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Haley, In The Thick Of It
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Summoning copies of myself was exceptionally risky, even now. Mind control by the Concept was still a real threat. We’d solved the problem, I hoped, with a Magic Jar spell- each body out here was actually being piloted by a separate copy of me within the dimension, with its mind stored in a special gem and the other mind’s original body moved far enough away to not be immediately possessable if things went poorly. If one of my clones got meme’d, they were under orders to immediately end the spell, hot-swapping them back into their gem and placing the other, uncorrupted version back in control of its’ body. Then a support team could eliminate the memes using Repress Memory, leaving the gem-mind ready to take over another body. It was rough, but it was working.
As I flung my first shot in response and took off into the air, the skies over London erupted. A hundred thousand dragons each the size of a mid sized navy warship flew through the air from individual gates. With enough of me on the battlefield to blot out the skies, some might have called that good enough. But we were not in the business of good enough. As the first nuke of the battle had detonated, flinging me to the ground, and the call to action spread around my second dimension, my simulacra began a summoning chain. It was the same trick I had used during my brief play for the ring. Communal Mount was turned via Heighten Spell and Alter Summoned Monster into a factory for near-infinite Angelic reinforcements. A single Simulacra-Haley could produce six high-tier monsters every forty-two seconds, repeating until they were out of relevant spell slots, then send their minions through to assist.
By the time the dragons swept the skies, each was orbited and attended by dozens of angels, devils and elementals each. The huge formations darkened the air and plowed into the massed armies of the genies and infomorphs. Their rules of engagement were simple- I had only one goal, total air superiority and removal of these threats from the wider multiverse. If they decided the situation warranted full lethality- well, we would restore all of those lost from backup or resurrection as needed. The damage to Concept-captured humans on the ground… I tried not to think about. Sean said he had a solution, and I had to trust him.
It unsettled me anyway. None of this should have been necessary. The gate wasn’t even that large of a prize- it would be a convenient shortcut for the enemy to be able to step into any story it wanted, but as Asriel’s portal had demonstrated, there were other ways of achieving that goal- why the total commitment here? It had to be due to Sean and I’s involvement.
I didn’t take any particular role in coordinating the assault- we wanted a distributed command and control structure, one that would be resilient against any memetic attack. My personal retinue was a half dozen of my clones at full size, and another half dozen in human form riding shotgun on my back. The first formation I met was Efreet. They were a hundred strong, armed and armored in the panoply of war that the Brass Cities produced- brass armor and flaming swords and glorious black banners listing their heritage and victories. Their eyes glowed blue, and they didn’t speak. But I recognized who had put herself in the front of the charge. Jada and I met again, for the third time.
She wasn’t infected, I noted, and called her on it. “Sold your own people out as quickly as you could, huh?”
She snarled as she pulled back her flaming greatsword. “The Concept betrayed us, tricked us into a foolish war and then took both sides while we were distracted! But it promised me your hide for a coat, if I would stay loyal long enough to lead the rest of my people. I would rather be empress of the ashes than your slave.”
I shook my head sadly as we winged to a halt in front of her. “You were never my slave, Jada. We had a contract, and I was prepared to go outside it for you. I wanted to help you, I was just scared of- well, something exactly like this. Once humanity could defend itself I think I would have turned you loose.”
She didn’t balk, exactly, but some of the fire left her. “You think. That remorse in your voice- do you truly mean that?”
I tried to smile at her. “You built me a dimension. Your people, more than anyone else, kept the world safe and fed in the first days. I told you I wasn’t ungrateful. But you anticipated a knife in the back and planted one of your own. I haven’t got time for mercy today, Jada. But if I see you on the other side of this… we’ll talk, okay?” She considered for a moment, and nodded. We both knew there was no escaping the clash, or changing what the outcome would be. But she raised her weapon in a warrior’s salute and made the charge anyway.
