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I understand. I…I wish you well.

Alex circled the small copse in restless, chaotic loops. Approximately every three seconds she checked on Caleb. He’d been out for far longer this time than in the first melding. Minutes—ten? Twelve?

8.7 minutes.

You’re not helping, Valkyrie.

The information should ease your concern as it indicates he has been in this state for less time than you believed.

She checked him again. His lips moved in silent, half-formed words, and in the last minute or so his fists had clenched, the left one curling tightly over the leaves and vine wound around his hand. Now his jaw was set in an expression she was all too familiar with.

It wasn’t going well.

Night fell in full, and his form faded into the shadows. She moved closer.

How long was she planning to leave him this way? Was it even possible for her to wake him? She’d jostled him after he collapsed to the ground while trying to move him into a more comfortable position, and he hadn’t stirred. She could cut the vine and sever the connection, but doing so might be as damaging to him as abruptly severing Mia’s connection with Meno had been to Mia. No, she didn’t dare risk it.

So the answer was ‘as long as it took.’ She would wait. Didn’t mean she had to like it.

The wind picked up, raising goosebumps on her arms. She crossed them over her chest and rubbed her hands along them.

You should retrieve a pullover from the ship.

I’m good.

In truth, she had no reason to be freaking out—which she wasn’t. He’d done this before with no ill effects. He’d initiated this encounter. It was just…he looked so damn vulnerable lying there. She’d never say that to his face, and it did represent rather a contradiction. So little about him could ever be called vulnerable…and what there was resided deep on the inside, never visible like this.

As she studied the vulnerable lines around his twitching, anxious lips, his eyelids fluttered. Instantly she was on her knees beside him.

The vine began to unwind from his hand, then protested as it met resistance from the fist clutching it in a vise grip. A brief tug-of-war ensued until his fist relaxed. The vine slithered away and its source limb rose to retake its natural position above them.

She was smiling when his eyes opened, as if this episode had been no big thing. “Hey. Are you okay?”

His jaw remained clenched, darkening his features more than the shadows. “We need to leave.”

The tone the statement was delivered in left no room for questioning, so she didn’t argue.

The next instant he was on his feet and heading toward the
Siyane
. She rushed to catch up to him. “Did it work?”

“Maybe.”

Given the urgency in Caleb’s bearing, Alex lifted off as soon as they were on board. Until he volunteered otherwise, she could only assume ‘leave’ meant leave the planet, so she ascended directly into the atmosphere. The active biosphere created an especially thick one, and it was a bumpy trip requiring her attention. Still, she sensed him pacing in agitation behind her; she could feel the disquiet flowing off him in waves.

At last they cleared the upper atmosphere, and she twisted around in her chair. The pacing had ceased at some point, and he now sat at the kitchen table, his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.

“Are we done here?”

He nodded but didn’t look up.

“Valkyrie, set a course for the portal.” She went to the table and sat down across from him. “What happened?”

He blew out a harsh breath and met her gaze with eyes bleeding torment. “I polluted something that was pure and beautiful. It had no concept of moral darkness, didn’t know evil and violence even existed—not until I showed it. Now that innocence is lost forever.”

“You were trying to protect it—to keep it alive. This was the right thing to do.”

‘Think of Akeso as a child. As with all children, it has to lose its innocence if it is to survive in the larger world.’

“No offense, Valkyrie, but shut up.”

Her throat worked in unease, and she shrank back in the chair, increasing the distance between them. “Does that apply to me, too?”

He cringed and removed a hand from his temple to reach out and squeeze hers. “No, of course not. I just…” he let out a raw, frayed chuckle “…the only way I could think of to communicate the nature of the threat was to allow it into my mind as it had allowed me into its own. And I saw my darkness through its eyes—which is fine, I can handle that. I know what I am and what I’ve done. But I felt the dampening of its spirit all around me. Inside me. I felt a portion of what made it beautiful die.”

She struggled to find the right words to say. Honestly, at this moment she cared little about Akeso’s suffering but a great deal about his. “Caleb, you’re a…a champion for life. The simple truth is, protecting good often requires violence against evil. Surely, seeing your past and the trials you’ve faced, Akeso recognized this.”

“Maybe. I can’t say.” He shook his head. “I wish like hell it didn’t have to learn such a harsh lesson. From me, from anyone.”

‘Perhaps conflict is not limited to the human condition—perhaps it is the nature of all sentient beings, of all universes.’

“I’m not—”

“Valkyrie, when Caleb tells you to shut up, you goddamn better shut up!”

‘Apologies.’

His hand moved to her arm. “No…she’s right. Or at least, I fear she might be. Valkyrie, please accept
my
apology.”

‘Always, Caleb.’

I’m sorry, too. I’m just angry at the world on his behalf right now.
She exhaled heavily and managed a grim frown. “Well, if she is right about the universality of conflict…that would be a real damn shame.”

