– CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR –

  STEP THIRTY

  The Chancellor’s office became too small to contain that sentence.

  Trinity’s last word still trembled in the air, “homunculus,” as if someone had thrown a strange object into Americ-Ana’s brain and now it was ricocheting, striking every inner wall, searching for a place to fit, and finding none.

  Her body still remembered the impact against the floor, the doubled vision, the throbbing pain at her temple. But that was only physical. What truly hurt was something else, a clean and horrific sensation of losing ground, as if the universe had pried loose the last plank of trust she had, and for a second she was floating in a void with no manual.

  “Wait, what?” Americ-Ana’s voice came out hoarse, half-choked, as if she’d tried to speak and swallow at the same time. “I don’t think I heard that right. I don’t understand. What’s happening? What is that?”

  She looked Trinity Bustanay up and down in a rush, trying to find, in the girl’s face, some clue that could turn it into an obvious lie. But Trinity looked far too real, trembling too much, too pale to be an act.

  Americ-Ana’s mind tried to do the dirty work of self-protection, trying to force the moment into an easy thought, a comfortable thought.

  “I was fooled.”

  But comfort did not exist in that place. Not after the lab. Not after Nioh bound. Not after Poppandacorn thrown to the floor like something without a soul.

  Americ-Ana’s throat tightened.

  “It can’t be…” she whispered, more to herself than to the others.

  Astyam was there, holding Antichrist in his arms as if that were the only normality left in the world. Head Keys, on the floor, traced small restless circles, like a living alarm. Wwwyye looked ready to fight reality with her fists.

  Americ-Ana dragged in a hard breath and tried to turn the scene into order.

  “But wait.” She pointed at Trinity, the gesture trembling halfway through. “We don’t even know you properly. Wwwyye, where did you find this girl?”

  Wwwyye gave a smile that wasn’t joy, it was impatience. The smile of someone stuck in a place where everyone takes too long to understand the obvious.

  “I already told you.” She opened her hands as if she were holding patience in the air, about to let it drop. “The Jump Chronos Station where I thought I’d heard the scream took me into the inside of the little tree of colored stained glass. In there, I followed the direction of the scream.”

  Wwwyye took a step to the side, as if she were walking inside her own explanation.

  “I ended up in LEVEL 33. The one we went to after we put our key with the three dualities into the elevator, remember? Those confusing steps, thirty-three of them, like the staircase had a will of its own.”

  Astyam made a brief grimace, as if the name LEVEL 33 were something that scraped at the brain.

  Wwwyye kept going, fast, without breathing.

  “Trinity Bustanay was down there, under Step Thirty. Trapped. Curled up. I literally had to pull her out from under it like I was dragging a scared cat out from under a couch.”

  Trinity blinked, as if the metaphor was too close to the real sensation, and hugged her own arms. She looked small in there, despite a surname too big to fit inside any room.

  Wwwyye turned her face toward her with that “go on, speak” look, a silent pressure that shoved time forward.

  Trinity swallowed hard.

  “Yes.” Her voice came out low, but insistent, as if she were trying to keep her own body in one piece. “She… she got me out of there.”

  Trinity looked at Wwwyye and frowned, confused.

  “Sorry… what is your name again?”

  Wwwyye froze for half a second, as if she’d been insulted by an innocent question. Her mouth opened, ready to answer with irony, but before she could let anything out, Astyam cut in, and his interruption came with a rare kind of urgency.

  “Hold on.” Astyam tightened his hold on Antichrist carefully, as if the little fox were an external heart he had to protect. “Quiet, all of you. You’re driving me insane.”

  Astyam stared at Wwwyye and then Trinity, as if he were aiming at two contradictory pieces of evidence.

  “Wwwyye, that’s a very serious accusation.”

  Americ-Ana felt the sentence hit her like a brake. Serious was too small. Serious was a courtroom word. Here it sounded like a private apocalypse.

  Trinity took a small step forward, as if she needed to place herself in the middle so she wouldn’t vanish.

  “But it’s true.” Her eyes gleamed, and it wasn’t theater, it was old fear. “I swear.”

  She drew a deep breath. She was trembling.

  “Nioh Nemmesis and I had the same duality. He is the Moon duality.” She pointed to herself, her hand unsteady. “And I am the Sun duality.”

  Americ-Ana heard it and her stomach made a slow turn, because the word “duality” here was the system’s inner language, the game’s language, the language that doesn’t usually lie. Not like that.

  Trinity went on, tripping over her own words.

  “We agreed to share a CELL. We made an arrangement. He… he kept his word when it was time to turn the key in the elevator, and so did I. Everything went right. Everything was… normal.”

  The last word landed wrong, almost ironic, because normal was something that had died a long time ago.

  “But when we reached LEVEL 33 and started climbing those steps…” Trinity lifted a hand to her mouth as if she were holding back vomit or a memory. “There was a trap. In the steps themselves. In the staircase itself. It was as if the place had switched on a mouth and swallowed us.”

  Wwwyye folded her arms, impatient, but her gaze didn’t leave Trinity, because even her impatience knew how to recognize truth when truth came trembling.

  Trinity tried to go on. Her voice failed.

  “Then… then…” She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them it looked like she had gone back there. “Nioh Nemmesis revealed himself to be a homunculus and…”

  The word jammed.

  “And he kept me trapped down there.” The sentence came out all at once, as if she’d torn it from her own chest. “All this time. I was so scared. I didn’t know if anyone was coming. I didn’t know if it was… punishment. I didn’t know if I was… alive.”

  The last word was the trigger.

  Trinity began to cry.

  It wasn’t pretty crying, it wasn’t a staged kind of crying. It was crying like a fever, like something the body does when the mind can’t keep holding it in anymore.

  Astyam went still for a moment, uncomfortable, not knowing where to put his hands because he already had Antichrist in his arms, and because he looked like a boy who understood logic better than tears.

  “Please, don’t cry,” Astyam said, and the plea came out almost too polite for that, as if he were trying to lay a clean towel over a fire.

  Americ-Ana felt a pressure building behind her eyes. It wasn’t only empathy. It was anger. A heavy, specific anger, the kind that comes when someone messes up the world you needed to believe in just to keep breathing.

  If Nioh was a homunculus…

  Her mind dragged the lab back into view. The living shackles. The antidote. The way Patron Uvo treated bodies like objects. The way the system seemed to have layers inside layers.

  And the image of Poppandacorn on the floor, gone dark.

  Americ-Ana’s chest tightened.

  “I left him there,” she thought, and the thought came like a tooth. “I left him.”

  Wwwyye, on the other side, finally ran out of patience.

  She stepped forward and shoved the air with her hands as if she were pushing smoke away.