The rest of her entourage raised their weapons and blasted a hundred waves of cold at us- it should have been a frightening move, one of the few energy types that we were not completely immune to. But we’d grown beyond such things. I wasn’t the Haley who’d dueled her in a field for the use of her people, or even the Haley who’d heard her threats and insinuations at court less than a week ago. Our formation plowed through their blasts without a scratch, and every one of us opened our mouths in response. They would be immune to fire, which was no doubt the Concept’s intention in setting them in our path- a wonderful tar pit that we’d have to club our way through while that giant machine behind the portal did… whatever they intended it to do. But we didn’t breath fire- we tapped our other breath ability, the weakening gas. Even now it was weak in comparison to the flames we could produce. But only relatively weak. One blast from any of us could have knocked out the whole formation. And there were a dozen of us, and our stats made that ability damage utterly, utterly irresistible. Every one of the hundred-plus efreet fell from the sky, Strength sapped away to nothing, and we flew on. I couldn’t spare a last glance for Jada. “Up! Up! Get to the portal!”
We arced upwards, spamming wand-based Dimension Doors to increase our travel speed, leaping forward by a quarter of a mile per cast. I still didn’t know what that thing on the other side of the portal-storms was, but I was willing to bet that it would be the linchpin of their assault, the trump card meant to counter my overwhelming firepower. So far it hadn’t done much, and reports were already sweeping in from the battle- the efreet were being neutralized with incredible speed, largely without casualties, which was heartening news. The infomorph drones were putting up a stiffer resistance- their gravity rifles were no longer any particular threat to us, but they weren’t susceptible to most knockout attacks- most of my clones had ignored my rules of engagement allowing lethal force and were using Mass Hold Monster to paralyze them for extended periods of time. I was proud of them, for refusing to compromise. The spell wouldn’t last terribly long, even at our extremely heightened caster levels- but we only needed it to last long enough for the arch to be ours.
We drew closer to the miles-wide eye of the nearest storm. Close enough for me to see through the hundreds of overlapping fields around the machine, to read the writing emblazoned on the side of it- in English, no less. “Plate-class GSV… oh no. Break formation!” We scattered, even the simulacra on my back leaping off to transform and take flight, but it was too late. Truth be told, it had probably been too late the moment the portals had opened and the Culture ship had been able to extend sensorium on this side of the dimensional gap. It had just been waiting for me to distinguish myself from my copies before it engaged. And I’d just done so, flying right at it.
There was no shot or energy blast- it was a hyperspatial entity, it had no need for such things. Instead across the battlefield my clones simply… died. In a wave reaching outwards from the ship, they went limp and vanished into snow and dust. I shouted in horror as creatures capable of taking a nuclear weapon to the face and carrying on just evaporated in the face of that god-machine. The summoned monsters went with them- some throwing up their hands or diving for the ground at the last second, but it did no good. The ship took them all, without moving an inch.
I’d worked with some of my clones for subjective months. They were still me, but- they were friends, colleagues as well. They had no souls as far as Pathfinder was concerned- there’d be no replacing them, no resurrection. I couldn’t quite fathom the level of the loss I was experiencing, or the absolute nature of it. I didn’t even know the specifics of how they’d died. The ship might have been displacing a small bomb into their brains, it might have been reaching into their minds via hyperspace and just turning them off. A GSV was capable of that, I knew. I ducked into another Dimension Door, trying to evade, but-
“Where is it you think you’re going, when you jump through one of those?” came a voice from all around me. “I don’t grant you passage through my space.” The rejection was not just verbal- it was absolute, and the energy of that strange in-between space rose up to consume me. I was flung backwards from the door, nearly torn in half by its’ collapse. It was still speaking in my brain. “Be a dear and don’t get up, and I’ll leave your mind intact. There’s a man who’d like to speak to you.” In that moment, I don’t think I could have if I wanted to. I plummeted to the ground in blood and flame, crashing into a street in London for a second time in the last hour. The support team in the other dimension was on it, healing me as I fell- but I ordered them not to come through. We’d expected this- nothing so extreme, but something to trump us. Instead of another wave of clones, other plans were set in motion. And in the meantime- Sean could carry on, while the Concept’s attention was on me. As it so very clearly was.
A whole cadre was waiting for me at my crash site. Like they knew I was going to fall here precisely… or a certain ship had transported them here via displacer the second I landed. I blinked blearily, and images of my last day at court in the stadium flashed through my head for some reason. A horde of blue-eyed zombies surrounded me, human and infomorph and efreet, stretching as far back as the eye could see. But closer still the crowd was… oddly familiar, and none of their eyes were showing the telltale blue of memetic infection- except for two. Lord Asriel stood, slack jawed and silent, mind fully taken by the Concept, alongside a young woman with the same affliction who I could only assume was Telantes’ other half, Anna. Around him stood a range of figures I had met before and some I hadn’t- Merlin, and was that Greg the Hobbit? And the Dog! Oh, I’d been worried about him. But also… Mom? She was standing at the side of what looked an awful lot like a copy of me, alongside Skylar. It was everyone I’d last seen at the stadium, and then some. Striding to the front was the only figure of the group I hadn’t at least seen once, but I could guess his name easily enough.
