Where Gods do Battle

Part 1: 17-Gri is Missing

001

The cybermage was absolutely panicking. This alone would be enough to scare any dweller of the Greater Void into running away. Indeed, it may be the scariest thing in the whole of the Greater Void, right up there with the full broadside salvo of the Halsttadtian battleship and reaching the fright levels of the very Void itself.

And if you ask “why?” – you clearly had never in your life met a cybermage. They are automatons made of brass and gears and vaguely electronic components strapped together in a way that gives them sentience. They exist only by the will of their goddess, the Lady of Tower, and only to fulfill their intended function in service of her: to guard and maintain the Universes’ thresholds imposed by the Lady and, by extension, operate the voidstations built at such thresholds.

And so even the thought of a panicking cybermage would be alien to any void dweller. Firstly, they can’t possibly panic because of their metallic emotionless nature, and secondly, if something made cybermage panic… any softer lifeform, like, for example, humans, better be running away from whatever might’ve caused that, as fast as the contents of their guts discharged into their pants would allow them to.

So when Till Deadeye saw the brasshead flail its mechanical appendages and whistle “.. - .----. ... / -- .. ... ... .. -. --. -.-.-- .. - .----. ... / -- .. ... ... .. -. --. -.-.-- .. - .----. ... / -- .. ... ... .. -. --. -.-.-- .. - .----. ... / -- .. ... ... .. -. --. -.-.--” over and over in a voice that was even more high-pitched than their usual binary talk… Even the security chief who has seen the Void itself with his naked eye, felt uneasy, and his knees started giving him clear signs of the need to turn away and run.

“What’s missing?” Deadeye asked, approaching the cybermage from behind and trying not to let the shaking of his knees spill into his voice.

The cybermage didn’t answer. His arms, still flailing wildly, split – each one turning into two slender limbs, as if the brasshead tried to transition into the spider mode but stopped halfway. Then its torso rotated on the waist to face the security chief.

“What is missing?” Till repeated the question, desperately fighting the force of gravity – or, more likely, the desire to go fall on the floor and roll into the cover.

The answer to that was a deafening and maddening mechanical screech as if all the oil was sucked out of the brass mechanical body and all its gears ground against each other. The oscilloscope diagram on the brasshead’s “face” convulsed several times throwing its peaks wildly up and down and out of the display range – and then went flat before blinking dimmer and dimmer and going out completely.

The screeching stopped. The gears halted. The mechanical body fell down as a pile of scrap.

“That’s new.” Till mumbled under his nose. He’s seen a lot in his life, but that didn’t include a cybermage having a literal emotional breakdown.

“Security chief?” He heard another cybermage’s voice. Unlike the one in front of him, this one was calmingly emotionless and ordinarily annoying. “We shall take care of the remains of our unfortunate brethren. Meanwhile, you should perform your assigned duty and establish a security zone around the point of incident.”

“Don’t tell me what to do…” Till snapped back. “Not before I know what got into this one to make it go nuts in the middle of the hallway.”

The pair of cybermages that arrived to pick up the remains of the broken one didn’t react to the security chief’s insubordinate tone. They never reacted to anything like that.

“I believe you will find the reason for that unit’s unfortunate demise if you proceed half a block forward and turn right. There was that unit’s assigned workplace in sector 17-Gri, laboratory eight. Up until twenty minutes ago it was.”

“What’s happened twenty minutes ago?”

“To find out what has happened at that point in time, Mister Till Deadeye, is your assigned duty as the security chief of this voidstation.”

002

17-Gri was missing. It was gone. According to cybermages, up until twenty minutes ago there was a sparsely populated scientific block of the voidstation here, but it was gone now.

Till Deadeye was left staring at the spherical hole in the station’s intricate and labyrinthine construction – the gaping wounds of the rusted service tunnels, the round mouths of various sizes left by the pipes and the hanging hair of the power and communication cables. All of it terminated at some unidentified event threshold that took a perfectly spherical chunk of the voidstation and made it disappear, one way or another with whatever it might’ve still contained.

The questions of “where was it gone?” and “how was it even possible?” were pressing but, to the mind of the station’s security chief, secondary. Whatever caused the disappearance of the whole section of the station was extremely powerful, sure, but didn’t pose a danger as immediate as the disruption the event left in its wake.

So, first things first – Till ordered the security force to cordon the borders of the missing bit of the station, hopefully preventing anyone and anything from falling into the newly created hole in the station’s interior. And, of course, the same security personnel would be able to assess the infrastructure damage and call onto the engineering and repair crews as needed. There was a lot of patching up to do. The station was old, and derelict enough as it is, so nobody could predict what kind of malfunctions and breakages the sudden disappearance of the large part of its structure may cause.

And thirdly, the engineering and repair crews together with the security details should be able to look for any signs of anything unusual, anything that might give Till a clue to answer those important but not immediately pressing questions.

The security chief could see some of them from where he was standing – a progressively ant-sized humans poking in and out of the passways and corridors and other holes in the station’s crudely disrupted interior.

A cough to his right informed Till of the arrival of Assun, one of his deputies.

“Are all personnel deployed as ordered?” The security chief asked.

“Exactly so, chief.” Was a short answer. Till looked over the shoulder and saw Assun eyeing up the hole in front of them. “How could it… disappear?”

“Well… that’s our work to find out. Currently, all theories are equally viable, up to and including a myriad of pocket-sized humans coming in with the tiny screwdrivers, dismantling the section and ferrying it away on what… a Deshreti convoy?” Till shrugged.

“Maybe… Maybe some sort of infestation? Biological or mechanical… like the mites or something?” Assum proposed.

“Leaving no trace or debris?”

“Maybe they dissolved everything in acid or other chemical?”

“That still would leave a lot of spillage I think…” Till looked at where the missing section had been. “And it would definitely take them some time. How could the disappearance happen so suddenly?”

“I… don’t know…” the deputy followed the chief’s gaze but couldn’t guess what caught his eyes.

“Neither do I…” Till said slowly still staring into the empty space. It wasn’t truly empty, of course, full of air and dust and random molecules flying inside the station’s normalcy fields. It wasn’t the absolute emptiness of the Greater Void… but still, something in this spherical hole made the right side of the Deadeye’s face, the one that earned him the nickname, tingle. He closed his right eye with his hand. Then moved the hand away. The tingling persisted.

There was something wrong with the space where the section 17-Gri previously was but was no more. There was something there, that even his dead eye couldn’t see and that send shivers through the deaden flesh of his face.

“Is something wrong, chief?” Assun asked.

“Yes… No… I don’t know.” Till shook his head and spat at his feet. “Maybe it’s just the enormity of it all that gets to me. A whole section… poof! Gone!”

“Isn’t it what always happens though?”

“What do you mean?” Till was surprised by the deputy’s question. “What does always happen?”

“We build things… then, with time, things disappear – and then we rebuild them again…” Assun looked up into the emptiness left by the missing section. Till followed his gaze and almost saw the outlines of the metal constructions, rebuilding the station in midair… he blinked, and the vision faded away, leaving only the spherical void behind.

“That’s… certainly a way to look at it.” Deadeye said. “But I’m sure very few things disappear so completely and so quickly.”

“Yes…” Assun shook his head. “Usually, the disappearances are either slower or more violent.”

“Did someone mention violence? I wouldn’t mind doing some stitching up right now…” They were joined by Kiriakos, the station’s medical officer who sounded even more disappointed than usual – which was a really hard thing to achieve. “There’s just no work for me here today, so I guess I will just be where I always am at this time...”

“Why the long face then?” Till gave him a half-smile. “I thought you of all people would be happy to keep to your schedule of laziness?”

“What you, Mister security chief, call ‘laziness’ to me had been containing the possible Lernean flu epidemic at Sector 30, investigating the rumors of an unknown voidborne disease in the section 5-Kokkino… or was it 5-Mavro…? Anyway, it was in Sector 15 and you know how it is in Sector 15 – section numbers really don’t matter there…”

“Okay, okay, doc, I get it.” Till raised his hands, surrendering to the avalanche of words from Kiriakos’ mouth. “You were as busy as the Phoenixian trader at the Aeolian festival. But it just raises more questions…”

“Oh, yes, the questions… Why am I unhappy with the whole section of the voidstation disappearing? Why am I not happy that there’s no critically wounded to treat and stitch up? Why am I not happy that everyone who was in that damn section just went missing without a trace?”

“What are you getting at, doc?”

“What I am getting at, chief,” Kiriakos wiped his forehead where a few drops of sweat had appeared because of how emotional his talking got. “Is that I don’t understand where they went. The whole section is removed, right? There should be damage. There should be wounded. There should be broken bones, possible brain trauma, a lot of mental damage – at least a bruised knee!”

“And yet there is none?”

