply that I finally know who I am.
Elijah Brighton.
The name carries meaning, like a personal key of my own, an echo of who I am. I claim the ancient superstitions, naming myself and thus gaining control over my being. The parts of it circle faster and faster, collapsing together, and suddenly I’m drawing breath and awakening in my physical body back in Marcus’s citadel.
My encounter with Augustus was brief and terrifying, but I snatched a glimpse of his plans. Grayson’s hand holds me steady in the chair, but I twist my way free and rise up in an urgent need to explain the horror of Augustus’s plans to Marcus and Lenora.
She’s flits to my side as I stand…
…but Marcus’s bodyform is lifeless on the floor.
“Eli, thank God!” Lenora scans me with frenetic concern.
I’m standing unsteadily in Marcus’s citadel, staring at his body on the floor. “What happened?” My head is still fuzzed out from coming back together in the void.
“He’s trapped.” There’s real pain in her voice, which wrenches my stare from Marcus’s fallen body up to her worried face. Grayson’s expression is likewise grim.
“He didn’t make it out?” I don’t know why this is hitting me so hard. Maybe it’s the distress on Lenora’s face. Maybe it’s the after-effect of pulling myself together. Or that my body feels like it’s been asleep forever—how long was I in the fugue? Time has no meaning in the void, and everything operates in ascender time within Orion. I blink, physically shake my head to clear it, then try to focus on Lenora’s words. I’ve missed half of them.
“—backup still hasn’t triggered.”
“What? Whose backup?” My mind feels like it’s clogged—words hit it but don’t get through.
“You all right?” Grayson asks, edging closer and peering a
t me. “You were out for a while.”
I squint at him. A while?
Lenora floats her hands over my body in earnest, sensing my vitals or something. “Two hours and five minutes,” she says tightly. “The way Augustus went after you…” There’s distress in her voice again.
Two hours? My mouth hangs open for a moment, then I shut it and grab hold of her wandering hands. “I’m fine. Just still pulling myself together.” But I’m freaked—normally, it doesn’t take me this long. And there’s not missing time. That reminds me too much of when the fugue controlled me, not the other way around.
She frowns then turns my hands over to peer at them as if she’s never seen them before. “Your human body is so fragile, Eli.” Her voice is a whisper. “It terrifies me that something will snuff out your biological life before we have a chance to—” She stops and shoots a look up at me.
I frown, but I can’t piece that together right now. I focus on the thing I know we need to do. “We have to go after Augustus,” I insist, glancing around the citadel. “Where’s Marcus’s backup?”
Lenora frowns but quickly answers. “It hasn’t triggered. Which means his original cognition must not have been destroyed.”
“Augustus has him, but he hasn’t killed him,” Grayson clarifies.
My mind is clearing a little, and this makes sense—Augustus wouldn’t risk the wrath of the ascender world by murdering a fellow ascender unless he had no choice. Or a really good reason. Besides, as long as Augustus keeps Marcus trapped, he can’t resurrect elsewhere. He’s captured, and that makes him a lot easier to control, especially if Augustus has shredded his mind as he did with Lenora…
She’s staring oddly at me—I’ve drifted off in thought again, unaware of time. Untethered. The word floats up in my mind and startles me. I squeeze my eyes shut. Focus, Eli, I command my scattered brain. It helps. When I open them, Lenora’s eyelids flutter for a fraction of a second—so fast I wouldn’t have noticed if I weren’t staring straight at her face—and then her eyes go wide.
“Augustus has left his citadel.” Her voice twitches with panic. “He’s gathering up followers and—”
“Going after the Makers,” I cut her off. “I know. I saw it when I encountered his mind before he blasted me out to… well, a scattered state.”
Purple tendrils of concern mist across her chest, easy to see through the translucent fabric of her ascender-tech toga. “Scattered?”
“Not like you were,” I reassure her. Although that’s not entirely true. In the void, I was probably even more atomized than she was with her twelve selves trying to rejoin together. The difference is that I know how to pull myself together. I think. This void-hangover isn’t reassuring. “Hypatia must have gleaned some new information about the Makers from you during the fight, then passed it on to Augustus. Because he knows all about Miriam and the new Offering and me.”
“Yes, of course.” She steps back. “If he knew about the resurrections you’ve performed…” Her eyes flutter again, and she whips her head to the side like she’s heard someone behind her, only there’s no one there. Before I can ask what’s wrong, she turns back, eyes wide. “Eli, he’s telling Orion about you.”
Crap. “I guess that was going to get out sooner or later—”
“You don’t understand.” Her face is alive with agitation as she moves physically closer, throwing her arms out like she wants to cover my body with hers and deflect some unseen attack. Again I look around, but we’re alone in the citadel. “I’ve shut off access to Orion, but…” She whips a look to Marcus’s prone body. “If Augustus has the support of the others, he could break the key and…” Back to me, she says, “I’m a danger to you. He could commandeer this bodyform or Marcus’s… I have to leave!” She suddenly flits to Marcus’s bodyform and heaves it up in her delicate but ascender-strong arms. “I’ll lock you in. You’ll be safe here.”
“What? No.” I’m shaking my head, but she’s already zipping with ascender speed to the empty energy elevator. “Lenora!”
She freezes halfway into the vertical space that’s the only physical access to the citadel.
