Thresholder, ch 179, Quarry

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We're getting there.
~~~~

Perry was braced near the exit hatch for the whole last part of the trip as Dirk guided them down into the crevasse next to the quarry. They’d swung around and approached from the opposite direction of the railway, low to the ground, the better to hide from where Queenie had been last time. The ship was moving about as fast as it could without breaking apart, and it was clear that Dirk had some experience with it, something that must have happened in the long time before they’d come to the Dusklands. The landing was smooth, with barely a jolt, and Perry stopped holding his breath, exiting out the door as soon as the ship was down.

There was, perhaps, an argument for waiting until further repairs had been done to the ship, or for recruiting more of Amanaco’s people to help with the fight, but no one had seriously voiced the opinion that they should do that, not when Queenie was so close to getting a huge boost for her machine. They had to stop her here.

Perry was first out the door, but Amanaco followed soon after. He looked a bit green, as Dirk’s quick flying hadn’t agreed with him, but he managed to keep his lunch, and when the guards came over the hills, he had a hand up to stop them from doing something stupid.

His horse was sitting nearby, and Perry stared at it for a moment. They had left it dozens of miles away, maybe as much as a hundred, and that was across the Dusklands, where space warped.

“Scenario Daydream Yellow,” said Amanaco as the quarry’s security came toward the ship. “These people are allies, and there’s a rogue Peony coming toward here. She might be here already, armed with a gun that can shoot the wings off a fly from a mile out. I’d advise that you evacuate the town and get your men down into the quarry, and those cores are going to need to be put somewhere safe — that’s what she’s after.”

They hesitated, but they took Amanaco’s words seriously. Perry was going to remember that code phrase. If Amanaco had known about the quarry beforehand, he hadn’t given any indication of it, but apparently he had the authority to stroll in and start calling the shots. From everything that had been said about the mysterious Walkers, they existed outside the normal command structure of the Commission, but in order to do that, someone would have to set up protocols for the grunts to follow. Did every guard respond to ‘Scenario Daydream Yellow’ like that? Maybe it was only for secret mines.

There was no sign of Queenie, though the sign that Perry expected they would get was a bullet whistling straight into the side of someone’s head.

“We’ll keep inside buildings,” said Amanaco. “Give her as little chance to hit us as possible, as little chance to see us.”

“She can probably shoot through a wall,” said Perry. “She’s a better sniper than the Dusklands has ever seen before.”

“Point taken,” said Amanaco. “But you don’t have any idea of the skills of the best Peonies. A rifle shot from a mile away? I knew a woman who could do that. She had eyes like a goat. Hell, I’ve heard of a rifle that could shoot straight through walls, though you’d need a devil’s eyes to use it.”

“I don’t suppose they have shielding?” asked Perry.

“I never knew about this place before today,” said Amanaco. “They’ll follow orders, so I’ll ask. But we should bunker down.”

Amanaco hadn’t been told about the machine that stripped bonds. There’d been general agreement that he would be kept in the dark, at least for the time being: knowing that such a machine could be made wouldn’t be as bad as the Commission having one, but Grayspear might have told other scientists, and there was a risk that it could be reinvented, even if the current version needed a piece of Queenie’s scarf.

Infosec was going to be a real problem going forward, particularly since they had Amanaco and Anaksi together. Perry wasn’t confident in his ability to keep anything sensitive from crossing his lips, so he kept his trap shut.

The group moved into one of the main buildings of the town, one of the only ones with thick stone walls instead of cheap timber. It was the same building where the harmonizer cores were being stored, though Perry didn’t guess that he was supposed to know that.

“We’ve had no sign of any untoward interest,” said Jericho, the site supervisor, who’d been called up to deal with the situation.

He was a big, burly man wearing a suit that had seen better days, and Perry imagined that he’d been a mine worker who’d somehow worked his way up the ranks while still in his prime. He had two other men with him, built from the same mold, who clearly didn’t appreciate Amanaco’s intrusion. There was a fourth, a woman, who Perry was fairly sure was an Inspector, and he guessed that she’d authenticated Amanaco somehow. She was a tiny woman with sunken eyes, and seemed out of place next to her coworkers.

“She was here yesterday,” said Perry. “She rode the train in, jumped off a mile from the quarry, then watched through a scope. It’s likely that she had a rifle trained on you.”