  “Oh, for the love of God.” Her tone was the tone of someone who hates melodrama, but also hates wasted time. “You want proof? Then we’re going to give you proof.”

  Before anyone could react, Wwwyye grabbed Trinity by the arm.

  Trinity flinched slightly, still crying, and tried to get out a small “wait,” but Wwwyye was already pulling, decisive, moving too fast for the rest to keep up.

  “Hey, Wwwyye, wait, where are you going?” Americ-Ana asked, and the question came out with desperation, because everything in her had already learned that when someone bolts somewhere in that universe, the universe tends to collect.

  Wwwyye didn’t even look back.

  She crossed the door flooded with light inside the office, that ordinary door that only spilled brightness as if it were a permanent spotlight, and she pulled Trinity with her, like someone dragging living evidence into the courtroom of chaos.

  Americ-Ana reacted on instinct.

  “Wwwyye, wait!” she shot out, and she was already after her, stepping through the light without thinking twice.

  For half a second, the office went too quiet.

  Astyam squeezed his eyes shut, as if he were counting to three to keep from losing it.

  “No… not again…” he muttered, rolling his eyes, tightening his hold on Antichrist carefully, as if the little fox were too fragile for that kind of hurry.

  Head Keys made a short, irritated sound and darted into tight circles, as if his whole body were saying “decide, decide, decide.”

  Astyam looked at the creature, let out a brief sigh, and accepted the inevitable.

  With one hand, he picked up Head Keys carefully, because Head Keys looked ready to bite the world out of impatience. With his other arm, he kept Antichrist held tight against his lap.

  And he stepped through the luminous door.

  The Jump Chronos Station gallery opened before them like an infinite corridor of choices, too much shine, too much depth, too many rows, a museum of doors that looked as if they’d been hung in the void just to remind you the universe also knows how to organize chaos.

  Wwwyye was out in front, pulling Trinity by the arm with the same naturalness as someone dragging a stubborn suitcase. Trinity still looked fragile, but she tried to keep up, tripping over her own haste and her own fear.

  Americ-Ana came right behind, her heart still beating crooked, her mind running in parallel, trying to understand how the world had reached that point, and failing. The word “homunculus” was still in there, throbbing like a small, cruel bell.

  Astyam was last. Antichrist lay in his arms, quiet, the little black fox seeming to absorb the tension as if it were part of the job. In his other arm, Head Keys was held with care but indignant, his disproportionate little legs kicking at the air like someone protesting anything that isn’t self-control.

  Wwwyye stopped in front of a specific Jump Chronos Station, one of those points that, for some reason, the body recognizes before the memory.

  She looked at the opening, at the glare, at the floor, as if she expected someone to be there, exactly where they were supposed to be.

  “But damn it… where’s that little guy?”

  She turned her head, swept her eyes to either side, and then spotted Head Keys in Astyam’s arm. Her gaze lit up instantly, as if she’d found a lost tool.

  “Oh, right. There you are.”

  Before Astyam could say anything, Wwwyye stepped in and yanked Head Keys by the head with offensive confidence, as if it were as normal as grabbing a coat off a hook.

  Head Keys kicked at once, thrashed, tried to bite the air, let out a tiny indignant sound, a mix of protest and wounded pride. Even so, as if his own body carried a chain of command it didn’t know how to disobey, he ended up doing his duty.

  Wwwyye brought Head Keys to the Jump Chronos Station and fit him into the right spot, the right way, as if she were placing a living key into a lock that doesn’t tolerate mistakes.

  The portal answered.

  The light changed quality, grew denser, more active, and the air seemed to stretch, opening a passage that wasn’t ordinary space. The Jump Chronos Station woke up like a machine that can feel desire.

  Wwwyye gave a short smile, humorless, and dropped the sentence like a verdict.

  “Done. Now we go. We’re going to end this once and for all.”

  She stepped into the Jump Chronos Station, dragging Trinity by the arm, giving no room for more drama, more crying, more debate.

  Americ-Ana took a step to follow, urgency hauling her from the inside.

  “Hey… wait…”

  But the “wait” was already born too late. The light was already swallowing Wwwyye and Trinity, and Americ-Ana had no choice but to follow.

  Astyam stood still for half a second, watching it like someone watching an inevitable accident.

  “My God… what a mess.”

  He let out a deep sigh, the kind of sigh that seemed to try to shove sanity back into place. Antichrist stayed in his arms, steady, and for an instant Astyam looked as if he calmed down simply from the fox’s real weight there.

  Astyam glanced to the side and saw Head Keys.

  And he realized, immediately, the obvious detail.

  Head Keys was still there. Head Keys hadn’t crossed.

  Astyam lowered his posture a little and spoke in an almost gentle tone, like someone giving an order to a creature that likes to obey.

  “Wait here, little buddy.”

  Head Keys puffed out his chest at once, as if he’d heard a title, as if he’d been promoted. He let out a short, proud little sound, and stayed there, in the gallery filled with Jump Chronos Stations, standing guard like a miniature of the imperial guards, still enough to seem serious, restless enough to seem alive.

  Astyam adjusted Antichrist in his lap, held him tight with care, and stepped through the Jump Chronos Station.

  After came like a weight.

  It wasn’t light, it wasn’t the portal’s cold, it wasn’t that “in-between” the body learns to hate. It was simply the world already on this side, whole, crushing Americ-Ana all at once, as if someone had closed a lid over her.

  The air went short. Her chest wouldn’t expand properly. Her shoulder struck something hard and rough. Her knee scraped the ground, and pain shot up fast, hot, immediate.

  Americ-Ana screamed.

  The scream came out wrong, muffled, broken, because even sound seemed too big for that place. Her throat rasped, and panic arrived in the same package, uninvited.

  She tried to take a step and had no room.

  She tried to turn her body and got caught in her own motion, as if the place had invisible hands pressing her ribs and her hips.

  And then she understood.

  She was truly being crushed.

  Not by force, by geometry.

  The inside of the little tree of colored stained glass wasn’t “a room.” It was a tunnel too narrow for people. The height wouldn’t allow her to stand, not even close. Americ-Ana, with that adolescent smallness of stature, still had to fold, to shrink, to twist half her own body just to exist in there.

  Wwwyye, up front, didn’t even look impressed. She only turned her face over her shoulder, like someone talking to a person making a scene in a crowded elevator.

  “Calm down. It’s tight in here. Just lower yourself and start crawling.”

  The sentence didn’t come with tenderness, it came with pragmatism. A survival order.

  Americ-Ana swallowed the panic with difficulty, not because she’d become brave, but because the place demanded it. She tried to reposition herself. The movement was ridiculous, clumsy, a battle against her own body.

