We raided the storeroom, gathering anything and everything that might be helpful. We brought cleaning supplies as well as thick gloves and kneepads into the hallways, and we spent the rest of the morning clearing out the debris and making sure there were easy paths to get to the main places we needed to go.

From the control room to the storeroom, down to the lower decks where we could get out onto our temporary home planet, to the living quarters, the mess hall, and back up to the control room. It took until well into the afternoon, and we were starving despite the few snacks and energy bars we’d taken from our backpacks.

The mess hall hadn’t yielded much in the way of food, not even the protein packs or MREs I was used to. The only thing I found of any use was a few gallons of water stored away in still-sealed containers, which were admittedly very useful. We poured several of them into the septic filtration system, which was completely empty. I didn’t know if any remaining liquid had simply dried up, or if it had been emptied on purpose. For all I knew, this could have been a base-wide evacuation.

“I can Walk somewhere and get food,” Josephine suggested, as we were sorting through a stack of discarded electronics in an attempt to find anything helpful. I hesitated. On the one hand, she had already demonstrated her ability to Walk without causing so much as a ripple and would most likely be able to go get us supplies without incident.

On the other hand, she was all I had.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said, and was rewarded with a disgusted look.

“What are we going to eat, then?”

“I can go get something,” I said, but she shook her head.

“You’ve gotta start trusting me sometime,” she said. “I can’t be the only one taking leaps of faith here.”

“It’s not about trust,” I protested. “You’re my first and only recruit. You’re my responsibility. I can’t let you run off to do something potentially dangerous, and beyond that, where are you even going to go? We’re on a prehistoric Earth, remember? It’s not like you can just Walk to the corner store and buy us some milk.”

Now it was her turn to hesitate, though it was for an admirably short moment. “There are other ways to get food. I’m sure there are fruit trees, right? And fish?”

“I don’t think there are fish trees,” I said, and she threw a coil of copper wire at me. I’d gotten her to laugh, though. Sort of. “Although, that’s not a bad idea. Fishing, I mean.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t even have to Walk anywhere, I can just go off ship. Okay? Send your bubble thing to find me if I’m taking too long.”

“His name is Hue,” I reminded her, though I refrained from pointing out that I wasn’t sure I could really send Hue anywhere. He wasn’t exactly at my beck and call.

“Whatever. Gimme one of those satchels and I’ll go get us some fruit, okay? It’s better than nothing, which is what we’ve got.”

I handed her one. Somewhat reluctantly, but I knew she was right; I had to start trusting her. We’d only been working together for a few hours, but this was fate-of-the-world stuff. I needed to let her stretch her legs, and it was best she do it now while we were still relatively safe.

Besides, this meant I could do a few things around the ship I was way more comfortable doing on my own.

First and foremost, once she left, I made my way down the cleared hallways to the living quarters. It may have been silly, but I wanted to find my own room—or what had been my room. If this InterWorld was thousands of years in the future, I’m sure I was long dead. It must belong to another Walker by now, but I just … wanted to see. I wanted something to be familiar, anything at all.

Nothing was, of course. InterWorld didn’t allow for much customization in the first place, and whoever had used this room before the base was evacuated (abandoned? Surrendered?) hadn’t left any personal items. The most I found was an old T-shirt, so yellowed with age that it was impossible to tell whether it had ever had any kind of logo on it at all.

I set my backpack in there nevertheless, and swept out as much of the dust as I could. The shift shutters—made of the thick acrylic they use to make airplane windows—were down and wouldn’t open until the ship was powered again. The sun had been up for a few hours now, and was currently directly overhead; the solar panels were soaking it in, and with any luck we would have enough power to run basic functions by the time Josephine got back. Then I could open the windows and air out the rooms, get the dust out of the ventilation systems, use the stove and ovens in the kitchen, and (I hoped) have enough hot water for a shower.

And maybe, if I could use the solar energy to charge a few of the power cores, I could get the Hazard Zone up and running. Then Josephine would have a chance to really stretch her legs.

She came back a few hours later, right as I was starting to worry. While she was gone, I’d managed to get two rooms as cleaned out as I could for us, and moved our stuff into both of them. I was staying in “my” room; hers was right next door. I figured it’d be safe enough and far less awkward than trying to share. I was still pretty sure she didn’t like me much. That was sort of par for the course with most of my para-incarnations, it seemed. (A small part of me wondered exactly what psychological implications it had that I never seemed to particularly like myself. The rest of me was just concerned with trying to keep everyone alive.)

I’d also managed to start up the ventilation system, and there’d been enough solar power to get the shift shutters open by the time Josephine got back. We’d still pretty much be inhaling centuries of dust for a while, but it wouldn’t be as bad tomorrow.

“These apples are as big as your head,” Josephine said once she’d found me again, tossing one in my direction. I caught it reflexively, though it took both hands. She wasn’t kidding.

“Good,” I said, taking a bite. “More for …” I paused, chewing slowly. “It doesn’t taste like an apple.”

“Is it bad?” She eyed her own suspiciously.

“No, it just … doesn’t taste like an apple. It’s good, though.”

She took a bite. “It kind of tastes like an apple. Like … a weird apple.”

“The Evolution of Apples,” I said, putting a note of drama in my voice. It was supposed to be funny, but she paused and looked down at the giant red fruit in her hands.

“Y’know, we’re probably eating something no one has eaten for thousands of years,” she said.

“Millions,” I corrected. “But, yeah. It’s one of the perks of this job.” She tried not to look pleased, but I could tell she was. We ate our giant not-apples in silence.

“Okay, boss,” she said, once we were finished eating and had found homes in the kitchen for the various other fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries she’d brought back. “What now?”

“Now,” I said, glancing outside at the sky. “We take our much-deserved hot showers while we still have solar power, and go to sleep.”

