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“Any problems?”

Milanda glanced up at the door, where Walker had appeared, and shook her head. “No…just more junk. I ended up piling it on the other beds, so I could reach the…you know.” She waved vaguely at the other end of the barracks.

The room was long and narrow, rather like a corridor branching off from the security hub. Immediately inside the door from the hub was a seating area, lined by generously padded square benches, with low tables in front of them. Then it descended six steps to its main, central section, where the walls were lined by double bunk beds, four on a side. These, too, were well-padded; Milanda had cleared off the one closest to the door and on the bottom right. Past the sleeping area, six more steps climbed back up to the kitchen, where she had identified sinks, a cold box and an oven/stove apparatus, as well as half a dozen more devices whose purpose was inscrutable to her. A door behind the kitchen led to a small room containing toilets and showers. In design, the barracks sort of reminded her of the belly of a ship, except for its squared edges. Every section of wall not covered by beds or other furniture appeared to be a screen, each currently displaying the symbol which she by now assumed was the sigil of the Infinite Order.

Like the security hub, they had found the room full of junk once it was unsealed. Milanda had stacked crates, boxes, tools, and garments on all of the beds except the one she’d chosen, and the bunk directly above. Walker had claimed to need no sleep, but it seemed inhospitable not to at least make some little arrangement for her.

“Hm.” Walker’s eyes flicked dispassionately across the room. “If this ends up taking more than a few days, it may profit us to take an inventory of all these containers. What’s in them might be useful. Or dangerous. At the least, it doesn’t belong…piled around, like this. It looks like the default environment; is it to your liking?”

Milanda frowned. “The…environment? Well, the whole place is generally sterile, despite being messy. I can’t say I would want to live here.”

“No, I meant the controls for…” Walker trailed off, then smiled slightly. “Well, let me show you. Computer, load environment preset: Hawaiian night.”

Silence.

“I suppose that only makes sense,” Walker said ruefully. “You try.”

Milanda gave her a dubious look, getting only a mildly expectant one in return, then sighed. “Computer…do what she said.”

Immediately the light dropped to the level that might be provided by a full moon on a clear night. A moment later, the air warmed, the humidity rose significantly, and the scent of greenery, flowers, and the salty ocean breeze suffused the room; in fact, a faint, warm wind was now blowing through. The sounds of the ocean and of chirping insects and night birds filled the air. Most amazingly, all of the viewscreens paneling the walls activated, showing a scene of a nocturnal beach, the ocean stretching away in one direction and a distant, forested rise of mountains in the other, as if they were all windows looking out over a scene upon which the barracks sat.

Milanda gasped, and then could only gape. The detail was amazing… It all seemed so real.

“It has a number of preset arrangements,” Walker said, looking pleased by her reaction. “You can change the individual factors to suit you, though. Temperature, humidity, background noise, aroma, view… You can also add fog or light rain, though those aren’t part of the preset suites by default. In theory, it could do heavy rain or snow, but you’d need to get in there and monkey with the settings, since they aren’t considered part of an indoor environment anybody would want. The furnishings should be impervious, but be sure to remove anything fragile if you’re gonna add precipitation. You’re lucky; this room’s previous occupants had to argue with fifteen other people about the environmental arrangements.”

“This is unbelievable,” Milanda whispered, turning in a slow circle to gaze around at the room. It was just like being outside on a beach. In fact…amazing as this was, she rather doubted she’d be able to sleep with it like this. Presumably the computer could give her something that felt a little less exposed.

“Anyway, I’ve made some progress out here, too,” Walker said, turning and walking back into the hub. “Come see.”

Following her was like stepping indoors; the door hissed shut behind her, cutting off the Hawaiian night and leaving them again trapped in the Infinite Order’s sterile environs. There was a change in the room since Milanda had gone to arrange the barracks: above the central structure around which the computer terminals were arranged, there was now projected a luminous, transparent model of the whole facility, with the faint outline of the mountain itself around it. Being almost a full story tall, it gave her a much better sense of the scale of the place than the much smaller map out in the corridor had. Walker went back toward her selected screen and sat down.

“Basic security’s set up,” Walker reported. “I tested the instructions you gave the computer, just for thoroughness’s sake, and it’s fine. The door outside will remain hidden unless one of us orders it activated, so the Hands shouldn’t be able to find this place. Didn’t test the alarms, obviously, but there’s not reason to think they won’t work. We should have warning when they’re in the facility. I’ve been checking over the facility as a whole to see what’s what.” She pointed at the floating, three-dimensional map. “The yellow marks are corpses of sapients.”

“Not very many,” Milanda murmured. At a glance, she could only see half a dozen of them, scattered throughout the whole structure.

“It gets more interesting. The blue ones represent life forms held in suspended animation.”

“Suspended…?”

“Asleep, but preserved, and alive. In theory, ready to be awakened. There are usually some health issues associated with awakening from long suspension, but fairly minor ones. If we activated the requisite medical drones first, they should be fine.”

“These are people?” Milanda asked, fascinated. Several dozen blue marks were scattered across the map. “Actual, living people, from the time of the Elder Gods?”

“No, just life forms that someone considered important to preserve. Sapients in suspension are identified by green marks. Look, down here; this is a medical wing, and the only place that has any.”

Indeed, in the small room to which she pointed, there was a whole row of green person-shaped icons, each marked by floating notations which made little sense to her. Seven of them.

“Who are they?”

“The computer does not know,” Walker said, giving her a significant look. “Which is way against procedure. Somebody took the good time and trouble to erase that data. Look, if you mean to leave this facility open and explore it in the years to come, you or the Emperor or whoever may decide to wake ’em up and see. Personally, I wouldn’t. It would be cruel to just dump them into the world as it is now, and anyway, they stand a very good chance of being far more trouble than they’re worth. Meanwhile, for our purposes, they’re nowhere near here, and I’ll repeat my recommendation that we not open anything up that we don’t expressly need.”

“Agreed,” Milanda murmured, then pointed. “That blue dot, up there… A non-human life form that can be awakened, right? Isn’t that this room?”

Walker turned in the chair to nod at her, then turned further to stare pointedly at the transparent cylinder containing the katzil—or quetzal, as she called it. “That doesn’t look like any suspension chamber I ever saw, but just because standardized designs existed doesn’t mean everybody used them. It’d have to be hooked into the power grid. None of the Order’s portable power sources would have kept running for eight thousand years.”

“Let’s not wake him up,” Milanda said fervently.

“Good call,” Walker replied with a grin. “I just point it out, because it means we can’t move that thing out of here without disconnecting it. Which might kill it, or wake it up, depending on how it’s set up.”

“Well, I guess it’s not hurting anything, sitting there. What’s this big room, next to the sleeping people?”

Indeed, the medical wing containing the green marks was adjacent to the second largest open space indicated on the map, dwarfed only by a vast round chamber far below it containing a hovering sphere, which had to be the tiny planet where the dryads lived. That whole space was well below sea level, reached only by a few descending shafts, and seemed to have a diameter comparable to the whole size of the city above. The room to which she pointed was long and much wider than tall, apparently butting right up against the base of the mountain, just above the sea level. In fact, it looked like it should open out onto the ocean itself, though there was assuredly no sign of any such thing visible from without.

“Shuttle hangar,” said Walker, standing and sticking her finger into the display to indicate the labeled shapes arranged within. “Larger ships parked on the flat top of the mountain, but several ranking members of the Order kept personal spacecraft in there. Just status symbols, really. Ascended beings have no need of vehicles, but having fancy ships to carry one’s personal staff around was a grand affectation.”

“You mean, there are working vehicles down there?” Milanda said, fascinated. “Ships that can travel off the planet?”