“Not a thing, chief! Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody noticed anything.”

“Not a thing, you say…” Till remembered how the space left by the missing section 17-Gri looked to his dead eye. “You know, doc… you might be onto something here. It won’t help you to get happier, but it might help me.”

He paused.

“What if,” he asked nobody in particular. “What if someone did actually turn the section 17-Gri into not a thing? Not ‘nothing’ – not a thing?”

003

“Not a thing?” Kiriakos looked at him with great concern. “You don't make any sense, chief. Do I need to take you to the medical?”

“Well… Nothing about this makes sense so maybe nonsense is the answer?” Till kept looking at the emptiness left by the missing section.

What exactly was wrong about it?

Even in the Greater Void things don't normally disappear without a trace.

Disappearances don't happen in the blink of an eye.

What kind of power can do something like that?

Why does the part of his face that saw the naked Void keeps screaming at him that there's something wrong?

“Hey, cybermage!” Assun called out to one of the brassheads passing by. “Can you tell me how something can become not a thing?”

The cybermage stopped in its tracks, seemingly surprised by an unexpected question.

“The posed question employs the form of the wordplay that muddles the clarity of the matter at hand and is usually used to conceal the underlying absence of understanding by pretending to be deep and meaningful.”

“Chief, even the brassheads say you're full of shit.” Kiriakos laughed.

“Then tell me, cybermage,” Till looked at the brasshead with his dead eye. “Tell me why is this place so wrong?”

“To answer this question the cogitation unit is performing the scan of all present Voidstation’s sections and the space where the incident did occur. Using our data with added reports from the engineering and security teams, we shall be able to determine the nature of the incident.”

Part 2: The Search for What Isn’t

001

“Where were you when the section 17-Gri disappeared?”

“I was in the kitchen… I was still sleeping… I was at home… I was walking home…”

“When did you notice the disappearance?”

“I looked away for a moment and then it just wasn't there… I bend to pick up a fork from the floor and then it just wasn't there… I think I blinked and then it just wasn't there…”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No, not really… Other than the parts of the station were missing?... I didn't…”

“Did you feel any strange sensations in the moment of the incident?”

“No… No… No…”

“Did you hear any ominous chanting or any words spoken in unnatural tongues before or after the disappearance?”

“No… No… No…”

“Do you have anything to add?”

“No… No… Can I go home now?...”

Till personally conducted the questioning of all the people who were in the area near 17-Gri when it went missing. And all the witnesses - if they could even be called that - agreed on one thing: the section was there one moment and vanished the next. For some, it happened literally in the blink of an eye.

“Well, that was unhelpful…” Till leaned back against the chair and put his feet on the table. “We're about as far from any answers as we were before… if not further.”

“A dead end?” Assun asked.

“Completely dead. Nobody saw anything.” Till put the hand over his eyes, covering them from the light. “Nobody heard anything either. Nothing. No-thing…”

“Are you back to your crazy theory, chief?”

“Well… it's still the only one I have.” Till coughed. “But even if I'm correct, even if we disregard the question of how it happened… I still have no idea of who made it happen and why they did.”

002

“Not a thing…” Till looked at the open bottle of the Phoenixian brandy at the table and a small glass standing next to it. He hesitated for a moment, then his hand decisively chose the bottle over the glass.

“Why did I even say it…” He took a large sip out of the bottle, sending the burning liquid straight into the depths of his misery. “Why did I think it to begin with? What made me…”

He took another sip and paused, listening to what his body - and specifically the ‘dead’ part of his face felt at the moment. Hopefully the alcohol numbed his nerves enough…

The body felt as uncomfortable, as usual. Joints creaking here and muscles sprain there, the normal thing for anyone past the few decades of life.

His face wasn't normal though. The part once exposed to the Void had been less honest about its feelings than any other part of his body. It took a lot of convincing to make it explain exactly what it felt and why it felt it. Most of the time it gave off just some vague cryptic signals, parts of which Till learned how to interpret, but most of which he just didn't understand.

And now, when he as much as thought about the disappearing part of the station, the ‘dead’ part of his face was telling him it was wrong. All wrong.

“Of course it's wrong…” Till told his imaginary reflection sitting across the table. “The parts of the station normally do not go missing.”

“That's not what's wrong.” The imaginary Till shrugged.

“Then what is?” The real Till asked. “What can be even more wrong than that?”

The imaginary Till smiled at him, then looked up and blew a row of soap bubbles, gleaming with all the colours of the spectrum. He laughed and popped the bubbles with the long impossibly thin needle.

“You… who? What?” Till’s dead eye grew heavy, threatening to fall out of its socket.

The imaginary Till laughed again and rolled the dice. With each roll, a colour of the soap bubbles shifted randomly, some going so far as to escape the visible light completely. Roll after roll, the dice randomized whatever was in the room with them.

“...Who Plays Dice? And the Laughing One?”

The bottle fell out of Till’s hands, glass breaking against the floor. His right eye cried bloody tears, but he didn't notice.

“It doesn't make sense… nothing makes sense… no-thing…”

And with that final thought, the exhaustion helped by the unhealthy dose of Phoenixian brandy had finally taken him.

003

“.. .----. -- / ... --- .-. .-. -.-- / .. .----. -- / -. --- - / - .... . / ..-. . -- -- . / ..-. .- - .- .-.. . / -.-- --- ..- .----. ...- . / -... . . -. / .-- .- .. - .. -. --. / ..-. --- .-. .-.-.-“

The cybermage’s high-pitched binary shrieking woke Till up. His head hurt, his body hurt, everything hurt. But especially his head - the unfortunate consequences of the Phoenixian brandy.

And what's the worst - Deadeye couldn't even remember why he got so drunk last night.

Trying to recall anything from the last hour before the sleep took him hurt the most.

“What's happened?!” He asked the cybermage which barged into his living space as if it was his work office. “Can't it wait?”

“We have completed the analysis of the data collected by the engineering and repair crews at the place of the disappearance of the voidstation’s Section 17-Gri.” The cybermage’s voice was the usual emotionless monotone. “The results are as follows: material remains of the former section’s structure – absent. Organic remains of the former section’s inhabitants – absent. Unidentified remains at the point of the station’s section disappearance and the surrounding area – absent.”

“So, you’ve analyzed all the data and found… nothing?”

“Not quite so, security chief. Despite the remains of the missing section and its organic contains being absent, there is something else present that isn’t any of the above.”

“Something… else?” Till rolled his eyes. Another unknown thing – just what he needed.

“Indeed. In the space left by the former voidstation’s section 17-Gri were found unusual fluctuations of the energy harmonics, causing interference with the resident station’s normalcy fields.”

“Huh…” Till saw a glimmer of hope and reached out for it. Judging by the cybermage’s wording it wasn’t some weird Void tomfoolery, but science. Weird Void science, probably, but there was hope the cybermages might be able to understand it. Or not. It was a coinflip, but there was no better chance in the whole Void.

“So,” he said, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Any idea on what might’ve caused it?”

“A reality mine.”

“A reality mine!?” Now Till didn’t even try to sound less perplexed. “I mean… Isn’t that some pre-collapse superweapon?”

“It is.” Was an unexpectedly short answer.

“And as far as I’ve heard about those…” Till rubbed the back of his head as if trying to stir the memories inside it. “If it really was a reality mine detonation, we’d have our hands full of the space filled with the molten lava, or freezing to the point when the air goes liquid, or the area where even the stable atoms become radioactive… Things like that. Not a simple disappearance.”

“The depth of your knowledge on the matter of the ancient civilizations’ technology and its application in the warfare is truly fascinating,” the cybermage said it in its normal voice. So, Till had no way of knowing if it was genuine or sarcasm – so he just assumed the latter out of habit. “But the truth of the matter is, there is infinitely more ways to use the reality mines’ effects to manipulate the laws of physics in the given volume of space. Those devices, the marvel of the pre-collapse military engineering, had a myriad of settings, each of which could be attuned to specific value to achieve the desired results. In fact, the reality bubble containing and permeating this voidstation is merely a simplified derivative of the reality mines technology. They are of the same root, hence the interference left in the wake of the detonation of such device in the sector 17-Gri.”

“So let me get this straight…” Till have finally stood up from the bed - his aching head didn't like it at all. “You can set this ‘reality mine’ to turn part of the station into nothing?”

“We do believe it is possible.”

“Okay… that at least gives us something: the mine had to be brought to the station… I don't think you have a stash of them just lying around for any wanna be pre-Collapse warlord to use?”

“We do not have any kind of such weapons in our possession.” Cybermage said. “Its usage goes against the rules set by the Lady of Tower and as such is strictly forbidden even for us, her humble servants.”

“Forbidden by the Lady of Tower, huh?” That was something Till haven't heard too often. The mysterious goddess of cybermages didn't impose too many rules on her followers.