“Sherlock Holmes, I presume,” I said wryly, shifting to human form in the middle of the crater I’d left in the middle of the street (and several buildings), the better to actually see all of these people. “You’ve got quite the collection there.” I tried to quell the rage inside me, the howling loss of my army of alternate selves, the anger I felt at this man. I could kill him in an instant. He had to know that.
He smiled at me and it was surprisingly earnest. “I wanted you to know you were among friends.”
I gave him my biggest, fakest smile. “Go to hell. I assume you arranged all of this?”
He nodded. “Yes. Terribly sorry. You continually placed yourself in the path of the Concept, and I needed to remove you in one stroke. The veiled arch served as convenient bait and a worthy goal, but you were always my target.” He held up a hand to forestall any response. “Please, I don’t mean to kill you. But I needed you to understand that this would be a conversation among equals. You have your army and I have mine- which was also, at one point, your army.” He smirked at his own pun. He really wanted me to kill him. Or he was just that oblivious. “Regardless. Now that force has been ruled out, with admirably few casualties I might add, well done, we can sit down and talk.”
“You don’t usually begin a friendly exchange with a missile,” I growled. “I know Merlin and Asriel’s loyalties, and I think I can assume yours. If the Coordinator had anything it wanted to say peacefully, it could have come to me at the stadium. It could have come to me at Hogwarts. Instead, it’s attacked us, all of us, at every turn. But force hasn’t worked, has it? Your master can’t seem to make me do what it wants and I think, just maybe, it’s scared of what I represent. Why it doesn’t just kill me? It keeps missing the mark, on that.” I looked up at the big ship in the sky, still negotiating through the widening portals. “It’d be a lot easier than talking, right now.”
Holmes kept that easy smile as he walked up to me. “I’d say, judging by its’ actions so far, that it doesn’t want to kill you. Rather, it wants to recruit you. Though perhaps that is my own bias speaking. Though you are incorrect when you assume my loyalties. They, ” and he indicated Asriel and Merlin, who jerked with alarm, “have been sabotaging the Concept from the very start. They resent the loss of freedom and autonomy.”
Merlin shook a fist at him. “I’ve sabotaged nothing, you bastard! You stand before her because I placed you there!”
I looked at him levelly. “You understand that I’ll probably kill you first, if it comes to a fight.”
The old wizard scoffed at me. “Like to see you try, child. But… the wheel is always turning. Might be a day when you’re up and I’m down. Understand, there’s no animosity here- I do what I must to preserve the realm and myself.” Including handing it over wholesale to monsters?
Sherlock dismissed the man with a wave of his hand. “ I, on the other hand, am working with it willingly. And I’d like to extend the offer to you, to do the same. One copy of you has already agreed.” I eyed the clone of myself and she nodded. Really needed to hear the story there. He continued- “Perhaps that will make more sense if I explain.” He opened his mouth, paused, and then a gleam entered his eye. “But, to be honest- I’ve heard so much about you. I’d like to see what you can deduce.”
I looked at the others standing behind him. Mom looked scared and bewildered, but she was continually glancing at the other me for reassurance. Skylar looked defiant. Greg looked timid, and he was continually fingering something in his pocket that was undoubtedly the Ring I really didn’t want to think about right now, but he didn’t seem like he was about to bolt. Merlin looked barely restrained- he seemed to be on the verge of a fight or flight response. The other Haley was the real mystery to me. She regarded me calmly. Not mind controlled, apparently here of her own free will- despite everything we’d seen the Concept do. She’d have split off from me a few weeks ago, with the first Contact teams- unlikely that she’d known about the side projects then, as I’d still been under a Geas not to think about them. She returned my gaze levelly. The only person on his side who wasn’t taking cues from Holmes was the Dog, and it appeared to be having trouble moving at all.