“We have protection,” said Jericho.

“Not enough,” said Amanaco. He gestured at Perry. “Do you think you could kill this man?”

Jericho eyed Perry, who was in full armor, sword at his side. “I haven’t seen what this man can do, but you have, and my guess is that he’d beat the stuffing out of me. But you’re talking about a sniper from a distance. A single Peony? Unless she’s exceptional, it’s not the kind of problem that would call for Daydream Yellow.”

Amanaco glanced at Perry.

“She’s exceptional,” said Perry. “And not actually a Peony, something else, more powerful. For now, it probably makes the most sense to completely shut the quarry down, evacuate everyone without powers, and wait her out. Keep the trains running, make it look like this place is still operating, and wait for her attack.” He hesitated. “She also has a weapon, a large box, that can permanently affect the minds of everyone within a city block. If she sneaks that in and we don’t find it, we can still fight back, but we won’t be the same afterward.”

“Wonderful,” said Amanaco. He frowned, thinking it through. He must have seen that this was something Perry would have preferred to keep from him. “And there’s a chance that it’s here, now?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “I think I’ll be able to sense if she activates it, and then evacuate a handful of people in my general area. But I think it’s unlikely she’ll use it. It doesn’t convert anyone to her cause, not by itself. She’ll try to convince you that she has riches, freedom, immortality, special powers, all kinds of things, and you should know now that’s just a lie.”

“But we might not feel the same way when the time comes?” asked Amanaco.

“Might not,” said Perry. “Also, I think I forgot to mention this earlier, but she can shapeshift, so it would probably be good to doublecheck everyone, just in case she slipped in and has gone stealth. I doubt she would try that though.”

“Why not?” asked Jericho.

“Because I can see through her shapeshifting, and she knows that,” said Perry.

Dirk gave a little laugh. At least he seemed like he was enjoying himself, watching the locals grapple with having to deal with thresholder bullshit.

“You think she might be in here?” asked Jericho.

“Maybe,” said Perry. “How often do you get new personnel? This place is secret, right?”

“There are hundreds working here,” said Jericho. “We get new people all the time, sent by the Commission. They vet them.”

“How well?” asked Amanaco.

“Inspector vetting,” said Jericho. “But if you’re asking if I’m confident, against what you’re talking about? No, I’m not.”

“Have the metal man check them,” said Amanaco. “Slowly. If she’s out there, we don’t want her to know that we’re here. I’d set up some spotters to see her coming, but if her eyesight is as good as it’s supposed to be, she’ll see them before they see her.”

“She’ll come on the train, either into the quarry or jumping off of it a ways off,” said Perry. “What’s the schedule like?”

Jericho blinked at him. “Schedule?” he asked. “The trains come when they come, and we hope that it doesn’t have to barrel through the night. This is the end of the line, we hope for one a day, in and then out with whoever needs to go, back to Charlonion.”

“Has it arrived today?” asked Perry.

“Sure has,” nodded Jericho. “You think she’d be on it?”

“There’s a possibility,” said Perry. “She could steal someone’s skin, or —”

“Literally?” asked Amanaco.

“No,” said Perry.

“There’s a beast that does that, a relative to the demons,” said Amanaco. “That’s why I ask.”

“No, her method is different, I think,” said Perry. “I was going to say, steal someone’s skin or their documentation. But if you can bring in every man or woman who came in on today’s train, especially those you don’t recognize, I can check them.”

“But we want to do it without spooking her,” said Amanaco. “Business as usual until we bunker everyone down.”

Perry frowned inside his helmet, but didn’t say anything. He was worried that Queenie had seen the ship coming in, which would either spook her or get her shooting. Hella might plausibly be able to survive a bullet, though maybe not of that caliber, and Mette might be able to regenerate if Perry blasted her with moonlight he was keeping stored in a vessel, but anyone else would probably die unless they got winged — and Queenie’s aim was too good, even at a distance.

There was some waiting time as logistics were discussed, and soon, people were being brought into the room to check them over, under the cover of routine precaution. The checks weren’t even remotely routine, and that was a flaw in the plan, but it couldn’t really be helped.

