“I do.” I did not like where this was going.

  “I kept a piece of the Polyp,” Minna said. “Later, I grew it, but only into a body, without a mind – that was not so hard. It was just about making certain connections not connect.” She interlaced her fingers and then pulled them apart. “You see, I was thinking and thinking about the way Polly’s mind was passed around, and it didn’t seem so different from the way I put my memories in a seed that time so you could see what happened to me when we were separated, Zax. I figured out a way to do what Polly did. I didn’t think it was good for much except maybe a sort of emergency, um, what is it called, Vicki?”

  “An emergency backup,” Vicki said. “Or a restore point.”

  “A way to make a new me in case the first me got killed,” Minna said, as if that were a perfectly ordinary idea. “So all that I am would not be lost. But when the ugly mask lady tried to recruit me, I knew they wouldn’t stop trying to catch me, and if they did, I wanted to be able to escape to the one place they could never follow.”

  “Minna made a duplicate of herself from Polly’s tissue,” Vicki said. “Then she encoded her entire personality into a seed, and fed it to the copy. She did all this on worlds where the Prisoner had no eyes, to keep it secret. Then… there were two Minnas. One to go forth into danger, and one to stay back, safe. I had Sorlyn pick up this one on the way home from Wormwood.”

  “So the Minna who died on the first world… that was the copy?” I said.

  Minna cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

  I frowned. “You’re the original, aren’t you?”

  Minna shrugged. “I am not sure. Polly’s body is so versatile, and I made it even more so, until it became mine, every bit, down to the cells, and we have all the same memories of course, so who could tell one from one?”

  “One of you would remember feeding the seed to the copy, though, right?” Ana said. “The memories can’t perfectly match.”

  “Oh, we cut that memory out.” Minna made a snip-snip motion with her fingers. “It didn’t seem fair, for one of us to think they were more real somehow. We were both real. Both Minna. Both me. When the time came to decide who got to go on the mission and who would stay behind and be the backup, we just let chance decide.”

  “I generated a random number,” Vicki said. “One was odds, and one was evens. And, no, I don’t know which Minna was the original, either. I had to shut myself down to avoid the contamination of that knowledge, lest it alter our relationship. I have been persuaded to Minna’s way of thinking, now – that it doesn’t matter which one came first.”

  “You can clone a plant, and it is the same plant, until it grows into something new,” Minna said. “I am sad the other me will not get to grow anymore, but one gone is better than all gone, we agreed. I would have died to save all the everything anyway, but this way, a part of me still goes on.”

  “It will… take me a while to get my head around this,” I said.

  “We have time,” Minna said.

  She led us through the remains of camp, to where Sorlyn and Toros and Winsome were bringing the bomb out of the vault on a levitating dolly. The breach-bomb was a cylindrical metal thing, almost as big as one of the chariots, wrapped with glowing blue pipes.

  I approached Toros warily. “Are we good?” I said.

  He looked at me coldly, then sighed. “You took an unnecessary risk. Without Minna’s quick thinking, all would have been lost. But… I am attempting to remain focused on outcomes. I like to think of myself as pragmatic above all else.”

  We loaded the bomb into the back of the shuttle. Sorlyn and Toros took it to the First World. Ana and I followed in a sleepercar. We flew to the breach we knew led to the second world – even if the bomb wasn’t as effective as its creator predicted, we hoped it would seal that one, at least. There were other breaches in that world, it turned out, which made sense – the Prisoner had been bashing at the walls of his prison for a long time. Most of those breaches were underground, or on the icy night side, or led to uninhabitable worlds. This first breach was the one that let zealotry in and caused all the problems.

  I looked to the volcano. “I could try to talk to the Pilgrim again…”

  Toros shook his head. “He made his choice. We should respect it. We’ve meddled with other worlds and their inhabitants too much already.”

  I reluctantly agreed. We placed the bomb, set the timer, and retreated to a safe interdimensional distance, into the second world.

  Then we sat, our chariot next to their shuttle, parked near the standing stones. “How will we know if it worked?” I asked.

