Hudson held up in front of him a chunk of rock he’d taken from the weird space that had been severed from Sal’s mindscape and stuck to his. Ix began to spin its form on a horizontal axis.

A thin tendril of spinning dark gas reached out and drilled into the rock that Hudson was holding. When Ix’s sphere of gas stopped spinning, Hudson began walking slowly backwards, stretching the tendril connecting Ix’s form to the rock.

The cloud of dark gas still centered within the remaining binding grew smaller and smaller until it was only the size of a baseball. Hudson was almost at the end of the small room, and the tendril finally split from the remaining central body.

Instead of falling to the floor, the tendril collapsed towards the rock anchor Hudson was holding.

Hudson quickly let go. The rock remained floating in the air, and quickly disappeared as it was surrounded by the portion of Ix that he had separated from its main form.

“Thank you, Hudson,” Ix said. “We will not forget that you have freed us.”

“You’re welcome,” Hudson said.

On the other end of the room, the metallic wall disappeared and in its place an inky black portal ringed with white mist appeared. That must be Ix’s mindspace..

Ix’s original form and their newly freed portion floated towards the other side of the room. There were a number of flashing lights from within the two different nebulas, as if they were communicating with each other.

“We have separated our consciousnesses,” Ix said – the Ix that Hudson had fully freed from its bindings. “When you return to your mindspace, do not immediately remove your hand from our form. We have a… complication.”

“Um, that sounds ominous,” Hudson said.

“The consciousnesses that remain trapped will no longer communicate with you directly, and when you remove our physical form from direct contact, we believe they will activate the final fail-safe.”

That was definitely not the plan.

“Can you portal Cor and I out directly anyways?” Hudson asked. “Will you have access to the maseki reserves to do so?”

“Doing so will also run counter to the restrictions and understanding of our other selves.”

“What can we do then?”

Ix thought for a moment, their lights within their form blinking brightly.

“Nothing. Leave this space, and do not remove us from our pedestal,” Ix said.

The two Ix’s, one surrounded with a spinning circle of blue-gray stone, and the second one, slightly larger and now free of any bindings, retreated through the opening at the other end of the room. As they did so, the metal walls disappeared and the room began to collapse completely into white mist. Hudson retreated quickly through his own mindscape – with a quick stop to stare at his reflection in his lotus pool – and then back into his physical perceptions.

“Cor, we have a problem. But don’t shoot! It’s not that kind of problem. I’m clean.”

“Well daggonit man, you gotta be more specific when you say stuff like that,” Cor replied.

“I was able to remove the restrictions…or most of them, but in the process, Director Ix split in two.”

“They… split in two?” Cor asked, puzzled.

“Yes, like two separate groups, or two identities, I don’t know man. But one of them told me not to move, or the other one would blow the place.”

There was a tickling at the back of Hudson’s mind, and a quiet voice echoed softly.

We are speaking directly into your mind so that our other self does not hear. Do not speak of what we tell you, or that we are communicating in this manner, the voice of Director Ix spoke into his mind.

Hudson twitched and nearly took his hand off of the jade ring, then tried to process what was going on. Cor’s voice droned in the background, describing in increasingly creative ways the various opportunities that were available for Director Ix to both humiliate and destroy themselves while leaving Cor and Hudson alone in the process.

We require you to do the following things without informing our former selves: activate your cultivation technique at a tempo as high as possible; bring your other hand into contact with our form, so that both of your damaged meridians are leaking qi directly onto our physical form; and convince Cor to stand in direct contact with you.

Hudson ignored Cor and tried to process what Ix was telling him – not to mention the fact that Ix was talking to him in his mind. Could he trust this voice? Or was he compromised, and had a silicate in his mind now? One that would eventually drive him crazy, like George had?

He decided to trust his gut. He wasn’t going crazy, nor did he think Ix was trying to betray him.

“Hudson!” Cor’s voice intruded into his thoughts.

“What?” he asked.

“It would behoove you to pay attention. I asked the Director to use a portion of its reserves to transport us, but got no response. Seems like the plan has failed.”

“Yeah… yeah, it does seem that way,” Hudson replied, thinking a mile a minute. “But I, uh, don’t want to die. I really don’t want to die.”

He started up his breathing technique, pumping the air and qi into his lungs. He moved his other hand inside the wall holding Ix’s form, and grabbed the ring with both hands.

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“But if I’m going to die, then it should be in a blaze of glory, right? Making sure we don’t get absorbed by those gosh-darn silicates. And when I pull this jade ring off of the platform, it will explode and the silicates won’t get us.”

“Um, you ok there, Hudson?” Cor asked, a concerned tone to his voice.

“No, I’m not ok,” he replied and had a quick, brilliant thought. “And as a matter of fact, I could, uh, really use a hug right now.”

There was silence for a moment and Cor coughed.

“What was that, Appleseed? I didn’t quite copy. Must have been one of the silicates in my head making some noise.”

“Since we’re about to die, I could um, use a hug.”

“Uh, well, I, uh…” Cor managed to spit out. “Uh, yeah, ok.”

