Whenever Zax wasn’t being poked, prodded, or questioned about his travels, we spent time in a little cottage by the lake, only emerging to get meals. One day we were sitting in the cafeteria when Durio sat down beside us, slamming his tray onto the table. “I thought she’d be able to cure us! I want this worm out of me!”

  “Who are we talking about?” I said.

  He jerked a thumb at Zax. “His friend, Minna. She’s supposed to be this amazing biological genius, but she says she can’t remove the worm!”

  “You had the procedure, didn’t you?” Zax said. “You can stay awake, so you don’t have to travel anymore if–”

  “There is a parasite inside me,” Durio said. “Don’t you understand? There’s one inside you too! It’s disgusting! I lay awake at night, shuddering, I swear I can feel it slithering through my blood. But Minna says, oh, the worm lives in other dimensions, we can’t pull it out – well, why not? The cult put it in, so there’s got be a way to expel it.” He shook his head. “Disappointing. It’s all so disappointing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry the two miracles you have been given aren’t enough for you.”

  Durio stood up again. “You uninfected can’t possibly understand.” He stormed off.

  “Don’t mind him,” I said. “He’s a minority view. Everyone is thrilled with what you and Minna have given us.”

  “Toros thinks Minna’s gifts can turn the tide against the cult,” Zax said. “He has plans to infiltrate, find out their goals, track them to their homeworld, find a way to stop them… If we can understand them, we might be able to reason with them, too, you know?”

  “No infiltration for you, though.” I took his hand. “You’ve done enough, OK? I have, too. You spent years out there, and so did I. I brought you back, and you brought treasures back. We get to just be us, for a while. We’ve both earned a break.”

  He kissed me, and then pulled away, and said, “I love this… but I have to help out. It was bad enough when I thought it was just me torn from my home and sent spinning through worlds. Now I know the cult has done it to countless others. If I can help stop them, I have to do my part.”

  I sighed. “I knew you’d say something like that. And I love you for it. But let’s be self-indulgent for a little bit longer?”

  In the end, it was only a little bit longer. We’d only been on Sleeperhold for a few weeks when I saw the Pilgrim slip into the geodesic dome that housed the security system and surveillance controls. That wasn’t so strange – the Pilgrim and Vicki had more tactical knowledge than the rest of us put together, and they’d been giving Toros advice on our defenses – but it was late, and there was something furtive about his movements, like he didn’t want to be seen. I was only out and about myself at that hour because Zax and I had gotten distracted and forgotten dinner, and I’d gone to the kitchens to get us some fruit and bread and cheese.

  I hadn’t spent a lot of time with the Pilgrim, but there was an intensity about him that I found slightly offputting. It occurred to me that night that the Pilgrim was a zealot, someone who’d traveled with a whole sect of people like him on a starship, looking for the literal, physical home of God. Weren’t people like that likely to be… sort of… susceptible to cults? Hadn’t he kind of been in a cult already, in a way?

  I crept toward the security dome, and ducked inside. The door to the command center was standing open. I started to call out… and then saw a pool of blood spreading from the door. Shit shit shit. I had my staff – I kept it on my belt at all times, since Polly – and I snapped it out to its full length.

  I moved, cat quiet, toward the command room, wishing for my shimmersuit. The guards on watch, a pair of Toros’s cousins, were dead on the floor, their heads at impossible angles, necks clearly broken. They’d died meters away from me, and I hadn’t heard a sound. I said I was cat quiet, but the Pilgrim was an actual cat, a predator by ancestry and a killer by training.

  He was standing at the console, not just shutting things down, but sabotaging them – pulling out wires, prying open consoles, removing components. He’d helped improve our defenses… which meant he knew exactly how to disable them.

  There was only one reason to do that. An attack was coming.

  I struck at him with my staff, triggering the inertial generators, intending to hit him hard enough to break his shoulder and smash him to the floor.

  I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to question him.

