It’s about time, Chak-Tal said in my mind. I was getting bored waiting for it.

  “One teleport to get there,” I said. “Maybe one more if you’ve got reserves left to get me back home.”

  I can manage two. But the second one will hurt.

  “That’s lovely,” I said.

  I checked the Negator while holding the amplifier case. The weapon was heavy at my side.

  I moved to the center of the cargo bay, giving myself room. The T-suit’s systems were primed.

  “If I’m not back in an hour, get out of here,” I said.

  “We’re not leaving you,” Alina said. “Besides, if Zorion gets the ring, nothing else matters. Our survival won’t mean anything if reality ends.”

  There was no argument with that.

  “Good luck,” Bill said.

  “Kill them all,” Gorrax said.

  I imagined that was a Tokari saying.

  “Be safe,” Alina said.

  “God help me,” I mouthed to myself.

  Then I activated the T-suit.

  Hang on to your organs, Chak-Tal said. This might scramble them a bit.

  The cargo bay twisted as reality folded. I felt myself stretching as we teleported to the Dreadstar.

  The sensation was worse than before, probably because Chak-Tal was running on fumes or maybe there was an anti-teleportation system in place. I didn’t know. We materialized hard, my knees buckling as reality snapped back into place.

  I was in a chamber, but the stasis pod was empty, its lid hanging open like a mouth that had vomited out its contents. Ice crystals covered everything in here, and the air was cold enough that my breath fogged inside the helmet.

  “Greetings, Kane.”

  I spun around. The daughter stood in the hatch. She wore a form-fitting dress that seemed to be cut from the void.

  “Father wanted me to pass along his regrets. He couldn’t stay to greet you personally.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Where he needs to be,” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll see him soon enough. First, though, I need what you’re carrying.”

  She held out a hand.

  “The ring, Kane. Give it to me, and I’ll make your death quick. Refuse, and I’ll take it anyway, but you’ll die hard and ugly.”

  The ring was under a glove on my finger. I drew the Negator. “Let’s try option three?”

  She laughed and said, “I’m not some android you can erase. I’m a High Polarion. I transcend your simple concepts of existence.”

  She started walking toward me.

  “Stop,” I said, aiming the Negator at her.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  She kept coming.

  I pulled the trigger.

  The Negator whined and fired, although I couldn’t see the beam. But she was already gone, having phase-shifted. The bulkhead where she’d stood vanished.

  She reappeared to my left, moving fast. Her hand closed on my wrist, and where she touched, the T-suit’s fabric began to dissolve.

  “Crude weapons for crude minds,” she said.

  Oh, hello there, Chak-Tal purred in my mind. What a delicious little snack you are.

  The black globe on my back pulsed, and the daughter began to scream.

  -70-

  The black globe pulsed against my back, and I felt something flowing out of it: not tentacles or physical appendages, but a field of pure hunger that wrapped around the daughter like invisible chains.

  Her scream wasn’t just pain. It sounded like outrage and shock that something dared to feed on her. The flesh she’d worked so hard to obtain began to flicker.

  Mmm, yes, Chak-Tal hummed in my mind. High Polarion energy, aged in digital space, then compressed into flesh. It’s like a fine wine. I haven’t tasted anything this rich since the Empire fell.

  She tried to phase-shift away, but the feeding field must have held her partially in our reality. She flickered between solid and translucent.

  “What is this thing?” she gasped, her composure cracking.

  I am extinction, little girl, Chak-Tal said. I am what the High Polarions feared so much that they buried me in time. And you just gave me exactly what I needed.

  The energy drain intensified. Her form began to dim, her starlight dress becoming a threadbare shadow. Her white hair lost its luster, and those perfect features started to show cracks.

  “I am eternal,” she whispered. “I am—”

  You are food, Chak-Tal said. Delicious, nutritious food, but food in the end.

  She struggled hard. For a moment, it seemed she might phase-shift to safety. But Chak-Tal just laughed and pulled harder.