They boggled at Perry, who was in his full armor with a mask on top of it, but he just stood there, arms folded, watching them.

The fifth woman in was someone Perry recognized, even before Marchand called it out. She was one of the two from Queenie’s safehouse, only seen through the viewer until now. She stared at him with wide eyes when she came into the room, and Perry moved like the wind to grab her when she tried to leave. He had her pinned to the wall by her wrist a second later, and though she struggled, she was just a perfectly ordinary woman, confirmed by the mask.

“Where is she?” asked Perry.

“Somewhere,” gasped the woman. “She didn’t say, only that she would rescue us if it went wrong.”

“It’s going wrong now,” said Perry. “What signal were you supposed to give?”

“A red handkerchief,” she said. “Back pocket.”

“How long has she been here?” asked Perry.

“Since this morning,” replied the woman. There was no resistance in her. She answered quickly, without hesitation. “I don’t know what she was going to do. She said she’d save us.”

“The two others are here?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said the woman.

Perry released her, and she gripped her wrist as though he’d broken it, even though he’d been gentle with her. He believed her about everything, or at least that this was what she’d been told by Queenie. There was no reason for Queenie to give anything away to her agents on the ground.

It was also possible that Queenie had used a bit of her scarf for long-range communications. This woman could have a bit of it wrapped around a toe, or tied into her hair at the base of the scalp, could have it hidden anywhere on her body. They could be psychically communicating at this very moment. He would have to assume that anything he said would be heard, but it wasn’t as though there was much Queenie wouldn’t know just from what she’d already seen.

“What were you supposed to do?” asked Perry.

“Snoop,” said the woman. “Talk. Listen. She wanted to know how many people were here, how many K-men, Peonies, or whether there was much security.”

“I want you to give her the signal,” said Perry.

The woman stared at him. “What? Why?”

“I’m interested in hearing that myself,” said Amanaco.

“Because I want to flush her out,” said Perry. “I think it’s more likely that she starts an assault than that she dips. And if she does dip, then I have a way of finding her, should it come to that. There’s got to be a limit to how many hidey holes she has.”

“You said she’s very, very good with that rifle,” said Amanaco.

“Not good enough to get me,” said Perry. “She’s hit me in the head before, I tanked it.”

“Tanked it?” asked Amanaco.

“It’s a stupid plan,” said Jericho.

“It’s not,” said Hella. “If she gets a signal, she might reveal herself. If she sees Perry, she might run. But if she was going to run either way, we never had a shot, so better to make sure that we have the best possible chance of seeing her. We want a fight here, now, when we have people ready.”

“We could wait a day,” said Amanaco. “I have a Peony, part of my crew, she can peep into the future just a bit. It’s a rare power.” He shook his head. “But you’re right, better get her out in the open, if she somehow missed the ship coming in. At least, if it’s you that’s taking the risk.”

“She wouldn’t have context on the ship,” said Perry. “She wouldn’t know that it was connected to me in any way. And while it doesn’t look like a Commission piece of equipment, the Dusklands have enough variety that she might think that. She wouldn’t expect me to have a ship, not one of that size.”

“Then we prepare,” said Jericho. “Get people bunkered down, then have this woman set the signal. And then … we get attacked, is that the thinking?”

“I’ll get attacked,” said Hella. “Our target has never seen me, and I can take a hit from a bullet if I’m well-prepared for it.”

“Even the sniper rifle?” asked Perry.

“Probably,” said Hella. “Better me than anyone else.”

Perry looked at her with some skepticism.

“If it’s you, then it’s a different thing entirely,” said Hella. “When I get hit, if I get hit, you run after her.”

“I understand,” said Perry. “You’re bait. It’s admirable.”

“Well, don’t thank me just yet,” said Hella. “Let’s see how this pans out. I’ll follow up, if I’m able. Which I should be.”

There was some more talk of logistics and planning. Hella needed clothes to go over her spandex getup, so she could fit in, and even after a spare pair had been acquired for her, she didn’t look quite right: it was her haircut, her demeanor, and the fact that she didn’t look like she belonged, even with the kind of variety that existed within the Commission-controlled Dusklands.

Perry prepared himself, and got a good view out the window, to where the prisoner would be paraded with her red bandana. He needed to see where the shot came from, if there was a shot, though March would be figuring out the trajectories.