  I should have just shot him, and ended his life. That might not have helped things, since by then the damage was done, but it would have made me feel better.

  The Pilgrim heard something – the whoosh of the staff, the click of the button, who knows? He ducked, faster than I could believe, and spun, and swatted my staff out of my hands. I didn’t try to fight after that, because I knew I wouldn’t have a chance. I bolted, sure I was dead anyway – he had to be faster than me.

  But he didn’t chase me. He let me go. I didn’t know why, then, but now I do: it’s because my escape didn’t matter. I was too late to do anything about it. I started to shout, to scream an alarm… but then a lot of people started shouting, all over the hold.

  Cultists poured into the camp from the trees, armed with our guns. They must have overtaken one of the outposts on an adjacent world, waited until some predetermined time, and then slept their way here, en masse.

  I thought immediately of Minna and Colubra’s lab. The linguistic virus. The seeds Minna used to rewrite neural architecture. I couldn’t let the cult get their hands on those. I rushed toward the lab, in time to see Colubra seal the doors. “We are under attack,” she buzzed. “I am sanitizing the lab so the intruders cannot access our information.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Do you know where Toros is?”

  “I will search for him. You should help with the evacuation.”

  I wanted to run back to Zax, but our cottage was halfway around the lake, and… if he were here, in my place, I knew exactly what he’d do. He’d help people. I could do the same.

  I went for the shuttle. It was a sleepercar, but writ large. The familiar, spherical shape of our chariot was there, but integrated into the cockpit of something with a huge rectangular storage area in the back. Sorlyn was already in the garage. “Ana! Good, you’re all right. I need you to secure the sleepercars, and then send any staff you encounter here, so I can get them off-world.”

  I nodded, and spun right back around. He was right. The sleepercars would be even more valuable to the cult than Minna’s innovations. It hadn’t occurred to me that the cultists could operate the chariots… but they had spies here. Someone could have taught them.

  I raced to the corral, and ran into Minna, who was running toward the sound of shouting, of course. She was in terrible danger, if the cult knew what she was capable of, and we had to assume they did. “Take one of the cars!” I shouted. I knew she’d trained with Vicki to drive it, and the ruby twinkled on her finger. “So the cult can’t get it, or get their hands on you! We’ll meet in the next world!”

  Minna looked toward the flames leaping in camp, bit her lip, and then nodded. She climbed into the green-and-blue chariot, and flickered away.

  I looked at the other sleepercars, all lined up. A few were gone, out on missions or in outpost worlds, but most were there. Secure them, Sorlyn said. How was I supposed to secure them?

  In the end, I settled for sabotage. Better to break them than let the cult take them. The easiest thing was just ripping out the wires and destroying the diadems that let sleepers integrate with the propulsion system. Maybe the cult could drive the chariots, but I was willing to bet they couldn’t repair them.

  I was about to disable the last chariot, the purple one, when someone kicked me in the knee and knocked me down. I rolled over, and screamed, because the person leaning over me didn’t have a face, just a series of holes where the face should be, and it was like seeing the space between worlds in human form.

  Then I realized it was just a mask. The woman with the lotus pod face pointed a gun at me, and I scrambled away, running, as she laughed. I looked back in time to see a cultist climbing into the back of the sleepercar. Other cultists swarmed around the sleepercars, and I felt a thrill of joy at their coming disappointment. I ducked behind a pile of scrap metal and watched as the purple car disappeared. The cultists realized the others weren’t usable… and then they tossed grenades into the chariots and ran away. I turned away, reflexively, from the explosions.

  I kept running. Everything was screaming and fire. I’d done what I could. I had to find Zax. I had to–

  A cultist stepped into my path and punched me in the face. I went down, hitting my head hard, everything black and swimmy at the edges. The cultist laughed, and raised his boot to stomp on me – and then a beam of energy disintegrated his upper body. His lower half, one leg still raised, fell over into the dirt.

