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  Blood trickled from Hari’s ear, but Aurora assured Ryol that the wound would not be fatal.

  Gerald appeared physically unharmed, but his vital signs were dangerously erratic. She dedicated a portion of her attention to monitoring his biofeedback in case his situation worsened.

  Ryol glowered at the three Graesians filling the room with their unsettling buzzing and clicking speech. As a species the Graesians never stopped growing over the course of their short lives. In their culture, size related directly to power. Because of this, she immediately recognized the enormous features of Tzalear, the Graesian High Lord.

  Ryol oversaw the recruitment of the Graesians into the Alliance. She remembered the young world poised on the brink of calamity, where it would have been torn apart if not for the Lenoreans’ intervention. The Madam Leader had taken a great risk accepting them into the Alliance. To repay that act of kindness with violence against an inferior race defied Ryol’s comprehension.

  “What is the meaning of this, Tzalear?” Ryol asked.

  “Retribution.” The Graesian twisted his head unnaturally to the side so that Ryol saw a thousand reflections of herself in the creature’s compound eye.

  “My people wished for nothing but peace with your kind. We welcomed you into the Alliance despite your…” Ryol collected herself and forced down the anger creeping into her voice. “Despite your nature.”

  “Our nature is one of self-preservation, a commonality shared by all intelligent life,” Tzalear said in a high-pitched buzz that set Ryol’s teeth on edge. “Do not pretend you have come here seeking anything less.”

  Ryol could not understand how he’d determined the purpose of her visit, but it filled her with a dread blacker than the Graesian’s carapace.

  “No harm will come to this people by our hand,” Ryol said, gesturing towards Hari with an open hand. “Through the spirit of cooperation and mutual benefit, we hope both our worlds might prosper.”

  “Your words fall flat, Princess.” Twin incisors on either side of Tzalear’s face clacked together as if relishing a joke. Somehow he knew Ryol was the Madam Leader’s daughter, but he did not understand the Lenorean hierarchy if he thought her to be next in line for ascension. “You seek peace with these people, yes? But you will not settle for anything less than their servitude. If they refuse, you will destroy them and take what you need. It is the way of the strong, and the Lenoreans are very strong.”

  “We would do no such thing. We follow the Mandate.”

  “Rules you wrote and which now you break.”

  “Lies.”

  “Your Leader has broken the peace.” Iridescent wings fluttered behind Tzalear, lifting him inches off the ground and adding to the ambient noise filling the room.

  “Excuse me,” Hari said, holding a hand in the air. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but would somebody explain what’s happening?”

  Tzalear stared at the human without comprehension. A thickly muscled tail, with broad spikes narrowing to a needle’s point, flicked over the alien’s shoulder. Light glinted off the razor-sharp edge of a stinger, larger than Hari’s head, on the end of the corded tail.

  Hari held his hands up with palms out. “Never mind.”

  While Hari spoke Ryol reorganized her thoughts and found her connection to Aurora, and therefore Lenora, had been severed. She had never experienced such a separation. The absence of Aurora was like a barb buried in the back of her mind. It ached as she tried pushing through whatever suppressed her connection.

  “What are your demands, Graesian?”

  “I demand nothing. I have what I need. With the knowledge that passes to you, we will harness the power of Eitr for ourselves.”

  “You overestimate my value. The Madam Leader will not be manipulated into a position that threatens the lives of the trillions represented in the Alliance. Not for me.” Ryol folded her hands in her lap, hoping to exude a confidence that had nearly abandoned her. “Not for anyone.”

  Tzalear’s face contorted, but Ryol could not understand the intended meaning behind the expression.

  “How can it be that she does not know?” The Graesian turned to his two comrades. Their laughter sounded like a swarm of angry bees.

  “What is there to know?”

  Tzalear taunted her with a clucking sound. “The Alliance has fallen.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Without the Madam Leader to guide them they threw themselves at our feet and begged for mercy.”

