Mom always felt like she had eyes in the back of her head.
She noticed things. Like when I hadn’t brushed my hair, or when I hadn’t eaten all my prunes. Even when she wasn’t in the same room, and I threw the nasty things away, she’d track me down with another couple of spoonfuls a half hour later. I had no idea how she did it—really, I didn’t. It was like magic.
Gross, disgusting do-your-chores-and-eat-your-prunes magic.
It was only when Alice took over that I realized it had never been Mom’s eyes on me. It had been my sister’s, too. She was just as focused on the chores as Mom had ever been. Maybe even more.
But at least there weren’t prunes.
The Mindscape
- - - - -
Madame Baudelaire was decidedly not having a good time.
The interloper in Claire’s Mindscape was seeing to that quite nicely.
She finished reading the fifth chapter of The Hobbit to the eight-year-old abomination and disappeared, putting all her effort into cleaning up the Mindscape. It needed to be très beau, and Claire’s little big sister was antithetical to everything Madame Baudelaire believed. Everything had to be in its place, and everything had to be clean. Spotless.
Black and white. That was what Mademoiselle requested, and that was what she would get.
That still left Madame Baudelaire with two problems. First, Alice. And second, Claire.
Alice was a whirlwind. Whenever she wasn’t being read to, it was like every semblance of inhibition and self-control vanished from her. Madame Baudelaire shelved books as quickly as she could, the spines alternating between vanishing and stopping perfectly in line with one another as she worked. The spilled juice and popcorn that’d been tossed about vanished as she swept it into the nothing that surrounded Claire’s Mindscape, but it was a losing battle. Soon, Alice would pull herself out of the storytime trance, and it would take hours to calm her down again.
But if Alice was a whirlwind, Claire was a time bomb ticking down, a teakettle about to whistle. It was only a matter of time before she pushed herself too far, tried to fight something too strong for her—if anything like that existed. But when she did, it’d be the end of the Mindscape.
That was pas bien, unacceptable. Madame Baudelaire needed time to put together a contingency—an escape plan for her and for Alice. But every time she tried to stop and come up with something, the girl went ballistic, and it took another hour of focused attention to calm her.
Madame Baudelaire could only hope Claire came back soon. That would buy her time.
Location Unknown, Reality One, Time Unknown
- - - - -
A lot of things rush through my head as the Undying aim the gigantic barrel in my direction.
It’s a flamethrower.
One from the wall.
What do I do?
I’m so fucked.
The two Undying that’ve been chasing me must be thinking something similar because they back off. That buys me an extra second, maybe two. It’s enough time to start thinking about a solution.
It’s not enough to finish, though.
A spark coughs to life in the barrel’s darkness, then a flame. A heartbeat passes. The fire grows. The smell of gasoline fills the air. I try not to think about it. Then it’s gone, and all I can smell is burning. I go Smoke Form and Slither. I’m not aiming for anywhere in particular, just ‘not where the fire is.’
[Stability 5/10]
‘Not where the fire is’ sounds nice.
Almost as soon as I reform near the acid pit, the flamethrower spins around. It’s on a bipod, both legs jammed into the white floor, and both of the gigantic Undying jerk the barrel around toward me. It coughs fire. I Smoke Form and Slither again, but this isn’t sustainable. They’re reacting too fast for me to counterattack, and the two shots I do get off don’t do anything.
[Stability 4/10]
[Analysis complete,] James says. I ignore him. The new plan is simple—so simple I won’t need multiple tries to pull it off. The flamethrower’s barrel snaps around to face me again. I don’t bother shooting. Instead, I’m reloading. I grab the reality skippers. Then I aim and fire and vanish all at once, through the micromerge and out the other side.
[Stability 3/10]
And then I’m falling toward the acidic whirlpool that’s draining down into the pits of this world. James won’t stop screaming something in my ear, but it’s too late for him to stop me. The flamethrower belches blazing heat my way; my hair curls and crisps. Am I on fire? I’m not sure.
[Skill Learned: Physical Anomaly Resistance 14]
I’m past it, still falling into the whirlpool’s ever-shrinking pit. The Undying rush the pool, but they’re too late to stop me now. Which, in its own way, is too bad.
This is gonna suck. A lot.
I don’t use James’s Analysis to try this multiple times. I don’t Smoke Form it—it wouldn’t last long enough anyway. And I don’t bother taking a deep breath. One second, I’m above the acid, and the next, I’m in it.
It hurts. It hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I’ve been injured before, but this isn’t isolated. It’s between my toes, in my armpits, in my nose—pain everywhere, even through the Physical Anomaly Resistance. Faintly, I can hear James screaming at me to use Mergewalk and get out of here. He sounds distant. Is my aug burning, too?
[Stability 2/10]
I fire the first Soundbreak. The target is myself.
