“Activate the Continuity Engine.”
As soon as the words left Alpha’s mouth, Dyna gripped her watch and turned the bezel.
“—name is Marybeth King,” Alpha said.
Dyna tuned her out, closing her eyes as she tried to focus. Alpha did not have a Continuity Engine. How could she? It was at Tartarus. Even if her tulpa had been inspecting the device for reverse-engineering purposes, it had only been a few hours. She might have been trying to build one. There was no way she had managed.
It was clear to Dyna that Alpha was trying to use her own power against her.
Opening her eyes in a hard glare, Dyna noted that Alpha had stopped talking.
The woman was smiling.
At this point in their conversation the last time around, Alpha had been on the verge of rage.
“You used your watch gadget,” Alpha said. When Dyna didn’t respond except with a deeper glare, the woman actually laughed. “Being an administrator, I am quite aware of your abilities, both those granted by artifacts and your natural power. Your mirror allows you information on anyone observing you or with hostile intentions toward you in the area. Your laser pointer violates causality, making projectiles fired from its attached body hit so long as the laser beam intersected with them in the past few seconds. Your watch allows you to throw your mind back in time up to one minute and cannot be used to breach that one minute mark.
“I have planned around them.”
“You don’t have a Continuity Engine,” Dyna said, making sure she convinced herself of that fact by speaking the truth aloud.
“Ah. That is what made you use your watch.” Alpha shook her head, mournful smile on her face. “I’m afraid that, today, your opinion doesn’t matter. The Continuity Engine is an amusing little device, fully capable of protecting itself from your ability.”
“Doesn’t matter if you don’t have one.”
“As I said, your opinion doesn’t matter.” She pressed a button on the side panel next to the window. “Activate the Continuity Engine.”
Dyna crossed her arms. Rather than rewinding time, she simply looked around as if expecting some obvious change. Nothing did happen. Of course nothing would happen. The woman didn’t actually have a device. She was bluffing.
“Warning,” Beatrice said, making Dyna jolt. The artificial intelligence had remained silent, letting Dyna and Alpha talk without distraction. Dyna almost forgot about her presence. “Anomalous activity detected at Puerto Rico Psionic Radar. Analysis matches psionic waveform patterns around Dallas, Texas.”
Dyna winced. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” she hissed. “You’re reinforcing its realness. She couldn’t possibly have built one in those few hours.”
“Because I feel sorry for the unfairness of your situation,” Alpha said, pressing another button on the control panel. “I will offer you a choice.”
A small metal panel fell forward, looking like a library book return box. Wary, hand on her watch, Dyna leaned forward to peer inside.
It held a single syringe. Quite a bit larger than the kind used for vaccines. It was filled with a clear liquid.
“Desflurane, isoflurane, and sevoflurane. I’m not sure on the correct dosage—I’m not an anesthesiologist or chemical scientist—but I overcompensated. It should put you to sleep quite painlessly. A much more appealing way to go than at the end of a gun, full of fear and adrenaline, no?”
A sick sensation filled Dyna’s stomach as she stared down at the capped needle. Any way was not appealing when she didn’t want to die. Whether or not Alpha had a Continuity Engine didn’t matter. Not if a bunch of tulpa charged in and started shooting.
Dyna’s eyes darted around the room. Aside from the window in front of her and the barred entrance behind her, there were two other doors. One on either side of the room. Neither were labeled. A quick peek into Alpha’s monologuing room showed that the door was on the left.
It was a simple wooden door with no windows, roughly in line with the similar door here in the entrance room.
Was there a hall connecting the two rooms?
Dyna reached down into the receptacle and picked up the syringe.
“Huh. I hadn’t expected—”
“Look, I’m sorry if…” Dyna cut Alpha off, but paused and shook her head. She dropped the syringe on the floor and stomped on it, crushing the glass and spilling the liquid over the floor. “You know what? No. I’m not sorry. You tried to murder me. Multiple times. You couldn’t have just asked if we could try to force my power to find your family?”
“And risk you repeating yourself? And risk my family being brought back as the wrong people wearing the right faces or tulpa or something?” Alpha glowered, leaning close to the glass. “Better you die. For the world’s sake. Team C, move into position.”
Dyna didn’t wait around to see what Team C was going to do. She rushed to the left door, pulling out her bobby pin.
Hematite had given it to her. She hadn’t told anyone about it. At the time, she had been a bit paranoid. Being thrown into a decoupling chamber to separate her from other artifacts and the whole lightning gun—coil gun thing had her feeling like she might need to use it to escape from the Carroll Institute. She hadn’t at the time but now? It looked like she had been half right. All right about her decision to keep it secret.
Whether or not her main ability worked—whether there was a Continuity Engine in the area or not—didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she could use her power reliably anyway.