  She shifted her hips, pulled one knee in, pushed the other out, tried to find an angle where her bones wouldn’t complain so much. Her hand slipped over an uneven surface, and she felt tiny grains, like glass dust, pressing into her skin.

  Only then, when her brain stopped screaming “suffocation” for two seconds, did she manage to look.

  Everything around her was not an ordinary wall.

  The floor, the sides, the ceiling far too low, everything was made of colored stained-glass particles, as if the entire interior were a ground-up mosaic, an architecture built from fractured light. Reds, blues, greens, golds, yellows, glittering at tight angles, reflecting into the wrong places, throwing stains of color across her face, her fingers, the QR Codes tattooed on her skin, as if the tunnel were trying to paint her by force.

  It was beautiful.

  It was aggressive.

  It was claustrophobic with aesthetics.

  Americ-Ana began to crawl.

  Up ahead, Wwwyye was pulling Trinity by the arm, steady, like someone who doesn’t tolerate delays. Trinity went as best she could, her body tense, breathing short, and now and then misplacing her hand, as if fear were still lodged in her muscles.

  Behind them, Astyam fell into a quick rhythm. He paused for a second, shock passing over his face like a brief shadow, and then adjusted, because Astyam had that kind of irritating efficiency. He lowered his body, fit his shoulders through, and then, carefully, set Antichrist down on the ground.

  The little black fox went down lightly, almost silent, and began to walk on his own in there, sniffing the way with a naturalness so calm it was infuriating. Antichrist seemed less tethered to human panic, as if the tunnel, for him, were just another corridor in the world.

  Americ-Ana crawled behind, feeling her heart beating in her throat.

  The tunnel seemed endless. Every meter, her body scraped against something. With every movement, the colors shifted position, dancing across the surfaces like living reflections. The temperature in there was strange, neither cold nor hot, only confined, no wind, no relief, air that had already been breathed too many times.

  Wwwyye stopped farther ahead and raised a hand, a clear signal, like the commander of an improvised team.

  “Attention.” Her voice reverberated in a weird way, because the space threw everything back closer. “We’re going to cross the portal to enter Step Thirty.”

  Trinity froze at once, as if the words “Step Thirty” were a verbal trap. She drew in air, and her voice came out with haste and fear mixed together.

  “Wait.” She looked back at Americ-Ana, at Astyam, as if she needed to confirm she wasn’t alone. “Do you have your KING MatNat spheres? Because only someone with a KING MatNat sphere can go in and out of that portal. I got trapped there because Nioh Nemmesis took my KING MatNat sphere.”

  The sentence landed heavy in the tunnel, and Americ-Ana felt her stomach turn.

  The word “took” lit an old anger, but this wasn’t a place to explode. This was a place to stay alive.

  Wwwyye let out a short, impatient sound, almost a humorless laugh.

  “Relax. All of us here have our spheres.” She tightened her grip on Trinity’s arm. “I’ll hold on to you, and you’ll cross again safely.”

  Trinity swallowed hard, and her eyes went bright, a relief too small to be joy, big enough to be necessary.

  Americ-Ana, hearing that, lifted a hand to her throat at once.

  Her fingers found the necklace.

  Found the KING MatNat sphere.

  She felt its weight. Felt its cold surface. Felt that dense “something” inside, as if the sphere were not just an object, but a presence. And with that presence came the memory that raised gooseflesh.

  An inheritance from Helena Blavatsky.

  And now, with it, the seal of the Ars Goetia demon Andras, lodged there like a small and dangerous pact, a kind of power that doesn’t comfort, only promises.

  Even so, the touch brought a thread of relief.

  The sphere was there.

  It hadn’t been stolen.

  The world hadn’t taken everything yet.

  Wwwyye reached her hand back, gripped Trinity’s hand firmly, and without ceremony, without counting, without preparation, simply vanished.

  It was a flash.

  A quick, dry flare, like a photo taken in the dark.

  Trinity disappeared with her, pulled by the contact, as if the rule of the place allowed a ride, but only when the ride came tied to someone who “had permission.”

  Americ-Ana kept staring at the point where they had been, and the tunnel seemed narrower for a second, as if it had taken offense at the speed.

  Just ahead, embedded in the very structure, there was a small door.

  It wasn’t a door of wood or metal. It was a little door carved into a small stone, fitted as if it were part of an ancient step, too discreet to be found by accident. The outline was precise, almost ritualistic. A secret detail inside a place that was already secret.

  Americ-Ana crawled to it carefully, fear coming back to bite, because everything that was “too small” in that universe usually turned out to be enormous on the inside.

  She reached out her hand.

  Her fingers were trembling, not from cold, but from intuition.

  She touched the stone.

  And at the instant of contact, the flare exploded.

  It didn’t feel like light coming from outside.

  It felt like light being born from inside the stone itself.

  A violent white flash, as if Step Thirty were blinking at her in anger, and for a second Americ-Ana saw nothing but brightness, and the whole tunnel seemed to turn into pure, lit glass.

  Her breath caught.

  And her body understood, before her mind did, that the next passage had already been activated.

  The flare ended.

  And the world did not come back whole.

  Americ-Ana found herself kneeling, hands braced on the ground as if she were still crawling, and for a few seconds her brain took its time accepting what her eyes were receiving. It wasn’t the stained-glass tunnel, it wasn’t the gallery, it wasn’t a lab, it wasn’t anything shaped like a “normal place.”

  It was dark.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A raw blackout, black, without edges.

  The air carried that thick silence of ancient stone, and the first thing she felt was the echo of her own breathing coming back to her, small, intimate, betraying that the space was larger than it looked.

  She lifted her chin slowly, her knees aching from the hard contact with the floor, and fear, that mission-kind of fear that leaves no time for poetry, crossed her stomach like a cold blade.

  At the center of the black, a light.

  Blue.

  It wasn’t the light of a lamp, or a screen, or technology. It was a living, mineral, impossible light, as if the night had decided to reveal a heart.

  A gigantic crystal rose in the middle of the darkness, tall enough to feel like a monument, something around seven meters, and its color was a blue that didn’t look like pigment, it looked like depth. It lit the outline of the place just enough for Americ-Ana’s brain to start assembling the image in pieces, like a puzzle put together in the dark.

  A cave.

  Or something pretending to be one.

  The blue light didn’t fill everything. It carved. It showed fragments and kept the rest secret. The uneven ground, the walls curving upward, the ceiling lost in shadow. The world was there, but the world did not give itself whole.

  And then she saw the second element, and that was even stranger.

  Fireflies.

  Thousands.

  Blue, in the same shade as the crystal, as if the place had manufactured a swarm to imitate its own light. They clustered on the crystal in heaps, like a living crown, a shining carpet that moved with patience. And when they took flight, the air turned into luminous dust, blue points dancing in slow spirals, settling on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, sketching the cave in fragments.

