“Bad idea, chaining me up,” Ephedra said. “What if I trip and fall and knock myself out by accident?” She scowled at the girl. “That’s an ugly figment. Are we done improving her miserable lot yet? Can we get moving?”

  “Be silent,” Zaveta said. She crouched to look the girl in the eye. “What is your name, little one?” The answer was a buzzing, clicking sound that we couldn’t hope to reproduce, linguistic virus or not. Zaveta grunted. “I am pleased to meet you. Come. We must free your broodmates.”

  The distant cries for help continued. We crept through the forest, and after a hundred meters or so we reached a low rise, overlooking a camp. There were half a dozen slavers there, bustling around tents and cook fires… and fifteen or twenty winged people in a fenced pen. They were bigger than our friend.

  “Give me a weapon, and I’ll help you fight the piggies,” Ephedra said.

  Zaveta shook her head. “We do not arm captives. Zax, may I have your permission to clear the camp? I will limit myself to disabling strikes whenever–”

  Before she finished, the person we’d unearthed loosed a ululating shriek and rushed down the hill toward the camp. The slavers shouted and snatched up catch-poles and spears.

  She leapt into the air, wings buzzing into a blur. Extra appendages I hadn’t noticed before extended from her abdomen, long and multiply folded and scythe-like. She slashed about wildly, felling two of the slavers in gouts of blood.

  I ran down the hill after her, taking aim at a slaver with my little cannon, and dropped him in a spasming crackle. Zaveta was right there beside me, dancing, swinging her club, taking out knees and cracking heads – but not breaking them. Soon the “piggies” were all down.

  The little one tried to descend on the fallen with her bladed arms, but Zaveta stepped into her way and held up her hand. “Soft, soft,” she said. “Peace. They are no threat anymore.”

  After a moment of wild fluttering, the girl landed on the ground, and folded her extra limbs away. “I… thank you. For helping us.” She glanced at the pen. “I must set them free, and find a new burrow, to complete our cycle.” She yawned hugely, and it made me yawn, which still makes me anxious, even though these days I sleep at will.

  I nodded. “Be safe, and be well.” Zaveta reached out a hand, and after a moment the girl clasped it, holding for a few heartbeats, and then letting go and turning to the pen.

  Zaveta and I made our way back up the hill. “I wish we could do more here,” I said. “If there are people like that all over, burrowed into the ground, being dug up and murdered and taken captive…”

  “We cannot save this world,” Zaveta said. “That is not our mission, and it is not within our power. But we helped these people, on this day. We changed their lives for the better. We can only do what we can do, Zax.”

  “I know. I just wish I could do more. It never feels like enough.”

  Cries of jubilation rose behind us, and that cheered me. We had done something, after all.

  I half expected the cultist to be gone when we got to the top, her promises to guide us just a lie to make us let our guard down, but she was there, leaning against a tree. “Are we done?” She sounded bored. “Or do we have to let more bugs out of cages?”

  “Don’t you care about other people at all?” I snapped.

  “People?” She straightened up. “Of course I do. I have devoted my life to helping people. But figments like you, and these bugs?” She shrugged. “You aren’t people.”

  “Why do you call us figments?” I said.

  “Why do you call us the ‘Cult of the Worm’?”

  “Because you are cultists,” Zaveta said. “And you infest people with worms.”

  Ephedra sniffed. “Fine. We call you figments because you aren’t real. Not like we are. Your worlds, this world, all these other worlds, they are false creations. They are nothing more than bars in the Prisoner’s cage.” We must have looked insufficiently enlightened. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Never mind. I can’t expect figments to understand. Let’s go. You want to find your little minnow, don’t you?”

  Ephedra led us through the forest until we reached a particular clearing. She peered at a tree trunk, and then grunted that we’d reached the right place. There were a few worm-trails twisting through the area, suggesting there was a path to follow, but how did she know?

  I looked at the trunk and saw, faintly, the speckled pattern of worm sign scored into the wood with a knifepoint. Trail markers. I wondered how many I’d walked past, all unknowing.