  Numbness spread through Ryol. She blinked but couldn’t bring her mind into focus. “Where is the Madam Leader?” Ryol asked, terrified to know the answer.

  “She is dead.”

  “No. I would know.” Ryol tried to convince herself, but the Graesians’ presence cast doubt on her own beliefs. “I would feel it.”

  “Would you? This world is under my quarantine, and you have been cut off from Lenora. But ask yourself, if I am lying, how am I here? And how did I come by this?” Tzalear held a round white stone between his spindly fingers up to the light. He held it there, admiring his victory, and then tossed it in a high arc across the table.

  Ryol snatched it out of the air and turned it over in her palm. Her heart skipped a beat. Recognition was immediate.

  Every child on Lenora received one on their fiftieth birthday: a rite of passage into the upper echelon of Lenorean society. An implant that would allow the user to link directly with the super-computer Aurora.

  Ryol didn’t wonder who it had belonged too. She knew. Such a large implant could only belong to one person.

  Her mother.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hari

  Despite his best efforts, Hari could not decipher a single buzzing word exchanged between Ryol and the insectoid. Ryol’s body language, however, told an unmistakable tale. Hari lacked fluency in the body language of women, but when the color fled Ryol’s face, and her eyes rolled back in her head like unfocused marbles, he knew enough to guess what would come next.

  Instinctively he lunged out of his chair the moment Ryol’s body lost its rigidity and fell forward. He dove, arms outstretched, and caught her by the shoulders, stopping her head inches from the coffee table.

  Even with inertia working against him, Hari was surprised to find that Ryol weighed practically nothing. He chalked that up to the rivers of adrenaline pumping through his veins. Hari recalled stories of amazing feats performed by people doped to the gills on adrenaline. As he placed Ryol in her chair he wondered if he could lift a car, or, more beneficial given the circumstances, fight off a trio of insect men with a history of blowing up laboratory doors.

  The insect men were tall, lean, and utterly terrifying. They looked like a Frankenstein mash-up of a mosquito, a scorpion, and a bee. Stingers the size of bowling balls gave Hari pause to reassess his chances in a fight. He’d like his chances a whole lot better if he didn’t have that crippling bee allergy.

  “Any ideas?” Hari tried to whisper without moving his lips.

  Gerald’s eyes were wide bulging orbs of white that never left the insect men as he shook his head in the negative.

  “What do you think they want?”

  “What do all insect men want?” Gerald said dryly.

  “I got nothing.” Hari shrugged and scanned the room for a means of escape, or at least a weapon, but besides a couple Bunsen burners and beakers, he came up empty. The only items even remotely resembling an effective weapon were the thin metal stools which had been thrown across the room in the explosion. Even if he could somehow get to the stools Hari doubted he could inflict much damage on the hard black carapace of the insectoids.

  Hari watched his colleague tapping a stubby finger with no particular rhythm on the armrest of his chair. He wondered how much of a withdrawal he could make from the adrenaline bank if forced to fight the aliens. Gerald abruptly stopped his tapping finger and inched to the edge of his seat. His muscles were tense, his jaw set with iron resolution.

  Gerald had a plan. Some
thing hid behind the old man’s flat expression that made Hari shudder: the icy edge of a man prepared to do whatever it took. It was a determination Hari had never witnessed before.

  “Do you have the Key?” Gerald asked quietly, over-modulating his numb voice.

  Hari rummaged for the heavy object in the back pocket of his jeans. “Yeah?”

  “Give it here.”

  Hari’s stare ricocheted between the insect men and Gerald as he withdrew the Key from his pocket. Concealing it in his palm, he handed it to Gerald.

  “Jumping through the Door won’t help,” Hari said. “We have no idea where it’ll drop us.”

  Thick rivulets of sweat wound through the weather-worn wrinkles of Gerald’s sun-kissed cheeks. Through the stench of smoke and burning wood, Hari thought he smelled fear. Whether Gerald’s, or his own, he didn’t know.

  “Get ready,” Gerald said. “You’ll only get one chance.”