The quarry had gone quiet, a lull before the storm. Maybe Queenie had seen their planning go down and was fleeing already, but if she was, there was nothing that could have been done about that.

Hella walked the prisoner out, and Perry watched, keeping far enough back from the window that he wouldn’t be able to be seen, not unless Queenie could see and shoot through walls, which she probably could. Perry didn’t like the waiting; it was making him paranoid.

The walk was slow, just from one building to another. The handkerchief flapped in a mild breeze. It was high noon, probably, though the sun, as usual, was absent.

A part of Perry wondered whether Queenie was even out there.

When Hella was hit, Perry started moving instantly, crashing out of the door even before Marchand had divined where the shot had come from. She had fallen to the ground, but he didn’t waste time going to her and seeing whether she was okay, and instead darted down the central avenue of the quarry town.

Perry knew the timing of Queenie’s rifle, how long it took between shots. He ran straight at where the marker pointed as a timer ticked down the seconds until she would fire again, and as soon as the timer was up, he hooked to the right, running at an angle. The bullet whizzed by him, missing by inches, and he felt a thrill of satisfaction at having anticipated her. The adrenaline was coming in hot, focusing his movements, heightening his senses. The energy felt like it was roiling around him, pulsing through his meridians.

He crossed the ground as swiftly as his legs would carry him, putting a bit of energy from his reserves into every step. Marchand’s accounting put him at ninety miles an hour, an insane speed. The aerodynamics of the power armor were terrible, but he was pushing hard.

He changed direction again when the next shot was supposed to come, having closed half the distance by Marchand’s account. This time, there was no bullet whizzing by him, and he wondered if Queenie was already on the run. He couldn’t see her yet, but he expected that she’d be low to the ground, just barely visible.

His head jerked to the side and he stumbled in his run, tumbling to the ground as his foot failed to gain purchase. He slipped into the shelf space as he came to a stop, hitting the inner wall, then climbed to his feet, checking himself for damage. He’d taken more from the fall than the bullet itself, which had been a glancing blow against his temple. Queenie had aimed for the head and scored a hit, whether that was luck or skill. There was a significant dent in the metal, a little furrow, but nothing that affected his capabilities.

“Overlay the outside environment,” said Perry, voice clipped, as he backed up to the other end of the shelf space.

“What are you doing, sir?” asked Marchand as everything was laid out.

“I’m going to get a running start,” said Perry. He felt the hot anticipation. He wasn’t going to let her get away this time. “Leave the shelf at full speed, run for a few seconds, try not to get hit, then duck back in here and run back out.”

“It seems slow, sir,” said Marchand.

“You said if she gets lucky with one of those shots I’m toast,” said Perry with a small laugh that forced its way up his throat. “I’ll be fine.”

“Ready, sir,” said Marchand.

With the overlay on, Perry raced forward, seeing a reconstruction in wireframe of the surrounding scrubland. He aimed directly for where the opening would be, but didn’t activate it until the last second.

He emerged at half speed, kicking into gear, still at an angle from Queenie’s presumed position. She fired on him and missed, which gave him another chance to go all out. There wasn’t that much space between them any longer. He could see a glint of light off her sniper rifle, and spotted what he thought was a hat just above it.

He ducked into the shelf space right when the next shot was due to come through, vanishing from the real world, barely stopping himself by thumping up against the back wall. If he’d have been going full speed, he would have hurt himself, but he’d managed to slow himself down.

“Perry?” asked a croaky voice.

Perry looked over and saw Eggy struggling to sit up in her bed.

“Go back to sleep,” he said.

“What’s going on,” murmured Eggy.

“In the middle of a fight,” said Perry, readying himself for the run. He could feel his blood start to cool, and he couldn’t allow that.

“Someone lasered me in the chest,” said Eggy, looking down at where she was bandaged.

“That was me, it was to keep you from dying,” said Perry.

“You’re so cool,” replied Eggy as she slumped down into the bed again.

Perry sprinted forward, exiting the shelf at the last minute, slightly at an angle. The shot didn’t come right away, and as he continued, Marchand put up a warning: Queenie was making a run for it. The blown up picture-in-picture showed mostly her scarf as she took off, but so long as Perry didn’t need to take flight, he was faster. He was a hound after a hare, every step swift, head down to minimize drag. He was going to pounce on her and rip her apart, he could feel it.