As pleased as she looked at the notion of a hot shower, she looked equally disappointed that it was bedtime so soon. “Aren’t you tired?” I asked, abruptly feeling like I was talking to a small child.

“No,” she said, looking like she meant it. “I want to learn more.”

“Well, I’ve been up since three this morning, and it hasn’t exactly been a restful day. I’m falling over. You can entertain yourself if you want, but I would advise you to get some sleep. I’ll likely be up between four and five again, and I’m waking you up with me.”

“Fine.” She shrugged. “Can I really entertain myself? Like … can I explore?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” I said, warily. “But I won’t tell you not to. Just stay on the ship, okay?”

She hesitated, but nodded. “Okay.”

“Fine. I’m going to go enjoy my shower.”

“Where are they? I’ll want one later.”

“You’ve got a small bathroom in your room. Let me show you where it is.”

I led her back to the rooms (she seemed pleased that I’d already moved her stuff in there, or possibly that we wouldn’t be sharing), and showed her how to use all the facilities, as they were built to be compact and were more complicated than the turn of a knob. Despite her excitement at the idea of exploring the ship, I heard her puttering around in the adjacent room as I went about getting ready for sleep. I guess she was glad for the space, since she’d been living in an elevator. Not that our rooms were that much bigger, but still … bigger than an elevator, even a large corporate one.

All in all, the day hadn’t gone too badly. I was still sore, hungry, exhausted, and terrified that the universe might end at any moment—but I had a ship, a recruit, and a plan. It was more than I’d had yesterday.

For the next three days, Josephine and I stuck to a specific routine. We would wake up at five, go for a jog around the ship (which was torture for my injuries at first, but slowly got easier), come in and eat breakfast, then clear out and organize until lunch. Then we would go out again, to a stream about two miles away (we jogged), where I taught her to catch fish with her bare hands. I was glad once again for my InterWorld classes; though such happenings were rare, we had all gone through basic wilderness survival courses in case we ever ended up stranded on a primitive world.

As I stood knee-deep in the stream, showing her how the light bent in the water and made the fish seem slightly to the side of where they actually were, I remembered how much trouble J’r’ohoho had always had with this lesson. The centaur hadn’t been able to bend over as far as the rest of us had and couldn’t even reach the water without wading in deeper. His hooves kept slipping on the slick rocks, and he’d ended up soaking wet with only a single fish to show for it.

Josephine did well, catching her first fish on her fourth try. She lost it again as it wriggled out of her grasp, but was able to hold on to the second and third. She did better and better as the days went on, and I took to giving her a crash course in battlefield tactics while we brought the fish back to base. Learning how to anticipate the enemy was discussed while we got our catch cleaned and cooked; then, while we ate, I explained the basics of planar travel and the concept of why Walking worked.

After lunch, we’d go for another run around the base, then I’d give her combat training. She had a better chance against me than she thought she did, with all my injuries, but I still managed to teach her some basics without hurting myself further. Then it was more cleaning out and hauling (specifically the other dorm rooms) and more combat tactics, specifically in regard to what she could expect from HEX and Binary. A final jog around the base, more fish for dinner, then an hour of leisure time before bed.

The first and second day, she used that extra hour to sleep. The third day, looking no less exhausted but even more determined, she asked me for another lesson in combat.

The fourth day, I decided it was time.

“Hue will bond with us again,” I explained, “and we’ll go back to our proper timeline. Then, through Hue, I’ll search for another Walker. I’ll go with you on this first one, but eventually, you and I will be running separate extraction teams.”

“Meaning we’ll both go after different versions of us.”

“Yes.”

For the first time in three days, she looked pensive. “How am I supposed to just … pull another one of me out of their life? It’s not fair.”

“The same way I did it to you,” I told her.

She frowned. “You didn’t give me a choice—you showed up and things started coming after me. …”

“Exactly. I didn’t give you a choice.” It was harsh, but it was true. It had to be true. It was the only way we could win.

She glared down at her shoes for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” After a pause, her expression relaxed, though she still didn’t smile. “I’m sick of fish, anyway.”

“Me, too.” I put a note of sympathy in my voice, sort of as an apology for my tone a moment ago.

“Are we going now?” she asked.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” I said, but the reality was that now was when Hue happened to be here (we hadn’t seen him at all for the past three days), and I didn’t want to chance his disappearing again for longer this time. She nodded.

“Hue?” I called, and the little mudluff perked up from where he’d been doing a passable impression of a floor mat. He rose slowly, like a balloon being filled with helium, and floated over. “Hey, buddy,” I said, reaching out to touch a hand to his side. He turned a pleased powder blue, exerting slight pressure against my palm. “You ready?” He shifted color again, this time to an affirmative bronze, and I reached out for Josephine’s hand.

As before, Hue flowed over us both like weird, nonsticky honey, and I Walked.

Josephine was a bit more used to Walking now, which made the transition smoother for me; but we were stumbling along the path rather than gliding, the gait of a weary traveler who has been on their feet for far too long.

I think Hue is getting tired, Josephine thought at me. Well, it wasn’t really thinking at me, exactly; it was more that I was aware of her thoughts. Like she was saying them out loud, even though I knew she wasn’t.

Probably, I answered. I don’t know how much this takes out of him, but he’s been sleeping a lot.

Let’s try not to make so many trips, she suggested. We can Walk side to side and gather up as many Walkers as we can find, then take them back all at once.

It wasn’t a bad plan, and if I had Josephine do most of the side-to-side Walking—meaning we’d go from dimension to dimension rather than back and forth through time—there was far less chance of us being detected. I had to make these next few trips count.

With that in mind, I cast about for the strongest source of Walker energy I could find.

And I found it. Close.