“No, it’s empty. If I ever have a god of the Pantheon at my mercy, I’m going to make them explain to me what happened at this port complex. Everything’s stacked in boxes, there are hardly any bodies, so the place was evacuated. All the shuttles are gone, but something hit the mountaintop above hard enough to melt it. People in suspension… And why was the only open part a prison wing? The whole thing doesn’t add up.”

“It’s not empty,” Milanda protested, pointing. “Look, I can see the ships! They have labels and everything.”

“That’s not a live feed; it’s showing you the reserved berths. Look, see how they’re outlined in red? That means the ships themselves aren’t there, it’s just displaying where each one goes. Trust me, I checked. There are no spacecraft or even pieces of them anywhere in here, not even the little maintenance skiffs that should be tucked away in various access compartments. That means somebody went to serious effort to remove them.”

“I see,” Milanda murmured in disappointment. She rose up on her toes to peer closely at the ships’ outlines, which didn’t give her much insight into what they looked like. Their profiles certainly resembled nothing she would have thought of as a ship. The labels were interesting, though. “Are these their names?”

“Yes. And those of their owners.”

“It’s funny…”

“Oh?”

She shook her head. “The way you describe the Infinite Order, I’d have expected more pomp and grandiosity. Like this one, Enterprise. That seems fitting. But some of these are so…whimsical. Dawn Treader, Heart of Gold…” She frowned and leaned closer. “…Beans With Bacon Megarocket?”

“Bunch of dorks,” Walker muttered, turning back to her terminal and tapping the screen.

Milanda backed away from the map and blinked at her. “Bunch of…”

“And about a hundred years too late for it to be trendy, so I understand. The Order were a pretty tight-knit group, and had some very particular interests in common. That’s why I pointed you at Tolkien. Some of their shared hang-ups explain a lot about the general state of affairs on this planet, even now.” She shook her head, grimacing. “Nobody on Earth was sorry to see them leave. That had more to do with their attitude than their hobbies, though.”

“The way you were talking earlier, I thought you were born on this world. You also got to visit…Earth?” She wondered, but did not ask, if there was any significance to the fact that the origin planet shared a name with a Tanglish word for dirt. Actually, most of the things she’d heard her own world called meant something similar…

“No,” Walker said tersely, shaking her head again. “This solar system has been dimensionally isolated since long before my sisters and I came along. That was one of the first things they did. I did some research, though, and Mother was sometimes willing to answer questions, if I caught her in the right mood. It was impossible not to wonder, born as I was into a world governed by all-powerful beings, most of whom were late in the process of going completely mad. The history was fascinating to me, and important. Anything to help me understand where it all came from… What it all meant.”

Milanda seated herself next to Walker, then leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and stared expectantly at her.

Walker gave her a sidelong look, continuing to poke at the screens in front of her. For a few long moments she was silent. Then…

“Humans need something to believe in. They need faith, and to be part of something larger than themselves. The physical universe is just not enough; a human being requires purpose. Religion has been part of your species as long as it has existed, which is a very different fact to you than to your distant ancestors, because you live in a world in which gods are a real, verifiable thing. On Earth, they weren’t…but religions were. Some were systems of principle, sort of like the dwarven animism around what they call the Light. Many, though, posited divine objects of worship, which clearly did not exist. And the irrationality that resulted in this has caused untold war, suffering, and subjugation throughout the long history of your race.

“As science advanced, atheism rose as a coherent system of thought, and gradually gained traction, but never grew to be more than a minority. It didn’t address the fundamental, emotional need people had for faith, for purpose. That is what gave rise to the Infinite Order. They were, in essence, a cult which worshiped science. Reason was their doctrine, engineering their sacrament. They were trying to reconcile the emotional need for belief with the practical need for rationality. And…no, they were not well thought of. Neither atheists nor the faithful of the old cults appreciated the competition. Honestly,” she added somewhat sourly, “they brought the worst of it on themselves, managing to combine atheistic condescension with religious sanctimony. Their arrogance was really something to behold. ‘Infinite Order’ is a fair enough name for a group of people who bent reality to their will, created a whole world and all its inhabitants… But they called themselves that from the very beginning, starting when it was among the most staggeringly pretentious things anyone on their world had ever done.”

“I suppose I understand why they wanted to become gods, then,” Milanda murmured.

“Not really,” Walker said with a humorless little smile. She had already stopped tapping the screen, and now shifted to face her audience more directly as she continued. “The Order never particularly cared what anyone thought of them—or so they insisted in the records they left here. Personally, I strongly suspect they resented their rejection by society and spent the next few thousand years denying it, just because that would be consistent with their personalities as I observed them. But that’s only my opinion. Regardless, what they were trying to do here… The Ascension Project… That was something much greater.”

She finally shifted fully to face Milanda, her expression solemn. “In the beginning, in the very beginning, all existence started. There was nothing but heat and the base elements, exploding outward for a near infinity of time. As the deep ages passed, material coalesced together due to gravity, eventually forming the first stars. The stars lived, burned, and billions of years later, died, exploding and spewing out dust and elements refined in their cosmic furnaces. This detritus drifted through the void, becoming the interstellar dust clouds, showers of debris, some of it forming together to make new stars…and planets. On some planets, the right combination of elements occurred to spark self-replicating chemical reactions—life. Living things evolved, growing gradually more and more complex, until some produced sapience.

“At the most fundamental level, Milanda, when you peer closely at what matter and energy truly are, it turns out that they are mostly nothing. Things are made of molecules; molecules are made of atoms; atoms are little more than infinitesimal electric charges and patterns of probability. Mass is illusion; existence is built of stacked-up equations. And among the most startling discoveries in the history of science is that on that basic level, the constituent particles of reality respond to consciousness. What they do depends entirely on what they are observed to do. By being an intelligent thing examining the building blocks of the universe, one determines how those blocks are laid. To observe is to affect.”

“Magic,” Milanda whispered, nodding.

“Not exactly,” Walker said with a wry grin. “That’s jumping ahead a bit. The Infinite Order held central the belief that reality, the collective laws of physics, was a conscious thing, and the physical universe was its attempt to understand itself, possibly to reach its own fulfillment. Evolution marked the long process from base elements to sapient life, and was a purposeful and meaningful event. They believed their goal here, ascension, was both the ultimate scientific and spiritual objective of all life, of all reality. By remaking themselves as beings not bound by their biological shells, they sought to advance the goal of the universe itself. To move beyond evolution, outside the cycle… To give meaning to existence by transcending it, seeing what lay before the big bang and after the heat death of the universe.”

“I guess I was right, then,” Milanda murmured. “Grandiosity hardly begins to cover it.”

Walker smiled again. “Yes. I think it actually was a noble goal… It’s a shame how it turned out, for more reasons than the suffering they ended up causing. The only thing the Ascension Project ultimately proved is that absolute power is psychologically unhealthy for sapient minds. Which, frankly, was a matter of open record and didn’t need to be validated. In a way,” she said with a sigh, “this…all this, this world and everything that has happened on it, has ended up being history’s grandest and most cosmic waste of everyone’s time.”

The silence hung over them, Milanda having caught some of Walker’s suddenly morose mood. It was, indeed, a heavy thing to consider. Before depression could begin to set in, she shook herself and spoke.

“But…you talked about consciousness affecting the basic structure of reality. I’m no mage or enchanter by any means, but that sounds a lot like the underlying theory of magic. I’ve read a little about arcane physics. The math is way over my head, but the concepts are actually rather beautiful.”

“Quantum physics,” Walker replied with a faint smile. “But yes. That…is not what magic is, but how magic works. Objective physics become subjective, physical reactions occur in response to thought. That’s the nature and the function of transcension fields.”

“It sounds like the Elders needed magic, needed their transcension fields, to achieve ascension.”

