I glanced at Lad. He had paled.
That was enough to tell me I wasn’t particularly interested in any of their options.
“
Actually.” I pulled myself from Lad’s grip, walked to the centre of the room and beside my son’s tube. “I think it’s time you listened to me.” I drew strength from his closeness, and placed a casual hand on the tabletop beside him. The silex screen was only inches from my fingertips. My Flare throbbed, as though in readiness.
“
These all sound like grand plans you and your
Hero
have conceived. But no matter what you do, this Core of yours will fall. With the rest of your world. And the rest of mine.”
Heavy silence. Leola glanced at Lad.
“What is she talking about?”
He hesitated.
“I—”
“
She
,” I snapped, “is right here, speaking to you. Why don’t you try that question on me instead?”
Leola hardly blinked.
“Alright, Tanyana. What are you talking about?”
“
We are not from this world,” I said. Apart from Meta’s raised eyebrows no one in the room made any response. Not quite what I had expected. “My child and I crossed through the veil, we came from the light world, the opposite world, on the other side. Lad will confirm this, if you don’t believe me.”
They did not ask, and he did not speak. Still, I continued.
“On the other side of the veil is a powerful force, creatures accidentally created by the programmers themselves. They mean to tear down the veil. An act that would destroy both worlds. This is what we need to stop. We need to—” this was the problem, wasn’t it? I still didn’t have an answer “—do something. The programmers wouldn’t listen to me, but you, you must understand! The programmers, the Legate, they are not as infallible as they think—”
“
Tan.” Lad stood, approached me, and rested a calming hand on my shoulder. “Stop.”
The bosses
’ watched me, expressions unchanged. “Do you hear yourself, Tanyana?” Leola asked. “This sounds like madness.”
Not this again!
I shook off Lad’s touch, refusing to be defeated. “Why won’t you listen to me?”
“
Because all your talk about invisible and impossible threats don’t stand up against a real and present danger,” Lad said. “What are the puppet men, compared to the who knows how many Drones doing everything in their unnatural power to get in?”
“
Three hundred in the tunnels,” Adrian interrupted. “At last bounceback.”
“
It was the same with the programmers,” Lad continued. “What were the puppet men to them, compared to the Guardian’s failure, and Halves waking up?”
And that was what I had always come up against. I could warn and fuss about doors and Keepers and puppet men until I ran out of breath, but to the pion-binders of my world, and even my debris collectors, those threats had been unreal. They were not failing pion systems, or threatened veche inspections, or fear for the life of a brother.
But that didn’t make them any less real.
“
I don’t care.” I glared at Leola. “If you will not help me, then do not try and stop me. Lad and I will leave. We have work to do.”
Meta laughed, dry and without humour.
“Leave? And how, exactly, do you plan to get through the Legate’s forces?”
I tightened my hand into a fist. My light strengthened, suddenly bright, suddenly sharp, and extended the cracks across my wrist. Liquid silex bubbled free.
“I am not weak here,” I whispered.
As the bosses turned to each other, murmuring, Lad shuffled over to a seat against the wall.
“That was exactly the kind of stupid thing I told you not to say,” he muttered.
My silex crept across the table. It brushed the screen, set its crystalline surface rippling, then dipped inside. It bonded to the tangle of wire and silex hub beneath it, and connected me to the entire city.
Where the rundown building had been empty, the city was full. The power of multiple Shards fed through a complex and expansive series of bonds, swept and eddied through Core like the sea. But they did not push against me, like the program and the memories of a dead child had done from within the Drone. Rather, they embraced me. I sunk down inside their warm weight like I was home, with old friends. I was one with so much power that it truly did take a city—with all its lights and pods and heating and defences and more, stretching further and further—to contain it all.
Core-1 West was eager to please. It gave me a guided tour; in an instant I touched every building and saw flashes of the lives lived inside. A young boy, sleeping with the soft glow of a small hub to keep him company. A woman who had been rescued from Crust, sitting alone in a room much like Lad
’s, holding her knees and rocking herself. She traced the scars along the inside of her arms, where her implant has been removed. I surged through Shards, each like a vortex with a Flare pulsing and pulling within them. I slid down thick fibres drilled to the cavern walls, stretching far into the earth, where houses had not yet been built and large machines chipped away at the rock to create enough space for them. I even rode the machines, for the smallest of moments, and was introduced to the programs that ran them.
Core was very obliging—even though it was nothing but light and code. It was difficult at times to remember that.
“I think that decides us,” Urvan was saying. I could barely hear him. Rather, I was listening to the groan of rock and the scratching of Drone feet, as the primary defence was readied a third time. Such a powerful Flare, I was almost swept away in it. But strangely, I was stronger. I was, after all, a part of the light world itself, not merely a tear in realities waiting to be patched up. I was a constant weakening; I was an open door.
Core-1 West deferred to me like an older sibling. It gave the city over to me. All I had to do was ask, and everything would stop.
“She’s not worth keeping here.”
Adeodatus nodded.
“The programmer, however, must remain.”
Lad surged back to his feet.
“No, not without Tan!”
“
Meta,” Leolas ignored him. “Restrain the programmer. Adrian and Kasen will escort Tanyana back to the surface. Give her to the Drones, then seal that passage. We shall never use it again.”
“
No, you can’t!” Lad lurched forward. “I won’t co-operate! You do this and I’ll sabotage your whole fucking city the first chance I get.”
Meta drew her gun, advanced slowly.
“Let’s just all stay calm.” Kasen and Adrian skirted around the corners of the room. “No more threats.”
