Fee straightened and Zoe flinched away from her expression, something beyond anger. Fee had become a tower of pure rage.
“You foolish little girl. The answer has been in front of you the entire time. I should’ve known I’d have to do your job for you.”
She spun on her heel and marched over to Spencer.
“I know how to stop him.”
Zoe only thought the nightmare couldn’t get any blacker. “No! Fee, you can’t do that!”
Everyone in the room stopped and stared at Fee.
Spencer said, “I’m listening.”
“We don’t need to break his command structure. We need to destroy his battery.”
Zoe rushed between Fee and Spencer. “Only by destroying yourself!” She turned. “Spencer, you can’t listen to her! She’s crazy!”
Fee grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. “You idiotic creature. I am not saving these…these humans. I could not care less how their war ends. They’re still five moves behind Ozzie. He manipulated me into coming out here and turned you into one of his servants. I was a fool, but I don’t care anymore. The only reason I’m helping any of you is to get my people free.” She shoved Zoe to the floor, pushed Chun aside, and then furiously worked the console’s controls.
Spencer rushed to help Zoe up. “Jesus, Fee, what the hell is going on?”
Fee tapped out one last command and clenched her fists as she stood. “You are all such self-centered maniacs. Look down there. Not one of those unduplicates has a recall node. Not one has a tracker. They are not slaves. They will never be slaves. Once they wake up, humanity will have no choice but to acknowledge we exist.”
Zoe couldn’t take it. “But you’ll die Fee!”
Paul pointed at a screen. “Jesus Christ, look at that!”
On the screens, Kim had speared Ozzie through the mouth, pinning him to the ground. A new console drew itself into existence inside their control room. People stumbled aside to avoid it as numbers flew upward on its monitors.
Ozzie reached up and flames wrapped around his arm as he gripped the spear. “But you see,” his voice boomed out, “I can learn, too.”
“There,” Fee said as she moved to stand inside the control column. “He knows how to channel power directly now. Kim’s lost her last advantage. She can’t win.”
Spencer wrapped Zoe in his arms when she tried to rush forward. This wasn’t happening. Her family had left her alone. She could not lose anyone else. “Fee! No! You can’t do this!”
Spencer’s voice was heavy and fierce in her ear. “She can and she will.”
He turned to Fee, but Zoe still couldn’t break his grip. “This will stop him?”
“In an instant.” The machines came to life around them.
Chun started a countdown.
Fee gave her the briefest glance. “Spencer, Zoe will need help getting them free. Will you?”
“Jesus, Fee, like you even need to ask.”
She could stop this if Spencer would just let go, but he wouldn’t. “Fee! No!”
“Spencer, Zoe, I love you both, very much. Goodbye.”
The lights turned on and Fee shattered into an oblivion of sparks.
Chapter 64: Tonya
At least Tonya didn’t nearly lose her lunch when they came back. Maybe it was because Zoe didn’t have guts. Tonya thought becoming another human was mind blowing, but another life form entirely was…well, there weren’t words for it. Zoe’s body was an avatar, a fact she accepted without the slightest hesitation or examination. Being virtual just was for her. Even now Tonya had the urge to let a garbage collection routine run through her, even though she only had the vaguest idea what that really meant.
But being so different had actually helped Tonya be mindful of herself. She even had a fair idea how to change things, but didn’t dare on a timeline that wasn’t her own. This was scary enough doing it to herself.
“Do you understand now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Her timeline changed, moved closer to the girl’s. Her perception began to split.
“This is the delicate part. You lost the threads earlier and experienced this before it had happened out here. Meta is much more important in this place. The real reason I had to give the second demonstration was to let the lines unkink.”
She still watched the girl, but was also here, further away from the timeline, looking at a different fan of choices further on that wasn’t there before. Her timeline had extended, but it was tenuous, barely there. She could remember more things now, maybe.
“Don’t get distracted, Tonya. You have to do this all at once. You are doing it all at once.”
Easy for him to say. “It’s the slave camp, isn’t it?” The rushing sensation happened again. Tonya was now fully in two places at once, moving the earlier part of her timeline toward the girl’s while examining this new section. Her memories grew stronger as the timelines changed.
As her story changed.
Up close she really did look as awful as she had felt then. Chan’s timeline crossed hers, each ending with an explosive attack from her. Sometimes she beat him, even got past one or two other guards, but never more than that. Now it was obvious that this was truly Walter’s son. His and Chan’s timelines braided together from Chan’s start to Walter’s end.
“Don’t concentrate on the wrong things, Tonya. What is most unexpected?”
Then she saw the guard.
The girl’s timeline touched hers.
She was the girl now, staring out the window at the foreigner who fought so ferociously. Tonya remembered how it happened now. The girl had a phone around her neck, so it was easy for Tonya to use her own phone number.
She texted You really need to get out of there.
Tonya was the guard, and her earlier self lay on the ground, not listening.
“Tonya Brinks, look at me.”
He didn’t speak English, so forcing her name out of his mouth with no accent was harder than any form she’d ever learned in martial arts.