Everything cuts off. The rushing, roaring acidic whirlpool that’s dragging me down into a bunch of tubes just big enough to fit me. James’s frantic, panicked shouting. Someone screaming. Is that me? It might be me. But it’s all cut off instantly. The void wings spread out behind me, filling the Soundbreak.
I’m still burning, but it’s not getting worse. The plan is working; I squeeze the Revolver tightly, ready for the next step.
I have to Soundbreak a second time. And a third. The fourth shatters the glass pipe, pouring acid into the bone concrete and rock surrounding it. I don’t care. I’m already past it, rocketing for the edge of the tube. It’s like a horrifying waterslide. The worst waterslide I’ve ever seen. A flume of doom.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
It doesn’t matter that my skin’s burned and in agony. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know where I’m going, exactly. What does matter is that I’m sure wherever I’m heading, it’s going to be better than burning to death at the hands of the Undying.
A minute later, I slide out of the tube and into the canyon beyond it. I’m free-falling, spinning in the air as I zoom toward the rocky canyon’s bottom, but in the flashing images of gray sky and white ground, I spot my target.
Every acid stream the building dumps out goes through one of a dozen holes in the canyon floor. They vanish inside, and I can’t see anything past that.
I finally let the Soundbreaks fade.
[…and I swear to whatever gods exist here that if you don’t reset right now, I’m going to kill you myself,] James says. He’s not yelling or screaming anymore, so that’s good. I give him a second to rant.
I’ve got more important things to do. I take aim, shove my finger into the Revolver’s barrel, and warp myself down to the canyon floor, between three of the holes. When I hit, I roll and have to throw my acid-burnt arms out to stop myself from plummeting into one of them.
[Stability 1/10]
“That went about as well…” I cough up something. My throat burns, and my voice is croaky. “That went about as well as I expected.”
James goes quiet. He’s pissed at me. I can tell. But also, I don’t care. Let him be angry. I’m getting him valuable data, and I’m doing it my own way. Instead of arguing with him, I stare up at the side of the Walmart/corpse disposal facility. From this far down, it looks tiny. I’ve got to be a thousand feet deep in the canyon—maybe more. Then I roll onto my side, careful not to end up in the holes.
I’m going in. But I’m doing it on my own terms, and I don’t need an acid bath again.
[That Soundbreak was lucky,] James says. He doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t respond.
The holes I landed by still have acid pouring into them, but there’s one across the canyon that’s rapidly drying off in the warm wind that rushes up from the depths. I ready the Revolver—gravity rounds this time—and head toward it.
This would be a great time for some of RST Lambda-Four’s gear, but I’ll make do with my Revolver and skills for now.
I peer inside the hole as soon as I get there. It’s empty. Nothing but blackness, dust, and a faint ray of light like a sunbeam pouring down into it, but it feels like there should be more there. My void wings flap uselessly behind me, trying to dry themselves of what acid’s left on them.
My whole body itches. Every inch of it. I resist the urge to scratch; the last thing I need is for my skin to start peeling, and I should heal eventually if I don’t make it worse. It’s almost maddening, but not quite. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have survived what I just went through.
Anyway, pushing that out of my head, I focus in on the pit. It’s not empty. It just feels that way, looks that way, and sounds that way. A month ago, I’d have gone with ‘if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,’ but there’s no way the Undying would have built those tubes all the way here if it was just a storage tank or something.
“James, flicker my vision. I want to see what’s in there,” I say.
He doesn’t respond, but my aug pops between dozens of settings in about two seconds, eventually settling on one that makes anything else overwhelmingly bright, but makes the inside of the pit almost visible.
There’s a merge portal way down at the bottom. It’s vomiting hot, dry air upward, and now that James has turned up the sensitivity on my optic aug, there’s a faint red light. Not fire. It’s definitely not fire. This is more the crimson of blood if blood glowed or the scarlet brilliance of a cardinal. I saw one of those in Ucluelet once, and this is close.
[That’s what they’re doing,] James says.
It hits me a moment later.
They’re not fighting Merge Prime—not really. They’re not trying to resist it directly. Instead, they’re harvesting what they need—the toughest, strongest bones and what metal they can scrape together—and melting down the rest into acidic slurry. Then they’re dumping all that slurry into a different reality.
Reality One didn’t lose the same way Provisional Reality ARC did. It hung on, continued to exist in its own way, because it rolled with the punches in a way ARC couldn’t. Provisional Reality ARC tried to endure.
Reality One adapted.
[Truth Learned: Reality One]
[Active Skill Upgraded: Determination 2]
I don’t need to enter the literal pits of hell here.
It’s not even a good idea. I’ve got everything I need already.
If Reality One can adapt, then Reality Zero can, too. My worry isn’t whether we can. It’s about whether we should. About the cost.