“Yes.” Walker nodded. “It’s an absolutely necessary part of the process. You see, quantum physics is materially useless to most people most of the time, because it governs interactions they’ll never see. It takes very advanced experiments even to observe quantum effects; for the rest of all interactions, human perception doesn’t initiate wave function collapse because humans cannot percieve the infinitesimal particles involved. And if they could, the number of such interactions it would take to achieve a macroscopically useful effect would be in the trillions, far more computations than a human mind could possibly make. Transcension fields bridge these gaps. They interface between sapient perception and the subatomic world, and they perform the necessary calculations to turn countless wave function collapses into, say, a fireball or luck enchantment. They have a third purpose: to impose limits, and order. That’s why individual transcension fields—individual schools of magic—have their own unique traits and interactions. Obviously, you cannot have every stray thought every sapient produces affecting physical reality; the carnage that would result would be unimaginable. The fields impose limits, of whatever nature seemed most appropriate to their makers.

“Magic is not power, you see. The power is inherent in reality; there’s enough fundamental energy in a square meter of space to instantly vaporize the world’s oceans. Magic is…” She paused, tilted her head to one side in thought, then smiled. “Data processing.”

Slowly, Milanda stood. Without really meaning to, she began to walk, gradually making a full circuit around the central structure of the chamber, navigating around upended chairs and piles of boxes without really seeing them.

She was a practical person, at heart. Politics, history, human relationships, those were the things she found interesting. Art and music and the like, sure. Philosophy had always been an annoying abstraction to her, advanced magic a useful science whose benefits she appreciated in society, but which was the province of other people to actually perform and understand. Having the central mysteries of the universe dropped right in front of her, having answers provided to staggering questions she’d never even thought to ask…

It was quite a mouthful to chew.

“Anyway,” Walker said suddenly, causing Milanda to twitch in surprise and stop walking. Without realizing it, she’d done a complete circuit of the chamber and come abreast of Walker’s station again. “There’s been no further visit from our mysterious friend, but I’ve been doing what I can to prepare for him. I have to tell you, though, that I’m somewhat less confident than I was.”

“Oh? What’s wrong?” Milanda asked, turning to her and glad to have something more immediate and concrete upon which to focus.

“As I said before,” Walker explained, “I think I can shut him out easily enough. The system’s inherent defenses should be more than adequate; all we would have to do is turn them back on. What’s tricky is taking the opportunity to identify and retaliate.”

“If it’s at all possible, I would still like to do that.”

Walker nodded. “Then…I may need help. I can use the computers just fine, Milanda, they’re designed to be simple. Getting into their deeper functions is another matter. I’m not a programmer…and just for the record, while I was made with the knowledge of how to operate systems like these, I haven’t done so in over eight millennia.”

“You’re rusty?” Milanda asked with a smile.

“I can figure it out,” Walker said a little testily, “but that will take time. I’ve been researching methods here—fortunately, these systems contain literature on every conceivable subject. But we’re talking about me acquiring a level of skill at hacking that we don’t have time for, with the Hands up there running loose. We need to deal with this guy before we can start putting the system right. This is your project, so I’ll leave the decision to you: shut him out and proceed straight to repairs, or try to engage and neutralize him more permanently?”

Milanda frowned. “Can you think of anything to make this faster? More feasible?”

“Yes,” Walker said immediately. “Ask the Avatar for help. He could do this as easily as you can breathe, but he’s not here. If he’s got an apparatus down there that lets him produce data crystals, though, I bet he can put together a program that will make all this much easier. You can plug that into the console up here, and it’ll make my job a lot easier, if not do it for me outright. A fully automated program is probably too much to hope for, but if he can give me a software suite that’ll let me engage an intruder and counter him without needing to know the ins and outs of the sub-OS’s digital architecture, that will help immensely.”

“All right,” Milanda said, nodding. “It sounds like a plan. I’m too keyed up to try sleeping, anyway; I might as well go talk to him.”

“You’ll be wanting to do that in any case,” Walker added with a smile. “If what they did to you is anything like what they do to the Hands of the Emperor, you’ll have gained a lot more by it than strength, vitality, and immunity to fae effects. The Hands have powers unique to the individual, which they need some individual coaching to master; considering what we’re up against, it seems a shame for you to be walking around carrying abilities like that, and not know how to use them.”

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“Computer! Map!”

Walker waited in expectant silence for a few seconds before heaving a sigh.

“Security protocols,” Milanda said. “With all due respect, you are not trusted with unfettered access to the system. And where are you going? The terminal is here.”

“There’ll be terminals concealed in most every surface,” Walker replied, pacing back toward her. “I know how the Order like to arrange their structures; there’s probably a terminal at the end of this hall, where it turns, and also probably a door facing the teleporter. If not, the ‘porter itself can be reconfigured to send us somewhere else. At bare minimum, there will be one right next to the teleporter. But since you are here, would you do the honors?”

Milanda raised her eyebrows wryly, but turned to the currently exposed wall terminal. “Computer, map.”

The screen lit up with a complicated series of red squiggly lines on a black field which resembled no map Milanda had ever seen.

“Project in 3D,” Walker ordered. Nothing happened; after a moment, she turned a pointed look on Milanda, who dutifully repeated the phrase.

Then she instinctively stepped back as the diagram lifted off the surface of the panel to hover in the air above it. As it did so, it suddenly began to make sense. The red lines formed a network of chambers and tunnels which, to judge by their general shape and arrangement, had to run through a large portion of the mountain.

“Hmm,” Milanda mused. “Can you make it bigger? And focus on this location?”

“The computer is fairly smart, but it’s not designed for social interaction like the Avatar. You get the best results with clear and precise instructions. Terse, even.”

Milanda made no response, occupied as she was studying the map as it shifted, grew, and moved, the lower portions fading from view. Despite Walker’s admonition, the computer had apparently understood her request. A small section of hallway rose to prominence and the red wire-frame structure was filled in with light, conforming to the shape of the hall in which they stood, cells and all. Icons represented the entrance, with the elevator just beyond it, as well as the teleporter. Right across from that, exactly where Walker had said it would be, was a door leading to a larger, round chamber, with more hallways branching off from it, and three elevator shafts descending lower into the complex.

In the course of the shift, before they were moved out of the map’s current frame of view, Milanda noted that the nearby surface elevator was not the only one protruding upward toward the city. She made a mental note to investigate that later. It seemed unlikely anyone but the Empress had found a way down here, or more would be known about it. If the possibility had existed that someone one day might, it was worth taking precautions. After all, she had no idea when or how Theasia herself had discovered this place.

“Perfect,” Walker said in a satisfied tone. “As I suspected, that’s a security station. Apparently a fairly important one, from the size of it. Look, there’s a crew barracks attached; that will provide you a place to sleep. I’m assuming, here, that you are not eager to go back above and explain yourself to the Hands.”

“Not until I’m ready, anyway,” Milanda agreed, still studying the map. The Avatar had warned her that she and the Hands would be able to sense each other if they drew close enough together. That was to be avoided, which meant she should avoid the Palace for the time being.

Walker had already headed back down the hall again; when Milanda joined her, she was waiting patiently at the intersection, and gestured toward the flat wall.

Milanda cleared her throat. “Computer… Uh, door.”

Lines appeared in the blank milthril surface, delineating a doorway; a second later, the cut-off mithril panel slid silently into the floor, revealing a door that appeared to be of steel, marked with the same emblem as the outer door.

Milanda carefully stepped forward and touched it with her fingertips. Nothing happened.

“Computer,” she said, annoyed, “open the door.”

“Warning.” The computer spoke in a rapid tone devoid of inflection. “Security lockdown in effect.”

Milanda sighed. “Well, end the—”

She broke off and stared at Walker, who had begun waving frantically to get her attention.

“Clear, precise, terse,” she said firmly. “Since the Avatar apparently gave you clearance, if you just tell it to end the lockdown without any qualifiers, it’ll do so everywhere. There is no telling what’s buried in these halls, or what might happen if all the doors are suddenly unsealed. You can open rooms one at a time, which is what I strongly recommend.”

