Somewhere in the vast universe, a planet-killer asteroid was on a collision course with the Xorlinian home world. Connie sat on the bridge of a spaceship, watching the asteroid hurtle past.
The Xorlinian crew lay unconscious at their stations. A sudden malfunction in the atmosphere recyclers had pumped out too much oxygen, though it was a little thin for a human. The ship’s gravity beam was primed and ready to fire. The helm operator’s hand was right next to the blinking button.
A push of the button would be all it would take. The beam would divert the asteroid, allowing it to miss the home world by a bare 17,000 miles. But that window was closing.
She hadn’t pushed the button yet, though.
“Having second thoughts?” said Hiro.
Connie didn’t jump. It wasn’t in her nature. And she’d sensed his arrival. They were bound together by the shared force within them.
“You can talk now?” asked Connie.
He pushed a Xorlinian out of his chair and had a seat. “Why don’t you do it? Why would the fabled Constance Verity hesitate to save untold lives with one simple press?”
He grinned.
“Is it because you’re so full of negative potentiality that you can barely hold it in as it is? Is it because the lives of a few billion souls that you’ll never even meet is a price you’re willing to pay to buy this doomed universe a few more minutes?”
“Fuck off,” she said.
She pressed the button. The gravity beam diverted the asteroid’s course.
The averted chaos channeled into her. She closed her eyes and pushed it down. She was a bomb without a detonator, but still dangerously unstable. A momentary slip might be all it would take to jostle her into exploding.
“The longer you go, the worse it will be,” said Hiro.
She ignored him, went to check on the recyclers. It was nothing serious. She could fix it. She undid the coupling and inserted a new scrubber from the spares. The recycler hummed back into full operation, and the oxygen levels fell.
Under normal circumstances, she could handle these levels for a few minutes, but she was on the verge of exhaustion. What little energy she did have was devoted to keeping the caretaker essence from exploding with her.
She checked on the crew. The Xorlinians were stirring.
“You can’t stop it, can you?” asked Hiro. “Always have to save people.”
“Shut up.” It wasn’t her wittiest retort, but she was barely holding together.
She helped the captain to a seat. “The asteroid—” he said.
“Taken care of,” she said.
He blinked his four eyes and wiggled his long snout in a gesture of thanks. “We owe you untold gratitude.”
“It’s cool,” she rasped. She leaned against a console and closed her eyes. “Just need a moment to clear… my head.”
She listened to the universe, to the numberless disasters and tragedies, great and small, occurring now. It was too much.
But she could handle one or two more. A small one.
She blinked across space. The transition was smoother and faster. Not even a touch of disorientation as she appeared in the office. She pushed her way past the office workers to the view of a dangling window washer. She cleared her head enough to use a one-inch punch to shatter the glass. She pulled the washer in just as his harness snapped.
“Oh God. Thank you,” he said.
She ignored the applause, grabbing a cup of coffee out of someone’s hand. She gulped it down and sat in a chair.
Hiro poked his head over a cubicle. “I’ve been busy myself. Pushed a guy into traffic today who would’ve prevented World War III in twenty years. And dropped an air-conditioning unit on somebody’s head. Just for a laugh.”
She ignored him.
She could hold more. Just a little more.
She slipped away, landing in front of a kid standing over an anthill with a magnifying glass. She blocked the sun with her shadow.
“Hey, what gives, lady?” he asked.
“Beat it, kid.”
Hiro laughed. “Is this what you’ve been reduced to? Saving insects?”
“It all counts,” she said.
“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” He knelt down beside the anthill. “You have to feel it now. All the chaos and decay around you, all the time. A universe crumbling one atom at a time.” He raised a fist over the hill with a devilish smile. “This isn’t any different than this world. No harder to crush.”
He lowered his hand.
“Not that I need to. It’s falling apart well enough on its own.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “If it’s all pointless, then isn’t destroying it pointless?”
He wagged his finger. “You got me there. It’s just… well, it’s just that it bugs the ever-loving shit out of me. What can I say? It’s just my nature.”
He pulled his foot back to kick the anthill.
Connie jumped on him, grabbing him by the arms.
“It’s not going to work,” he said.
She slipped free of the world, dragging him along with her, appearing in the middle of the lab. Hiro’s derisive laughter echoed through the lab. Connie squeezed Hiro in a bear hug, anchoring him in time and space. But she could feel him slipping free.
“Now,” said Connie.
Bonita threw the switch, and the machine sprang to life. The containment sphere shimmered as it drew the entity’s otherworldly energies into it.
“Is this your master plan?” asked Hiro through clenched teeth. “You can’t put me back. I won’t let you.”
He tried teleporting away, but the machine anchored him.
Hiro screamed as the thing fought to remain in him. His skin turned ashen. His eyes yellowed.
“I’ll tear him apart! I’ll do it! There will be nothing left. Not even a single goddamn memory.”
Tia took a step toward them.
“I’ve got this!” said Connie.
She pulled him closer. Parts of his skin had fallen away to reveal the muscle and bone underneath.
She whispered, “I know you’re still in there, Hiro. And I know there’s nothing you can’t escape from, no prison that can hold you. Show us what you can do and get out of this one.”
Hiro stopped yelling. A confused expression crossed his face.
“You’ve got a wife now, you idiot. Don’t leave behind the one commitment you’ve made in your life.”
He looked to Tia.
And he smiled.
Connie wrapped him in her arms and held tight as the entity drained from his body. Its disembodied screams echoed through the portal.
He fell limp. She lowered him to the floor as Tia and Byron came running over. Hiro was in one piece, more or less. A few patches of skin were gone. Some of his hair. A few fingernails. A finger.
“That really sucked,” he said.
But he was smiling.
Tia kissed him as Connie stood to one side.
“Closing the portal,” said Reynolds, throwing a switch.
The machine fizzled as the other-dimensional pinprick shrank, but wouldn’t close.
“It’s not working,” said Bonita.
The portal widened. A trail of lights connected from it to Connie, Tia, and Byron.
“We’re still tethered to it,” she said. “As long as the caretaker is on this side, it will find its way back.”
Shrieking, the thing on the other side pushed its way into reality. Its presence, either by accident or intention, caused part of the giant containment machine to catch fire.
“It’s not going to hold!” shouted Reynolds. “Whatever you plan on doing, do it now!”
Byron stepped up. “I know what I have to do. I have to die so the universe lives.”
“No, you don’t,” said Connie.
“It’s okay.” He smiled with quiet acceptance of his fate. “It isn’t ideal, but someone has to do it. A plan millions of years in the making. We can’t just change it now.”
The other-dimensional tear widened.
“Nobody dies, Byron,” she said. “I’ve got a better plan.”
“So what do we do?” asked Tia.
Connie hugged Tia, taking back all the caretaker mantle. Connie crackled with power. Too much to contain, but unable to release it. Her body started breaking down, held together only through sheer willpower.
She looked to Byron and the thread of energy connecting them. He was too close. Another step closer could spell disaster.
“I love you,” she said, fighting back the destructive potential consuming her from the inside. “If this doesn’t work…”
“Connie, I—”
“Nobody dies,” she said. “Keep the door open for me.”
She jumped into the portal. It swallowed her, and the machine quieted. Technicians ran about putting out fires.
“Is that it?” asked Patty.
“Still getting questionable readings,” said Reynolds.
“It’s subdued, but the Key is still not contained,” said Bonita.
The portal, now a small point of light, hovered before them. Glittering particles of negativity connected Byron and Tia to it.