Ten black barrels of ten black guns — sharp little holes bitten out of reality’s hide; the flesh-piercing, blood-sucking, brain-drinking mouth-parts of ten beetle-backed insects, all ten open wide as whirlpools in the great dark ocean of the mind, surfaces slick with oil and grease and corrosive mucus, eager and quivering with the promise of punctured lungs and ruptured hearts and an end to the dream.
Ten sets of squared shoulders. Ten pairs of gloved hands. Ten of my own wide-eyed face, reflected in ten mirrored visors. Ten safeties off, ten magazines locked, ten sights zeroed on unprotected flesh. Ten Empty Guards, ten false Knights, ten intruders commanded by one unseen voice, muffled by radio static and the distance of the void.
Ten trigger fingers, tightening on ten shots; ten bullets awaiting the strike of ten hamrs; ten chances to fail, ten chances to die.
Ten guns all aid at Eileen.
And , with two hands, one body, and without my tentacles.
“No!” I scread, and hurled myself off the throne.
‘Hurled’ is perhaps too grandiose a word for what I actually achieved — the ungainly slump of a morphine-addled waif falling sideways out of an overgrown swivel-chair, bloodstream fogged with opiate dreams, crutch sliding off my thighs, left leg reduced to dead weight, fingers clawing at empty air. But that was how it felt. A heroic lunge. A leap of faith. Jumping in front of a bullet.
This was all a dream, of course. A dream and a play, a taphor for Wonderland and the Eye’s mind, a stage wrought from hyperdinsional mathematics, painted with a heady stew of shared trauma, buried history, and allegorical obscenity. Would a stage-prop bullet truly slay Eileen? Could a slug of explosive-accelerated lead leave the tiniest pinprick upon the Eye? Probably not, no. Eileen’s true body lay spread out across the sky, bigger than a gas giant, more dense than a black hole, unassailable by anything smaller than a supernova or an act of so unseen god beyond the stage.
But she’d co so far in these last four hours. She had spoken, and written, and seen, and grown, in a way I gathered she never had before. I had shepherded her into true insight.
What would it an to lose her now? Would she forget everything, like the parting mists of a dream? Would ‘Eileen’ and all she had experienced cease to exist? Would the Eye resu her blind observation, without mory of carrying on her back?
Before that prospect, all my bitterness counted for nothing.
So I floundered sideways and tumbled out of the observation throne. I tackled Eileen from the side, bunching my fists in her laboratory coat, desperate to interpose myself between the guns of the Empty Guards and Eileen’s unprotected flesh — the flesh which had carried and borne upward from the depths of the archives, only monts earlier. Part of believed it was a calculated risk; the Guard who had spoken into the radio had said I was ‘not to be hard’. Eileen’s only chance was for to put myself in harm’s way, and pray that the Empty Guards’ orders were stiffer than their triggers.
I shouted so incoherent babble — don’t shoot, don’t shoot!
Like we were in an old western, or a noir detective story, and the posse or the pigs would put up their guns at the cry of a young damsel.
But we were not. We were in a horror story.
Eileen did her best to catch , but my clumsy heroics had caught her by surprise. Praem tried to help, but she was only a plushie, without true strength in those soft little arms. I landed very badly indeed. My injured leg smacked against the side of the chair, then slamd to the floor; the pain burst morphine’s bonds, knocking wind and sight and sense straight out of . My crutch slipped forward and jabbed in the gut so hard I almost vomited, feeling my intestines and organs pushed aside and warped out of shape; if this had happened out in reality, that would be a trip to the hospital, with internal bleeding, or worse.
Crumpled on the floor, wheezing for breath, blinded by tears, clutching my guts — I realised that the Empty Guards had not yet opened fire.
My fall had bought Eileen a second or two’s reprieve, as I had passed in front of her.
I summoned more resolve than I believed I possessed, and reared up from where I had fallen, reaching for Eileen’s front, bunching great fistfuls of brown jumper and lab coat, to haul myself up. Things tore inside my guts, but I pulled, I had to shield her from—
Bang-bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang!
Eight shots rang out, deafening booms in the close confines of the Governor’s Office.
I scread with an emotion I’d never felt before — desperate failure, utter desolation, hope terminated by blood-soaked lead and unfeeling hands. I slipped downward and slumped helpless on the floor, powerless to stop what had happened, tiny and beaten before this bland institutional violence.
I think I wailed; I wasn’t sure, because my ears were still ringing.
Then, eight matching clatter-clank-rattle noises followed the gunshots, suspiciously like the sound of eight heavy, armoured bodies crashing to the floor.
Gasping for breath, with strings of bile hanging from my lips, my leg a vice of agony, and my insides about to be outsides, I grabbed a corner of my yellow blanket and raked it across my eyes, clearing tears of pain from my sight.
Eileen was still standing, right there in front of , rcifully unpunctured by bullet holes. Her pink-glowing eyes were thrown extra wide with fresh surprise.
“—wha-what—” I wheezed.
Eileen looked down at . “We have been spared, so do not go spare. There is no spare of you.”
I coughed, and tasted blood in the back of my throat. The pain throbbed like black shadows in my peripheral vision. “S’not— the ti for … puns.”
“This is the best ti for puns.”
I coughed again, wheezing for breath.
“Thank you for jumping in front of ,” Eileen said. “I should have done the sa for you.”
