Hawk finally chose to take a risk. “I think I can explain what happened.” She took out her piece of Kali’mar’s orb. Straight out of the back of the man’s neck, it had looked like a smooth, pearlescent orb, about the size of a large orange or small grapefruit. But she and the Shadow had purposefully broken it. The outer rind—the consumable part, she’d learned, the part that gave you power—they had both destroyed, though the Shadow had split the Orb in half as some sort of gift. It terrified Hawk, that rind, that promise of power. Even here, now, with it destroyed, she felt the temptation of it. Power. All hers. No more bending the knee to people greater than herself—if she’d eaten the rind, there might not be anyone greater than herself. She could reach for the very sun and swallow it whole.

  But she’d seen who that sort of person was. It was a Kaiser. A Naomi. A Nasheth. Someone who crushed people like Alex and herself, Emile, Henry, and Mattias. The frail beauty of people could not flourish at the feet of a God. Not unless that God could somehow make space within itself for something else, something other. That had been one of Nasheth’s many flaws: there could be no other. No other God, no human higher than Herself.

  She’d been a teacher. Maybe, once, she’d even been a good person. Hawk kind of doubted that; her husband was wealthy beyond wealthy, and her choice was not altruism or charity, but to run an exclusive school and to experiment on her students. But she might have once been someone Hawk would have been glad to know.

  Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  She’d let her half of Kali’Mar’s power burn.

  But she’d kept the brilliant, shattered core. Only half of it, but the transparent beauty of it made that unnecessary. This was a glinting diamond to outshine all others. It sat in her palm like an indictment. Her murder of Kali’mar, and of the person he’d been before the Studdards got hold of him, was not something she could handle lightly.

  “There’s an orb,” she said. “It’s some kind of excess organ in the back of the head. It has an outer rind and an inner core. You have to shatter the core to kill the Archetype.” And she held Kali’Mar’s remains up to the light, where cracks glinted through crystalline substance, silver-bright.

  “And if you eat it, you become one of ‘em. Nuts, like they are?” Mulligan said.

  Hawk shrugged. Then, hesitantly, “I don’t think—this information should be considered—” she stopped herself. She’d murdered a god. She shouldn’t get all trembly over a general. “I’m not commenting on that. I think spreading that information even this far would be irresponsible. Similar as to why Alex West is dead. He has to be dead. Because if he’s alive—” she swallowed.

  “If he’s alive, bad things are going to start happening. Like, for example, what would happen if I threatened your life.”

  “That would be unwise,” the Shadow whispered, and power seemed to grow, leonine, rich. It was a golden thing, but cold as unearthed jewels.

  Helpless, she looked back at the General, who nodded, musing.

  “Alright. Alex West is dead. That’s going to have to happen, and I’m sorry if that screws with any other plans you had. Same thing goes for this info you’ve got on Archetypes. It’s black-holed. You don’t mention it again. If it comes time to write any of it down, you tell them Mulligan said no. I’ll take the flack and the heat. As far as we know, the Gods are unkillable.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “But that brings us to problem Two: the bad guys we’ve got on our own doorstep right now. What’s your name, since we know it isn’t Alex.”

  The Shadow stiffened a bit. He must have seen the pattern of deception as clearly as Hawk did. “They call me the Shadowmaster, or just Shadow. It works for a name.”

  And Mulligan almost swallowed it, too. Then he stopped and looked down at the being before him. Hawk hoped Mulligan actually saw him. How shattered he was. Powerful, yes, but broken so profoundly that there wasn’t much of a person left. Then he said, “Shoot, kid. Shadow sucks.”

  “It is what it is. Why fight the labels you’re given, when you can work within them?”

  “Because labels suck too. Alright, Shadow. Welp, the problem bigger than you are those other gods. Or whatever we want to call them. Doesn’t feel right calling them Archetypes, because…well, they’re not the original, are they?”

  “At least you deny them honors they don’t deserve,” Shadow said.

  A bright, fierce smile at that. “Right-o. Now, the problem they pose is they are confirmed hostile and do not at this moment seem open to negotiation. Now, I am a reasonable man—”

  “They are not reasonable. I would argue they are not even sane.”

  “—but this seems like a case of madmen in power, and those are the times that justify having a man like me and an army like mine in play. More than one person has told me that they want to invade our world, just as soon as they can reach it. Which is why it’s so goddamn hard to get up and down here. I’m told you’re responsible for cutting them off from the world up here.”

  “Did that make a difference?” Hawk interrupted. “The crystal growth?”

  A nod. “As soon as that thing appeared, the Glass Line slowed to a fucking crawl. It never stopped, but it went from a few miles per day to a couple feet. But that brings me to problem 3: that little pocket universe down there is doomed.”

  It was expected, to Hawk. She knew the Rifts closed eventually, within a week or two Earthside. But the Shadow, ramrod straight, seemed surprised. “Oh? How so?”

  “It’s draining power from here to fuel the life inside of it, right?” Mulligan said. Which was impressive. He caught her look and said, “Yong briefed me. A bit hysterically, but it’s understandable. Half the soldiers I’ve brought would have collapsed under what you went through. They’re good people. Yong, I mean.

  “But the Rifts collapse, eventually. Hawk knows that. You probably knew that, too. It’s why your collection of divine psychopaths want to escape. They know they’re doomed unless they can take ground up here before the collapse begins. Which, by our calculations, is going to be about four days from now.”

  Four days? Her horror exploded. There were people down there. At least a few hundred thousand. No modern infrastructure, no cars, no television or radio to announce from, and a natural bottleneck created by the time dilation. How could they get them all out in four days?

  “That is problem 3. We got a lot of people in a hole who are,” and he suddenly raised his voice so everyone in the area could hear, “as far as I’m concerned, born American citizens. Which shouldn’t matter,” he said, at a more normal volume, “But for some people it does. For some people, having a pulse isn’t enough to motivate a rescue. And we need to rescue them…or else we need to find a way to jam the door open.”

  The Shadow was silent for a long time. A very long time. Then he said, with the low roar of the hungry cat, “My world is soon to die. Is that what you are telling me?”

  My world. Hawk buried the enormous implications of this beneath the mountain of jealousy those words evoked, and then squashed both of them flat with the weight of her own self-respect.

  “Yes,” Mulligan said, and he started to say something else when he was interrupted by shouts from below. Screams of pain, followed by a voice Hawk was pretty sure was Spectre.

  “Fire!” the captain shouted. “The fire has breached the rift!”