  Americ-Ana stood up carefully, her legs complaining, her head still trying to align her body with this new reality.

  Her nervousness wouldn’t let her admire. Wouldn’t let her “find it beautiful.” What she could feel was something else, more animal.

  Vulnerability.

  Because the blue light wasn’t safety. It was only a beacon saying “you are exposed.”

  The crystal wasn’t anchored in ordinary ground. It rose from a tiny little island, just enough to hold it, as if the stone had been placed there on purpose. And around the island, water. A moat, a circular lake, dark at the edges and blue at the center, fed by something invisible. From somewhere in the black came the constant sound of water falling, a small waterfall hidden in the darkness, stubborn, repetitive, making the place breathe in a liquid rhythm.

  The water looked very deep.

  Too deep for a space this enclosed.

  And the proof wasn’t in her gaze, it was in the light down below.

  Jellyfish.

  Thousands.

  Blue, luminous, drifting through a depth that vanished into black, and yet still revealing, with their own glowing bodies, that the bottom was very far away, far below, as if the lake were an open mouth into another layer of the cave.

  Americ-Ana felt the back of her neck prickle.

  It wasn’t beauty, it was vertigo.

  She took an instinctive step away from the edge, even without being sure where the edge began, and in that movement the sound of her own foot made a small echo, betraying that everything in there answered back.

  Behind her, a new flash of presence, and the air shifted with the weight of someone else arriving.

  Astyam appeared kneeling too, as if the crossing had dropped his body into the same shape. He got up with controlled speed, as always, and pulled Antichrist back into his arms, settling the little black fox in his lap with an almost automatic care, as if he needed to feel something living and warm to prove the world still had rules.

  Wwwyye was already on her feet. She was the kind of person who stayed standing even when the universe tried to bend her.

  She looked at the crystal like someone recognizing a landmark, and then spoke in that tone of someone who had decided before everyone else.

  “This is the place. We’re at Step Thirty, or rather, beneath Step Thirty.”

  Trinity was nearby, a little away from the lake, as if she knew exactly where not to step. The fireflies’ blue traced shine through her hair, giving her face a ghostly air, and at the same time something too human, too trembling.

  She drew a deep breath and took the floor carefully, like someone afraid of triggering a memory just by saying its name.

  “In truth, this whole place is Step Thirty.” She swallowed hard, and her voice came out lower. “And it was here that Nioh Nemmesis kept me hostage all this time.”

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach tighten again.

  The word “hostage” wasn’t theory. It wasn’t game. It was a dirty, concrete reality, with the smell of fear and time passing.

  Wwwyye, Astyam, and Americ-Ana moved toward Trinity at the same time, forming a tight circle around her, as if their shared body were a barrier against the dark.

  Antichrist lifted his snout in Astyam’s arms, watching the place with an ancient silence, and the fireflies kept circling, indifferent, as if that human story were just another sound inside the stone.

  Trinity drew in air again.

  And she began to say it.

  “As I told you… everything was going fine, until we reached the steps of LEVEL 33.” Her voice trembled, but it insisted. “The steps have traps, you must know that, and in one of those traps… Nioh Nemmesis was forced to reveal his true form. The form of a homunculus.”

  The word fell into the air like a stone.

  Americ-Ana felt her skin prickle. It wasn’t cold, it was instinct. Her stomach tightened, as if her body already knew that information was going to strike somewhere with no protection.

  Trinity tried to go on and failed.

  The crying came like a choke. She sobbed, brought a hand to her face, and for a second it looked like she would stop right there, broken, unable to cross the memory.

  But she crossed.

  “We ended up here, at Step Thirty.” She gestured around, her eyes bright with horror. “And Nioh Nemmesis told me he is the homunculus of Rabbi Worse Devil, whom he calls Abba.”

  The blue light shone in her eyes, turning everything more ghostly.

  “He claimed to have a mission here in THE-IMPERIUM.” Trinity drew a deep breath, her voice speeding up, as if she wanted to pour it all out fast so it would be over. “Abba made him to infiltrate Equal One Zero Academy and take all the other seventy-one Ars Goetia seals.”

  Wwwyye lifted a hand with impatience, as if her brain had spun once around and only now was locking the entire absurdity into place.

  “Hold on.” She pulled a face that was half disgust, half revolt. “I know I’ve heard this already, but only now did I stop to think with any clarity. You said Nioh Nemmesis is a homunculus, that part I understood. But that means that, in truth, Nioh Nemmesis is a mixture of dung with… with… I can’t even say it. Ugh.”

  Americ-Ana’s face tightened into a grimace, and she tasted the metallic edge of her own fear on her tongue.

  Astyam, with Antichrist in his lap, was too fast, as if he preferred a horrible truth to a long doubt.

  “Nioh Nemmesis is a mixture of dung and human sperm.”

  The silence lasted a second, heavy.

  Wwwyye made a strangled sound, turned her face away, and vomited for real, right there, with not a shred of glamour, as if her body had decided that information could not be allowed to stay inside.

  Americ-Ana shut her eyes on instinct. The cave’s smell, damp and mineral, seemed to worsen. The blue, once beautiful, turned into a kind of cruelty. Everything lovely, everything lit, everything vomit-inducing.

  She opened her eyes again and asked, because her mind was still trying to grab onto some kind of human logic, some kind of limit.

  “But whose sperm?”

  Trinity looked at her with the expression of someone who knows the answer is going to hurt.

  “Rabbi Worse Devil’s own sperm. That’s why Nioh Nemmesis calls him Abba, which means father in Hebrew.”

  Astyam didn’t lose momentum. His voice came dry, almost clinical.

  “And surely the ‘dung,’ which is really feces, also belongs to Rabbi Worse Devil.”

  Trinity nodded, sobbing again.

  “Exactly.”

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach roll.

  The image came without asking permission, like a high-definition memory thrown in her face. The moment she kissed Nioh Nemmesis on the cheek. A quick, human, innocent gesture. Now contaminated with a meaning that made her skin want to climb out of her body.

  She brought a hand to her mouth, tried to hold it back, tried to breathe, tried to keep some dignity in front of the others.

  She couldn’t.

  Americ-Ana vomited.

  It was brief, violent, humiliating. Her body spat out this new reality as if it could erase the information by sheer disgust. When it was over, she trembled for a second, her heart beating wrong, her throat burning.

  Astyam looked at the two of them, and a dry sarcasm slipped out, as if irony were his way of not losing it.

  “What did you think? That homunculi were made with glitter and strawberry whipped cream?”

  Wwwyye wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, furious and miserable at the same time.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, shut up, or I’m never going to eat whipped cream again in my life.”

