Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
She looks concerned. “Not a single thing of what you just said makes sense to me.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing that you don’t need it to make sense,” I joke. And then, before she can ask any more questions, I slip my hand under her lingerie top, eager to drop the subject and have a little fun before I have to get up and go back down to the Factory.
She arches her back and moans my name when I enter her.
And for a second… I don’t recognize it as mine.
36 - TYSE
Epsilon! Epsilon! Epsilon!
This is how the chant starts.
Epsilon! Epsilon! Epsilon!
They won’t shut up until I kill. Then, and only then, will it change to Rise a God.
I’ve spent the last ten days trying to figure this shit out. In between killin’ mutants, stealing spark from other dimensions, and spoolin’ Clara back up, that is.
So, admittedly, these spare minutes haven’t added up to a lot of thinkin’ time. But I think I’ve worked it out now. The Epsilon chant is the swing. The frequency, in the analogy I told Clara all those years ago.
Weeks, Tyse.
It’s only been two weeks.
The swing. The frequency. That’s what the Epsilon chant is. A way to hone it.
But Rise a God is the push. That little push you give the swing when in that one moment between up and down. The resonance. A way to elevate it.
These mutants aren’t chantin’ for fun. They’re not wound up like a bunch of drunken sportsball fans.
It’s a process.
It’s part of the process.
And by process, I mean what that melty-face fuckin’ god is doing to me on the threadin’ table.
Clara’s boots thud on the concrete floor of the hallway next to me. Her steps shorter, so her footfalls are like an echo of my own.
She has almost no idea what is happening right now. If we had more time, it would all come back. But our time is up. Either she trusts me, or she doesn’t.
And since we’re shoulder to shoulder, walkin’ towards an almost certain death, I’m gonna go with she does.
Which is good. Because she’s strong—very fuckin’ strong. But if this keeps going much longer, it will reach its inevitable conclusion.
I can fight forever. There’s no limit to me now. Not after what the Corrupted God has done to my body.
But we’re gettin’ close for Clara. I had to unspool seventy-four men that last time to fill myself back up. Every time, it takes more. More, more, more.
Just… more.
Like… I’m gettin’ bigger—or possibly… emptier—each time I go there. Each time I walk the worlds I disrupt the natural order of things in ways I can’t even imagine.
Well, that’s not true. I’ve got a pretty fuckin’ powerful imagination actually. I can imagine plenty. But it’s not the point. The point is, we’re done here. This is it. We can’t live like this. And I’m not sayin’ that as some romantic gesture towards Clara, meanin’ I’ll be checkin’ out with her, if she goes.
I will, but that’s not the point, either.
I mean, we just can’t do this. And this understandin’ I have about the state of the situation goes far, far beyond some romantic grand gesture.
It’s about everthin’.
Not just all the worlds I’m trespassin’ in, but the actual glue holdin’ it all together.
Each time I defy the Grand Design and take what isn’t mine, the foundation shakes a bit.
And these bits of shakin’ are cumulative.
They add up and there isn’t a way to even it out.
We’re fallen.
Falling. Falling, Tyse. Not Fallen.
But it is Fallen.
This, what I’m doin’, is the end of everythin’.
And it’s all his fault.
Epsilon! Epsilon! Epsilon!
Clara and I stop at the junction between the rooms. Hers, to the left, mine, to the right.
She grabs my hand. Squeezes it. “I’ll be OK.”
I nod.
She won’t be OK.
She’s never gonna be OK again.
This shit is changin’ us in ways I cannot imagine. And this time, when I say that, I mean it literally.
“You’ll be OK,” I echo her words. Then I lead her off to the left, to the open door of her lab.
Don’t look at it, Tyse. Don’t look at it.
But I do. I always do.
The harvester is on the right-hand wall. Luther prances around it—fists filled with needle-thread tubes as he inserts them into the machine. His movements jerky, uncoordinated, and seemingly without reason as he feeds the tubes into the ports.
He looks up, spies us, and starts babbling his incoherent sentences filled with unspooling metaphors that really, only make sense in his demented mind.
He drops the needle-threads and calls her Dolly. “Come here, Dolly!” Comin’ at us with both arms outstretched, making grabby-hand gestures with his fingers.
I growl. Not an exaggeration.
He backs off. “Needles and thread! Needles and thread!”
I look down at Clara, take her face in my hands, look her in the eyes. “Be strong.”
She presses her lips together, straightens her back, tilts her chin up. And with her most up-city, Spark Maiden voice, tells me, “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got this. You just worry about you.” Then she pokes me in the chest, smiling. Like this is no big deal.