Slumped on the floor, cradling my belly, drooling from pain-slack lips, I asked Praem for help. She assisted, and together we turned to look at the massacre behind us.
Eight of the ten Empty Guards lay on the floor. So had fallen straight out with their limbs spread eagle, like pole-axed cartoon characters. Others had crumpled in awkward twitching heaps, armoured bodies tangled in their own black-clad limbs, guns pinned beneath chests and bullet-proof vests, legs twisted backward with the weight of their collapse. Each Guard had been felled with a single head shot, each helt breached at side or rear, or shot through the shattered and broken visor. Dark tarry puddles spread outward from the fresh corpses, soaking into the brown carpet, ruining the Governor’s office forever; but the air did not stink with that unmistakable iron tang of fresh-spilled gore. Instead the room slled like a garage. The Empty Guards were not bleeding — they were leaking machine oil.
So of the more explosive head shots revealed slivers of plastic and chro instead of skull and bone. In place of brains and at lay broken circuit boards and burst vacuum tubes, oozing with arteries of wire and pipe, smoking and sparking like damaged computers on the bridge of a fanciful starship.
Robots. The Empty Guards were robots.
And two of them had saved us.
Two of the Guards still stood astride the wreckage of the death squad — feet braced wide, weapons flicking back and forth over the bodies. Twin strears of smoke rose from the barrels of their submachine guns.
Eileen and I said nothing, both staring with shock; Praem did what she could to get sat up properly and help clear my airways. I still tasted blood, and plenty of it.
Our pair of inexplicable saviours swept their guns back and forth across the corpses until they were satisfied. One of them gently kicked a couple of the bodies, checking for survivors. After a mont they nodded to each other, then lowered their weapons and straightened up. I realised these two were not like the other Guards — they did not move with the sa robotic, boxy, halting motions, but flowed with a loose, easy, quick muscularity. They were slightly taller than the other Guards as well, and their matching black uniforms lacked so of the details shared by the ones lying dead on the floor. They had no radios on their shoulders, no unit patches over their hearts, and their visors were dull grey rather than mirrored silver.
They flicked the safety on their guns, then slung the weapons over their bellies. Then they reached up in unison and removed their helts.
Twin waterfalls of long white hair spilled forth, framing twin faces of copper-brown skin, with high cheekbones, bold noses, and wide, expressive mouths. Two pairs of deep purple eyes were set in steely expressions, full of suppressed passion, flushed with post-combat high, wide and alert and aware, both darting about the room one last ti before settling forward, at rest, upon .
Two helts were clasped to two belts, and a pair of twins stood revealed.
“Heather,” one of them said — echoed instantly by the other: “Heather.”
I had never seen these people before, in reality or dreams or Outside or anywhere. There was only one logical conclusion.
“ … Zalu, Xiyu?” I wheezed.
The twins — the Lilies, the plant-girls from Outside, the twin sisters Xiyuol’tok-al and Zalui’yel-tul, identical this ti in their new dream-guises — nodded in exact unison, then glanced at each other with mirrored frowns.
“Yes, it’s—” “—us. But this is—” “—weird. Hm, it really is. We’re even finishing—” “—each other’s sentences. Oh, damn, I don’t—” “—like this.”
The twins spoke different parts of the sa single sentence. Even their voices were identical, the sa pitch of spiced honey poured over charred granite.
“Wait, wait,” I said, still wheezing, still struggling for breath. “What— how—”
The Lilies turned to again. “How did you know—” “—it was us?”
“ … uh … uhh … ” I wiped a string of drool from my lips; my hand ca away sared with blood. “Two … two identical girls, who I’ve never … never seen before? Who else would it be?”
“Fair—” “—enough. That does—” “—make sense.”
The identical twins glanced at each other with another pair of mirrored frowns.
“This isn’t—” “—going to—” “—work. One of us has to—” “—stop talking. You stop.” “No, you. No— “—I said you—”
“Twins!” said Eileen.
The Lilies stopped. They turned their frowns upon Eileen.
“Twins,” Eileen repeated. “Hello. You are twins. Or you are the sa one person, doubled into two, but still existing as one. How wonderful. How beautiful. What does it feel like?”
Twin hands twitched around the grips of twin guns. Twin brows furrowed in matching suspicion.
“Thank you for saving us,” said Eileen. “I have only just begun to think clearly, and bullets would clog my thinking. I am alive! I am not shot. This is capital, to avoid capital punishnt.”
Twin purple eyes dipped down to in identical silent question.
“She’s— on my— side. Long story.” I heaved for breath. “Can you two just— give a second? I’m not— not— can’t think—”
“Under—” “—stood, Heather,” said the twins. “Take all the—” “—ti you need. We’ll secure—” “—the room.”
“Help—” I groped for my mother’s — no, for Eileen’s hand. “Help — back into the chair, please?”
Eileen handled with great care. She took charge of my crutch, then lifted by the arms, careful not to put any weight on my legs or pressure on my belly. She gently deposited back into the throne of chro and plastic. I felt as if I had never sat anywhere so comfortable, so perfectly shaped to accept my bruised and battered body. I sank into the plush welco. Praem helped by smoothing my yellow blanket down over my back and easing the iron maiden of my left shin up and onto the chair.