  Ana pointed to the console. “See that? It indicates the presence of a breach. So–”

  “Now!” Toros said over the radio.

  The indicator light on the console flickered and went out. “Breach sealed,” she said. Toros and Sorlyn whooped over the radio, and Ana reached into the back seat to hug me. “We did it!”

  “So let’s go celebrate,” I said, and kissed her.

  Don’t you love a happy ending?

  Ana

  I’m writing this in one of the notebooks I scrounged from the Sleeperhold, since I gave Zax his journal back. He’s been reading my account, and I’ve been reading his. It’s funny how often we had the same ideas or the same thoughts about things. Or maybe it’s just natural. We do fit.

  I didn’t plan to write again like this. I thought I’d spend some time just living life instead, but with everything that happened with Toros… I’m having trouble processing it, and maybe writing again will help.

  At first, everything went beautifully. We sealed the breaches in the First World, and trapped the Prisoner. Once we got back to the Sleeperhold, we found out we’d done even more than that. We noticed the phenomenon while we sat around a table set up near the ruins of the lodge, pretty much all of us except Toros and his cousins.

  “Your worm-trail… it’s disintegrating.” Sorlyn pointed at Zax.

  He peered at Sorlyn through his cute little spectacles and said, “Yours is, too!”

  Sorlyn laughed, a rare sound from him. “Who knew reality could knit itself up like that? Why hasn’t it been happening all along?”

  “I think the Prisoner was reaching through the trails.” Minna wriggled her fingers. “Like bits of metal in a wound, preventing them from healing all the way.”

  “But we slammed a gate down across the First World,” I said. “We cut off his tentacles or his eyestalks or pseudopods. He can still reach into the First World, but he can’t reach any farther.”

  “I’ve got to tell Toros,” Sorlyn said. “This is amazing news!” He took Minna’s hand, and they ran off together.

  “Truly a welcome outcome,” Winsome agreed, and Colubra nodded. “I wonder though… what does this mean for the infected, here and scattered elsewhere? Will they continue to whirl through realities, or will this change remove their abilities?”

  “Maybe the little worms will die too, and I’ll get my cure at last,” Durio said.

  “I… guess we’ll find out.” Zax sounded a little stunned at the prospect. He was Zax of the Thousand Worlds – what would it mean to him, if something so fundamental about his nature changed? With Minna’s ability, not dependent on the worm, we could still travel with her and even use a sleepercar… but we wouldn’t have to.

  I took Zax’s hand. Wherever he went, I’d go with him. “What’s everyone going to do, now that our war is over?” I asked.

  “Toros’s cousins are planning to stay here,” Durio said. “I guess their world is a garbage pit now, and this one is nice enough. I’m going to return to my own world. Even if the parasites don’t die, Minna’s procedure means I can stay there as long as I like. Winsome here said he’d pilot the shuttle for me.”

  “Durio’s world sounds like a delight,” Winsome said. “Technology and luxury, without the ossification and stratification that so defined my own world of origin.”

  “They will return me to my hive along the way,” Colubra said. “My honor debt to Toros is now discharged.”

  “I don’t know what the other Sleepers are planning,” Durio said. “Toros had some meeting with them in the wee hours of the morning, and I haven’t seen any of them since. I was supposed to go, but I was resting, and I’d say I earned the break.” He shrugged. “What about you lot?”

  I leaned my head on Zax’s shoulder. “We’re going to see the worlds, and see if we can’t do some good along the way.”

  Zax nodded, then pointed across the table at Zaveta, who was shoveling food into her mouth; she ate with the same intensity she did almost everything else. She wore Vicki on her finger. It turns out Vicki’s addiction is fresh knowledge, and they’d been talking a lot about siege warfare lately. “Minna and Vicki and Sorlyn are coming with us,” Zax said. “First we’re going to help Zaveta find her friends – tracking them will be trickier than we expected, with the worm-trails disappearing, but we’ll go back to her world, and fan out from there.”

  “My people may not have survived,” Zaveta said. “They were shepherds and farmers, not warriors. But some might be saved, and at the very least I will bring their bodies home, and give them the appropriate rites.”