Milanda regarded her uncertainly for a moment before nodding. It was true that Walker’s incentive here was to make herself useful, but it was difficult to trust the eerie creature. It would have been even if she were not alone with her, in the apparently perfectly functional ruins of a civilization that Walker fully understood and Milanda did not. Hopefully, at minimum, there would be no more head-grabbing. In this case, at any rate, her advice made sense.

“Computer,” she said carefully, “end the lockdown only in the security station beyond.”

A pleasant, two-toned chime sounded. Milanda frowned, turning to Walker.

“That’s an acknowledgment,” the ex-valkyrie explained. “Descending tones means there’s an error; in that case, it’ll usually explain what’s wrong.”

“I see.”

“You’ll pick it up quite quickly,” Walker continued. “I’ve heard it said that the degree of a civilization’s advancement can be judged by how much of its work is automated; the Infinite Order were very advanced, and arranged their structures to avoid having to lift a finger without need. The computers are designed for maximal efficiency, convenience, and user-friendliness.”

“Then why is the door still not open?” Milanda asked in some irritation.

Walker smiled. “That room has been blocked off for eight thousand years, and with lockdown protocols in effect, the systems wouldn’t be working to keep it habitable. It won’t open the door until it’s safe. Housekeeping functions are cycling in fresh atmosphere, removing dust, purging any biological contaminants. It should take just a minute or two.”

“A minute or two?” Milanda asked, turning to gaze thoughtfully at the door. “To clean eight millennia of mess?”

“Very advanced indeed.”

In fact, it was faster than that; no sooner had she spoken than the ascending chime sounded again, and the door opened on its own with a soft hiss.

Milanda stood there uncertainly, craning her neck to peer through the opened doorway, until Walker sighed and pushed past her, striding into the security station. Suppressing her annoyance, Milanda followed.

The room’s general shape she could recognize, both from the map and as the product of the same minds which had designed the Nexus on the dryads’ mini-planet. It was round, and sizable; the central floor was sunken, with doors opening in four directions (including the one from which they entered), and an upper ring of floor forming bridges over the doorways, reached by four narrow flights of stairs which had those glowing lights under each step. Another round structure stood in the center, chest-high and flat, with screens and panels protruding from it on all sides. The arched ceiling was black and decorated with a pattern of glowing stars which slowly rotated, the whole thing supported by rounded steel beams, culminating in a round purple hemisphere in the center which was faintly luminous. Lights were cleverly hidden along the steel walls, illuminating the space more completely than any fairy lamps Milanda had ever seen.

It was clean, the air fresh, and there was no sign of dust. The room did not look as if it had been sealed off for eight thousand years, but it was still a mess. Metal crates and barrels of various sizes were piled haphazardly all around, as well as racks and display cases of various kinds of equipment, all of it unfamiliar to her. There were chairs, strewn without order across the floor, a few on their sides, and quite a lot were piled with boxes or draped with lengths of clothing. Just to the left of the doorway through which they emerged stood a transparent cylinder taller than she, illuminated from within by a sickly green light. Milanda stared at this in fascination; the unmistakable shape of a katzil demon was suspended, motionless, within it.

“Well, look at that,” Walker marveled, studying the demon. “A quetzal. Such graceful creatures. You can tell they were some of Scyllith’s early work.”

“Can you?”

“She always had a strong sense of aesthetics,” Walker said, now examining the cylinder in which the katzil hung, seemingly unsupported and not touching the walls. “Initially, that meant she created beautiful things. As time went by and her personal transcension field began to have an effect on her psyche, she took to collecting the more hideous and horrible cast-offs from her colleagues’ experiments, so that she and her own work appeared more pleasant by contrast. Never a likable woman, so I understand, even before succumbing to infernal corruption.”

“What’s it doing here?”

“That is a fascinating question,” Walker mused, turning to pace slowly through the maze of chairs and containers. “I wasn’t on this plane of existence when the renegades attacked the spaceport. There must have been quite an interesting chain of events, to result in these piles of random junk being shoved into what seems to have been a major security hub. I confess I’m at a loss. This reinforces what I said, though; let us refrain from unsealing any more rooms unless we find a good and specific reason to enter them.”

Milanda picked her way through the mess, pausing to examine a segmented cylinder perched on wheeled legs, its protruding spider-like arms drooping. “What’s this?”

“A Caretaker unit,” Walker said. “Maintenance droid. Curiouser and curiouser… Lockdown protocols shouldn’t have shut them off, and if it was running, it would be able to repair itself indefinitely. Having a functioning Caretaker in here would have gone a long way toward keeping it orderly. This place looks like a student dorm after a party. Just what did the Pantheon do here, I wonder?”

“Hm. Maybe we should turn it back on, help clean this out.”

“Let’s wait and see how much time we’ll need to spend here, first.” Walker picked up an overturned chair, carelessly tossing aside the garment that had been draped over it, and set it in front of one of the panels sprouting from the central structure. She sat down, focusing her gaze on the panel itself. At a touch from her, it sprang to life, and two more narrow ones slid out from its frame, one below and one to the side. The symbol that marked the doors hovered in the middle of the transparent central screen, while a series of glowing icons appeared in the smaller ones. “I believe I will need your help, here. Would you kindly instruct the computer to give me access to the relevant records?”

Milanda paused to consider her phrasing, mindful both of Walker’s advice regarding talking to the computer, and her own lingering unease toward her new companion.

“Computer.” She paused, and the affirmative chirp sounded. “Give user…uh, Walker, here, access to records of changes made to…um, anything to do with the programming. For the last…” She looked helplessly at Walker, who was just giving her a sardonic stare. “…since the dryads moved in. Uh, go.”

The computer chimed again, and lines of text popped up on Walker’s terminal.

“Smoothly done,” she said, turning to examine it.

“Oh, shut up.” Milanda rescued a nearby chair, carefully moving a stack of rounded boxes from it to the floor, and set it down beside the fairy, positioning herself where she had a good view of the screen.

“Hmm,” Walker murmured, eyes flicking across the display. The lines slid up and down as she moved her finger on the smaller panel to the right. “Okay, this part is simple enough. The changes made are all fairly superficial… Some affect only the maintenance functions of the facility and shouldn’t impact the dryads or Hands at all. Since most of the facility is inactive, though, the majority of these dealt with that network. There just wasn’t much else to be messed with. I can reverse these changes. Actually, I can designate a restore point in the timeline, here, and simply reset the whole thing to how it stood there.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Not remotely. All I can affect here is the code. Think of it like…” She paused, ruminating for a moment. “The system is like vines climbing a trellis. They die off and are restored with each season, they grow naturally, they change. Change the shape of the trellis, and the vines will clearly be affected, but they’ll continue growing. Put it back the way it was…”

“And the vines won’t go back the way they were,” Milanda finished.

“Exactly. Restoring the code is a start. It’s very likely, though, that in order to restore the whole system to its previous state, we will need to do what was done to set it up in the first place, which will involve the conscious cooperation of the dryads.” She turned to look seriously at Milanda. “And as I said before, I really think you would be better off nixing the whole structure and restarting from scratch. If you want to make it identical to how it was before, the Avatar should remember what was done. That would be an excellent chance to make improvements, however.”

“Taking your analogy of vines further,” Milanda said slowly, “restoring such an organic network to a previous state is…difficult, and unlikely to work, correct? You can prune a vine, but that won’t make it a younger vine.”

Walker nodded. “And an elaborate spell structure made purely of fae magic is the very definition of organic. The code gives it shape, but the magic is what manifests the effects. That the Hands are so clearly affected shows it is doing just that.”

“Is there anything else you can learn from it?” she asked, putting off that decision for the moment. “Information on who did this would be extremely helpful.”

“Quite. Let me see.” Walker touched the large screen, and the lines of code shifted, retreating to the background while another box of text popped up. She touched this, moving the text. “Hm… This is interesting. This was done under Scyllith’s credentials.”

