“Eric!” shouted Arla. “Stop!”
Eric froze. With her distant eyes, Arla watched the gel pull itself back down into the floor, into herself.
There was nothing left behind.
“What did you do?” Arla asked the Mind softly.
I have maintenance functions that I can operate without a Hand. I used one of those. The voice was miserable, tiny and lost. What will we do now?
“Arla?” called Eric down the corridor.
“In here!” Slowly, she drew back, bringing her whole self back to her body.
No! cried the Mind. Don’t go!
“I’ll be back, I swear. Tell me how I can bring a Hand with me.”
And she knew, had always known, would always know.
She lifted her hand away from the stone and staggered from the weight of the sudden, appalling loneliness.
“What is this place?”
Eric’s voice startled her, because she couldn’t see him. She turned carefully around, holding herself up by sheer force of will. Her knees seemed to have turned to rubber, and her eyes did not want to focus.
“I think,” she said, with difficulty, “it’s where the Servant brought my ancestress.”
Heart pushed his way into the room beside Eric, only to stop and stare at what he saw. His gaze moved around the chamber in short, sharp jerks until it finally rested on Arla. “Where is Jay?”
“I don’t know,” she said. I don’t really want to know.
“Are you all right?” Eric moved to her side and laid a cool hand on her cheek.
“Mostly.” She lifted his hand away. “I’ve found out what the Vitae’s Ancestors left behind, though, and I think we can use it to fight them back again.” She raised her eyes to his. “It’ll take both of us, though. It needs a Hand and an Eye.”
Eric’s breath caught in his throat. “What is it?”
“I don’t think I can explain.” She gestured toward the control banks. “It’s a kind of computer, or an AI. It calls itself the Mind, and it needs us to move, and to see. It’s … I don’t know what it is.”
Eric licked his lips and eyed the stones. “What do I have to do?”
Arla fished one of her remaining namestones from her pouch and set it into the empty socket next to the first one. She took the third stone in her left hand. “Lay your hand on this stone and that one.” She held it out. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
Eric gave a soft chuckle. “You say this like it’s a new thing, Arla.”
“Hand on the Seablade!” Heart waved his hand at the room and all its strangeness. “Have you lost your mind? What is this? You wanted to get the Notouch, you’ve got her, let’s leave here!”
Eric shook his head. “And you claim to know the apocrypha. Didn’t the Servant and the Notouch walk into the earth? And didn’t they speak to the Realm?”
Heart folded his arms. “This is no time to debate philosophy …”
“I agree,” said Eric wearily. “So be quiet and watch our backs.”
He laid his hand on the stone she held and Arla felt its warmth flow straight into her. Together, they pressed their palms against the namestones in the bank.
The Mind opened for them. No shock. No reaching. No readjustment. Easy as breathing. Pure. Whole. Alive. Free.
No fear. No consequence. No limit. No barrier. No binding. No stopping. No time, distance, exhaustion, or end.
Freedom.
The Vitae called themselves the Nameless Powers! Arla crowed and she knew Eric heard her. He was with her, of her, around her, like thought and breath and light. That title belongs to us!
Shall we teach them that? His thought came back to her. All the delight he felt, she savored and returned. It doubled and came back, and came back again. Delight Fury. Power. Freedom.
Revenge.
Oh, yes!
No, said the Mind, but there was no force to the plea, just a minor tug of the conscience. Don’t make me do this. Not again.
But the heat of the task and the joy of their freedom ran through them. It spread out into the Mind.
The blood of the World began to quicken.
18—Station Thirty-seven, Section Eighteen, Division Nine, The Home Ground, 11:20:19, Settlement Time
“This is what the Aunorante Sangh cannot understand. Life cannot be controlled. Trying to keep your grip on it will break your own hand.”
Fragment from The Apocrypha, Anonymous
“CONTRACTOR!”
Kelat tore his gaze away from the monitors on the artifact’s holding tank. Behind him, the Bio-tech Beholden had moved back from the bulge in the wall they had designated tank 4B. Although it had no seams or joints, a space had opened in the bulge and a shadow crawled out into the light.