  Astyam raised his eyebrows as if he were about to fire back another joke, but his mind took an unexpected turn, and his tone shifted into something more alert, more dangerous.

  “Now I remember something.” He stared into the void for an instant, connecting pieces. “That’s why Nioh Nemmesis made that whole scandal in Professor Fiat-Lux’s class when he was going to teach us how to make a homunculus. He was probably afraid someone would find out he is a homunculus.”

  Americ-Ana wiped the corner of her mouth, feeling her face hot with shame and anger. The blue light struck her fingers, and for a second she hated the beauty of that place.

  “Hold on.” Her voice came out weaker than she wanted, but the memory was solid. “When I was in Nioh’s cell… I kind of saw his academic report by accident. And it said he had failed. Failed because he hadn’t made a homunculus.”

  Wwwyye narrowed her eyes, and disgust turned into suspicion.

  “Professor Fiat-Lux used to go there to teach him.” She spoke slowly, as if each word pulled another conclusion along with it. “Could it be that Professor Fiat-Lux discovered Nioh Nemmesis is a homunculus… and then Nioh ended up… killing Professor Fiat-Lux?”

  Trinity swallowed hard.

  “Probably.” She shook her head, her face marked by old fear. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but Nioh was terrified people would discover he is, in truth, a homunculus. And he was willing to do anything to anyone who found out. Including keeping me hostage here all this time.”

  Americ-Ana felt a hard tightness in her chest, a kind of indignation that wouldn’t fit into words.

  “But I don’t understand…” she said, still trying to fit the Nioh she’d known into that horror. “Nioh seemed completely against the exploitation of robots and Moss Human. Why would he do something like that to Professor Fiat-Lux?”

  Wwwyye answered fast, with no tenderness at all.

  “To pass as the good guy. Typical psychopath behavior.”

  Astyam frowned, and his eyes moved as if he were rereading an old scene inside his head.

  “Wait.” He lifted his face, the blue dancing along the lines of his nose. “I remember now. Remember when we were in LEVEL 33 and followed the wrong corridor, and we ran into that place where everything was inside out? All those creatures looked like they were made of flesh, bones, and veins, like normal humans on the inside, but there was a little guy, completely different, who was made of…”

  Americ-Ana finished before he could. The image was already whole in her mind, alive, stuck.

  “Something that looked like the texture of clay, with a thick, whitish fluid.”

  When she said it, something shifted in her face.

  The disgust was still there, the anger was still there, the fear was still there, but over all of it another motion was born, quieter, colder.

  Thought.

  The kind of thought that begins to line up patterns.

  The blue crystal glowed, the fireflies circled, the jellyfish pulsed down below in a depth that seemed to have no end.

  And Americ-Ana kept staring at the light as if, for the first time, she were seeing not only a place.

  But a system.

  Trinity began to walk slowly through the cave.

  Americ-Ana followed, feeling the uneven ground under her knees and then under her feet, as if the place were a throat of stone. The blue fireflies rose in small swarms whenever they passed, flying around their faces, brushing against clothes, landing and lifting off again, and every time one of them grazed Americ-Ana’s skin, the shiver came like an electric touch.

  The crystal’s light cut everything in blue. It wasn’t a light that comforts. It was a light that watches.

  The sound of water falling somewhere in an invisible pocket of the black kept going, constant, a small-waterfall noise that seemed to say “there is depth here,” even when the eyes couldn’t prove it.

  Trinity spoke as she walked, as if speaking were the only way not to become a prisoner again.

  “After some time, Nioh began to say he’d made a great discovery.” She kept her eyes forward, but her voice came from behind clenched teeth. “That THE-IMPERIUM had managed to recreate a technological method of time travel in order to recreate Solomon’s Temple exactly.”

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach draw tight.

  Solomon’s Temple.

  The words had their own weight in her universe, the weight of symbol and weapon at the same time. And the sound of the water seemed louder for an instant, as if the cave had heard it too.

  Trinity went on, and the swarm of fireflies followed, circling around her.

  “With that, to draw the Glory of God and give rise to another original KING MatNat sphere.” She swallowed hard. “With another seventy-two Ars Goetia and Shem HaMephorash seals. So that the seal of the demon Astaroth, which Rabbi Worse Devil has, would no longer be necessary to reach Lucifer.”

  Americ-Ana felt the necklace at her throat grow heavy even without touching it. A weight that wasn’t physical. It was awareness.

  “Nioh became obsessed with it,” Trinity said, as if reliving a voice that still echoed. “He wouldn’t stop talking about it, every time he came here. Nioh also discovered that this Solomon’s Temple was being built in the vault beneath the altar of the Solomon Coliseum.”

  Americ-Ana’s brain welded that sentence to another, older, too recent to be safe. The vault beneath the altar. Astyam had already said it. The piece clicked into place with an ugly sound.

  “And since then,” Trinity concluded, “his greatest mission has been to invade the vault at the exact moment the Glory of God descends, to steal the new original KING MatNat sphere.”

  Astyam walked with Antichrist in his arms, his eyes switching between Trinity, the lake, the crystal, and the shadows where the water fell. He looked calm, but it was a calculating calm.

  He asked the way someone measures danger by frequency.

  “How often does Nioh come here?”

  Trinity let out a small laugh, with no humor at all.

  “He comes all the time.” She tipped her head toward the black, as if the path were far too familiar. “He spends most of his time here. He told me everything. His origin, his dreams, his fears, his plans.”

  Americ-Ana felt discomfort bite at the back of her neck. The idea of Nioh talking about dreams in here, with the blue crystal watching, was intimate in a way that felt wrong.

  Trinity continued, and her voice grew steadier. Not because she was fine, but because the account had to come out.

  “Nioh told me that after Rabbi Worse Devil fled THE-IMPERIUM with the seal of the demon Astaroth, only a few years passed and Rabbi Worse Devil himself gave rise to a family creation of homunculi.” She drew a deep breath. “And that gave rise to the group, the company, NEMMESIS SEEDS.”

  The word “company” sounded like a knife.

  Because a company belongs to normal life. To advertisements. To products on shelves. And she was saying it inside a blue hollow full of jellyfish.

  “That’s how Rabbi Worse Devil infiltrated THE-IMPERIUM again,” Trinity said, pressing her fingers together as if recalling the feel of a door closing. “Nioh was always certain I would never get out of here, so he told me all of it.”

  She stopped for a second, looking at the crystal as if it were a witness.

  “Only people with a KING MatNat sphere can cross that little stone portal,” Trinity said more quietly. “And Nioh took my KING MatNat sphere.”

  Americ-Ana felt a dry anger rise. An anger with nowhere to go in there.

