Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

11

Molly stepped out of the sheriff’s office and back onto the crowded sidewalk. She looked down at the ticket stub she’d just purchased. There was no name on it, just a date, time, and place: that very night at eight o’clock, the opera house. Lok’s extremely short days meant she didn’t have long to wait, but it also meant skipping a shift of sleep. She tried to calculate how long she’ll have been up by the next nightfall—when the Wadi’s claws dug sharply into her shoulder, breaking her concentration.

She turned to chastise the animal, then saw it had cowered down low to peer over her shoulder at something. Following its eyes, she looked across the street and spied Walter walking amongst the crowd.

Molly let a buggy go by, its un-muffled engine blatting loudly as it revved up to cajole the buggy ahead of it. She ran across the street behind it, hot exhaust blasting her bare knees. Weaving through the foot traffic, she took long strides to try and catch up to Walter. The boy was walking unusually fast and quite close to the two Humans just ahead of him.

She nearly caught up to him when a ruckus occurred. Some kid came out of an alley right in front of the couple. The boy collided with them, sending the woman to the dirt, and then ran off without even apologizing. Molly rushed forward to help her and her husband, to see if they were okay. Shockingly, Walter did the same. He steadied the man by the hips to make sure the gentleman didn’t go down as well.

“Are you alright?” Molly asked the lady as she helped her up.

“Little snot came out of nowhere!” she said, brushing the dirt off her knees.

“Now Sandra, it was just an accident.” The gentleman patted Walter on the back. “Alright lad, I’m fine. Thank you very much.” He smiled at Molly and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. “Thanks for your assistance, young lady.”

“Molly!” Walter said. He glanced up and down the street as the couple merged with the crowd and disappeared. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m looking for the person who’s gonna help get us out of here. What’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” Walter said. He thumbed through folds of paper in his hand. “What wass her name again?”

“Cat. I’ve told you that a hundred times.” She pulled him out of the middle of the sidewalk so the crowd wouldn’t have to part to get around them.

“I think I found her,” Walter said.

Before Molly could respond, a young boy forded the river of foot traffic and tugged on Walter’s elbow. Walter turned and pushed him away, hissing softly.

“Did you just give that kid something?” Molly asked.

“What?”

“Was that the kid from the alley?”

“Huh? No!” Walter turned and resumed thumbing through something in his hands. All Molly could see was the top of his stubbled, metallic head, which seemed to be glowing a little. He turned around and pressed a wad into Molly’s hands. She looked at them: a thin stack of tickets, all to that night’s show at the opera house.

She shook them at him. “Where did you get these, Walter?”

“People gave them to me.”

“Gave them?” She reached out and grabbed a fistful of his flightsuit, pulling him close. “Where did you get them? Did you steal them?”

“No! They’re free!” he squealed.

Molly glared at Walter and had a visual of spanking him, right there in public, age be damned. “C’mon,” she said, pulling him back across the street. She veered toward one of the many outdoor cafes lining a busy side-alley.

Walter pried her fist off his cuff and grabbed her hand. As they crossed the street, he practically skipped along beside her, trying in vain to interlock his fingers with hers.

A few minutes later, Walter sat across a small café table from Molly, sulking. He took his finger out of his mouth and asked, “Why can’t we go back to the sship?” He pouted and resumed sucking on his digit.

Molly took a sip of her water, which she had made Walter vote for, then leaned back in her seat. “I already told you, some bad people are setting up camp in there, and the sheriff won’t have anything to do with them. Besides, I don’t wanna miss our chance at finally tracking this Cat character down.”

“So let’ss go get ssome gunss,” Walter said. Molly glanced away from him and over his shoulder. Two Callites were walking down the alley, both wearing coveralls splattered with the same purple paint Scottie and his friends had sported. She watched them curiously over the lip of her glass.

“I ssaid, let’ss get ssome gunss,” Walter hissed.

“Get them where? Guns are illegal here.” Molly reached into her glass and pulled out a cube of ice. She squeezed it between the pads of her fingers to numb the persistent soreness there. “That’s why you don’t see people on Lok shooting at each other.”

Walter looked down at his computer for a moment, then back up at Molly. “How do you protect yoursself from whoever’ss in charge?”

“Look around you, pal—this isn’t Palan. A bunch of pirates aren’t gonna take over and let the last people out of prison before putting some different ones in. It doesn’t work like that here.” She raised her voice as she talked, speaking over a protest marching down Main street. Someone on a bullhorn was promising to handle the Drenard invasion differently, and also to get rid of the ships overhead, if only the electorate would throw the current bums out and install him in their place.

“But if the ssheriff won’t help, and he’ss the one with the gunss, how do we get the sship back?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll be gone by the time we return. I think they were looking for someone else, anyway. Maybe they’ll give up. Anyway, we’re just gonna hang out here until the show. We need to find out about the fusion fuel. That’s the most important thing right now.”

“I thought we had plenty of fuel. You don’t tell me anything.”

“Yes I do. I’ve told you a dozen times, you just don’t listen. We need a different kind of fuel or we can’t get back from where we’re going. Besides, this lady might be an ally, which we’re in desperate need of. Our crew has dwindled down to—”

“I’m your ally!” Walter said, beaming.

“Yeah?” Molly took a long pull from her water, and then fished for another cube of ice. “Where in hyperspace were you this morning when I needed you?”

Walter frowned and looked back down at his computer; he’d hardly touched his food. Molly wondered if she should give the plate to the Wadi. She looked down at the creature, which was curled up in her lap, chewing on the tablecloth.

“Are you still not in yet?” Molly asked Walter.

He shook his head, which seemed to glow with an inner light. It was a sign she’d begun to recognize as either shame or excitement. Not knowing which made for some interesting interpretations of his moods.

“Seriously? You can crack a StarCarrier mainframe and remotely hack a Navy-issue missile, but you can’t get a wireless signal in a cafe? Look, just let me pay for it.” She glanced at her poor pinky, rationalizing the sacrifice.

Suddenly, the roar of thrusters in the atmosphere caused everyone in the café to glance up. It sounded at first like another Bern ship heading off to orbit, but they were too far from the rift for it to be that. She and Walter joined the rest of the patrons in searching the sky for the source.

She finally spotted the vertical plume from the lift-off. The tiny ship at its head didn’t match up with the sonic boom it created, as the sight of it reached them well ahead of the lagging noise. It was a strange optical illusion: a silent ship being chased by the grumble of an invisible one. It was especially unnerving as Molly still had not gotten used to hearing spacecraft move.

She looked away from the ship and watched the other patrons follow the scene. They soon began arguing politics amongst themselves, often saying something about Callites and immigration laws.

Walter peered down at his computer, frowning. “Coffee sshopss are much tougher than Naval encryption,” he said, still smarting over her jab at his technical prowess. “They update their sstuff weekly—the Navy takes decadess. Thiss sshop csycle’ss its passsword every half-hour and they usse ten twenty-four bit encryption.” He took a sip of his gelatte and wiped the foam off his lips with the back of his hand. “If the Navy took half thesse precautsionss, you’d probably be dead.”

He smiled up at her. “Twicse,” he added with a grin.

Molly glared at him over the lip of her glass. “You can’t die twice—”

A gasp from the upward-gazing crowd cut her off. Molly shielded her eyes and looked up as well. A second later, the distant roar of the spacebound ship went silent. As she followed the plume of exhaust upward to locate the ship, she saw the craft tumbling down past the pillar of smoke it had created, bow spinning over thrusters, over and over.

Everything in the café froze as the patrons watched solemnly, waitresses frozen in place with pitchers of water dripping condensation. When the plummeting hull disappeared behind the building’s awning, there was a distant rumble, the sound coming from many kilometers away. Everyone gradually looked back to their food. Forks tinked against plates. Whispers began to grow back into conversations.

Molly took it all in, desperate to know what had just happened. Were they testing some kind of new craft? Something to use against the fleet? Everyone else seemed to know something, or at least they weren’t terribly shocked by the display. She leaned over to ask a nearby table, when Walter hissed excitedly.

“I’m in,” he said, his face glowing. He bent over the computer, typing furiously and sneering.

Molly reached across the table. “Let me see it.”

Walter continued to peck away.

“Walter, it’s important. Give it here.”

He frowned and handed over the computer. “Won’t be long before you’re kicked off,” he said.

Molly nodded and moved to swipe the top screen away, then noticed it was Palan’s planetary homepage. The weather forecast was being displayed, showing the projected hour for the next rains. She glanced up at Walter, who was looking back over his shoulder at a political dispute in the alley. She felt a sudden pang of sadness for him as she realized he must be feeling homesick.

Swiping the page to the side, Molly dragged up a new one from the bottom. The few times they’d been connected to the Net in the past two weeks, the datastream had been too thin to do even the most rudimentary of tasks. The remote Lokian villages had suffered from poor connectivity and bandwidth, even when they were lucky enough to find an available signal. A seemingly countless number of items had built up over the past weeks that she really wanted to check on, but first there were a few she had to.

Using the virtual keyboard, she typed: “Molly; Fyde; Navy,” and hit enter. Hundreds of hits registered, but she could see most of them were junk. Lots of false positives and a ton of spelling suggestions for “mollified.” She sorted the results by date, looking for something recent, but there wasn’t anything within the last two months.

She swiped that away and tried: “Parsona; Ship; Navy.”

“You looking for newss about thosse sshipss?” Walter asked. “The oness from the bright light?”

“No. I probably know more about them than the Bel Tra do. Not that that’s saying much. I’m actually looking for news about us. Trying to find out how much trouble we’re in.”

Walter pushed up from his chair and leaned forward. “You ssearching on Latticse?” he asked.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about—”

Walter leaned over the table and snatched the computer away from her. He pecked furiously at the keys while Molly tried to snag it back. “I said not to worry about—”

Walter relinquished the computer. Molly glanced at the screen and nearly dropped the device. She looked behind herself, scanned the crowd, then moved the tablet to her lap and stared at the screen.

It showed the welcome page for the GN Naval database.

“How did you do that?” she whispered.

“Eassy. I already had the passsword.” He slurped through ice cubes for the last of his drink, then looked around for their waitress.

“Is this how you hacked the missiles?”

He frowned at her as if the question didn’t merit answering. “Completely different,” he said.

The waitress came up from behind. Molly moved the computer under the table and threw her napkin over it. Some more water was sloshed in their glasses—their one free refill. Walter was told the gelate top-up would cost. He demurred, peering at the pads of his fingers. Molly glared at him, jerking her head to the side to let him know she needed some privacy.