For a long mont I just sat there, sunk deep into the throne, trying to get my breath back, waiting for the morphine to resu its own tender magic. The taste of blood lingered in my mouth. My guts quivered with every breath. I stared at the left leg of my pajama bottoms, certain that I must have burst at least one or two of my stitches, waiting for the blood to start seeping through the fabric.
“Do you need dical attention?” Eileen asked.
Praem told her no, I was not in any danger. But I needed to rest. Damage had been done.
The Twins did not stand idle as I recovered. They really did ‘secure the room’. One of them closed the door, though it wouldn’t stay shut with the damaged hinges, so she dragged a filling cabinet in front of it, to block the entry of any further undetected interruptions. The other Lily checked the bodies of the Empty Guards, rolling them over and stripping their weapons and spare ammunition. In a couple of minutes she had eight additional guns and a big stack of shiny black magazines piled up on the Governor’s desk. The Twin who had closed the door went to the window and peered left and right, then frowned up at the sky — at the Eye, open in the firmant. The other one pointed at the tal door to the archives and snapped a question for Eileen: “Where does that lead?”
“The archives,” said Eileen. “It is a dead end.”
“Might want to grab her,” I wheezed.
Both Twins stared at . Those purple eyes were so intense. Every motion of their bodies was like watching a predatory big cat stalking around the room.
“Who are you—” “—talking about?” they asked in unison.
I gestured at the floor. “That. Her.”
“ … ah. We must—” “— have missed that. Thank—” “—you, Heather.”
One of the twins stepped quickly over to the towel-wrapped bundle still twitching and writhing on the floor, where it had fallen from the grip of one of the guards.
She lifted Horror’s severed head, then lifted her eyebrows. “Is this what—” “—I think it is?”
“Horror, yes. Don’t unwrap her, please. Unless you’re going to interrogate her or sothing. And I wouldn’t try that either, she’s not very useful.”
The Twin dumped Horror’s head back on the desk, where it belonged.
“You really—” “—did take her head—” “—off. Wow. Well done, Heather. Well—” “—done indeed.”
“Wasn’t ,” I wheezed. “Was Twil.”
“Ah. Even—” “—better.” “We did— “—hope she would—” “—find our—” “—brief presence—” “—useful. Did—” “—she?”
Listening to the pair of them was dizzying. They were not rely finishing each others’ sentences, they were stopping and starting with split-second precision, like one mind in two bodies. Processing their speech would have taxed my mind at the best of tis, let alone when my back teeth were floating in morphine, my left leg was going to fall off, my guts were recovering from a sledgehamr blow, and I was coming down from the adrenaline high of almost getting shot.
I held up a weak hand. “Sorry, Zalu, Xiyu, I can’t tell you two apart, not like this. It’s very disorienting. And you’re getting worse. More fragnted the more you speak.
The Twins glanced at each other with a strictly irritated look again. “You-” “have to—” “—stop. Let—” “— do—” “—the—” “—speaking.”
I didn’t have the energy to roll my eyes.
Eileen said: “This is beautiful. Please keep talking.”
I sighed. “For you, perhaps. Please, you two, isn’t there a way to … separate you out a bit?”
The Lilies both looked at . “Technically—” “—no. This ti—” “—we’re the sa—” “—single person. But—” “—maybe we can—” “—improvise. Things are—” “—already breaking—” “—down, after all. We may—” “—as well—” “—take advantage.”
Both Twins reached into the pockets and pouches of their matching bulletproof vests, and withdrew matching black hair ties. With a swish of both hands and a flick of quickly gathered long white hair, the Lily on the right pulled her snowy mane into a loose ponytail. The Lily on the left watched her sister, then repeated the motion, arranging her hair in a side-ponytail. One back, one side. That was enough to tell them apart, for now.
“Better?” one of them said.
I almost laughed. “Tactical hair ties, really? I an, yes, good idea, but—”
“Zalu,” said the rear-ponytail twin, pointing at herself with two fingers.
“Xiyu,” confird Xiyu, with her side-tail.
I sighed. “Right. Thank you. Are you differentiated now?”
Zalu and Xiyu looked at each other.
“Operation successful,” said Zalu.
“Confird,” said Xiyu. “Mission complete.”
Eileen said: “Distinction has been introduced, yet the similarities remain unblurred. This continues to be very delightful.”
“You two were beautiful, earlier, by the way,” I told them. “When you showed us your true forms, when we were all fighting Horror, out in the rain. I just wanted to tell you that, in case we never get another chance to talk like this. You were incredibly beautiful.”
Zalu laughed softly. Xiyu raised her eyebrows in polite surprise.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“And I,” said Zalu, “will never truly understand you human beings. But thank you.”
“Who are you two inhabiting this ti?” I asked. I nodded down at the machine-corpses of the other guards. “You’re not one of those. I thought you had to insert yourselves into the dream, take the place of sobody already present, or sothing like that?”
Zalu nodded. Xiyu looked grave. Zalu said: “In the normal course of operations, yes. Reinsertion would have taken much longer. But we ran into your fiancée. She got us straight to the front. taphorical airdrop. Unpleasant, but this was an ergency.”
“ … you an Sevens?”
“Yes. Seven Shades of Sunlight. She outranks us, even though she’s from a different outfit. Couldn’t turn down those orders. She arranged equipnt and arms, and used her own transport to get us here.”