  “Until I discovered something,” Trinity said, and then she stopped walking.

  She turned her body slowly and looked at the great blue crystal at the center of the water, on the tiny little island. The fireflies resting on it looked like a living mantle, glowing and moving in waves.

  “I discovered that this crystal reflects in THE-IMPERIUM’s mirrors.” The sentence came out with the seriousness of a key. “But only in certain places. It wasn’t easy to figure that out.”

  Americ-Ana felt a shiver run through her scalp. She had seen it already. She just hadn’t known she had seen it.

  Trinity took a small step, as if measuring the distance to the edge was a way of remembering danger.

  “Harder still was crossing those deep waters to reach the crystal.” Her voice trembled, and Americ-Ana realized it wasn’t only fear, it was bodily memory. “I can’t swim.”

  The words felt too small for what came next.

  “So I drowned,” Trinity said, and the air grew heavy. “I almost died several times. But I managed.”

  The cave didn’t answer. Only the water, far off, kept falling the same way.

  “But the difficulties didn’t stop there.” Trinity lifted her chin, as if she were presenting evidence to a court. “When you enter that water, the luminous jellyfish come close.” She pressed her lips together. “And they burn your skin.”

  Trinity lifted the hem of her dress.

  The blue light cut across her legs, and there were the marks. Many of them. Blotches and lines of burns, some old, others more recent, like signatures of repeated pain.

  Americ-Ana felt her throat tighten.

  And the memory arrived whole.

  The marble mirror in the Statue Garden. Halloween night. The blonde girl in the reflection, appearing like a ghost of water and light.

  The little tree of colored stained glass, the other reflection, quick, inexplicable, as if the world had blinked a presence at her.

  “That’s how,” Americ-Ana said, and her voice came out low, almost reverent, because now it made sense. “That’s how I saw you in that marble mirror in the Statue Garden… and in the little tree of colored stained glass.”

  Trinity nodded without speaking. She only moved her head, a short gesture, as if confirming something that had hurt too much to explain.

  Wwwyye frowned, confused. Astyam did too. They exchanged a look that said “what are they talking about?”, but they didn’t interrupt, because the proof was there on those burned legs.

  Astyam grew thoughtful, staring into the blue void, and then his conclusion came like a domestic jolt.

  “My God,” he said slowly. “You said Nioh’s entire family, the Nemmesis Empire, is made up of Rabbi Worse Devil’s homunculi.”

  Astyam tightened Antichrist in his lap, as if the little fox were a reminder of what is real, and went on, now with a shadow in his gaze.

  “That means Rabbi Worse Devil himself has direct access to every home in THE-IMPERIUM.” His voice turned colder. “Through the Nemesias that smile every time someone walks into the kitchen.”

  Americ-Ana felt a chill.

  It wasn’t myth. It wasn’t lab. It was home.

  Wwwyye made a face of sincere hatred.

  “Man, I hate those plants.” She spat the word “plants” like an insult. “My house has dozens of them.”

  Trinity looked at the three of them, and her tone turned almost funereal, like someone reading out a sentence.

  “Rabbi Worse Devil has been in THE-IMPERIUM all these years,” she said. She pointed into the darkness, but the sentence was pointing at something else, something much closer. “With direct access to the homes and families of THE-IMPERIUM’s inhabitants.”

  Wwwyye crossed her arms, and for a second her humor tried to surface, but died before it could be born.

  Then she asked, with a practicality that felt absurd in all that blue.

  “Speaking of home and kitchens, how did you eat? Survive in here, that kind of thing? Did Nioh bring you anything? Supplies?”

  Trinity answered without hesitation, as if she’d already repeated it many times to herself.

  “I drank that water.” She pointed toward the moat around the crystal. “It’s sweet.”

  Americ-Ana felt her skin draw tight just imagining it.

  “And I ate the fireflies,” Trinity went on, with the same horrible naturalness. “In some places, mushrooms grow in here. I ate those too.”

  The silence that followed was heavy, absolute, almost religious.

  Americ-Ana, Wwwyye, and Astyam were horrified.

  The swarm of fireflies kept flying, indifferent. The jellyfish glowed down below, indifferent. The water fell in the dark, indifferent.

  And inside Americ-Ana, a memory. Nioh offering to run away with her, as if it were romance and not strategy. Nioh offering that device capable of making tropical juices, with a gentleness that now felt like a mask, and her using it in LEVEL ONE of the KING MatNat Games as if it were just another resource.

  She remembered the mornings in the SAMKHYA CELL, Nioh coming there to talk, always present, always with a reason, always with that air of “I’m different.”

  And her stomach tightened in a new way.

  Because the conclusion came without mercy.

  Nioh had probably gone to the SAMKHYA CELL to obtain information.

  And in that instant Americ-Ana felt that part of what she had called trust might have been nothing but collection.

  The blue kept shining.

  But inside her, something had just gone dark.

  Trinity walked a little farther, and the three of them followed, as if the cave had turned into a corridor of confession. The blue fireflies circled the group, sometimes opening clearings of light in the darkness, sometimes sealing everything again into a black that made the chest tighten. The sound of water falling continued from some invisible place, constant, like a liquid clock measuring the abyss’s patience.

  Astyam kept on with Antichrist in his arms. The little black fox was quiet, but his gaze seemed alert, as if even the silence in there had texture.

  Trinity stopped abruptly.

  Her body went rigid for an instant, and her voice, when it came, sounded weighted with something too heavy for the place.

  “But for me the worst of it wasn’t even being locked in here, or having to drink that water and eat insects to survive.” She swallowed hard. “The worst for me was being forced to bottle Rabbi Worse Devil’s blood.”

  Americ-Ana felt her heart sink. It wasn’t fear, it was pain, a pain too hot and too human for a place so blue. She looked at Trinity and saw wounded courage, the kind of courage that exists because it had no choice.

  Trinity flicked her hand through the air in a sharp gesture, and the fireflies obeyed as if they were living dust. They flew toward a specific direction, lighting a rock wall, and then the blue light revealed a kind of shelf carved into the stone, improvised and precise at the same time.

  There, carefully stored, were the bottles.

  Identical bottles, lined up, ready, silent, as if that place had become a storage room for a secret.

  Americ-Ana recognized the shape at once. Recognized the kind of glass. Recognized the detail that made her stomach tighten. They were the bottles Nioh Nemmesis used, and carried with him all the time.

  Trinity pointed at them, and her hand was trembling.

  “Homunculi have to be fed by their creators with blood.” Her voice wavered, but it insisted. “So, from time to time, Nioh would bring large quantities of blood. He said it was the precious liquid, the blood of his Abba.”

  The fireflies’ blue brushed the bottles and made the glass shine like ice. It was too beautiful for what it contained. Americ-Ana felt disgust and anger together, a mixture that burned from the inside.