Well, relatively speaking. We had been docked on one of the prehistoric Earths in InterWorld’s future. Hue took us back in InterWorld’s timeline, which took us forward in Earth’s timeline. The Walker essence I was sensing was on a parallel planet, an Earth that had never recovered from the meteor impact roughly sixty-six million years ago.

The energy I was sensing on this planet, this dead planet, was strong. Very strong.

Could it be a trap? Josephine asked silently.

A few days ago, I would have said no. I would have said there was no way to simulate Walker energy from someone who wasn’t a Walker. I would have said we would know.

I knew now that wasn’t true, so all I said was Maybe.

The landing sent a jolt through us both, like when you’re going downstairs and hit the floor sooner than you expected because you thought there was another step. The ground was hard and unforgiving, reddish, and cracked like a dry riverbed. The air was thick with dust and ash, the sunlight filtering weakly through the haze. It smelled like rot and marshland, the landscape restricted to a color palette of grays and reds and browns. Despite the warm colors, it was freezing.

“Ugh.” Josephine wheezed, lifting her sleeve to her mouth and nose. “It smells like bad water.”

“Yep,” I said, doing the same. “Hold on.” I closed my eyes, partly to concentrate and partly because they were stinging and watering. Taking a deep breath through my sleeve, I focused on the strong, clear pulse of familiarity, of power just like mine, the same way I’d found Josephine. It was here, still, laid out before me like a trail of bread crumbs.

“This way,” I said, starting off through the trees. Josephine followed, coughing.

“This dust is really thick,” she observed, voice muffled by her sleeve. “Did a volcano explode or something?”

I ignored the jolt of adrenaline that went through me as her question reminded me of the rockslide that had killed Jerzy and fractured my shoulder. I wanted to stop and take a deep breath, but that wasn’t really an option. Instead, I shrugged and said, “Maybe. More likely it was a huge meteor.”

“You mean like what killed the dinosaurs?”

“Yeah. This is a version of Earth that suffered longer-lasting effects from that, whatever it was.”

“You just said it was a huge meteor.”

“That’s what it probably was,” I said. “But no one really knows for sure. Evidence suggests it was a meteor, but scientists have a few other theories.”

She tilted her head, looking curious. “Aren’t those things we could find out, though? Like if it was a meteor and whether or not there was an Atlantis, and what’s up with the Bermuda Star, and …”

“There’s actually nothing up with the Bermuda Star,” I said. “It’s called the Bermuda Triangle on my world, and it’s mostly a myth perpetuated by television and other media.”

“But all those planes and ships went missing,” she said, looking disappointed.

“Not really. There haven’t actually been any more disappearances or wrecks in that area than any other,” I said. She continued to look disappointed. “I mean, at least on my Earth. Maybe it’s different on yours.”

“Maybe,” she said, perking up. “But what about the other stuff, like Atlantis or the missing crew of the Maria Christine?”

“I haven’t heard of that last one—might’ve had a different name on my world, if it happened—but the fact that you and I both come from a world with Atlantis myths might mean there’s something to them.”

“Huh.” She looked thoughtful. “I guess so. Would that be another way of finding out, do you think? Walking to different worlds and seeing if they have the same myths, or finding one where Atlantis never sank?”

“Yeah, probably. And that,” I said, removing my sleeve from my face long enough for her to see me grin, “is what we call perks of the job. We do get to go off Base sometimes.”

“That’s awesome,” she said. “I can’t wait to explore.”

“When we’re done saving all the worlds,” I reminded her.

“I know,” she said a little testily. I suppose I didn’t have to keep reminding her how serious this was; there wasn’t anything wrong with looking forward to dessert while knowing you still had to eat your vegetables.

“I used to have a whole book about stuff like that,” I said after a moment, trying to make conversation as we slogged our way through the thick, dank air. I knew I should save my breath, but we hadn’t had much chance to talk about anything other than tactics and technical ship stuff. I knew next to nothing about her, except what I assumed we had in common.

“Stuff like what? Modern mysteries?”

“Yeah. My aunt gave it to me.”

“I had the same one,” she said. “Aunt Theresa?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Blue cover?”

“No, green. Yellow title.”

“Mine was black, I think. Don’t remember; I got it when I was really little. Mom and her sister didn’t talk much, really.”

“I guess that’s how it was for us at first, but they got closer after the accident,” she said.

“What accident?”

“The car accident.” Josephine glanced sidelong at me. “When Mom lost her arm.”

I paused, once again struck by the realization at how different we all were, even though we were all essentially the same. When I’d first come to Josephine’s world, when I still didn’t know what was happening or why, I’d gone into her house and seen the woman who was my mom but wasn’t, who looked like her and sounded like her but had different hair and a prosthetic arm.

“That didn’t happen for you,” she said.

“No,” I admitted. “I remember one car accident we were in, but it wasn’t bad.”

She was silent for a moment, considering that. She didn’t seem upset, just thoughtful. Josephine was like that, I was learning; she tended to mostly roll with the punches. I guess she’d had to.

“Well, it was bad for us. I have a scar right here from when I hit my head.” She pulled her sleeve away from her mouth long enough to push her hair back. I couldn’t make out the scar with how my eyes were watering from the dust in the air, but I nodded anyway. “And I only sort of remember what happened. I woke up in the hospital with Dad sitting next to me, and he told me we’d be staying there for a few days while Mom had surgery.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to think of anything else.

“Whatever,” she said. “Don’t pity me or anything. It wasn’t that bad. Mom’s used to using the prosthetic now, and she can do most things pretty easily. She even makes jewelry.”

I automatically reached up to touch the necklace beneath my shirt, the one I always wore. My mom had made it for me the night I left home, and I wondered if Josephine’s mother had been able to do the same before she left.

“Is it just me, or is it getting harder to breathe?” she asked.