I felt like my leg pain was transforming into a headache. “You two are talking like … I don’t know, like characters from a shooting ga.”
“It’s part of the role,” said Xiyu. “It’s efficient, but showy at the sa ti. Very odd. But not our place to question.”
“We can’t drop the lingo entirely,” said Zalu. “Sorry.”
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“But who are you?”
The Lilies glanced at each other. Zalu answered. “Identity unknown. We’re not locals this ti, not from the dream. We think we’re so kind of composite, partly from a book Sevens has read, partly from a video ga familiar to Raine. This kind of spec-ops assignnt is not our usual haunt, but Sevens needed an operative proficient in small arms, CQC, infiltration, subterfuge, sabotage, snake eating, and assassination. She needed sobody to slip in among the guards. Sent us to help you.”
Both Lilies hefted their submachine guns, racking slides and flicking switches and making the guns go click-click-click, all in perfect unison with each other. They finished with a boot-stop attention-stand and a quick pair of salutes.
“ … okay,” I managed. “And where is Sevens now?”
“Unknown. Our orders were destroyed after reading. She is occupied in another theatre.”
“Ah!” Eileen gasped. “Oh. Beautiful.”
The Twins both scowled at her.
I sighed and shook my head. The pain was making it almost impossible to think clearly. The morphine did not appear to be working the sa as before. My leg burned like a hot piece of tal had been inserted beneath my skin, and my guts felt like I’d been run over by a bus driven by an entire troop of gorillas. My eyes kept watering. Every ti I breathed I could taste blood.
I nodded down at the Empty Guards — the machine corpses, the absurd robots with their circuit-board brains and vacuum-tube eyes. “What are they, then?”
“Enemy unknown,” Xiyu answered. “We slipped in alongside them, in the rear of the formation, following Sevens’ orders.”
Zalu carried on: “They’re not too smart, didn’t realise we were tagging along, not until we broke cover.”
“Sloppy discipline.”
“Bad officers.”
“Yes.”
Zalu and Xiyu glanced at each other again. Zalu said, “I’m starting to like this, sister. The white hair suits you.”
“The stature suits you, too, sister.”
“Nice muscles, beneath that armour.”
“Want to compare?”
“Not on the battlefield.”
“We’d have to strip.”
“Very unsafe.”
“Not sanctioned.”
“Excuse ,” I croaked. The Twins looked at again. I gestured at the corpses of the Empty Guards a second ti. “Where did they co from, then? Who sent them? Who’s in charge of the asylum now?”
Zalu eyed the Governor. “Her?”
I shook my head. “No, no, she’s not in charge anymore. Eileen has—”
“Eileen?” echoed Xiyu. Her purple eyes went wide with shock.
“Yes,” I sighed. “Eileen, it’s—”
Zalu laughed — a single hard bark. “A new designation? That’s absurd.”
“Yes!” Eileen said, voice brimming with pleasure. “It is absurd. Do you like it?”
Zalu and Xiyu eyed each other, unsure how to respond, their warrior-goddess appearance undercut by deep bafflent. Eileen bead without actually smiling, her pink eyes burning in her face, hands deep in the pockets of her laboratory coat.
“She’s gotten into puns and homophones,” I said. “Listen, it’s a really long story to tell right now. The short version is that I finally got her to turn her gaze inward. She’s done so introspection. She’s on my side.”
“Yeah,” said Zalu, fingers flexing on the grip of her weapon. “We did notice the big peeper outdoors is open, but the world is still intact. Funny, that.”
“Did you feel the earthquake?” I asked.
Zalu and Xiyu shook their heads in unison, ponytails swaying. Zalu said, “No quake up here, ma’am.”
“Could have happened before we arrived,” said Xiyu.
“Don’t see any physical evidence though.”
“True, sister.”
“True.”
“Ah, hm,” I humd, realising they had a good point. Down in the archives the earthquake had shaken books from shelves and cracked the concrete of the stairwell, but up here in the Governor’s office nothing seed to have been knocked out of place. “That’s … odd.”
I struggled to think through the pain. Had the earthquake been pure analogy, then? Was the centre of the Eye’s mind isolated from this taphorical hospital?
“Sorry, Heather,” said Zalu. She pointed at Eileen. “But this is weirder.”
“She’s not observing any more,” I said. “For the purposes of the dream, she’s on my side. She wants to assist with the revolution, and she’s going to open the Box, so I can get to Maisie.”
“Your twin sister, right. The main mission target. And she’s going to assist with that now?”
“Yes.”
Xiyu snorted. “That’s so battlefield conversion.”
“Love can bloom,” added Zalu.
I sighed a very big and exhausted sigh; the Lilies were easier to tell apart now, but so instinct told they were descending even further in video ga military slang. I said, “I’m pretty sure I had to rewrite part of the play to achieve this, but yes, it’s real. She’s on my side.”
Zalu and Xiyu both stared at Eileen — the ex-Governor, the ego of the Eye, the avatar walking beneath her own gaze. Eileen stared back at them, intense and wide-eyed.
“I saw you two once before,” she said after a mont. “I rember you both. You were very fast and very clever. And very green, but also … very green.”
Zalu sighed and closed her eyes. Xiyu winced.
“I am sorry,” said Eileen. “Your language does not have many puns, and we are not currently speaking it, so I was forced to make a pun in English. But it was a bad pun. That was painful.”