He gained on her as she shot her rifle, and the zoomed in image resolved into her distant figure. Perry pulled out the laser rifle as he ran, and nearly toppled in the process, but he had it up and ready, then pulled the trigger, drawing on the internal power banks. It lit her up, and she dropped down to the ground with a distant wail. The shot came from where she was slumped over, and the laser rifle’s front end spectacularly exploded as it was struck by a bullet — either luck or incredible skill. He dumped it back into the shelf space, not slowing down.

She fired the weapon again, too soon after, but it was just to move herself, and no bullet was forthcoming. He was three hundred yards away when she reached the train tracks she’d been moving toward, and though there was no train, there was a small spur off the tracks with a handcart on it. She leapt onto it with no hesitation, braced herself, and fired the gun, sending it rolling backward. With the second shot, it began to build speed, but then Perry had closed the distance. He jumped with the intent to strike her, sword drawn and ready, but he hit the same bubble she’d used back in Charlonion and fell down to the tracks. It was anchored to the platform of the hand cart, which had moved off the spur and onto the main rail line.

Perry watched her go, for just a moment.

“Estimate her top speed,” said Perry, breathing hard. “Send word back to the Farfinder. No way she’s faster than us on that thing, right?”

“I believe air friction and rolling resistance will be significant,” said Marchand. “We should be able to out-pace her, sir.”

Perry got down into a crouch, then took off in an explosive moment of power.

Queenie had her rifle, and it was pointed at him, but he didn’t know whether she could shoot out of her bubble or not. He did think that she couldn’t use the bubble often, couldn’t flicker it on and off, and all he’d have to do is stop her in her tracks, then force a confrontation — and ideally, murder her. The wolf in him could smell her blood.

He caught up to her easily, and once he did, kept pace with her. She watched him carefully, firing the gun at the same steady rhythm, though the cart had already achieved its top speed, where the added velocity of the gunfire was balanced out against the forces of friction. The cart wobbled and creaked with the speed. It would be hard to speak over the periodic gunfire, so they just stared at each other.

Eventually, they were going to come to a town, and Perry didn’t know what would happen then. She would have a chance to make a move, and maybe she would try taking hostages, though that wasn’t going to stop him. He’d take whatever shot he had, rather than let her get away and cause more death and destruction, that seemed like an easy trade-off to him. He was feeling frustrated from being unable to touch her when she was so close.

If she hadn’t shot the laser rifle, he’d have tried to fry her with it — the bubble was permeable to light. But that was gone, a piece of trash unless Marchand could fix it.

“Stop now and I’ll go easy on you!” yelled Perry. His voice was amplified by Marchand to be heard over the wind.

“Never!” Queenie shouted back, grinning at him.

Perry pulled ahead of her, racing down the tracks, then pulled a metal bar from the shelf space and dropped it on the tracks. He’d been hoping that it would go through the bubble and flip the whole cart over, but instead it was knocked to the side and swiftly left behind them as he kept running and she kept firing.

He ran ahead again, to try something else, but slowed himself to match her when he saw that she’d pulled the device out of her own extradimensional space. He hadn’t known whether it was too big for her to carry or not, but apparently it wasn’t, and she had it out. She was working up the charge, looking at him dead in the eyes.

It was her final threat. If he stayed, he’d get blasted with it, and so would she. It was a price she was willing to pay. They were far from the quarry now, it was just the two of them, and he had to make a decision. If he did stay, he’d still kill her, he was certain of that, and then the portal would open, and … would he really be in a worse position, having lost the bonds he’d formed along the way? The transient relationships that had somehow morphed into something that endured through worlds? Was it worth it to take her out, at the cost of a piece of himself? There was a thrill to it, to be honest, a way in which he imagined a Perry without bonds as being the ideal form of himself.

The moral burdens would be gone. He wouldn’t care about Anaksi or the Yuuksen, about Esperide or the culture, Mette or the Loop. It felt almost like his true self was calling to him. He wanted so badly to kill her, to dominate her, and not to worry about anything else.

She stared at him, and he stared at her, and she made no move to actually use the thing.

