My knees and elbows felt like jelly underneath me. I staggered over to a bench, sat with my head over my knees, and waited to stop shaking. It took several minutes.

No one had come for me yet. That was a beginning.

It was difficult through the battering ram of panic, but I did my best to weigh up my options. Running away wasn’t one of them. Access to the multiverse I might have had, but so did the Chapel. It knew how to find me.

I could come clean about everything and hope for mercy. None of this was my fault, at least not intentionally, and the problem in both instances lay with my orders.

Which would have worked as an excuse if not for Near Miss. I’d spent long enough with my core to be well aware of its handiwork, and my seniors were in a similar position. Altering reality was what we did. I wasn’t sure even a Defect status would save me. If anything, it had just proven me more of a liability than worth keeping around.

“Why do you hate me?” I hissed at it under my breath, sending my elbows wobbling again. It took another minute to calm them down.

The other option, and the one I really didn’t like, was hoping the incident remained unseen. It was possible. Technically, I’d completed my assigned mission. As long as no one looked into it, I might be alright. Although I’d already reported the dark smear earlier in the Interstice, there was nothing to indicate it was Jadal Cai in particular, and it would soon be buried in administration.

The Reinless universe wouldn’t collapse right away; it would take time. Time in which, theoretically, any number of other things could go wrong and kill its saviour. All it would cost would be the ongoing stress of looking over my shoulder.

But of course it couldn’t be that simple. It wasn’t just one universe Jadal was ruining, it was multiple, and nor was it just any target. Moreover, Reins had a tendency to grow rapidly. If one of them had turned ‘Rein serial killer’, we had problems. If only I’d never –

I could change it.

I sprang off the bench, stumbling from the adrenalin, and raced to the infinite staircase. Slamming the door behind me, I reopened it into my very possible saviour –

It was Alushex’s office.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, gave an apologetic wave, and backed out to try again.

It was still the office.

“Inyusol,” I instructed the back of the door on the third attempt. “I really need Inyusol. Please.”

I opened the door onto Alushex’s office.

The Hex was at his desk. He gave me a sceptical look from under the hand supporting his head full of braids, but made no move to wave me in. Resigned, I stepped through anyway, since Fate wouldn’t let me go elsewhere. An objectively bad move on its part.

In spite of the seniority differential, the office was smaller than Flinq’s and lacked a view. Alushex’s preferred working environment resembled an interconnected network of water features dripping at a variety of steady speeds and an intoxicating array of colourful blossoms between them.

We stared at each other for a few seconds while my legs resumed trying to become liquid.

“I completed my mission,” I said eventually.

Alushex nodded in impatient silence, either not noticing my discomfort or doing a good job at pretending. He beckoned me over, retrieved a small rod from his desk and tapped it against the inside of my wrist to transfer the mission credit. I took back the hand, doing my best to hold it steady, and sensed I was free to leave. Water features dripped all around me.

Was that it? I couldn’t believe it. Somehow I’d gotten away with it. Part of me was a little hurt my old friend seemed so keen to get rid of me a second time, but on the other hand, I could just sweep the whole thing under the rug and deal with living in fear that retribution could still arrive at any given point in the future.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Had Near Miss actually come through when it mattered? Ignoring the small fact it had likely been responsible for all this to begin with. A flush of hot anger burnt away some of the adrenalin, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself whirling on my feet while the rational part of my brain screamed at me to reconsider.

“The mission was faulty,” I found myself saying. “The orders gave me the wrong target.”

I regretted it the instant the words were out of my mouth.

Alushex put the hand back to his forehead and waved at me to go away. Incredibly, I still had an out.

Like an idiot, I threw it away.

“The Rein was post-death,” I persisted, kicking myself as I did. But it was the right thing to do. A problem this severe needed to be reported.

At that, my temporary boss finally seemed to pay some notice. He hadn’t spoken a word at either of our meetings, which had been bothering me, but now he sat up and fixed me with attention.