“You don’t say,” said Xiyu.
Zalu thumbed at Eileen. “Is this just what she’s like now? Old people pun jokes?”
“She’s still learning,” I said, feeling oddly protective of Eileen’s efforts. “Look, isn’t it better than before? She’s not burning this dream to ash or anything. This is a good thing.”
Zalu nodded, sharp and smart. “On the battlefield, sure. But this doesn’t an we’re sticking around afterward to see what happens when she finally lets go, out in reality.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I didn’t say it before, but thank you for coming back, for saving . Saving us. You had no obligation to do this. You didn’t have to save us the first ti either. Thank you both.”
“We cannot take full credit,” said Zalu.
“Ah?”
Xiyu pointed at the corpses on the floor. “The automatic guards paused when you gave them an order. That gave us an opening to neutralise them.”
I squinted through the pain. “I … they did what, sorry?”
Zalu echoed her sister. “The automatic guards held their fire when you told them not to shoot.”
My head throbbed with increasing pain. My guts roiled, still threatening with a lap full of sick. The burning in my leg still absorbed so much of my ntal processing. I felt like I was being torn in two; I couldn’t think. The guards had obeyed ? Why?
“Um,” I managed. “Thank you regardless. Thank you.”
Zalu and Xiyu both nodded, curt and simple.
Zalu said, “We needed to render our support for this operation. And we got conscripted by Seven Shades of Sunlight.”
Xiyu suddenly rocked back on her heels. “We’ve carried out our orders, sister. Technically we could be off now.”
“No we can’t. Seven Shades would have our heads for dereliction of duty.”
“True, sister.”
“What’s the SOP, then?”
“Stay here, guard Heather, wait for reinforcents.”
“Ummm, excuse ?” I said, interrupting the pseudo-tactical chatter. “But I don’t think that’s an option any more.”
Both Twins looked down at . Xiyu said: “We know better than you do, Heather. We’re in the role for this, rember? We’re the professionals here, you’re a civvy in need of protection. Let us worry about the combat part. You just do what you gotta do, we’ll look after you.”
I frowned, hissing with effort. “Pardon if I’m asking an obvious question.” I gestured at the dead Guards again. “But what happens when they don’t ‘report back’, or whatever they’re supposed to do?”
Zalu and Xiyu looked down at the dead Guards.
“Oh.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“That’s a good point.”
“They’ll be missed shortly.”
“When they don’t make their report.”
“And then another team will be sent out to finish the mission. Do we consider that probable?”
“Very likely, sister.”
“And we’ll be barricaded in here.”
“Like sitting ducks. Fish in a barrel. A tree on a bluff.”
“Can we hold that door with just two of us?”
“Negative. They’ll bring up heavier fire-power.”
“But they don’t want to hurt Heather. They wouldn’t risk doing that.”
“Can we use her as protection?”
“Negative. Seven Shades would never accept that.”
“True, sister.”
“True.”
“How about if we arm the Governor too, and retreat past that other door? Can we hold out until reinforcents?”
“What kind of reinforcents are en-route?”
“Good question.”
“We don’t know.”
The Lilies ceased their rapid-fire chatter and looked back up at , in perfect unison. I felt dizzy.
“ … well?” I said. “Do you agree with now?”
“We do,” said Zalu. “Sorry, Heather. We’re not really special operations soldiers, we’re just playing the role. We missed that detail. We might miss other details too. You’ll have to let us know if you notice anything we don’t, ma’am.”
Xiyu asked, “Are we placing ourselves under Heather’s command?”
“Do you have a better idea, sister?”
“We could leave the dream.”
“We could.”
“And Seven Shades of Sunlight would hunt us down for gross insubordination.”
“We’d be court martialed.”
“Dragged before a tribunal.”
“Tried in the Hague.”
“What’s the Hague?”
“No idea.”
Both Lilies turned to again. “Ma’am.” “Ma’am.”
“Um … ” I blinked.
Zalu nodded — past , at the wall of monitors to my rear. “Ma’am, we need intel on the positions of friendlies, hostiles, and possible reinforcents. Can you interpret that data for us? We can’t understand a lick of it. Not in our pay grade.”
My head felt like it was splitting in two. The pain wasn’t going away, wasn’t ebbing, wasn’t flowing out of . The observation throne felt massive compared to my battered, shrunken form. I almost croaked an affirmative, almost said yes, almost started to turn and look at the monitors. Because that would be so much easier than facing whatever had gone wrong here — to stare into those infinite views, that perfect omniscient observation, and lose the pain of my body in the sight of others. I started to turn, to seek solace, to stop thinking and start—
Praem said no.
I began to argue with her, but she put her foot down and held steady. I pointed out that I had looked at those monitors only a few minutes ago, had I not? And I had co away fine, I had not gotten stuck or trapped, I was more than capable of exerting self control, and I was—
Praem said I was not all here. Praem said she was doing what she could. Praem said she could not anchor against that impulse, with so little of to hold onto.
I asked her what she ant. She couldn’t answer in a way that made any sense.
“Praem?” I croaked.
“Hm,” grunted Xiyu. “I don’t believe Heather is capable of intelligence assistance right now.” She looked at Eileen. “What about you?”
Eileen turned and stared at the wall of monitors to my rear; a flickering of infinite views was reflected in her pink eyeballs for a mont. Then she turned back.
