Knowing there was something lurking in the darkness made the tight corridors of the Psychic Detector’s underground all the more claustrophobic. Her bullets hadn’t done anything to it. Or anything obvious, anyway. That only served to make her more tense. If it did pop out of the ventilation and attack, Dyna’s only defense was to reset time and hope that changing her actions changed its actions enough that it didn’t rip her apart.
This place was designed to manufacture tulpa. She couldn’t believe that it didn’t have any anti-tulpa weaponry. Yet, checking every door she passed by, she hadn’t seen a single disruptor or even a vague idea of one.
Which, unfortunately, made her feel like there was a Continuity Engine in the vicinity. Her power would have generated a room with just what she needed otherwise. Probably.
Instead, she moved from room to room, wondering where Frankenstein had gone while keeping hyper-aware of any vents overhead.
Most of the rooms weren’t anywhere nearly as impressive as the control room. A lot looked like equipment storage rooms, machine rooms, or rooms that held spare parts. No devious science laboratories. No living personnel. No sign of the noosphere portal device that Frankenstein had mentioned.
Not wanting to sit around in one place—or trap herself inside a room with no exit—Dyna hadn’t been investigating each room thoroughly for more secret passages. She was hoping that this entire place being behind one secret control panel was enough.
“I do not mean to alarm you,” Beatrice said as Dyna slowly closed another of the storage room doors. That was the third she had passed so far. “A facility-wide alert has just sounded at the Carroll Institute upon detecting anomalous activity within the noosphere.”
“Define anomalous activity,” Dyna whispered, moving slowly down the corridor. She had passed a T-intersection not so long ago. Had she picked the wrong route?
“Increased tulpa presence. Analysis indicates Alpha intends to assault the Carroll Institute with a small army. All non-security personnel are directed to safe-rooms. Phrenomorphics disruption teams are taking up positions at key areas, including the artifact vault.”
“Is Alpha herself there?”
“Unknown. Initiates are being evacuated.”
“I doubt that war will get far. DT is with Alpha’s tulpa. I wouldn’t let them attack the campus so she wouldn’t let them either. Unless she has another… Specimen Five? The eye-tulpa. Unless she has another one of those, DT could probably decimate the tulpa army on her own.”
A loud hum of motors or high-voltage electronics powering up echoed down the corridor, making Dyna tense. She snapped her head around, hand on her watch’s bezel as she looked for any sign of Specimen Seven. She checked the ceiling, the floor, and the pipes. There was no sign of movement. The glasses didn’t highlight anything noteworthy either.
Dyna started to relax until a grainy film crossed her vision.
“No records I have access… control room…”
“Beatrice? I’m getting a little static and the glasses are blank,” Dyna said, looking around. The ventilation shafts Beatrice had been highlighting for her weren’t highlighted anymore. Data streams and notifications on the interface also failed.
One bright red text appeared in the center of her view.
SIGNAL LOSS
Dyna pressed her lips together, considering walking back a few steps. Beatrice had said that they would lose connection eventually as Dyna put more distance between herself and Walter’s phone. She had thought it would be a little bit further than this, however. Putting her back to a wall, she took the glasses off and pulled out her own phone. Without Beatrice’s enhancements, the sunglasses were just sunglasses. Wearing them indoors was detrimental.
Although she intended to call Beatrice to resume communication, Dyna’s phone wouldn’t connect. No signal.
Perhaps she hadn’t just walked out of range.
That hum had come from up ahead, further along the way she was walking.
Now on her own, the walls closed down around her even more than before. She kept moving forward. It was the only option unless she wanted to run away. At that point, Dyna would just have to hope that Alpha was at the Carroll Institute so that DT could try to capture or kill her.
Dyna doubted Alpha was that stupid.
No. Alpha probably didn’t even want anything from the Carroll Institute. If Dyna were in Alpha’s position, she would be trying to disappear—go into hiding and maybe restart her operations elsewhere, if possible. The Carroll Institute had a lot of psychics. Dyna didn’t know all of them or their capabilities. Alpha did. With her administrative knowledge, she would know where, who, and how to hit in order to disrupt any attempts at tracking her down.
Finding Alpha might be difficult if she had escaped into the noosphere and had a way of rapidly moving about within.
Frankenstein had to know something. The way he ran off… She needed to find him.
If she failed, she needed to find the Continuity Engine. If she disabled it, she might be able to force Alpha into a confrontation using her power, much like how she had apparently done with that monologuing room.
Hearing a hollow thud from somewhere overhead made Dyna tense.
She needed to get to her goals before that tulpa decided to attack.
Dyna picked up the pace, moving from room to room with haste as she searched. More closets, more storage rooms. Another armory, this one with older, worn equipment. Dyna didn’t investigate any for more than a few seconds.
The humming was getting louder. She was getting closer.
