Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

I felt the delvers arrive. I heard Brade speak to them. I felt the terror from my friends.

It was time.

Spensa, M-Bot said in my mind. I have the answer.

What? I said to him, and prepared to step into the nowhere.

You need to bring the somewhere here, he said. Not a pinprick, not a drip, but a tide. They commented out their memories, but they aren’t code any longer—and the presence of time will quickly weather away the scab they placed over their pain. That’s why they fear you. You belong to both worlds now.

Scud. Could I do that?

I can help, he said.

I entered that place. A sea of nothingness. Not blackness or whiteness, though sometimes my mind had to see it that way. I couldn’t comprehend nothing, so my brain stamped the nowhere with an analogue. I visualized myself floating in blackness with M-Bot at my side in the form of a blazing white hole.

The eyes were there. I remembered how frightened I’d been when I’d first begun to see them reflected in my canopy. That sense of malevolence had been almost nauseating.

Now I was accustomed to those stares. I turned around, picturing myself as I was: a young woman with a body, a uniform, and a sense of self. Chet doubling me like a glowing shadow. I could be me in here. I’d reached that point in developing my powers. It was part of the somewhere that I carried with me, for all this place’s efforts to make me forget it.

I could carry more, if I tried.

“So, you’ll destroy us,” I said to the delvers. “You’ll perpetuate the pain and sorrow. You’ll force my hand.”

You are pain, they sent back. You must stop existing. Offer yourself up. Save them.

It was strangely tempting. A part of me longed to die in heroic sacrifice as Gran-Gran had, while another part recognized that I’d been indoctrinated by my upbringing. Gran-Gran hadn’t simply sacrificed herself; she’d done it to accomplish something. I’d learned the difference between a meaningless gesture and true heroism back in flight school.

Beyond that, I knew I couldn’t trust the delvers. They’d proven in the past that promises meant nothing to them. Though perhaps I could use their fear as leverage.

“Bring back the thirteen you sent to the somewhere,” I said to the eyes. “Show me you’re willing to deal.”

Something happened then. I could sense the somewhere, where the thirteen delvers had created bodies for themselves. Vast planet-size mazes full of dangerous bits they could break off to form fleets. They held off their assault at my request. They didn’t return to the nowhere, but they…peeked in. Like I was doing at the moment.

Now, the greater group said, give yourself to destruction.

“I will not,” I told them, “because it wouldn’t stop you. I’ve seen the way you deal, heard you admit to wanting to immediately break your word. If I give myself up to you, that won’t remove your pain. Even if I vanish, you’ll still lash out at the somewhere. You know this to be true.”

It is your fault, they thought. You noises. You pains. Leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.

“Not possible,” I said. “This place isn’t yours just because you’ve decided to claim it. It’s part of the taynix, part of me, part of our very being. We can’t stop coming here, because not all of us can control our powers. Even if we could, we couldn’t leave it any more than we could leave off breathing. We would come by accident, in dreams, in moments of panic, in times of exploration.”

Then we will destroy you.

I formed a sword from nothing and held it up before me. Things like that just…worked in here. “So be it. M-Bot?”

Like this, he said, and showed me.

The explanation defies words. He sent me the information—similar to the way people would send me coordinates so I could hyperjump. He fed me a pathway. You might call it a code, or a program, but I preferred to see it as a tactical battle map for destroying the delvers via the pain in their souls.

Within me, Chet vibrated with horror, determination, pain. This will work, he thought to me. It is terrible. A weapon only you can wield.

I was a being between two worlds. This let me draw the ability to change from the somewhere, but manipulate the essence of this eternity inside the nowhere. And it made sense. The pain the delvers hated was the somewhere—time, change—leaking into their world. The more powerful the cytonic, the more leaked through.

And having melded as I had, I was the most powerful they’d ever seen. I focused that power into the blade I had conjured, then thrust it forward with all of my might—and it ripped a hole into the somewhere.

Time entered this place of timelessness. A wave of it that exploded from me like a sphere of green light, washing over the delvers, tearing away the patch they’d put onto their souls to hide away their pain. Flawed as it was, the patch came off easily—as easily as a strong wind from a passing starship pulled the dust up off the ground, stripping the top layer of soil.

This was what they’d feared. The power I’d gained by merging with Chet, by traveling the nowhere, by learning of their past. I knew that deep down, they were actually very weak. They’d fled here because they were weak. Scud, they’d always known. Otherwise, after patching up their pain, they could have stayed in the somewhere.

They’d come here. Because they’d known their solution wouldn’t last. Not unless they found a place where everything lasted. In the face of raw change, that temporary solution wore away.

The delvers howled in agony, their wound exposed. They vibrated, reaching for each other, searching for one of them that wasn’t hurt—one they could copy, to take away the pain. There was no such refuge. Now, all I had to do was pop back into the somewhere, leaving them consumed by this agony.

Except, would that be enough?

