Split

 

Knowing what she knew now about Ignotus-33, Dyna expected the mountain man to charge her. Ignotus was an organization out to kill her specifically, as long as Id’s information was correct. Thus, it could be reasoned that the Ouija board incident had been another attempt at killing her. Or perhaps their first real attempt to kill her. Hematite and Ruby being targeted were likely incidental, collateral damage. Even stealing the Ouija board and ransacking her apartment had either been a crime of opportunity or a method to disguise their true aim.

Expecting it to finish what had to have been its mission made a lot of sense. Especially because the tulpa were artificial; made more than formed. It likely wouldn’t have developed a sense of self or proper desires.

So, seeing those six white lights look over Dyna without seeming notice and stop on November was a shock.

November’s shadowy form jolted. She took a careful step backward. “I think I am going to run now,” she said, oddly distorted voice trembling.

The hunched monstrosity reared back, lifting its… arms? Front legs? The roar it unleashed sounded like a cross between a foghorn and every key on a keyboard being slammed at the same time. When its legs hit the ground again, the world shook. Several of the gathered soldiers stumbled, falling to the ground. Dyna staggered back, bumping into O’Neil.

The square-cube law meant that as something’s size doubled, its mass was cubed. The larger something was, the more weight it had to lug around. The larger something was, the slower it would move no matter the musculature it had. It was simple laws of physics.

Physics apparently did not apply to thoughtforms.

The mountain man charged. It barreled across the room, plowing over one of the soldiers. Slamming into the wall at the opposite end of the room caused another earthquake. November glided out of the way, not running so much as she drifted through space. Her own movements were quick and snappy as well.

The soldiers were not idle. Bullets and disruptors alike fired at the mountain man. Neither had any visible effect. Dyna had already made her report on the effectiveness of guns against tulpa while within the noosphere, but she thought the disruptors would do something. Slow it down, at least. November had just said that the mountain man was nowhere near the level of the Hatman and the Hatman had been at least staggered by the disruption effect.

Unless it was something unique to the mountain man. Even when in a human form, he had seemed utterly implacable, requiring a physics-defying artifact to defeat.

“We need to get through the portal!” O’Neil shouted.

Dyna glanced toward the shimmering ring in the air. She couldn’t hear what was going on beyond the threshold, but she could see. The yellow warning lights had turned red. Soldiers filed in through the main door, all taking up defensive positions around the portal. Most of the scientists and technicians had been evacuated, though it looked like Doctor Langford was still at the main control panel. She could easily imagine Beatrice spouting off warning after warning while alarms blared in the background.

On this side of the portal, soldiers were backing up. They were still firing toward the mountain man, but had obviously realized that they weren’t effective. A pair were trying to drag the poor guy who had been run down.

“And leave November?” Dyna shook her head as the room shook again.

Both tulpa were up near the ceiling, ignoring gravity, one chasing the other.

“They’re going to collapse the portal if we don’t get through it! It’s protocol!”

“Then go.” Dyna shoved him off her. “Get the experimental disruptor! Or get me every artifact the administrators will allow!”

“My orders are to ensure your—”

Dyna gripped the man by the straps on his suit and pulled. They both tumbled to the ground, thrown aside just enough to avoid another charge from the mountain man.

November, spotting an opportunity, dove toward the portal. The mountain man’s six white eyes followed her movements as it let out another foghorn bellow.

As soon as its line of sight crossed the portal, the shimmering ring in the air shuddered and shrank down to the size of a pinhole. The last bit of light vanished just before November could reach it.

“Damn it,” O’Neil hissed.

“Are they going to reopen it?”

O’Neil didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t see his face behind the mirrored glass of his silver suit, but with the way he was stringing together colorful curses, he clearly wasn’t pleased with the situation.

If they didn’t open it, Dyna didn’t think it was the end of the world. Spatial anomalies had been growing more and more common ever since November appeared. Not to mention Ignotus had a way of opening portals from the noosphere. They could deal with that later.

The mountain man was the highest priority.

Getting back to her feet, Dyna ran across the large room. Most of the soldiers had made it back through the portal. Aside from O’Neil, there was only one other trapped in here who had made the poor decision to rush to the door that should have opened back into the rest of the facility. He was trying to scan an identification card to force it open, but wasn’t having much luck.

Ruby was still in the room as well. The membrane of shadow clinging to her skin alternated between shrinking in on her and flaring up like an angry flame. The girl herself, however, wasn’t moving beyond what it took to keep the mountain man and November in sight.

While the soldiers had cleared out, not all of them had maintained a tight grip on their equipment. Dyna skidded to a stop not far from Ruby, snatching a disruptor from the floor.