“She’s right, Eli,” Grayson says, striding quickly to her side. “Under no circumstances can we let them—”
“No.” I say it with enough force to stop Lenora from throwing Marcus’s bodyform in the lift. “Augustus is after me, and he doesn’t care who he wipes out in the process. Right now, that’s the Makers and the Resistance—he’s going after them both, and he’s not going to mess around with taking prisoners this time. We have to warn them. And then I’m going to have to face him, one way or another.” I stride over to them, my foot catching on the smooth, stainless floor, making me stumble a little on the way. Apparently, my body isn’t fully recovered, either.
“Eli.” Grayson’s growl is a warning.
I stop dead in front of him and stare him full in the face. “I am not letting Augustus kill people because of me.”
He hesitates a long moment, frowning, then stands aside.
Lenora looks furious.
I shove past her, step into the lift, then gesture to Marcus’s limp bodyform in her arms. “Send him up after me.”
“Eli—” But her words are cut off as the blue energy sucks in around me. It must activate automatically on the way up. I’m hurtled upward, my internal organs protesting by trying to stay in the underground bunker. At the top, I tumble out, then edge away from the lift in the narrow space between Marcus’s ship and the bunker wall. Marcus’s body shows up only a few seconds later and thuds to the concrete floor. It’s far too heavy for me, so I wait. Five more seconds, and Lenora appears, face full of fury and panic. She glowers at me, then scoops up Marcus’s bodyform and tosses him into the transport.
She hustles me into the ship. “What are you thinking?” she asks in a tone that implies both that I’ve lost my mind, but also that she’s willing to follow me down whatever insane path I’m on. It’s blind devotion to Eli the Prophet—which almost stops me cold. Maybe Grayson’s right. It’s far too easy for me to inspire fanaticism, and Lenora would be the most extreme of fanatics. Her whole purpose in life has been wrapped up in me from the moment of my creation. She would literally rush into a burning volcano for me. I know it.
I hesitate on the threshold of the ship. Am I making a mistake?
Grayson stumbles from the lift, then climbs directly into the hold of the ship without hesitating, although he looks a little sick. “I can set up a secure line to Commander Astoria,” he says, clomping toward the cockpit and throwing me a look over his shoulder. “But I don’t have any way to contact the Makers.”
Right. I can worry about fanaticism later.
I step the rest of the way into the hold and slap the button to close the door. “Take the ship straight to the Makers’ shops,” I say to Lenora.
Her face scrunches in disapproval, then she disappears into the cockpit at ascender speed. The hum of the ship revs up, and we’re hurtling up out of Marcus’s citadel garage a second later. When I reach the front, Grayson already has a holo channel open. The commander’s face looms large, and Cyrus and Tristan are in the background, angling to see.
“What’s this about?” Commander Astoria asks. Several of the Resistance’s militia dart behind her in full body armor. I halfway think they must be already under attack.
“We failed to stop Augustus from resurrecting,” I say quickly. “He’s coming after the Resistance and the Makers. You need to evac everyone out, commander.”
She only hesitates for a moment—then she steps away from the holo camera, shouting orders in French. The level of activity in the command center jumps from hurried to frenetic.
Cyrus and Tristan take her place. “Where are you?” Cyrus asks.
Tristan frowns. “We don’t need to know,” he says to me, “as long as you’re secure.”
“I’m headed to the Makers.”
“What?” Cyrus reaches toward the holo camera, then pulls his hand ba
ck in a fist. I’m pretty sure he’d be physically shaking me if he were here.
Tristan just shakes his head. “You are such an idiot.”
I grin. “I’ve been called worse. By you, in fact.”
Tristan runs a hand over his face. “All right, I’m sending a transport—no, correct that, two transports—to back you up. What exactly are you doing there?”
“Just warning the Makers and getting out.” I give an apologetic look to Cyrus, but he’s busy pounding a fist into his own forehead. “Augustus is coming for them, and they wouldn’t be dead-center in his bullseye if I hadn’t… you know.”
“Saved people’s lives?” Cyrus comes alive again… pissed.
“Backup would be good,” I say to Tristan, ignoring my best friend’s complaints. There’s no way he’ll be on board with this no matter what I say. “Just make sure Kamali and my mother evacuate with the rest, got it?”
“Copy that,” Tristan says and runs off.
Cyrus opens his mouth to protest some more—I cut the comm.
“This isn’t your fault, Eli.” Lenora’s pinched look and soft voice would be reassuring if that was even close to true.
Grayson keeps quiet, but his eyes are sharp. You’re playing with a fire that can burn down whole civilizations. He doesn’t have to say it again for me to hear the message loud and clear.
And he’s right.
I sigh and face Lenora. “You know, people keep saying things aren’t my fault, but I’m fairly certain I’m responsible for all of this. Or at least, someone has to be, and it’s looking like that someone is me. So, I’m going to do what I can to keep all of this—this coming time or Second Singularity or whatever the hell you want to call it—from turning into the world’s greatest bloodbath.”
Her expression opens like these are words she never expected out of my mouth.
But it’s Grayson’s minuscule nod of approval that cements this for me.
Lenora recovers and gives me a belated, jerky nod. “Yes. Someone does have to lead. But that’s not what I meant.”
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