“
You fire that at Tan and we’re all doomed!” Lad edged toward me. “And that’s not a threat, that’s a fact.”
I blinked, tore myself away from the gathering primary defences, and glanced between them.
“Three hundred and twenty one, to be precise,” I said.
Everyone paused. The gun in Meta
’s hand shook, “What?”
“
Three hundred and twenty one Drones in the tunnels above, not three hundred.” I peered up at the ceiling. “I can feel them through the silex. Every scratch of their metallic claws. Core-1 West feels them, and so can I.”
“
Ma’am,” Adrian hissed. “Look at her hand. Just like the Drone!”
“
There.” Meta—gun still trained on Lad—glanced over her shoulder to the bosses. “She’s wired. Did the same thing to the Drone to destroy it.”
Adrian hurried over to the table, one hand on the gun sheathed at his hip.
“We cannot allow her to do it to Core!”
Meta
pointed her weapon at my head.
Lad had finally come close enough to see my hand.
“I’ve told you, shoot her and—” he paused. “Other’s fiery hell Tan, what have you done?”
And something rattled through the city
’s entire silex network. A shiver, like the quivering of a great body, finally resolving itself in a flicker of light on the screen and a spasm of the abused muscles and nerves along my arm.
“
I am connected to Core-1 West,” I said. I met Meta’s worried gaze. “I’d put that gun down, if I were you.” And glanced at Adrian. “And you can just stay where you are.”
“
Tan?” Lad whispered, close behind me. “You—you wired yourself to the city’s central network.”
“
I did indeed,” I said, with a grin. “And Core is very obliging. If I ask her to play with the lights, she will. If I ask her to drop her defences against the Drones, she will. Anything at all, and she will help me. Because we are connected, Core and I. So I think it’s about time you really did start listening to me, don’t you?”
“
The suit.” Lad was rubbing his forehead. “It’s the suit. The suit was debris, right? And debris is actually a manifestation of the Keeper, who is really the Guardian program. Which means the suit itself was a program, and the more of you it consumed the more of a program you became. You really were just like the Keeper, Tan. But the difference is that you have an extremely unstable Pionic Flare powering you. The code inside you is using the strength of your Flare to override any network your silex is connected to. So when you connect to a hub like Core, for example, your code replicates itself, invades and dominates the old programming. You’re a fucking virus, Tan! A true, old fashioned virus.”
“
Terrific.” I didn’t think it really mattered what I was, as long as it worked. “Whatever that means.”
Lad lowered his hand, grinning now.
“I’d say this changes the power dynamic rather drastically, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded.
“You heard him,” I said to the three bosses. “You might even have understood some of that. Either way, you’re going to let us out of here. Not the way we came in, not into the claws of three hundred and twenty one Drones. There are other passageways, I can feel them. I’ll call my own pod, if I have to. But I’d rather you escort us, quietly and politely, with my child and as much silex and baths as we can carry. You will not try to stop us, you will not try to follow us. And if you don’t help us, I’ll overload every one of the thousands of hubs and wires that keeps this place alive. I’ll paralyse you, and leave you to the Legate.”
“
You try anything,” Meta growled, “and I’ll blow you into tiny pieces. Pionic Flare or none.”
“
Wait—” Lad tried.
“
Meta, lower your weapon,” Urvan snapped.
I dipped deeper into the silex network; I gathered the strength in me and shone, brightly, in her eyes.
“Do not doubt me, Other curse you.”
This time, the ripple was so strong the entire city felt it. The building shook, the lights died before flaring into life again, and great groans like an awakening giant echoed through the cave system.
“What was that?” Meta lifted her gun, spun, staring around the room. “The defences? Adrian, get me bounceback now—”
“
It didn’t come from them.” Adrian was already tapping at his red-dot-riddled screen. “We’ve got reports coming in from all over Core. Hubs are overloading—lower east quarter has gone dark, southern pods three to eight have halted, all excavation work has stopped. I don’t know what this means. Is it a surge? Not getting any unusual readings from any of the Shards—running backup diagnostic just to be sure. A freeforming Flare? Can’t be. None of the alarms have been tripped, and it doesn’t seem to be isolated in any quarter.”
Lad gripped my shoulder.
“Tan, was that you?”
“
No.” There was something else in Core-1 West’s silex network with me. Why hadn’t I felt it there before? Was it a program? Surely not another dead child? But it was not fighting me, not pushing or weeping. In fact, it felt so much like the rest of the network, as it quested around my presence, touching softly, investigating, that I was barely certain it was actually there.
The screen started glowing around my hand and silex threads. It projected a solid-looking mesh of light into the open space above it, and all the way up against the ceiling. I leaned back as it travelled along my arm in a faintly warm brush of light.
“What—”
“
The Hero calls on us,” Leola breathed. As one, the three bosses and their guards dropped to one knee.
A face resolved itself in the light projected against the ceiling. It looked odd, proportions strange. Eyes too big, nose too thin, lips full and cheekbones high. It could have been a young man, could have been, but wasn
’t quite. The light from the screen gave its skin a faint bluish, almost silver tinge.
“
That’s a composite,” Lad whispered in my ear. “An image created with code. Not a real person.”
Those too-big eyes scanned the room, and settled on me. Their pupils shone, and the thick lips stretched in a wide smile.
“Other,” I cursed. That unreal face reminded me of the puppet men.
“
Other?” When the Hero spoke, his voice reverberated not only around the room, but through my silex connection as well. Through the entire network of Core-1 West itself. And I knew, instantly, that he was the presence I had felt. “It’s been a very, very long time since anyone has called me that.”