The sun crested over the basin’s rim as a blinding scarlet strip. It filled the big room with its radiance, premature, impermanent. Soon thereafter, a heavy blanket of clouds dispatched the light. The ensuing grayness hung thick over the space and its inhabitants, as if evening were already here.

  “Some small wonder isn’t it?” Sohrab grimaced, unhappy to be awake this early. He sat hunched over with his head in his hands. “That glare would have split my head in two.”

  “And you did it to yourself,” Nash said. She slid him a cup of coffee so rapidly across the table half of it spilled on the ride over.

  “It’s more than that, I can tell… I can feel something not right is going to happen,” He muttered in a voice just low enough for her to hear. Greg was across the room preparing number three for its journey down. What Sohrab said next was not for his ears.

  “I thought you weren’t that kind of psychic,” Nash scoffed.

  “I don’t need to know the future to see that she…” he trailed off, raising his eyes towards the window. “…she would have never gone for it if we hadn’t, if I hadn’t –”

  “And thank you for that, by the way,” Nash reassured.

  “But what if you’re wrong? He has no idea, and he made the damned things.” Sohrab glanced in Greg’s direction.

  “I don’t think we’re wrong…” she started carefully. “…because I believe your theory is right. Zol was afraid because he didn’t understand what was happening. And it’s not like we need to see the foundations of existence or whatever, just how the Vercoden is made. Now step lively. This is a big day.” She beamed. “You ready?” She called to Greg.

  Together she and the Earthling walked to the bottom of the pit where Kory waited for them, careful not to apply any external energy to the third gauntlet. Unlike its forebears, the structural copper blend served less as a conducting agent and more as a scaffolding upon which trapezoidal scales of Vercoden shone. These shimmering plates would extend from the wearer’s fingertips to halfway up her forearm.

  Greg wore protective gloves of his own as he affixed the device to its tester. He’d made it modular to fit either Kory or Zol, so it needed a little taking in on her. When he’d got it on firm at last, he and Nash stood back as Kory regarded it, extending her hand and flexing her fingers as the little azure panels clacked together.

  “It sure is a lot,” she said, half in awe and half in judgement. If it wasn’t for the blinding blue right in front of her face she might have caught the gleam of white sooner, but catch it she did. There he stood on the far-off balcony, looming over her as before. “I didn’t think he’d be up this early.”

  “Yes, well you know the weird hours he keeps.” Nash brushed her off.

  “6 A.M. isn’t usually one of them,” Greg commented, processing at last the eeriness of Sohrab’s presence in the distance.

  Nash wished desperately that Greg would focus just a little longer. Distractions might leave the door open for analysis, and the Human was masterful at both. “Look on the bright side, if he’s outside that’s less smoke inside!” Nash japed, a little too enthusiastically.

  “Speaking of, is Zol awake yet?” Kory asked.

  “Umm, I don’t think so. But let’s go ahead and get this squared away so that we have good news to give him when he wakes up!”

  “Right, time to send it,” the inventor clapped his hands together, regaining the point of it all.

  Nash tried not to be so visibly flustered as she lifted her and Greg’s feet off of the ground. “Show us how it’s made!” She called, sailing away.

  Kory knelt to the ground and looked upon her friend’s shrinking countenance. Words escaped her, so she settled for a wink, then turned her gaze once more to the dust.

  #

  “What do you think feels worse, not knowing where you’re going, or knowing you’re going somewhere bad?” Sohrab mumbled to himself as Nash and Greg passed him by. They went inside, but he stayed planted where he was. This place was as good as any. He gripped the railing tight and thought about how he’d rather be in the open air than behind the glass like some aquarium creature. He liked a good balcony anyhow, couldn’t get enough of them. Vito’d told him balconies represented longing, or the desire to see another world just beyond the threshold of our own; something to that effect. Vito was always talking when he shouldn’t. He’d also said there were Teyshma girls flown in all the way from their native Cuanerel to Las Vegas to put on a show in the fountains at the Bellagio. Sohrab wasn’t hotly anticipating a return to Earth any time soon, but he kept it in mind just in case he ever got out that way again.

  “GO,” he heard loudly, artificially, and far too soon over the loudspeakers mounted on the edge of the pit. It couldn’t be time yet. There was no chance for him to get a good look at her, to lock in on her. He turned around to snarl at the figures behind the window so quickly that the cigarette fell from his lips. No sooner had he opened his mouth to curse at them that he heard the voice of authority through the PA once more, this time for him. “PAY ATTENTION.”

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  Sohrab had no choice but to heed the command as he spun around to view the upheaval in the great expanse below. A rush of wind carrying sand and static compelled him to grab hold of the railing again. In spite of it all he forced his eyes to stay open. Still better than some aquarium creature, he figured. He saw the vague image of her rising through the cloud, ensconced in power. To feel the heat of her embrace would complete him. One half second within that voltage and he would be like the dust that swirled around him now. No comparison, no weakness, just her, and then nothing more at all.

  Her ascent was nearly complete. The time had come to read her mind and peer through the seams of this realm. Sohrab strengthened his grip, and reluctantly let his eyelids fall, only to yank them open an instant later when the one this early hour was meant to bypass called out like the tortured animal he knew he was.

