The last of the robots filed into their garages, and the doors rolled down with a tinny racket. We stood there, dumbfounded and grinning like idiots, clothes soaked through with sweat.
Luka roared, and Meuhlnir cried out in pain. I dropped into a crouch and spun toward the sounds, but Luka was no longer there. Meuhlnir half-lay, half-sat against the wall with a horrible gash across his upper chest. He pointed wearily up the road.
I turned, expecting to see the oolfur getting ready to attack or threatening the puppies, but he was already changing into the form of the man I first knew as Chris Hatton. Lanky, cadaverous even, he sprinted past the varkr pups without a glance and slammed through the interior door.
“Don’t let him escape!” moaned Meuhlnir. “If he gets the preer running again, we’ll never catch him!”
I sprinted toward the only open garage—our garage. Veethar ran to Meuhlnir’s side, but the other three followed on my heels.
I raced through the door in time to spot Luka turning a corner far ahead. Behind me, the others grabbed our gear and packs. I ran on, chanting the triblinkr that split my consciousness into three animi, stumbling a little as my vision trebled. One animus I sent back to check on Veethar and Meuhlnir—there might still be oolfa, Isir, and Svartalfar in the cul-de-sac—unless the blue men had taken them also.
The other animus I sent forward, blinking into existence at points in the hallway I remembered, glancing around for Luka for a heartbeat before moving on again.
“What are you doing, Hank?” gasped Jane.
“Looking for Luka, checking on Meuhlnir, and running. You?”
“Smart ass,” she said with a grin.
Veethar bent over Meuhlnir, pressing a cloth against Meuhlnir’s wound. He mumbled healing words from the Gamla Toonkumowl.
“I’m going to see if any troops are still hanging around in the cul-de-sac,” I said, having no idea if Veethar could hear me.
He glanced up at me and nodded.
“What?” asked Jane. “What corner?”
“Never mind,” I whispered. “This split consciousness thing is complicated.”
I caught sight of Luka as he reached the end of a hallway, opened the door to the next, saw hundreds of robots trundling through the hall, and slammed the door closed without crossing the threshold. He whirled and raced back up the hall toward me, panic blooming on his features.
“Luka’s coming back this way,” I said, and his head snapped up.
Around the corner, the road leading to the end of the cul-de-sac was silent and empty, but the troops might have followed us inside, which would mean that we could be running into a trap, but with all the robots in the next hall, I figured we were okay either way.
“We’ll be ready for him,” said Jane.
“Dammit! He heard me.”
“What?”
I flew into the square at the end of the road, ready to pop away in an instant if I needed to, but it was empty. Bodies lay heaped along the edges, but there were no live troops, and the interior door remained sealed.
Luka skidded to a halt and stared at the air where I hung, expression shrewd.
“He’s stopped now,” I said.
Still staring at me, Luka put out a hand and opened the door he stood beside. The white door.
“Shit!” I yelled and poured everything I had into my sprint. There would be hell to pay later, but I had to catch him.
I followed him into the room. I floated up in the corner of the square room, near the ceiling. Luka stood by the podium, flicking switches, adjusting sliders, and setting dials without hesitation. “Haymtatlr, enable this proo,” he said.
Could it be that easy? I wondered.
“I can’t do that, Luka.”
I appeared above Veethar’s head. “No troops,” I said. “Looks like they disappeared with the Black Bitch.”
Veethar nodded. “Any sign of Sif?”
Luka slapped his palm on the podium. “Don’t play games with me, Haymtatlr! You can enable this proo, and you will.”
“No, Luka, you misunderstand me. I didn’t say ‘I won’t,’ I said, ‘I can’t.’ You instructed me to turn off all access to the preer, and I did so. But you fail to grasp the complexity—”
“Haymtatlr…” growled Luka.
“There are ninety-three thousand two hundred ninety-one preer, Luka. Rather than turning them off one-by-one, I turned off the—”
“Fine! Turn them all back on, only get this one working now!”
A loud clunk sounded, then an almost inaudible hum that I felt in the soles of my feet and deep in my bowels.
“What was that?” asked Jane.
“The preer coming online. We have to be quick!”
“Proo departure station alpha-nine-five-three activated. Destination set,” said Haymtatlr’s voice from a speaker in the podium. The square dais in the center of the room began to glow, and a high-frequency hum started behind the walls. The memory of those strange horn-shapes in the brown room flashed through my mind.
“He’s going through a proo!” I shouted, trying to memorize the position of each control on the podium, but there were too many settings, and I couldn’t concentrate with my mind split into three parts.
“No, I saw no one,” I said, answering Veethar.
“Maybe you could start each sentence with the name of the person to whom you are speaking,” muttered Jane.
Luka stepped on the dais and walked to its center. He glanced up at me, a sneer playing at his lips. “Send me, Haymtatlr, and close the proo behind me,” he said. The dais flashed through a rainbow of colored light, and he disappeared.
“He’s gone!”
“What?” asked Veethar.
“Luka! He opened a proo and crossed over.”
We reached the corridor that led to the white door and sprinted to the room. I skidded through the door and snapped my animus from the corner back into myself.
“Follow him!” said Meuhlnir. “Don’t let him escape! We mustn’t lose him!”
“Will you be okay?”
“This is nothing,” he said, but his face was gray, and his lips were tinged with blue. “We’ll find Sif, and she’ll fix me up.”
“How will we reconnect?”
“Leave the proo open, and, after we’ve found the others, we will come find you, Hank. Never fear,” said Veethar. “Be careful, and good hunting.”
I snapped my animus back and looked at Jane, Yowtgayrr, and Althyof. “They want us to follow Luka through the proo. Veethar says they can find us as long as we leave the thing open.”
“But Meuhlnir was injured—”
“He said he’s fine. They will find the others and join us when they can.”
“Haymtatlr, open this proo and set it to the destination Luka traveled to,” said Jane.
“Luka asked me to—”
“But does Luka talk to you? Does he ask you interesting questions?” The dais shimmered with potential energy and began to hum. “Let’s go get the bastard,” snarled Jane.
“No, Jane. You mustn’t leave,” said Haymtatlr through the podium’s speaker. “I shall cut the power if you try, and no one will leave!”
“He’s right, hon. You should stay, go with the others. Find Sig.”
In answer, Jane walked to the platform and stepped up. “Mothi is there to protect him, and Sif and Yowrnsaxa will mother the heck out of him. Sig will be fine. You, on the other hand…” She tipped me a wink. “Haymtatlr, if you don’t allow me to leave, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Haymtatlr didn’t answer, but the power to the dais remained.
“I think it’s now or never, Hank,” said Yowtgayrr. Looking down at the shimmering platform with a trace of distaste on his face, he stepped up and moved to stand next to Jane.
I glanced at Althyof. “I’m going with them,” he said. “Sounds like fun.” He tipped a wink and stepped up on the platform.
With a shrug, I called Keri and Fretyi to my side and stepped up next to the others. “Hit it, Haymtatlr.” A nanosecond later, he did, and my next breath tasted of home.
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