PART
II
:

RELATIVISTIC
MOTION

“If I was perfect then this would be easy. Either road is plausible on both I could drown. I walk through the center with no rules to guide me. I realize it’s difficult but now I can see.”

— Avenged Sevenfold

P
ORTAL:
A
URORA

(
M
ILKY
W
AY)

6

EARTH

V
ANCOUVER

D
EVON
R
EYNOLDS STARED AT
the nickeled plaque, one among thousands lining the endless walls of the mausoleum, and found he had no idea what to say. He didn’t even know what to feel.

Juliana Solaine Hervé
August 14, 2261-June 5, 2323

They’d stripped her of her rank and afforded her no military funeral. Instead it had been a simple, sparsely attended civilian ceremony for family and friends. Was he her friend? He’d thought so once but….

“She tried to kill me.”

Dr. Abigail Canivon nodded beside him. “She did.”

“So why am I standing here? Why did I feel the need to pay tribute to her life? The funeral’s over—why haven’t I left?”

Because we want to believe she believed she was doing the right thing. We want to believe she was a fundamentally good person.

He took a measure of comfort in the notion the Artificial synthetic intelligence linked with his mind needed to wax philosophical in an attempt to make sense of the nonsensical.
Want to give your sapience back now, Annie?

No. But I will not deny from time to time it is unexpectedly burdensome. This is such a time.

“The same reason I’m here—because she was a person worth knowing. Something I can say about very few people, by the way.”

He glanced over at Abigail. She wore a severe black pantsuit and had drawn her hair into a low, tight knot. Her expression was more stoic than usual, giving little hint as to the depth or extent of her true feelings.

They were the only people remaining in this wing of the mausoleum, the rest of the attendees having scattered to the winds when the service ended. Jules had only extended family and few friends outside the military. Or perhaps it was rather that few friends hadn’t disavowed her once the charges against her—treason, espionage, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, the list went on—were made public.

“Did the faulty implant drive her crazy before it killed her? Is that the answer?”

Abigail shoulders rose weakly. “It would make all this so much easier to accept, wouldn’t it? But I don’t think so, not beyond the effect knowledge of one’s impending death has on a psyche. No, she was always fearful of the power Artificials could wield. Coupled with an acute hero complex and the seductive whispers of a manipulative alien, I suspect insanity was not required.”

“Did you talk to her? After she was in custody, I mean.” He had not seen Jules since the confrontation in the War Room during the final battle against the Metigens, when she attempted to use the ‘Kill Switch’ she’d embedded in their firmware to destroy the Prevos. It was an act that would have killed the humans involved—notably including him—if Jules had been successful.

He hadn’t even seen her today—merely ashes in an urn and a portrait on the wall.

“Often.” Abigail laughed quietly. “I daresay I wanted to understand, too. If she had come to me when she first learned the implant was malfunctioning, I might have been able to help her. Intractable, prideful woman…yet I did care for her once, long ago.”

“I know.”
Shit
. He winced at her arched eyebrow.

“Valkyrie been telling tales, then?”

“Not deliberately. There was a lot of leakage from everyone when we first set up the Noesis. She didn’t mean to reveal any private information.” The ‘Noesis’ was what he and the other Prevos dubbed the quantum connection that existed between them, for it went beyond any existing form of communication network or data transfer, all the way to the cusp of consciousness sharing.

“I’m sure she didn’t.” Abigail sighed and turned away from the plaque. “Enough wallowing. It’s time to let Jules rest, and for us to get back to work.”

He ceded to her urging and fell in beside her as they strode toward the entrance. The
clack-clack
of her heels on the marble floor echoed through the long hallway like bells tolling an elegy for the dead who surrounded them.

Finally he spoke just to drown out the sound. “Abigail, why haven’t you linked with an Artificial? Vii is fully mature now, and the two of you work as well together as you and Valkyrie did. I realize the government says we’re not supposed to create any more Prevos, but I’m sure they’d make an exception for you. Admiral Solovy would.”

She gave him a smile both uniquely open and startlingly chilling. “Devon, you dear, sweet boy. I don’t need to.”

7

UNKNOWN LOCATION

I
T’S TIME TO WAKE UP,
M
IA.

A wispy murmur in the blackness. Blackness, where before there was only nothingness. It was dark, inky and thick, but there now existed the palpable sense of
tangibility
.

She gasped in alarm, but no sound came out of her throat.
Where am I?
she shouted, but no words made it past her lips.

It’s all right, Mia. You’re safe.

The faint memory of a nanosecond of searing pain cleaving through her brain haunted the edges of her consciousness.
Am I dead?

No, you are very much alive. You were sick, but you’re better now.

She tried to blink, but there was no sensation of motion.
Meno…is that you?

Hello, Mia.

Where are we?

In the span between dreaming and consciousness.