“Under the threat of a complete and final disassembly.”

“I see…” Till suddenly realised he just learned more about cybermages in a few sentences than in all of his previous years of life. “So someone had to ship the weapon here. And then someone on the station had to activate it. How probable is that they were inside the missing section at the moment of activation?”

“That probability can not be precisely calculated but is considered to be sufficiently low, according to the main cogitator unit of the station.” The cybermage's face display blinked. “It would, after all, go against the main biological instincts of self-preservation.”

“So you can safely assume that whoever did this is still on the station.” Till looked around the room, found a bottle of water and poured half of it into his mouth. “I hope we didn't forget to close the station after the incident…”

“Such an order was issued by the main cogitator unit immediately after the disappearance of section 17-Gri was discovered.”

“I knew I can count on you, guys…” said Till, trying to ignore the fact he didn't think about it before.

004

“What are you doing, chief?” Assun walked into the station’s security office smiling happily, contrasting the frown on Till's face.

“Looking for clues, deputy.” Deadeye answered, going through sheet after sheet of paper.

“I'm not sure that…” Assun took one of the sheets and looked at it. “...that looking through the cargo manifests will be all that helpful. Unless someone declares a shipment of the reality mines… but I don't think anyone can be that stupid.”

“That's why I'm looking for things they didn't declare. All of the cargo is constantly weighted. As a whole and by the individual items. I never understood why the cybermages insist on doing it and why we never paid attention to the discrepancies…”

“But now it came in handy?”

“It did.” Till scratched the back of his head. “All these cargo manifests are from the ships that came to the station in the last month. I didn't think there were that many… and that most of them were smuggling something on board.”

“What, a lot of numbers didn't match?”

“Well, I can understand being a few grams off here and there. Guess I can explain the difference of a kilogramme or even a few… but here… look.” He pointed his finger at one of the manifests.

Assun looked at it and whistled in surprise.

“That’s… a ton…”

“Almost exactly at that.” Till put that manifest away. “Too bad it's almost certainly not what we're looking for.”

“Do you actually know how much that mine would weigh?”

“I'd say about ten kilograms…” Said Till, sounding rather unsure of his words. “It should be one man portable apparently.”

“How do you know we're dealing with a single man?”

“I don't. I simply choose to believe we do.”

After some time, Till noticed that Assun’s head seemed to grow heavier and heavier - the deputy started leaning forward more and more, keeping his eyes open only by the great personal effort.

“Sorry, man.” Till patted his shoulder. “Sometimes our job is just this kind of boring.”

“I don't know, chief…” Assun yawned. “We had a whole section of the station disappear. I'd think it will lead to the dangerous investigation into the crazy forbidden secrets and all manner of the Void weirdness… not this.”

The deputy pointed at the cargo manifests with disgust.

“Not everything must involve the weird things of the Void, Assun…” Till leaned back and yawned too. “Sometimes it's just us, humans, doing our boring work.”

“Yeah, yeah, chief, you are right…” Assun agreed. “Pass me another batch of those…”

After more yawning and grunting and silent cursing at the port authorities and cybermages, they managed to go through all of the manifests.

One of them Till picked up and put on top of the pile.

“So, this one, I believe, is our most likely candidate…” He said. “An Aeolian freighter, ‘the Screaming Siren’.”

“What a bold choice for a name…”

“When you're cruising on a filament in something that's basically a bunch of barrels tied together with rope, screaming is what tends to happen.”

“But how would you know who that undocumented shipment went to?”

“We'll have to talk to the people at the port.”

“And what if they say they don't remember anything?”

“Then we'll take them in for questioning about each and every one of the manifests. And that will leave them out of job for a long, long time. So they better remember something.”

005 

The questioning went smoothly. After hearing what Deadeye and Assun had to offer, each and every one of the port workers they spoke to started talking - and talking, and talking, and talking… After all was done, the security chief and his deputy had a pretty long list of addresses that the illicit cargo smuggled on the station was delivered at one point in time or another.

“Well that was easy…” Said Assun in a very tired voice. “And rather pointless.”

“Was worth a shot.” Till shrugged. “We got the addresses.”

“Do we need to go door to door now, checking all of them?” Assun thought aloud. “But that would draw too much attention, potentially warning our suspect…”

“True…” The security chief closed his eyes as if listening to his inner voice. “You know what… for now, just heighten the security in the areas around those addresses…”

“And I'll tell them to watch for anything unusual.” Assun caught up fast with the chief’s thinking. “I guess I should also look into how these addresses are distributed… Maybe there's a cluster or two of them that may lead to the same destination?”

“Good thinking.” Till smiled. “Do that. Meanwhile…”

“What will you do?”

“I'll go and ask a terribly unreliable source about it…”

006

He walked into the forgotten parts of the station. The place that most of the people here never visited unless they took the wrongest turn of their life. The place where the rust and decay reigned almost unchecked.

His path was marked by the cryptic symbols and writings in the tongue he didn't know. He covered the left half of his face letting the right eye do its work: he still couldn't read the markings but he understood them. They were of the Void after all.

A couple of times he heard quiet rustling, soft sounds of steps to his side or behind his back. Then he stopped and loudly stated his name and his goal. Then he looked at where the sounds were coming - and there was nobody there.

The entrance he was looking for was guarded by the tall figure dressed in colourful clothes. The guard saw him, nodded and stepped aside, letting Till know that he was permitted to enter.

Deadeye nodded back and stepped into the darkness.

007

The lone lamp on the table lit up the circle around itself, gently pushing the dark away. The woman sitting behind the lamp looked at Till as if she was expecting him.

“Take a seat, Deadeye.” She said, gesturing at the empty chair in front of the table.

“Thank you, Ma’am.” He said, sitting down. “I'm sure you know why I am here?”

“I can guess…” Madame Vex smiled. “Did you lose the trail, Till?”

“Ah, no, I didn't.” He sighed, leaning back in the chair. “The problem is there are just too many trails - and we don't know which to follow.”

“And what does your Void eye tell you…?” She reached forward as if trying to touch Till’s face but stopped herself half-way.

“I'm not like you, Vex.” Till covered the right half of his face, hiding it from her gaze. “I don't hear it… not while I'm still sober enough to understand anyway. It just hurts.”

“I see…” She took away her hand, her long thin fingers moving as if pulling some unseen threads in the air between them.

“Then I believe it is meant for you.” She took a torn piece out of somewhere and slid it across the table towards the security chief.

He picked it up. “Arrival at 210000. Section 22-Prasinos/122. Jareeq.” it said in hastily written letters.

“Are you sure it's what I'm looking for?”

“Of course I am not.” Madame Vex smiled again. “But considering how one of my Voidwalkers by pure chance acquired it and brought it to me not long before your visit… I think this piece of paper was looking exactly for you.”

“The Law of Possessions?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you, by chance, have a large sum of money that was desperately looking for me?” Till sneered.

“Unfortunately, Deadeye, the law doesn't always work in your favour. I'm not sure that I'm doing you a favour by giving you this address…”

“Well… thank you for it anyway, Ma’am.” Till got up from the chair. “And… one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“How can something become not a thing? Not nothing. Not a thing?”

Till noticed how Madame Vex grimaced like she smelled an old half-rotten corpse smell. She clenched her teeth and shook her head.

“Not a thing…” She finally said. “...and nothing. Something can be nothing but still be a thing. But what's not a thing can't ever be something.”

“So it's like ultimate destruction? The finality?”

“You can say that…” She bit her lip, thinking how much she wanted to say next. “But I prefer to think of it as destruction in more dimensions than usual. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, it's just something unimportant… Just a silly thought.” Till scratched the back of his head and turned to leave. “Thank you for the information, Ma’am Vex. We will check the address.”

“Good bye, security chief.” She replied. “Come visit… when your eye starts talking.”

Part 3: The Echoes of the Past

001

“So, what do we have here, Assun?” Till asked, watching his deputy dispatch another pair of the security guards to their new posts.

“Here, chief, we have a surprisingly quiet section of the station. Almost no gang presence, not much crime, not much business… sleepy place.”

“How likely this place was sleeping on a stash of the reality mines this whole time?”

“I mean… you got the information, you should tell me.” Assun shrugged. “I have no idea, why you think it is where we should look first.”

“It was on the list we got from the port workers…”

“As were many others.”

“Let's call it intuition then.”

“Whatever you say, chief.” Assun waved the pair of the returning guards to come closer. “I don't want to know what the name of your intuition is and why it starts with the capital ‘V’.”

The guards reported seeing nothing suspicious at where they were posted. At least they haven't noticed any reality-bending effects or otherworldly occurrences.

“Okay then, you two are free to go home.” Till shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Take a good rest until tomorrow and hope that nothing happens while you're asleep.”