  “He forced me to put it into those bottles,” Trinity went on, pointing again, as if repetition were a form of courage. “He said it was cough syrup, but in truth it’s Rabbi Worse Devil’s own blood.”

  She breathed in short, her eyes shining.

  “Sometimes, because of the darkness in this place, the terrible lighting… I would accidentally let a few drops of the blood fall onto the ground.” Trinity pressed her fingers together, as if she could still feel the liquid there. “Then Nioh would come to me and… and… and…”

  The sentence broke.

  Trinity began to cry again. Her crying didn’t match the fireflies, or the crystal, or the water, and precisely because of that the sound was so violent. A sob caught in her throat, an attempt to hold it back, failing.

  She drew in a breath and spoke through the crying, as if she were tearing the words out of her own body.

  “And… he would take on his true homunculus form and drink my blood as punishment.”

  Americ-Ana felt something melt inside her chest. Her anger turned into something almost solid, an urge to destroy the world with her hands. She looked at Trinity’s legs, at her face, at the way she trembled, and the pain came as if it were hers too.

  Astyam spoke, and his voice came with a strange tone, half memory, half disgust.

  “Now that you mention it, I remembered something else.” He frowned, as if the memory had a smell. “During LEVEL ONE of the KING MatNat Games, Nioh dropped his vial and it shattered. Then the demon Naberius, the demon drawn for Nioh to offer his pact proposal to, tried to lick the liquid from his vial.”

  Astyam stared into the void, the image still sharp in his mind.

  “It showed up on the Coliseum’s LED screen. Everyone saw.” He paused briefly, and the conclusion came out like a verdict. “In truth, Naberius was trying to drink Rabbi Worse Devil’s own blood.”

  Trinity, still with tears in her eyes, nodded in silence. She didn’t say anything. She only moved her head, confirming, as if that confirmation were one more nail driven into reality.

  Americ-Ana took a step forward.

  She moved closer to Trinity carefully, as if any sudden motion could break the girl all over again. Americ-Ana took her hand, steady, warm, trying to pass through touch something words couldn’t carry.

  “I’m so sorry for everything you went through.” Americ-Ana’s voice came out low, true. “I didn’t know at the time, but if somehow I had helped you from the very first time you appeared to me in that marble mirror in the Statue Garden… so much of your suffering would have been avoided.”

  The tightness in her heart grew as she said it. Americ-Ana thought of Nioh asking her to run away with him. Thought of Nioh “sacrificing” himself that day, taking the blame for the book, casting himself as a martyr in his own theater.

  And the certainty began to rise, heavy, inevitable, like water climbing.

  Nioh Nemmesis would make her the next hostage.

  The way he did with Trinity.

  Or worse.

  Trinity squeezed Americ-Ana’s hand back. Her voice came trembling, but there was something new in it, a fragile determination, like glass insisting on staying whole.

  “While I was here alone, I had a lot of time to think.” Trinity looked at the blue around them as if she were looking inward. “To think about everything in my life that led me to this moment, to this situation.”

  She drew a deep breath.

  “The only thing I want from now on, now that you’re here, now that you rescued me… is to be free.” The word “free” came out as if it hurt and healed at the same time. “To be free and happy, to be myself. I just want to start over.”

  The fireflies landed and lifted again, as if the place were breathing with light.

  “And I feel I’m being given that chance now, with you here, setting me free,” Trinity said, her voice a little steadier. “I don’t care about the past. I only care about the here and now.”

  Americ-Ana’s mind snagged on the sentence.

  The here and now.

  Something in her short-circuited, as if an inner gear had jumped its track.

  Her gaze drifted away from the blue for a second and landed on a point no one else could see, a point in time.

  “Wait.” Americ-Ana said, and her voice came out fractured. “Nioh has Poppa. Not this.”

  She drew in air, but the air wasn’t enough.

  “The last time I saw Nioh… I shot Patron Uvo to protect Poppa and Nioh.” She spoke fast, as if trying to run inside her own sentence. “Now all those bodies inside that lab… I don’t know what those things are, but they’re in danger because of me. Patron Uvo had captured Nioh and I freed Nioh.”

  Her eyes filled.

  “And worst of all, now he’s loose and he can break into the vault beneath the altar.”

  Desperation rose like a wave.

  Americ-Ana started to cry.

  “My God, I’m such an idiot.” She brought a hand to her face, but she couldn’t stop. “I handed Poppa over to Nioh.”

  She shook her head, choking on it.

  “And the worst is that now Nioh knows about my grandparents.” Her voice trembled more. “He mentioned my grandparents. I have to do something. I have to do something before it’s too late.”

  Her hand went to her throat, to the necklace, to the KING MatNat sphere, as if touch could pin reality in place.

  She spoke out loud, as if she were trying to rip meaning out of panic.

  “Oh my God… Name-Rocky.” The sentence came out in pieces. “He probably knew something. Otherwise why would he have given me the seal of his demon ANDRAS and made me swear… ‘Do it for THE-IMPERIUM’?”

  Wwwyye stepped closer, her face loaded with irritation and concern tangled together.

  “Hey, girl.” She gripped Americ-Ana by the shoulder, trying to steady her. “Have you lost your mind? What are you talking about? I’m not understanding anything.”

  Astyam spoke right after, sincere, tense.

  “Neither am I.”

  Americ-Ana looked at the two of them and the guilt exploded again, as if it had no bottom.

  “I need to fix my mistakes.” Her breathing was wrong. “It’s all my fault. I need to fix it.”

  She swallowed hard and tried to cling to a plan, anything that could become ground.

  “You two, take Trinity away from here, to safety.” Americ-Ana pointed in a rush, trembling. “As for me… Astyam, you said the Jump Chronos Station you entered leads to the vault beneath the altar, where Solomon’s Temple is and the Chancellor is there, correct?”

  Astyam nodded.

  “Yes, correct.”

  Americ-Ana turned at once and headed toward the exit, as if her own pain were an engine.

  Wwwyye caught up to her in two steps, grabbed her arm, and yanked hard, forcing Americ-Ana to stop.

  “What the fuck.” Wwwyye’s voice came harsh, indignant. “Are you insane? Where do you think you’re going alone?”

  “There’s no time for me to explain,” Americ-Ana said fast, desperate. “I’ll explain everything later, I swear, but right now I’m going to the Chancellor in the vault beneath the altar.”

  She tried to pull her arm free, but Wwwyye didn’t let go.

  “She might be in danger,” Americ-Ana went on, panic making the sentence skid. “I saw the Chancellor inside that tank, but now everything’s confused, but I need to be sure. I need to get to the vault beneath the altar. I need to stop the worst from happening.”