He finally said “no thankss,” and the waitress moved on. Molly placed the computer on the table as the Wadi munched on her napkin. She looked over the welcome page for the Navy database, the appearance of the familiar site filling her with memories of the Academy. The only difference was the tall stack of red bars running down one side of the screen, indicating her current clearance level. She had no idea it even went that high.

Pulling up the keyboard display, she repeated her search query from Lattice and hit enter.

Molly scanned the report one more time, frowning at the results of the hyperspace signature scan. Somehow, it actually felt comforting to know what had happened, that Cole had definitely jumped into an object with mass and would likely have ended up in hyperspace. But how had he mistakenly jumped into a star? Did Riggs play some part in that? She peeked up at Walter, who was holding his empty gelate to the sun as if to make the ice melt faster.

The database search also showed the older memos linked to the most recent one. She glanced over the one detailing her and Cole’s escape from the Academy, but she didn’t read it. She could get lost in that memory: the door banging, Lucin yelling, the silent shots, just a crinkle of glass and a life ended…

The overall image created by the search results made her feel nauseous. Two escapes, several deaths, theft of Navy property, and a string of violence. She couldn’t imagine what more the higher-ups would be saying about her if they weren’t so busy dealing with the Bern invasion overhead, or the rumored expansion of Drenard hostilities.

Her mother, of course, had insisted that none of this was her fault, that perhaps things foreseen couldn’t be stopped—but Molly didn’t believe that. The mistakes she’d made, with the Navy and now on Lok, it was Glemot all over again. But unimaginably, impossibly, on an even larger scale.

“You’re wassting the connection,” Walter hissed.

Molly shook her head and looked back to the screen. She tried searching for: “Cat; Catherine; Lok,” but once again got too many hits to weed through them or make sense of it all. Most went too far back to be the correct person. She cleared the computer screen and handed it to Walter, then thought about the odd fatality count reported from Palan. She felt certain four people had died in those flooded streets. And yet: Lucin, Saunders, and now the official reports all claimed three. Did someone survive the rains? Or did they just not find the body?

“We’re in trouble,” Walter hissed.

Molly snapped her head around, her hands moving to the table and ready to push off, to flee or fight. The Wadi, asleep in her lap, jumped up and hit its head on the bottom of the table and came out woozy. But Walter was just looking at the computer. She could see the reports she’d just found back up on the screen.

“Close that stuff out!” she hissed at him. “And you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

He looked up. “Ssorry, but if you didn’t want me to ssee it, you sshould’ve cleared the hisstory tab.”

Molly settled back down, her heart racing. “No, Walter, that’s not the way it works.” She patted the Wadi on the head, comforting it, then leaned forward, hoping he’d see how serious she was. “If I wanted you to see what I was looking at, I would’ve left it up or shown it to you, understand? You can’t take stuff that’s not offered to you. At the very least, you need to learn to ask.”

“Why? If I don’t take it, ssomeone elsse will. What’ss the differencse? It’ss sstill taken, but then I don’t have it.”

“You shouldn’t even want something stolen. You—haven’t you ever had someone give you something?”

“No, not—” he looked down at his flightsuit, his name scrawled across the breast with a black marker. “Thiss,” he said, placing one hand on his chest.

“Okay, and how do you feel about that flightsuit? You love it, right?”

Walter nodded.

“More than that computer, am I right? And yes, I know you stole the computer from your uncle back on Palan.”

Walter looked at his computer, then ran his fingers over the bare patch of material on his suit where he had printed his name.

“I like the computer better,” he said.

Molly threw her hands up. “Oh, forget it.” She threw some credit chips on the table for a tip and shooed the Wadi up to her shoulder.

“C’mon, I think the waitress is telling us to buy something or scram. We’ll go hang at the square for an hour and wait until the show starts.”

She stood up and began weaving through the tables to reach the alley. Walter remained seated. He stared at his computer some more, then looked down at his flightsuit.

“Thiss iss my favorite outfit,” he muttered to himself.

12

Anlyn piloted the Bern ship through the Great Rift, sliding from one galaxy to another. As she scanned the backdrop of stars ahead of her, checking out the various structures floating in the void beyond, Edison began his prepared spiel in flawless Bern. She couldn’t understand most of the individual words—her Bern in deplorable shape for a member of royalty—but she’d helped write the speech in Drenard, so she could somewhat keep up, translating in her head:

“Greetings, members of the great Bern race. We come unarmed and without malice. Please do not fire upon us. As ambassadors for the Drenard empire, we wish to communicate, nothing more. Please do not fire. We wish to speak in peace with your cultural representatives.”

Edison lowered the mic and Anlyn checked the SADAR screen, or whatever the Bern called their version of it. Seeing nothing, she peered forward, squinting at the large structures floating silently in the distance.

“Another iteration?” Edison asked.

Anlyn shook her head. “I don’t think anyone will hear you.” She spread her hands toward the view through the canopy. “Where are the ships? All the activity?”

“The prophecy contained much accuracy,” Edison said, chortling.

Anlyn didn’t laugh. She settled back into her seat and grabbed the flight controls, spinning the ship in place. “We should tell Bishar. The Circle will want to—”

She fell silent. Looking back, a solid wall of gold stood in the open slit of space. The last hole in the barrier could be seen squeezing shut, one of the armored canisters brought forward and locked into place.

Anlyn reached for the radio. “Bishar, this is Anlyn, respond.” She waited a moment for a reply. “Hello? Anyone, please answer.”

Nothing.

Her hand dropped to her lap in frustration.

Edison took the radio from her grasp and returned it to the dash. “Reveal your ruminations,” he said.

“You want to know what I think? I’m starting to wonder what we’re doing here. Where are the Bern? I don’t—we aren’t supposed to be doing this by ourselves.” Anlyn looked down at her lap. “Those two boys playing with your lance… what were their names—?”

“Who? You speak with adequate volume,” Edison said, “but it appears self-directed.”

“This was all a mistake. Everything. The speech, the prophecy, all those people…” Anlyn glanced over at Edison, then looked away. “I’m sorry, I think I really messed up this time—”

Edison reached over and squeezed her arm; he growled in her native tongue: “Love, are we more lost than when we met?”

Anlyn thought about that.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “But back then, we had at least known what galaxy we were in.”

“Ceti,” said Edison, switching back to English.

“What?” Anlyn lifted her head.

“We currently occupy the galaxy designated Ceti by the Terran federation.” He gestured to the screen ahead of him, then clacked a few buttons with his claws and the image zoomed in. “Observe. Our position is precisely determined.” He flashed his teeth.

“Like I know where the Ceti galaxy is,” Anlyn said, wiping at her face. She couldn’t tell if her love was being sweet to change the subject, or just unaware. Either way, she tried to pull herself together.

“It is situated approximately two point eight five million light years from the Local Cluster,” Edison said.

Anlyn glanced at his screen, then sat up straight and looked at her own. “How do I pull that up over here?”

Edison pointed to a button on his display. Anlyn pressed hers and tried to memorize the swirling shape of the word and the position of the key. The display of ranged targets disappeared from her screen, replaced with a standard looking chart. The names were gibberish, but she took the dotted trails for supply routes between good hyperspace jumps.

“How are you telling which galaxy we’re in? Mine just shows nearby systems.”

Edison clacked on his keys, and her screen duplicated his view. Their ship stood in the center, a blip nearly the size of what seemed to be an elliptical galaxy. Edison marked a target off to one edge, a fuzzy spiral in a cluster of several other blurry patches.

“The marker indicates home,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

He turned to her with a hurt look, then bared his teeth. “Positive.” His claws tapped on the keys, and more targets lit up, his deep voice calling out names as they flashed. “The Milky Way. Andromeda. Triangulum. The more diminutive objects in periphery represent the dwarf galaxies within the cluster. The overall pattern is immediately recognizable. The only difference is the angle of reference, which is inclined forty two degrees from normal, and askew eighteen degrees clockwise.”

Edison glanced over at her and seemed to catch the confused expression on her face. He looked back to the map and held his hands out like he was clutching an invisible sphere. He swiveled both hands together and said in Drenard: “If you just rotate the map in your mind—”

“If you rotate it in your mind,” Anlyn said. “Some of us are normal.”

Edison’s teeth winked out in a sideways smile.

“Okay,” Anlyn said, wiggling to sit up straight, “So, the one we’re in, it’s called ‘Ceti?’” Anlyn tried to memorize the squiggle below their ship indicator; her brain didn’t feel quite up for the challenge. It was weird enough hearing Edison refer to galaxies with their Earth-names while speaking in Drenard. The last thing she needed was a third language thrown into the mix.

“That’s correct. And this one is labeled ‘Bern.’” He typed something, and a galaxy became highlighted in red.

“Oh, wait. I recognize that one. The shape anyway. Okay, I think I have my bearings. I’m just used to everything being centered on Drenard and right-side up.” Anlyn traced the black space around their ship’s indicator. “I wonder if the lack of lines between galaxies means we’re stuck in this one?” She shook her head. “No, of course not. There won’t be any resistance out here, no blockades and no keeps. It’s all Bern space, so there should be rifts with lots of traffic.”

“I’m confused,” Edison said. “The only way home should be through there.” He pointed at the shiny wall of plated armor ahead of them.

“It is.” Anlyn gripped the flight controls and spun the ship around to face the silent structures in the distance. “But we aren’t going home.”

She began accelerating out toward the large stations.

“We’re going to find the Bern and make first contact,” she said. “All over again. Prophecy or no prophecy, we’re here and we’re together, which makes this galaxy as good as any other.”

Edison reached over and rubbed her arm. “Agreed,” he said. “Besides, the most impossible thing we’ll ever do in all our lives has already been accomplished.”

“Which is?” Anlyn asked.

“Locating each other, of course.”

13

“Tickets! Get your free tickets!”

A man standing in front of the old opera house yelled the line over and over as he waved a fan of narrow stubs in the air.

“Ssee?” Walter hissed, turning to Molly.

Molly pulled him to a halt. “Did you know they were free when you stole them?”

Walter looked away.

“Thought so,” she said, releasing him with a slight shove.

She approached the gentleman, noticing as she did so that most people were doing just the opposite: they were scurrying into the street to avoid him. She wondered if the repulsive effect came from his comical attire: the man had on red pants, a velvety red jacket, and a white shirt with ruffles so long and stiff, they looked like a dozen pale hands reaching up to strangle him.

“Why free?” she asked him. She held up her own ticket as he tried to shove a few in her hand.