Arriving at another door, Dyna started to spin the wheel only to find it jammed. Not locked—it spun partially—but something was preventing it from turning fully. Although she wasn’t sure if her bobby pin could stop a chair propped up against the wheel, Dyna pulled it out anyway. There were no keyholes for it. She wedged it against the seam of the door as best she could and twisted.
The bobby pin met with some resistance, pushing against her twist.
Something loud clattered on the other side of the door, followed quickly by a startled yelp. Dyna didn’t waste her chance, grabbing the wheel and spinning the rest of the way. Something pushed against the door, keeping it closed. Dyna slammed her shoulder into the door, forcing it open even as she pulled up her PP-2000, dropping the bobby pin in the process.
Frankenstein, head still hidden under his quilted mask, slid back on the floor, knocked over from her push against the door. He groaned, gripping at his wrist as he laid on his back.
“Oh. It’s just you.”
“Shut up,” Dyna hissed. She scanned the ceiling of the room, taking note of the single vent up against one wall. With no other sign of Specimen Seven, she pressed the door closed and spun the wheel, noting a thin wire dangling from it that must have been connected to a nearby pipe, preventing the wheel from spinning when she had tried.
“You don’t have to be so violent,” he groaned, picking himself up as he kept rubbing his wrist. “I was just… getting us an escape route.”
“Us,” Dyna said, tone flat as she picked up the bobby pin. One of the prongs had bent. Carefully, she bent it back, hoping that the little bit of deformed metal wouldn’t cause problems. “I’m sure you intended to get both of us out when you ran off without a word.”
“That’s not fair. I was frightened! You didn’t see what Specimen Seven did to the others.”
“I did see, actually,” she said, turning back to look at the rest of the room.
It held the noosphere portal. Large, up against one wall, it was an exact duplicate of the ringed machine that she had found in the Idaho Falls meat packing plant. The same one the Carroll Institute had taken down into Phrenomorphics and one quite similar to the one that granted her access to Beatrice’s core.
A bright pinpoint light right at the center of the rings indicated that Frankenstein had already started up the process of opening a spatial tear. Dyna doubted he would have left it open for her.
“Is Alpha on the other side?” she asked, keeping her gun pointed in Frankenstein’s direction.
“Ah…”
“Just open the portal,” she said with a menacing motion of her gun toward the control panel. “We need to get out of here before your mad tulpa finds a way in here.”
“Excellent idea. Never heard a better one.”
“Just do it.” Dyna scowled, moving further into the room. She deliberately positioned herself so that Frankenstein would be between her and both the vent and door. At no point in moving did she feel even the slightest guilt about putting him in harm’s way.
If he got attacked, she could rewind time. If she got attacked, they were both dead.
Besides, he was its creator. Only fair that he face it first. Again. First for the second time.
With a small shake of her head, Dyna looked toward the portal and immediately regretted it. The bright pinpoint of light made her wince and glance away, being too bright to look at for any amount of time. As she looked away, blinking the spots from her eyes, she noticed something else in the room. Something she didn’t recognize as being a part of the portal structure.
It was a little device, standing about thigh-high. A metal sphere the size of a person’s head had been suspended above a coil of cables, held up by three thick brass pipes either pressed against or into the sphere’s mid-section. Several blinking lights around the base winked in and out as she stared at it.
Something about it made it hard to look away from. It took her a long moment to realize. The metal sphere, though polished to the point where a mirror would be envious, didn’t actually reflect everything. The room as a whole was there. The portal ring was there. The bright light of the portal opening was not. Neither was Dyna herself, despite standing in a position where she should be perfectly reflected in its surface like M.C. Escher in the reflecting sphere.
Being a sphere, she should have been able to see Frankenstein as well. He wasn’t there either.
It only reflected the world.
“What is that?” Dyna asked, tearing her eyes away with some effort.
“What is… Oh. That. That is… a thing.”
“What is that?” Dyna tried again.
The hostility in her voice made Frankenstein freeze for just a moment. “It’s… just a device that keeps things… safe.”
“Frankenstein.”
“Uh… yes?”
“I’m not going to ask again.”
“Good. Because I really don’t know how to answer without causing a lot of problems.”
Dyna clamped her jaw shut, staring at the strange man. Looking back to the odd device, she walked over.
“Ah! Don’t touch it. It’s… uh… deadly. Very deadly. Dangerous device. Shouldn’t be handled with human hands.”
“Why is it sitting out here in the open?” Dyna asked, not believing the man in the slightest.
“Well, that’s where the tulpa left it when they brought it back from… elsewhere.”
“It feels strange. Calming, almost. I should be much tenser than I am, knowing that Specimen Seven is lurking in the vents—”
“It’s what!” Frankenstein shrieked, head twisting around in a panic.