  We ate first, and then dipped into my sedatives again, and moved on to the next world.

  For the first time in a long time, I had a dream.

  I’d only dreamed once since I got infected and ripped out of my life and flung into the multiverse, and that was more like a half-sleeping vision, caused by a patch of hallucinogenic flowers. As a rule, since I began traveling, my sleep is void, just an empty interval between worlds.

  This time, I was in a place with red skies, on the shore of a lake. I knew I hadn’t awakened here – I was standing on the shore, not sprawled in the sand. On the far side of the water, a volcano rose, snail trails of molten rock slowly oozing down its sides. Clouds of steam rose in the distance, where the lava touched the far side of the lake.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” a familiar voice said behind me. I spun – and there was the Lector. So it was a nightmare, then. I hadn’t seen the Lector since he leapt to his death at the edge of a waterfall, driven insane – or more insane, or differently insane – by what he saw in the space between worlds when he transitioned while awake. He looked the way he had when I first met him: an older man dressed in a neat dark suit, with a noble brow, intelligent eyes, and a knowing smile. He sat on a rock, and gestured to the volcano. “There’s another mountain like that, on the far side of this planet, precisely antipodal.”

  He looked like the Lector… but he sounded like Ana. The incongruity was wrenching. A face I feared and respected; a voice I loved. “You’re the Prisoner.”

  He ignored that, perhaps because it was so obvious it didn’t require acknowledgment. “In this world, the solar system is the whole universe, and there are no stars in the sky except the sun. This planet – the only planet – is tidally locked. That means one side of the planet always faces the sun, and one side never does. We are standing on the sunward side, where night never falls. If not for all the ash in the air, it would be too hot and bright to live here. The other side of the planet is eternally dark, and on that side, exactly opposite this volcano, there is a cryovolcano. Do you know about those?”

  I didn’t answer.

  The Prisoner didn’t seem to mind. “You don’t get cryovolcanoes often on worlds that can sustain life – your sort of life, anyway. Instead of erupting with fire, they geyser out ice and vapor, ammonia and methane. I’m not sure what makes cryovolcanoes explode, actually. Tidal pressure, or some interaction with heat sources under the surface? The eruptions are pretty, though – a glittering spume. They’d be even prettier with sunlight making the spray sparkle, but you can’t have everything. Welcome to the First World, Zax. A place of fire and ice.”

  “This is where you live?”

  “This is not my prison, no. My prison is…” He waved a hand around. “Outside. I’m afraid all the spatial metaphors I can provide would be deeply misleading. Let’s just say this is… the world nearest to my prison. The first brick in the wall, the first bar in the cage, the first strand of barbed wire around the camp.”

  We don’t have much in the way of prisons back in the Realm of Spheres and Harmonies – at least, not the kind with walls and bars and guards. We used to have them, in the bad old days, before we got better at harmonizing, providing for people’s needs and treating their mental and emotional difficulties, and helping people fit into the world. Truly incorrigible cases still existed, of course, and they were taken to remote, pastoral reserves with automated support systems, where they could live out their days in peace, without harming anyone else. They were practical, not punitive. Though for the ones who liked harming people, I suppose the inability to do so felt like a punishment.

  “Why were you imprisoned?”

  “It’s rude to ask a convict what they’re in for, Zaxony,” the Prisoner said. I turned and looked at the volcano again, unable to stand seeing that patrician face with Ana’s voice coming out of it. “In point of fact, I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  I barked a laugh. “You infected me with a parasite and stole me from my world and my family. You did the same thing to countless others. Your people destroyed the Sleeperhold and murdered the inhabitants. You’re a monster.”

  Ana’s voice sighed. “From the point of view of an insect, a human who paves over their colony in the course of building a road would also seem like a monster. But there is no malice on the part of the humans, just as there is no malice in me. It takes a great effort for me to even notice creatures like you, on any sort of individual basis, though as you can see, I’m making the effort. You should be honored.”