  Astyam stepped closer, and his voice came steady, slicing through the desperation with a blade of reality.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked at Americ-Ana the way someone recognizes a suicide. “But you’re insane if you think you’re going to the vault beneath the altar with the risk of running straight into Nioh Nemmesis, and going there alone.”

  He adjusted Antichrist in his lap.

  “I’m going with you,” Astyam said, and the sentence carried the weight of commitment. “We’re distinct, but we’re part of the same duality, remember?”

  Wwwyye nodded hard, still gripping Americ-Ana’s arm.

  “That’s right. We’re a CELL.” She narrowed her eyes. “We’re not letting you go alone, you maniac.”

  Then Astyam turned to Trinity.

  He reached into his pocket, took out the CELL key, the SAMKHYA CELL key, and placed it into Trinity’s hand carefully, as if he were handing her a document of survival.

  “Please,” Astyam said, and his tone went serious. “You need to get help. Call the authorities. Look for Director Popess Rock. She’ll know what to do.”

  Trinity looked at the key as if it were a weight and a chance at the same time. Fear rushed back into her face, fast.

  “But I’m not even supposed to be here.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t have my KING MatNat sphere. If a drone catches me, I could be arrested. No one would believe me.”

  Wwwyye stepped forward and spoke with a stubborn conviction, almost aggressive.

  “Relax.” She pointed at the key in Trinity’s hand. “That’s why you have our CELL key. If anyone questions anything, you show them this, they’ll believe you. I swear.”

  Trinity looked at the three of them.

  The fireflies’ blue danced across her face as if the place itself were waiting for her answer.

  She drew a deep breath.

  And agreed.

  Wwwyye didn’t wait for anyone to breathe.

  She was already holding Trinity by the arms, firm, like someone who decides reality is going to obey by force. Trinity, without the KING MatNat sphere, looked even smaller in there, more fragile, and Americ-Ana felt a stab of urgency when she realized the girl was alive by sheer stubbornness.

  Astyam came right behind, Antichrist in his arms, his face set in a strange focus, almost clinical, as if he’d filed panic away in an inner drawer to use later.

  The little stone door was there, carved, discreet, impossible and obvious at the same time.

  Wwwyye pulled Trinity close.

  “Come.”

  And crossed.

  The flash came dry, quick, and the world was tight again.

  The stained-glass tunnel existed over their bodies again, with that immediate claustrophobia, floor, walls, and ceiling pressed close, the crystal particles reflecting color in nervous fragments. Americ-Ana dropped to her knees again, because her body had no choice, and she was already crawling, following the group’s movement as if instinct were the only map.

  Trinity was bound to Wwwyye’s arm, being pulled like someone rescued from a hole that keeps trying to swallow you back. The stained glass threw stains of color across her skin, across her eyes, and Americ-Ana saw Trinity’s hand trembling, trying to keep herself whole.

  They moved through the tunnel in a short silence, that silence of people who are too alive to speak.

  Then the tunnel opened.

  The Jump Chronos Station appeared, and the next crossing was quick, functional, almost humiliating in how “normal” it felt after the blue of Step Thirty. The world blinked again, and when Americ-Ana felt solid ground under her feet, the air changed.

  The gallery.

  Immense, bright, too full, with row after row of Jump Chronos Stations stretching out like a museum of infinite doors. The light there was clean, excessive, and for a second Americ-Ana hated how everything looked “organized” after everything that had happened.

  Head Keys was still there.

  Standing guard.

  Chest puffed out, miniature-imperial posture, disproportionate feet planted on the floor, as if he’d spent the entire time doing exactly what he’d been told to do. When he saw the group arriving, he made a short, alert little sound and readied himself, as if his presence were a promise of discipline in the middle of chaos.

  Wwwyye bolted.

  She ran to the door that led to the Chancellor’s office, pushed, took a quick look, scanning the space the way someone searches for a fire.

  “Nothing here,” she called out. “The Chancellor isn’t here.”

  Wwwyye ran back to the others, her hair and her top hat seeming to have a life of their own in motion.

  Astyam took a step forward, his gaze already decided.

  He pointed at Trinity and then toward the direction of the office.

  “Head Keys.” His voice came firm, pure command. “Get her back to the Chancellor’s office safely. And from there, get help.”

  Head Keys answered in his own way.

  A short little sound, almost an irritated “yes,” and then he moved up to Trinity, brushing against her leg, nudging with his small body as if to say, “move, move, move.” Trinity looked at Americ-Ana, looked at Wwwyye, looked at Astyam, swallowed hard, and followed.

  Head Keys went first.

  Trinity followed behind.

  And the two of them vanished through the door, heading back to the Chancellor’s office.

  The air seemed emptier after she left.

  Americ-Ana stared for a second in the direction Trinity had gone, and then pulled her focus back to what mattered now.

  The three of them looked at one another, steady, as if they needed to confirm with their eyes that they were still together.

  Americ-Ana spoke, and the sentence came with that clarity that’s born when guilt turns into reasoning.

  “Something just occurred to me.” She drew a deep breath, trying to hold back the tremor. “It wasn’t Nioh Nemmesis who killed King Solomon.”

  Wwwyye narrowed her eyes. Astyam went still.

  “I heard Patron Uvo killing King Solomon,” Americ-Ana went on, feeling the memory scrape at her from the inside. “That’s one more reason to go to the vault beneath the altar, to go to Solomon’s Temple, and settle once and for all what’s happening.”

  Astyam nodded, like someone sealing a calculation.

  “I agree.” He tightened Antichrist in his arms, and the little black fox remained quiet, as if he sensed the next step was dangerous. “We’re going to get answers and put an end to this, so things can go back to normal.”

  Wwwyye let out a sigh that sounded more tired than dramatic.

  “I miss our normal life.”

  Americ-Ana felt the necklace at her throat grow heavy, not like an accessory, like destiny. She looked at the Jump Chronos Stations, at the infinite doors, at the excessive brightness, and chose an idea the way you choose a weapon.

  “I don’t know what’s waiting for us,” she said, and her voice went firm on the last word. “But no matter what it is, we’ll do it for THE-IMPERIUM.”

  “For THE-IMPERIUM,” Wwwyye answered, without hesitation.

  “For THE-IMPERIUM,” Astyam answered, with the same steadiness.

  And then the three of them went.

  Americ-Ana in front, her whole body set to decision.

  Wwwyye right beside her, like a contained storm.

  Astyam behind, Antichrist in his arms, as if he were carrying the last innocent thing in that chaos.

  They crossed the Jump Chronos Station.

  Toward the vault beneath the altar.

  Toward Solomon’s Temple.

  Toward the Chancellor.

  Toward the truth.