“I cannot observe as I used to,” she said. “A small price.”
“Tch,” Zalu tutted. “Then we can only stay here, bunker down, reinforce the position. Maybe we can retreat into your ‘archives’.”
“We require an escort,” said Eileen. “Heather has made it clear to that we must assist the others here, but I have relinquished my authority, and cannot protect her from nurses or others. Please escort us.”
Zalu looked doubtful. Xiyu gestured at the pile of firearms on the desk. “You’ve got more than enough bang here. You’re going to have to protect yourself, too.”
Eileen transferred her gaze to the shiny black tal and matte black plastic of the guns. She stared and stared and stared, utterly still, without even blinking. Distant sounds of shouting and fighting filtered up from the lower floors of the hospital.
Eventually Eileen said: “I do not know how to use those. Please escort us.”
Zalu sighed. “I can teach you. Quickly enough to—”
“I do not wish to know how to use those. Heather cannot use one either, because her leg is very injured, and if we are to venture forth, I must carry her on my back. Please escort us.”
Zalu said: “Without intel, we don’t know where we’re going, or where our allies stand. We can’t just—”
“Please escort us,” Eileen repeated.
Praem gently suggested that I interrupt this debate, because the whole thing was pointless. We could not stay here in the office, nor could we go blundering about the hospital hallways without information.
But I wasn’t paying attention. I was fighting against the pain, and trying to think.
“The genre is collapsing,” I muttered.
Eileen and the Lilies stopped talking. One of the Lilies said, “Heather?”
I looked up into twin pairs of dark purple eyes and twinned ponytails of white hair. Eileen watched too, listening closely.
“The genre,” I repeated, struggling to fit the pieces together. “The dream has … or had, a genre, but it’s getting all confused. When we defeated Horror, we did so by letting Twil pull off her head, in full werewolf mode. That changed the ‘genre’ of the play, changed the dream. It made it into a proper horror story, more directly, or changed the nature of the horror, I’m not sure which. My leg wound went from a scratch to a deep-tissue injury. The whole logic of the place shifted slightly. But this.” I gestured at the dead robot guards. “Android security guards? You two? The battle outdoors, whatever was going on out there — do you two know what that was?” Both twins shook their heads. “Well, my point is, all of this stuff doesn’t fit. The genre has shifted again.”
Zalu said, “The dream is growing thin.”
“ … excuse ?”
“Getting thin. It’s not collapsing or ending, but the logic is all over the place, you’re correct. Restrictions have been lifted. Rules of engagent have been abandoned.”
“Is that … good? Or bad?”
“Unknown,” said Zalu.
I gnawed on my bottom lip.
Without the Eye as Governor or Sevens as Director, the dream had beco un-anchored, like a story without an author, a play with no script, a dream turned independent of the drear, into a jumble of signs and symbols all fighting against each other. Lozzie’s revolution was in full swing out there, trying to fill the power vacuum, but she had not yet won. Cygnet Hospital was not yet ours. The asylum was still in flux. Right then it belonged to nobody.
“The centre cannot hold,” I murmured. “re anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
The familiar old poetry brought clarity to my mind. The pain ebbed back, at long last. Suddenly I felt more like myself again.
“Pardon?” said one of the twins.
“Nothing,” I answered without looking up, then gestured at the machine-corpses on the floor. “I think these people— these robots, whatever they are, I think whoever sent them is trying to re-establish control of the dream.” I sighed. “Oh, I do wish Evee were here, she’d understand this so much better than I, she was always the one with a head for strategy. Nobody’s in charge anymore. Sobody else is trying to step in, now the Governor is no longer the Governor.”
“Who?” said Eileen.
I shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest.”
“Here,” said Xiyu. “Take a look at this.”
She reached down and pulled the unit patch off the nearest machine-corpse, then held it out so I could see; it was stick-on, velcro-backed, easily detachable. I couldn’t very well get up and accept the patch myself, so Praem went for , and returned the patch to my waiting hand.
“Thank you, Praem,” I murmured.
The patch itself was well-made, a precise piece of craft work in fabric and stitching, stiff and heavy and well-rendered, without a thread out of place. The insignia showed a faceless white head on a black background; the head was crowned in white and haloed in red, as if both royal and divine together in one being.
The face seed oddly familiar despite the total lack of features, the absence of hair or ears or any form of identification. The crowned head could have been anybody, or nobody at all, a re allegory for an ideal leader. Yet I found that silhouette so very familiar, as if I had seen it a million tis before.
I reached out and stroked the woman’s face with a fingertip.
Woman? How did I know that?
“Ummmm,” said one of the Lilies. “Heather, Ma’am, who was that just now?”
“Hm?” I looked up to find Zalu and Xiyu both staring at Praem, who was now tucked neatly back into the front of my yellow blanket. “Oh! I’m sorry, did she surprise you? This is Praem. She’s my … surrogate … daughter, I guess? Yes, let’s go with that.”
“Heather, that’s a plushie,” said Xiyu.
Praem told Xiyu that was true. Xiyu choked on her next words. Zalu sighed, and said, “Yeah, restrictions lifted, just like I said. Heather, do you make anything of that patch? Recognise the insignia?”
I shook my head, then returned my gaze to the crowned and haloed face, sinking back into the observation throne as I felt my eyes sinking into the symbol.