He seemed to be leaving me room to speak. I called out to mom. “Are you okay?” She nodded but still held tight to the other Haley. That hurt a bit, to be honest, but I wouldn’t hold it against her.
I frowned in thought at Holmes, shoving my rage down beneath the surface for now. “You have a story. Whatever it’s told you must be pretty compelling. At least one copy of me believes it. You brought everybody I care about, that you could find, here with you, to convince me to hear you out peacefully. Whatever the Coordinator wants requires… pretty much multiversal coverage through the Concept, or is achievable much quicker that way, and you think it would much rather have me on its side than opposed. Though I disagree with that, given past… encounters. It’s possible that it can’t kill me- only eliminate my present body. I wonder, would dying make me less dangerous to it, or more ?” No answer. I continued. “But it lies, Sherlock. You can’t trust anything it says.”
He nodded. “Perhaps. And yet, the methods it has displayed so far would seem to be in keeping with what it has told me. Shall we continue to dance around that point? Or would you like to hear what I know, before you condemn your friends and family for standing with me?” I sighed and rolled my hand in a ‘Get on with it’ gesture. He clapped his hands. “Splendid! So glad you’re willing to listen.” He produced a camp stool from somewhere and sat down on the edge of my crater. “Well over a month ago I found myself in a strange world, beset by strange problems. Recognizing nobody, I began evaluating the situation and soon realized I’d been transported, summoned. And that I was not the only one. Stories were cropping up, and-”
I really didn’t need the recap, but he seemed content to ramble and I was inclined to let him- as long as he talked, my plans already in motion could continue. And I could survey the crowd for a way out of this. The Wiltshire Dog was the one that interested me. Of all of them, he seemed entirely paralyzed. Except for the eyes. They were blinking rather rapidly, in what I eventually came to realize was morse code. “H - E - L - P. Z - E - N - O.” Repeating endlessly. I was taken aback, for a moment. Delmutt’s lost lover? No. The Greek philosopher? I had no idea what the Dog could be trying to indicate. Behind him, I saw the briefest flash of something scurrying up Anna’s leg- I had a feeling I knew who that was. I asked, and the narrative continued to provide. The zombies surrounding us continued to stare, unblinking, unmoving. I’d long since learned to ignore them.
Holmes was still carrying on and finally getting to the interesting bits. “-I finally made contact with the creature behind the Concept. It spoke to me through the original vector of the memetic infection, one Arthur Anderson. I asked it why it was causing such chaos with such nonlethal methods- if conquest was its intent, surely it wouldn’t work so hard to preserve the lives of individuals! Yet a memetic takeover of all of England and, eventually, the world was sure to cause damage on a scale undreamt of. What Arthur said to me changed the course of my reaction, as, I’m confident, it will change yours.” He leaned back in his stool and took on a slouched and surly posture- channeling the manner and the voice of the man he’d met a month ago in a nearly uncanny fashion. “He said-” a look of confusion crossed his face. “He said…” he cocked his head to the side. “But maybe it would be better if you heard it from yourself? The Haley that I met some time ago, yes?”
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She stepped forward, but despite the chaos and confusion of the last hour, something was tickling the back of my mind. A sick feeling. He keeps dodging his explanation. “No. No, tell me what it said, Sherlock. Exactly what the Coordinator said to you. The words it used, that converted you to its’ cause.”
Holmes looked stricken. “I- to be honest, I suddenly can’t recall.” His compatriots looked concerned. A murmur ran through the wider crowd. No, wait- those were zombies, they had no emotional response. It was a sound, barely perceptible, but it sent a shiver of green running through them. Then another one. Those of us uninfected didn’t seem susceptible to it, but the Concept zombies were converting- and soon they’d go savage. This is the shift Sean warned me about. Voldemort’s made his play, and his timing couldn’t be worse. Things are about to go to hell.
Damn it all. I marched up the rim of the crater towards him, ship above and threats of instant death be damned. I’d have to guess at this, and hope it played out. “You never could recall. You’ve been operating this last month on backstory. That’s what it does. It worms its way into the unexamined moments in our narratives. There was no argument a monster like that could have made that would get you on board, so it didn’t bother to make one. It just decided that you were on board, had always been on board, after it had your narrator. Then it used you to weaken me. You’ve been played, detective. You never brought them here to convert me. You brought them here to get all its enemies in one place.”
