“Follow me.”

  They kept their heads down as they weaved through random debris in the open field. The stacks of bricks, lumber, and scrap metal provided cover at times. A tall but silent drone loader, one of those he viewed after crashing in the hothouse, provided a brief staging area. Royal checked his tablet and oriented a course toward the Splinter. He was two hundred meters from the Alpha universe.

  Enemy sounds intensified. Searchlights captured the silhouettes of FGs spreading out beyond the sewer line, their strategy having no doubt changed. Every route to safety offered a narrow path, tightening by the second.

  “I’m down to two grenades,” Reaper said.

  “Save them. We’re not making a final stand here.”

  “I’m sorry I got us into this mess.”

  “It was my mistake. Breck said you’d be trouble.”

  “What? He said that about me?”

  “He wasn’t wrong.”

  Alvara hissed. “You’re both trouble. OK? We need to move. Royal, our best chance is your route. But we’re not stopping for your cube. If you see it, grab it and run. Or stay behind and search. I don’t care. We’ll find our way back to the city before morning.”

  Fair enough, he thought. Royal took another look at his tablet and prepared for a sprint. He hated running from a fight.

  They took no fire in the first hundred meters, but searchlights twisted in their direction, and shuttles convened along their route. After another fifty meters, the lights having grabbed hold of them, energy bolts rained from the sky and exploded directly ahead. Shrapnel whizzed past. They fell to the ground and covered.

  “We’re moving again in five, four …”

  Reaper interrupted the countdown.

  “We’re trapped. We have to fight.”

  Royal pointed to the explosions which blocked their escape but consistently missed.

  “They’re not trying to kill us. We’re more valuable captured.”

  “They won’t take me, Royal. They’ll never make me a scalp.”

  Royal saw it in the boy’s deranged eyes. This was the moment he wanted: A memorable way to die and a chance to fight FGs, even if he wouldn’t last ten seconds.

  Let him go.

  It wasn’t the worst strategy. Allow the kid to rise up against the enemy, be the brave warrior just long enough to draw their fire, while Royal continued his sprint toward escape.

  They’re already dead. Let them go.

  He refused to fight another hopeless war. He had important work to do. Even a wolf knew when it was time to run.

  In that instant, the searchlight illuminated all three. Royal caught a glimpse into Alvara’s steeled eyes. She made her choice when she abandoned the Talons, and she wasn’t going to compromise her mission. Reaper was her brother now, and he needed her. If he stood his ground, she’d hold it with him.

  It's not my fight. I can’t save you people.

  He resumed the countdown.

  “Three, two, one … run!”

  Royal pushed off, racing toward the deadly gauntlet of blasts. Either he’d defy stupid odds and slip through, or he’d have to hope the regen strategy worked. He’d never been gunned down from the air before. He imagined an intense burst of pain when the laser fire tore through his body then a long, annoying journey to the abyss.

  Royal didn’t look back.

  He also never anticipated what happened next.

  As he raced into the shower of death, the laser cannons went silent. The spotlight followed him, even as he zigzagged through the debris field. Fifty meters on, the light receded and the madness of the hour morphed into inexplicable peace.

  Amid the quiet darkness, Royal wondered for an instant if his death had happened so suddenly, he was not aware of it. Was this another iteration of the abyss? Nothing else made sense. Swarm officers never called off a chase.

  Royal crouched beside a palette of lumber to check his coordinates.

  For all the rings …

  The Splinter’s signal was clear and bright, thirty feet away.

  No. This is too easy. Something’s off. Something is …

  Footsteps approached. He aimed his rifle in that direction.

  “Royal?”

  Reaper spoke from the other side of the palette.

  “Kid? Shit. You made it. Alvara?”

  “I’m here. Why did they stop firing? Swarm don’t behave like this.”