“Oh! Very good. Coming to see tonight’s show? Excellent. It’s free because—” He turned to a passing group. “Free tickets!” he yelled, frowning as they declined. “It’s always free on Tuesday nights. Tough day of the week— Free tickets!” More people scurried to the other side of the street. “Tough day of the week to get a crowd,” he finished. “We make it up in fruit and alcohol sales. Free tickets! And of course, we haven’t had this performer in several months. She’s been making quite a circuit around Lok, refining her act. Free tickets! We need to get people hooked again, am I right?”

He smiled and nodded as if answering his own question. Or perhaps to let Molly know he was quite busy enough without having to talk to her. She turned and studied the façade of the old opera house, which loomed up beside her.

It didn’t seem like much, not at first. Colorful dabs of paint clung to ornate carvings in desperate little chips. Rained-on dust dripped down massive columns in streaks, the tracks of brown smears blending with the dirt splattered upward from the sidewalk. The flaking and dripping made the entire building look like a half-burned candle of mud.

Through the grime and neglect, however, Molly saw something: an old grace, like a woman whose beauty had become shrouded in time. The building had tasteful architecture; it possessed a forgotten style that used to require an investment, back when artisans and laborers worked side-by-side, carving and painting masterpieces atop inspired engineering. But it was something else that made Molly’s breath catch in her chest. Something familiar. She actually remembered the place. Her father had brought her there when she was young—to see a magic act, she thought. A man had made loads of things disappear right off a stage before bringing them back again.

The old memory flooded her brain, striking for its clarity: a portly gentleman, bearded, wearing overalls instead of a magician’s suit. Fidgety and nervous, his head had been sheening with perspiration, his voice cracking with discomfort, and yet he had been wildly popular with the crowd. She could hear them in her recollection of that day: roaring all around her as a prairie buggy vanished from stage, then going wild again as it returned with members of the audience sitting inside—the very people who had just disappeared from traps and what-not.

Molly closed her eyes and attempted to corral more details of that night. She placed herself inside the theater of her imagination and tried looking to the side to see her father. She felt like he was right there, turning to her and smiling—

She lost it. It was too dark, that place they’d been in. Or maybe it was her childhood that remained too dimly lit. Still, it felt as though she’d won a kind of lottery, had reclaimed some portion of her fuzzy past.

The Wadi put its cheek next to hers and flicked its tongue out as if it were trying to taste the memory as well. She opened her eyes and coaxed the creature down by her belly where she could cover it with her arm. Walter stood by her side, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. Molly ignored him and strolled up to the entrance of the soiled building.

“Tickets?” a young boy by the door asked.

Molly fumbled for hers, exposing the Wadi, but the kid didn’t seem to notice or care. “Why do you need them if it’s free?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

The boy looked at her curiously, then glanced out at the gentleman in the street. “Good question,” he said.

Walter pushed on her back, shoving her inside before brandishing his collection of tickets to the boy.

“You only need one,” she heard the lad say.

Molly smiled and stepped deeper into the building, taking in the sight of the lobby, which was slathered in the same sort of red velvet worn by the ticket hawker.

“Thiss is nicse,” Walter hissed.

Molly looked at the stains in the carpet, the torn posters on the walls, the crumbling ceiling tiles. Both the concession stand and ticket office were dark and empty. The former had a glass counter with several of the panes broken, fragments hanging like transparent teeth. The latter looked like it had been broken into, the door askew and clinging to a single hinge. In the center of the lobby stood four grand columns, one of which had a wide crack running its length with rough-hewn lumber nailed across it, making it look like an arm in a splint.

Molly frowned and rubbed her own arm.

“Thiss iss like a date,” Walter said.

Molly turned and saw him looking up at her, his hand reaching out to grab hers.

She pulled it away and used it to squeeze his shoulder. “This is not a date, Walter. We’re here to meet someone.” She glanced at the various doors leading to the seats. “Let’s go sit up close so we can get her attention after the show.” She headed for the stairs leading down, but Walter ran toward the door marked “Balcony.”

“I wanna ssit up top!” he called over his shoulder.

Molly sighed and headed up after him. She didn’t think it would be difficult to race down after the show and introduce herself to Cat, so she ascending the wide stairway darkened by burnt-out bulbs. Feeling her way up using the railing, Molly groped with her feet for that last, non-existent “ghost step” that always made her feel like a lepton.

Just as she started worrying about it, someone jumped at her, fingers digging into her ribs and nearly knocking her back down the steps.

“BOO!” Walter yelled.

Molly jumped so hard, she nearly pulled a muscle. She swung an open hand at him, but he was already rolling around on the red carpet, panting and wheezing in a full-on Palan giggle fit. Molly pictured herself kicking him in the shins, but somehow restrained herself. Then, the sight of something incredibly familiar loomed in her peripheral, distracting her.

She stepped over Walter and went to the rail, looking down across the seats and the handful of people milling about. She took in the stage, lit only by the house lights, and knew she’d been there before. And more recently than her early childhood. Much more recently.

Dakura. Her mother’s simulated afterlife!

Her mom had whisked her there virtually in an attempt to keep her quiet. It had only been for a moment; her mother’s next tactic had been to strap her into a dentist’s chair, a memory Molly didn’t feel like revisiting. She concentrated on the stage, instead. It was definitely the same place. And it had to be the same theater her father had brought her to as a kid, right before they fled to Earth. She must’ve been six, or very nearly. She looked up at the dimly lit dome above her head, the tall walls to either side dotted with private viewing booths. She remembered sitting in one of those, leaning across the rails—

“Ew!” Walter yelled. Molly turned, and in the dim light she could see him patting his flightsuit, his hands coming away as if something were on them. “Thiss floor iss ssticky!” he hissed.

“Serves you right, you Drenard.”

Walter scrambled to his feet. He looked down at the faint stains on his clothes. “I am a Drenard!” he said proudly.

Molly laughed, reminded once again that some of her habitual cursing no longer made any sense—or at the very least had become ineffectual. She led Walter along the rail to the seats at the center of the balcony, thinking about how she couldn’t tell people to “go to hyperspace” the way she once had. Not since she was yearning to get there herself.

“Where iss everybody?” Walter asked, looking down at the sparse gathering below.

“I hate to break it to you buddy, but I don’t think Cat’s performance is gonna be that nebular.”

She glanced at her watch, which was still on universal time. She did the math for Bekkie, taking into account its fourteen-hour days, and confirmed that it was almost eight. And yet, she and Walter were the only people on the balcony, and just a handful seemed to be gathering below.

Walter settled back and spread both of his arms across the generous armrests. Molly looked at all the empty seats around them and wondered why she felt obligated to sit directly next to him. The Wadi must’ve had a similar thought; it moved from her shoulder to the back of the adjacent seat and flicked its tongue out at a stain. Molly squirmed in her chair and wondered what those jerks on her ship were doing at that very moment.

After a few minutes of agonizing over Parsona and watching the Wadi explore its environment, a chorus of boos signified the start of the show. Molly leaned forward to glare down through the railing at the rude behavior. As the lights began to dim, she saw several people hurriedly purchasing fruits and vegetables from a vendor. A handful of spectators stood in the aisles, carrying on and making a ruckus.

The only other quietly seated people in the audience besides her and Walter were an older couple in one of the box balconies. Molly strained to get a view of them, but the house lights dimmed, and soon, the entire space was pitch-black.

An electric speaker popped, and then blared with a shriek of feedback. Finally, a voice—deep and loud—boomed through the mostly-empty building: “Ladies! Gentlemen! Lokians! Welcome to another Tuesday performance from Cripple Cat! We regret to inform you, she has made a change in her routine during her recent tour of Lok. The management would like to stress the need to throw early and aim true.”

The speakers clicked and popped again as a button was released somewhere. There was another shrill of feedback as it was pressed once more: “Enjoy the performance!”

As the announcer fell quiet, a new and worse sound took his place: a metallic crash followed by a terrifying wail of vibrating steel. It threw Molly’s spine sideways, then the sound rang out again. And again. Each bang was like an off-key tuning fork sending out sonic tendrils to molest her ears. Through the noise, Molly could just barely hear the screams and boos calling out from below. The poor Wadi jumped from its perch, did a few circles in her lap, then started digging its way under her shirt.

Bang! Screeee! Over and over.

Molly stuck her fingers in her ears, but the horrid sound wormed its way through and just rattled around, trapped inside her skull. The assault on her one sense was so terrifying, it seemed to bleed over to others. She could taste metal. Pops of light burst in her stunned vision, although it was still pitch-black all around her. Even her nose hallucinated somehow, as an electrical burn tickled her nostrils.

The stage lights gradually brightened as the horrendous noise continued; they revealing a lone figure on the stage: a nude Callite, her back turned. At first, Molly couldn’t tell what she was doing. Then she noticed several objects rising and falling in front of the woman. She glanced at Walter and could see his outline huddled and cringing from the awful noise.

They needed to get out of there before they went permanently deaf.

Just as Molly considered an escape from the barrage of awful sounds, the first volley of fruit arced from the crowd and into the puddle of light on stage. Molly watched, horrified, as the raw and rotten foodstuffs splattered across the alien’s bare back. Something like cabbage exploded against her head, and the crowd could be heard whooping over the furious noise. The female Callite, seemingly naked, kept throwing the objects up in the air. Her back, brown and webbed with the lines of interlocking plates, shed the incoming missiles, her muscles rippling like turbulent, muddy water.

Molly pushed on her ears and watched intently. The Wadi finally managed to dig its way under her shirt; it crawled around to the small of her back where it huddled and shivered.

The woman began to turn. Another light came on, illuminating something floating down from above. Molly glanced up and saw a clear bubble descending—and the audience must have noted it as well. The hail of rotten edibles became thick and frantic, most of them missing. The spectators began using both hands, as more objects zoomed through the air at once than there had been people below.

Some of the produce found their target, and as Cat spun around, Molly saw she wasn’t completely nude. She wore a very short apron—almost like a welder’s smock—that just covered her body from her breasts to the top of her thighs. She completed her turn, facing the audience and the hail of edibles, and Molly finally recognized the source of the clamor: two hammers, like small sledges, were being wielded in each hand. The woman swung them in tight circles, knocking the falling objects repeatedly into the air. The things she hit looked like woks, but with the handles removed. She struck them on their flat bottoms with such precision that they rose straight up, never spinning over. She just kept juggling them with noisy violence.