She was a hypocrite. She didn’t want the change for herself, he could see that now. She saw it as a loss of self, a violation of her drives, some unknowable scything of her soul that might be akin to killing her. She was less willing to accept it than he was.

Their eyes locked, and they knew these things about each other.

Perry stumbled once as his foot came down awkwardly on a railroad tie, but he corrected and kept up his stride. Running so fast for so long was burning through his energy reserves, both what was on the internal batteries and what was stored in his vessels. Queenie seemed to have no similar problem, but she couldn’t know that he’d eventually run out of steam.

“Sir, we’re approaching a bend in the tracks,” said Marchand.

Perry looked ahead and saw a steep turn. The trains of the Dusklands weren’t fast, and the handcarts were even slower. Maybe a train would slow down for a turn like this, to keep from derailing, but Queenie was still making her decision, oblivious to any danger.

When the turn came, the hand cart went flying dramatically off the tracks. It spun on its edge for four full rotations, tossing Queenie and Grayspear’s device. The latter exploded into its component pieces on impact, while the former rolled across the dry earth, torn and bloody by the end of it.

Perry’s shoulder gun, controlled by Marchand, shot her twice, but she staggered to her feet anyhow.

“You got me, chubbo,” said Queenie with a bloody smile. “Or I got myself, should say.”

Perry’s sword was drawn. His grip was tight, like a chokehold, until he relaxed it. Her sniper rifle was a hundred feet away from her, and seemed intact, but he wasn’t about to let her go for it. He was faster than she was.

“I’ll take the deal,” said Queenie. “You go easy on me, yeah?”

“We go until the portal opens,” said Perry. “Then I’ll let you through.”

Her blood was nearly black. She was breathing heavily. The bullets had hit her, but she was still walking and talking. There was less damage than the time before too, when she’d been pretending to be a nun.

Maybe if he’d been committed to going easy on her, he’d have dropped the sword, but she was too dangerous for that, so he went in at full force. She was unarmed, and when his sword came down, she raised a hand to block it — and unbelievably, that worked. She still cried out, and her acidic blood coated the blade, but it had sunk a half-inch into her hand, stopped by the bone.

Queenie grinned, gritting her teeth, then swung her scarf out to wrap it around Perry’s neck as he withdrew.

His head lit up from the inside, memories flooding forward, swimming across his field of vision — his mother playing violin, his time orbiting Esperide, a badly scraped knee in the third grade, trivia night at the pub, running as a wolf through the forests of the Great Arc. He had no awareness of where he was, but he felt something in his fingers, leaving him.

The sword stabbed him in the chest, and with the blooming pain came some clarity. Queenie was over him, staring down, eyes wild. He had no idea how much time had passed. The sword was through the armor, through the left lung, and out the back. He was bleeding heavily, and stopped it through force of will, circulating his own blood back around. His heart had gone arrhythmic until he set it back to a steady beat.

Perry ripped the scarf off before anything else, flinging it to the side, and then punched Queenie, sending her up into the air.

He got to his feet, sword still in him, and drew it from his chest, working as quickly as he could. The pain was sharp and wet, like he was drawing out his own heart. When the sword was free, he had a moment of blissful agony, like popping a zit. He flooded his chest with healing energy, which wasn’t fast enough to heal a wound of that size, and steadied himself for another attack.

She hadn’t been this strong last time.

Perry gripped his sword as he watched the scarf wriggle its way across the ground back to her. He wanted to strike out at it, cut it in half, but he didn’t know whether that was possible — it had to have a defense, didn’t it? He kept imagining that it would wrap around his sword and slither down until it touched him again, and if the visions came back, he didn’t think that Queenie would fail to kill him a second time.

“You’re tougher than you look,” she said.

“Same to you,” gasped Perry. His lung was still healing up. The cut had been clean, at least. That was one benefit from being stabbed with your own magical sword.

“K-man treatment,” she said. “I’ve been busy.”

“No shit?” asked Perry. “I was looking for that. Good get. I’m jealous.”

“You know, chubbo, I don’t trust you to go easy,” said Queenie. “I think if you get the better of me, I’m dead.”

Perry took a slow breath, testing his lung. It was still in rough shape, but he could release his hold on his blood and not have it instantly escaping to flood his armor.