  “Yeah, it’s new. Look, I’m about five seconds from the Splinter. I’m going to make a run for it. After that, you’ll never see me again. I suggest you run while you got the chance. This ain’t my fight. Tell Breck I’m sorry.”

  “Royal, you can’t leave,” the kid said.

  Royal didn’t wait to hear the rest. He zeroed in on the coordinates and pushed off. He ran through knee-high weeds until he saw a faint pink glow. It might as well have been the largest, most beautiful gem beheld by a man. It transfixed Royal, allowed him to forget the suspicion he felt when the cannons went silent.

  Yet his fierce instinct for war, so hardened after six years, returned for a second. It slowed him down enough to consider why this was too easy. By that time, however, a projectile caught him in the gut.

  The blade sliced deep.

  Royal dropped to one knee. A spotlight erupted around him, beamed from the quiet ship hovering high above.

  “If you take another step, they’ll kill you,” a male voice from nearby called out. “Does the Splinter belong to you?”

  Royal recognized that voice.

  “I asked them to call off the pursuit,” the man continued. “We were tracking you. We knew you were looking for the Splinter.”

  Royal cursed himself. Now it all made sense. The ease of entering that building, how quickly the enemy cut them off. The result would have been the same if Reaper hadn’t gone on that little killing spree.

  And now?

  Here was Bonju Taron. The man who tracked down Royal during the war and offered him a way back home. The man who claimed Amayas was the true danger threatening humanity. The man who started this madness by manipulating Ya-Li Taron, who in turn ordered the deadly ambush that set Ryllen Jee on his eventual path toward Mangum Island and a loop across the divides.

  This latest failure was Royal’s own fault, and he damn well knew it. Amayas warned him: “Don’t challenge the parameters.”

  Fuck.

  If he made a move for the Splinter, they’d finish him. Bonju knew Royal was immortal; he didn’t have to be taken alive.

  “Let me go home,” Royal shouted. “You already did enough to me, asshole.”

  A flabbergasted response broke a tense quiet.

  “Ryllen Jee? Is that … you?”

  Of course it is, dumbass. Who do you think?

  Now he understood: They were tracking the Splinter’s user but didn’t know who he was. Watching from a distance, Bonju saw a man with a tattooed scalp and an unruly beard. The cosmetic changes fooled him; the voice did not.

  “Same guy, new name. I’m Royal, and you need to let me go.”

  “I can’t do that. You’re too important. You know how to tether. Don’t you, Royal?”

  Shit.

  “Give it up, Bonju. I know what you want. You cudfruckers are never going across.”

  “I’m sorry, Royal. I deceived you. Yes. But we have a right to live.”

  A silhouette of soldiers entered the gray transition at the edge of the spotlight and formed a phalanx. Royal calculated how long it would take him to lunge at the Splinter, look inside, see the place from which his journey began, and disappear. He doubted he’d live long enough to finish the process. But what choice did he have?

  “I can make a deal,” Bonju said. “The guns are also trained on the two resistance fighters who followed you here. They can’t escape unless I give them free passage. If you drop your weapons and board the ship with me, your friends will be allowed to walk away.”

  Royal was many things, most of them admittedly unpleasant, but he wasn’t a stupid man. Bonju didn’t speak with final authority. He wasn’t Swarm. As soon as Royal surrendered, they’d kill Alvara and Reaper. Maybe it was just as well. Their days were all but up. Royal didn’t buy into this notion of FGs fearing to invade the sewers. On the contrary, he suspected the local commanders were preparing to do just that – especially after the ATB crash. The entire Sai-Por resistance would be crushed before the Assimilation Sequence.

  Wouldn’t a quick battlefield execution be less painful? It’s what Reaper would want. The great and mighty Swarm fussing over a boy’s fate and shining a spotlight upon him. He’d raise that bloody knife to show off his handiwork one last time. As for Alvara? She was like Royal, trying to be a hero. Her problem? She picked a lousy cause.

  Screw these people. I’ve got work to do.