  “Noble,” Durio said. “I’m just looking forward to getting drunk on proper liquor in a place that doesn’t smell like dirt and leaves.” He belched, then stood up. “‘Scuse me, I have to do the necessary.”

  Colubra rose too. “I should pack my things.” We waved as they departed.

  We had no idea it was the last time we’d see them alive.

  The rest of us were just chatting away when we heard a voice weakly say, “Zax.”

  I turned, and Minna was there, covered in blood. She collapsed, trying to crawl toward us, but clearly spent. “I couldn’t – couldn’t save them–”

  Zax was at her side in an instant. “What happened? What’s going on?”

  “Toros and his cousins,” she said. “They attacked us. Shot us, then stabbed us. I pretended to be dead so they’d leave, and I think I saved Sorlyn, I filled his wounds with moss and he disappeared when he passed out. But Durio and Colubra, I found them, her head was broken, Zax, I couldn’t fit the pieces together, and then one of the cousins found me, and I had to hurt him, so he wouldn’t call the others, but he hurt me, too, and…” Her eyes rolled back, but she didn’t transition, so she must have still been on the edge of consciousness. Unless she was…

  I knelt beside her. I couldn’t feel a pulse. I told myself, with Minna, that didn’t mean much, but… “Why?” Zax stared at me. “Why would Toros do this?”

  “Because it has to be done.” Toros stepped out of the trees, four of his cousins flanking him. They all held terrifying weapons, from guns to bloody blades. “You travelers are abominations. We sealed the breach and we stopped the cult, but you carry their sacrament. Listen to you, making your plans, intending to spread your filth throughout the worlds. Colubra didn’t have to die, but she tried to protect Durio. She doesn’t understand. None of you do. Everywhere you go, you damage reality. If you die, you’ll pass your worms on, and they will go on, eternally.”

  Zax stood up, putting himself between Minna and me. “Toros, the worm-trails are healing! That’s what Sorlyn went to tell you before you attacked him! Without the Prisoner’s interference, the damage to reality is temporary!”

  I saw the flicker of uncertainty in Toros’s eyes… and then saw him will it away. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter. You carry the worm. Minna can make more like you any time she wants. You’re dangerous – you were always dangerous, and just because the cult is gone, that hasn’t changed. Everything needs to go back where it belongs. Every world on its own, complete and uncorrupted. Abominations must die. I’ll give you a moment to say goodbye to your–” He frowned. “Where is Zaveta?”

  A voice behind Toros said, calmly: “Drop.”

  Zax grabbed me and Winsome and pulled us both down to the ground, hard, so we fell next to Minna in the dirt. Toros and his cousins turned toward the voice – and then jerked wildly in place as a rapid series of bangs shattered the air.

  The attackers fell to the ground, riddled with small holes. Zaveta stood behind them, holding a portable autocannon. She dropped the weapon on the ground, its barrels still smoking, and then stepped over Toros and the others to approach us. “Using a weapon like that hardly seems fair, but then, Toros and his cousins did not engage fairly, either.” She held up her finger, jewel twinkling. “Vicki told me how to operate the gun.” She looked at Zax, bowing her head, and her expression was – sheepish? “I am sorry I did not ask for permission to kill them, Zax. I did not believe there was time.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Zax croaked.

  Recoveries • Love Is Little Yellow Flowers • What Worlds May Come

  Ana showed me what she wrote last night, about Toros turning on us, and it’s what I would have written, pretty much, although my version would have included more anguish and shock. She’s stronger than I am.

  She says she loves how I always look for the best in people, but it certainly does mean I get hurt a lot, doesn’t it?

  Oh well. So far, the trade-off still feels worth it.

  Minna recovered. She went into some kind of temporary hibernation while her body fixed its wounds, and you’d never know she’d been shot and stabbed now. Physically, anyway. I assume some psychological damage was done, but it’s hard to tell with her.

  We found Sorlyn in an adjacent world, and he’s stable, though he kept losing consciousness and flickering away. Minna fetched him back every time, and I guess he ran out of new worlds he can reach from the Sleeperhold, because he hasn’t disappeared again. We don’t have a good infirmary here anymore, but we’re doing our best.