She had to do this herself. Just like everything else.
Flinging open the door, Dyna immediately grabbed her watch and rewound time.
She really should have expected tulpa guarding the hall that led to Alpha.
Jolting, Dyna looked down. She held the syringe in her hand once again. Alpha was quipping about how her taking it hadn’t been what she expected.
Dyna tossed the syringe aside, ignored Alpha, and rushed over to the right door this time, just to check what was on the other side.
Only a pair of tulpa, down from the five that had been in the other hall. She still rewound time before one could put a gun in her face.
Syringe in hand once again, Dyna bit her lip as she stared down.
Pulling off the plastic cap of the needle, she decided.
Hurrying to the right door, Dyna used her bobby pin to open it. Knowing where the tulpa were and how they were standing gave her the perfect knowledge of how to step forward and slam the syringe down into the throat of one of the two tulpa. Slapping his PP-2000 aside, Dyna managed to depress only about half the liquid before having to step aside, ducking under the arms of the second tulpa, gripping his wrists to keep the gun away from her.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The tulpa with the needle in his neck collapsed almost immediately, falling to the ground in a seizure.
It certainly did not look like peaceful sleep to Dyna. She didn’t get a chance to reflect more. While grappling with the still-standing tulpa, the door opposite of the one she ran through opened up. The first tulpa through raised his gun.
Dyna pivoted, putting the tulpa she was grappling with directly in between her and the open door. Just in time for the tulpa to open fire.
All the tulpa wore body armor. It didn’t help the tulpa in front of her as the other emptied his magazine into her tulpa’s back. He slumped over her, forcing her to hold him up for an extra few moments until the gunfire stopped. As soon as it did, Dyna shifted around him, letting him fall as she threw the door shut, locking it on her side with a heavy deadbolt.
Dyna stared down at the two tulpa for a brief instant, mind wandering back to Alpha’s commentary about her being some action movie star. She wasn’t hurt in the slightest. Not one bullet fully penetrated the tulpa’s rear and front armor and none had managed to skim around his bulk to strike her.
Was that because of her power?
Alpha was confident that she had a Continuity Engine working here, which, if true, meant no. It was just her training.
Dyna wasn’t sure what to believe.
“Beatrice,” Dyna said as she knelt to retrieve the PP-2000 from one of the tulpa.
“This is Beatrice.”
“You don’t have access to this facility, right?”
“I have active data feeds from the radar. No access to camera or internal networks.”
“Can you cut power to this entire facility from the outside? Disrupt or disconnect it from whatever power plant it’s drawing from? Or disconnect the power lines? Overload some nearby substation?”
“All Carroll Institute facilities possess on-site backup generators capable of maintaining essential operations for up to forty-eight hours.”
“Do it anyway,” Dyna said. “Just in case Alpha forgot to plug this fake Continuity Engine into the right outlet.”
“Understood.”
Bullets ripped through the door around the deadbolt lock. Dyna hurried down the hall, moving away from the team trying to get at her. “Any map on how to reach Alpha?”
“The layout I am observing through you does not match my stored blueprints of the facility. Given Alpha’s comments about a monologuing room, it is likely your power altered the facility before she activated the Continuity Engine.”
Dyna ground her teeth together.
She always wanted to be special. Someone just a little different than everyone else. But not like this. She didn’t know what had happened when Walter first came to her. Alpha didn’t even seem to know. Maybe her power had screwed up reality so thoroughly that nobody would ever be able to know.
Alpha wasn’t wrong to want her dead. Not if what she said was true.
She still wasn’t going to lie down and let it happen.
Dyna pushed her way into another door, one further down the hall. If her mental map of the facility was correct, this door should open up behind the monologuing room.
It was some kind of office. Although there were several desks set up, only one of them actually had terminals set up. The rest of the room looked older and a layer of dust covered most of everything except the terminal. If Beatrice had been right in saying that everything here was automated, it was little surprise to find a room like this sparsely used.
There wasn’t a lock on this door, unfortunately. She could hear footsteps charging up the hall. Slamming the door shut, she took up position behind one of the thicker desks, the one occupied by the terminal, hoping it would offer more than just concealment.
“I don’t suppose there is a way to hook you into this terminal?” Dyna hissed as she hastily attached her laser pointer to the looted PP-2000.
“If you physically attach Walter’s phone, I may be able to gain entry to their system. Alert: Sinkhole gondola moving on live satellite footage.”
“Alpha’s heading down to the radar station?”
“I have high confidence in the accuracy of your assumption.”
“Why would she leave if she thinks her only chance is attacking me while the Continuity Engine is active here?”
“Unknown. It is possible she wishes to leave her tulpa to the task while seeing herself to safety.”