Molly matched each of the objects with their unique brand of auditory pain. All three had their own signature, like merciless handwritten scrawls etched with fingernails on a blackboard. A piece of fruit glanced off one of the woks, sending it wobbling. Molly heard excited whistling from the crowd as Cat fought to stabilize the blaring cone of steel. Meanwhile, the lip of the descending bubble was close to protecting her, so the aim from the unseen firing squad shifted to her bare legs, both of them already flecked with the salad of disgruntled viewers.

Molly felt hope swell in her chest for the tormented performer, glad that Cat had added the shell as some sort of feeble defense. The lip of the inverted bowl finally met the stage, locking inside a round collar and sealing it tight. Residual noise continued to ring in Molly’s ears, but she could tell the source of the painful vibrations had gone away, as she could no longer feel the fabric of her shirt buzzing against her chest. She pulled her fingers out of her ears and worked her jaw, feeling something pop inside her skull.

The Wadi wiggled out of its makeshift cave and crawled up inside her shirt, peering out the collar. Molly leaned forward to take in the scene below as fruit from the audience continued to impact the barrier, sliding down and leaving colorful tracks behind.

Inside the bubble, Cat juggled the woks, each one rising up toward the ceiling of her shield before sinking back down. Without the agonizing noise, Molly could begin to appreciate the physical ordeal taking place. Each hammer looked to weigh a few kilos, and the woks had to be sturdy to take such a beating and put off so much sound.

Cat’s arms, popping with sinewy muscles, were beautiful in motion. They vibrated with each impact, relaxed, then tensed, then vibrated again. The definition in them stood out through her dark, scaly skin, the movement of them reminding Molly that Callites appeared to be made up of hard plates, but they were just as soft and pliable as she, the webbing no different than how her own skin looked on close inspection.

She shifted her gaze to Cat’s legs, where the alien’s larger muscle groups fought to keep her body stable, her torso rotating gracefully through the cycles of the juggling, hips and shoulders weaving in time to a tune Molly could no longer hear. The entire display was a sort of grace moving to the beat of torture, a sensuous expression of pain. Molly studied Cat’s body and her motions intently, finally noticing the two bands encircling the woman’s thighs, the only things she wore besides the smock-like apron.

Movement in the crowd broke Molly’s concentration. She watched as the bored spectators threw the rest of their ammunition toward the dome. The missiles impacted and exploded as the unhappy silhouettes filed toward the exits.

For them, the night’s entertainment was over.

For Molly, it had just begun.

A hum-filled silence ensued. There wasn’t a peep outside Molly’s head, just a dull, residual roar from the earlier explosions of sound. She watched, mesmerized, as Cat slammed the objects up into the air. It took her a moment, lost as she was in the lovely display of dexterity, to realize something truly awful. Something horrifying:

It wasn’t quiet in that bubble.

The shield, Molly finally understood, wasn’t meant to protect Cat from the hurled objects—it existed for the audience’s benefit. It protected Molly and the rest of the spectators from the gods-awful noise.

Inside that shell—alone and unguarded—Cat endured a torment far worse and of greater frequency than the petty strikes hurled from the crowd.

Molly leaned over the railing, her empathy drawing her down inside that dome. She tried to imagine the horror of standing there, of enduring not just the noise, but the confined echoes of that shield. She felt the sickening inability to escape or win reprieve, the anguish of willingly secluding oneself in tight proximity to such violence.

The thought made her want to yell out for it to stop; she wanted to float to the stage and pound on the glass and put an end to it all; she wanted to throw something, anything at whoever was doing this. But the silence, the barrier between her and that agony, even the sheer beauty of Cat’s precise movements, it all completely paralyzed her.

So she continued to watch, transfixed, at the sublime mastery of kinesthetics on display. And without even realizing it, she began to cry. The tears silently streamed down her face as she clutched the railing with white knuckles and watched an event more meaningful and more beautiful and more terrible than her imagination could properly bear.

Close by, the old Wadi responded to the tears and sadness. She kept her head tucked beneath the jutting outcrop of her pair-bond’s chin, and she bobbed her head with grief, swaying with the somber scents she could see and smell like columns of smoke. Falling into a deep trance, she forgot even her great and persistent hunger. She forgot her need to feed her brood. She just lost herself in her pair-bond’s emotions—clear and as moving as canyon music. And those emotions stirred something deep inside. Deep, where her pair-bond had triggered other changes by removing her from her lair. Changes she had once fled to the canyon of solitude to never feel again.

As the chemicals and smells of sadness swirled all around her, the Wadi remembered back to long ago. She remembered the arduous, dry, and hot run to the eggless canyon, that place where she could avoid what the male Wadis had done to her. She had made her home in those canyons where offspring were never produced and where the blue hunters rarely came. It had been so long ago, but she was willing to stay there even longer. She had planned on staying forever, hoping to avoid these changes for the rest of her days.

But now they were taking place, and emotions coursed down her scent tongue, traveling like liquid rays of the twin lights to fill her head and heart. They swelled and consumed her near to bursting—even as her body continued to dwindle. Continued to dwindle as whatever she ate and drank was robbed from her, pulled through some sucking void she couldn’t understand, racing off to feed eggs laid in the eggless canyon, which was so impossibly far away that she could no longer taste it. Impossibly far away, but somehow connected to her, nutrients flowing through a corridor that shouldn’t be there.

14

“What the flank are you doing?” yelled Cole. “What the flank!”

Joshua smiled and calmly returned the wooden sticks to their furry folds. He then brushed his hands along his thighs, smoothing the pelt covering them. “More questions?” he said. “Should I divide your friend into smaller pieces?”

Cole shook his head and panted for air. He watched the two goons bend down and grab Riggs’s boots, pulling his calves forward so they could smear the cut edges with the purple goop. Blood leaked out the top of them. As they held them away from the rack, Cole could see the concentric circles of Riggs’s insides, the white of bone surrounded by bright layers of red meat.

“Are you ready to answer my questions?”

Cole nodded.

“What’s your name?” Joshua asked.

“Cole,” he whispered. His mouth responded directly to the question, bypassing his brain, his heroics, his fear.

“Where are you from, Cole?”

“Earth. Portugal. What are you going to do with us?”

“If you ask me another question, I’m going to pull out my favorite toy again, do you understand?”

Cole looked away from Riggs, whose head had begun lolling from side to side, dull moans leaking out that seemed to come straight from Riggs’s gut, not his vocal cords. The sound—primal and eerie—snapped Cole out of his zombie-like state. He nodded at Joshua.

“How do you know Mortimor?”

“I don’t, I swear. I know his daughter.”

Joshua nodded as if that made sense. “Have you been to Lok?”

“Never.”

“Do you know what fusion fuel is?”

Cole dipped his head. “Yeah, of course. I went to the Academy, I—”

“No. Not what it’s used for. What it is. What it’s made of.”

The question startled Cole. He thought of Dani back on Drenard, the conversation they’d had on that prison rooftop. Dani had told him that this was the most important question. He lowered his brows and shook his head.

“Were you about to say something?” Joshua asked.

“No, just… it’s an odd question.”

Joshua stepped close, frowning at Cole, his gaze boring straight through his skull. “I’m only going to ask the following once,” he said, “so be honest with me. Are you a Drenard?”

Cole stopped breathing. He glanced at Riggs, who seemed awake, but in shock. His friend’s head rolled around, the whites of his eyes showing.

“Yes,” he said, not looking back at Joshua. “I’m a Drenard.”

“Well, well!” Joshua slapped his thighs. “This is just unbelievable. Jons, finish putting that boy’s legs back on. Kelly, untie Cole. You and I are taking the Chosen One to meet his maker.”

Cole had no idea what any of that meant, but at least half of it sounded very bad for him. He kept his eyes on Riggs as one of the goons stood up, wiped his hands on his fur, and came over to untie him.

Joshua smiled at Cole and moved his goggles from his neck to his forehead. “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “we were always going to take the legs off both you lads. Had nothing to do with the questions.”

Cole grimaced as the goon pulled him down from the rack. The brute loosened his hands and yanked his arms around his back before re-tying his wrists. Cole kept looking to Riggs, waiting for his eyes to focus, to see if he was going to survive. The guy at his feet had the ends of his legs forced together, the purple paste squeezing out between the severed edges. The man met Cole’s stare for an instant before turning away; Cole closed his eyes right as the door squeaked open, blasting the room with harsh light. The last thing he saw before squeezing his eyes shut was one of Riggs’s thighs twitching involuntarily, a trickle of blood oozing past the purple paste where the two parts of him were pressed together.

They dragged him outside, the cold air and searing light washing over him. The light flashed through his eyelids, his thin flesh filtering the photons to the redness of glowing steel. Part of him wanted to open them a little—just to cauterize the image of the severed legs out of his memory. He instead forced himself to concentrate on other sensations, both to get a feel for his surroundings and to be distracted by something.

The first thing he noticed was a slight breeze swirling around his neck and flecks of freezing snow on his face. He could feel dollops melting in his hair, turning it wet. Forceful hands gripped his arms and shoulders on both sides, and hinges squeaked behind him as the door was pushed shut. Just before it clanged tight, Cole heard agonizing moans leak out from his friend, the sound bringing back the very images he was trying to avoid.

“Goggles!” Joshua barked.

Cole tried to shake the echo of the moans out of his head. He focused on the other sounds around him: the groaning of metal as if massive sheets of it twisted under pressure; the stomping of feet on steel decking, vibrations coming up his own shins; people shouting commands in the distance; the clatter of a sparse crowd. Behind it all—the sound of a soft yet persistent wind; the crunching of packed snow and crackling ice; a slight sway in the deck, like a boat at sea, or a ship with dying grav panels.

Hands went to Cole’s face. He tried to pull away, but his arms were still strapped behind his back, and somebody had him by the shoulders, fixing him in place.

“Keep still,” a voice said.

He felt something tight come down over his head—hair ripping out painfully—before the cups snapped over his eyes. Someone slapped him on the back of the head, either to tell him they were done or to punish him for being difficult, he didn’t know.

With the red glow gone from his vision, Cole tried cracking his eyelids. Blinking, he looking down at his feet and away from the dangerous light, but everything looked… normal.

They pulled him forward again, forcing him to take in his surroundings on the move. A clump of his hair had been trapped inside the goggles, obscuring his vision, but he could still see pretty well. Around him stood several small huts; they would’ve been normal looking if they weren’t made of metal plating. Cole recognized the colors on quite a few. Navy black and gray with words stenciled in blocky white letters:

Each phrase stood at odd angles or upside down, the hull they used to be a part of long disassembled and the shape of the crafts beaten flat with hammers. Cole saw a few ship names and designations that qualified as antiques, Navy hardware that hadn’t been used since the galactic expansion.