Merlin growled at him. “You thought you’d been working with this thing longer than I have? I was there the day it took you! You fought against it right up to the last moment.”
The zombies were turning on each other- the others had begun to notice as violence broke out in the distance, still buffered from us. Sherlock looked around wildly, then collapsed back on the camp stool. “I remember being convinced but I don’t remember how. But I- I also remember resisting. I…” he looked up at me with horror in his eyes. “I may have made a terrible mistake. Everything I set up was to bring you to this moment- to get all of us here. To reason with you, I thought. Then- then what does it want? If not that, then what? Truly?” My mind was racing, searching for the same answer. But it wasn’t the monster that answered us.
“An end to heroes,” said the clone of me, walking past Holmes. It sounded like me, but not. Pushed beyond the edge of grief and stress, into some mental landscape I’d tread close to, but never walked. “Remember that, Haley? Remember what we wanted? I don’t know how your life has gone, but I’ve been shepherding zombies and watching the world end for the last two weeks. What would you give, to bring it all to a close? To not have to play the hero anymore? Here’s your opportunity. Work with it, and you don’t have to fight anymore.”
So that was her play. I swept my hand in dismissal. “I can believe I might give up, some day. I’ve come close enough in the past. But the fact that you’d participate in endangering all of our friends and family for this? I can’t believe you share any part of me.”
She sneered. “Like you’ve done any better? Ever person here has come close to death since getting wrapped up in our story! The Concept could have killed them all if it wanted, while you were off running around once again, forgetting the core of your ‘Principles.’ Save the people closest to you, remember? Well they’re around you now because of the mercy of the monster you’re fighting. But you don’t have the slightest intention of backing down, do you.”
Her words rocked me back. She wasn’t… right, exactly. I wasn’t responsible for every terrible thing that happened in my absence. But she was right that I hadn’t been thinking of the people here. Had she, truly? “A bargaining chip is not the same thing as ‘Mercy,’ other me. You know that, deep inside. It will kill these people in a heartbeat if it furthers its goals. What it wants is to spread until it owns everything, and then- well, it’s still a mystery. But you can help me keep them safe, and stop it, here and now.”
She looked downcast at my words. “I can’t help you. It’s too big- it’s all too big. We were never going to be able to keep them safe.” She really had given in to despair. Was this the path I was on?
I tried to reassure her. “You’re not in possession of all the facts, sister. When we split off, I still wasn’t able to remember the other part of what we were up to. I reached the same breaking point you did. But then I remembered. I had help remembering, from Skylar and Delmutt. It was never really about us playing the hero. We were just the cover while the rest of me got the world ready for-” I gestured at the increasing madness of the zombie horde that surrounded us on the street, as far as the eye could see. They still hadn’t noticed us, intent for the time being on consuming their blue-eyed compatriots. “For that. ”
She laughed. “As if that makes it all better! Up until my breakdown and your little epiphany, you and I were doing exactly the same thing. A half-assed job as we tried and failed to make up our minds! All we had to do was take power. The Concept gets that- the only way it can win is by imposing its will. And maybe it’s not a perfect end for you and I, but it’s an end. An end to this madness. But you haven’t abandoned your fantasy that the whole thing is going to sort itself out, somehow. That if you just wait long enough, people will figure out how to fix it! How’s that working out for you ?”
I roared in defiance. To hear my own doubts echoed back at me, as my friends and family were desperately trying to avoid the encroaching tide of monsters around us- “ Great, until the Concept came along and sabotaged us! You are directly responsible for fucking this up!”
She roared back, running at me. This was going to end in blows- the kind of blows that could level buildings. “ I fucked it up? You made all of this necessary when you went off script! How many holes have you punched through dimensions? The Coordinator wants to put things back in order. If you’d stopped escalating, it could stop! No more clones, no more supermen, no more dragons. No more us. Just a few deaths, a few narrators, and then a bunch of nice safe little worlds where everything works like it should. You could go back to Sean. I could go back. Isn’t that what we want?”
No, that wasn’t what I wanted. Not entirely. Was it? Wasn’t it? I stumbled, in my sprint towards her. Was all of this- in reaction to me? Was I the one destabilizing the world now, by my presence? Could I just… go home, or join forces with this monster, and end all of this trouble at once? Was it worth the cost?