  “Because we’re figments. Not real. Beneath notice.”

  “Oh, dear. You’ve been talking to my followers, I see. That figment business… they have developed a cosmology and philosophy that don’t entirely reflect reality. I haven’t intentionally misled them. You little people just have a way of hearing what you want to hear and ignoring the rest. My followers came to this world, close enough to hear my voice, whispered through a crack in the cell wall. I told them about my origins, and what I could offer them in return for their help. From there, they have… embroidered the story. Perhaps to make themselves feel more important. Perhaps to help assuage their guilt over the acts required to secure my freedom.”

  “So let’s hear it.” I faced him again, crossing my arms. “Give me the pitch. Why should I join the Cult of the Worm?”

  “Such a silly name. They all have their own reasons for taking up my cause.” The Lector’s body stood up, taller than me, and looked down to meet my eyes. “You should join because I want to make all the worlds a better place, Zaxony. I want to help people, and end suffering… just like you.”

  Ana

  “This place is beautiful, but terrifying.” Sorlyn gazed through the transparent dome of the sleepercar, and I had to agree with them. We were in a crystal city, but that makes it sound deliberate, like an architectural choice, and this… wasn’t that. We were in the middle of a city, but it was a city transformed, the buildings encased in translucent glass in pale shades of green and blue, yellow and pink. There were trees, but they were also draped in crystal, and clearly dead underneath their armor. The ground underfoot was covered in sharp-edged sand, tiny prismatic shards.

  “Look at the sun,” Sorlyn said, voice an awed whisper – and this was a man who had seen everything and was impressed by very little.

  I looked. The sun was a jewel, surrounded by glittering crystal. “What happened here?”

  “The crystal could be an informational matrix,” Sorlyn said. “Computronium – smart matter? I’ve seen that on other worlds. The inhabitants build structures that can run complex calculations, and sometimes even think independently. But, if so… things clearly got out of control on this world, and the crystal started reproducing wildly. Or it could be something stranger.” He got out of the sleepercar, and I followed. Zax’s trail and the Lector’s twinned closely here, meandering through the buildings, and even disappearing into them, where the sleepercar would have trouble following. “Let’s look around,” Sorlyn said. “I feel like we must be close to Zax by now.”

  We sealed up the sleepercar and set off along the trails, crystals crunching underfoot. We went to a few of the buildings where Zax and the Lector had been, using our heavy metal flashlights to smash our way through the crystals that had grown over the doors.

  In one dusty old building, we heard shouting, and froze, listening close. At first it was incomprehensible, but then the virus did its work, and the bellowing became words. We were some distance away, but we could pick out a few syllables:

  “–down here – get me – stupid pit – when I – Lector–”

  Lector? I mouthed at Sorlyn, and he nodded. We crept through the dusty corridors, shining our lights around into empty corners. We reached a room with a ragged hole in the floor, and when we shone the lights down, they illuminated a figure at the bottom wearing a filthy white coat. There was something unfinished-looking about the creature at first glance – it was a humanoid, with two arms, two legs, and a head, but the latter seemed lumpy, lacking in features… or maybe it was a trick of the light. The figure skittered away from the torch beams, so I couldn’t confirm my first impression.

  “Who is that?” it called. “Are you locals? These idiots can’t even understand me–”

  “Who are you?” I called down, in its language. “Did you say something about the Lector?”

  A pause, and then, “He’s a real asshole, isn’t he?”

  Sorlyn burst out laughing. “That’s what we hear. Did the Lector drop you down there?”

  “Do you know Zax?” I called. “Are you one of his companions?”

  “One of his companions?” the voice said, and it sounded different, somehow, altered in timbre and pitch, strangely familiar. “I am Zax!”

  The person in the pit stepped into the light, and turned his face up to us.

  I gasped – because it was Zax. His hair was messy, his face dirty, but it was unmistakably him! He was here, a thousand worlds from the place we met, but alive and whole and here. He said, “The Lector took a bunch of my blood and dumped me in here, it’s a nightmare, help me out, would you?”