Their group weaved in and out of the square structures, through little alleys of zig-zag confusion. Cole looked down at his feet and wondered what they meant by putting Riggs’s legs back on and how he was going to “meet his maker.” His boots clomped on the steel decking dusted with the barest cover of snow. The rivets that dotted the deck and the thick welds that held the plates together gathered the white flakes in small ridges, like miniature drifts. Here and there, these drifts were crushed flat by the boots ahead of him, pressed with the designs of mismatched soles.

They rounded another shed and popped out into a clearing—an expanse of flat steel. The area bustled with fur-clad people carrying things, coiling lines, someone welding amid a shower of golden embers. In the center of the square, a cluster of men clashed with sticks, as if training. Everyone looked exclusively human where the absence of fur revealed anything.

Cole looked down at his getup of flightsuit and jumper and wondered how they weren’t burning up in all that fur. He was cold, but not freezing. His trio of escorts, Joshua, Kelly, and whoever had joined them outside the door, pulled him through the square and toward the far side. Getting away from the tightly packed buildings gave Cole his first vista of the overall area, allowing him to appreciate the size and scale of the massive ship. The deck stretched out thirty or so meters to either side and probably a few hundred or more to the far end. Through gaps in the buildings to his left, he could see a railing at the very edge and a white field of snow beyond. Out there, the flakes continued to move sideways in thick sheets, even though only a smattering of flakes fell over the village. It reminded Cole of the smaller craft he had been on. He assumed a barrier up front was parting the heavy snow, and that the sounds and vibrations in the steel meant the entire metal village was underway, sailing across the snow-covered land on large runners.

They were halfway across the square before Cole finally noticed the fleet overhead. Ships, dozens of them, possibly hundreds. Large and black, they looked menacing beyond the veil of snow, fierce in the way only half-hidden things could be. It was impossible to count them, which added to their awful potential, but there were enough to blot out the sky. Anywhere he could see through the flurry, dark hulls loomed, their overlapping forms creating an artificial cosmos to replace the harsh whiteness he’d seen from the Firehawk’s belly. Across that black, the snowfall whizzed horizontal like speeding stars in some holovid’s corny rendering of what traveling through hyperspace might be like.

Joshua spoke with the other two escorts as they dragged him along, but Cole couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. Besides the fleet, there was another distraction: a massive tower—a larger version of the mast-like pole from the smaller vessel—that rose above a cluster of steel buildings ahead. Cole tried to follow it up to the top, but the spire rose further than he could see without arching his back. His group seemed to be heading straight for the strange object.

Beyond the tower, he could just barely make out the tall walls of dull steel that seemed to form the prow of the monstrous craft. The high barrier, shaped like a “V,” must be what broke the driving snow to either side. The sheets of steel had to be three stories high, at least. Between them and the mast there was another large clearing on which sat a few ships. Cole could see their tails sticking up over the squat buildings, the light snow swirling around them. One of the tails he recognized as a Firehawk, the rest were alien. Not just indistinguishable: alien.

“You sure about him, boss? This is the guy from the prophecy?”

A fragment of the conversation grabbed Cole’s attention, and something told him they’d been speaking of him for a while. They passed through an alley on the far side of the clearing, exiting at the base of the tall mast. Cole tried to focus on what was being said, but yet another curiosity caught his attention: another group of men were practicing with wooden sticks ahead of the mast, but they were doing it in slow motion.

Then Cole saw that everyone up ahead was moving slowly, all across the wide deck as far as he could see. A figure descended from one of the ships, taking forever to move between rungs. A woman walked across the deck in half-speed. She had fur up to her neck, black goggles over her eyes, and her long ponytail swayed side to side like a pendulum through viscous water. A man with a blowtorch cut away at one of the ships, but the shower of sparks flew up as slow as lazy bugs, arcing out forever and drifting down as if frightened of actually landing. Cole looked at his own feet; they appeared to be moving at a normal speed.

He started to ask Joshua about the effect, then saw they had almost reached the base of the large tower. About ten meters wide and perfectly round, it appeared to have a flat top—like a squat cylinder sitting on one end. The tower rose up from the center of this platform: thin and wide like a blade, but with dozens of slits running its length.

As his escorts led him past the structure, Cole thought he sensed it twist a little, the entire cylinder rotating slightly. The people in the distance moved even slower now, nearly at a stand-still. Some sort of game they were playing on him?

One of his feet hit the back of his ankles, and he nearly tripped forward, but the arms at either side caught him. Another hand smacked the back of his head, the blow echoing with laughter.

“Enough,” he heard Joshua say.

Cole tried to look over at Joshua, and then he noticed the world had returned to normal: everyone had picked up their pace across the moving village. To his side, the tower definitely moved a little, twitching and rotating. They led him around the perimeter of the base to the forward side of it.

Meet his maker? The phrase rang in Cole’s ears again. Was he about to be strung up? Executed? Simple as that? And why cut off Riggs’s legs to put them back on? How was that even possible? And why put them back on if they were to be executed? What in hyperspace was going on?

Cole felt his pulse quicken as he ran through the questions and the likely answers. He still felt shaken up from the crash landing, from the strange voices in his head, from the fight with Riggs. There was too much going on and none of it made sense. He needed one thing he could understand, something to somehow web the rest of it together.

But he had nothing. His entire environment felt out of focus as they pulled him in front of the tower’s base. He saw a steep flight of stairs there, cut into the flat cylinder and leading all the way up and aft toward the top of the platform. They started pulling Cole up the stairs while some inner self yelled: fight back. But as soon as he put his feet out to resist, they just lifted him up and carried him. Now and then, the entire tower would twitch to one side, and the men would sway together, grabbing handrails and dragging Cole roughly.

Definitely an execution. A flogging at the mast. The more Cole struggled, the more hands he felt on him, some coming swiftly and in the shape of fists.

Suddenly, the world started flashing by around him. He must’ve been going into shock. Everything moved at a blistering pace, the snow a blur to either side, people whizzing across the deck below. He squirmed and kicked and felt himself picked up by all four limbs, laughter filling his ears.

After the last step, they threw Cole down and wrenched his arms up; somebody forced his knees under him and he tried to kick out—he shook his shoulders back and forth. When someone punched him in the liver, Cole bent to the side in agony. He thought of Molly—tried to focus on his love for her—pulling her face out of memory to have something solid to cling to.

Rough hands grabbed his head and forced his gaze up, while his arms were yanked against the restraints. He was having the hardest time remembering what Molly looked like. It heaped sadness on his despair. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to drown him inside his goggles.

A face swam into view. Not Molly’s, not the face he was trying to conjur, but one familiar. It loomed down in front of him, smiling.

Cole couldn’t make sense of it. He recognized the man, the thin face, the wicked smile. Cole blinked, trying to focus through his goggles, feeling like this was exactly how he’d seen him before: through a sheet of thick plastic. Or carboglass.

Dakura.

The man from Dakura who was after Molly! Cole couldn’t remember his name, wasn’t sure if he ever knew it, but he knew that face—

Byrne. He did know it. He remembered Molly saying it in horror. But didn’t they leave him for dead in that loading bay?

Joshua stepped forward and began whispering in Byrne’s ear. He waved his hands as he spoke.

Byrne’s smile grew. He stared at Cole, nodding his head.

Cole tried to focus on what was being said, then noticed the strange man was wearing a red band around his forehead. He wondered if it was his; he wondered if the man remembered him from Dakura.

Byrne whispered something in return to Joshua, who stepped back and relayed it to the people holding Cole. As Joshua stepped aside, Cole realized there was something different about the thin man, something besides the red band. Byrne wore the same outfit of thin canvas pants, a shirt with large white buttons, his wiry frame poking out at the shoulders—

But Cole could’ve sworn the last time he’d seen him, Byrne had been in possession of both his arms.

15

Cat eventually seemed to tire and make a mistake, and one of the woks fell and rattled silently inside the bubble. Molly tried to sense how long the beautiful and brutal display had been going on. Half an hour? Longer? Cat pulled her foot out of the way of the spinning wok as her arms continued looping in large circles. The strained grimace on her face was visible even from the balcony. She looked away from the remaining two mid-air objects and nodded to someone off-stage. As her head turned, Molly spotted a bright trickle of blue blood leaking out of the Callite’s ear and weaving its way down her brown neck.

A moment later, the lights began to dim, and Cat juggled the last two woks lower and lower, allowing them to settle to the ground. Finally, the torturous and sublime show came to a silent conclusion, but Molly remained transfixed, staring into the darkness as her mind struggled to comprehend the powerful display she had just witnessed: a solitary figure, on stage, enduring incredible violence while exhibiting such practiced expertise. She had to meet this person. She wanted to get backstage somehow and thank her. Congratulate her.

Then she remembered: that’s why we’re here!

She turned to grab Walter and saw that he had passed out across the armrest on the other side of himself.

“Walter, are you asleep?”

He lifted his head as the dim house lights flickered and returned. Molly looked to the stage and saw that Cat was gone, the bubble rising slowly toward the rafters.

“Iss it over?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Molly shooed the Wadi to her neck and hurried toward the stairs. Behind her, she heard someone clapping; she glanced over her shoulder to see the couple in the box seats giving the performance a standing ovation.

“Let’s go,” she repeated impatiently. She turned down the stairwell and took them two at a time, not waiting for Walter to catch up.

The lobby was empty save for one man—the ticket hawker from the street—who leaned on a mop. Molly ran toward the doors that led down to the lower seats, then whirled to ask him: “How do I get backstage?”

The man threw both arms wide, dangling the dripping mop in the air.

“Practice!” he announced, smiling like a fool.

Walter staggered down the last few steps, still half-asleep.

“I’m serious,” Molly said. “I need to speak with Cat.”

“Well, you better hurry if you want an autograph.” The man laughed to himself. “She’ll be in no shape to write before long.”

“What? Where is she? It’s important.”

The man pointed slantwise through the building. “She’s most likely in the back alley with her meager pay, heading off to a pub to get tore up.”

“Thanks!” Molly said. She grabbed Walter and pulled him toward the exit.

“No problem,” the man said. He then hollered after them: “But next time, there’s a two tomato minimum!”

Molly kept one hand on the Wadi’s back as she ran down the side of the opera house, not so much to keep the creature in place but to let it know the claws weren’t necessary, at least not deep enough to sting.