  Sorlyn grabbed my arm and hauled me upright. There was a gleaming silver sidearm in his other hand. “Come on. We have to go, before they find the shuttle.”

  “Zax,” I said, my voice slushy.

  “Zax survived a thousand worlds,” Sorlyn said. “He’ll be OK.”

  I know now that Sorlyn carried me to the shuttle, but I can’t remember it.

  It turned out, I was the only person he managed to get into the vehicle and off-world that night.

  Sanctuary Moon • Zaveta Wakes Up • Enter Vicki and Minna • Tactically Sound • Rusting Radio Telescopes • The Wormwood • An Ultimatum

  “Destroy the First World,” I said carefully. “How will you do that, exactly?”

  Toros was happy to share his plans. “Gibberne created a breach-sealing bomb before he died, the biggest ever constructed. It’s locked away in a vault back in the ruins of the Sleeperhold. I’ll take the bomb to their cursed world, and I’ll set it off. Gibberne theorized that the bomb would ignite the atmosphere there and tear through the entire planet, sealing every breach. They never made bombs this big on our world – they would have killed everyone. Our weapon will render the First World radioactive, poisonous, and uninhabitable for millions of years.” Toros was almost giddy. “Don’t you see, Zax? The cult will be gone, no longer capable of spreading their vile worms. Any breaches leading to First World will be sealed, so no one can sneak or stumble in again. And no traveler like you will ever transition there either, because travelers can’t go to a world that won’t sustain life! We’ll finally be safe. Everyone will be safe. This Prisoner of theirs can keep whispering, but there won’t be anyone left to hear him. We’ll seal him up, too.”

  “That’s… quite a plan, Toros.” He wanted to murder the whole cult and nuke their planet. That was not the sort of solution that appealed to me. “I’ve talked to some of these cultists, though. They’re deluded, and dangerous, but they’ve been deceived by the Prisoner and their leadership–”

  “They pledged their fealty to an evil god who wants to destroy reality, Zax. Ana warned me about your terminal case of empathy, but surely even you can see this is an extreme situation. Either we kill them, or we risk them killing everyone.”

  “It’s very serious, certainly, but–”

  “I wasn’t asking for your approval,” Toros said stiffly. “That is simply what’s happening. As soon as I find Ana.”

  “Why do you need her?” I couldn’t believe she would support this plan any more than I did.

  “Because she took the shuttle!” He banged his fist on the console. “We have a few other sleepercars, recovered from outposts and returning agents, but they’re too small for transport. The breach bomb is huge, and I can’t dismantle it, because I don’t know how to put it back together again. Without the shuttle, we can’t transport it – Ana and Sorlyn took the only transdimensional vehicle big enough to hold the thing.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” I said, as blandly as possible.

  Toros took us to an outpost the Sleepers still controlled, transitioning into a high-walled circular space open to the air. We were on a moon. I could tell, because the planet, a gas giant swirling with beautiful purple and white clouds, filled a quarter of the sky. “Are there native people here?” I asked.

  “Our survey found a few things with spinal cords in the ocean, but that’s about as far as complex life has developed here. We have the place to ourselves.” He opened the dome. The air was thin but breathable. The round walls reminded me of Zaveta’s arena, but there were cameras and sensors here, and guns mounted on the walls. “Security,” Toros said when he noticed me noticing. “This is one of our strongest outposts. Anything that transitions through here, in stealth or not, will be seen.”

  He woke up Durio, and they helped me carry Zaveta toward a sort of airlock, and then into a tunnel complex. Colubra was here, as promised, and she helped me get Zaveta onto an exam table in a side room outfitted as an infirmary. “The cultists drugged her,” I said.

  “Breathing is good, heart rate is good,” Colubra buzzed through her artificial voicebox. “I could give her stimulants, but I think she’s likely to wake on her own soon.”

  “I’ll sit with her.” I pulled up a chair and took Zaveta’s hand.

  Toros hovered by the door. “Do you have any idea where Ana might be, Zax?”