  She solidified, dropping to her knees. The feeding continued for another few seconds, then stopped abruptly.

  That’s enough, Chak-Tal said, sounding satisfied. Any more, and she’ll cease to exist entirely. I can’t have that. Dead High Polarions tell no tales.

  The daughter collapsed onto the deck, still alive but drained. She looked up at me with eyes that had lost their impossible depths, now just blue and human—and afraid.

  “Oh,” she gasped, staring at nothing. “Oh no, the equation… Father didn’t master it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It mastered him. All these centuries, we thought he was wielding it, but we’re all just variables in its proof, aren’t we? Even I, even this moment…”

  She looked up at me. “It’s been using him to manifest its will. It’s been using all of us. Why did it take me so long to see that?”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  She means the Null Equation, meathead, Chak-Tal told me. She’s telling you that Zorion’s studying of the equation warped his thinking. That’s the reason he wants to do this: it twisted his thinking into wanting nothingness. The very equation used him for its ultimate purpose.

  Oh. I finally understood. Some equations weren’t right to study.

  “He’ll kill you,” she whispered. “Father has prepared. He knows about the amplifier. He knows about the Negator. He even knows about that thing on your back.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  She laughed weakly. “Where he needs to be, the deep places, the tunnels where it all began.”

  Before I could ask what she meant, alarms started wailing. It seemed that the Ick had finally responded to my presence—or maybe to that of the Theron.

  We should go, Chak-Tal said. I have enough energy for the jump, maybe two short ones. But we need to move now.

  Through the chamber’s hatch, I could hear the chittering of approaching Ick, their insectoid voices rising.

  “Wait,” the daughter said, struggling to sit up. “You don’t understand. Father isn’t just using the planet. He’s been preparing it for 2,000 years. Every death in those tunnels, every drop of blood spilled, it all feeds the machine.”

  “What machine?” I said.

  “The one the Pre-Polarions built to unmake themselves when they realized what they’d become. Father found it, understood it, and then improved it. The Null Equation isn’t just mathematics—it’s an instruction manual for the universe’s suicide.”

  The chittering was getting closer. I could hear metal on metal, weapons being readied.

  “Why tell me this?” I said.

  She smiled sadly, and for a moment, she looked almost human. “I’ve been a fool to help him. I finally see that. I can’t win. I’m screwed, but…”

  The hatch burst open. Three Ick surged into the room, their dark robes billowing, claws extended from their sleeves. They saw me standing over the daughter’s collapsed form and let out a shriek.

  I raised the Negator, but Chak-Tal had other ideas.

  We don’t have time to fight them. We teleport now.

  “Teleport to where?” I said. “I don’t know where Zorion is!”

  The planet below, of course,” Chak-Tal said. I can feel the Pre-Polarion machinery. It’s active, singing its death song.

  The Ick raised weapons, but I was already leaving, the T-suit teleporting me toward the frozen planet.

  There was no gentle materialization this time. We appeared a hundred meters above the surface and started falling. The T-suit’s systems screamed warnings as we plummeted toward the ice.

  I hit hard enough to crater the frozen surface, the T-suit’s emergency dampeners the only thing keeping my bones from shattering. I lay there for a moment, gasping, looking up at the star-filled void. The Dreadstar hung above like a curse against the sky.

  I climbed to my feet and looked around. The landscape was desolate, nothing but ice and frozen rock as far as I could see. But something was familiar about the mountains in the distance, their distinctive triple peaks…

  Malik’s memories hit me like a sledgehammer.

  This was Fenris III.

  The planet where I’d worn Malik’s skin, where I’d fought through the Chirr tunnels, where I’d retrieved the amplifier. But that had been 2,100 years ago, and the planet had been warm then, orbiting a binary star system.

  Now it was a rogue world, frozen and dead, drifting through the void with no star to warm it.