“Because that has worked so well every other time,” Dyna grumbled as tulpa kicked down the door. Two advanced, only to be met with a laser-pointer. Two trigger pulls dropped them. “How do I get to the gondola?”
“Path impossible to calculate due to layout uncertainty. Indicating the direction of the gondola.”
The compass from earlier appeared in Dyna’s vision once again. A marker shifted back and forth as she turned her head. Biting her lip, she glowered at the open door.
She needed to head back through that door. There was another door in this room. The angle wasn’t what she expected for a door that would lead to the other hallway—the one Alpha had presumably left through. Since the gondola was back through the hallway she had come through, Alpha must have looped around somehow.
Unless the layout of this place made absolutely no sense.
“Why is my power so… ragh!” Dyna let out an inarticulate cry as she dropped a tulpa that leaned around the corner. “Do you have access to my phone’s camera?”
“Accessing. Accessed.”
Dyna pulled out her phone and, with a light toss, sent it out through the door the tulpa had kicked open.
“Six tulpa standing in the hall to the right, weapons raised.”
“Six?”
A window of a terrible angle of the hallway appeared. It was distorted but looked like Beatrice had tried to adjust whatever the actual image was so that she could see what was out there. Dyna didn’t get a chance to think too hard. One of the tulpa aimed their gun directly at the camera.
A gunshot rang through the open door as the image turned to static.
Dyna grabbed her watch and reset time.
“Accessing. Accessed.”
“No need. Six tulpa,” Dyna said, grinding her teeth together. She wished she had a grenade.
The tulpa weren’t advancing. That probably meant that the other door in this room wasn’t a valid exit. If it was, they would need to move to prevent her from escaping through it.
Eyes flicking to the nearby terminal, Dyna searched for a phone cable. Several wires came out of the boxy machine. One looked like it would work but she would have to move out of cover to reach it.
One of the tulpa peeked their head around the corner. Distracted as she was with the terminal, the tulpa ducked back too quickly for Dyna to aim her laser pointer.
Moving along the desk she crouched behind, Dyna reached the other end of the room, well away from where she had just been seen. Just in the nick of time. The tulpa held his gun around the side of the doorway, blind-firing roughly where she had been.
Aiming at the door from her new position, Dyna was ready for the tulpa to peek out and check if he had hit anything. He ducked back before she could pull the trigger, but the laser point had hit him directly between the eyes. Although he was fully on the other side of the wall, she watched him crumple.
Five left.
With the one only recently falling, it would take a moment for the others to move up.
Dyna spent that moment rushing back to the terminal.
“Damn.”
“It has suffered catastrophic damage.”
“No kidding,” Dyna hissed, scowling at the smoking wreckage. The tulpa must have hit it. Her eyes darted up to the doorway. She needed to hurry. While she was pinned down here, Alpha had the freedom to move, run away, or send even more tulpa after her.
Stepping out from behind cover, Dyna advanced to the door, pressing her back up against the wall, she took a breath then held her own gun out around the corner, sweeping it at what she hoped was head-level. It only took a second before gunfire rained down, knocking the gun from her hands.
Dyna let it go, snapping her hands back as quickly as she could. Grabbing her watch, she took care to shift backwards only a few seconds, not wanting to accidentally revive any of her opponents through time travel.
Gun back in her hand, Dyna pulled the trigger.
She heard the bodies fall on the other side of the wall. Rather than poke her head out or spend the time fumbling about for her phone, Dyna swept her gun around the hall once again. No gunfire ripped it from her hands this time. She still pulled the trigger several times. Two bullets hit something on the other side of the wall. Two more bullets struck the wall she was physically aiming at.
Only then did she pull out her phone and use the camera to peer around the corner.
Beatrice provided the footage on her glasses, letting her see the now empty hall.
“Action movie hero,” Dyna grumbled to herself as she replaced her magazine with one from the downed tulpa.
She stepped out into the hall, turning to orient herself with the marker Beatrice provided. Dyna paused before heading further down the hall, however, hearing a voice coming from one of the radios on the tulpa’s chest.
“Team B, report.”
Dyna glared at it for a long moment, mentally warring with herself. A part of her wanted to reach down and say something snippy to Alpha about how her team was dead and she was next. Shaking her head, she gripped her gun and continued down the hall.
She was coming for Alpha. She didn’t need to advertise that more than a non-response would.
The door at the far end of the hall brought her out to a wide balcony that looked down into the sinkhole. The spinning arms of the radar tower swept past just above the building’s ceiling at regular intervals. It was a truly massive structure. Not as big as a skyscraper but big enough that it felt strange standing next to it.
The cables for the gondola were just to her right. The actual gondola vehicle wasn’t up at the balcony. However, Beatrice helpfully highlighted another door. One that was labeled.
Stairs.