According to James, this wasn’t what Reality One was like until a few decades ago. The Undying are a relatively new variable—or more accurately, the answer to an equation this reality had to solve quickly. Their solution had something to do with their biological, living bodies. Standing over the pit, I can’t exactly confirm this, but it feels like the truth; the whole wall to acid canal to processing plant system feels inefficient and clunky as a solution.
If it’s inefficient and clunky, the only possible reason why is that it’s necessary. The processing plant was harvesting parts—the toughest bone, the strongest metal, and so on. They’d only build something like that going through their city if they had to in order to survive. A temporary solution that became permanent.
Reality Zero won’t do something like this.
And it shouldn’t. The cost is too much. Most people won’t abandon their humanity to survive. I close my eyes—they’re almost certainly black and red and Li Mei-like—and feel my wings flexing behind me. Most people won’t. And the ones that will…well, the Truth is that I can’t sacrifice the rest of them.
“James, we’re going home,” I say.
[Are you sure? There’s still so much to learn from this world. Just their system for keeping merges from overwhelming the city is fascinating. There’s no way they’re not hanging on by a thread, but they’re hanging on. I’d love to—“
“Yes, I’m sure. There’s nothing to learn here—at least, not anything that’ll help Reality Zero.”
And just like that, standing on the edge of a pit and a merge to some other world that’s slowly filling with acid, I Mergewalk.
Hurricane Ridge Visitor’s Center, Washington, USA - June 18, 2043, 8:36 PM
- - - - -
The Security Checkpoint below the visitor’s center doesn’t smell any better than it did earlier today, but at least it’s not worse. I’m actually shocked that we’re back exactly where we left from—the last time I used Mergewalk without an active merge, it threw me across Victoria and over to West End High.
James doesn’t waste any time. [Reality One’s a bust, then. R-404’s the low-reality mess I told you about, and R-1723’s the mixing pot world with the high danger. I think R-1723’s the play at this point, but—]
“No, we’ve already learned what we need to about post-Merge Prime realities that end up as melting pots. Reality One had plenty of that. It was just contained by the wall.”
[So, why don’t we try something like that? I’ve got a thousand people bonded with anomalies in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Maybe more. I could get people working on it.]
“Because it wouldn’t work.” I take a deep, shaky breath of the stale air around me. “The Halcyon System’s both right and wrong. Reality One lost its battle. It hasn’t lost the war yet, though.”
[So if it hasn’t lost the war yet, why isn’t this a valid model to follow? What you need is time to get stronger. A stalling pattern, or containing the problem, could work.]
It could. But it won’t. “Yet, James.” That’s the Truth with a capital T. I’m not sure how to explain it to James, though.
The math is simple. The more I reveal to the Halcyon System, the less I can trust it, and I already don’t. James is the Halcyon System. Therefore, I can’t tell him everything I think I know, because what I’m pretty sure is the truth is not good.
There’s a way through—a solution—but I haven’t found it yet.
I need to talk to someone who’s not James. And who’s not Alice or Madame Baudelaire. But I can’t. James can’t track Director Ramirez, and I don’t know anyone who’s not with him.
But there is one person I haven’t considered.
The Mindscape
- - - - -
You wake up.
Sleep came for you quickly this time. You thought you’d have nightmares—horrific ones—from visiting that other reality, or from falling asleep next to the bodies. But you didn’t.
The garden is a mess. So is the house.
{Mademoiselle,} Madame Baudelaire says, {I have to insist on your guest leaving as soon as possible. Miss Alice is a whirlwind, and the longer she is here, the more of a mess this place—and she—becomes.}
You take a deep breath. Madame Baudelaire isn’t going to like what you’re about to do.
You’re not sure you like what you’re about to do. It has to be done.
But the Mindscape is a disaster, and Madame Baudelaire is right. It’s your sister’s fault that the glass is broken and the flowers are trampled. It’s her fault that the books are out of order and upside down and backwards on the shelves. It’s her fault that everything is chaos in the one place you were supposed to have sanctuary.
{Oui, you see it too, mademoiselle. The Mindscape, as I said, wishes only to match your needs and comforts. While Miss Alice is safe here, her comfort and needs beyond that are only tangentially met. She is a burden to both you and me, as well as to herself. She must find her own place.}
You ignore the matronly yet cold French woman. She’s both right and wrong. This space is not meeting your desires. Not at all—this isn’t what you’d want in a million years. But your needs?
It’s perfect for them.
You walk to the bench. Your next decision is one with more risks than bringing Alice here, but you pick up the key that opens your Mindscape. The wrought-iron gate in the wall—the one with the artistic rusting—is locked.
And looking in, clad in a black T-shirt and shivering in the rain, black hair slicked over his eye, is the next guest you’re inviting into the innermost sanctum of your mind.
Not James. James is too much of a risk. This person might be, too.
You open the gate, and Sidney steps through.
Patreon has one advanced chapter available for free members and seven advanced chapters ahead of Royal Road for $5.00. Come check it out!