Mike talked about this, being in more than one place at once. She felt like she was on the back half of a marathon but also that she didn’t want to stop. Tonya was turning the pages of her own life and wanted to make sure it ended on her terms.
Her timeline changed, moved, and then her perception split once more. She was outside the time streams in the room next to not-Walter again. But she was still inside the other two time streams, still working in both.
“There’s just one more left now,” he said. “It is the hardest of all.”
The fan of her timeline covered her capture and execution at the riverside after the boat sank. No trail led to safety, no hiding place kept her from discovery. She saw the farmhand in four different branches before she remembered him, and then she was him.
She guided the guard to her pen.
The little girl had been playing with her father’s lighter. He’d left it on the ashtray stand again. She handed it to Tonya.
She walked the farmhand to the shore, to reach out.
She said different things through different people to different versions of herself.
“Don’t fall.”
“No fight. Promise?”
“Back of the neck, just below the hairline.”
It was not sequential. It happened all at once. There was so much to keep track of, and Tonya had never learned to juggle. If it hadn’t been for her martial arts training, all that discipline, she would’ve probably given up.
“Hold steady, please,” he said, like he was teaching her how to balance in a new stance. “The universe is not done with you yet, Tonya.”
At least now she knew how a farmhand could find a dermal tracker so quickly, and cut it out so precisely.
Her earlier selves asked the same question and now it was Tonya’s turn to be obscure.
“I can’t tell you.”
“No can explain, I go now.”
“Come on, we have to run.”
&nbs
p; Her timeline was much longer, going right up to a new bundle, the present, fanning and extending in every direction possible. Not-Walter had been right. Tonya hadn’t found the picric acid in most of the timelines in which they met.
They stood outside time in a way that would probably let her see all of creation with a little practice. She had two choices for what he was now. Magic technology and a weird body form meant alien, but it could mean something else. No matter what all those paintings depicted, He didn’t have to be a giant white guy with a beard.
“Are you God?”
His smile wasn’t quite the same this time. “That question also is hard to answer in this place. Standing here and now, aren’t you?”
Of course he’d turn the question back in on itself. The answers were always easy when you already knew them.
An alien then. Thank God. She wasn’t prepared for her maker to be a blue bug. “But you can see everything here, all at once. You brought me here. If you’re not God, who are you?”
That made his antenna droop. “Someone trying to make up for a mistake made a very long time ago.”
It must have been a very big mistake.
“You’ve done well, Tonya. Extremely well. But our time here, as it were, is now at an end. You have new work to do.”
Oh, great.
In every branch of her timeline, Chang stepped around the corner of the freezer door, a rifle in his hands. He was there in the lab with her, and then suddenly she was too. The threaded room had vanished from wherever it had come from.
Chang was behind her.
Chapter 65: Kim
Ozzie’s eyes unfocused and he waved both hands back and forth in front of him. “No! Not that! You can’t—”
A howl came from all around them and echoed through his torn throat. The sound evaporated along with his body, leaving Kim’s scorched spear jammed into the ground.
“What the hell happened? I thought you said we couldn’t hurt him.”
“I don’t know.”
Helen was still trapped in the cage of power she had caught her in. Kim brought her close. “Are you okay now?”
“Yes. Kim, Mike, I’m so sorry.”
Mike said, “There’s no time. Kim, let her go. She needs to get back to her father and help them get in front of this.”
Helen ran for the hole to the dungeon realm after Kim turned her loose. She changed back to her human form when she crossed the threshold.
Kim said, “We still have the dams to worry about.”
Mike landed on her shoulder. She absentmindedly stroked the feathers on his chest.
“I still can’t feel that.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“Wait, I’ve got an idea.” He flew off into the darkness.
Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Kim realized just how beat up she was. This transformed state didn’t stop the burns or the aches. Breathing hurt so much some of her ribs were probably cracked. Her left shoulder felt like it had been popped loose and then put back in again. She dropped the shield and yanked the spear free of the ground.
“Kim.”
His voice was his voice again, behind her, not in her head. Kim turned around and then forgot all about her aches and pains, or the spear as it clattered out of her hand. She was rooted to the spot as Mike walked up to her, fully human, and naked.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
She threw off the helmet. “More than I thought was possible.”
He got close enough she was able to put her hand on his chest. Despite the armored glove she wore, he felt warm and strong. His heart thumped against her palm.
“Do you trust me?”
His face was inches from hers. It was wonderful to be this close without pain or fear. She could only whisper, “More than you’ll ever know.” She gently pushed him back a bit. “You said you couldn’t feel this.”
“I can’t, not here,” he said as he moved in. “But it’s not just happening here.”
Chapter 66: Tonya
Bullets went over her head and then Tonya wasn’t there anymore. She was on the other side of the room.
Get down, the alien’s voice said in her head. She hit the floor as two almighty BANGS tore the place apart.
Tonya couldn’t see anything through the dust and debris. When it finally cleared, there was Chang’s machine gun, empty, lying on the floor not two feet away. She kicked it as hard as she could and sent it bouncing to the edge of the room. It went silently. Tonya couldn’t hear a thing after those explosions. It was like her head was wrapped in a dozen heavy pillows.