“Why is the face blank?” I murmured. “It’s like a … like a mirror, or a … ”
One of the Lilies said, “Miss Eileen, I need you to answer a question. Are you certain there’s no other part of you, perhaps trying to take charge?”
“I am only two,” said Eileen. “And really we are both one, so no, there is no other one of us two, only we two, I and I. And I have already surrendered my command, so there is nothing more to retreat from.”
A sigh. “Are you still trying to pun?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not doing a very good job of it.”
“I’m experinting. And I am very stressed right now. I apologise for the shortcoming. I will improve.”
The more I stared at that faceless head with crown and halo, the less I was plagued by pain in both leg and gut. My own head began to clear. My mind woke up, thinking faster and faster. Within seconds I felt no longer like a pain-wracked blob of flesh writhing in a chair or sprawled on the floor. Whoever had sent these Empty Guards to kill Eileen, I would find her and hunt her down. I was smart and swift and capable, leg wound or no. Lozzie and the others were fighting for a revolution, and I would join them shortly — but my first foe was here, behind the stage.
The faceless head seed almost allegorical, as if it wasn’t a face at all, but an echo of sothing else, which only appeared as a face inside this dream. It was like a magic eye picture that I couldn’t quite solve, depicting sothing I knew with more intimacy than anything else in the world.
“It’s really weird, talking to you,” one of the twins was saying.
“Yes,” said Eileen. “It is strange for too, for you have all been strangers for far too long.”
“We don’t like you,” said one Lily. “ and my sister here, we’re not gonna kiss and make up with you, not like Heather has. All you did was kidnap us and fuck us up.”
The other sister humd: “Mmm. Not entirely true, sister. Technically she also extended our lifespans, and taught us how to reach beyond the limits of our own species. Right?”
A big sigh. “Right. Whatever. Discuss this later.”
The colours of the insignia were a bit silly — a bit ‘edgy’, as Raine might have put it. Black and white and red was so very supervillain, but a little part of thought it was kind of ‘cool’, if a bit over the top. Not the kind of thing I would admit in front of others; good girls didn’t dress up in black and red and cackle about their evil plans, but Raine would probably think I looked wonderful in spandex and a mask. I hadn’t liked the patch worn by the actual Knights, which had depicted tentacles impaled on a spike. But this emblem was acceptable to so part of . This symbol felt right, perhaps only in private.
I lowered the patch over my own heart, as an experint. The pain was almost gone. My head was so clear. Perhaps if I held the patch there, I would remain coherent enough to turn and look at the screens and monitors. Perhaps if I affixed the patch to my chest, I would be able to ‘take command’ of Zalu and Xiyu in their military guises. Perhaps if—
Praem gently moved my hand — and the patch — away from my heart.
I blinked several tis, eyes filling with tears; the pain ca throbbing back.
“Oh. That was … odd,” I muttered. “Hm.”
“Heather?” said one of the Lilies.
Praem reminded of my resolve. We still needed a solution.
I glanced up, not at the Lilies and Eileen, but at the machine-bodies on the floor and the patches on their uniforms. If the owner of the blank face was the one they served, then perhaps I could make contact. Perhaps I could find an answer.
Each of the corpses had a radio strapped to the shoulder — a little device held on by an elastic strap. The squad of Empty Guards would be missed soon, if they didn’t check in with their commander, their boss, whoever had been on the other end of that radio call, the one they’d called “Ma’am”, the one who had given the order to execute Eileen.
Praem fetched one of the radios for . Zalu and Xiyu both flinched, but I really couldn’t understand why. A mont later I held the radio in my right palm, with the patch in my left.
“Thank you, Praem,” I muttered, and tucked her back into my yellow blanket, so she could peek out and provide advice.
“Uhhh, Heather,” said Xiyu, stepping closer. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
I nodded, taking slow and steady breaths. The pain had rushed back, but I was still in control.
“They’ll be missed soon enough,” I said. “Like I explained earlier. Replacents might co. There’s no danger in making contact first.” I raised my eyes to look clearly at the Lilies, each in turn. “That’s why we’re going to have to move. Those guards will be missed.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Zalu. “The radios. Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Why not, indeed, sister?” said Xiyu.
I almost laughed; that made my guts ache. “Because you’re not really soldiers, or whatever you’re ant to be. You’re very good shots, well done with that, but you’ve got no … tactical … good thinking … ” I sighed. “I’m still finding it hard to think. Like there’s … less of .”
“Tactical acun,” said Zalu. “You’re right. We don’t. We’re just acting, faking it, for the dream.”
“Right,” I said. “Thank you. So, my point is, we will have to move, whatever we decide. You’re going to have to escort us regardless.” I raised the black shell of the radio in my hand. “And I have to know who’s trying to regain control of the dream. Whoever it is, I need to stop her.” I tapped the blank face on the unit patch, feeling a strange anger stirring in my chest. “Who even is this? She feels like … like I … should know … ”
“Mm,” Xiyu grunted. Zalu added, “Fair enough, Ma’am. Go ahead, Heather. And you,” she added to Eileen. “Get ready to pick her up. We’re gonna move location at the very least, try to link up with so of the others if we can. Heather’s orders.”
Eileen nodded. The Twins prepared themselves, making their guns go click-click, checking their armour and holsters and straps.