“You really know how to motivate people, chief.” Scoffed Assun when the guards disappeared behind the corner.

“Oh, it's just the mood… you know, when you constantly feel something's terribly wrong but can't exactly point a finger at it?”

“Excuse me, chief, but that sounds more like something Kiriakos should be dealing with.”

“I may sign up to get my brain checked one day…” Till said. “Maybe it too went missing like that 17-Gri.”

The sudden jolt of pain hit the right side of his face. It's like the whole of the greyed deadened area of his skin had become one thick nerve at which someone hacked with an axe.

Then it was the long and impossibly thin subquark needle, the one that could pop a whole Universe as a soap bubble. And now it was plunged deep into his dead eye, exploding with unbearable searing pain into the back of his head.

He fell on his knees, barely able to hold his breaking apart head in his hands. His mouth rapidly filled with blood and saliva, overflowing and dripping on the floor.

He didn't hear Assun calling for the medics.

He didn't even notice when the cybermages arrived.

002

He came to his senses way more violently than passed out - waving hands in front of his face and cursing at whatever was plaguing his mind while he was out.

“Calm down, chief, the Void won't eat you… yet.” The vague figure before Till’s eyes came into focus and turned out to be smiling Kiriakos holding up an empty syringe, looking all proud of himself.

“Ugh…” Deadeye stood up from the floor, using the medic’s shoulder as a ОПОР. “What… What did you inject me with?”

“My special cocktail.” Kiriakos followed him up on his feet and dusted off his white coat. “I didn't know what's gotten into you, so I gave you the mix against everything bad I know. Glad it worked.”

“Thanks for not killing me, doc.”

“You're welcome, chief.” Kiriakos put the empty syringe in his pocket. “It was a gamble. I wasn't sure it will work.”

“No need to tell me…” Till looked around searching for his deputy. Kiriakos caught his stare.

“Assun is with the cybermages outside the room. You should go talk to them if you're feeling up to it.”

“Will you let me rest if I say I'm not?”

“No.”

“As expected…”

Till walked out of the room, leaving the still smiling medic inside. He immediately noticed his deputy and a pair of cybermages standing in front of the turn to the next block of quarters.

“Are you okay?” Asked Assun when Till approached them.

“I've been worse.” Till waved the question away. “Can you tell me what's happened? And why the cybermages?”

“We noticed the anomaly.” Said one of the cybermages. “We were the closest, so we arrived immediately.”

“Wow, you've shortened your speech…” Said Till, surprised. “Is everything that bad?”

“Not bad. Urgent.” The cybermage said. “We detected an anomaly in the normalcy field…”

“Like the one left by the disappeared section?”

“Correct.”

“But this section is still present, right, Assun?”

“Nothing unusual for now, chief.” The deputy nodded. “We'd know if something that big happened.”

The second cybermage who kept quiet until now suddenly let out a rapid burst of the binary data, leading to the heated exchange of beeps and boops between the cybermages. Till could barely understand what it was about, but what he did catch from the rapid-fire binary speech he didn't like.

“How often do the people on posts around the section report back?”

“Every fifteen minutes, using the station’s intercom.”

“And all reports were normal after I had passed out?”

“Absolutely normal…” Assun thought about something. “Well, everyone reported two minutes earlier than expected, but I guess the guys just wanted to get it over with quicker…”

“Two minutes…” Till turned to the cybermage. “Does that line up with the temporal anomaly you've detected?”

Deadeye had to try really hard to persuade himself that the cybermage wasn't utterly dumbfounded by his words. Also he had to convince himself that the look of utter confusion on the faceless oscilloscope display under the cybermage's hood was just a figment of his imagination.

Cybermages don't have emotions. Everyone knows this.

“Indeed it does.” Finally said the cybermage.

“Exactly two minutes jump.” Added the second one.

“Destruction in more dimensions than usual, huh?” Till looked along the corridor - the rusted walls, the floors covered in dust and mud, the rows of doors on both sides…

“Did the anomaly have an origin point?” He asked the cybermages, waited for them to affirm his suspicion, then added: “Then let's check it out.”

“Are you sure you should be going, chief? If you pass out again…” Assun sounded genuinely concerned.

“Then we should move quickly while the Kiriakos’ cocktail is still working.” Till walked forward even before finishing the sentence. “Let's go!”

003

The origin point. The ground zero. The eye of the hurricane. All those ways to call the single point in the center of a circle. The point from which something spreads or expands. The point where everything begins. The point around which everything orbits.

Sometimes it’s just a poorly cleaned apartment block in the voidstation’s slums that’s hiding behind those grand words. Rusted walls, covered in kinds of moss probably unknown to most biologists of the Void and cables that had long forgotten its original purpose and now are just hanging to the rust-devoured metal out of habit. Moisture, that runs down the walls leaving behind traces, resembling the eldritch symbols spelling out names of the gods that never existed. Low ambient humming behind those walls that may be still running machinery or maybe the breathing of the station itself.

This was where Till walked in first, telling Assun and the cybermage to wait. The security details had encircled the block, hoping to cover all the exits – Till didn’t have much hope though. In places like this there are always too many trapdoors, hatches and passages not documented on any station’s plans.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go alone, chief…” Assun tried to contradict Deadeye’s orders.

“You should stay back.” Till raised the palm of his hand at him in a stopping gesture. “Someone should be in charge… if anything happens. And I would prefer if it was you.”

Assun stepped back and nodded, in equal measure disappointed and honored.

004

The door of the apartment slid into the wall the moment Till slid his security keycard through the cardlock’s slit. He hunched slightly at the sight of the exposed apartment’s entrance as if expecting danger – but nothing happened. Just the quiet “clang” of the metal door coming to rest in the open position.

The apartment was dark, with only the slight bit of light coming from the furthest room – which was supposed to be a bedroom if Till’s memory of the station’s floor plans was correct.

And so, he moved forward. Carefully, quietly, thinking of all the ways it could go wrong – and yet, nothing had happened again. He came to face the open door of the bedroom where he finally found the man he was looking for.

Or, at the very least, someone who fit the nebulous criteria of “a person who can set off a reality mine on a station and is possibly called Jareeq” to the smallest indent on top of a “t”.

The man knelt before a hexagonal device crowned with an angular diamond-shaped construct. His hands moved in practiced efficiency – pulling wires, plugging them back, pressing symbols etched into the device’s casing – all the while murmuring under his breath. He was so absorbed in his work that he ignored Deadeye standing silently in the doorway.

Till exhaled slowly, keeping one hand firm on the grip of the revolver under his coat.

“Mister Jareeq Amunrekh?”

The man finally lifted his head, blinking up at Till as if surfacing from deep waters.

“Ah, the station’s security is here…” He said, getting up and wiping his hands with a cloth. His tone held neither surprise nor concern – only a casual acknowledgment, as if greeting an expected visitor.  “Mister… Deadeye if I’m not mistaken? I don’t think we’re acquainted.”

“I don’t think we are.” Till nodded, still scanning the room with both his eyes. The left one barely saw anything suspicious except for that one strange device while the right, dead, one saw the room as a web of flashing wrongness and refused to cooperate further.

“But I see you successfully found out my name… Am I that famous already?” Jareeq asked with a half-smile. “I do expect to be recognized for my genius eventually, but I’d never think it happen so soon.”

“Well, you’ve managed to destroy a large part of the station…”

“A small miscalculation.” Jareeq didn’t even try to dismiss Till’s blatant accusation. “It was empty anyway. Well, mostly empty. Acceptable losses on the path to the greatest discovery in the whole Void.”

Till released the grip on the revolver for a second – to cover the left side of his face with a hand and try to force his right eye to do its job. It still was unwilling, but it had no choice but to look and see what it didn’t want to see.

The dead eye did what Till asked it to do – it gave him a brief glimpse of what was really happening in front of him – and went blind, turning itself off as it didn’t want to have anything to do with what would happen next.

But the brief glimpse was enough.

Among the shadows cast by Jareeq only one was human.

005

Till narrowed his gaze, watching the scientist. Jareeq looked like someone whose brilliance eclipsed consequence – he spoke of destruction as if it were theoretical, abstract, rather than the erasure of  the human lives and places someone might’ve called home.

“You expect me to believe this was just a miscalculation?” Till finally spoke, voice sharp with skepticism. “You wiped out a whole section of the station, and you stand here tinkering with some wires and pushing buttons like it was some sort of an accident?”

Jareeq sighed – irritated, but not surprised. “A section was lost, yes. But was it destroyed? Was it truly gone in the way you believe?”

His fingers traced the edge of the hexagonal device, hanging for a moment above the big round button, then moving further.

