“So we learned that these Orbs need to be viewed as highly toxic waste,” Hawk said, reporting to a grim audience comprising General Mulligan, Captain Spectre, Emile and the Shadow. “The ants ate it down to the core. I can only hope that we got to the house and the Queen in time, before any alates had a chance to fly—”

  “Hold up. Those are the winged ants, right? Alates? The ones who can reproduce?” Mulligan said, and shook his head when both Emile and Hawk nodded. “Fuck. I knew ants were bad—no offence, Doctors—but flying fuckers? We might as well be in that old movie. What was it?”

  “Them,” said Emile. They were smiling, though it didn’t touch their eyes much.

  Hawk nodded to both of them. “Yes. Alates are the winged reproductives, and yes, it would be incredibly bad if even one of them escaped my house. That’s why I’m courting an arson charge.”

  “No, you’re not.” Mulligan said.

  “Well,” She said, uncomfortable in unexpected ways. This was more Kaiser’s world than hers. She didn’t like getting a free pass, just on a man’s word. She would have liked to think her own words were enough; she knew that they were not. She needed men like Mulligan to survive against men like Kaiser, because both kinds of men had built their necessity into the system. They hadn’t left space for people that weren’t precisely their sort, from khaki clothes to designer wallets. “Anyway, we can say that other than taking out the ant pile, my trip home was a bust. This is all that was left,” and she rolled the dead crystal center across the table.

  “Probably for the best,” The Shadow said.

  “Which is why our next target should be one of the Gods,” Hawk said.

  A sort of awed silence greeted this. The sort commonly reserved for suicidal ideation. “And just how do you think you can accomplish this?” Mulligan said.

  “I did it once. It was by the skin of my teeth but Shadow and I did it.”

  “And you may count me out for a repeat performance. I nearly died,” The Shadow said.

  Hawk nodded, acknowledging him. “It can still be done. And I don’t see another way to safeguard Earth from their activities.”

  “Murder of something that powerful is a big step, Hawk,” Mulligan said, gently. “We’re hoping we can come to a more…beneficial agreement.”

  “Peace,” Shadow interrupted. “If it saves lives, negotiations are worth it. And while I cannot know what the gods will do,” he held up a hand to stifle Hawk’s protests. “I do know that I do not have the power to stop the Rift from closing. I do not believe anyone or anything does.”

  That certainly chilled any focus Hawk might have had. Hundreds of thousands of people, and her casual cruelty had ignored their plight. Not even intentional cruelty, but one born of selfishness. She was more worried about Shadow and her dead friend than she was about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people living down in the Rift. Way to go with altruism, Hawk, she thought.

  “Right now our greatest concern has to be the evacuation of the Rift, before it closes on all those people.” Mulligan said, at last.

  “I disagree. Our greatest concern needs to be Illyris.” The Shadow said. “She has tried to get through the Nexus twice more. And I believe her people are beginning to gather at the edge of the flame.”

  “At the base of the Temple?” Hawk said, suddenly alert.

  “No. But near it. Where the fire has died down. I believe Argon is keeping it aflame beneath us, to disable any protections we may or may not have.”

  “And how is that disabling shit?” Mulligan said.

  “They know as well as we do that there will be no help from above,” The Shadow said. “Your equipment is will take hours, if not days, to mobilize—”

  “I’d feel pretty damn chuffed if we got what I want to bring down here inside of a week, kid,” Mulligan said. “You got allies on the ground who might move in our favor? If, that is, we put paid to that fire?”

  “Perhaps,” Shadow said, quietly.

  “Could it be enough to hold the Temple?” Hawk said.

  “No,” Shadow said. “We’ve tried before. There’s not enough water. That trick I did for the wounded. I’ve done it before, under far more need than that. There is enough water in that Spire to support an army of a few hundred for a handful of days. That’s all. And we would need many thousands to spur on a proper defense.”

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “Well, fuck,” Mulligan said. “I’ve got the supplies for an army right here. No speed required there. Should be as easy as dropping sacks of MREs and maybe some tanker hoses down the hole.”

  The Shadow, who had been a dark listlessness at the fringe of this table, suddenly leaned forward. “You would supply an army with the food of the God-world?”

  “Now, I can’t promise that it’ll be very big or last very long, but I got the supplies here for a week. I figured we might be putting our folks in quarantine or some nonsense like that, so we made sure we have extras on hand. It might be enough for that couple hundred you mentioned.”

  “I wouldn’t discount the refugees, either,” Hawk said. “Sure, a lot of them are mangled, but a lot more of them have just lost…well, everything. Because their god threw a hissy fit. If anybody is primed to stand up to Nasheth and the others—”

  “Nasheth and Argon. I might—might—be able to negotiate with Illryis. Of the remaining Gods, she’s the most reasonable.”

  “Not encouraging,” Em grumphed from their place at the table. “The least psychotic psychopath is still one very sick puppy.”