  Royal grabbed his rifle and prepared to lunge.

  “Hey, kid! Show these assholes what you got.”

  The next few seconds dissolved in a flash.

  Reaper shouted, “Fuck yes!”

  Rifle fire intermixed with energy bolts from the FGs who surrounded the site, and laser fire pummeled the ground behind Royal, who jumped on top of the cube while sharp waves of heat shredded his body. He wrapped his hands around the translucent, glowing device and thought of home.

  In the last seconds before Royal died again, rifle blasts from a boy and an ex-Talon went silent. The immortal who should have known better saw nothing inside the cube.

  It wasn’t his Splinter.

  Royal coughed up blood and closed his eyes.

  Exogenesis

  Standard Year 5360

  D AYS AFTER HE LEFT EVERDEEN, his facial transplant all but healed and a promise to save Katherine and Exeter Woolsey lingering on his mind, Amayas set a goal to extend beyond his mastery understanding of how to read the mirrors and see into the future.

  He challenged himself to solve three puzzles. Who created The Hold and why? How did the Splinters maintain a connection to all human life and time itself? What caused the fracture that brought eight other universes into existence?

  Amayas faced his challenge with no expectations for success. These questions might not be meant for human consumption. Even the Jewels of Eternity failed to solve them during many centuries of study. Yet the Jewels found doors between universes – the Interdimensional Folds – and learned how to reshape entire worlds by tapping into what they called the Great Equations. The Jewel that lived inside Amayas showed him these experiences and filled his mind with visions of great technological possibilities.

  It also unlocked the core problem with the Splinters: Their inevitable inability to hold together the reality of all nine universes. The collapse, it predicted, would occur within twenty standard years.

  “Two hundred billion lives will be lost,” the Jewel said through a series of symbols and motifs that translated into words. “The eight fractures will dissolve through rapid entropy. The Interdimensional Folds will become doorways to a void.”

  What happens, Amayas asked, if the void seeps into our universe?

  “For most, the effects will be unnoticed for centuries. However, reality near the folds will fall into steady decline. Entropy will consume the surrounding space like a virus.”

  His mind flashed to Earth, where two IDFs delivered young travelers who changed the course of the Collectorate. The North American Consortium, in which one IDF existed, banned travel through it. All attempts to close it failed.

  They have to be warned, Amayas told the Jewel.

  “You will serve only to create panic and disbelief. We have time. Go to them when you can offer a solution.”

  The Jewel was right, of course. Ten other Collectorate worlds had IDFs, and three folds existed in open space of inhabited systems.

  I need help, he said. I can’t solve this on my own.

  “You will. The economic alliance you contemplated? Start there. Bring the many peoples together, and they will be your army.”

  The task is too big. The politics, the finances, the technology. And an army? That requires mass devotion to a single cause.

  “In our experience, humans rally around the right leader at the right time. Long ago, we infused ourselves into one human, and he started the Chancellory toward three thousand years of domination and a conquest of space. You and your brother built an army from nothing and crippled an empire in three years. You have a much greater timeframe for this task.”

  Where do I begin?

  “By attempting to answer the unanswerable. During the height of frustration, relax your mind and create a framework for your economic alliance. In time, you will see how they connect.”

  That’s when Amayas decided on the three great puzzles to solve.

  He created a data spool devoted to his diaries, all research, evidence, tech designs, and plans for an alliance of worlds. He gave it an umbrella name:

  The Genesis Defense.

  “An appropriate name,” the Jewel said. “The future will be won by understanding its origin.”

  The frustration set in as soon as answers failed to materialize. In other words, by the second day. Wouldn’t it have been nice to take a break in the company of Katherine and Exeter? Though Amayas dared not bring them to this dim, isolated corner of the galaxy, he loved the idea of taking dinner with them and having a normal conversation. Perhaps he’d break through Exeter’s psychological barriers or restore Katherine’s pride.