“It’s not just you,” I said, pausing. “And do you hear that?”

We both stopped, holding our breaths for more than one reason. Had I heard a faint rustling nearby? Now I wasn’t sure. There was the same unnatural stillness that had surrounded us since we arrived: no birds, no breeze, no insects. But now there was a heaviness to the air, a sense of waiting, of anticipation.

I tackled Josephine to the side as I felt the ground shudder behind me and slightly to the right, my only indication that something was about to happen. I felt a rush of air over my head, and heard a shrill, strangled sound that made my spine tingle. It sounded almost like a bird, but … not.

I rolled defensively to my feet, some small part of me noting with pride that Josephine was doing the same.

A shape loomed up out of the red dust at us, beady eyes glinting in the scant light. It looked like some sort of ostrich or emu, but … well, not nearly as silly. Large, flightless birds have always looked kinda weird to me, you know? Not this one. For one thing, it was probably close to twice my height, and I know I’m not exactly big, but still.

I rolled to the side again as the thing’s head—almost the size of my torso—lunged toward me, fast as a striking snake. I got the impression of some kind of hooked beak before it spun past me, orienting on Josephine. Definitely carnivorous, definitely hungry.

I’d like to say what I did next was heroic, but it was probably closer to dumb. As Josephine darted backward to avoid the beak, I threw myself toward the thing in what I hoped was a coordinated jump. It probably looked more like I was flailing while falling, but I managed to get my arms around the thing’s long neck anyway, legs wrapped around its body and feet off the ground.

It’s times like that, half-astride the back of a prehistoric monstrous emu, that I wondered what I’d be doing right now if my life was normal. Probably not playing rodeo with a giant bird, that’s for sure.

“Run!” I shouted, scrabbling for purchase as the whatever it was hopped and bucked. I managed to get an arm around its neck, locking my grip with my other hand. I felt feathers and rough, leathery skin against my arm, and then I felt my teeth rattle as it tried to run me into a tree. Basic anatomy teaches that most mammal or avian creatures have to breathe, usually through a windpipe of some sort, and I was hoping this thing would be no different. Of course, with all the soot and dust down here, I might have been way off the mark. … Maybe this creature had evolved to not need oxygen? I probably should have considered that sooner.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Josephine tuck and roll, lashing out with a well-placed kick against the joint of one leg. The creature tipped beneath me and I lost purchase, swinging around in front of it. This was not ideal, as now it was able to dip its head enough that the beak had once again become a concern.

I did the smart thing and let go, managing to land more or less neatly on both feet. Josephine dove behind a tree as the creature struck—there was the sound of snapping twigs and creaking bark as the razor-sharp beak left a small crater in the trunk. I had no doubt that beak could snap my arm in half, if it caught me.

I was sorting through my mental index of potential weapons when I heard another sound, this one the piercing cry of something much larger. A shadow passed over us, blotting out what little sun there was, and the giant bird thing paused, lifting its head. I saw the pupils of its eyes contract to pinpoints; then it stood up to its full height and let out a challenging shriek. As it did, I noticed the distinct lines of ribs beneath its feathery coat—whatever it was, it was clearly starving. Either there wasn’t much food here, or this thing wasn’t high enough on the food chain to compete. If the latter was true, I didn’t want to stick around to find out what was.

I made it around Josephine’s tree just in time to see something large and sinewy crash through the forest, talons out. It was maybe the size of a small airplane.

Nope, I thought, and grabbed Josephine’s hand. There was no way we could fight these things; I had nothing on me except Hue, who was resting in the hood of my sweatshirt—and he was no match for monsters like these, anyway. Josephine was already moving, and we took off through the underbrush as fast as we could safely go, given the fact that we couldn’t see more than six feet in front of us.

In retrospect, we probably should have gone even slower. The crashing and sounds of fighting were still all too close behind us when the dirt beneath my feet loosened, and I realized we were going downhill, fast. Despite my best efforts, my feet slid out from under me and I stumbled down the rocky ravine, Josephine beside me.

For a single terrifying moment, my shoes left the dirt and I was midair, with no idea of how far I might be falling. Then the ground caught me, not too gently; the wind got knocked out of me and I stayed there for a moment, stunned and in pain. The adrenaline caught up with me a second later, and I shoved my sleeve back up against my mouth, sucking in breaths only partially filtered of dust. I could hear Josephine coughing beside me, but it was all I could do to concentrate on breathing, on not panicking that I wasn’t getting enough air.

This place is a deathtrap, I thought, dizzily. How is there such a strong source of Walker energy here?

“Are we sure … this is the right … place?” Josephine wheezed, voice muffled behind her hands.

“Yes.” I coughed. “Well, I’m not sure this is the right place, since this seems to be some sort of deep … ravine. …” I paused. Josephine turned to look at me, expression both wary and weary. “Do you hear that?” I asked, feeling my shoulders slump. I was really tired of things trying to kill/maim/eat me.

Josephine tilted her head, listening. By the frown on her face, I could tell she heard it, too—a kind of clicking, or scrabbling, like something with a lot of legs crawling over rocks … or many somethings with a lot of legs. …

“Nope,” Josephine said, covering her ears with her hands. “Nope, I don’t hear anyth—”

“Come on!” I took off down the ravine floor, dodging rocks the size of my head and thin, spindly plants that looked like they’d either crumble to dust as I passed or be as strong and tough as razor wire.

Josephine was a few steps behind me. The sound was rising into an all-out chittering, and I didn’t dare look back as I ran. Only six feet of vision in this dust, remember?

Yeah. About that …

“Dead end!” Josephine gasped, removing her sleeve from her mouth long enough to press her hands against the rocks. There was a sheer cliff face in front of us, rising farther than I could see. I turned around.