Perry stepped forward and swiped at her, testing her more than anything. She moved back, still spry on her feet. The red scarf had moved to her hand, wrapped around her fist, like it was a weapon in its own right.

Perry threw up the flashing lights, blocking the world out around them, and Marchand overlaid a grid on top of it, showing with wireframes the location of everything in real space. Queenie didn’t move from where she was, but she staggered back for a moment, blinded to anything but Perry.

She lunged toward him, and when she brought the scarf to him, he was more prepared this time. He’d practiced before, when they were using a piece of it to communicate, and had the same wall up, his own energy pouring around his mind as a barrier.

It stung. He had a flash of Richter go through his mind, beautiful and intense, then he got his vision back and stabbed Queenie in the stomach. Her flesh was hard as oak, but the sword went in six inches before slipping out and making a wide gash. Her acidic blood spilled to the ground, and some of it got on the armor, but didn’t eat through.

She stepped back, and Perry stepped forward, cuffing her in the head with his other hand. If he could drop her to the ground and just keep stabbing her, it would all be over. She dropped to one knee and then pushed backward, but he was on her, and grabbed her leg, pulling her toward him and stabbing her again. The angle was bad and she took a gash across her chest instead of a sword into her heart, but he had her by her ankle, and she wasn’t about to shake his grip.

His third time stabbing her with the sword was more successful. He got it just under her ribs, angled up, and he put his full power behind it, pulling her toward him at the same time. Nearly the full length of the blade sank into her, through her organs, and she gave a loud gasp for air that became ragged. Perry moved the sword to the side, trying to widen the injury, and he felt something give way inside of her as the sword slipped sideways.

Her eyes had gone wide and blank, and she’d stopped struggling. He punched her in the head once, rabbit fast, and she gave no reaction.

Perry removed the sword and dropped the flashing lights, keeping his grip on her leg. He held her upside down from that leg, so she dangled, and watched as the blood spilled out of her. He wasn’t about to take the chance that she’d come back to life. He’d never heard her stories of what had happened in the other worlds she’d been to, and if she could survive something like this, it wasn’t the sort of thing that she’d have revealed. He was tensed and ready to rip her apart if she so much as twitched.

After a full minute, he stopped thinking that anything was going to happen.

After two minutes, the portal opened up beside him, the final confirmation that he had, in fact, won.

“Shit,” he said softly. His breathing was slowly returning to normal, his heart slowing down.

“Problem, sir?” asked Marchand.

“It’s over,” said Perry.

“I think that a celebration is in order, sir,” said Marchand. “Though given that we’re in the Dusklands, I don’t believe that we can risk leaving the portal, lest we never find it again. And my efforts at contacting the Farfinder have proven fruitless.”

“Then we wait as long as possible,” said Perry. He tapped his foot against the ground. He wasn’t too badly injured, though he thought he’d gotten lucky with the sword through the chest. Hell, he hadn’t even had to go wolf mode, though mostly because he didn’t think it would have helped him. His mind kept going back to the moments of the fight, to pulling his sword from his own chest, to running her through. His legs ached from the chase and the swiftness of his running. He was still in pain.

Perry looked at the portal. The only thing stopping him from going through was that Eggy was in the shelf. And he would need to tell the Farfinder, so they could set up their tools to redirect him, if they could even do that.

“She couldn’t even commit to her own ethos,” said Perry. “Maybe she could have beaten me, if she’d just used the thing.”

“Are we giving eulogies, sir?” asked Marchand.

Perry finally set the body down, but didn’t take his eyes off it. “No,” said Perry. “Just shaking off the adrenaline. The warm glow of a win.” He frowned and took a deep, steadying breath. He needed sober analysis. “Do you think Hella is alive?”

“She was getting to her feet as we left, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry looked over at the destroyed device, which wasn’t too far away from him. It was shattered beyond repair, and the core was cracked into multiple pieces, almost certainly useless. His eyes went to the sniper rifle, which was unharmed, and he gave a last look at Queenie’s body before trotting over to pick it up.

It was a huge piece of kit, and he looked it over. There was a selector that changed how it fired, with three strange runes for each. A slight flex of his translation muscles decoded it into propulsion, distance, and safety, which was less intriguing than the runes. He switched it to distance, then aimed the sniper rifle off into the distance and pulled the trigger, half-expecting it to fail for unforeseen reasons. Instead, it fired off a bullet, with no apparent need to reload thanks to whatever magic it was infused with.