I raised the radio and took a deep breath.
The device did not have many buttons — simply an on-off switch for broadcasting and receiving, and a little dial for selecting between several different channels, each one indicated by a number. The dial was currently set to 686572; it did not appear to have been knocked out of position during the brief fire fight. I puzzled over that number for a mont, then dismissed it. I would know soon enough.
Zalu and Xiyu and Eileen all watched with bated breath as I raised the handset to my mouth. Praem peered upward from the front of my yellow blanket, advising to keep it short and simple; all I needed was to hear the voice on the other end and confirm who it was — another Eileen, or one of Horror’s counterparts, or a friend of mine doing sothing wildly inadvisable, or perhaps so other unknown, sothing I had not accounted for.
I depressed the activation button with my thumb. The speaker hissed, wide open with silence.
Zalu nodded. Xiyu braced. Eileen stared.
I said into the speaker: “We’ve killed your guards. We won’t be here when you send replacents to find us. Don’t try again.”
Silence stretched out a cold, clammy hand, and cupped my face. Gentle static hissed on and on and on. I winced; had I wasted my chance? Any smooth operator would simply end the call, without giving anything away. If the force trying to re-establish control was at all sensible, then it would say nothing, give away nothing, and leave with—
A sigh — soft and high, distinctly feminine, in a voice I had known all my life.
My blood turned to ice. My thoughts stopped.
She spoke.
“I suppose I should have expected that, especially from you,” said the voice. Fussy, overly precise, patronisingly intellectual; the most irritating voice in the whole wide world. She continued: “Or rather, I should have expected that from … from ‘us’, I suppose? Oh dear. I’m sorry, the definitions are getting pretty confusing, and I am very tired indeed.”
The owner of the blank face, crowned and haloed, spoke with my own voice.
“ … I … S-Sevens?” I croaked. “Is that you, imitating ?”
Another sigh, this ti vaguely embarrassed and more than a little uncomfortable. “You know it’s not. Don’t make us go through this.”
“ … Maisie?”
A tut. “Of course not! She’s still trapped in the Box. Do you think we’d be doing any of this if she was free?”
I turned the observation throne on the ball-and-socket joint, whirling to face the wall of monitors. Praem was too shocked to raise protest. My frantic eyes found Maisie, to confirm this was not her on the other end of the radio. There she was — a scrap of flesh still trapped in the centre of an ocean of water, beneath miles of glass, bound by a spider web of steel cables. And there too were the outlines of my six tentacles — my six other selves, six little incarnations of Homo abyssus, flitting free among the shattered glass tanks and the waterlogged tal walkways and the chanical corpses of so many Empty Guards.
Maisie and my other six selves were all accounted for. Who, then, was I speaking with?
“You just checked, didn’t you?” said the voice on the radio.
“I … I did.”
She — I, — sighed a third ti. “Look, well done for dealing with the robots. We always have been endlessly resourceful, even if we’re really terrible at admitting it. I assu you already linked back up with Raine then, or maybe Twil? I know the rest of us aren’t there with you, they’re still in the Box too, so you didn’t do the violence yourself.” A pained grunt, a little ‘ugh’ sound, punctuated her sentence. “Look, if it’s any consolation, those guards weren’t thinking beings, they’re not like the Knights. We wouldn’t send actual thinking beings to their deaths, even in a dream. We’re not evil. I an, I think we’re not evil. You probably agree.”
“Who … who is this?” I managed to say. “Who—”
She cleared her throat, deeply awkward, deeply embarrassed. “I don’t have ti to explain everything. I’m exactly who and what you think I am. And we can end all this, this whole dream, the whole play, right now. We can end it. You’ve defeated the robots I sent, so you must have so of the guns they were using. I know next to nothing about firearms, so I did what I could, but I’m pretty sure they will at least shoot bullets out if you pull the trigger. I assu Raine has picked one up? She must be laughing at the things, I’m so sorry, they must be a joke to her.”
“ … I … I don’t—”
“Heather,” said Heather, on the other end of the radio. “Just tell Raine to put a bullet through the Governor’s head. Just tell her, and it’ll all be over.”
“What?” I murmured.
“We have to kill the Eye,” she told .
“Eileen,” I hissed, anger replacing bewildernt. “Her na is Eileen. And, no! No, absolutely not!”
I heard the wince. “I wish you hadn’t given her a na.” The voice — my voice — shook with real pain. “It makes everything so much more difficult.”
“She nad herself!” I almost shouted. “Who is this? Who are you?! I don’t understand, you can’t be , I’m here, I’m all accounted for, I—”
“I know she nad herself!” my own voice shouted back at , in a perfect mirror of my anger. “I know! Okay!? I know everything you know, or everything you knew, until the mont you decided to forgive her.”
“But I didn’t—”
“You did!” snapped Heather. “You did. You did. We did. I’m not absolved of this, I just … ca to the other conclusion. And that’s why I have to do this. That’s why we have to kill her. Please, just … just put Raine on, if you can’t give the order. Close your eyes, look away, cover your ears. You don’t have to see it happen. You can … you can let take responsibility for it. Heather, this can all be over. This is how it has to be. We have to do this.”
“No! No we don’t! We—”
“We have to do this!”
“Why?” I asked.
And my own voice answered: “Because that’s the price of freeing Maisie.”
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