I couldn’t see anything yet, but the noise was getting closer. As I watched, narrowing my eyes to try to see through the dust and resulting tears, I caught a glimpse of movement here and there at the edges of my vision. Long, sinewy black things, winding like snakes and skittering like scorpions. I started to make out a snap-snap-snap sound, like powerful little claws.

“Climb!” I said, cupping my hands and bracing myself to help Josephine up. She looked at me, at the cliff, and back toward the crab-snake-scorpion creatures. “See how high up it is!” I urged, remembering her reluctance to leave when I’d told her to run from the emu thing. She really wasn’t one to back down from something, even when it was probably safer for her. I’d have to keep that in mind.

She put her foot into my cupped hands and I heaved, ignoring the pain in my shoulder and ribs. It was definitely gonna be time for some painkillers once everything on this planet stopped trying to murder us.

I backed up against the cliff, once again trying to figure out what I could use as a weapon. The black shapes were getting closer, taking their time now to assess my threat level. I tried to make myself look as big as possible.

They were about two feet long each, more like centipedes than snakes, with a bunch of spindly black legs, crablike claws, and a wicked, scorpion-like tail. Now that they were closer, I could see there were patterns on their bodies, threads of red and blue and gold winding around their scales (carapaces?). It was kind of pretty, or it would be if they weren’t probably about to eat me.

“I’m up, it’s not that far!” Josephine called, and I took a breath and turned my back to them. I could barely see the outline of Josephine leaning over the cliff face, offering me her hand. I jumped and grabbed it with my good arm, using my feet and other hand for purchase as something wrapped around my leg.

I kicked wildly, feeling a crunch between my knee and the cliff face as Josephine hauled me up. Rocks and sticks dug into my hands and fingers as I scrambled over the precipice, but I pushed myself immediately to my feet and backed away from the cliff. I didn’t know if those creatures could climb or not, but it was probably safer to assume they could.

Josephine pressed her back to mine and we stood like that, panting, me facing the cliff and watching for any sign of those little spindly nightmare things, and Josephine facing wherever we were and looking for who knows what else. Giant emus. Demonic Big Bird, maybe, or a freaking tyrannosaur. With our luck, the one T. rex not extinct would live on this rock.

“Are you sure this is the right planet?” Josephine grumbled, finally, after a moment of blessed silence when nothing came up over the cliff edge or attacked us from the thick dust.

“Yes.” I sighed. “Hey, do you—”

“If you say ‘Do you hear that?’ I swear I will shoot you!”

I almost wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have the breath for it. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Who carries a handkerchief anymore?”

“Everyone on InterWorld,” I defended myself. “They’re useful for a bunch of reasons. Like tying them around your face to block out smoke.”

“Well, I don’t,” she snapped, then reconsidered. “I have a bandanna and a knife. We could cut it in half.”

“Better than nothing,” I said.

It didn’t take long to slice Josephine’s blue bandanna in half diagonally, to use as a face mask for each of us. I pulled a water bottle out of my backpack, took several gulps, gave it to Josephine, and soaked both rags before tying mine around my mouth and nose. I automatically put the empty plastic bottle back in my pack so as not to litter, then had to laugh at myself. We were all taught to leave as little imprint on the worlds we visited as possible, so of course I would put the bottle away—but the thought of someone ever coming to this dead planet and finding a single plastic water bottle amid all the ruin was suddenly absurdly funny. I think I was a little hysterical.

I found Josephine’s hand, forging ahead through the cloud of dust and debris. There were boulders rather than trees now, giant black rocks bigger than I was, blocking the way. In some cases we had to go around, and the rocks reminded me of the last time I’d breathed in this much dust. This was like when I’d fractured my shoulder in the rockslide that had killed Jerzy.

I felt myself tensing up, expecting the ground to start rumbling and the boulders to start falling, to crush us. My heart was racing, but I didn’t know if it was the lack of oxygen or the sudden onslaught of memories. Either way, as Josephine and I plodded on, it took me a moment to notice the figure stepping out of the dust in front of us.

Josephine gave a sharp tug on my hand, which caused pain in about four different places. I snapped my head up, shifting my weight to my back foot—and then the air cleared, so suddenly it left me gasping.

Josephine’s hand slipped free of mine, likely so she could wipe her eyes. I didn’t blame her; I was doing the same.

“You’re Joseph Harker, aren’t you?” a voice said, and I looked up into the face of a different version of me.

Like me (and Josephine), she had pale skin, unruly red hair, and freckles. But her eyes were green, so vibrant that they seemed to shine. Her hands were held up, kind of defensively, and she was dressed like she’d stepped out of a medieval adventure novel: browns and greens, with high boots, leggings, and a plain tunic. Pouches and leather things I didn’t recognize hung from a belt with intricate tooling on it. Her hair was short enough that I second-guessed her gender for a moment; plus she honestly had the kind of face that could have been male or female.

“Yes,” Josephine said from behind me. “He is. I’m Josephine.” I’m glad she was able to form sentences—I felt like I was going to pass out with the sudden influx of oxygen. I pressed the bandanna to my face again, wiping away the dust before tying it to my belt, forcing myself to breathe slowly.

“I’m Jari,” she said, and the name tugged at my memory.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I used to live on Base with roughly five hundred versions of me, all of whom had names that started with a J sound. Even if their names were in a different language, or a mathematical equation, it could generally be translated to a J sound. Saying that this girl’s name tugged at my memory would have seemed vastly unimportant, except for one small thing: I’d never seen her before.

After a moment, I had it. “You’re one of the twins,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. My brother is on his way.”

“Twins?” Josephine asked. “We can be twins?”

“It’s rare,” I said. “In fact, it was unheard of—but, yes, we can be twins. Apparently.” I smiled at Jari.