The somewhere would occasionally still leak into here. The delvers could perhaps claw their way free, and create another patch for themselves. Or worse, delete those memories entirely. Finally purge themselves of this weakness. Feel no pain at all.

Then they’d be able to rampage against us without cost. In military action, you had to be careful not to create a greater threat by accident. Striking a neutral party, pushing an enemy into a corner, taking away opportunities to surrender…these were all things that could backfire very easily. What if, by showing the delvers how weak they were, I prompted them to eventually jettison that weakness and attack us? So far, the only reason we’d survived was because coming to fight us hurt them so badly.

As they cowered and cringed before me, mighty though they’d once been, I had to ask the question. Could I destroy them forever?

Yes, Chet said softly from beside me, you could.

How? I asked.

The infinite loop that M-Bot suggested before would most likely work, he explained. Though we are no longer AIs, we are susceptible to some of their maladies. Just as you, though no longer amoebas, can dehydrate. See how they search one another for relief? If M-Bot were to imitate one of them that had peace, but secretly sent them in a circular loop of thought…it could trap them in their pain forever. Even if the somewhere leaked in, it might take them millennia to escape. Longer.

Trapped all that time, though? M-Bot asked. In agony?

It was what they deserved for all the people they’d killed. I stood over them, the executioner with her axe, ready to strike.

And scud. I hesitated.

Such pain. In the face of it, my anger faded, and I saw them as they truly were. Essentially newborns. Entities that had never been given a chance to grow, to learn. Toddlers with the power to annihilate planets.

In that moment, I felt sorry for them.

That’s what you did to me, Chet thought.

“What?” I asked.

You’ve always wondered why I changed, why I was willing to turn away from Starsight?

“I pled with the others,” I said. “Like I pled with you. I asked them to see the noises as people.”

And how did you see the delvers?

How…

You saw a person in me, he responded. I could sense that. It changed me. Or rather, it made me willing to change.

I looked upon the vast sea of delvers again. An ocean of white pinpricks of light, tiny eyes, trembling.

So…do we strike? M-Bot asked. The thirteen in the somewhere are moving again, Spensa. They’re sending swarms of stone to attack our friends. If we attack those in here, I believe they’d return to the nowhere to try to help. You could trap them too, Spensa. What do we do?

I…

I had to try something first.

I stepped away from Chet. I somehow relaxed my grip on him, and our souls began to separate. He grabbed hold of me like a child might a parent leaving them alone for the first time. But I soothed him, and he eventually accepted it.

We separated, and he became a glowing light next to me. Brilliant and white, but with a warmth within that I could only see as red.

“Look,” I said to the others. “See.”

His light hovered there. I could see the pain inside him as if it were a visual thing, a black wrinkle like a small crack. Small. The others were shattered by it, consumed by it, but his had decreased.

“It can be better,” I told them. “It can get better. You tried to hide it, but that doesn’t work. Not with mortals, and not with immortals. Look at him. See how he’s grown by living in the somewhere.”

The others continued to cower in their agony, and they pulled away from him. Refusing to see growth as a solution. There were too many of the delvers, unfortunately, for my still-mortal mind to comprehend. So I picked one of them, a lump—like a stone from the floor of one of the caverns I explored. A quivering white light fractured by black lines. I knelt beside it, then gestured to Chet.

“You can overcome it,” I whispered to the delver. “He is the same as you.”

No. He changed.

“You can change.”

No. Never. Change is pain.

“Change is pain that fades,” I said. “You have only pain that is eternal.”

I…can’t. I can’t.

“You can.”

The delver retreated farther, the light dimming. We might not need to freeze them in agony. Because I had the feeling this pain alone would kill them. In here, where thoughts were reality, pain could kill.

I should have let it. But instead I reached out to the taynix.

You are hurt? they asked, envisioning me—as always—as a slug.

No, but this one is, I said, indicating the delver.

Of course, the minds of the taynix pulled back in fear. I wasn’t sure, but I felt that they’d evolved over the past centuries to avoid the delvers. Or at least to avoid something like them—something that hunted using cytonics. The slugs could pass through here unseen, and they saw delvers as predators.

I tried to change that. I projected to the slugs how I now saw the delvers. The truth. These were not monsters, or predators. They were people.

Like you saw me, Chet said in my mind.

Like I saw you, I agreed. I showed that to the taynix, and waited. Hopeful.

Finally, I got back a set of thoughts. Those…poor slugs.

That warmth from before returned, the love and support. Turned not to me this time, but to the delvers. Toward horrors that had destroyed planets—toward people who didn’t know how to control what they were, who had tried to hide their pain.

The love of the oppressed found the souls of the broken, and the result was light. Cracks withdrawing. Pain being eased. It started with the one I’d picked and radiated outward.

How? M-Bot asked, hovering up beside me. How is it happening?

“What they’ve always needed,” I said to him, “was to know that they weren’t alone.”

What will that mean? he asked.

Change, Chet replied, hovering up on our other side. At last.