Eternity's Wheel (18 page)

She leaned down to kiss him with elliptic lips, the logarithmic spirals of her hair whipping around the perfect numbers of her face. Then the pixels and symbols and sums and products flying up from the world around me all connected, humming and buzzing like a swarm of bees. They swirled around me, obscuring my vision of the Old Man and the woman made of figures. They attached themselves to me like metal to a magnet, and I knew no more.

I
'M SORRY.

I couldn't stop it. I can't stop it. I don't even know if I want to.
Isn't this my destiny?

“The pup awakes.”

“You were informed of his condition already. You were told he would wake.”

“I still don't understand your decision to bring him here. It was my wish that he be erased along with his world.”

“Your passion is your folly. It would be a logical waste for the Harker to die when we can still use him, especially since your plan to entrap the other Walkers has failed.”

There was a sound like the snarling of an animal: a low, warning, guttural growl. “Your
science
has failed us as well, has it not? FrostNight is not strong enough to perpetuate itself.”

“Which is why we can still use the Harker.”

“He has escaped us twice now,” the first voice snarled. I was all too aware of who it was—it was the
only
thing I was aware of, right now. Lord Dogknife.

My brain felt like it was swirling around inside my head, and it kept repeating words I couldn't attribute a voice to:
I can't stop it
.

“And the last time,” the voice went on, “it was
my
perseverance that kept him and the girl from interfering with the
Adraedan
's lock on InterWorld.”

“A plan which ultimately failed.”

“That matters little, as we have found the power from another source. We can perpetuate the Wave even without the Harker.”

“Yet your other power source is not as strong. With the Harker, we are guaranteed success. It is the clear choice.”

They continued to argue, but the voices faded into the background. I didn't care what they were saying. I didn't care where I was, or what was going to happen to me.

My world was dead.

My family was dead. My supportive, good-natured father who always stood up for what was right and my smart, creative mother who'd not only believed my crazy tale about being an interdimensional freedom fighter, she'd made me a necklace and wished me good luck and let me leave home forever. My funny, sensitive little sister and my adorable baby
brother who loved Cheerios and blowing bubbles. Mr. Dimas. The boy riding his skateboard down the street, and the nice lady next door who'd babysat for me sometimes when I was younger. They were all gone.

And the Old Man had stood there and watched it happen. He'd stood there and
smiled
.

We'd trusted him. We'd
all
trusted him, we'd all been willing to die for him if necessary. We all knew why we were on InterWorld, why we'd been chosen, what we were doing. We'd all taken the oath and knew the risks.

And in the end, he'd dumped everyone onto a half-working ship, abandoned our Prime ship—our
home
—to HEX, and watched the destruction of my world without doing a thing to stop it.

I opened my eyes.

I had a headache like nothing I'd ever felt before, and I could vaguely feel Hue in the back of my mind. As I had been when FrostNight was first released, I was captive on what looked to be a Binary world. Everything was shiny and smooth, all angles and clean glass. I wasn't in the same kind of mesh cage I'd woken up in before, but I was still bound. I was lying on the floor, pale wires snaking around me. I knew they would be laid out in a five-pointed star, likely inverted, before I even looked. I also knew I was at the center of it.

My hands were bound, each wrist held to the floor by about a foot of thick white chain. They were made of
something lighter than metal, but it seemed a lot sturdier. The floor was white tile, so bright it hurt my eyes to look at. There was a single spire standing at each point of the circuitry star, five in total, with a small globe at the top of each. They looked like conductors, or something similar.

“Good morning, pup.”

Lord Dogknife's growling voice was unmistakable, and the leader of HEX looked at me with distaste, lip curling back as though he didn't like the scent of me. Lord Dogknife was taller than anyone I'd known on my world, powerful and perfectly muscled. The word “Adonis” came to mind, pretty much at the same time as “Anubis,” which was an equally apt description. He had a head like a wolf or hyena, though it still somehow bore a strong resemblance to a human face. It was like he'd gotten stuck halfway through transforming.

I ignored him. I forced myself into a sitting position and looked around, dully curious as to the rest of my surroundings. There was a sharp ache in my chest, like my heart had turned to ice and shattered. It hurt to breathe, to think, to even
be
. My world was gone. What was I fighting for now?

“I suppose I should thank you for one thing, at least,” Lord Dogknife said. I continued to ignore him, though there was this strange
tick-tick-tick
sound that filled me with an unidentifiable dread. I looked back, trying to find the source of it—and there, approaching on Lord Dogknife's right, was Lady Indigo.

She was still a giant spider thing, her bonelike appendages being used as legs now rather than wings. Her skin was still reddish and transparent, her bones visible beneath her rubbery flesh.

“You've returned one of my generals to me,” Lord Dogknife said with a smile, reaching out to run his hand along one of the long bones that arced up from her back. She was using them to walk, like a spider, though her body was vertical instead of horizontal, her feet not touching the ground. “And now, since you're here, I can keep her.”

Ah. Lady Indigo was the alternate power source Lord Dogknife had mentioned. I supposed that made sense, considering the power she had from the things she'd absorbed in the Nowhere-at-All. . . . “Hello again, Harker,” she said. I could barely hear her over the memories of my comrades screaming as she absorbed their essences.

“I almost thought you were going to invite me to your lovely home when last we met,” she said, her lips peeling back over her teeth in a horrific grin. “Tell me, how did you manage to break my link with your tasty friend?”

I swallowed thickly, remembering Josephine's last moments, the way she and Avery had smiled at each other before he sliced through the threads around her with his circuitry sword. I remembered the way she'd taken InterWorld's oath before she died.

