They rejected everything real I’d ever known. They embraced not just the lack of change—they rewrote their very souls to thrive in a place with no time, no distance…nothing at all except themselves. How could they reject love, growth, life itself?
I almost did something similar, I admitted. I almost walked off into the nowhere and let everything I’d ever loved fade away. It was a distressing thought.
“This frightens me in ways I can’t express,” M-Bot said. “The realization that I’m capable of doing the same thing…” His drone turned in the air to look back at Chet. “It seems suspicious that the delvers would delete their memories, and then people would start to forget their memories in here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think it’s clear from previous visions that the memory loss is a newer thing. In fact…it seems much stronger with regard to people I love. Memories of my friends have vanished faster than my memories of Gran-Gran’s stories. Maybe because the delvers’ main source of pain was someone they loved? Someone they deleted from their memories?”
“It appears likely,” Chet said as the lightburst in the vision grew ever brighter. “That light shining out, spreading through the belt—we exert an incredible pressure on this place. Even I didn’t realize…”
“So what does this tell us?” M-Bot asked. “They were so afraid that Spensa would come here. Is it just because they didn’t want her to know what they were?”
“More that they suspected in these memories were secrets to their pain,” Chet said. “They didn’t know what that pain was, but they knew if we found it…we’d be capable of destroying them with it.”
“I…don’t think I know how to do that,” I said. “Even after seeing this.”
“But you do,” Chet said, smiling toward me. “Isolate them, Spensa. Make them feel alone. That will crush them, cripple them…and as they have no bodies, just cytonic minds, you should be able to extinguish them.”
“That seems…harsh,” M-Bot said. “Couldn’t we somehow remind them of their humanity, like we did to you?”
“I don’t know,” Chet said. “I think that won’t work, not now that they’re prepared for it. You can’t force someone to be kind or to accept growth.”
“It’s war, M-Bot,” I replied. “War is always harsh.”
I didn’t know how we’d isolate the delvers, but it did feel like a start. Brade isolated my mind in the nowhere for a while, then tried to imprison me. Could we do something similar to one of the delvers? Chet was right, this information would be extremely useful. At the very least, I’d been able to see how he reacted to that man in the vision, the one who had created him. The delvers might react similarly to an image of him.
“Scud,” I whispered. “We need to get this knowledge out and give it to the others. The answer to defeating the delvers, or at least resisting them, is in the things we’ve learned.”
“Time for our final sprint, then,” Chet said.
I nodded. As I’d always felt, it was time to head for the lightburst. Despite that knowledge I lingered in the vision, watching the lightburst grow. Soon it reached the size it was in our time. The vision finally faded. As it did, I felt an awareness—an attention—snap into place from ahead.
They’d spotted us.
You are here! the delvers sent. You reject our truce!
I pushed back, shoving them out of my mind. But they simmered and started gathering themselves for a fight.
“They’ve seen us,” I said to the others. “Let’s go.”
We ran toward the ship, each footfall increasingly firm. I had to get out. This was why the delvers had tried to keep me from advancing any farther, why they’d been frightened of me all along. They knew. The secret was in what I’d learned. Maybe it was what Chet said—isolating them. But it could be something else.
If smarter minds than mine could get this knowledge—someone like Rig—then surely they could figure out what to do with it. I hauled myself up onto the ship’s wing, then helped Chet up before slipping into the cockpit.
“Did you find what you were seeking?” Hesho asked from the dash.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Then count yourself lucky indeed,” he said, settling into his cupholder. “For being blessed to discover what exactly it was that you wanted.”
“It was less a discovery,” I said, glancing at Chet, “and more a gift.”
I lifted us off and turned us straight toward the lightburst. Then I hit the overburn, and this time it felt entirely appropriate to go at full speed.
Chapter 42
My hands grew slick with sweat on the controls as we continued onward, and the distance between us and the lightburst shrank minute by minute. Scud. This was insanity. We were facing a near-infinite number of delvers in the part of the belt where their power was the strongest.
“The plan we devised earlier can work,” Chet said to me, his face in the corner of my proximity monitor screen.
“It seems so unlikely…” I said. “What if we distract just one, rather than the whole crowd?”
“Ah,” he said, “but remember, they all think exactly the same. If you were facing a hundred people, and you had a plan that was one percent likely to fool any given person—you would fail. You’d fool one out of the hundred and be dead from the ninety-nine. But with my kind, if you fool or intimidate one, you will fool or intimidate them all. Statistically this is much better—a much more true one-percent chance.”
It was an all-in gamble. We had little chance of success, but at least it was a chance.
Ahead of us, the light started to boil. It churned and seethed, undulating and rippling, becoming uneven in patches. I glanced at the clock; we’d been flying for about forty-five minutes since we left the Solitary Shadow.
“They’re preparing,” Chet said.
I glanced at his picture on my screen. “I hope we—”
Then I screamed. Chet was melting.
His face began to drip off. His eyes began to glow white.
“It’s all right,” he said to me. “I’m still me. I did not realize…getting closer to the lightburst… It is growing difficult for me to hold this shape.”
“You look like that burl!” I said. “From when we first entered!”
“Yes,” he said. “She was possessed by one of my kind, and her self started to disintegrate. Hesho held to himself better and retained his shape. We can hope that like Hesho did, the unfortunate burl returned to normal once the delver left her. But for now you must ignore me and continue.”
“Does this mean you’re losing your identity?” Hesho asked him.
“More that I’m focused on not doing so,” he said, “and so am not keeping as tight a control on this physical form. I am well, Spensa. I promise.”
Right. I could do this. But it was unnerving regardless.
“Continue,” Chet said, the word slurring as his lips melted. He turned off the image of his face, so just his voice came through the headphones in my helmet. “Courage, Spensa. We decided to do this. Not to run. We decided.”
“We decided,” M-Bot said.
“We decided,” Hesho agreed.
A fluting sound. Doomslug sent her determination to me in the form of images. I’d told her to get away if she could, but she understood what we were doing—at least the fundamental ideas. Her kind had evolved to be afraid of a type of creature from her home planet. The delvers were an even more terrifying version of those.