  “Wha—what are you talking about?” Hari placed a hand saturated with sweat on the old man’s shoulder. “One chance for what?”

  “To get the girl and run.”

  “Oh, God.” The blood drained from Hari’s face, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. “Don’t do anything stupid. These don’t strike me as the sort of folks that lose sleep over killing people.”

  “Do you remember coming to the hospital after they took my lung?” Gerald turned and stared straight at Hari.

  Hari leaned back, distancing himself from Gerald’s intense gaze. “For the better part of a week I slept in a chair I’m pretty sure was designed for torture. You don’t forget that sort of thing.”

  “I should’ve died then.” Gerald’s voice stumbled. “And not to get sappy, but you gave me a reason to keep going. To get out of bed every morning with a purpose. I’m glad I could be here to see that purpose realized. Though, admittedly, it did not go quite as I’d imagined.”

  “What are you talking ab—”

  “You gave me something to live for, but deep down I always knew you’d be the death of me.” With a weak smile, Gerald winked. “Now remember what I said: get the girl and run.” And with that, Gerald leaped from his chair, screaming with adrenaline-fueled purpose.

  “Hey!” Hari snatched for Gerald’s arm but missed. His hand found only air. The older man darted across the room, weaving between overturned bits of furniture and broken lab equipment with surprising agility.

  The insect men jolted into action in a blur of arms, wings, and movement that defied the laws of physics. Gerald rammed a workstation, using the anchored bench to stop his forward momentum.

  He spun to meet the advancing insects. They stalked him with tails twitching eagerly. Yellow mucus oozed from their stingers, dripping in long sickly strands that pooled on the floor. The three aliens formed a semi-circle, cornering the aged scientist with his back to a workbench void of anything that might make a useful weapon.

  Hari wanted to scream, to draw the instectoids away, but his body refused to comply with his wish for martyrdom. He was not a hero. Frozen like a man before a firing squad, Hari wanted to rage against the impotence imprisoning his body, but he could not.

  Gerald stood firm, defiant in the face of walking death. Bright blue light arced from the Key in his left hand, dancing on the white tile floor at his feet. No vapor trail signified the Door had opened. Only pretty lights.

  The largest of the insect men filled the room with the sound of a rumbling truck driving along a gravel road. To Hari it sounded like the devil’s laughter.

  The alien stepped into the half-circle. Gerald did not flinch. Did not waver. He kept his finger firmly pressed to the Key. The device hadn’t been designed to run for extended periods. Already the metal cover glowed red as the Key overheated.

  Gerald betrayed none of the agony he must have felt holding that fiery ember in his hand. He looked up at the insect and studied him with a mute interest.

  The insects exchanged unintelligible buzzes. Then one of the aliens turned. Hari caught the stare of its compound eye refracting light from overhead and casting a thousand tiny rainbows across the floor. Imprisoned by fear, Hari froze.

  “Run, Hari!” Gerald’s scream cut through the ambient buzzing like shattered glass raining to the floor.

  Gerald opened the palm of his left hand to reveal a silver lighter with dented edges—a device he’d used over the course of a lifetime to feed an addiction responsible for slowly killing him. The cancer, it seemed, would not get the last laugh.

  With a practiced movement Gerald flicked the lighter open and turned, pausing for a fraction of a second that stretched into forever with his hand hovering before an open propane exhaust port.

  Hari locked eyes with his mentor. His friend. With the man who’d shown him that life could be beautiful even in the face of tremendous suffering.

  A small blue flame flickered from the end of the lighter. The propane ignited, releasing a jet of bluish fire.

  Gerald, with a stoic calm that would forever be scarred into Hari’s memory, thrust his hand, still clutching the overheating Key, into the maw.

  The explosion was instantaneous.

  A blinding array of white-and-yellow light hit Hari milliseconds before the concussive wave hammered the air from his chest and slammed him to the ground. Thunder clapped in Hari’s head.

  For the second time that day Hari lay on his back dazed, afraid, and now alone. Terribly alone.