At the back of the building, she turned the direction she thought the ticket hawker had pointed and peered down an alley that serviced the rears of two rows of businesses. In the dim light of a few bare bulbs, she could see dumpsters dominating the lane, their quiet bulk contributing to the smell of things dead and rotting. Detritus was strewn everywhere, and bits of paper floated in the dark and dusty night air; they caught the feeble light and seemed like things alive and fluttering intently.

Molly hesitated, wishing a Palan flood upon the place. That miserable weather phenomenon would be a blessing for the alley. Squinting into the distance, she thought she saw someone turn a corner half a block away, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Drenards!” she cursed.

Walter skidded to a stop beside her. “Sslow down—” he complained.

“Hold her,” Molly said, handing him the Wadi so her claws wouldn’t be a concern. After he took the animal, Molly set off in a full sprint toward the corner she thought someone had moved around, berating herself as she ran for not bringing a flashlight. Pumping her legs, she weaved around the dumpsters, her boots growing heavy as the treads collected mud made of dust and discarded cooking grease.

Around the corner, she came to a halt. Another alley—long, narrow, and empty—stretched out before her like an urban canyon. The high buildings on either side blocked out all the streetlights; they rose up so far they seemed to be leaning in on one another.

Molly called down the passage: “Cat? Hello? Anyone?”

She stepped into the narrow crack between the two buildings and peered toward the shaft of light at the far end. The light seemed to come from the streetlamps of a busy road; they pulsed as shapes moved across them, headlights blooming and receding behind the silhouettes of a conveyor-like crowd.

The din of nighttime activity seemed the logical place to find a pub, but the dark alley made it seem so very far away. Despite her sense of urgency to catch up with Cat, Molly moved through the alley slowly. She could feel raw, childlike fear creep up her spine. She silently urged Walter to hurry and catch up.

As she crept deeper into the darkness, she felt internally torn. The impatient part of her urged her to hurry after the woman she’d spent two weeks searching for, but the fearful part of her begged to run back, to get out of that dark alley. She pleaded with Walter to come faster, for some physical company to wave away the creepiness. She was a dozen meters into the dark space when she finally heard him pad up behind her in his near-silent way. She turned and groped in the darkness for Walter, whispering his name…

But all she seized hold of was the bad thing reaching out to grab her.

16

Byrne nodded to the two goons holding Cole in place, and the men lifted him to his feet. They shoved him forward and presented him like a trophy. Cole and Byrne faced each other, one man with his arms strapped behind his back, the other lacking them altogether.

It made for an awkward moment.

Cole glared at the red band around Byrne’s forehead and cursed his stupidity. Joshua approached and whispered once more into Byrne’s ear; he jerked his head in Cole’s direction as he spoke. Cole tried to read his lips, but found himself again distracted by the dizzying speed with which the world flew past to either side. He glanced to the deck far below where the fur-clad people moved so fast, they left trails behind like human blurs. And the snow flying by to either side, drifting lazily a moment ago, now stretched out in a sheet of fuzzy white. Cole felt another wave of vertigo, and the men behind him had to support his weight as his knees buckled.

“Bring that chair closer,” Byrne said, nodding to one of the several pieces of furniture scattered around the mast.

As the goons went to work, Cole fought to regain his balance. He turned back to the scene around him, dizzy and confused. The circular platform was everywhere cluttered with tables and chairs and sprinkled with the debris that came from lounging men: empty cups, trays filled with ash and butts, plastic bags smeared with a film of purple. The normal seemed juxtaposed with the bizarre, as if regular people lived in this, the most irregular of places. For a moment, Cole wondered if he’d died in the Firehawk crash. Maybe the dreamlike inconsistency of the place was nothing more than the mad firings of his dying brain. Riggs’s legs; the snow; the slow and fast people; someone that should be dead, now alive, but missing his arms… all of it layered on a backdrop of people he knew from history books. People that shouldn’t be alive.

He watched, detached, as a chair constructed of metal strips was placed beside a seat ornate enough to qualify as a throne. Byrne sat in the latter, and Cole vaguely felt someone tugging at his arms, working the restraints loose. His hands came free. Cole rubbed the red mark around one of his wrists and went to adjust his goggles and get the clump of hair out of his eyes. Before he could, he found himself being pushed forward and forced down into the chair.

“Leave us,” Byrne said to the others.

Joshua flushed. “Sir, I—” he stammered.

“Have your men remain on deck, outside of the mast’s time-flow. Put them in shifts if need be. You may cut him down if he runs.” Byrne studied Cole. “But I don’t think he will. The prophecy has failed, and now there’s nothing left but time.”

“Any word from—?” Joshua tapped his forehead, his eyes darting over to Cole.

“Our friend will come through, don’t worry. And anyway, the invasion has already begun. It will succeed no matter what. Now go prepare your men. Don’t come back unless four days pass below. I’ll be returning to the command ship at that time.”

Joshua’s faced twitched at the news, his leathery complexion not quite weathered enough to hide his disappointment. Still, he bowed low to Byrne and forced a wan smile. “Very well,” he said. He stood upright, his eyes flickering over to Cole, then up to the men holding him in place.

Their hands came off his shoulders, and Cole finally had a chance to adjust his goggles. He closed his eyes, reseated the dark lenses, and brushed the wet clumps of hair off his forehead. Joshua and his men were halfway down the steps by the time he opened them again, their limbs twitching as they picked up speed. He turned to the armless man to his side.

“What in the galaxy is going on?” Cole asked. “What is this place? And my friend, is he—?”

“Do you know who I am?” the man interrupted.

“You were on Dakura,” Cole said. “You—you were kidnapping Molly. Byrne, right? What were you planning on doing with—?”

“With Mollie?” Byrne smiled. “I thought she was you.”

“What?”

Byrne settled back in his ornate chair and closed his eyes, smiling.

“Are you talking to someone right now? Is that my band?”

Byrne opened his eyes. “Was your band. And I think it was ordained that you bring it to me. I’ll have you know that I’m truly savoring this.”

Cole watched the men shuffle around at the base of the tall pedestal, out of earshot. Joshua’s blonde hair was no longer among them. The group moved to and fro somewhat faster than normal—twitching and jerking—but nothing like the distant crew, who continued to race around impossibly fast.

Cole turned to Byrne. “None of this is real, is it? I’m dreaming, right?”

“Oh, no,” Byrne said. “You are not dreaming. I am.”

Cole rubbed his hands through his hair and acted like he was drying them on his flightsuit. He felt his pockets for the utility knife or the band, but found nothing. He rubbed the edges of Mortimor’s name patch, the detail and consistency of some things causing him to doubt he was dead, dying, or dreaming.

“So, what, we’re just gonna sit here? You’re not gonna tell me where I am or how my friend’s doing?”

“Petty concerns, Chosen One.” Byrne laughed, shaking his head. “I dreamed of this day in a million different ways, but never like this. Sitting with you, in hyperspace, the invasion underway, this will be an enjoyable report to write.” He glanced down at his own shoulder, the sleeve of his thin, white shirt tied in a knot where his arm should be.

“Enjoyable to dictate, perhaps,” he said.

Cole leaned back and rubbed his face. “You’re talking in riddles, man. What invasion?”

Byrne turned to him. “Just how little do you know?”

“Less than zero. Seriously. I feel like I just woke up in someone else’s body. Why is everything moving so fast out there? And what’s this prophecy and chosen one nonsense? Who are you? Is my friend going to be okay?”

Byrne pursed his lips, his thin mouth set at an angle. Cole imagined a nonexistent hand reaching up to scratch his chin, completing the pose.

“How were you supposed to stop something you never understood?” Byrne wondered aloud.

“By accident?” Cole offered.

Byrne smiled. “I suppose. Strange that Mollie came so close to stopping the invasion. I should’ve known she was no Drenard.”

Cole swallowed. Loudly. “What does being a Drenard have to do with anything? Or are you just trying to frustrate me before you kill me?”

Byrne shook his head. “That’s the problem with you Humans, always thinking we want you dead for the pure thrill of it.” He paused, his thin eyebrows coming down. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Humans?” Cole studied the man’s face closely, looking for some major difference. “What are you?”

“We’re known in this area as the Bern, but we go by many names. We are everywhere. This is our universe, and it has been for many passings. You… you are one of us. Well, almost.” Byrne gazed up at the black shapes barely visible through the whizzing streaks of snow.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. How much time does my friend have—?”

“Time.” Byrne laughed, his voice oddly full and thick for so thin a frame. “Time does strange things here, that’s for sure. Take the mast behind us. When time meets it, each quanta of moment—the very constituent particles that move events along—they split in two and then split again. All those particles pass through the slits, propelling this magnificent collection of metal and men forward. Ingenious. Almost Bern-like to have been crafted by Humans. And for one such as myself, who the eons have made impatient, that makes this such a wonderful spot to rest. To usher events along.” He looked over at Cole. “If you wanted to live forever, you would just need to spend a few hours a day up here, letting time split around you, undoing the decay. Or, if you wanted to meet your end faster, in mere moments even, try your luck on the other side.” Byrne smiled.

“I don’t understand,” Cole said.

“Why don’t I tell you a story?”

“Is it more riddles? Are you going to kill me afterward?”

“It’s a simple story. And, no.”

“Good. To both.” Cole leaned back in his chair. He made a show of crossing his arms, defiant and mocking at once. “I hope it’s not a long one, then.”

Bern laughed in his deep, throaty way.

“In many ways, it’s the longest story,” he said. “But don’t worry. We have plenty of time.”

17

Molly groped in the darkness for Walter, but the hands that groped back weren’t his. They were too strong to be his. They wrapped around her, and she screamed at the top of her lungs, cut off when a hand clamped down on her mouth. She felt herself lifted off the ground, her back pressing up against someone’s broad chest.

She kicked back at her captor’s shins and tried to shake her head free, but it felt like being back in Byrne’s arms, like struggling inside a vise. The dim alley turned to complete darkness as she was pulled through a doorway and into one of the buildings framing the alley. A thick door slammed shut and another opened, filling the small foyer with light. She found herself dragged backward and into a larger room, trembling and confused.

“Whatcha got?” someone asked.

“Don’t know yet,” a voice said close to her ear. “She’s a feisty one, though.”

The man holding her turned around, giving her a sweeping view of the room. It looked like a small warehouse that had been transformed into a triage unit. High tables were arranged in a grid with people on at least half of them. Cords and tubes ran out of the figures, and tables of medical utensils sat to their sides. Molly tried to reach up for the hand over her mouth as another man approached. He was short and bald but with a dark beard that ran from ear to ear. He wore a white blood-splattered apron over a traditional business suit.