  In the distance, I could see a glow beneath the ice. The entrance to the tunnels must have been melted open, heat still rising from the gap.

  No doubt Zorion was down there in the same tunnels.

  I checked the Negator. The weapon was ready and the amplifier was with me.

  One shot to save reality.

  I started walking toward the glowing entrance, my boots crunching on the frozen surface of a dead world.

  -71-

  I soon realized I’d never get down there in time if I tried to walk in this heavy suit. I needed to use the T-suit as it was intended.

  “Can you sense him?” I asked Chak-Tal.

  Oh yes. He’s in the deep chamber, where your previous incarnation found the amplifier. The Pre-Polarion machinery is singing its death song. Can’t you feel it?

  Through the T-suit’s sensors, through the ring on my finger, I could feel reality groaning. Whatever Zorion was doing down there, it had already begun.

  “How much power do you have left?”

  You want to teleport there?

  “I do. Take us down.”

  Try not to vomit when we arrive. It’s undignified.

  In seconds, the frozen wasteland twisted and disappeared.

  The transition was violent, like being fired through a cannon made of screaming ghosts. Could that be the masses of dead in these horrible tunnels?

  We materialized, and I dropped to one knee, gasping at the teleportation. Then I looked around.

  The chamber was different from when I’d been here 2,100 years ago. The Pre-Polarion machinery that had been ancient ruins was repaired and operational.

  The air felt sick, even though I wore the helmet, with reality as thin as paper. Through the T-suit’s sensors, I could see microscopic tears opening and closing, tiny wounds in the fabric of existence.

  And in the center of it stood Zorion.

  He looked different from both the past and the dreams. His pearl-white skin had veins of darkness running through it, like cracks in marble. His eyes were pits of swirling void. He wore a crown of black glass, connected by streams of light to the machinery around us.

  What a sight that made.

  I could feel it in him, too. The equation seemed to radiate from him like fever heat. Every few seconds, his expression flickered, and I’d see confusion or terror, like a drowning man surfacing for a split second before being pulled under again.

  His daughter said that his equation had twisted his thoughts, driven him mad, really. It had corrupted him, given him the odd desire of universal unraveling.

  Did he fight it at all?

  “Kane Hunter,” he said. “Or should I call you Timur Malik? After all, I talked to you here back then, remember?”

  “That was 2,100 years ago,” I said.

  “I remember the antimatter explosion that killed your regiment. Except you survived, carrying my amplifier. That’s when I understood you weren’t just a human soldier. You were a temporal anomaly, a causality loop that would bring me exactly what I needed.”

  He gestured to the machinery around us. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Your daughter said it was a suicide machine. The Pre-Polarions built it to unmake themselves.”

  I didn’t know how he was breathing. My sensors said I would choke to death if I took off the helmet. Maybe his powers allowed him to do this.

  “That is partially correct,” he said. “The others built it when they realized that they’d become gods without purpose, immortals without meaning. But they lacked the will to use their strengths. They couldn’t commit to unmaking themselves, so they hid it, buried it, and hoped it would be forgotten.”

  Had an entire society studied the Null Equation then? Had it driven the others insane generations ago?

  Zorion touched one of the dark structures.

  “But I found this, understood and improved upon it. I found their papers and began to study the great equation.”

  So the Null Equation had driven an entire species mad. That was interesting. How could a formula do that? Maybe it was like an evil philosophy. I’d seen that on Earth: people believing the most dumbass ideas you could conceive. It led them to do the strangest things.

  “The Pre-Polarions thought small,” Zorion said, bringing me back to the present. “They only wanted to unmake themselves. I think bigger. Why unmake one species when you can unmake everything? Why stop at death when you can achieve true void?”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  “I’m enlightened. I’ve seen the truth that everyone else is too frightened to acknowledge: existence is pain. Every moment of being is a moment of suffering. Birth, growth, decay, death, repeat. It’s an endless cycle of meaningless agony. I’m offering the universe a gift: true peace, the peace of never having been.”

