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“FrostNight. The Ragnarok Wave. Armageddon, if you want to be dramatic. It’s a soliton. A self-aware explosion that will reshape time and space.”
The sudden, overwhelming disgust I felt was doing wonders to distract me from the feel of my wrist chafing against my bonds. “So you’re helping them destroy the universe. Can you get any more cliché? Why don’t villains ever want something rational?”
Joaquim smirked at me. “When did I ever say it would destroy the universe? I said it would reshape time and space. We can make the universe, the Altiverse, whatever we choose. We are destroying nothing. We’re re-creating.”
Somehow, that was worse.
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to work all this out. “So you’re re-creating the universe. Why? Isn’t it fine the way it is?”
“Not hardly. Look at the horrors we’ve seen, that I’ve seen, just in the few days I was on InterWorld! The more I was educated there, the more I learned, the more I realized our mission had to succeed. The memories I touched on only reinforced this—so much grief, so much anger, so much tragedy. So much chaos…”
“Joaquim. This is basic common sense—without bad things, there’s no way to quantify good!”
“Poetic philosophy,” he snapped back. “I wonder if all of us would agree. Do you know how many of us were hurt? Abused?”
I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. All of my para-incarnations were born from para-incarnations of my parents, and I just couldn’t believe that even alternate world versions of my affectionate mother and cheerful father could hurt their kids.
As if following my train of thought—which was possible, since he was technically my clone and shared a similar brain structure—Joaquim continued with: “My father and mother have envisioned a better universe for us, one where we can enforce peace and order.”
Hold the phone. “Your father and mother? You’re a clone.”
“I was given life, same as you. By Binary, and HEX.”
“That’s a hell of a family,” I muttered, and I think I actually made him angry.
“My parents are reshaping the entire Altiverse for me! Would yours do the same?”
“No, because mine are sane.”
“Joe!”
I felt a shock go through me—that was Acacia. I looked around wildly, trying to find her. A laser blast went off somewhere to my right; a second later I saw one of those blobs of mercury the Binary clones shoot zing past my cage. Acacia was fighting them—all of them—using a combination of martial arts and various gadgets from her belt.
“Joe, Walk!” she screamed. “Now! You have to Walk!”
Joaquim spoke up serenely from my side. “They’re ready.”
The machines flared to life around me, and I couldn’t have Walked even if I was willing to leave Acacia. It felt like I was in the core of a jet turbine, and everything I knew about Walking—or about anything, for that matter—was spinning around inside my head like that teacups ride at Disneyland. For a second I didn’t know where or even who I was, and then Acacia screamed my name again and I heard chanting start up from around the circuitry star. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but for all I knew they could have been speaking English. I probably wouldn’t have comprehended the alphabet right then.
Joaquim looked like he was on a roller coaster, eyes alight, more animated than I’d ever seen him, even though we were both strapped to whatever kind of conductor this was. The blue lights—the souls—that had been dancing around him were gone.
No, not gone. The wires that fed from his machine were glowing blue, and I could hear them. Over the chanting, over the sound of the engines and the machines, I could hear them.
They were screaming.
The light was flowing through the wires to the Tesla-coil thing, and a sphere was slowly growing above it. It was misty, ice blue, and roiling like it contained a storm. There was another sphere surrounding it, fed by the power of the thirteen robed chanters. They were containing it, whatever “it” was. FrostNight comes…
Abruptly, it all stopped. The last of the blue light was sucked into the growing sphere, and the robed figures changed their chant. I was still reeling. I felt like part of my soul had just been sucked out, but at least now I could understand what they were saying.
“By science and magic begotten, by sorcery contained and technology bonded—”
It didn’t sound good.
Joaquim was not nearly as excited now. His head drooped as though too heavy to hold up, his skin was pale and clammy looking. As bad as that had been for me, I didn’t feel nearly as weak as he looked.
He lifted his head, that small motion obviously taking a lot out of him. “Professor…” He sounded scared. I admit I actually felt for him; there was a slowly awakening comprehension in his eyes that chilled me to my core. “Professor!”
The leader of Binary was nowhere to be seen. There were only the robed and hooded figures, still chanting, the clones standing guard and the ones who’d finally managed to subdue Acacia. She was no longer struggling; instead, she was looking up at the growing orb of energy with the same kind of horror Joaquim was starting to show.