“Beggin’ yer pardon ma’ams, but that’s a load of bull if I ever heard one” said a small voice from between the two of us. Without even noticing, Greg had stepped there- he’d placed himself in the path of two charging Haleys this time. “Holmes there wanted me to come and spot your weak points, just like in the original Hobbit, just in case. Ceptin’ I don’t think your weak point is a missing scale. I think it’s that none of yeh are really certain in yerselves. And that ain’t a weakness we can tolerate right now.”
Both of us came up short, with the little man in between us. Even in her desperation, she was still a copy of me- unwilling to murder an innocent for convenience’s sake. I considered the other me, inches from my face. We stood there and the tension built, for a long minute as the noise of the rioting horde grew louder. Then- miracle of miracles- we both blinked. Looked away in shame. “He’s right,” she muttered. “He’s right. Bigger problems now.”
“He’s more than right,” I said. “He’s here because the narrative put him here.” It was beginning to dawn on me. “How many times have things almost fallen apart, only to be pulled out at the last moment? Rising tension, and rising action, and then a payoff at the top?” She looked at me in confusion and I tried to explain. “The Coordinator wants us back in our walled gardens, no narratives- it wants to end the one force that you and I are relying on, again and again, to save us all from disaster. Just a long slow slide into oblivion instead, as everything goes to shit in perfectly normal and ordinary ways.” It felt like I was getting through to her. I pressed on urgently, aware of how little time we had. “I think that, two weeks ago, I’d have questioned my actions the way you’re doing. I was looking for ways out. I might even have felt like the Concept was a better way- a tool to force everyone back in their boxes before they got hurt. But I’ve had my shot at power, since then. I gave it back.” I gestured at the Ring in Greg’s pocket and he nodded. “And I’ve learned- people can adapt to this new world, if we give them time. Sean, Roy, Matt- we didn’t need to force them. Just provide them with opportunities. And we don’t need to compromise with monsters. Never that.” She looked ashamed, but I didn’t have time for drawn out recriminations. “We can win this, Haley. On our terms. It may not be the end to our work, but it will be-”
I didn’t even have time to finish my sentence. The green tide of monsters was boiling over and swarming our little circle. The other Haley shifted to fully draconic, and surged back towards Skylar and our mother. Merlin threw up a line of something to ward them off, apparently deciding they were the greater threat for now, and everything that crossed it turned to ash and powder. Greg slipped on the Ring, disappearing. But I saw zombies going down, cut off at the knees as he slashed at them. Asriel and the Dog were still neutralized- the Dog paralyzed, Asriel’s mind fully engaged by the Concept still. I began to batter my way toward them in human form, dragging Sherlock with me, simply grabbing zombies and pitching them out of my way. They were no threat to me, but I needed to keep my friends safe. I summoned a Wall of Iron between myself and my destination, knocking it over to crush a tight path to run down. But it couldn’t be that simple.
“ IT WILL BE AN END,” said what I assumed was the ship’s avatar, appearing in front of us. A blank-white humanoid figure, faceless, hovering slightly off the ground. It wasn’t the voice of the ship that I’d heard earlier, in hyperspace. This was the Coordinator’s voice in full, the same one I’d heard on the phone and in that strange void between worlds- but magnified, raw. Angry? Holmes jumped at my side with a start, but the avatar’s hand flashed out and his head hit the ground, separated from his shoulders. Distantly my mother screamed, drawing the attention of the horde near her, on the ground and in the air, and other-me grabbed her up, ready to defend her with breath and claw. The avatar didn’t miss a beat. “AN END TO YOU AND YOUR INTERFERENCE.”
I didn’t attack it. It would have been pointless. It could kill me in a heartbeat as long as it held the ship and the narrative momentum. But I had to get past it to the last people I might be able to save. The Dog was losing great pieces of hide as the horde bit and clawed at it. Asriel and Anna were running towards us, but the Avatar stood between us still. I shouted at it in frustration. “Then kill me! Just- fucking kill me, already. Or I promise you’ll regret it.” Holmes’ headless body collapsed, pumping life’s blood onto the iron beneath us. Discarded by the monster the second his purpose was spent.
The avatar smiled- a truly inhuman expression. “SOON. WHEN THIS WORLD IS BEHIND A NEW BARRIER. WHEN YOU WON’T SLIP THE NOOSE.”