“Oh, very pink,” the man said, looking Molly up and down. He grabbed one of her wrists and twisted her hand around violently. Molly tried to pull away, but the guys were too strong. The man with the beard bent back one of her fingers to inspect her swollen pads; he wrenched the digit nearly to the point of breaking, the sudden jolt of pain taking her breath like ice water.

“You a local?” he asked Molly.

She grimaced and shook her head as much as the other man’s grip would allow. She could feel her eyes widening, tears of terror pooling up. She had to force herself to blink, her eyelids swiping the blurriness out of her vision.

“Yeah, you don’t look like a local. Shame.” The short man looked up at the figure behind her, and then pointed to one of the tables. “Number fifteen,” he said. “Find out where she’s from and get started. Oh, and don’t nab any more. I told the wife we wouldn’t be pulling a late shift tonight.”

“Yeah, boss,” the man holding her said. He carried her toward one of the tables. Molly twisted her hips, trying her best to squirm away, but the guy had one of his massive arms wrapped around her elbows, pinning them to her side. Even though she’d once taken out a male Drenard warrior with her bare hands, she felt absolutely powerless against such strength and in that position.

Another large guy looked up from a distant table. “You need help with that one?” he asked.

“And split the commission? Flank you, Randie, I’ve got this one.”

The other guy laughed and went back to tightening leather restraints across another person, who moved and grunted through a gag of some sort. Molly’s heart raced in panic—she couldn’t get enough oxygen through her nose.

Her captor released her mouth and reached down to grab one of her knees. He squeezed it painfully. Molly screamed as loud as she could as he picked her up and lifted her to the cold, metal surface. She continued screaming as he held her down with one hand. There was a busy street nearby; she just needed someone to hear her.

“Shut up!” the man said through clenched teeth. He struggled to hold her down as she squirmed and continued yelling. As he leaned over to grab a set of restraints, she got her first look at the brute. Human, with a head as big as a bull’s. He chewed on his lower lip as he tried to work one of the straps together with a single hand.

Molly yanked one of her arms free and swung at his blocky, stubbled face. The man blocked the blow, and she got a slap across her own cheek for the effort, hard enough to see spots of light. While she was stunned, her cheek on fire, the brute corralled both of her hands together and held her wrists in one of his fists. He pinned them against her stomach while he leaned across her legs with his torso.

Molly resumed screaming bloody murder, as high-pitched and piercing as she could. She twisted her torso back and forth, trying to break his grasp.

“Okay! A little help!” the man yelled.

The other guy lumbered over and held her legs with both hands while the first guy got a strap across her arms.

“You got this one, huh?” the second man asked, laughing.

“Let me go!” Molly yelled. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

The first guy reached to the small table nearby and grabbed a rag, covered in blood. He forced it into Molly’s mouth. She gagged immediately, her head convulsing, her throat seized by spasms as it tried to eject the foul thing. She couldn’t help but taste the coppery bitterness, feel the wetness of someone else’s blood on her tongue. One corner of the rag fell back on her gag reflex, triggering it over and over.

Coughing into her own mouth caused a corner to flap loose. It wiggled against the deep reaches of her tongue, partway down her throat. As she gagged and sucked air through her nose, she began to panic with the possibility of breathing the thing in deeper, sucking it down where the choking would become total.

Molly quickly found herself as close to death as she had ever been. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She forgot about the men and the restraints and the other bodies, and just concentrated on the obstruction in her mouth. She forced her tongue over—it wouldn’t obey—she finally got an edge, curled her tongue around it—that nasty taste—and pushed the rag forward just a little bit.

Again. Concentrating, working her tongue, forgetting the slick and wet, ignoring the rank on her tastebuds, wrapping her tongue around the back side, collecting the drooping piece that threatened to kill her, the raw taste of it making her gag over and over—

There.

She had the offending piece corralled, but the abhorrent taste made her feel like vomiting; her mouth was full of foul saliva, too much to swallow. She very nearly worked the entire rag out of her mouth, almost had it past her teeth—her entire being had become mouth and tongue and cheek, working them all with the force of several limbs—

A strip of adhesive went across the rag, holding it in place. Molly flexed her arms and legs and found she’d been locked down tight, several straps cinched across her body. She strained, arching her back, grunting and moaning with frustration, but she couldn’t move. And somehow, having been in that exact position before, the depressing familiarity of it all—it made the terror and panic and unfairness even worse.

“Thanks,” one of the guys said, punching the other one playfully. Molly lifted her head and watched the two men as the panicked fog from the rag ordeal melted away. She tried to give them her widest, most beseeching eyes, but they weren’t paying her any attention. The second guy, who also wore a smattered apron but over a jumpsuit, lumbered back to his work. The man from the alley stood by her side. He crisscrossed the sash of his own apron around his back before knotting it right in the middle of an old, dull stain.

“You’ve been a busy voter,” the man said, looking down at her scabbed and raw hands. He pulled something from the table. Molly tried to get a glimpse of it before he slid it over her finger. She couldn’t see it, but she knew what it was as soon as the padded clamps gripped her knuckles.

Molly moaned into the blood-soaked rag, anticipating the pain before the needle hit. It felt like a rod the size of a coin shooting through the raw pad of her index finger. She felt herself grow dizzy, then gag again, nearly vomiting in the back of her throat. She started coughing, the useless reflex muffled and hollow. The bloody rag fluttered inside her cheeks, touching her tongue and the roof of her mouth, dabbing them with metallic nastiness.

“Okay, now, let’s see where you’re from,” the man said, studying a small screen as if routinely taking her temperature.

Walter pressed his ear to the door and looked down the length of the dark alley. He’d heard a scream as he rounded the corner, but couldn’t tell where it had come from. The Wadi stood on his shoulder, scratching at the metal door with its claws.

Walter stood back and pounded on the door again, but the slab of metal sounded like it was a foot thick; his fist hardly made a noise. He turned to the other side of the alley and scrambled for the Wadi as it tried to jump off his shoulder.

“Sstay put,” he told it. He shoved it into one of the hidden pockets he’d sewn into his flightsuit—the one right across his belly big enough to steal most anything worth having.

The other door, the one on the opposite side of the alley, made a normal sound as he pounded it with his small fist. Surely Molly would’ve had the good sense to go through this one. He continued knocking until the door cracked, letting out a wedge of light framing someone’s head.

“The flank you want?” the person asked.

“Hi. I’m Walter. I’m looking for—”

“Entrance is in the front, you freak!”

The door slammed shut, startling Walter.

He frowned and looked down the dark alley, toward the glow of civilization at the far end where fast, moving things zipped past. There were only two doors, and he had knocked on them both. He pressed a hand against his stomach to stop the Wadi from squirming and set off toward the bluster of happening things. If the entrance was in the front, he’d have to look for Molly there.

18

“This is the story of our universe,” Byrne said.

“Your universe?” It was the second time Byrne had referred to it like that.

Byrne nodded. He glanced over at Cole, then out at the white lines created by the hyper-fast snow as it streaked across the dark ships beyond. “Not by conquest or fiat, mind you. I’m not being lordly, just stating a fact. It’s ours because we made it.”

“You mean hyperspace? Is that what you made?”

Byrne laughed. “No,” he said. “I wish we had, but this is the first time around we’ve even discovered it.” He gazed toward the bow of the large, moving village. “Everything will be so much easier from now on,” he said quietly. He shook his head and looked at Cole, who could feel the muscles in his forehead ache from keeping them furrowed in constant confusion.

“No, when I say we made the universe, I mean the one you are familiar with. We made the last several thousand of them—”

Byrne paused and frowned at the blank stare Cole must’ve been giving him. “I apologize,” he said. “I forget how limited your cosmological theories are. When I look at you, at any of you Humans, it’s like looking at a mirror. So few differences…” Byrne crossed his legs and seemed to settle back in his strange, metal throne. “Why don’t I start by explaining how the universe works, how it moves and operates. Let’s imagine for a moment that we’re on your home planet—”

“Gladly,” Cole interrupted.

Byrne smiled. “If you don’t get this lesson, my friend, the rest of the story will be lost. Now, imagine yourself on Earth, anywhere you like. Pretend you can walk across water and over any mountain. If you were to set off in a straight line in any direction, where would you end up?”

“On the other side,” Cole answered quickly, hoping to move the story along. “No—” With his index finger extended, he drew a circle in the air in front of him and focused on it through his goggles. “You’d end up where you started. Right?”

“Only if you stopped there.” Byrne had taken the tone of a teacher guiding along a favored student. He smiled at Cole, and for the first time, Cole realized Byrne didn’t have on goggles and didn’t seem to need them.

“You could keep going forever, if you liked,” Byrne said. “And that’s how the universe is shaped, only one dimension higher—”

“Well, you’re wrong about our cosmology, then. We’ve known this for a long time. If you travel in a straight line anywhere in the universe, you’ll end up where you started. It curves around on itself.”

“Oh, you’ve got the shape right,” Byrne agreed. “You’ve had that nailed for hundreds of years. However, your cosmologists don’t seem to appreciate the consequences, even though it’s completely obvious.”

“Consequences?” Cole asked.

“Everything in the universe is indeed traveling in a straight line. Which means—” He frowned, pursing his thin lips as if formulating a dumbed-down version for a child. “Imagine we’re sitting on the North Pole of your planet.”

Cole looked up at the snow flurries, at the large spire behind him. His imagination hardly needed to exert itself. “Done,” he said.

“Now picture the matter of the universe spreading out from here, all of it heading in every direction possible around your planet. Where is it going?”

“Back to where it started, just like when I go walking in a straight line.”

“Except you were traveling alone,” Byrne pointed out. Cole could almost imagine the armless man wagging his finger like Professor Phister used to. “Don’t forget,” Byrne said, “that there’s a lot of stuff in this example. If it’s all moving roughly the same speed—”

“The South Pole!” As soon as Cole uttered the answer, a lot more fell into place; he could almost hear his brain click audibly. The leading theory of their day, hundreds of years old and mostly unchanged, remained the Big Bang theory. Even with the problems of inflationary theory and dark energy, it was still the best they had, as messy and patchwork as it had become.

Cole thought about all that matter spreading out across the surface of a sphere, all heading away from the North Pole. He could see it traveling through the dips and rises, thinning out as it moved away. And then he could see it starting to come back together. All of it—all of everything—meeting in a big crunch at the South Pole. He considered the expanding universe and pictured for the very first time where it was expanding to!