“You think time moves forward, Deadeye. You think destruction is linear. But what you really missing is: time doesn’t progress. Time confines. Time…”

Jareeq coughed. Till’s right eye sprung to life, showing its owner the fan of shadows cast by the man – shadows inhuman, shadows laughing, shadows rolling dice…

“Time isn't an arrow, flying from past to future. Time isn't a river, carrying us forward in its waters. Time…” Jareeq paused. “Time is a barrier. A barrier pushing us in the direction of the future and crushing the past under its weight.”

“If that’s true, then the past doesn't exist anymore.” Till shook his head. “As far as my experience goes, all things crushed turn to dust. Or a slimy kinda goo.”

“Ah, but that’s what someone not burdened with the keen scientific insight would say!” The scientist gave out maniacal laughter. “But that’s the biggest lie in the whole Void! Think about it! The time is a barrier, a wall. And who in the Void is responsible for the walls? For the barriers?”

“The…” Till began, then thought about his words carefully, then continued. “The Lady of Tower.”

“Exactly!” Jareeq’s eyes flared up as the nozzle of the Phoenixian engine that’s about to blow. “And this… this deity… she didn’t appear in the Void until well after the Collapse.”

“And so…” Till looked at him with curiosity. “You are trying to blow up this ‘time wall’, don’t you? To achieve what exactly?”

“To bring back Deshret.

“Not as it is now – whole Universes turned deserts, the life barely clinging to the remains of the past.

“I want to bring back the Deshret of the bygone days – the place of unmatched prosperity and unrivaled splendor, the empire that ruled a thousand Universes!”

006

He saw it only for a moment. For a brief moment from his dead eye waking up to the true reality of what was going on in front of him to the moment later, when that eye closed itself shut screaming panic into Till’s brain.

Before he even could form a thought, his hand pulled the revolver out, cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger.

The gun spat a bullet out and into the man in front of it.

Till and Jareeq were only a few steps away from each other. There was nothing but air between them. Nothing could stop the bullet spinning and flying forward towards the Jareeq’s face.

The room broke apart, shifting at seams and rearranging itself like a puzzle box. Back and front, up and down switched up, traded places and rotated. Then again and again, sending sharp pulses of pain through Till's face.

The bullet’s trajectory curved to the side at an impossible angle - as if a simple ball of lead suddenly acquired a mind of its own and chose a different target.

It hit the diamond-shaped crown on the strange device that Jareeq was previously working on and toppled the thing on the floor, red lights flickering along its corners.

“You're such a bad shot, mister Deadeye…” Jareeq said, turning and running away through the door that for some reason now was behind him.

Till cocked the hammer again and it fell clean off the gun, leaving a smooth surface as if cut by a sharp blade.

Jareeq stopped in the gaping hole that was the door frame, turned to face the security chief one more time and with the light of zealous conviction in his eyes, proclaimed:

“Deshreti Empire will rise again! You’ll watch it rule a thousand Universes!”

And leaving those last words drift through the air as a banner that fell off the wall, he left.

The lights on the device stopped blinking and all lit up in distressing red.

Till made a step forward, already knowing that he won't be able to make it before this device… before it would detonate, possibly swallowing another section of the station and either erasing it from existence or sending it back in time…

007

It exploded. Well, it wasn't an explosion the same way the gunpowder explodes in the chamber of a gun – there was no booming sound, no bright flashes of light.

Just a sphere of pure alienness, radiating outward from the mine, carrying the laws of physics totally different to what was around it.

It expanded rapidly, but Till’s half-dead face reacted to the detonation with burning searing pain and the time broke down into a series of still images, drawn by an unseen hand.

His dead eye didn't want to look at the explosion but it was so horrible and repulsive that Till couldn't take his eyes away from it.

The sphere expanded.

And again.

Till noticed something behind it. The shadows. The dancing shadows of the past trying to become the future. The Deshreti battle barges conquering Universe after Universe. Their kings and queens worshipped as gods, drowning in opulence and excess. Their technology all geared towards either conquest or building yet more extravagant and luxurious palaces for their rulers.

The sphere expanded.

And there were more shadows. Those were hiding. Lurking. Waiting to strike from behind the facade that was the glorious Deshreti empire.

The shadows that bend the Void to their needs.

The true gods of this place.

The Law of Cycles – a laughing god, the creator and the destroyer of Universes.

And the God Who Plays Dice – the chaos incarnate, the great randomizer and the reason there were no two Universes the same.

The Absentee Gods.

They watched. And waited.

The true prisoners of the wall in time.

The sphere expanded again.

Till realised that soon it will start eating off his boots – and that this time instead of just making a part of the station disappear, it will break open the time wall and bring back things better left in the past.

But what could he do but watch?

The high-pitched whirring of gears and clanking of bronze limbs invaded his ears. Even if he still perceived time as the broken sequence of paintings, the cybermage running into the room at full speed looked like a smear of paint, hastily made by a brush.

The cybermage stopped millimetres away from the mine’s expanding event horizon.

Wires and mechanical tendrils erupted out of its body, completely tearing apart its tattered robes, and flew towards the expanding sphere - probing and testing. A few tendrils melted, some wires caught fire but then…

…The cybermage disassembled itself. Bit by bit, gear by gear, shining brass part by shining brass part – and re-assembled itself again, but not as the usual humanoid figure. No, now it was a symbol of faith, an idol and an altar dedicated to the Lady of Tower - the sacred protector of limits, boundaries and thresholds.

The event horizon hit the brass idol. It bent and leaned forward to hug the detonation sphere.

Till saw how the reality layered and shuffled itself as the deck of cards where the wills of different gods met.

“The humans shouldn't be where the gods battle…” was his last thought before the impossible exhaustion of keeping the time from moving forward caught up to him - and he was allowed to drift away into the merciful darkness.

Part 4: The Woman in Red

001

Till was sitting on the edge of the station’s corridor opening into the space where section 17-Gri used to be. One could say that it was the place where everything began but the security chief wasn't feeling melancholic enough to consider that.

And anyway: it all had begun long ago, before 17-Gri went missing. It all started at the dawn of time.

Till looked into the bottle of Phoenixian brandy then took a large swig out of it. Coughed and held the bottle up.

“Are you sure you don't want some?” He said to Assun, who was standing behind him, leaning against a wall. “It really helps with the existential dread and the crushing weight of helplessness.”

“You know I can't drink that stuff, chief.” Assun gave him a tired smile. “But are we really that helpless?”

“You didn't see it…” Till closed his eyes and kept talking. “The explosion, the wound in reality… in time, the hungry gods clawing their way through it… If the cybermage didn't intervene you'd live in a very different world by now. And I wouldn't live at all.”

“Then maybe the cybermages will do our work for us?” Assun shrugged. “It seems like it's their problem to solve now…”

“Would they be able to? If it took a total destruction of one of theirs to stop the reality mine from happening… now, when that Jareeq knows exactly the settings he needs, he can detonate as many of the mines as he wants and who's gonna stop them all?”

“…”

“And if even one of them will go off and breach that time barrier… Who will stop what will spill though the hole? It’ll be like trying to plug a hole in the station’s outer shell: no matter how much stuff you throw at it, the Void just keeps sucking it out.”

“The old Deshreti empire…”

“You’re not looking happy when you say it, Assun…” Till looked at the deputy with his dead eye. “You’re from Deshreti space too, right? Aren’t you at least a bit happy to get the glory days of your nation back?”

“Glory days…” Assun’s gaze travelled across the expanse of the hole in the station, not stopping on anything in particular. “The mighty Deshret… The Empire that ruled a thousand Universes… Well, more like about a hundred, but ‘a thousand’ sounds much grander, right? The unstoppable war machine, swiping the Void like the winds of the desert… and leaving the said desert in its wake… a lot.

You know, chief… Those times are very interesting to read about. To marvel at what was achieved, to muse on what could’ve been, to ponder on the secrets and lost knowledge. But I’m really not sure I’d want to live there.”

“Why so?” Till kept staring at him with his left eye closed tight.

“Because…” Assun coughed, clearing his throat. “Because I’ve seen what it came to. How it ended. The ruins of once magnificent places, the scars of devastation on an imaginable scale… The relics buried in the sand. I looked at all of it and felt only… despair.

There was… and is… no hope in the past.”

“I see…” Till finally turned away from Assun and looked into the hole in the station again. “And do you find any hope in the present?”

“I do.” Assun nodded, even if he knew, the chief wouldn’t see it. “There’s still a hope for a future. A hope that we can build something on top of the relics of the past. That we can use that as the foundation and do better… or, at least, differently.”

The empty space in front of them wasn’t as empty as it was when Till first saw it, when the section 17-Gri disappeared. The engineering and the building crews, together with the cybermages hurried themselves on all levels of the station – fixing what was broken and rebuilding what was lost. New communication cables were laid out, new floor planes constructed, and the once perfectly spherical area of disappearance had become jagged – the station slowly reclaimed the space.