  The Collector’s warning echoed in my head—the equation changes those who understand it. Looking at Zorion, feeling that wrongness radiating from him, I wondered if these were even his thoughts anymore, or if the equation was speaking through him like a ventriloquist through a puppet.

  The machinery pulsed brighter, and I felt something fundamental shift. For a moment, I could see through the walls.

  “You feel it,” he said. “The equation is ready. The machinery is primed. All I need is the final component.”

  He held out his hand.

  “The ring, please,” he said. “The one I lost when I entered stasis. Give it to me, and I’ll make your ending painless. Refuse, and you’ll watch everything you love dissolve into void before you follow.”

  I drew the Negator, aiming it at his head. “I’m thinking I’ll try option three.”

  He laughed. “You still don’t understand. Look at yourself.”

  I glanced down and saw that the T-suit was degrading. Likely, the proximity to the machinery, to Zorion’s incomplete equation, was unmaking it at the molecular level.

  This is bad, Chak-Tal said. The suit won’t last more than a few minutes in this environment.

  “The gun won’t help you,” Zorion said. “Even if you could hit me—which you can’t, as I can phase-shift between eleven dimensions now—the Negator would only accelerate what I’m trying to achieve. Negation and void are cousins, after all.”

  “Then why do you need the ring?”

  His expression darkened. “Because without it the equation remains unstable. I can begin the unmaking, but I can’t control it. It would be chaos instead of ordered void. The universe would tear itself apart in agony over eons instead of simply ceasing to be.”

  “Sounds like that’s your problem, not mine,” I said.

  “No, Kane. It’s everyone’s problem. Because I’m going to start it anyway. With or without the ring, existence ends today. The only question is whether it’s clean or messy, and that’s on you.”

  The machinery pulsed again, brighter this time.

  “Choose,” Zorion said. “Give me the ring and let reality end peacefully. Or refuse, and watch it die screaming.”

  The T-suit shuddered, systems starting to fail. The Negator felt heavy in my hand, dragging me down as if it weighed a ton.

  Boy, Chak-Tal said, whatever you’re going to do, do it soon. I can feel the equation taking hold. A few more minutes and it won’t matter what choice you make.

  I stood there in the failing T-suit, in a chamber where reality came undone, facing a proto-god who remembered me from 2,100 years ago.

  It was time to clutch my balls and give this a go.

  -72-

  “You want the ring?” I said. “Why don’t you come and take it then?”

  Zorion smiled. “Still the primitive, aren’t you? Very well, I will.”

  He didn’t walk. He slid as space bent for him. I fired the Negator—one clean pull—knowing the beam was invisible.

  Zorion phase-shifted on the instant.

  He reappeared behind me, hand reaching for my neck. I pivoted, caught his wrist. The moment we touched, something bit into me.

  Move, Chak-Tal said.

  I phase-shifted with the ring’s aid, doing it just enough as Zorion’s second hand raked through where my skull had been.

  I stumbled and solidified ten feet away. The T-suit’s left arm hung dead for reasons I couldn’t explain, although the glove had frozen onto the handle of the black case. I flexed the right hand. It was still mine to control.

  “You can’t run for long,” Zorion said. “The chamber is becoming part of the equation. Soon there will be nowhere to shift to, as it will all be gone.”

  He gestured, and pylons attached to the machine vomited beams of unlight. Wherever they struck, matter started to disappear.

  I raised the gun and pulled the trigger again so the Negator kicked in my hand. There was no flash or sizzle, just intent and recoil.

  Again, Zorion wasn’t there.

  Behind you, Chak-Tal said.

  I fired without turning. Some of it must have caught Zorion. He screamed. I turned to see. Void blossomed on his shoulder, not a wound but an edit, as if the universe had hit backspace on that part of him.

  The machinery pulsed, beaming energy at him, and the void in him filled up. The air around him shimmered as his flesh rebuilt.