And all was quiet.
Quiet save for my breath echoing in the black tunnel. Quiet save for a distant dripping of water. Quiet save for the scuttling of a rat somewhere. Beautiful quiet, the quiet of my childhood.
I wanted to linger, because this place granted me memories. Each scent and sound restored something deep inside me that I’d lost. But I had to move. I’d returned to a place where time mattered.
So I hyperjumped. Straight into the DDF’s Platform Prime in orbit around the planet. I’d absently chosen a random hallway, so I was probably lucky that I hadn’t appeared on top of some poor aide running errands.
Something felt odd about this place. I could come here by familiarity, but it wasn’t…in the same location as before? Was that correct? Well, it looked the same as ever. Clean metal walls, a simple rug on the floor, industrial lighting. Two pilots I vaguely knew stepped out of a nearby room and saw me. Then one shrieked.
Odd. That wasn’t the reception I’d expected. Hesho and Doomslug were both still unconscious, one cradled in each of my arms, but I tucked away my worry.
“Admiral Cobb?” I asked the two frightened pilots.
The one who hadn’t shouted pointed toward operations.
I walked that direction, proud that I’d remembered Cobb’s name. Would all my memories be restored? I held two sets of those now. Spensa’s memories and Chet’s. Why did everything feel so odd? And why did people stumble away as they saw me? They edged away white-faced, backs to the walls, stammering.
The door into operations was locked, of course, and didn’t open for me. An alert was on, per the pulsing red light that started flashing on the wall.
I hyperjumped through the doorway and into what appeared to be a meeting of the command staff. Only Cobb wasn’t there. Just a bunch of high-ranking officials, some from the military, others from the government. Sitting in Cobb’s customary place at the head of the table was…
Jorgen? In an admiral’s uniform? Well, he appeared to be the same age as before, so that was good. I hadn’t gotten lost in time. The uniform felt like it should matter to me, but for now I hyperjumped over next to his seat. He stood up immediately.
Jorgen was tall. So inconveniently tall. Wide-eyed, with that too-perfect face that I’d always considered punchable. Because deep down, I’d probably always recognized it as kissable. He watched me with concern—but fortunately not fear—as I gingerly placed Doomslug and Hesho on the table, sending Vice Admiral Lawkins scrambling out of her chair, mouth and eyes agape.
I smiled at Jorgen.
Then fainted into his arms.
—
I woke up with a splitting headache. I lay on the couch in the lounge beside the conference room—a room that Cobb had decorated in darker colors with some actual wooden furniture.
Jorgen hovered nearby. I groaned, trying to clear my mind from the very extended dream. I’d been…in a place where time didn’t matter, and I’d been a pirate. I loved that specific dream; I had it all the time, and…
Oh. Wait.
“Spensa?” Jorgen asked, kneeling beside the couch. “Are you…feeling better?”
“Blaaaar,” I said. “My mouth feels like someone used it to dispose of rotting algae paste. Is there anything to drink?”
He smiled. Scud, it was a beautiful sight. I put a hand to my head and pulled it away to find it covered in white chalk. It was on the couch, and…
Yup. All of that happened.
“How long has it been since I left?” I asked him.
“About six weeks.”
Exactly what M-Bot’s chronometer had said in the nowhere. That was good, though I felt a pang of loss at the thought. How was I going to help him? How was I going to get him back?
Then something else occurred to me. Far less important, but more immediate. “Oh no,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and putting the heels of my palms to them.
“What?” Jorgen asked.
“Did I really…swoon?”
He chuckled.
Oh, scud. I had. Me. Like some dainty woman wearing a corset.
“If you prefer,” he said, “think of yourself as a grand warrior hero stumbling home from the battlefield to her companions and collapsing from her wounds.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, opening my eyes. The red light was still flashing. “Um, is that because of me?”
He glanced at it. “Well, when you appeared out of nowhere, covered in white dust, wandering the halls like a ghost…it troubled some people.”
“They should expect that sort of thing from me.”
“Spensa,” he said, “your eyes were glowing white. Like…”
Like one of them.
Oh, scud. I kind of was one of them. I felt like me, mostly, but my soul had changed. Somehow melded with the delver that had been Chet. I could feel its experience and understanding attached to my own.
That…was kind of a big deal. Of the sort I really didn’t want to think through right now. How was I going to tell my boyfriend that half of me was now an interdimensional eldritch abomination from outside time and space? At the very least, was there maybe a less silly way of wording that?
Or maybe there was something else more important to explain first. “Jorgen,” I said. “I did it. It was really hard, but I did it.”
“Did what, exactly?” he asked. “Got back to us?”
“More than that,” I said. “I found their secrets. I snuck…into the dragon’s den…and I scudding stole its golden cup.”
He grinned. “I have no idea what that means, but I like how much you sound like yourself when saying it.”
“It means that somewhere in my brain—and the things I can explain about the past of the delvers—is the solution to defeating them. They’re scared of me, Jorgen. More now than ever.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Because we’re in kind of a spot here…”
“What kind of spot?”
“I’ll explain,” he said, “but first I should go reassure everyone else that we’re not under a delver attack. Can you wait a little bit? We have a ton to talk about.”
“I can wait for the debriefing,” I said. “But not for the more important thing.”
“More important?” he said, then looked at me and seemed to get it. “Oh, uh, yes. I—”
I grabbed him by the neck and kissed him. I’d just hiked through an entire dimension. I wasn’t in the mood to be coy. He leaned into the kiss, and I felt as if my entire body came alight. With warmth. His warmth.
When we finally broke, he smiled widely. “I needed that,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re just lucky that you got me on the one day in that place when I had a shower.” I nodded toward the other room. “Go ahead. Deal with them. Then we’ll talk.”
There was still so much to do. A universe to save. For now though, I rested while Jorgen walked back toward the other room. From in there I heard a familiar voice, Hesho talking to the officials.
“So they moved on without me?” he was saying. “Kauri took over the ship! Why, I cannot express how proud I am of them. Yes…I see. I tried to help, but by doing that I was nevertheless impeding them. Human, you must tell my people that you have encountered one who calls himself the Masked Exile. They will know the reference from the ancient play. It is what I now am, and what I must be.”
Jorgen entered, and the officials listened to him as he calmed everyone down. Admirals a decade or more his senior accepted his words. As if…he really was in charge somehow. Guess I wasn’t the only one who had some stories to tell. I idly glanced over my shoulder and found a monitor showing Detritus. It was in orbit around another planet.
Our planet was orbiting another planet?
That was new.
I felt a mind brush mine. Gran-Gran? She was curious, but happy to hear from me. And that other mind, smaller, was Doomslug. She was awake in the other room with Hesho.
Both expressed concern. I supposed they could see deep into me and knew the truth. That I’d been changed. Well, every journey changes the one who takes it. This one had done an extra-large job on me, but I still felt like myself, merely an enhanced version. A soul with a whole lot of extra code attached.
At least now I knew why the delvers had feared me so much. They hadn’t merely been afraid of what I had been, or what I would learn. They’d been afraid of the future.
And of the thing they’d known I would become.