  Shadow inclined his head. “Indeed. But it is not her I mean to bargain with. The one place I will give her credit is her compassion. She understands that she and her sibling gods are broken in a fundamental way. When she attends one of their conclaves, as we saw in Nasheth’s Pavilion, she imbibes in the same draughts as her brothers and mother-god. But apart from them, there are other voices she listens to.”

  “So one of these things will listen to reason?” Hawk said, hopefully.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But she will listen to compassion, under the right circumstances.” He shifted in his seat. “I would propose that myself and at least one other person go to her. It will be a dangerous journey, but unless time suddenly equalizes between our worlds, I see no other way to get defenses in place before Argon and Nasheth make their move.”

  “Won’t your girl be on their side?” the General said.

  “She is not mine, nor would I claim her,” Shadow said, then shook his head. “Not in this, I think. It has been a long time since Argon let his fires rage. She did not respond kindly the first time. At any rate, I don’t see a better way. There is not much left to burn. A natural fire would have been out days ago. I suspect the only thing keeping it alight now is Argon’s need to raise an army.”

  “What about Nasheth?” Hawk said.

  “She will wait for her window. She is the most subtle of the Gods. She can allow the others to be the blunt instruments.”

  Okay, Hawk thought. Now for the hard part. “So…when do we leave?”

  And the cacophony that followed was everything she feared.

  ***

  Hawk advocated for herself. She advocated until she felt blue in the face. Mulligan, being an upstanding man about forty years out of step with the rest of the world, did his best to out stubborn her. The person most in her corner was, surprisingly, Shadow. He said he was willing to go alone—an instant veto from Mulligan, who did not seem to understand how little power he had in this situation—but that the only companion he would tolerate was Hawk.

  When it became obvious that Mulligan wasn’t going to win this fight, Hawk excused herself and went to check on Mattias…and Henry.

  It was not a thrilling visit. Mattias had finally traded his white Archon robes for a more mundane set of blue jeans and a T-shirt celebrating the Cowboys. He sat with amusement in the middle of a giant pile of papers, crested by a laptop. From the amusement, Hawk guessed that Mattias was ascendant in his own body. She hedged her guess by calling out his name.

  “’Tis I, ‘tis I,” he said, and waved her near. He was eating a plate of French fries and mustard. “These fried tubers are remarkable. Have you had them before?”

  She noticed the McDonalds’ wrappers nearby. “Yes. Many, many, many times before.” She said. “It’s fast food. It’s a dietary staple around here.” And her lame attempt at a smile died before it could touch her eyes. “Is Henry…still in there?”

  Mattias sobered. “Indeed. The boy is. We had another of those shaking fits, and he’s giving me command. Those were his precise words. Command, and something about a star journey.”

  “Star Trek?” Hawk said.

  Mattias smiled and nodded. “Indeed. The very thing. ‘You have the con, Number One,’ and then he slipped away.” A sigh. “It is, I think, getting harder and harder for him to exist within me.”

  She nodded against the pain this thought caused, and jerked her chin at the collection of notebooks, print-outs, and the laptop. “What’s with all the stuff?”

  “Henry is trying to write down everything.” Mattias said.

  “Everything?” Raised brows.

  “Everything he ever thought of, but chose not to put down. He hopes that maybe there’s an idea inside of him that will grant him immortality, of a sort. A memory that will echo through time. He mentioned someone named Stephen Hawking, someone else named Einstein, and one Madam Curie. He also seemed morally offended that I did not know who these people are.”

  “But now you do,” Hawk said.

  “I do not. I know what Henry chooses to share. At first, there was a great deal of bleed-over. He did not know what he was doing, nor did I understand what his fear, his thrashing, were about. But he is more careful with himself now…or should I say more parsimonious? He is jealous of me, I think. That I live and he is a fading ghost in the halls of my thoughts.”

  Hawk thought she’d be bitter, too. “But he is fading?”

  “He believes so.” A pause. “He also believes that the age of my skin is a precursor to skin cancer and that I ought to use a white liquid to guard against the sun. It is, I admit, very bright, but its warmth is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It goes through to the bone, as only fire can. Why should I need to guard myself against such wonder?”

  Hawk, who was trying very hard not to cry, said, “Well, he’s right. You do need to wear sun-screen. The sun’s great, but it does have some bad effects from…erm…overexposure.” Which was a rather barren way to describe a sunburn. Hawk spent a little more time after that talking to Mattias, who seemed cheerfully overwhelmed by the real world. It rankled on her until, casually, Mattias added, “You and Shadow may wish to hurry. Not that I do not have perfect faith in him, and you. But Henry is fading.”

  He was cheerful, she realized, because he thought that their success was inevitable. Not one doubt permeated his consciousness. For Mattias, All will be well wasn’t his mantra, it was the pure song of his soul. It had been buried, she felt, by the cruelties of his gods, by their inexcusable behavior and lack of loyalty. But the Shadow was not one to fail.

  She visited for a few more minutes, then left the tent.