  Gritting his teeth, he propped himself on an elbow before sitting up. He stared at the place Gerald had stood only seconds before. Any proof of the man’s existence had been annihilated. A tear crept down Hari’s numb cheek. A crackling haze of smoke filled the room.

  Hari, recalling his friend’s last words, staggered to his feet with the help of the overturned chair. Gerald’s death would not be in vain, he resolved.

  One of the insectoids lay face down on the ground, fire dancing across his back. The alien did not writhe beneath the flames. Occasional convulsions of its flitting wings were its only movement. Whether the creature was dead, or merely resigned to its fate, Hari did not know or care.

  The other two insects, thrown across the room by the explosion, appeared unharmed by the fire as they stumbled to their gangly feet like a couple of drunks.

  Ryol had been thrown from her chair in the blast. She lay motionless upon the ground, one leg strewn across an overturned recliner. Ignoring the stabbing protests of his knees, Hari scooped the unconscious alien into his arms. She still weighed no more than a cloud.

  He wasted no time contemplating his newly acquired superhuman strength. He ran for the gaping black hole of charred wood that comprised his laboratory’s door as fast as his legs could take him.

  The aliens buzzed behind him. He imagined their hot, moist breath against his neck. He ran faster.

  His heart hurled itself against his ribcage as it pounded out a vicious beat. The buzzing grew louder, drowning out the sound of blood whooshing to his ears like a jet taking off.

  Closer.

  At the end of the hall Hari took a left, but still the buzzing followed, a static noise permeating everything, burrowing through his insides and causing his teeth to chatter along with the alien vibrations.

  Hari clenched his jaw and ran, not daring to turn around.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Falia

  A cloud of minds milled about Falia’s sedated body. Unprepared to speak with others in her weakened state, she ignored them.

  “Where is my daughter?” Falia thrust the thought at Aurora, who had remained conspicuously silent.

  I do not know.

  “How is that possible?”

  An Inhibition Field has been established around the world in question. It is beyond my ability to penetrate at this time.

  Aurora spoke not like a machine the size of a planet, but with a softness of tone Falia would expect from a child Lenorean. Falia did not approve of the computer’s choice of voice. It elicited strong emotions as she remembered Ryol as a
child.

  Those memories, once a source of strength and happiness, were a cruel torture decaying the mind of a frightened mother imagining only the worst.

  “Who could have constructed a device strong enough to withstand your efforts?”

  That Aurora did not immediately respond could only be bad.

  I am its creator.

  Falia did not know how to interpret this. “Have you turned against Lenora?” she asked, fearing the answer.

  Never.

  The Madam Leader knew never was only a theory in a Universe of ever-spawning Dimensions. She couldn’t, however, bring herself to consider the possibility that Aurora had betrayed her in a different Dimension. There had to be an alternative explanation.

  Falia would find it.

  Run this line of inquiry. Falia appropriated a portion of her attention to the hypothesis she’d created to explain this new development.

  As you wish, Faliana.

  Falia remained locked inside her mind. The sedatives coursing through her bloodstream would not release their grasp on her body. She did the next best thing and pushed her mind into that of the Healer beside her.

  The Healer resisted at first, recoiled from the strength of Falia’s touch, before realizing the Madam Leader’s intention. The Healer relaxed and allowed the Madam Leader to borrow her body.

  Falia blinked rapidly, prompting her mind to adjust to the influx of light and stimuli. She looked at her motionless body resting inside the recovery pod. Two Healers, plus herself, formed a triangle around the chamber.

  Falia watched herself for a moment. To the casual observer the slow rise and fall of her chest coupled with the look of serenity she wore made it appear as if she slept in a state of bliss. They would be wrong.

  First Healer Solma stood at the foot of her pod. His pulsing green eyes cast faint shadows across his smooth cheeks. Solma’s hands, palms facing down, hovered over Falia.

  Warmth leapt through the gap between their two bodies despite the Healer not touching her.