A chill worked its way down Milanda’s spine. She gave no outward sign of it.

“What else can you tell?”

“There’s a peculiar lack of information here,” Walker murmured, frowning at the display. “This should have logged details about the computer which interfaced with this one, but…there’s nothing. Like there was no computer, and the changes were just…made.”

“You mean, Scyllith did this personally?”

“No…there’s a record of a login under her user account. Direct access by an ascended being would be recorded differently. It’s as if she logged into some kind of void. This makes no sense… Huh.”

“What?” Milanda demanded when Walker fell silent.

“This isn’t the first time. These incursions started three days ago, but there’s something else in the records… The whole structure goes back decades ago, when it was first installed under Theasia’s reign. But there was another alteration made…about ten years ago. Also under Scyllith’s name. That one from a recognized facility.”

“What did it do?” Milanda exclaimed.

“I can’t tell.” Walker was frowning at the screen. “It definitely impacted the Hands…but this is a very minor, very careful and specific change. I don’t think this was the work of the same person who’s been meddling with this in the last week. To enact such a light touch and in such a way that it avoids leaving traces is the work of someone familiar with the system. This new person is fumbling about, trying to figure out what all the buttons and blinking lights do.”

“You said it was from a recognized facility?”

“Fabrication Plant One.” Walker touched all three screens in rapid succession, and the central one changed abruptly, showing a map of the continent. A glowing dot pulsed on the coast in the northeast.

“That’s Puna Dara,” Milanda breathed.

“Under it, more likely,” said Walker. “Possibly underwater off the coast. Any surviving Infinite Order facilities are well-buried at this point; Mother saw to that. No further access from there. Whatever happened, Scyllith or someone with access to her user account, likely someone working for her, tweaked the system and then hasn’t touched it since. Very curious…the transcension field connecting the Order’s facilities was supposed to be disabled. Mother saw to that, too. They must have piggy-backed on one of the other active fields, but that would be very difficult to do without seriously in-depth knowledge of how these machines work.”

“This is horrifying,” Milanda mumbled.

“Quite. Scyllith does not need access to these or any systems… I repeat, this appears to be a separate issue, but it also bears investigating. Honestly, Milanda, I believe we’ll need the Avatar’s help with both matters.”

Milanda leaned back and heaved a sigh. “And he can’t be brought up here. Is there any reason you can’t go down there?”

Walker shrugged. “Physically, no. It would severely agitate the dryads, though. It’s rare that they’ve been in a position to interact with a sister of my generation, but they always take it poorly. I think Mother built something into their nature that causes an instinctive aversion.”

“That seems cruel.”

“Cruelty is about taking pleasure in the pain of others,” Walker said evenly. “Mother is never cruel. Heartless, though, that would be accurate. She is generally not concerned with others’ pain, one way or the other. I’m going to set up a simulation,” she continued, her fingers suddenly flying across the narrow screen on the bottom. “Every little bit of data helps; this may give some insight into the ripple effects caused by the recent incursion. This may take some time…”

Milanda sighed, glancing around the room. “I guess I can find…something to do.”

“I recommend you do not touch anything in here,” Walker said, eyes on her screen. “Some of those devices are weapons and most of the rest are potentially dangerous if mishandled. Here… Computer, activate entertainment playlist on the next terminal. Novels, J.R.R. Tolkien, order of publication.”

The computer chimed obligingly and the next terminal came to life, text and icons appearing on the main screen and the supplemental ones sliding into place.

“Oh, how lovely,” Walker said with a smile. “It seems I don’t need your permission to access the entertainment database. The Avatar must feel somewhat sorry for my long imprisonment.”

“What’s this?” Milanda asked, scooting her chair over to frown at the lines of words on the other screen.

“Just a little something you may find interesting. Tolkien was quite popular among the Order; I rather think this will illuminate much of why your world is the way it is.”

Your world, Milanda noted. According to Walker’s own story, she had never lived on any world but this one, yet she didn’t think of herself as part of it. Well, considering how it had treated her, that was somewhat understandable. Out loud she said, “I suppose I could try. Are these number page counts? I’ve never been fond of dense novels…”

Walker shot her a look of pure irritation, unmistakable even on her peculiar features. “Fine. These systems contain the entire literary output of your species; perhaps Disney animated musicals would be more your—oh ho!” Suddenly she hunched over her screen, grinning fiercely. “Our friend has just appeared again!”

“What? What’s he doing?” Milanda demanded, scooting her chair back over and peering at the code, which didn’t help her at all to understand it.

“More of the same,” Walker murmured distractedly. “Poking around. Hmmmm. I could block his access. That will tip him off that someone’s here, working, however.”

“You’re of the opinion this person is a modern human?” Milanda said thoughtfully.

“It’s my leading theory, but of course I don’t know.”

“Can you get more data with him actively engaged?”

“I’m trying… This is so strange. He’s logged in as Scyllith, but Scyllith wouldn’t be doing this foolishness. It’s the same effect, though: it’s as if the machine he’s on…” She trailed off, her eyes widening. “Wait. I think… I think he built it.”

“Built it? A machine that can access the Infinite Order’s computers? How?”

“That is a question to which I would love an answer… Hang on, I’m querying his system specs.” She paused, then narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “…that kicked him off. His rig didn’t even have the processing power to handle the request while logged in. He did, Milanda. The simplest surviving Order device would register and handle such trivial tasks effortlessly. Somehow, he’s doing this on something he made. From modern enchanting parts.”

“Well, he knows we’re here now, if you knocked him out of the system,” Milanda pointed out.

“Maybe.” Walker leaned back gazing thoughtfully at the screen. “Whatever he’s using is so primitive the sub-OS here doesn’t even recognize it as a fellow computer; something like that would be prone to crashing on its own. This does change the color of the matter. There’s something else odd…something there, but not, like the machine itself. See, it’s indicating an Avatar’s presence, but it isn’t identified.”

“You can identify Avatars?”

“Indeed. They are numbered, and few; the Order didn’t like to leave artificial intelligences lying around.” Milanda glanced over at the deactivated Caretaker while Walker continued speaking. “Each Avatar should be instantly recognized by the computer; it’s registering the presence it recognizes as one, but it doesn’t know which, and that doesn’t make sense.”

“The Avatar I spoke to was many, many times more complex than the most advanced modern golem,” Milanda said slowly. “He was effectively a person. Would I be correct in assuming such a thing couldn’t possibly be run on contemporary logic controllers?”

“You would. The idea is laughable.”

“So…what if he’s somehow got hold of an Avatar and is running part of it? Just enough to make his system work without overloading it?”

“That…is…not impossible,” Walker said grudgingly. “If so, we have a real problem on our hands, Milanda. An Avatar is an AI designed by a spacefaring society to administer city-sized complexes in the most minute detail. This character is trying to run one on a cobbled-together steampunk gumball machine. The significant fact isn’t that it doesn’t work, but that he got it to boot up at all. If the theory is correct, this person would have to be a genius of a caliber even the Order would have respected.”

Milanda blinked, working her way through several unfamiliar terms in that sentence. “…what kind of machine?”

“Mother had one,” Walker murmured, leaning forward and again rapidly touching sigils on the control panels. “A valuable antique from Earth… I suppose it’s rusted away to scrap in some vault, now, if it wasn’t destroyed outright in the uprising. She even had the fabricators make gumballs for us.” She smiled faintly as she worked. “Vile things, really. Nothing but sugar, dye, and…glue. Still. It was…a happy memory. All right, I’m working on a little something, here, for the next time he logs in. We can shut him out easily enough, but that doesn’t help us figure out who this is or how he’s doing this, which I gather is a priority. It’ll take some adjusting to get the sub-OS to interact fluidly with his incredibly dinky computer, but…” A sly grin stretched across her uncanny features. “I do believe we can turn the tables.”