  I know what will help, he told the Jewel. I need a partner.

  “Do you have someone in mind?”

  You. I want you to become manifest in my eyes. The Jewel hybrids each had a partner called Mentor. It appeared on command.

  “The Mentor program was built into their genetic engineering. I do not possess that program.”

  I was also engineered, and now you flow through me. I want to look into your eyes and see your lips move. I’m tired of being alone out here. I need to speak to a human – even one that’s not real.

  “Your personal technology can generate a holographic assistant.”

  I want a sentient being.

  “I can do this, but you will not be comfortable with the results.”

  Why?

  “I lived in the body of one human being. I have all his memories and the breadth of his personality.”

  Amayas kicked himself. Why hadn’t he thought of it?

  There has to be another way, he told the Jewel. I don’t want to see James again.

  “You loved your brother despite his aberrations. You tried to save him. You are here now to redeem yourself for crimes you committed at his side. Logic predicts James to be the perfect companion.”

  I’ll be reminded of how he turned against me in the end. He was a monster incapable of being saved.

  “Then might I offer an alternative? You did not know your brother as Jamie, the boy raised in another universe. Yet I lived inside him then. He was a troubled child but innocent nonetheless.”

  The suggestion made sense. Early in their relationship, James told Valentin of his upbringing in a small town called Albion. It had all been a lie, James said as embraced the engineered monster flowing through his blood. Jamie was a nobody; James intended to make sure whole star systems knew his name.

  “This will not be perfect,” the Jewel said. “I will require time while you sleep.”

  The next day, as Amayas finished breakfast and prepared for research among the mirrors, a companion appeared across the table. He was a gangly teen, with a short nose, oval eyes and disheveled blond hair falling over his shoulders. He was not entirely corporeal. The boy appeared to fade at the fringes, as if dissolving into a fog bank. Yet Amayas saw a meager resemblance to the brother who later fancied himself a god.

  “You’re Jamie?”

  “I reckon so,” the boy said, his accent carrying a slight twang.

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “My brother. You used to be Valentin. Now you’re Amayas.”

  “And this place?”

  “C’mon, Amayas. I’m not the actual guy. I’m the Jewel, too. I know what kind of questions we have to solve. If you want me around, I’ll do the best I can.”

  “Do you expect the resolution to improve?”

  “Nope. I’m a memory, not a recording.”

  “It will take some getting used to, but we can try.”

  The companion exceeded expectations. Within days, Amayas forgot he was alone in The Hold. Jamie’s colloquial tongue blended with the intellect of the Jewel to provide a meaningful partner. Amayas stopped noticing the foggy dissolve and focus on a face that did not yet wish to harm anyone. The boy tagged along most of the day but kept a respectful distance when Amayas asked for privacy.

  On the thirty-fourth day of their relationship, Amayas made a breakthrough. He took one of Jamie’s observations – a product of the Jewel’s vast experience – and used his mastery of the mirrors to do the rest.

  “We always thought it strange how The Hold defies the natural currents of space,” Jamie said. “There’s no mechanism to lock it into a fixed position. The gravity generated by the core furnace isn’t strong enough to do this. We estimate The Hold has not moved its relative position in space for thousands of years, not even by a centimeter.”

  “There could be many explanations.” Amayas paced among the forest of mirrors. “Did the Jewels run tests to develop a hypothesis?”

  “We ran countless simulations without success.”

  “But did you do anything to physically disturb this rock?”

  The boy frowned. “Like what?”

  “I was thinking about a controlled explosion on the surface.”

  “You’d take that risk?”

  “I’ll be careful. The Guard trained me well in demolitions. I know where and how to place the charges. The vibrations alone should generate enough inertia to adjust The Hold’s position. We can measure that shift against the galactic plane. If the inertia meets resistance, and the rock returns to its original fixed position, then we have more than a simple hypothesis. Agree?”

  “It’s possible, I reckon.”