“It’s going to eat us,” Ruby said, voice unnaturally calm. “It’s going to catch November eventually. Then it will be my turn.”

“No one is getting eaten.”

“What do you think you’re going to do about that?”

Dyna held up the disruptor. It wasn’t the same model that Tartarus had used, though it was based on the one Dyna had brought back. It lacked the weird angled cylinder above the barrel and its trigger had been replaced with several buttons on the back side, meant to be pressed with the thumb. Instead of knobs along the sides for calibration, it seemed to have several different settings built into those buttons, ready to go.

“The security team already tried.”

“Yes, but I am me.” Dyna looked over the disruptor, checking for any other major differences. “I am a psychic. An artificer. I create artifacts and gadgets.”

“You’re turning that into an artifact?”

Dyna flashed the younger red-head a grin. “If you want to help, keep it away from November until I finish.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Look at them!”

Both tulpa were little more than shadowy streaks, blurring through the air. November barely kept out of reach of the mountain man. The mountain man seemed to be getting better at turning rather than just ramming into every wall. Neither had left the room. Dyna wondered if they could with the doors closed or if November was trying to keep it here, counting on the institute to pull through with some assistance.

Their movements should have been impossible. But physics didn’t care about tulpa. They weren’t physical creatures with actual bodies. They were beings of thought. In the real world, they had bodies to contain that thought, but here?

This was the noosphere. A world of thought, not proper physics.

Dyna blinked.

This was the noosphere. Malleable and changing as the general consensus of everyone alive changed.

Those immediately perceiving the noosphere should have a stronger effect on it, their thoughts more directly affecting it. Being inside it…

“It’s this world,” Dyna said. “Do you think you can fly?”

“Of course not!”

“Then you can’t fly.” Dyna looked down at the disruptor in her hands. Flying was useless for her, but other things? Dyna was concentrating on the disruptor as much as she could, flooding it with psionic energy. But this was a world of thought. In other words, it was a world of psionic energy. The entire place around her was brimming with those psychic undercurrents.

It should take barely any effort at all to affect change. If she could turn a coil gun into a lightning gun merely by mistaking what it was out in the real world…

Dyna lifted the disruptor, trying to aim.

The tulpa were too fast now. The mountain man didn’t stop and Dyna could barely see the difference between him and November. She didn’t want to hit the wrong target, not knowing what the effects of this weapon might be.

“I need the mountain man stopped, Ruby. Just for a moment.”

“What am I—”

“Ruby!”

“Arrgh!” Ruby ground her teeth together, staring up at the tulpa. As she shouted, the shadows coiling off her skin stretched and grew, flowing around her until her skin was only visible through the occasional gap.

Dyna didn’t know what she was doing, but it worked. The mountain man stopped on a dime and turned.

Dyna kicked Ruby out of the way, not wanting her hit, and moved into place as the mountain man charged directly toward her. Her thumb slammed down on every button.

A flash of light erupted from the front of the gun. Shards of shadow split off from the mountain man, dissipating into the air, shrinking its hulking form. One shard of shadow, a little larger than the rest, hovered in the air for a moment. November dove down, grasping hold of it with her handless tendrils.

Dyna didn’t get to watch more.

The remainder of the mountain man slammed into her. The force made her lose her grip on the disruptor gun, sending it skidding across the floor where it crashed into a console. The mountain man didn’t stop at just hitting into her, however. It dragged her across the floor until they hit the wall. Thick tendrils of thought slammed into her chest, lifting Dyna up against the wall, pinning her in place.

Four white lights tilted in the shrunken tulpa. It stared at Dyna, pressing its claw-like grasp against her. Back against the wall, Dyna couldn’t expand her chest enough to breathe.

Ruby raced across the room, picking up the fallen disruptor gun. She aimed, but nothing happened. Ruby’s glare shifted to surprise as she looked down at the gun.

Dyna didn’t know if it had broken, run out of batteries, or only worked in her hands. Whatever the case, she struggled against the arm, trying to suck in as much air as she could. She wasn’t going to get any help from November either. That shard that had broken off from the mountain man looked like it was fighting back against her attempts to integrate it. Had she bitten off more than she could chew? Would she even still be her?

Dyna grit her teeth. The experiment wasn’t supposed to have turned out this way. She just wanted a measure of how strong the tulpa were. How could she have known that the containment unit wouldn’t have held the mountain man in the noosphere?

A tunnel vision started to form on the edges of Dyna’s vision as her lungs burned. Couldn’t she just imagine more air in her lungs? She was fairly sure that something had cracked in her ribs, but she barely felt it over the burn for air.

Ruby stepped closer, the shadow around her flaring up again. Her face was set in grim determination, like she knew she wouldn’t survive the mountain man focusing on her but was going to get its attention anyway.