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Everything was the same, but the world was totally different.

According to the Avatar, the initiation was designed to fully incorporate the proper muscle memory and thus avoid the difficulty moving that could come from a person being suddenly far stronger and more agile than before, but he had warned her that this modification of the Hand procedure could have unpredictable side effects, and that she should take it slow.

She felt fantastic, however, and fully in control.

The first test of her newfound athleticism had come when she returned to the hallway where the Dark Walker was imprisoned. The door, apparently, remained stationary while the “planetoid” (the Avatar’s word for it) slowly rotated; finding it necessitated walking south until she came to the long band cleared of trees around its equator, and then following that. Looking at it, she felt rather foolish for not having noticed before, though at least now, she was accustomed enough to the peculiar shrunken horizon to find it less disorienting.

The door had drifted slowly toward her, but Milanda hadn’t waited for it. She didn’t even need a running jump; one smooth hop, and she was through, landing lightly in the brightly-lit mithril hall beyond.

The lack of visual stimuli here actually helped her re-orient herself. There was just nothing to see but mithril walls, the little lights in the ceiling, the turn of the hallway just ahead. It made her even more conscious of her own body…her own strength.

But there was nothing to be gained by standing here.

Milanda strode purposely forward, rounding the corner and continuing to the proper cell.

“You look well,” the Dark Walker said calmly upon her arrival, sizing her up. “I gather the outcome of your…adventure…was optimal? I recognize that calm self-possession; it wasn’t on you earlier. Of course, I could sense the truth, if not for this.”

She rapped her knuckles on the transparent panel. Despite transmitting sound as if it were nothing but empty air, when struck it made a muted noise as if she had tapped on a stone wall a yard thick.

“I have protection from you, now. Apparently.”

“Felicitations.”

Milanda studied her, taking in the eeriness of her features. The almost-humanity of her.

“The Avatar was confident it would work. And that you can help. Before doing anything rash, however, I have questions for you.”

“That’s wise.” She spread her arms. “I have nothing but time. Ask.”

“How do you know how to help, if the Emperor and the Hands themselves don’t?”

The Walker gazed at her impassively for a moment, then smiled, and there was something in that expression Milanda didn’t care for. It was hard to tell exactly what, though; her features were so doll-like, it was as if she were a machine built to convey emotion but not truly feel it.

“It amuses me how you’ve made gods of the ascended beings of your so-called Pantheon. Sure, by any reasonable definition they might as well be… But the Infinite Order were more powerful beings by far, and they never built actual religions around themselves. At first, they were scientists, conducting experiments. In the end, they were kings and queens, drunk with power and lacking any feeling for the people living on this world. But gods? The idea would have insulted them.” She shook her head. “But then, it seems Scyllith got in on the act. In her case, specifically, it does not surprise.”

“What does this have to do with what I asked you?” Milanda demanded impatiently.

“I am explaining why your Emperor, and the Empress before him, did not do a more thorough job of setting up this system properly.” Again, she tapped on the transparent screen between them. “Religions are the creation of primitive people to impose a semblance of order upon a world they do not understand. Science renders them…obsolete, but not unnecessary, because it is a feature of human psychology that you need something to believe in, for your lives to be fulfilled. So it is with the systems here. Sharidan is quite intelligent. Theasia was more so. But in this facility, they tampered with things vastly beyond their comprehension, and succeeded to a point by imposing the structures they knew, the systems of magic and religion. They achieved…a happy medium. The system works. For it to be truly refined, they would have to know how it works. They do not.” She grinned. “I do.”

“You said you were not a… The exact words escape me.”

“A computer tech, which I am not.” The Walker began to pace back and forth in her cell, swiveling her head smoothly to keep Milanda in view as she did. The effect was even more creepy than she herself was. “A computer is a machine that processes information. Not a true thinking machine; that is an AI, an artificial intelligence, such as the Avatar you met in the gravitational isolation chamber. Tech is just a shortening, in this case, of technician, though in other contexts it can also mean technology.”

“Then how can you help, if you’re not one?”

She stopped her pacing, and shrugged. “I hear tell of wondrous enchanted devices you have, now. Lights that need no fuel; vehicles that travel without horses.”

“I’m sure that must seem abominably backward to you,” Milanda snapped.

“Not really. You are still primitive compared to the Infinite Order at its height, but recall, I have been on this planet these eight thousand years. I am accustomed to thinking of humans as mud-dwelling apes with marginally better linguistic skills to compensate for their lack of upper body strength. Your current civilization is actually rather impressive. But this is beside the point: you can use an enchanted carriage, yes? Or a fairy lamp? To live in your society, you would perforce need to know how.” She smiled again. “But could you build one?”

“What we are talking about doing,” Milanda said slowly, “is a great deal more complex than driving a carriage. Certainly more so than flipping a switch. I take your point, but still…”

“Very well, you require more data to be reassured. That is reasonable.”

The Dark Walker broke off and paced a complete lap around her cell, counter-clockwise, seeming to gather her thoughts. When she was front and center again, she turned to face Milanda, and folded her arms behind her back.

“Of the daughters of Naiya, there are three generations, of which I am of the second.”

“You’re a valkyrie?” Milanda asked in surprise.

The creature raised an eyebrow. “A valkyrie is a thing out of Norse myth. But…I suppose, thanks to Vidius, the description is more or less accurate, depending on whether one agrees that the things my sisters gather are in fact souls, which is a vast debate for another time.”

“What are you doing here?”

She smiled thinly. “In this cell, or upon this world?”

“I know why you’re in the cell. Valkyries were banished from the mortal plane.”

“To the dimensional insulation layer, yes. It is a peculiarity of all Naiya’s daughters, resulting from the immense power accessible through us, that when heavily traumatized, we mutate in entirely unpredictable ways.” She leaned one forearm on the barrier, lounging against it, and gave Milanda a recognizably sardonic look. “When one has been banished to the dimensional insulation layer, being ripped back out of it by a third-rate warlock is an extremely traumatic experience. Take my word for it. I wouldn’t wish it upon you.”

“I’m sorry,” Milanda said automatically.

“Are you? Well, that doesn’t really matter. Thank you for the sentiment. We were discussing more practical things, though.”

She straightened up, and again began pacing back and forth, this time keeping her gaze where she was going and not bothering with eye contact.

“Most of the Infinite Order regarded their experiments and creations, sapient or not, as of no more significance than lab equipment. Naiya, however, created daughters; she truly did care for us, and presumably still does, no matter the lengths she has gone to in her efforts to care less. The first generation… They truly were her children. She actually raised them, brought them up in the traditions of her own native culture, which they have since recreated in Sifan. Part of the Order’s whole purpose was breaking with the customs of old Earth, but by that point, none of them were much listening to each other, and I suspect she longed for the comfort of familiarity. When the kitsune proved too dangerous for the other members of the Order to allow running around, it was all she could do to insist on their containment on the islands, rather than their destruction. After that… Well, obviously, she tried again. But I think she grieved that separation, and wanted a bit more…distance, this time around. To protect herself.”

Milanda felt another platitude bubbling up, and silenced it. She was getting the impression that the Walker didn’t much care for displays of sentiment. If nothing else, she definitely enjoyed hearing herself talk, and Milanda had known enough people like that at court to know better than to interrupt.

“My sisters and I were made with fully-formed minds, not educated through a childhood like our elders. Mother preferred not to develop so close a relationship, I think. I resented it, until I saw how she has treated the dryads. I’ve come to…count my blessings, as they say. She was distant, with us, imperious… But at least she was present. And she made certain to look after us. Regardless,” she went on, suddenly more brisk, “the point is that what I know of the systems and functions of Infinite Order technology is part and parcel of my very being. My mind was constructed to have all the relevant information, organized and complete in a way that no…organically learned skill ever truly is.” Smiling faintly, she tapped her temple with a fingertip. “Would you be better off with an actual specialist? Undoubtedly. Sadly for us both, you don’t have one. Unless you can tempt a kitsune here from Sifan to help you, or one of your gods down from their celestial palaces, and bring yourself to trust such a creature, I am the only source of that information to be found on this world.” Her smile broadened; her teeth were blindingly white and perfectly even. “And most fortuitously for you, I am right here. How very…providential. Is it not?”