002

“Oh, look who the Void dragged in…” Till said without looking back. Assun turned his head and saw a woman with the long dark hair, ashen-white skin and a piercing gaze of the charcoal-black eyes. In contrast to the simple colors of her skin and hair, her dress was variegated, stitched together from the spots of vibrant, flashy hues.

“Hello, Till. Hello, Assun.” The woman said in a quiet voice. “I hope you don’t mind if I join your small farewell party for the world we know?”

“I don’t really mind, madame…?” Assun said, blushing slightly for reasons unknown even to him.

“Vex. Madame Vex.” The woman replied and sat down beside Deadeye who had said nothing after his first remark.

“That… Vex?” Assun couldn’t believe it really was the secretive and mysterious leader of the Voidwalkers gang.

“Yes, Assun, it really is that Madame Vex.” Till said, looking straight forward into the air. “The one that sent me to the lair of a zealous Deshreti restorationist without mentioning he had Absentee Gods as allies.”

“In my defense, I didn’t know they were.”

“Please, Vex, don’t lie to me…”

“I’m not.” Madame said simply. “Isn’t it why you aren’t looking at me? To not know that I’m telling the truth?”

“I just want to blame someone…” Till finished the bottle and almost threw it down into the empty space in front of him but then decided against it and rolled it back along the corridor. The bottle zinged against something metal somewhere down the corridor and stopped.

“Someone other than myself.” He added.

“Why blame anyone but Jareeq?” Vex asked, looking at the security chief with kind eyes.

“Because I knew…” Till leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I could know. The eye was trying to tell me… If only I was stronger and less drunk…”

“What would change?”

“I’d went to the cybermages… to you… to someone who knows what to do when the ancient gods are trying to break out of their prison.”

“Do you think they know?” Surprisingly for Till it was Assun who asked this question.

“At least they’d know someone who knows…” Deadeye said. “Do you, Vex?”

“Maybe… maybe not…” Was a vague answer. “What I do know Deadeye, someone on this station is looking for you. And if you don’t listen to them now, it’s over. For you. For me. For all of us.”

“More cryptic words…” Till smiled. “Who are they? And where are they?”

“I’ll show you the way.”

003

They walked for a long while, turning at the corridor junctures seemingly at random and taking more than a few stairs and ladders down. At first, the station’s structures kept getting increasingly disused and rusted but then Assun noticed something strange – the further they went, the cleaner and shinier it got. Like it was a crowded and constantly managed area – and even shinier than there.

“Where are we going?” The deputy asked. “I’m completely lost at this point…”

“We’re almost where I hoped you’ll never have to be.” Deadeye said without turning his head at Assun. “The Underside.”

“The Underside?” Assun knew that that was the name of the quarantined part of the station, heavily infested with the weird Void things bringing their Void weirdness to the station, but he’d never thought it would look like this. “Nobody lives here, right?”

“No humans are allowed here.”

“Then who keeps cleaning the place?”

“The brassheads. Mostly because they fear that the dust can carry some Void plague, virus or mutagen or any other sort of thing…” Till said. “And so, they keep cleaning and disinfecting the station around the Underside area… I hope we won’t have a run-in with the sterilizer crew… Vex?”

“Don’t worry, chief.” Madame answered. “I’ll lead you around their path…”

004

Finally, they took the last ladder down through the maintenance hatch and just five small steps down led Assun into a hall that was everything that the earlier few corridors weren’t. Poorly lit by the bulbous pulsing growth on its walls and ceiling, it was covered in dust and cobwebs. The air was stale and moist; the deputy had a hard time breathing.

In the middle of the room stood a lone woman figure, dressed in a long bright red overcoat with the matching color fedora hat on her head. Long mahogany brown hair fell cascading on her back.

“We have arrived.” Vex said in her quiet deep voice. “I’ve brought them.”

“Hello security chief.” The woman said, turning around. Her words sent jolts of uncomfortable pain through Till’s dead eye. “Hello, Assun. For the sake of simplicity, you can call me Madeleine.”

“What are you?” Deadeye asked, not sure what to do – either try to shoot this woman or to cover the right side of his face to quell the pain.

“Oh, I see…” Madeleine looked at the security chief with an unbound curiosity. “I’ve heard about you, Deadeye, and about your eye that is… well… dead. Or shall we say, Void-sensitive? I can use those words if you prefer?”

“Just spill it out, lady…” Till grimaced. “Use whatever words you want.”

“I can’t.” Madeleine said. “Some things are too heavy to know safely… Even here, near the Underside, when the rules aren’t rules and the laws aren’t strict. But if that helps…”

She raised her hand and put her palm towards Till. Dim red licks of flame appeared on the points of her fingers like small torches – one, two, three. Warm reddish glow shined upon the Deadeye, persisted for a second and vanished.

“Does this feel better, Deadeye?” Madeleine asked.

“It is…” Till touched the dead part of his face with his fingers. “Numb? What did you do?”

“I’m sorry, it’s the only way.” The woman said, putting her hands back in the pockets. “It isn’t permanent, so don’t worry. I just put the restless part of you to rest.”

Assun made a weird groaning sound forcing everyone’s attention to himself. The young deputy was visibly lost and unsure of what to do and what to say in this situation.

“I’m sorry these two dragged you in, Assun.” Madeleine said, prompting even more confusing look from the deputy.

“How do you… How do you know my name?” He muttered – his tongue tying in all kinds of knots in his mouth.

“Just file it under the ‘weird Void stuff’.” Madeleine smiled. “But I do know. And I liked your perspective on Deshret and the future as a whole… here’s a penny for your thoughts.”

The woman took her hand out of the pocked and flicked something into the air towards Assun. He caught it and looked at the shiny round piece of metal with an unknown human profile pressed into it.

“A coin?” He said, turning it around in his fingers. “But I don’t recognize…”

“That’s okay.” Madeleine said hiding her hand again. “You won’t be able to pay with it in the normal stores… Unless you cheat the vendor a bit.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“If you ever decide to go back home... Just give it to any cybermage. On this station or any other – doesn’t matter. Give it to them and they will do everything in their power to find you a ship to the Deshreti space. That’s my gift to you.”

“Thank you…” Assun said without much confidence in his voice.

“You better believe her.” Madame Vex whispered. “Keep it and use it wisely.”

005

“Now back to you, Deadeye.” Madeleine’s smile disappeared. “I understand that right now you are feeling mostly powerless, being confronted with the forces beyond your ability to control.”

“That’s…” Till cleared his throat. “That’s putting it very lightly.”

“How would you put it then?”

“I’d say we should run and hide… But at the same time, I understand very well that running and hiding won’t help. After the Absentee Gods return there will be no place safe in the whole Void.”

“That’s a good assessment…” Madeleine nodded slowly. “And are you sure you can do nothing to stop… What was his name again?”

“Jareeq.”

“Yes, Jareeq.” The woman in red looked at all three of her guests in turn. “Do you really think the humans shouldn’t stand where gods battle?”

“What can we do?” Till turned his gaze away. “He’s… He’s supported by the two most powerful entities in the Void. Even if it looks like he doesn’t know it himself – they will do everything to protect him because he is their key…”

“He’s not the key.” Madeleine cut his words off in a voice, as sharp as a razor’s edge. “He’s not the key; the reality mines aren’t locks and the timewall isn’t a door. You’re right: it doesn't matter what he thinks of himself. None of his delusions of grandeur matter. He can think the fall of the old Deshreti empire was the single most important catastrophe in the Void’s history… But it was inevitable. And so is the reconstruction of Deshret – not the restoration of the old, but the construction of something new.

That’s the Law of Cycles. That’s where they got him, the Absentee Gods.”

“And what’s next…” Till shrugged. “Shall we go and find him and reeducate him, pointing out his errors and hope that we can convince him to not set off more reality mines? For all I know he might be activating one at this very moment and this whole conversation is pointless!”

“Oh, no, I don’t think that’ll work…” Madeleine shook her head. “He’s adamant in his beliefs. Don’t think you can change it with a conversation…”

“Then what?”

“Cut him off.” The woman in red said coldly. “Cut him off from the source of his power. He doesn’t know it exists, he believes it all comes directly from his brain – so cut him off. Let him experience the reality of his situation.”

“And how would we even do that? I don’t remember having any god-proof rooms on this station!” The security chief spat on the floor.

“Are you sure, chief? Vex?”

“God-proof…” Madame Vex said thoughtfully. “God… Proof… Keeping gods away… Keeping the Void beings away? Is that why you wanted us to meet here, lady?”

“I see you are very close to the correct answer, Vex…” Madeleine smiled again, happy she found an understanding.

“But what if I’m right?” Vex asked, still unsure of her own thoughts. “Do we need to take him to the Underside? Wouldn’t it make matter even worse?”