  Ana says if Sorlyn doesn’t improve soon, she knows a world with a really good hospital that’s patched him up before. Minna says she’ll take care of him, thank you very much. When she’s done with him, she says, he’ll be even better. I never thought I’d see Minna fall in love. It’s made her even more adorable. She’s blossomed. Sometimes literally. Love looks like little yellow flowers in a crown around her head.

  We buried Toros and his cousins. Colubra and Durio too. We found the other travelers and their companions, the ones Toros called in from the outposts, all murdered, their bodies tossed in the vault that used to hold the breach-bomb. Where we would have ended up, if Zaveta hadn’t done what she did.

  I still don’t think killing is ever the best choice, but I must reluctantly concede that sometimes there aren’t any better ones. I wish we could have subdued Toros and his cousins and stranded them somewhere they couldn’t do any harm, but I can hardly blame Zaveta for saving us all.

  Emptying the vault meant filling more graves. We just couldn’t leave them like that, in a heap, you see. Winsome and Zaveta are tireless when it comes to digging holes, at least, but it’s still exhausting. The aquatic people are also dead – poisoned, we think – and we left them in the water, not knowing what rites their people prefer.

  We did notice that the worms aren’t contagious anymore. Ana didn’t get infected, despite getting the blood of dead travelers all over her during the cleanup. The parasites aren’t really separate creatures, after all, but aspects of the Prisoner, extended into our worlds and our selves. Now that those extensions are severed from their “body”, they’re like sliced-off fingers, rotting away. My worm is probably dying, or already dead, and once the chemical it secreted leaves my blood, I won’t travel anymore when I sleep. If that’s true, Toros really did try to kill me for nothing. Even more nothing than we thought.

  It’s hard to wrap my head around the possibility of such a fundamental change in myself, and in all the other infected scattered throughout the multiverse – not just the cultists, but those unlucky carriers like me. They might all find themselves, finally, at rest, and I can only hope they end up in places where they can live in peace… though I don’t know how likely that is.

  I take comfort in the knowledge that no one else will be infected and suffer the loss that I did, torn away from everything they’ve known and cast into the unknown. The incalculable pain created by the Prisoner and the cult will no longer increase. I often wonder if my efforts to help people made any real, lasting difference – but in this case, I know they have. We’ve done good.

  Minna says, if I want to keep the ability to travel, she can make that happen. She changed her body, after all; she can change mine. She’s offered that ability to Ana, too. She says she’s thinking about it. If the damage we do to reality heals itself now, there’s no reason not to.

  You’d think I’d want to be rid of this gift, this curse, this power… but I still have work to do, and people to help. We’re all mourning right now. We’re all staggering around in grief. But we’re doing what we can, and what we must. In time, we’ll be able to do more; to do our best.

  For a long time, I hated what happened to me. My life was loss and loneliness and fear, sorrow and confusion and desperation. But being flung through the worlds this way… it’s the reason I met Minna, and Vicki, and Winsome, and Sorlyn, and Zaveta. And Ana.

  The Prisoner was evil – that’s not a term I use often, or lightly – but it did bring us together. Even the worst events sometimes have threads of good running through them.

  I don’t believe the Prisoner is a god. Not exactly. But it worked at least one miracle. Do you know how rare it is, to find a person who’s just right for you, even in the vastness of one single world? Let alone the impossible expanse of the multiverse? And yet, thanks to the Prisoner’s curse, I managed it. I found Ana. Then I lost her, and found her, and lost her, and found her again.

  No more loss. This time, I’m holding on, through whatever worlds may come.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Eleanor Teasdale at Angry Robot for acquiring this book, and to Simon Spanton for editing it. They believed in me and my idea for a weird multiverse duology, and I’m grateful, because Zax and Ana are dear to my heart. Thanks as well to Gemma Creffield and all the other members of the Robot Army who make me look good. Rob Lowry’s copyedit saved me from myself. (I can’t be expected to get the names of my characters right every time.) As usual, I am indebted to my literary agent Ginger Clark, who always has my back.