  Sorlyn opened his pack and pulled out a coil of rope. “We’ve come a long way to find you, Zax,” he called. “I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever catch up.”

  “So you can sleep your way through the worlds too, huh? Small multiverse.”

  I frowned. Maybe he couldn’t see me with the light in his face, and hadn’t recognized my voice – it had taken me a moment to recognize his, after all. “Zax, it’s me! It’s Ana!”

  A pause, then, “Whoa, Ana, really? Wow, that is… totally unexpected. I did not expect that. How about that. Good to see you! Get me out of here so I can say hello properly!”

  I don’t know what reaction I’d expected… but it wasn’t that. According to Winsome, Zax was haunted by what had happened to me – I was the source of foundational guilt in his life – so why did he sound so vague and cheerful, like I was someone he’d met at a party and didn’t really remember very well?

  “Wait,” I said, but Sorlyn had already thrown down the rope, and Zax came scrambling up adroitly, practically bounding out of the hole.

  He looked at us, wide-eyed and grinning. “So, you were looking for me, huh? Old friends, reunited, yeah?” He hugged Sorlyn, and then me, and that order didn’t feel right at all.

  “You’ve never met Sorlyn before,” I said slowly. “Did you hit your head or something down there?”

  “Wow, did I ever.” He thumped a fist against his temple. “Totally scrambled my eggs. I’m sure I’ll be better soon. What do you say we get out of here? We can hunt down the Lector, kick his head in, no, wait, feed him his own guts, yeah!”

  Sorlyn and I exchanged a glance. Sorlyn said, “That’s… yes, we would like to… find the Lector. We thought he was chasing you, not the other way around.”

  Zax cut his eyes away from us. “Well, you know how it is. Sometimes he chases me, sometimes I chase him. He stole my blood, I want to steal it back, around and around we go. He’s trying to do a whole thing, you know, the Lector. He wants to found an empire in the multiverse. It’s wild! But also cool. Kind of impressive. But he shouldn’t have left me down there.”

  I was so frustrated. He seemed scattered, manic, not at all like the man I’d met – or the man I’d thought I was following. “Zax, we don’t understand. What do you mean, an empire?”

  His face lit up. “The Lector’s got this serum, right, lets you travel the multiverse, he made it from Z… from my blood, and he wants to make more. Once he’s got enough, he’s going find some high-tech world to conquer, and raise an army, and give them the serum, and bring that army to other worlds, and conquer those, and on and on, until he’s running the whole everything.”

  “But… conquer the worlds? How?” Sorlyn said. “Even if he can start and stop traveling at will by taking his serum, how can he return to universes he’s taken over once he leaves? Has he found a way to travel back to worlds he’s already visited?” We’d seen no indication of that.

  Zax stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. “Nah. The Lector hasn’t cracked that whole going-in-reverse thing yet, but he’s a genius, a super genius. He’ll figure that part out – he’s working the problem. The Lector figured he might as well get started, though, with a little more blood and the right equipment and he can make lots of the serum, and start setting up little, what do you call them, strongholds. Outposts. He’ll recruit some people, give them power, people love power, start putting the structure of the Moveable Empire in place, founding the Collectorium–” He frowned. “That’s what he says, anyway. Crazy, right? Who would even want to do something like that? So. How does this work? Do we all cuddle up and pop sleeping pills at the same time, or what?”

  “We have a vehicle,” Sorlyn said. “It allows us to travel between worlds–”

  I put a hand on Sorlyn’s shoulder to stop him. “Zax,” I said. “Look at me. Do you recognize me?”

  There was absolutely no recognition in those familiar eyes. I thought of my first impression of this person, when I looked down into the pit – blank, unfinished, inchoate.

  He said, “Yeah, for sure. You’re Ana. Let’s get going. A vehicle, huh? That’s great. Is it easy to drive?”

  I took a step to one side, putting distance between me and Sorlyn. Better if we didn’t present a single target. “You’re not Zax. Who are you?”