“Taking who…? Jareeq? To the Uniderside?” Till was completely lost. “Are you two mad for even suggesting it?”

“No, it’s not that easy…” Despite what she was saying, Madeleine’s smile persisted. “The Underside is a quarantined section, right? Right. It has a certain threshold around it. The one that doesn’t let the things inside it escape. It’s not unlike the timewall, really.”

“So, we cut a piece of this threshold and wrap it around Jareeq the next time we see him? And he at once gets better?”

“Your sense of humor gets progressively worse when you don’t understand what is going on, chief.” Madeleine said, finally wiping her smile off her face. “You’re my last hope Vex… Please tell me you understand.”

“I understand…” Vex started strongly but then trailed off. “But still don’t know how we…”

“Look around you, Vex! Look and listen closely!” Madeleine began sounding increasingly annoyed with each word. “There are different ways to create a threshold. Some thresholds are natural, some – artificial. Some thresholds are built; some are weaved. You of all people should know!”

Vex looked around, her frightened gaze jumping from point to point, trying to find what exactly Madeleine was referring to. Then it hit her. She heard it. The skittering of tiny legs, the long dragging sound of the silken thread against chitin. She focused her eyes and saw the rainbow-colored web gleaming on the damp metal wall.

“I understand now, lady.” She finally said, lowering her eyes.

“Finally.” Madeleine sighed. “I was already beginning to think it all was pointless. Take this knowledge and use it well, Vex.”

“I will, lady.” Madame nodded. “We all will.”

Section 5: Where it Hurts

001

“I never thought I would meet her in person…” Assun finally said, still examining the coin the woman in red gave him.

They were standing in silence after Madeleine left the room. She walked into the doorway and disappeared. As simple as that. Till, Vex and Assun kept quiet until the deputy finally spoke.

“Am I the only one who doesn’t know who that was?” Till asked.

“Looks like you are, chief…” Assun gave him a half-smile. “Thouhg I can’t say I recognized it was Ma’at the moment I saw her… It was her way of speaking that made me think.”

“Ma’at?” Till looked at him, confused. “But she said her name was Madeleine?”

“Oh, she’s known by many names, chief.” Vex said. “Madeleine, Ma’at, the Lady of Tower…”

“That was…? Herself…? That explains why my eye got all prickly about it…” Till rubbed the right part of his face that was slowly losing its numbness. “That also explains the cryptic language. What did she even want to say? You seemed to understand her, didn’t you, Vex?”

“Phase spiders.” Vex saw both Assun and Till’s reactions and continued with the explanation. “There is a kind of spider that lives around the Underside. If you look closely, you’ll see their work on the walls of this room. The small spiders… they’ve become infused with the energies of the threshold that keeps the Underside contained. Their webs are actually a part of this threshold.”

“Can you order them to put someone as big as Jareeq in a cocoon? To cute him off the Absentee Gods’ influence?”

“You catch up fast, chief.” Vex smiled. “That’s her advice. And I think we should listen. And yes, I, and other Voidwalkers, will be able to command the spiders.”

“So the only thing left is to find Jareeq and…”

Till didn’t finish the sentence because the floor decided it was enough talking and shook violently, throwing the security chief and everyone in the room off their feet. The whole station quaked, its metal parts letting out a painful screech arguing against such abuse. It shuddered once, twice, then became still again.

Half of Till’s face ached, hurt, burned, agonized and was being painful in ways not describable by the human language. More than anything it wanted to leave his scull and run away.

Vex was lying on her back on the damp metal floor, her eyes empty and fixed on the one arbitrary point on the ceiling.

“It has begun…” She whispered.

002

The station was being torn apart and held in one piece only because of the efforts of the cybermages desperately trying to stabilize its normalcy fields – and because one small part of it refused to be dragged along trough the timewall. The Underside stuck in the metaphysical hole breached in time by the multiple reality mines detonations like unlucky fish bone in someone’s throat.

This gave Madame Vex and Assun a moment to realize what was going on and gave Till Deadeye a moment to wallow in excruciating pain caused by the Void-exposed parts of his flesh.

Vex rolled over and caught the security chief’s head in her hands.

“Till, we need you. We all do.” She said to his face, contorted by the waves of sharp pain.

“It… it hurts… too much…” Deadeye managed to squeeze a few broken words out of his mouth. Madame Vex’ touch seemed to help, soothing the ache a little, but it wasn’t enough – it wasn’t even close to the Madeleine’s torches.

“Your face is afraid, Till.” Vex told him. “It knows what’s coming and it is scared out of its skin. But you know how to deal with it. You’ve dealt with this horror for almost half of your life.”

“Ea… Easy for you… to say…” Till’s teeth scraped against one another giving off an almost metal-on-metal sound. “It… hurts… doesn’t… cooperate…”

“It hurts because it wants to warn you. Tell it you understand…”

“Can we… do something?” Assun said, as yet another shockwave rocked the station. “We’ve spent too much time talking already!”

Till knew Assun was correct. But right now, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to him other than the needle-like pain in his face.

“Till! Till!” Vex tried calling out to him again but this time got only pained growls in response.

“Madame…” Assun touched her shoulder. “Madame Vex. We need to do something.”

“Yes. Yes, we do.” Vex let go of Till, who kept wailing in pain.

003

Vex stood up from the floor. She closed her eyes for a moment – and when she opened them, there was an eerie iridescent glow in them, shifting in brightness, changing hues, wave after wave, creating two shimmering pools of color on her face. A cold glow. A distant glow. A glow, mirroring the web of the filament currents, woven into the Greater Void.

She raised her hand and moved her white thin fingers as if playing on the string of an unseen instrument or pulling the invisible threads out of the fabric of reality.

And that movement was an order.

Assun heard it. The skittering and scampering of the tiny-tiny feet. Hundreds of thousands of them. An avalanche of small translucent spiders flooded the room and pulled their iridescent web across the floor, the ceiling and the walls.

The threads were thin, almost microscopic in their girth but there were seemingly endless amounts of spiders producing an endless number of threads, spinning their web and tethering the room to the time and space it belonged to.

“We need to move.” Assun heard the security chief’s voice. He turned his head and saw Till standing up from the floor. The right half of the Deadeye’s face, the one that previously was grey in color and devoid of life, now began resembling rotting meat, the lifeless skin peeling off of it in large flakes.

“Are you okay?” Assun asked the dumbest possible question in this situation.

“Of course not.” Till said, his dead eye covered by a web of dark blue capillaries. “It hurts like I’ve been put through the meat grinder. But what’s new?”

“Can you walk?”

“Until you get me another bottle o’ brandy – sure.” The left side of Till’s face smiled. The right one – just bared its black teeth.

“Let’s get moving then.” Madame Vex declared, her voice deep and booming. With the wave of her fingers, she sent the legions of her spiders into the doorway, commanding them to spread the web far and wide.

004

They traced their path back into the more inhabited parts of the station. Where they went, the spiders followed – a living, chittering mass had woven their web into every wall they met on the station. Those semi-transparent spiders worked without rest, living, dieing and reproducing on the move to cover every spot of the station.

They were assaulted by several more shockwaves - torturing the old metal of the Voidstation with ripples both in space and in time. Spatial ripples threatened to tear the construction apart while the temporal ones aged parts of it rapidly or de-aged them turning metal parts into the raw ore or even in its constituent atoms.

More than once they had to rely on Till’s warnings about the incoming distortions - and found a safe pocket of an untouched space or force the phase spiders to build them a shelter out of their protective webs.

Somehow Deadeye managed to turn the pain in his face into a compass. 

“It hurts less there!” Said he, pointing at the seemingly random direction - but the moment they changed their route, the corridor they were just in rocked and was violently twisted into a four-dimensional spiral.

005

“You look like a walking corpse, chief.” Kiriakos said when they reached the former warehouse where the chief medical officer established something resembling a field hospital.

“Thanks, man, I feel even worse than that.” Till grumbled wearily, allowing himself to slid onto the floor against the wall and let Kiriakos look him over. On both sides of them stood cybermages, brass arms raised high, mechanical tendrils plugged into the wall sockets, speech synthesizers chanting the binary machine spells over and over to prevent the reality from crossing the threshold into something else. The number of them stood at every wall of the room, making it a safe space for Kiriakos to set up shop.

Till hoped that with the help of Vex’ spiders their work will become easier.

“Do you have much work here?” He asked looking around.

“Oh, not really…” Kiriakos answered, pondering which liquid from different vials to inject into Till’s body. “Most people who got hit by the reality mines’ detonation are a lost cause immediately. Of those who aren’t – majority doesn’t need much help at all. The largest part of the patients are the Crimson Serpents who are currently trying to keep the Deshreti assault force from taking over the station… A few Voidwalkers who were caught in the crossfire… Those are complicated.”