“It is not so uncommon to me,” she said. “I find it more disturbing that there are so many of you who are not twins. I could not imagine being without my brother.”

“Did it give you an advantage at InterWorld?” Josephine asked. “Like, in training?”

“We did not have much chance to find out,” Jari said.

“I never even got to meet them,” I explained. “They were brought onto the ship right before I left. They’re from a high magic world. Remember, I explained about the arc of magic and science. …” I trailed off, looking at Jari again. Her hands weren’t held up defensively, as I’d first thought. She was holding the dust and ash at bay, encasing us in a protective bubble of oxygen. I’d assumed (stupidly) that she’d had some sort of gadget on her at first, but she looked like she wouldn’t even know the difference between a grav-disk and a cell phone.

“How are you doing that?” Josephine asked.

“My particular gift,” she said. “Everyone on my world has one. I can adapt to any environment, or create one of my choosing in a small sphere around me. That is why they sent my brother and me out to gather food.”

“He can do the same thing?” I asked.

“He can change himself,” she explained, and turned to look up at the sky. Or, where I presumed the sky would be; there was nothing beyond our little sphere but a miasma of debris. “You do not think the appearance of a larger predator during your fight with the bird monster was coincidence, do you?” She smiled, abruptly lifting one arm to the sky—and an enormous red-tailed hawk came gliding out of the cloud of ash to rest upon her leather-covered forearm. He settled with a shuffling of wings, tilting his head at us.

“This is my brother, Jarl,” she said, and the hawk gave a quiet chirp. “He is not usually so feathery,” she added with a smile.

“Nice to meet you,” Josephine said, and I could tell from her tone that she’d once again decided this was all absurd and she was just gonna go with it.

“Same here,” I said, looking into the bird’s eyes. Bright green, like Jari’s.

“Jarl,” Jari said, getting the bird’s attention. They seemed to confer for a moment, just looking at each other, though the bird showed little or no reaction and neither of them spoke again.

Finally, she gave a bounce of her arm and the hawk spread his wings, launching himself into the air. He disappeared into the miasma and was gone.

“Are you and your brother—” I began.

“Telepathic?” she interrupted, then smiled. “In a sense. What we have is known as kinesthetic telepathy. When he found you earlier, he sent me an image of what he was seeing. When I caught up with you, I sent him a feeling of triumph, so he knew to join us.”

“And you knew I was about to ask, because you sensed I was curious?”

“No.” Her smiled widened. “We have been asked that several times since we met all of you. I assumed it would be your question, as well. I can utilize telepathy with my brother but no one else.”

“Fair enough,” I said, though something she’d said was nagging at me. “You were looking for us, specifically?”

“Yes. Joeb sent us out to find you.”

I let out a quiet breath. Joeb was also a name I recognized. He was a senior officer on InterWorld, and someone I thought of as a friend. As far as I knew, he had been on InterWorld when the HEX ship had found it. He should be stuck in the warp field like everyone else. If he wasn’t, and he had the twins with him … maybe there were more of us here than I thought.

Maybe we had more of a chance than I’d realized.

“How did he know we were here? Did he sense us Walk?”

“You will have to ask him,” she said, and gestured for us to follow her.

“Who’s Joeb?” Josephine asked as we walked through the thick red clouds, safe in our bubble of oxygen.

“Another one of us. A senior officer at InterWorld, from an Earth pretty close to ours. He’s a lot like me, I guess. Older, maybe.” Joeb was, in fact, a lot like me—but if I had to be honest, he was even more like Jay. He had a sort of big-brother aura to him, and tended to look after all the new recruits; that was probably how he’d wound up on this world with the twins. “He’s a good guy,” I said. He’d been one of the few people to start talking to me after I first came to InterWorld. We’d talked about family, since in his world, his youngest sibling was a girl instead of a boy, and her nickname was Mouse instead of Squid. There were always little similarities like that among all of us.

“He is,” Jari agreed, navigating her way around the terrain. There were rocks here, sometimes, and gnarled little black things that might have once been trees. The only time I could see them was when the circle of clear air brushed past them, allowing us a glimpse of things here and there as we walked; otherwise they were faint shapes distorted by smoke. “He and four others came for us—my brother and me—on our world. There were other things, too, dangerous things we were running from.”

“I know what that’s like,” Josephine said, shooting me a dark look.

“So do I,” I reminded her, and Jari kept talking as we walked. I paced myself carefully; even though we hadn’t gone far, I was already feeling a strain in my calves. And my shoulder, after all that activity—as we walked, I pulled a roll of bandages out of my backpack and tied them into a makeshift sling to take some of the weight off it.

“Yes, Joeb said they’d come to capture us when we first realized our Walking power,” Jari continued. “Jarl and I did not think we would have any other abilities beyond our gifts, but …” She trailed off, remembering.

“But then you figured out how to Walk,” I guessed.

“Yes. It was amazing … at first. But then the bad ones came for us, and we ran. We made it back to our world, but they pursued us. That was when Joeb and the others came. They were all very brave, and took injuries helping us … but Joeb made sure to talk to us after we came back to the sky dome, and make certain we were all right. Then the Captain sent us out—”

“The Old Man did?” I interrupted. “Why?”

“Old Man,” she repeated, sounding amused. “Joeb said that some people call him that.”

“Most of us do, honestly. Why did he send you off? And when?”

“I do not know why,” she said, looking briefly irritated at the interruptions. “You will have to ask Joeb.”

“Where are we even going?” Josephine asked. “Is there any part of this world that isn’t completely messed up, or does everyone just hold their breath all the time? Or do you have another ship?”

“We do not have a ship,” she said, “but the dust only reaches so far.”