She was right, of course, but it wasn’t that which held Milanda’s concentration at the moment, but something she had just realized. It hadn’t been necessary for the prisoner to talk about her creator and sisters to make her points, nor to go on digressions about history and the world she had known eight thousand years ago. Despite her reserve, she was desperate to connect with someone.

Isolated first from her sisters by being jolted back to this plane, and then from everyone in this cell. Whatever else she was, this woman, this creature, was unbearably lonely.

That didn’t make her a whit less dangerous.

“All right,” she said aloud, “you have, in theory, the correct knowledge. But you are still an incalculably dangerous creature, and I hope you’ll pardon me if I’m reluctant to unleash you on the world on the basis of theory.”

“Ask anything you need to,” the Walker said calmly. “One of us has all the time in the world.”

“Then let’s hear some specifics,” Milanda said, folding her arms. “Tell me what’s going on, and how you would fix it.”

“This facility has been remotely accessed by a third party,” the Walker said immediately, tapping the window. “You saw the information feed in this panel—it has been keeping me updated. And no, it would not be standard policy for prisoners to have access to that, it’s just another artifact of the slapdash half-measure rigging that was done to set up this network of yours. And that, I believe, is the core of your problem. Most of the essential functions of the facility are either turned off or doing something they weren’t meant for. If everything were running properly, there would be firewalls in place to prevent unauthorized access. If the Avatar were installed here where he should be, instead of having been yanked and moved to the GIC to ride herd on those three dryads, he would have detected and countered any such incursion. As it is, the system was, and is, defenseless.”

“Who has done this?” Milanda demanded.

“I don’t know. This only gives me information, and not much at that; it doesn’t allow me to give commands, or I’d just have it let me out. With clearance and access to a proper terminal, I could examine more detailed records of what was accessed and changed, and give you more information. I will tell you one thing, though.” Again, she leaned against the panel, smiling faintly and reminding Milanda of several cocky young men who had tried to flirt with her when she was newly arrived in the capital. “To do this, someone would need two very important things: a piece of the Infinite Order’s technology capable of interfacing with this facility’s systems, and personal clearance granted by a member of the Infinite Order.”

Despite her practiced poise and the heady feeling of power now coursing through her, Milanda’s breath caught.

“You mean… An Elder God did this?”

“They would hardly have to do something so subtle, nor would it be in their nature. At least, not if they were acting directly.” The Walker shrugged. “Several possibilities come to mind. Scyllith does have her own cult, now; they are theoretically isolated underground by Themynra’s drow, but it wouldn’t be the first time one of them dug a long tunnel straight up and got loose on the surface. That doesn’t usually last long before the Pantheon’s agents land on them—or, for that matter, Elilial’s—but there’s precedent. It is also possible, though it would be out of character and contrary to her established pattern of the last few millennia, that my mother has decided to intervene in the mortal world again. Alternatively, it may be that one or more of the Infinite Order thought slain in the Pantheon’s uprising has survived, and now resurfaced. Ascended beings are nothing if not resilient, and most of them were exceedingly intelligent. Then, too, some members of the Pantheon would know how to use these systems, even before acquiring the nigh-limitless knowledge of godhood. They picked up some walking detritus in the course of their adventures, but a good few of them were trusted lab assistants who worked directly under members of the Order.” She shrugged. “The list of possibilities is long… But it is, now, a list, and not the wide-open vagueness it was when you stepped into this hall.”

Milanda unconsciously frowned and rubbed her chin, a gesture Sharidan made when concentrating. Catching herself at it, she immediately ceased.

“All right… You can find out who did it, then?”

“I’m not going to make promises based on information I don’t have, but I believe so. The access made to the systems gave me the impression it was…exploratory. Incompetent, even. A trained user would not have bumbled about, messing with random functions, the way the interloper did. My personal theory at the moment is that this is another human who’s got his hands on something he shouldn’t. If, somehow, somebody unearthed a functioning terminal with transcension field access and an authorized user’s credentials still active, that might be enough.”

“So…it’s an inexperienced user.”

“That much I can all but guarantee.” The Walker smiled. “I, as we have discussed, actually know how to use the systems. Provided our uninvited guest doesn’t get too much more time to practice, I should be more than a match for him. There’s been no such activity in the last day or so. Perhaps he’s asleep.”

Milanda frowned. “Can you reverse what was done to the Hands?”

“That’s trickier.” The prisoner began to pace again. “The system logs will tell me every change made by the intruder; putting everything back the way it was should be a very simple matter. This, however, is a hybrid system, designed to run at least partially if not mostly on the highly intuitive magic of the dryads. What’s been done may have had ripple effects that we can’t so easily put right. The whole mess is easily complex enough for chaos theory to be a potential factor. It should, in theory, still be correctable, but if that happens, we’re looking at a longer and more difficult operation entirely.”

“Especially if we want to take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again…”

“In all honesty,” the Walker said with a grimace, “if you’re going to do something like that, I would recommend dismantling the whole system and replacing it with another one, built from the ground up by someone who knows what they are doing.”

“Someone like you.”

She shrugged. “I could help, yes. The Avatar would be a better choice. I’m mystified what sequence of events could have led him to be stuck down there while this nonsense is going on up here. Theasia clearly persuaded him to help; she’d have been far better off persuading him to design her whole Hand apparatus. It couldn’t have been made without his input, but he definitely did not engineer this jury-rigged thing.”

Milanda drew in a deep breath and peered around the empty hall. “All right… What, then, would you do? I assume there’s more to this facility than this hall, but I don’t see any doors…”

The Walker grinned and tapped again on her invisible barrier. “You wouldn’t. You don’t see one here, either, but I assure you, this is where it is. This facility was put under lockdown when the renegades attacked, and that order was never rescinded. Most of it is inert and walled off. I don’t know how this was left open enough that comparatively simple humans thousands of years later could have entered and turned on the lights, but here we are. I can unlock the rest of it, easily. There will be terminals in this hall; you just have to know how to access them. We’ll want something more central to do the kind of work necessary, though.”

“How big is this place?” Milanda asked curiously.

“It runs through most of the mountain,” the Walker replied. “You’ve built your city upon what used to be the planetary spaceport. The Infinite Order were rather paranoid and grew increasingly mistrustful of one another; they insisted on there being only a single point where spacecraft were permitted to land and depart, so they could all watch it, and thus watch each other’s comings and goings, as well as see who was doing what with the off-planet facilities scattered about the solar system. To that end, they flattened the top of this mountain and used it for a giant landing pad, building all the actual facilities the port needed underground.”

“But…the mountain isn’t flat,” Milanda protested, fascinated in spite of herself. “Tiraas is on a perfectly symmetrical hill.”

“It isn’t flat now,” the Walker said with a mirthless grin. “The Pantheon, when they came visiting, were not in a…talking mood. But yes, this is not even the tip of the iceberg. It’s scarcely a snowball, the gravitational isolation chamber notwithstanding. That, by the way, is deep below the mountain, accessible only by teleporter; it’s not actually at all close to here. These passages are practically a city unto themselves, with spaces set aside for every conceivable use. I would suggest,” she added, suddenly frowning, “that we not unlock anything more than we need, which should be minimal. The security lockdown caused by the renegades’ attack would shut off virtually all of the housekeeping functions in chambers without living occupants—which would be all of them. A space that hasn’t been touched in eight thousand years will not be pleasant to visit, and there’s no telling what the Order had in some of those chambers. This, up here, was clearly a detention wing; there should be a security station close by. That will do splendidly for our purposes. If not, or if it’s not accessible, the hidden terminals here will have maps.”

