State your b-business, Esh repeats simply.
“Okay, I’m a Trigger. You trained me. I’m here with another Trigger, who’s an utter sociopath; and why you decided to give all godlike power to a complete …” I shake my head, pushing on. “Anyway, it’s a long story. Point is, the Weapon is damaged and we need to repair it—fast.”
We … Esh’s image flickers, like a faulty viewscreen. We f-feel it. We . . . It looks up to the gray, cracked sky, down to the cracks running through its hands. What … h-have you done?
A flash of pain cuts through my head, and in my mind’s eye, I see a fragment of the battle raging outside. Time moves slow outside the Echo, like ice cream melting on a hot day. But I see more Ra’haam vessels spilling into the cavern, the few remaining ships we have burning in slow motion.
Inside the Neridaa, I feel Tyler—a spark of him, a faint but beautiful molten-gold flame that I never noticed before now. Beside him I feel Lae, a reflection of those same colors. And between them I feel Kal, gold and violet in that smothering cold.
I feel his rage.
I feel his fear.
I know I don’t have long.
“We got thrown through time,” I tell Esh. “Two Triggers together … I don’t know. But the Ra’haam is here! The whole Milky Way is ending! We need to fix the Weapon now—can you help?”
Esh studies me for a long moment.
The galaxy holds its breath.
N-no, it says.
Kal
The blades are lead in my hands, my body slick with sweat inside my armor. I stumble in the blood, thick and sticky upon the crystalline floor.
“… Kaliis …”
I do not listen to its voice, the pistol in my hand flaring.
“… We know you love her, Kaliis. We love her, too… .”
Around me, the Vindicator’s crew fights with all the fury of those with nothing to lose. I feel the Enemy Within awakening—the part of me shaped by the man in that throne room, who delights in war and carnage. I have fought against it for as long as I can remember, this thing he tried to twist me into. But as much as I hate him, I am glad he is within me now.
… There is only one way you may save her. One way she might live, eternal, your love evergreen in the light of a warmth all-consuming …
Do not listen to its voice. Listen to his.
Mercy is for the weak.
Peace is for the coward.
Tears are for the conquered.
More are coming. Dozens. Hundreds. I look to Tyler, and his face is grim. Lae meets my eyes, and I can see the death that stalks us.
But we cannot allow them to get to Aurora.
“Hurry, be’shmai,” I whisper.
Aurora
“No?” I ask, my voice rising. “What do you mean, no? You built the thing! You should know how to fix it!”
The image flickers again, like a transmission losing power. I can feel the ground shake beneath my feet. Outside, the Ra’haam drips closer, like molasses, thick and sickly sweet. Toward Kal, Tyler, the others …
“Esh!” I shout.
The Echo. The Weapon itself. This p-personification of us … all are linked. As it is damaged, so t-too are we. We cannot h-help you.
Another tremor passes through the ground. Lightning cracks the shattered sky above. I can feel them out there, bleeding in slow motion, one by one falling under those impossible numbers. I’m not sure what Esh even means, but every second we spend speaking, my defenders are dying.
I look around the Echo, to Esh itself. Mind racing.
“If this place and the Weapon are linked …”
I reach toward the closest object, lying in a hundred rose-colored pieces on the grass. I can feel the remnants of the energies in this place. See the way it used to be in my mind’s eye, all those months I spent in here with Kal, clear as glass. And as my eye begins to glow, I pull the pieces together, reforming it in the palm of my hand.
A single, perfect flower.
In answer, outside beyond the Echo, I feel a tiny crack in the Weapon’s hull stitch itself closed.
Yes, Esh nods. You s-see.
I close my eyes, slow my breathing, slow my mind, taking in my surroundings—real and virtual—and attuning myself to both. I can still sense the others beyond—quick brushes of Kal’s familiar mind, of Tyler’s, even, and of Lae’s. I can taste their fear and courage, their grief as their friends fall, their fury at the thing taking them away. And above and around it all, I can feel the creeping unnaturalness of the Ra’haam.
It wants me… .
I trained as a cartographer for the Octavia mission for years. And walking here in the Echo every day with Kal, I couldn’t help learning the shape of this place. I draw that memory close, remembering what this place was.
The way it can be again.
But it’s so big, to hold it all inside my head… .
Hard as I try, I can’t… .
“I can’t,” I hiss, trembling hand outstretched.
You must.
I reach out both hands, face twisting as I try to hold it all.
“We’re running out of time, help me!”
But Esh only shakes its head.
“I can’t do this alone!”
Kal
We are failing.
The Ra’haam has pushed us back, Tyler’s crew falling one by one as we give ground. The crystalline floors are awash with blood, the stink of death hangs in the air, and the enemy simply keeps coming.
“Lae, fall back!” Tyler roars, blasting from behind cover.
She dances among those awful figures, null blade aglow, cutting down a flower-eyed monstrosity lunging for Dacca’s back.
“Back where?” she shouts.
She speaks truth—we can retreat no farther. Behind us is the entrance to the throne room. If the enemy reaches my father and Aurora, all hope will be—
A shot hits my legs, thick and viscous. It is like … glue, pinning my leg to the floor. Another strikes my belly, and I fall, covered in more of this sticky ooze. I realize I cannot move, stuck like an insect in amber, and horror unfurls as I understand the Ra’haam does not wish to kill us—it wishes to subdue us, drag us into its awful singularity.
“Kal,” Tyler roars, “look out!”
I slice at the hands grasping at me, scream a denial in my mind, reaching for Aurora, refusing to let it end like this. And I flinch as a burning arc of energy, deep red like dried blood, scythes through the oncoming Ra’haam.
Another blast hits them, a sphere of raw psychic power smearing their bodies upon the walls, leaving only broken corpses in its wake.
Tyler blinks in astonishment. Lae only snarls. But I realize who has saved us.
“Father …”
He stands above me with hands outstretched, clad in black steel. His eyes are bruised, lips and chin smudged with violet where he has wiped away the blood. I can see the cracks in his face run deeper, his fingers trembling—just the slightest signs of strain from his ordeal.
But his eye burns like a star. And much as I hate him, I feel the Enemy Within surge as he shatters my bonds with a wave of his hand.
“No child of Caersan dies on their knees, Kaliis. Fight.”
Aurora
I can’t do this alone.
As the battle rages on outside, I’m giving everything I have—as much as those outside are giving—to mend the tears in the Echo around me. But there’s so much of it. It’s too big.
I try to drag the images into focus, remember the way this place once was. Walking through rolling fields of flowers with Kal beside me, his hand in mine, and at the thought of him, a part of me reaches for him, across the ocean between us, and it’s then I realize.
It’s then I see.
I can’t do this alone.
But I’m not alone.
He’s with me. Always. And not just Kal, but Tyler, too. I can feel him out there, his crew beside him, all those people—survivors I never even got the chance to meet, children and warriors, fierce and frightened, standing with the last of their loved ones or alone, the last of their kind.
Every one of them is fighting and dying, the future of the galaxy in the balance, giving everything for the chance of a different yesterday.