“Exactly,” I said, clamping down on the jitters. “The Machine sent me to the wrong universe. It was a System world. He was already killing out-of-control beasts.” I pursed my lips, knowing it was about to get worse. “Before you ask, I wasn’t the one to kill him.”

Alushex waved at me to slow down. With the expression of someone developing a fresh headache, he rose and paced to the nearest wall, rolled his knuckles into a ball and punched the wood lightly. I thought he was taking his anger out it on it until a hidden compartment fell open from the tremors and released a small sheaf of loose papers and pencils.

Alushex glanced at my surprised face and gave me a somewhat resigned wink. He picked up a paper and pencil and scribbled a message, then thrust it at me.

[Near Miss?] I read.

I sighed. “Do you have to ask? And you’ve lost your voice?”

The Hex nodded.

Anywhere else, it would have been down to injury or illness. “Defect?”

He nodded again.

I winced. Hopefully not another one of mine. I didn’t think Near Miss could affect advancements that far from a distance, and there was always the underlying five percent Defect chance without its involvement. Statistically-speaking, half of all Chapel agents would eventually end up with one. But I couldn’t know for sure.

There were worse Defects than losing one’s voice. Personally I’d have taken it over Near Miss any day. But for Alushex, it must have been a devastating blow. He’d planned his whole advancement around social benefits only to have one of its key supports shot out. Usually by the time people made Hex, the physical changes were already obvious – but Alushex had otherwise kept it hidden.

It had been optimistic. No one could hide their advancement forever.

“Great,” I said, unable to offer more than small comfort. “At least there’s always an upgrade.”

Alushex didn’t look like he agreed. He spent a moment writing and handed me another slip. [Tell me from the beginning.]

“First,” I tried to bargain, “how much trouble am I in?”

[So much,] read the next slip. The ‘so’ was underlined.

“Ah,” I said, but Alushex had already taken it back to write.

[But so am I,] he passed me. [So let’s work through this.] He laced his fingers and gazed at me expectantly.

I ran through the last couple of days, omitting the argument with Imbertri. Thinking about it still made me angry.

When I reached the part about the report on the Interstice smear, Alushex held up a hand to stop me. He leant back in his chair and gave another rap on the wall, at which a second hidden compartment appeared. In it sat a long scroll of paper, which he plucked out of the wall with a flourish and began reading.

“I think Jadal Cai might be another post-death,” I submitted hesitantly once he was done. “It makes sense. It’s happened twice now. He’s too strong to be a normal candidate.”

[If so, his progress was interrupted,] Alushex wrote back. [Post-deaths are much stronger than someone of this description. They need to be, to be capable of saving a universe. The average post-death Rein would mop the floor with me in a second well before reaching their peak.]

“Yes, but you aren’t the best example.”

He assiduously ignored the comment. [There’s the obvious angle: that he’s gone insane. Coming from a post-apocalypse, I wouldn’t blame him.]

“But,” I said, “Reins aren’t supposed to be susceptible to that.”

The Hex shrugged.

“And there’s the matter of the multiverse. How could he escape his universe, and how did he keep going? Even if he somehow piggybacked off of me. And I don’t understand how he did that either.” I realised I hadn’t gotten to the rest of the story yet and hurriedly completed my report, including the universe I’d followed him to.

[Reins don’t have inherent access,] Alushex wrote when I was done, [but you do know there are plenty of worlds with versal travel, right?]

“I’m a Tri,” I said jadedly. “They don’t tell me everything.”

[He could have done it by escaping to one of those and utilising such a network.]

“The universe he went to was advanced,” I admitted, “but hostile. And how would he know where to go? As far as I know, he travelled there, killed someone – maybe another Rein – and hijacked a flying car.”

[What’s the name of this world?] asked Alushex.

“I have no idea. I could find it again, though.”

[Hostile, you say?] Alushex grinned as he passed me the slip, bizarrely in a much better mood than when the conversation had started. He stood up from his desk and ducked under a hanging flower. [Let’s go.]