They watched me for a moment; when I didn't respond,
Lord Dogknife gave her a soothing smile. “It hardly matters, Lady Indigo. In mere moments, everything will be ours.”

She smiled again, pleased. “I know you wished him dead on his world, Lord Dogknife, but I must say I agree with the Professor's decision to bring him here. This way is so much better. The InterWorld ship is still so full of tasssssty Walkers. . . .”

“Once FrostNight is fully powered, the Walkers will be of no more concern to us,” Lord Dogknife reminded her. “Our ascension will ensure that.”

Lady Indigo frowned. “But the InterWorld vessel will be one of the last—”

“Hush, my dear,” he said, though there was an undercurrent of a growl to it once again. “The Harker is clever. We mustn't say too much.”

“The Harker isssssss . . . clever. . . .” she repeated, looking at me hungrily. Literally hungrily, like she wanted to eat me.

“FrostNight will be upon us soon. It will return to its roost, and we will feed it as mother birds.”

“Mother . . . mother birdssssss . . .”

I looked away, still only partially able to summon up any measure of caring. The only thing that piqued my interest at all was Lord Dogknife's warning to not say anything more in front of me. I was the thorn in his paw, and he was starting to recognize it. I smiled grimly. That was fitting. That was all InterWorld had ever been able to be.

InterWorld will be one of the last, she'd said. I supposed that was a small comfort, but when FrostNight came, it would wipe out everything. Like it had wiped out my planet.

That sharp, stabbing ache made itself known in my chest again, and I ignored the little voice in my head that whispered
fight
. What would I fight for? Revenge? That was useless.

There was a huge computer on the far wall, seamless and white, and a full screen with programs opening and closing in rapid succession. I knew without even a second thought that this was the Professor's nonhuman form. It seemed to be controlling all the power in the area; the programs on the monitor seemed to correspond with bits of equipment all over the room powering on or off.

I concentrated, somewhat listlessly casting about for a portal. I thought I sensed the mere thread of one, somewhere close, but I couldn't reach it. The chains kept me from Walking, which I had more or less expected. I was able to pick up on the classification for this planet, though; Earth Fε98
⁷
. The last projected planet in FrostNight's path.

“FrostNight comes,” said Lord Dogknife. I was getting really tired of hearing those words.

This was it. FrostNight would come here, would drain me of everything that made me
me
, as it had nearly done before. Then it would go on to reshape the Multiverse.

My earlier apathy faded a bit at the thought. Yes,
my
world was dead, but there were an infinite number of other worlds.
There were an infinite number of my para-incarnations yet to be discovered, and all of them had parents. I couldn't save
my
mother and father, but mine weren't the only ones out there.

And beyond that, what about my comrades, waiting on InterWorld Beta? I had told them I would be back with the Old Man. Who would they look to now that he was dead?

I suspected I knew the answer, but I didn't like it any. They'd look to me, if I made it out of here alive.

Lady Indigo had said InterWorld would be the last, or one of the last. I assumed she meant the last thing left; I didn't know for certain, but it seemed like an educated guess. Lord Dogknife had said they would “ascend.” What did
that
mean? FrostNight had to
stop
at some point, right? If it was going to reshape the Multiverse, there had to be a point where it would accomplish its goal and cease to be, right? Maybe if InterWorld went into a perpetual warp again, or something . . . maybe they could outrun it.

That was doubtful; Acacia had said she could run anywhere in the Multiverse, and she didn't think there was anywhere that would be safe. If not even TimeWatch (and I had no idea where TimeWatch actually
was
, it just seemed likely that an organization existing for the sole purpose of protecting time would be pretty remote) would be safe, I couldn't imagine InterWorld being able to outrun FrostNight.

Still, it was the only chance they had. Maybe if I could send Hue to them, tell them to warp . . . It was either that,
or hope that TimeWatch would somehow come in and save the day.

As before, Hue was a dim presence in the back of my mind. He did that sometimes, seeming to sort of merge with me without giving me all the crazy vision-into-time-and-space stuff.

Hue
, I thought, not sure if he'd be able to hear me at all.
Hue, are you there?

I got the brief impression of a contracting pupil, or a deflating balloon, along with the connotation of
fear
.

I know, buddy. Me, too. I know you tried to warn me back there. You can go, okay? You can go where it might be safer, you just have to warn the others
.

Not that I knew
how
he was going to warn them. Even I had trouble communicating with Hue, and I knew him better than any of the other Walkers.

“Sssssso sad . . . the Harker won't speak. He dislikessss usss. . . .”

Lady Indigo's voice drew my attention to her and Lord Dogknife. They were standing together at one of the pillars, watching me intently. They were watching me so intently that neither of them noticed the faint green glow sparking in the air behind them, like a lighthouse through a distant storm.

“‘Dislike' is a pretty mild word for it,” I told her, feeling a smile curl at the corners of my mouth. “‘Hate' would be
closer. But you know what?”

She tilted her head to an angle that didn't look possible, let alone comfortable.

“I don't hate you nearly as much as
he
does.”

Her face registered confusion for a brief moment—then pain, as Avery's circuitry blade cut through the air and sliced into one of the bones holding her up.

She screamed, staggering sideways as the limb buckled beneath her and the others shifted to compensate. She skittered around to face the dark-haired, violet-eyed boy, standing with sword at the ready.

“Hello, lovely,” he said. “I think we're overdue for a conversation.”

She snarled, swiping at him with one of her limbs. It was long and razor sharp at the end, but Avery moved so fast he seemed to blur, slicing his sword out at the same time. Lord Dogknife moved as well, lifting a hand in preparation for some kind of spell.