Barrier? “You mean like our world was behind a barrier?” It had claimed responsibility for that. But why would that allow it to kill me any more effectively- a chill ran down my spine. “The dead. I couldn’t bring back the dead or the disappeared, in that world. You did something. ” Merlin was throwing out great whirlwinds to disrupt the hordes, with limited effect. Somebody else had joined us, I realized- Jada was standing over Anna at the far end of the iron pathway I had carved, slashing left and right with her flaming greatsword, sending up great walls of purple flame to keep them away. Guess she got her strength restored, somewhere. Glad she’s here.
The ship’s avatar stepped closer, unhurried. It knew it had me at its mercy. “A PRISON FOR YOU TO GROW SENESCENT IN. ONE LAST MERCY, TO GROW OLD AND DIE, FORGOTTEN. BUT YOU BROKE IT. DEFIANT. YOU WILL NOT BREAK THIS ONE.” It glanced around at the chaos with contempt. “LOOK AT THIS RABBLE. ALL YOUR PIECES ARE GATHERED HERE. GROUND TO NOTHING,EXTINGUISHED. THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT THIS TIME.”
Well, it seemed I had an opening. “But you can’t kill me until you’re done putting it up, or I’ll escape. Slip to another world, just like Sean did. So fuck you. I have a couple things I’d like to say.” I started walking.
It seemed indulgent, laughing as I stepped past it. “YOUR WORDS MEAN NOTHING AND LESS THAN NOTHING.”
“Perhaps.” I turned towards the Dog, still frozen in place. Knocking a half dozen monsters spinning away from him with one backhand, I resolved to solve his problem first. “Perhaps not. Zeno’s arrow paradox posits that an object cannot be in motion if it is still in every individual instance of time that you might measure. But I would refute it, as Diogenes did, thusly.” Keeping my eyes locked on the dog, I silently stood and walked in a complete circle. “Let the evidence of your eyes dispel the confusion in your model.”
The Dog sagged in relief, finally free, flesh knitting back together. “It has been a long week, dear Haley. Shall I-”
I eyed my mother and Skylar, cowering atop a version of me that wasn’t me, anymore, but that I still trusted to defend them with her life. “Go get Anna. Telantes?” The little mouse that had snuck up Anna’s pants pocket in the earlier confusion had already done his job, I saw, administering a dose of the dilute Swooping Evil venom to the little girl that he embodied the soul of. The blue in her eyes was winking out- I hoped she wouldn’t lose too much- and she collapsed. Asriel shuddered, and it began to fade from his eyes as well. Rather than flee the hordes, his first action was to draw his pistol and fire two shots at Merlin. They went wide, but the wizard turned in startlement. “What are you-”
Asriel’s leopard, always at his side, leapt at the wizard and bore him to the ground beneath the zombie rabble. Asriel waded in among them, a grim look in his eye. “Finishing what I started weeks ago.” Two more shots sounded from within the mob, and I didn’t see either one of them emerge. Much as I appreciated an end to such things, it meant we’d lost one of the three most potent fighters. The Dog was still being ignored, and I saw him darting under the feet of the zombies to retrieve Anna and Telantes, still defended by the raging Jada- I’d have to trust that he would be okay. I signalled to clone me to take off and get our loved ones out of the war zone. A third figure rode her back now, literally and figuratively invisible and laying about himself with a sword of infinite sharpness as she struggled to stay above the rising tide of maddened zombies.
“WHAT IS ALL THIS?” asked the avatar, surveying the chaos, perhaps realizing for the first time that it was no longer fully in control of the Concept or the hordes.
“The world, saving itself,” I said as I closed on it, shoving through the tide of bodies like a thin fog. An efreet leapt on me and I flung it away too hard, tearing it apart in the process. It was hard to hold back, down here. I decided to stop trying- I dropped the human form, and suddenly the street wasn’t big enough anymore. The buildings on either side began to crumble and shatter as my bulk smashed them aside. I covered the remaining distance to the avatar instantly. “It’s a work in progress, I admit.”
“YOUR STRUGGLES ARE POINTLESS, I HOLD THE ONLY TRUMP CARD THAT MATTERS. LOOK-” it indicated the skies. The portals had merged, and finally the whole bulk of the GSV could move itself into this world- vertically. It was a tower of white fields and grey metal over the center of London, ninety-six kilometers tall or more. Underneath it, the storm clouds it had traveled through were dissipating. “I HAVE THE SHIP. THE BARRIER IS COMPLETE. YOU WILL NOT LEAVE HERE ALIVE.”