It was his now, not that he thought he’d have much use for it. He stored it in the shelf.

“We wait for the Farfinder,” said Perry. “They know I came this way, and they’ll follow the tracks, and eventually they’ll be in range.”

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand.

“Or we could go through,” said Perry. “I’m not sure Eggy would ever forgive me.”

“I suspect that many people wouldn’t,” said Marchand.

“And I need to talk to Anaksi at least once before I go,” said Perry. “I wasn’t able to undo the damage to her people. I won’t be able to help her. I’ll be leaving without helping the Yuuks.”

“It isn’t necessary for you to leave at all, sir,” said Marchand.

“What?” asked Perry.

“It would, so far as we know the mechanics, actually be preferable if someone else went through the portal,” said Marchand. “The portal will be redirected in either case, and you will be aboard the Farfinder, which we believe will sever your connection to thresholding and the Grand Spell’s mechanisms. Once at our chosen destination, a fresh thresholder will be facing a less severe threat, especially as the destination will ideally be Earth 2.”

“Ah,” said Perry. He eyed the portal. “And then I’m out of the game, forever, or at least until another thresholder battle takes place and I hitch a ride.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Do you disagree with my logic?”

“I don’t,” said Perry. “But …”

“Is it not about logic, sir?” asked Marchand.

Perry kept his mouth shut. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I can’t keep doing this.” His hand went to his chest, and the wound that would probably take the better part of a day to close. He could easily have died there. It felt so good to win, so righteous, but it could easily have gone the other way.

Perry looked down at the psychic scarf, and wondered whether he could steal that too. It was moving of its own accord, but he didn’t want to touch it. It had nearly killed him, after all.

When Perry checked the shelf, Eggy was back asleep, so he didn’t disturb her.

He waited some more.

“You think I’m right about them showing up?” asked Perry. “That they’ll follow the tracks and stumble across me?”

“They’re likely worried about being sniped, sir,” said Marchand.

So Perry sat and waited, having nothing better to do, and watching the portal. He had a day to decide whether it would be him or someone else. Probably it would be someone else. It made sense for it to be someone else. Nevermind that it was his portal, one that had opened just for him, and promptly this time, with no doubt or waiting around.

After an hour, Perry spotted someone on the horizon. It wasn’t the Farfinder, but instead a man in all white on a white horse. Perry watched him carefully and idly touched the wound that was still visible on the armor, not yet healed over. In fact, the blood that had seeped from the wound wasn’t even cleaned up by second sphere healing yet, and between the armor and his skin was a sticky layer of coagulation. Perry would fight, if he had to, but he’d have really preferred not to. White on white was what these people called an angel, a mysterious person from mysterious origins, more so than the other denizens of the Dusklands.

“What ho!” called the man as he approached. “Is this your portal?”

“It is,” said Perry. “Is that a problem?”

“Other worlds,” the man said. “The source of all Light.” He got fairly close, not so much to be a threat, then got down off his horse.

“How’d you find me?” asked Perry.

“We know the signs,” the angel replied. He took a silver flask from his pocket and took a quick drink. “Do you mind if I sample it?”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Perry.

The angel stepped toward the portal and pulled a glass bottle from within his white jacket. He swiped it through the portal casually, his hand passing through the membrane momentarily, and when he was finished, the bottle was filled with light of the same color as the portal.

“A fine vintage,” said the angel, holding it up to look at it in the afternoon sunlight (though of course the sun was missing).

“The destination isn’t set until later,” said Perry.

“Yes, of course,” replied the angel. He stuck the bottle back in his jacket pocket. “Well, I’ll be off, thank you for indulging me.”

“That’s it?” asked Perry.

“Should there be more?” asked the angel. When Perry didn’t answer, he mounted his horse and began trotting off, back to wherever he’d come from.

“I’ve gotta get out of this place,” said Perry, half to himself and half to Marchand.

Another ten minutes later, Marchand made contact with the Farfinder over radio, and ten minutes after that, it landed clumsily beside the portal. For better or worse, his people had found him.