His eyes shine with a faint light. But something is there, some glimmer of recognition. I can only hope it is enough.
Yes, he says. ...I think so.
I kiss him again; I can’t help it. As I do, I hear it, the whispering of the numbers, the sound I haven’t stopped hearing for months.
I look up at Revik. Seeing the distance in his eyes, I shake his arm, gripping him tighter. Revik, listen to me. You were working for Vash. You were a Nazi for Vash. Do you remember? You let them recruit you. You’ve carried the succession order ever since...for Vash. For all of us.
Doubt fills his face.
After a pause, he shakes his head. No, Allie.
Don’t argue with me, Revik, I send. I know this is true. Just trust me. Trust me on this, please. You’re one of the good guys. Don’t let yourself die...please.#p#分页标题#e#
I slide my light into his, and feel him react as I show him the numbers. Even inside his confusion, his light connects with them easily, with a familiarity that is clear in the space. I watch him unlock the key to the succession order, until I can see it, too. It expands around us in clean, geometric shapes, rotating with a visual mathematical dance I cannot look away from.
Relief fills my light. Awe, too. I see it. Do you?
When the numbers light up around us, a faint wonder touches his eyes.
Yes, he says.
They’re ready, I tell him. Vash and the others. I think I can get a signal to them. Wait for me. I kiss him again. I love you. Wait for me...please.
His eyes change. Then, before he speaks, his outline fades.
Terror reaches me, that feeling of being ripped in half. I feel it fleetingly in my heart, that I may never see him again.
Then I am alone, in an endless chasm of dark...but light lives in the tiniest of fragments, and I finally know exactly what I’m supposed to do.
Drawing the numbers, Revik’s numbers, up and out of my light, I superimpose them over the model of the Pyramid itself...
...and imprint the succession order simultaneously into every seer in the Rooks’ network.
As I do, I realize I know.
I’ve known all along who the Head is.
One seer watches quietly, from a dark, remote corner of the Pyramid where he hides.
There are crevices even here, even in the group mind. Places to hide inside the inter-connectivities that the Pyramid cultivates. Places where the others don’t often go, where constructs live inside constructs and one can disappear into the silver strands, become a bare whisper inside the intricacies of the landscape.
The structure rotates in a prismatic dance, every light connected to every light...from Galaith to Xarethe to Dehgoies to himself.
He hides here, still as death.
It is not easy to remain unseen while crouching inside these lit strands, yet the Pyramid is his home. It encompasses everything he knows, terrifying and magnificent. It keeps him from the void. The shining, silver strands play a slow, intricate dance, one he knows better than the beats of his own heart. Its music lulls him, singing to him in the dark.
For the same reason, he feels it when she comes. Her music is different than his...so different, he knows the precise instant when she enters his home. He feels the conflict, the chaos she evokes...but at base, she is a tourist. Her husband is all that truly connects her to them.
Then, out of nowhere, he sees it.
The succession order is laid out neatly before him, a map of light connecting one Rook to the next, spread before him in perfect, beautiful lines. Like his brothers and sisters, he looks for the Head, tries to count how many steps he is from that highest, most coveted spot.
The Pyramid shakes.
Reflexively, he makes his light even more dim.
It takes him another moment to understand the cause of that instability, too.
They are killing one another. All around him, seers are attacking seers, hammering blows at one another, trying to destroy one another. Lower-level seers attack the lights they see above them, pausing only to defend against those seers who strike at them from below.
He sees lights flicker and snuff out. He sees death and pain. He sees fighting and screaming...but also silence and rippled light, places where Rooks are dimming themselves as he has, trying to disappear. Already, though, more than half have joined the fray.
Terian is lucky. Lucky he will not be missed.
Lights flash brighter, then wink out. He feels the structure tremble, shuddering more seriously that time, more dangerously. He still cannot see the successor’s chair, but he is getting closer, rising higher all the time as he seeks it, ever-groping through metallic dark. He counts each place in the hierarchy, follows each place as one fits into the next. He ignores the chaos in his single-mindedness, as he traces them all the way up to where his light hovers...
Until he can see no further.
It is quiet there, and he is alone.