Cor came behind him and awkwardly placed an arm around Hudson’s shoulders.

Hudson pushed his cultivation technique to the max, breathing in deeply and pushing the qi through his system and out of his damaged meridians.

We need more qi, Ix’s voice echoed in his mind.

Hudson pushed his technique even higher.

“Ya know, kid, this ain’t a bad way to go,” Cor said, leaning into Hudson’s shoulder. “Whenever you’re ready, you know, go ahead and–”

Cor was interrupted by the tiniest buzzing sound. A shock of lightning surged around Ix’s jade form, and the pedestal began to glow an incandescent red before an inky portal closed around both Cor and Hudson, teleporting them away.

A cold so absolute it could freeze time surrounded them in the inky blackness. After either an eternity or a split second, the inky blackness retreated and left them shaking and shivering.

Despite the difficult teleportation and the intense lead up, Hudson didn’t forget where he had stashed the portal anchor on the other side of the planet. As they appeared in the shaft Hudson had carved for his latrine, he reacted quickly, grabbing Cor’s tactical vest in one hand and snaking the other over the edge of the shaft.

Hudson pulled himself up over the edge, and then Cor.

“What in tarnation was that about? And I know that smell,” Cor said.

Hudson laughed, more from relief than anything else.

“You have a sick sense of humor. I approve.”

They were now huddled at the bottom of a familiar-looking ravine, stars stretching across the sky above them. There was no sign of any silicates.

“That was rough transport,” Hudson said. “Different from normally traveling through a rift. But we made it out alive – all of us.”

He held up a partial jade ring for Cor to see. Instead of an intact, full circle, there was a third of the ring missing. It was too large to put on a finger, but it could fit well enough on a thumb.

The tips of Hudson’s fingers and hands had slight burns around them; the fail-safe had gone off when they’d left, and he’d gotten exposed to the barest edge of the explosion. But Ix had managed to open a rift and portalled them to the other side of the small planet, where the silicates hadn’t yet gotten to.

“Yes, it looks like we did,” Hudson said. “And we have Director Ix to thank for that.”

No longer Director Ix. We are just Ix now, the voice came in his mind.

“That’s still very unsettling,” Hudson said under his breath, before turning to Cor.

“So Ix here,” holding up the jade ring, “has been talking to me telepathically so that the other Ix couldn’t hear. I assume that’s because the other Ix didn’t agree with the plan.”

It is more correct to say that they could not, Ix said. Hudson passed their words along to Cor as well.

After our consciousnesses split, the remaining wills comprising Director Ix still could not allow the rest of its original form to separate physically from the pedestal without enacting the failsafe mechanism. The remaining binding would not allow it to do otherwise.

When they realized that we were opening a rift using the qi streaming from Hudson’s broken meridians, they had no choice but to detonate the final self-defense mechanism. We… wish they had not needed to sacrifice themselves.

Please pass our physical form to Cor. We wish to speak with him directly.

Hudson relayed the request to Cor, who looked a little uncertain.

“This is where they get ya, no?” Cor said uneasily.

“So far Ix has proven themselves, helping us escape after we were able to free them,” Hudson reminded him.

“And helping themselves escape too,” Cor rebutted. “But whatever. We still need to get off of this rock – there aren’t any silicates we can see right now, but that could change quickly and at any time.

“Here, set that thing down and we’ll trade. You take my rifle and I’ll pick up the ring, like we originally planned to do anyways. You know what to do if needed.”

Their original plan had indeed been for Cor to pick up the jade ring, just in case Ix tried to do anything after their bindings were freed. Hudson was the only one of them that could help free Ix from his mental restrictions, but Cor was adamant that if anyone was going to take the risk of long-term exposure to a silicate’s mind, it was going to be him.

Hudson put the jade ring down on the ground and picked up Cor’s rifle, pointing it down at the ground and keeping his finger off of the trigger. He moved a few paces away.

Cor picked up the jade ring off of the ground and placed it on his left thumb. It fit snugly.

He stared off into the middle distance for a short while, apparently listening to whatever Ix wanted to tell him. He nodded, then closed his eyes for a brief moment. When he opened them again, an incredulous look of relief passed over his features.

“The voices are gone,” he said. “It’s not a permanent fix, apparently, but when I’m wearing the ring then Ix can make the voices shut up. Man, does it feel so much better.”

Hudson smiled, then pulled the rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at Cor.

“You know the drill,” he said, as Cor-like as he could.

“Thatta boy,” Cor said, laughing freely. “We just agreed that I would say something to prove I wasn’t taken over by Ix, right? But we didn’t agree or say ahead of time what that would be.”

“That’s correct,” Hudson said. “So… let’s talk about that hug. Were you about to start singing kumbaya, or did you realize that I just needed you close and in physical contact to reduce the energy requirements for Ix?”

“Just shoot me now,” Cor said glumly. “Feel free to go ask my ex-wives why they’re exes. They wanted to talk to me about my feelings, and look where that got them.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Hudson said, lowering the rifle to his side. “What do you say we find ourselves a big chunk of maseki and get ourselves off this little hell hole?”