“That’s why the expansion is speeding up,” Cole murmured. It was one of the mysteries of cosmology, the odd fact that expansion was accelerating when gravity should be slowing it down. Now he knew why. He turned to Byrne. “We’re halfway there, aren’t we? The matter is no longer flying away from itself, it’s now coming closer together! Gravity is working the other way, speeding it along.”

Byrne nodded. “Precisely how we like to put it. We are ‘past the universal equator.’ Well past, in fact.”

Cole forgot where he was, all the trouble he’d seen, all the matters relatively inconsequential. His brain went giddy with the possibilities, scrambling to assemble them into a coherent whole.

“That also explains hyperinflation,” he said. “It explains why things are going so quick in the beginning. All that matter just finished its downward swoop, so it would be absolutely flying as it came together!” He paused, finding a problem with the theory. “But why don’t we see it coming if we’re getting closer?” he asked. “Where’s all the other stuff?”

“All that stuff is over the horizon, to extend the metaphor.”

Cole pictured that. “But not because the light fails to bend, right? Is it because of the speed everything’s traveling?” Cole held up his finger, seeing it clearly. “It’s because of the direction it’s traveling through this fourth dimension.”

Byrne smiled broadly at Cole. “You are the one, aren’t you? I can see it, now. I never could in Mollie.”

Hearing her name elicited a shiver from Cole, snapping the descent into philosophy and cosmology. He remembered where he was, felt it like an icicle stabbing through his chest. He pictured Molly strapped to the gurney in Byrne’s ship, and the vision angered him, breaking the physics lesson. It helped him see another flaw in Byrne’s theory.

“That can’t be right,” he said. “The Big Bang didn’t happen in a place, it happened everywhere. It created space. Hell, the Big Bang happened just as much in my Portugal as it did in the Andromeda galaxy!”

Byrne laughed at this, bending at the waist and uncrossing his legs. It was a jolly laugh, very Human-like. When he settled down, he turned to Cole: “Son, we aren’t talking about hypotheticals, here. I’m not discussing theory. This is what we know, what we’ve known for a very long time. We’ve observed it.”

“That’s impossible,” Cole spat. “How can you observe something that destroys everything?”

“Oh, but it doesn’t. Very nearly but not quite. Not everything arrives at the same time, and some of it gets deflected. Besides, the South Pole of the universe, if you like to consider it that, is a very big place. As hot as it gets—and it gets hot enough to melt down nature’s laws—there are ways to get information through. Just as a particle can escape a black hole now and then, we can make sure data survives the Great Passing.”

Cole’s jaw dropped. “You’ve done this? This isn’t the first time we’ve been here?”

“Literally? You and I?” Byrne looked at the world zipping around them. “Of course it is.” He laughed. “There’s nothing mystical here, none of that repeating-our-actions nonsense. No, no, in fact, each universe is vastly different. That’s our job. That’s why I say this is our universe.”

Cole shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“What is life but information, my young friend? We are just—well you are just chemical programs and mindless routines. Ahh, you frown, and you are right to do so. Sentient things cannot grasp the accidental nature of their existence, and they are correct to feel this way. Tell me, do you know why Humans and the Bern look so similar?”

Cole looked at his hands and considered the question. “Convergent evolution?” he guessed. “The simplest solutions predominate?” But he knew that wasn’t right. Hadn’t Dani given him clues in the hallway of that Drenard prison?

“Nonsense. The odds are prohibitive. Look at the diversity of life on any one planet. An honest account of them is more bizarre than the differences between you and a filthy Bel Tra. No, my little Chosen One, the reason the Bern look alike all across the universe, the way they are able to rule all of creation with an iron and beneficent embrace, is simple: we set everything up in advance.”

Cole continued to stare at his palms; he peered at the lines in them. “You made us?”

“Almost,” Byrne said. “There are problems now and then. We just get the—to use a Terran expression—the ball rolling. And most times, the ball is kind enough to go downhill, following the route we set up in advance. It’s all about rules, you see. If the laws of nature are within certain parameters, you get a universe conducive to life. And when you can rig impervious seeds full of genetic information, seeds that can only be blown apart by the forces present at the end of the universe, seeds that ablate just right during the creation process, then you achieve what all life seeks.”

“Which is?” Cole asked.

“Immortality, of course.”

Byrne smiled. “And not the temporary sort. We’re not talking organ transplants, or colonies on a different egg but still in the same solar basket. We’re talking about real descendants surviving the end of time and making it through to the next beginning.”

“But it’s all your life, right? Only what you decide lives and ever gets that chance.”

“Most of it. But then, we’re setting up our universes to be warm and wet, which is a habitat conducive to other sorts of breeding, mutating brands of scum. The problem for these life forms is that we’ve given ourselves a head start. And the… unique method we use to communicate with the next generation is tied to our DNA, so we know what’s going on first. Of course, there have been mutations in the past that outpaced our local representatives, but since intergalactic spaceflight is—or has been thought to be—impossible, these were just pockets of annoyance scrubbed away every twenty billion years or so, motes that contaminated a mere galaxy or two, but what are a few galaxies in the grand scheme of things? Practically nothing.”

“So why are you flanking with us now?” Cole asked. “Give us our twenty billion years and leave our galaxy alone.”

Byrne shook his head. “No can do, Chosen One. Everything is different now. Past mutations were a mere bump in the road compared to what happened in your Milky Way. The rules have been rewritten. Our entire empire has been thrown into discord. This isn’t one of those changes we log in the master program and tweak our next go-around.”

“I don’t understand. What’s different? And why do you keep calling me the Chosen One?”

“Hyperspace is what’s different. We never knew it was there. A twenty-fifth dimension? It made no sense. Twenty-four is such a perfect number. Now, keep in mind, my ancestors were just like you thousands of iterations ago. They were a single species trapped inside the gravity well of their home galaxy with no chance of escape. When they realized the end of the universe was approaching, they could watch the Big Crunch coming—mathematically, of course, not visibly—but they were powerless to stop it. But then the seeds were invented, and the first program was written.

“And what looked like a problem at first, the Big Crunch, actually turned out to be a golden opportunity. Travelling between galaxies was prohibitively expensive. Space begins stretching faster than you can cross it, so there’s no way for one species to spread out and ensure their survival. Even if you got there, what had you accomplished? Long term, I mean? Even galaxies are doomed as they collide into one another. That means no one place is safe, and even with hyperspace, not all places can be reached. How much better, then, to wait until all places come to you!” Byrne beamed at Cole, clearly excited to be having the conversation.

“The first seed made the next universe even more conducive to life. The very laws of nature were tweaked. Carbon was made more eager to chain with itself. Water was given a wider range of fluid temperatures. The primordial elements, the building blocks of life, were put into place ahead of time. Everything needed to create more Bern and to educate them, to prepare them for the next trip around—”

“I’m sorry,” Cole interrupted, “even if all this is true, I don’t see what it has to do with us. Besides, why didn’t we stumble onto this Program? If we were made just like you, why don’t we know this stuff?”

“You do stumble onto them,” Byrne said. “Fragments, anyway. You see them in visions and dreams, and you hear them as voices in your heads. They are the very elements of your religions and your superstitions. This is why so many of them have so much in common. Your species plays these slices of our instructions over and over, but you hear only small chunks, and you hear them out of order. You inspect shards of the Program as if they were the whole.”

“You say that like we’re some sort of computer drive.”

“That’s a perfect analogy. Only, we write with four bits instead of two, and we coil them together in what you call DNA. The problem is, your drives are fragmented. Everything is haphazard, even as you continue to read them sequentially.” Byrne laughed. “The priceless irony is that you label as junk the most important parts of your DNA!”

Cole shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“Look around you and say that again.”

Cole didn’t have to. It sounded foolish and naive the first time he had said it.

“This entire cluster of galaxies is infected. That’s why you’re different, why our code didn’t take, not fast enough anyway. There’s a mutation here that threatens everything. Everything my people—billions of generations of them over thousands of cycles—have worked to create.”

“What?” Cole placed a hand on his chest. “Us? We’re the mutation?” He crossed his arms, shoving his hands in his pits to keep them warm. “So being the Chosen One isn’t really a compliment, huh?”

“Not from our perspective, no. The Drenards in your galaxy named you that. They hold out hope for our extinction, thinking a Human will be the one to effect it. Some crazy old bat foresaw the end of our entire race. A complete impossibility, of course, but enough of her other predictions hit home that some of my people became worried. As this Prophecy spread, it made many of us nervous. We began looking for the signs, for someone both a Human and Drenard. We had a few scares, years ago, but now—after thousands of years—things are finally playing out in our favor. And as everything falls together, new programs are being written for the next passing, new defenses erected in case of—”

“Defenses? Against us? Or against the Drenards?”

“The Drenards?” Byrne laughed. “They are a non-issue. There’s always a few species that evolve and put up a noble fight. None of them matter, even if they defeat an entire galaxy full of Bern. What is their conquest? Temporary lordship over a small cluster of stars for twenty billion years? The end will consume them, and our seeds will spread on the winds of finality.

“No, the real threat is much smaller and more nefarious. It’s the substance that polluted this entire galaxy, the mutation that threatens all of creation—” Byrne’s voice climbed and continued to climb as he went on, “—it’s the foul slime that coats and smothers our program, eating all!”

Cole leaned away from the outburst, pulling his arms tighter to his chest.

“Cyclidinous,” Byrne hissed, his voice full of venom.

“Do what?”

“The organisms, the single-celled monsters that move the stuff of life through hyperspace, spreading throughout your cluster of galaxies. Cyclidinious is what they’re called. That’s the mutation I speak of, not you.”

“Never heard of it,” Cole said. “But if it’s screwing you guys and helping us, I’m a fan.”

“Oh, you’ve heard of it,” Byrne said. “You reek of it. It’s your damned fusion fuel! That’s what it’s made of.”

Byrne’s angry words drifted off, swirling in a pocket of calm air around the mast. And in a land where time did not agree, where events did not always happen at the same time, at the same pace, or in the proper order, it was an unusual and lucky circumstance for his annoyed utterance to linger at that very moment.

For the very substance Byrne cursed, the answer to a riddle that had gravely puzzled Cole, suddenly brought forth a small group of armed men. A raid—a suicidal mission through hyperspace—being launched against the very first group to ever attempt such a thing.

They came, focused, clad in white and wielding invisible swords. They were looking for the One, not knowing it was far too late for prophecies.

Or perhaps, just unwilling to accept it.