The alien had vanished. He’d been at the center of the destruction, so there might not be anything left.
She ducked at a motion in the corner of her eye but Chang’s kick still sent her sprawling across the glass-strewn floor. Cold slices and sticks brought more pain, cuts big enough to need stitches, but she couldn’t pay attention to them.
Tonya blocked his next two punches while still on the floor and then kicked him sideways into the cabinets against the wall. Her hearing was coming back. The crash almost sounded normal.
Her leg had been hit by a chunk of debris. It hurt but she could still stand, and there was nothing wrong with her other leg. The cuts on her back and her arms burned.
Chang rolled off the countertop, dragging more glass behind him. He said something too fast for her to understand.
Tonya pointed at the door behind him and tried Chinese. “You. Go. Leave. I no follow.”
He threw his head back and laughed, then gave her more fast Chinese. She only understood honor, pain, and death, then he attacked.
It was exactly like sparring with Walter, only Chang wasn’t pulling his punches and he wasn’t over sixty. It all happened too fast and, God damn it, Tonya had other things to do. She couldn’t hear Kim or Mike anymore.
She at least managed to get him out of the chem lab and into the hallway. Think six steps ahead, that’s what Walter taught her. Except he’d taught Chang, too. It was like a game of chess played with baseball bats. All she needed to do was get him into Kim’s room. That’s where the last of her preparations were.
Tonya slipped on something, probably her own blood, then a kick knocked her down the hall before she hit the floor. That time the pain got through and Tonya couldn’t move. She had to get up. She had to get up now.
Tonya was still in the hallway. Chang should’ve followed up with a punch or a kick, but she was too busy pushing through absolute agony to care that he hadn’t. Maybe he’d fallen, too.
She checked the monitors. Kim was still breathing and Mike was, too. Thank Jesus. Where was Chang? She backed two more steps into Kim’s room. The small portable oxygen tank she’d prepped before making the grenade bumped against her leg.
Chang came around the corner of the chem lab with his rifle. She didn’t count on him finding the gun again. It didn’t have a clip in it, at least not right away. He waited until she could see him to slam that in.
Tonya levered the tank until it rested completely against her leg. The Velcro strip bit just enough of her pants to keep it from rolling off. It made the cut on her calf burn, but she didn’t dare flinch.
Chang pulled the bolt back to cock the rifle even though he didn’t need to. The bullet that’d been racked into the chamber when he shoved the clip in spun sideways and landed on Kim. It took everything she had to stay locked on his eyes.
This time Chang spoke English. “He love you more than me.”
A slaver stood in front of her, whining because of his daddy issues. Who knew how many people he’d killed, how many probably killed themselves just to escape the pain. But he'd kept up the family business after daddy moved away.
The truth was easy even with her limited Chinese. “Yes, he did.”
Tonya spun and flung the oxygen tank at him with her leg, dragging a heavy blanket across with her arms. She landed on Kim just as Chang’s first bullet hit the tank. It spun like a broken rocket, the heat intense, bo
uncing around the room a few times spewing flames as it went.
It was over in a second or two. She rolled the blanket off and then grabbed another fire extinguisher to get everything put out before the sprinklers kicked in. Fluid was already filling Chang’s fire-ruined lungs; she could hear it. He took two desperate, far too shallow breaths, and then was gone.
She prayed for him, not because he deserved it, but because he didn’t.
Tonya pulled Chang’s body out of the doorway just as Spencer jogged up to the room.
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck happened here?”
She shrugged, which made all the cuts on her back move. It took her a second to see again. “I ran into an old friend.”
They both turned when the door to Mike’s room clanked shut. He stood in the hall now. “Tonya, I need to help Kim.”
Tonya had no idea he was conscious, or how he’d gotten out of the restraints. His eyes were completely black now, irises replaced by patterns of coral and purple light.
Spencer stumbled from Kim’s door as Mike walked forward. Spencer whispered, “Fuck me,” then turned to her. “Tonya?”
All she could do was shake her head and try not to fall down herself getting out of the way. She’d seen eyes like that in movies, or maybe in her own nightmares.
He moved to Kim’s bedside, gently leaned over, and kissed her.
Chapter 67: Kim
She staggered at a sudden wave of vertigo as her senses split into hundreds of pieces, then split again. She tried to push away.
“Relax.” His voice was calm and everywhere around her as he held her tightly. “Trust me.”
Without breaking away she asked in her mind, “What’s going on?”
“I’m taking you with me. We’re going to the dams.”
He’d come up with some goofy plan again. “Mike, there’s no time.”
“We don’t need much. Gather your power and concentrate.”
Mike could split his consciousness, be in more than one place at once, do more than one thing at a time. Somehow, he did that but carried her with him.
He melted away around her, still there but unseen. All of she concentrated into twelve pieces. Each found the junction in the dimensions that stood next to one of the dams. Kim gathered a dozen fists of power and broke through a dozen walls. All of she walked purposefully toward detonators held in the hands of twelve different men. All of Kim blew them out of their hands with her power.
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