It was at that moment that I realized the strain I was feeling in my legs wasn’t because of how far we’d walked, it was because we were going uphill. I ignored the sudden thud of my heart against my chest. The thought of going anywhere near another mountain was daunting, at the least. …

I heard a hawk cry out above me, and looked up. Habit, really; I hadn’t expected to see anything. To my surprise, though, I did. Barely visible, so faint I thought I’d imagined it, there was the soft glow of sunlight and the shadow of a bird passing over us. The miasma was thinning.

“It’s a little farther,” Jari said.

“So you and your brother can send each other emotions?”

“Yes, and we are often aware of the other’s general location.”

“Have you ever done it by accident?” Josephine asked.

“When we were younger, yes. Not as much now. If we are in pain or afraid, we often think of the other first, and then those emotions may send by mistake. Jarl once broke his arm playing by the foxwillow in the last summer days, and I knew immediately.” There was something in her voice as she mentioned the incident, the casual way she spoke of things I’d never heard of reminding me of my own summers taking day trips to the beach with my family or when my sister and I ate Popsicles in the shade of the giant tree in our front yard. There was a sense of familiar fondness and a deep sense of loss; whatever a foxwillow was, Jari would probably never see one again. I would probably never see that giant oak tree again, either.

She glanced at me, and I offered a smile. Josephine was silent as she walked behind me. We both understood.

“This way,” Jari said before I could say anything else, veering off to the right. The air was clean enough now that I could see the path outside our bubble, and we were definitely up in the mountains. The incline got sharper, and the air got gradually thinner.

“We aren’t going to run out of oxygen or anything, are we?” Josephine asked.

“I doubt the mountain goes that high,” I said, and she reached out to punch my arm. The good arm, thankfully.

“I know that. I meant the bubble we’re in.”

“Oh,” I said, glancing around. That might actually be a legitimate concern.

“We are not in a bubble,” Jari explained. “I am purifying the air around us in a small radius as we walk. You could easily reach outside of my range, if you wished.”

“And you can do that anywhere? Even underwater?”

“Yes.” She sounded proud. “Underwater, far underground, anywhere. It is specifically the ability to create the environment I need to survive, no matter what is around me.”

“And you said you can adapt, too?” Josephine asked.

“Yes. I can either create the bubble for those I am with, or I can allow myself to breathe wherever I am.”

“Do you grow gills or anything? Like, do you change your shape?”

“No, that is my brother’s gift. He can become a water dweller; I can simply dwell in the water as is.” She sounded irritated again; I was beginning to guess that she thought her brother’s shape-shifting was a better ability than hers.

“That’s really cool,” Josephine said, and then we had to explain the colloquialism to Jari. By the time we got that sorted out, the air had cleared up enough that Jari dropped her not-bubble, and we walked into a makeshift base.

My knees went weak with relief. There were at least half a dozen temp camps, which could fit four people if you got cozy. There were twice that many Walkers doing various chores, and I recognized most of them—and one in particular, a girl most recognizable by her beautiful white wings.

“Jo!” I shouted, surprising myself as I darted forward. I was further surprised when she moved forward as well, meeting me in a hug.

Though Jo was one of the first people I’d interacted with at InterWorld, our relationship had always been chilly at best. Still, she was a teammate and (as far as I was concerned) a friend, and the first of either I’d seen in four or five days.

I hugged her tightly, though I was careful of her wings and she was careful of my shoulder. She pulled back almost immediately, looking embarrassed at her uncharacteristic exuberance. “Joey,” she said, her voice heavy with relief. “You’re—” She cut herself off from saying the word okay; I obviously wasn’t all that okay, given the sling, wrist brace, and number of bandages on me.

“Alive,” I filled in. “So are you. I’m glad,” I said honestly, and we exchanged wry smiles. It was kind of like that right now; “alive” was about as good as we could hope for.

“I am also pleased to see you relatively well, though not uninjured,” said another voice, one I would have recognized immediately even if not for the overabundance of formality in his tone.

“Hey, Jai!” Oh, what the hell—I hugged him, too, something he accepted with a hint of surprise. “Are you all right? I haven’t seen you since …” I trailed off, not knowing what to call it. I couldn’t say the accident, because it hadn’t been one.

“I was fortunate enough to remain mostly unscathed,” he said, “and I attempted to provide the same fate for our comrades. With little success,” he added softly, his brown face filling with sorrow. I squeezed his shoulder.

“It would have been a lot worse without you,” I said.

A small crowd was gathering around us, a crowd of people I recognized. They all took turns waving or greeting me, saying they were glad to see me or expressing relief that I was alive and here. There was the rest of my team aside from J/O: Josef, twice my size and built of thick, dense muscle, and Jakon, my sleek, furry wolflike cousin, and others who weren’t on my team but had missed me anyway. J’r’ohoho, the centaur from a primitive world who’d nevertheless excelled in his science classes, and Jaya, with her red-gold hair and sweet voice.

They were all here, all glad to see me. It was a homecoming, of sorts, the kind I hadn’t yet had at InterWorld. No one here had been glad to see me before, had given me hugs, or said they’d missed me. It was nice, not just for myself, but because Josephine was watching with a quiet understanding. I was glad she could see the camaraderie we felt for each other firsthand.

“How did you get here?” I asked finally, raising my voice to be heard above the chatter.

“That’s something you and I should discuss,” said a new voice, firm but not unkind, and a few people stepped aside to reveal Joeb.

“Hey,” I said in greeting, another wave of relief washing through me. It wasn’t just that I was glad to see him. He and Jai were both senior officers, which meant I wouldn’t be the only one making decisions now. I didn’t have to do this all on my own anymore.

“Come sit,” he said, gesturing to a few travel cots that were set up around a portable heater. It was warmer now that we could actually feel the sunlight, but I imagined it got cold up here.