Nothing holding it back now. What it was saying was true- I had lost the connection to my other dimension entirely. Feels just like the last time, with Aslan. But that wasn’t going to stop me. I stepped right up to its face, towering over it, and played my last card. The last simulacra I’d split from myself as I’d fallen, cloaked in every form of invisibility and misdirection it could muster, was finally within range of the ship. With the ship’s fields pulled so close to come through the narrow portal, and the distraction caused by the Coordinator assuming direct control, she had been able to Dimension Door right past the shields and touch down onto the surface of the vessel itself. Apparently that counted as the “Body” of the creature as far as Pathfinder was concerned- for the purposes of the spell I wanted to cast, I was well within range, thanks to the ring gate she carried, linked to one I’d been carrying. “No, you don’t have a ship.” Smashing zombies underfoot, I stretched my neck down and gripped the avatar around the middle by my teeth- no matter how post-human its construction and materials, it was not fast or strong enough to escape me. “You have a hulk.” He looked confused. “Like- like in Avengers? But the ship, because I’m going to- oh, never mind.” I was never any good at puns. I bit down, tearing the avatar in half down the middle before it could register what was happening, and triggered the wish I had prepared.
I wish I could describe, after the fact, what it was like to Mind Switch with a four-dimensional consciousness. The process was instantaneous, but in the moment it felt like an eternity. It was like being in the time chamber again, but not- it was simply the speed at which this substrate was able to process information. Our systems were not made to work together- Pathfinder really had no way of representing intelligence on the scale I’d already been representing, much less that of this Mind. The world felt like a soap bubble to me now- but I didn’t have time to worry about any of that. Half of the systems on this ship, that I was now connected to, still resonated with the Concept. I began purging what I could. The infected primary consciousness of the Not Disquieting At All was currently adjusting to my body, back on the ground, and letting it get fully settled would not do at all. I reached down with one of the ship’s displacers and popped it into a Lagrange orbit. All the Strength and Hit Dice in the world weren’t going to let it fly or breathe in space- and inhabiting my body wouldn’t give it the ability to cast spells. But it wouldn’t suffocate any time soon.
I popped the beleaguered defenders up onto one of the near-infinite hangars that made up the outer layers of the ship. Anna, Skylar, Telantes, Greg, Mom, Dog, and other Haley looked around in bewilderment. Jada still had her greatsword raised in a defensive position, but backed down when no new threats were evident. Merlin and Asriel, I couldn’t find. Dead or disappeared, and I didn’t much care which. There wasn’t much I could do for Holmes- he’d had no neural lace, which was necessary for Culture backups and resurrections. But hopefully he’d died before whatever “Barrier” had come down and whatever thing was happening to our souls hadn’t happened to his. I didn’t know how hyperspace was supposed to look, but- there were definitely no holes here, no ways out that I could see.
The zombies swarming below didn’t stop tearing each other apart- Matt’s storms, already gathering in Scotland and swiftly expanding southwards would soon stop that, and I began contacting Thunderbirds for displacement worldwide to aid in it, but we had another problem. I grabbed a ship’s avatar, altered it enough to look like me, and plopped it on the deck nearby. “Take a breather, everyone.”
They jumped and turned. “Haley? Is that you?” asked my mother. “It’s so hard to tell, with all these bodies.” Other Haley gave me a single nod.
I sighed. “Yeah Mom, it’s me. Hopefully there won’t be too many more. Let’s take a few minutes to catch up, okay?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a few minutes were likely all we had. The last commands in the ship’s databanks were easy enough to interpret. As soon as it had crossed the portal and the Coordinator had completed whatever barrier it had been working on, it had begun the process to induce instability in the local star. The sun was going supernova, and I had no way to reverse it.
I supposed that was what it had meant when it said our struggles were pointless. Even should we survive the supernova, and on this ship we really might - we would all die eventually, locked away behind another soul barrier. Ten minutes or a thousand years- for us, the wider war was lost the second the barrier was completed.
There was only one trump left to play, and it happened to be on a planet with minutes left to live, at most. Whatever it was that I’d bought the time for Sean to do, he’d need to do it really soon.