It was working too. The mountain man’s four white eyes shifted on its head, swiveling slowly to face Ruby. Pressure on Dyna’s chest lessened just enough to suck in a breath of air. She spat it back out immediately in a single squeaked word.

“Don’t!”

Dyna couldn’t let Ruby do this. The little girl with no memories of her childhood, abused and thrown into harrowing situations… Her friend.

A stray thought erupted from Dyna. A clone of herself, shark-like teeth already spread across its featureless mask of a face, launched itself at the mountain man without any hesitation. The teeth started to tear into the mountain man’s shadowy body, only for Dyna’s clone to be sucked into the larger mass, vanishing into it without a trace.

A part of her had just died.

Dyna was still here. Her perspective was in her body. She was human, not a tulpa. She didn’t think she had just shaved off integrations. But, nonetheless, some of her had still just thrown itself to death to save Ruby. Dyna’s fork of herself, a complete clone of herself, a perspective knew it was going to die and still had done it.

It hadn’t even bought that much time. The four white lights barely blinked before they honed in on Ruby once again.

Another stray thought split off from Dyna. Another fork of her consciousness, duplicated in its entirety, launched itself toward the mountain man. It provided another few seconds of distraction. The lights in the mountain man’s face swam, but focused again.

Its pressure on Dyna lessened.

A third stray thought split off. A fourth. A fifth. At any moment, Dyna felt like she could be the one appearing beside herself. From the perspective of her clones, that was exactly what was happening. And yet, to save Ruby, to save herself, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would throw herself into the mountain man.

They attacked the mountain man with selfless fervor, yet the mountain man, even damaged by the disruptor, was just too substantial for her clones.

Even still, they were distracting it. It turned its focus to eating her clones. Dyna fell to the ground, released from its pinning grip. Its eyes weren’t on her or Ruby anymore, but on each clone as the sprung into existence near Dyna.

“You’re making it stronger!” November called from somewhere in the room. Had she successfully integrated that shard of the mountain man?

Dyna didn’t know. Her focus was on the mass itself, forming clone after clone. Two sprung up on either side of her. They weren’t even trying to tear it apart anymore; Dyna had long since realized the futility. Even in its weakened state, human-level consciousness couldn’t compete.

So why bother?

The second she stopped, it would turn back to the rest of the room. Either herself, Ruby, or November.

Dyna couldn’t allow that, so she continued. As she continued, her plan solidified in her mind.

What was that old saying? “If you can’t beat them,” she shouted back to November with her jaw locked in a tight grin, “join them.”

“What are you—”

Four clones appeared at once. Eight clones popped into existence. A dozen. Two dozen. Dyna slowly pushed herself to her feet. Something ground in her chest, a sharp spike of pain accompanied every breath, but…

What was a broken rib in this place?

One of her fresh clones helped her up before joining the steady stream of shadow diving into the mountain man.

Could she fix her rib? In a world of thought, all she had to do was think of a fix, right?

Dyna’s next breath came far easier. She stood up straight, glaring at the mountain man.

Something was changing in its stooped appearance. The formless monstrosity made from vaguely humanoid tendrils was slowly gaining a proper form. Not that of the hulking human form the mountain man had worn outside the noosphere. Neither was it that of its original almost elephant-like appearance.

No.

A woman was forming in front of Dyna. A familiar woman. Though a shadowy mirror of herself, Dyna easily recognized the contours of her own face on its blank mask. The four lights that had been the mountain man’s eyes winked out, replaced by a mere two glowing eyes. Even the eye-shaped pendant that Dyna wore for good luck formed on its chest.

The flood of clones stopped, but the tulpa didn’t attack. And why should it? Dyna wasn’t about to attack herself.

“What did you do? Are you insane?”

Dyna tore her eyes off her tulpa self, looking up to November. November’s form had changed slightly. Her shadows looked less stable than they had been and one of the deep pits that formed her eyes now had a faint glow behind it. Dyna hoped she was alright, that she was still herself, but…

“You were right, November.”

“About what?”

Dyna grinned. “If half of yourself isn’t yourself anymore, who are you?”

Dyna looked down at the large tulpa in front of her. She had no idea how much of herself comprised the tulpa that had once been the mountain man, but she bet that it was quite a bit more than fifty percent. She had wanted to be sure.

“Is it safe?” Dyna asked herself.

She knew her plan. Thus all of her knew her plan. Or at least the vast majority that she had created after coming up with the plan. Her clone knew what she was asking.

The large tulpa clone of herself held out a hand.

“What are— Don’t!”

Just as November shouted, Dyna clapped her hand into the tulpa’s hand.

It lunged at her, diving into her.

Dyna’s lone body crumpled to the floor, vision snapping to blackness.