He finally decided on the mix of blue and transparent – pulled it into the syringe and stuck the needle into the Deadeye’s arm.

“Aw, it stings, doc!”

“I’m sure it’s nothing compared to losing half of your face, so don’t pretend it hurts.”

“Anyway…” Till grimaced when Kiriakos pulled the needle out. “What did you say? The Deshreti assault force?”

“You haven’t meet them on the way here? The Serpents are doing a good job then.” Kiriakos put the syringe away and gave the security chief a pat on the shoulder. “A bunch of Deshreti soldiers just happened to pop into existence out of nowhere and started shooting everything that moved. Your guards fought back but were severely outgunned… and then the Serpents moved in.”

“Good thing we had a gang equipped to face an army…” A coughing fit interrupted Till’s words.

“Careful, chief, don’t cough your lungs out.” Kiriakos said in his usual cynic voice, but Till noticed something unusual in his eyes – a desperation?

“What’s wrong, doc?”

“What’s wrong?” Kiriakos regained his usual composure for a moment, then sighed and said very quietly, so just the security chief could hear. “Till, I have no idea what’s going on with you. It’s like your body is actively refusing to live… You… You probably shouldn't be alive by now. So… I don’t know how long you can go on like this.”

“Hopefully as long as needed to stop this madness.”

“I’ve given you the largest dose of painkillers and stimulants I ever… Let’s just say it’s way beyond the recommended dosage.” Kiriakos wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Please… I don’t think it will stop the necrotic decay, so… Please make it count.”

“Thank you, doc.” Till said, forcing his body up the wall into standing. “I’ll do what I can.”

006

Deadeye saw two groups of people forming at the warehouse’s entrance. One of them, wearing the colorful costumes, were the Voidwalkers who came here answering Madame Vex’ call. They appeared out of the twisted shadows of the failing station and stood there, listening to their leader whose eyes still emitted an unnatural glow.

The second group wore familiar security uniforms. Beaten and bruised, the security guards took the brunt of the invasion out of the past, slowing it as much as they could, before falling back. Now they stood in circle around Assun – and Till saw how his deputy’s words ignite the sparks of grim determination in the eyes of his audience.

Kiriakos leaned against the remnants of an overturned console, tapping his fingers against a half-empty vial of whatever he had just given to the security chief. He exhaled sharply, shaking his head.

“Looks like you’re all set now,” he said in a dry voice. "All that's left is to find where that bastard hides."

Till flinched. The sensation crawled through his ruined flesh like twisting metal threads, burrowing deep into the nerves. He closed the left half of his face with a palm of his hand, letting the right one feel everything.

“It’s where it hurts the most.”

His voice was hollow, his body barely holding itself together, but the certainty in his words rang through the room like the toll of a funeral bell.

Silence followed. Assun turned slightly, shifting the grip on his weapon. Vex watched him with that knowing gaze, the iridescent flicker in her eyes mirroring the woven webs of her arachnid helpers. Even Kiriakos paused for just a breath, running a hand through his hair.

No one questioned Till’s words.

They moved.

Section 6: Enter the Void

001

The Voidwalkers lead the way, melding into the shadows, disappearing into the hatches of the service tunnels only to reappear, warning the main group about the danger ahead and disappearing again.

The phase spiders kept their work, covering more and more of the station with their stabilizing webbing.

The security guards formed around Till, Vex and Assun and were ready to fire at anyone threatening them.

The group moved in the direction Till pointed at.

They passed through the warped corridors that straightened themselves after the spiders coated their walls with gleaming silk. They moved past positions defended by the Crimson Serpents where they saw piles of bodies forming – both Serpents and Deshreti soldiers.

A few times they were ambushed by those soldiers – out of the dark passages and out of time, – the security guards fought valiantly, losing men, dead and wounded but never losing their spirit.

A few times they stumbled upon the civilians, hiding out in their apartments or in random rooms of the station – those were given a Voidwalker guide and sent back to the Kiriakos’ field hospital.

But everywhere they went, they saw signs of destruction – ruptured pipes, torn cables, broken and falling apart walls. The spiders did great job at repairing the small cracks in space and in time but some of the damage was too severe for the tiny arachnids to mend.

They pressed forward.

Until they found it.

002

“Dead ahead.” Till said, holding on to the nearest wall as he was barely standing. “That’s where it comes from.”

“Do you think it’s him?” Assun asked. “Some sort of a control center?”

“I don’t know, Assun.” Till looked down, just in time to see another piece of rotten skin fall off his face and drift down to the floor. “I just know… My face doesn’t want to be anywhere near that place.”

Vex didn’t say anything. She gestured forward and the wave of spiders rolled on, splitting in two before the entrance.

“Assun, you should position the men here…” Till continued. “The spiders will isolate that room from the outside influence… and you should make sure nobody gets in.”

“Understood, chief.” Assun looked at him one more time, quietly shook his head and went on to issue orders to the security guards.

“Keep the spiders busy…” Till told Vex, before stumbling towards the doors.

Madame gave him a small nod without breaking her concentration, maintaining control of the myriads of small creatures bound to her will.

The second he walked in, the spiders’ web covered the doorway, making sure no god can peek at what would happen inside.

003

The room was full of machinery. Gears turned, relays clanked, vacuum tubes glowed, generators filled the room with their low roar. Consoles were stacked upon consoles, lights flickering and displays shimmer. The security chief was completely and utterly lost when he looked at it. Which switch turned what off? Which knob he needed to turn to align the station with its proper timeframe again?

Till had no idea. And the only person on the station who knew answers to those questions was the zealous Deshreti fanatic, the mad scientist who’ve constructed all of this.

“So, you’ve finally come…” The scientist said, turning away from the flickering screen. “Thank you for taking your time, security chief. You’ve given me enough to build and set off the reality ram. I’d thought you’d find me quicker, but…”

“Shut up, Jareeq.” Till said, stumbling two steps forward, and almost snagging his foot on a cable along the way. “I don’t want to listen to your pathetic taunting… we have no time for that.”

“Soon we will have no time at all!” The scientist laughed.

“Are you sure of that?” Till asked, picking up a brass tube from the floor and smashing a nearby console with it, sending sparks flying across the room.

“Are you sure, Jareeq!?” He repeated, crashing the tube into a console, breaking it glass screen into small shards.

“It’s of no use, chief!” Jareeq replied. “You can destroy as much furniture as you want but it won’t stop what’s already started!”

“Don't you see it? You're just a puppet for the Absentee Gods!” Till yelled at the scientist.

“Gods!?” Jareeq laughed. “What gods are you talking about? The gods who abandoned Deshret when they were most needed? The gods who left the Void for the usurper goddess to play with?

I spit at their idols!”

Jareeq spat and laughed again - but Till was sure he was hearing another laughter coming from outside the protective shell, crafted by the phase spiders. The laughter of the distant gods, bathing in the irony of their unknowing pawn cursing their names while still doing their bidding.

“The Void doesn't need gods!” Jareeq continued. “We do not need gods! There's no place for gods where humans battle!”

“Oh you ignorant…” Till began in desperation but stopped. It was a sudden change that made him swallow his words.

His face.

The dead part.

Agreed.

There was no pain anymore.

“You know, security chief…” Jareeq looked at the Till’s miserable form with a shade of pity in his madness-consumed eyes. “You are really bad at persuading…”

“I’m… I’m not here to persuade you.” Till said slowly. “I just want to not feel the pain anymore…”

He looked straight into the scientist’s eyes – and for a moment Jareeq was taken aback by the unnatural stillness of the security chief’s face. Previously it was clearly divided in two parts – but now, just for a few fleeting heartbeats, it was whole again. Frozen. Calm. Tranquil.

Till slowly raised his hand and touched the dead rotting flaking skin on the right side of his face. Put a little more pressure. Then pinched it and pulled a narrow ribbon of muscle off of it. Then clawed into it, digging into the flesh with his nails and peeling it off like it was a worn-out masquerade mask.

“No… more…” He said with the last of his lips, before dropping them completely. “No… mask…”

And when the last of the flesh and bone hit the floor, from under that discarded face, the naked Void looked at Jareeq.

The Void isn't nothing. The Void is a vast enormous expanse of not a thing, sparsely populated by the Universe bubbles and held together by the flickering everflowing web of the filament currents. And this not-a-thing was looking at the small puny human in front of it with sheer curiosity.

The man tried to look back. The man prided himself on the exceptional ability of his brain - but no human brain is exceptional enough to fully comprehend the Void.

And so the man was led adrift, his mind searching for something, for any reference point, surrounded not by nothing - by not a thing…

The space once housing the mind was left empty. And into that empty space the entities from beyond the timewall tried to manifest themselves, clawing their way through time and space and the spiderwebs.

But the Void looked at it.

And the Void said.

No.