“But it isn’t an artifact, is it? It’s…” Dyna crouched down, staring at the reflective metal at eye level. She still couldn’t see herself, just the wall behind her. Her eyes drifted away from the sphere, down one of the brass pipes to the small coil of wires at the base. A few other cables led away from it, passing into exposed circuit boards. Two circuit boards were a bit darker than the third, looking older. The third might have been a recent replacement.
Tilting her head, looking down at the newer circuit board, she noticed some text under a symbol. Three hexagons.
“Tartarus… This is from Tartarus.” Dyna blinked, eyes snapping back up to the sphere. “This is the Continuity Engine.”
“No, that’s… not true. It’s a tesla coil. The boys picked it up at the dollar store. Spent twenty dollars.” Frankenstein paused. “Inflation,” he added with a shrug.
Dyna wasn’t paying attention to him anymore, staring at the device. It really was here. Ado had said that the tulpa had only been examining it. If they had taken it, wouldn’t they have mentioned that at some point?
No. None of them would have said anything. In fact, Ado’s comments about it only being examined had probably been more manipulation, forcing Dyna into creating a whole new Continuity Engine just to keep Tartarus safe from her.
Alternatively, Alpha had lied, doing the same thing here in making Dyna create one for them. But… that didn’t make much sense. Dyna couldn’t alter minds. Frankenstein clearly knew what it was.
Her eyes roamed over the machine, finding a thick cable trailing to a standard outlet on the wall.
She grabbed it—
“No!”
—and pulled.
The bright light from the portal winked out as the mother of all headaches bludgeoned Dyna over the head with a sack of bricks. She staggered, strength in her legs failing. The room spun around her.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” a voice echoed, sounding distant and yet far too loud against Dyna’s pounding head. “It’s me. She found it. Unplugged—Yes I tried. She had a gun! No. Not safely shutdown at all. Continuity collapse? What the hell does that even mean? What? Fine. Fine. But I want a raise. I want a whole damn island of my— Damn it…”
Dyna planted a hand on the ground and tried to push herself up. Something kicked into her wrist and she found herself flat on her face. A shiny black boot was all that was visible.
“Not my job…”
Gloved hands gripped her wrist and yanked off her watch. The clatter as it skidded across the room felt far too loud against her ears, but not nearly as loud as the noise of Frankenstein trying to pull the gun out from under her body. Her phone fell out of her pocket, along with her mirror. A single sweep of the shiny black boot sent them toward the darkened portal.
The spinning of the room started to slow down but not before Dyna couldn’t take it anymore. The putrid smell of vomit stung Dyna’s nose just as she felt the gun’s strap go over her head.
“This is… Ugh.”
Eyes coming back into focus, Dyna looked up.
She found herself staring down the barrel of her own looted PP-2000, the sharp angles of its design looking all the more menacing from this position.
“Really sorry about this. I’m just supposed to make the monsters. Not kill kids. But… Can’t go against the boss, unfortunately.”
Dyna let out a small scoff. “I’m sure… you’re broken up about it,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“More than you can imagine.”
“I saved your life. Your creature—”
“Please. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
He was hesitating. Were their positions reversed, Dyna liked to imagine she would have pulled the trigger well before she apologized. Now?
Her eyes flicked to the Continuity Engine. The reflective sphere worked properly now, reflecting herself, Frankenstein, and one other bit of motion.
“You know,” she said slowly, buying time. “In the original, Frankenstein dies unwilling to give up his revenge against the creature. Kills himself, essentially.”
“So, what?”
“I always found it more poetic when the creature kills the creator.”
“Wha—”
Frankenstein’s question turned to an elevated shriek as a shadowy form swept his feet out from under him. Dyna ducked her head, rolling away with a kick off the wall as blood and viscera sprayed through the air. Her eyes locked onto her wristwatch. Diving for it, she snatched it off the floor and immediately tried to spin the bezel.
It turned, but only a second back.
From Dyna’s perspective, she had gone from holding the watch firmly in her hands to just barely touching it.
Looking back over her shoulder, she grimaced. Frankenstein was on the ground, utterly still despite missing a leg this time. Specimen Seven’s finger was pressed into his quilted mask, unmoving as well.
Clenching her teeth, Dyna pushed herself up and dashed for the door.
Spinning the wheel, she stepped out and slammed it shut behind her before she took off in a hazy sprint back toward the initial control room.
Mirror, gone. Gun and laser pointer, gone. Phone, gone. Her one lead on Alpha’s possible location, gone. If she could get to the control room, she could get Walter’s phone back. If signals were still being disrupted, that might not count for much.
The only other thing she had going for her was the Continuity Engine.
Or the lack of a Continuity Engine.
As Dyna dashed through the corridors, she tried to focus. There had to be a side door in the control room that she had missed the first time around filled with all kinds of weapons that could kill Specimen Seven.
There had to be.