  “NO! What are you – what did you let her do!?” Zol, newly awake, bellowed to all within and without. The wind blew harder. Tendrils of current, bigger than any they’d seen whipped forth from the center of the sphere. Nash chased in vain after Zol, explaining herself on some frequency he could neither perceive nor interpret. He launched himself over the parapet and lit his own spark, soaring towards the place where Kory levitated high above the ground.

  Sohrab held fast to the railing and tried to re-focus forward, as Nash cried out in vain beside him. Her fervent words were washed away in the sound of the storm. Somewhere behind the pane, within the pale-yellow mausoleum of glass and science, Greg’s eyes glazed over, and his heart dropped into his shoes. The sun would never rise again, he was sure of it.

  Together, the three saw the beam Zol cut through the sky towards the rising star of Kory’s newfound energy. Shame it wasn’t hers to possess. The power was on loan from somewhere sideways in time, and the creditors demanded repayment immediately. Just before he reached her, she flickered in and out of view, until she was gone at last. He arrived at the exact space where she had been just an instant too late, grabbing madly at the emptiness left behind.

  A thundering roar, more terrifying than yesterday’s, rang out over the chasm, to the distress of those who watched below, as if the mere echo of it could rip atoms in half. All around, the terrible sound, sound without vision.

  Greg joined Nash and Sohrab on the balcony, breathing in the dust that refused to settle. The three looked around in a frenzy trying to locate the source of the screams from beyond. One by one they yelled and flailed here or there, swearing they saw a stray flash of lightning to indicate Kory’s presence.

  “Follow her!” Zol shouted, crashing onto the terrace. He pointed back towards the building, the top of which now had a large trail of holes piercing through each subsequent wall. Seeing the wake of destruction for herself, Nash soared high above the structure. Before her lay what could only be described as a linear cataclysm. It was getting worse.

  Whatever power possessed Kory was barely visible in the present sphere, though its evidence was real. Throughout the complex and the whole town beyond she flashed in and out of view, shrouded in blue light, and screeching forth that immutable cry, destroying everything in her path. There was no time to waste. Nash flew forward with all her strength and tried in vain to anticipate the place where Kory would skip above the surface of this world again. If she could only catch her, surely she would succumb to her superior, surely…

  Above the streets of the settlement, Nash chased Kory. Zol joined her. Together they pushed the limits of their ability to capture the unwitting child of destruction. Warehouses, depots, apartment buildings, all sustained thick, structural wounds that appeared out of nowhere. Many collapsed where they stood. Some collided with others on the way down. At one point the path of their target circled back and converged upon the large plaza stretching out at the apex of it all. Upon the wide brick floor in front of the main building, she landed at last; present but gone, the same but different.

  Nash and Zol caught up with her not a moment too soon, horrified at what they beheld. Kory stood there brazenly, her form pulsing between gray and indigo light. The space around her seemed to fluctuate, as if what was there wasn’t really. She turned around, disappearing, and reappearing in a circle, entrapping her friends. There could have been twelve of her. Her eyes blazed with flames brighter than the sun and when she spoke it was like the voice of the multitude, as many as the shifting sands. So incomprehensible was the sound when she said from every angle, “WE LIVE ON. THE FIRST MUST PERISH.”

  All the blood drained from Nash’s face when she heard that voice. A brittle, lavender glow tried and failed at the ends of her fingertips. There was no point in it anymore. Beside her, Zol forgot himself and tried to charge at the specter. No sooner than he began he was flung unceremoniously by a beam of pure energy over some distant horizon, far beyond the edge of the colony. Nash had no time to process his departure, as the ghastly figure of Kory was upon her again, oscillating all around and bent on sentencing her to a worse fate.

  She shut her eyes tight and embraced with trepidation the end from which there was no escape. Foul whispers of darkness from another world swirled about her, spinning faster and faster, hastened on by a wicked pair of burning eyes, and by an evil voice that betrayed the pain of a friend now bolstered by vengeful allies. There was nothing left to do but die.

  “STOP!” The command of another pierced through the whirlwind of power, through space itself, and through to Kory. Nash dared to creep back from the precipice of oblivion and catch a glimpse of what unfolded. At once the menacing creature took its attention from her and levitated once more, looking instead at the source of the unwelcome intrusion. In the face of all that was rational, Sohrab ran from the front entrance of the building. He stood with his right hand outstretched just beneath the place where the figure calling itself Kory floated above the ground. She and the others behind her eyes shrieked again that same echoing, spiraling cry. The light flared hotter around him as he collapsed to his knees, pushing forward to the epicenter of the supernova even still. His left arm had shielded his eyes, but it fell away, revealing a gaze fully enveloped by blackness, as he rose to his feet in spite of it all and commanded again: “STOP!”

  “COME BACK! COME BACK!” He demanded. At the sound of his voice, she trembled once, then twice, betraying her worldly form in between fluctuating shades of blue. That which lie beyond fought tooth and nail to keep her close, as she fought harder to rejoin the one who called to her. The searing whiteness in her eyes faltered. Her time as a conduit between worlds was soon to expire.