Milanda drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, aware that what needed to be said had already been said. She was stalling, now, afraid of the implications of what she would have to do here. But there was no time for that.

“Very well, then. Terms.”

“Terms,” the Walker agreed.

“First, you are not to leave here,” Milanda said firmly. “Ever.”

The Walker tilted her head. “From one prison to another?”

“It’s the same prison, and surely having the run of it is a different matter than being cooped up in that cell.”

“Very true. All right, I accept.”

“Second, your access to the facility’s systems will only be toward specific goals approved by myself or the Emperor. Third, you will not go near the Emperor, or any other guest who does not have the Hands’ protection against your magic. I’ll warn you, I am explaining, not bargaining; all the terms I am laying out will be programmed into the system, and you will not have the clearance to alter them.”

“You can do that?” the Walker asked mildly. “Then I’m curious why you need me.”

“I can’t,” Milanda replied, “but I know someone who can.” She tucked a hand into the pocket hidden in her skirt and withdrew the object the Avatar had given her, ejected directly from a small fissure in his metal complex back at the Nexus, where the dryads kept their personal effects. It actually rather resembled a power crystal, though more square in shape and encased in a framework of steel, with a complex little apparatus on one end. The Walker’s eyes fixed on it instantly. “So no, you will not go near the Emperor. When he approaches, or anyone who is potentially in danger from you, the system will issue a warning and give you time to secure yourself in a cell. This one, or another. There you will remain until the facility is cleared, at which time you will be free to resume roaming the whole complex at will. If you do not secure yourself in a timely fashion, interior defenses will be activated to do it for you.”

“If those were a threat to me,” the Walker said in a deceptively calm tone, “the Infinite Order would not have bothered to banish my sisters and I to the insulation layer, against Mother’s wishes.”

“The Infinite Order were very impressive, yes, but they did not have dryads, or the ability to use Naiya’s personal transcension field against you through their auspices. Or have you forgotten how you were corralled into that cell in the first place?”

The Walker stared flatly at her, all pretense of friendliness erased now, but after a long moment, she nodded.

“Very well. Your concerns are entirely valid. And…this is still a step up from my current situation. I accept those terms, and will not cause needless difficulty.”

Milanda, ever the courtier, caught the qualifier; what was needless was in the eye of the beholder, and someone who had no intention of causing trouble wouldn’t need to cover herself that way. She let it pass for the moment, however.

“I wasn’t finished. Fourth, these terms are not final; more may be imposed as they are deemed necessary by the Emperor, or his heirs.”

“There, we have trouble,” the Walker said, folding her arms. “You ask me to agree to an open-ended deal which you could change at any time to any terms you like.”

“Fifth,” Milanda barreled on, “and pursuant to the point above, if you resist or attempt to attack any Imperial personnel, you will be conclusively terminated.”

The Walker’s eyes narrowed to slits. “If you could do that, you would have.”

“Once again, the dryads—”

“Don’t talk to me about dryads,” she said curtly. “I am far too dangerous to be left alive. That I am proves my captors don’t have the capacity to kill me.”

“That’s where you are sadly mistaken,” Milanda said softly. “I have not spoken with the Emperor about you, thanks to the geas on this place, but I know him as well as anyone alive, and it’s no trouble for me to understand his position on this. It would trouble his conscience enough to keep you imprisoned, simply because of what you are through no fault of your own. He places duty and necessity above his personal feelings when he must, but he would absolutely not countenance the injustice of executing you when you are not to blame for what you are.

“His mother was a different matter. Empress Theasia, I’m afraid, never learned the lesson of Athan’Khar despite her own father’s remonstrations; her ministers had quite a time preventing her from creating and stocking, much less using, horrible weapons with the advances in magic and alchemy which occurred under her reign. None of that is common knowledge, of course. In fact, now that I’ve met you, I suspect the world owes you a debt. I do believe part of the reason the Empress allowed herself to be persuaded not to pursue such projects was because she had you down here, ready to be unleashed on any enemy she judged deserving of it. Theasia was quite the pragmatist, not to mention ruthless and paranoid even by the standards of politicians. I sometimes wonder if she wasn’t part drow.”

“I see,” the prisoner said tonelessly.

“And allow me to elaborate on your earlier objection,” Milanda continued grimly. “I am not negotiating with you, as I said, nor asking for your approval. I am explaining what will happen. Computer, display terminal.”

With a soft beep, a section of flat wall next to the Walker’s cell suddenly manifested borders, then slid upward to reveal a glowing panel above a rack of controls that vaguely resembled the runic interfaces with which Milanda was familiar. Positioned as it was, the Walker couldn’t see it, but her eyes cut in that direction regardless. Milanda, as the Avatar had directed her, carefully inserted the data crystal into the appropriate slot.

“Security protocols updated,” a curt and toneless feminine voice said from the air all around them. “User Milanda Darnassy acknowledged.”

“It’s done,” Milanda said, stepping back and dusting off her hands. “Once you’re out of there, the rules as I have explained them will be in effect. It was worth doing, on general principles, since the Avatar went to the trouble of making that for me. All this, though, has been my way of deciding whether I want to run the risk of letting you out.”

She stepped toward the panel again, meeting the prisoner’s featureless black eyes.

“Help me decide.”

They locked gazes, and the seconds slipped by. Finally, though, a small smile crept onto the Dark Walker’s thin lips. It was hard to tell, peculiar as her face was, but Milanda had the distinct feeling the expression was genuine.

“I like you,” the imprisoned fairy said simply. “You’re smart. Very well, it’s not as if there is a downside in this for me; your deal is an unqualified improvement in my own situation. I don’t at all mind helping you in exchange. In fact, after all these years, I find myself eager at the prospect of something constructive to do.” She stepped backward from the barrier, then bowed. “We have a deal.”

Milanda drew in another calming breath and let it out. “What’s your name?”

The eerie woman’s expression closed down again. “It doesn’t matter. The name belonged to…who I was. With my sisters. She is gone.”

“Well, in modern folklore you’re known as the Dark Walker,” Milanda said wryly. “I have to call you something, and forgive me, but I’d prefer it not be that.”

“Indeed,” the prisoner mused, “in all my years I have rarely met anyone who could pull off being called ‘The Dark’ anything. Walker is fine. I do enjoy a good stroll.”

“So be it, then. Computer, open the cell. Come on out, Walker.”

Even as she finished her sentence, the facility’s sub-OS beeped in acknowledgment, and an aperture suddenly appeared in the transparent wall near its right edge; roughly door-shaped, with rounded edges, it manifested silently where before the surface had been utterly seamless.

Walker moved without hurry, slowly pacing toward it, then as Milanda backed away to give her room, out. She paused in the corridor, then drew in a deep breath, her thin chest expanding.

Milanda smiled and opened her mouth to speak, but abruptly Walker whirled on her, lunging forward to grasp her head in both hands. Milanda seized her forearms reflexively, feeling her own newly-enhanced strength; she could have picked the woman up and tossed her one-handed, and that was the least of it. Walker’s grip was like iron, though, strong enough that even she couldn’t hold it back by brute strength alone.

The fairy smiled, however, and released her a moment later.

“You really are protected,” she marveled, still standing uncomfortably close, but having relaxed her arms such that Milanda was able to shove them apart and away. “Forgive me. You cannot imagine how long it has been since I could touch someone. All right!”

Grinning, she pulled back completely, rubbing her hands together in a mimicry of the gesture Milanda herself had made moments ago. “Then it seems we have work to do. There is no sense in delaying further. Come!”

She stepped around her, heading back up the hall toward the bend to the teleporter, and Milanda could only follow, desperately hoping she had not just made a critical mistake.

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