  “I have no idea. I haven’t seen her since the night of the attack.” That night I’d been in our cottage, stretched out in bed, perfectly relaxed, waiting for Ana to come back with a late snack, since we’d had better things to do during dinner. Then I heard the screaming, and rushed to the camp, where cultists were running amok. I tried to help people escape, even snatching up a gun from an inert robot sentry… and then someone or something cracked me on the back of the head. I woke up in another world, and had no way to get back. There were cultists there too, and dead Sleepers – I took my spectacles from a corpse of an unknown colleague, and just kept running until things calmed down, and I found a trail to follow. “I didn’t even know for sure Ana was alive until you told me so.”

  “She got away in the shuttle, with Sorlyn, the night of the attack,” he said. “She came back, the next day, when the survivors regrouped. We tried to make a plan for battle, and then… Ana and Sorlyn left in the shuttle, without telling anyone. I honestly thought they’d gone to look for you.”

  “If so, they didn’t find me. But there were dozens of possible trails to follow from the Sleeperhold, and I got farther away every day.”

  “They knew I needed that shuttle. They could have taken one of the other cars…” He shook his head. “Maybe they were afraid you were in the First World. Maybe they didn’t want me to set off the bomb, in case it killed you too, but would they be that selfish?”

  “Is wanting to avoid casualties selfish?”

  Toros sighed. “You joined this effort, Zax. You knew the stakes. Do you mean to tell me you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself to save every living thing in all creation? Because I would.”

  “I’d be willing to sacrifice myself, absolutely,” I said. “But what you’re talking about is sacrificing other people, Toros.”

  He turned and stomped off. I sighed, and held Zaveta’s hand, and waited.

  I wasn’t dozing – I can’t do that – but I was a little zoned out when Zaveta stirred, and turned her head to me. “Zax? Did we escape the cult?”

  I leaned forward. “We did. We’re safe. We’re with friends.” The first statement was true; the others were at least true-ish.

  “I saw the Prisoner again,” she said. “He was raging. He told me to tell you, there would be no more mercy, no more offers to cooperate – if we don’t obey him, he’ll have us killed on sight.” She smiled. “When an enemy general starts to shout that way, it means the battle is turning in your favor. I think things are falling apart in the Prisoner’s camp. I don’t know why, exactly. He was cursing about Ana and Minna and how they wouldn’t stay still, how he could see everything, but he couldn’t see everything all at once.”

  “He can’t just tell them what he sees, either,” I said. “At least, I don’t think so. They have to go to this cavern on their homeworld, where he whispers, or he can talk to them in the void, but that’s it. It’s not like he can call them on a radio or send a messenger bird.”

  Zaveta chuckled. “A general with such poor lines of communication is a weak one. What matter if he sees, when he cannot tell what he sees? The Prisoner may be something like a god, but he is not all-knowing and all-seeing. Greater than us, but not as much greater as he thinks.”

  “Yes, that is our assessment also,” Vicki said.

  I stood up, and Zaveta sat up, reaching for her cudgel, but that was leaning against the wall in the corner instead of hanging at her belt. “It’s OK,” I said. “I know that voice.”

  “I have looped the surveillance of this room,” Vicki said, still not visible. “Those watching will just see Zax sitting and holding this charming newcomer’s hand. Hello. I am Vastcool Class Crystal Intellect Three Three Three, sometimes called Victory-Three, or simply–”

  “Vicki,” Zaveta said. “The magic talking ring. I am Zaveta of the Broken Wheel. Where are you?”

  Minna stepped forward, wearing muddy overalls, her hair all mussed, Vicki twinkling on her finger. I blinked, because it wasn’t like she appeared – she was always there, and I just hadn’t noticed her. “Zax!” Her voice was an excited whisper. “I learned to be sneaky, extra sneaky, the way Sorlyn is.” She looked at Zaveta and curtsied – I don’t know where she picked that up – and said, “I am very much pleased to meet you.”