Joeb and I sat down on a cot. All the others followed, some also sitting on cots and others on the ground, leaning against one another and otherwise getting comfortable. Apparently, it was story time.

“The Old Man pulled me into his office six days ago,” Joeb began, his brown eyes serious. “He said there had been a security breach, a leak he’d just discovered.”

“It was Joaquim,” I said. A murmur went through those listening.

“It can’t have been,” someone said.

“We’d’ve known,” someone else insisted, and a few other voices rose up in agreement.

“It was Joaquim,” Joeb said clearly, his voice rising once again above the chatter. He let that sink in for a moment, glancing out over the faces of those assembled. “Captain Harker confirmed it before we left.”

I looked out at them, too, seeing the same disbelief I had felt, the same betrayal that had been twisting at me for days. “He’s dead,” I said, and Joeb looked at me. “He was a creation of Binary … and HEX,” I said, and another murmur went through the crowd. “They’re working together now. They used a combination of science and magic to create what they call FrostNight, and they used me and Joaquim to power it. Acacia helped me escape, but Joaquim was …”

“Killed?” asked Jo, when I faltered.

“Used up,” I said, unable to look at her. I couldn’t look at anyone; I kept remembering Joaquim’s face, still contorted into a mask of fear and anger, no emotion or depth or life left in his eyes at all. “He was powered by magic. And us, of the essences that are stolen when we’re caught by HEX.” Now I did look at her, and all of them, my gaze roaming over the faces of these comrades who were just like me. They all looked as sick as I felt.

“FrostNight,” Joeb said, after a moment of silence. “What is it?”

I took a breath. “Basically? A self-perpetuating supercontinuum that rearranges all of time and space in its path.”

A short silence followed my statement. Those who’d had any manner of basic classes at InterWorld Prime looked appropriately concerned. Others, such as Jari and Josephine, looked like they had absolutely no clue what the hell I’d just said.

“Okay,” said Joeb, who was one of the ones looking concerned. “What is its path, exactly?”

“Everywhere. It’s a self-aware manifold; it can reach into any dimension.”

“It has to disperse eventually,” someone ventured from the crowd. “Doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped, then put a hand to my forehead. I hadn’t meant to be short, I was just frustrated; I didn’t know nearly as much about this as I needed to. I’d seen it created, but I still knew next to nothing. “It was powered by us, by me and Joaquim and all the souls they’d infused him with. They got all of … them, all of him, but I escaped.”

“How?” someone else asked, and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining the hint of suspicion or not.

“Acacia,” I said, and Joeb held up a hand.

“Hold on,” he said, looking at me sympathetically. “Why don’t I tell you our side of the story, and then you can fill in the gaps for us.”

I nodded, grateful, and he continued. “The Old Man called me into his office two days after we extracted the twins.” He nodded to Jari and the hawk. “He said there was a leak in InterWorld, and that everyone was in danger. He instructed me and several other officers to take small groups of people off Base for training, and not to return until we heard from him. He also gave me an ADT”—he pulled an advanced dimensional tracker, a small, circular device, from his pocket—“and told me to keep an eye out for you.”

“For me?” I accepted the tracker as he handed it to me, staring down the screen. It had exactly one blip, a little red dot in the center. Me. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered, staring at the dot. I remembered sitting in the stark white infirmary, barely feeling the shot as it stabbed into my arm, still numb from my injuries and Jerzy’s funeral the day before. “He had me injected with a tracer the same day he sent you off Base. Hours before, I’ll bet. He said it was for my own safety, but now I’m not so sure.” After all, this wasn’t the first time the tracer had come in handy. The Old Man had to have known it would, but how?

Acacia, I realized, my hand clenching around the ADT. She was a Time Agent. She must have known this was going to happen, must have warned the Old Man.

I did my best to fight down a surge of anger, and instead handed the ADT back to Joeb and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Why couldn’t she have warned him about any of the other horrible things that had happened in the last week? Jerzy’s death? Binary and HEX working together? The Professor sacrificing his “son” to create a self-aware soliton that will erase everything in the Multiverse, for God’s sake! She didn’t find any of that to be half as important as having me injected with a tracer?

“Joey?” Joeb’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts, and I realized I’d completely lost track of the conversation.

“Sorry. What?”

“I asked if you knew why Captain Harker hadn’t contacted us yet. I mean, I assumed I was waiting for you, but I imagine you haven’t brought us orders to go back to base.”

I shook my head. “No. They’re … InterWorld is compromised,” I said, hating the words as they left my lips. There was the sound of a collective intake of breath from everyone sitting around me. “It’s been locked on to by a HEX ship. They’re running, I don’t know where to and I don’t know for how long. I think they’re stuck in a perpetual temporal warp, at least for now.”

“I was afraid of that,” Joeb said. At my look, he shrugged. “The InterWorld formula is … it feels like a broken link right now. Like it wouldn’t take me anywhere if I tried to use it.” He sighed, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, turning his head this way and that to stretch muscles made tense by worry and stress. I knew the feeling. “So that’s my side of it. We’ve been sitting on this mountain for the better part of a week now, running some rudimentary training and waiting to either hear from the Old Man or see your little dot show up on the ADT.”

“What about the other officers with their teams? Do you know where they are?”

“I don’t know if any of them actually made it off Base,” he admitted. “I grabbed my recruits pretty quickly—my teams, and what I could of yours.” He nodded to where Jo, Jakon, Josef, and Jai were sitting nearby, listening.

“Most of mine were injured in the rockslide,” I murmured, more or less to myself. Why had the Old Man had him take the injured Walkers off Base?

Joeb grinned at me. I blinked at the expression; for obvious reasons, his smile seemed kind of out of place. “They wouldn’t take no for an answer when they found out we were going off Base,” he explained. Jakon bared her teeth at me in her signature fierce smile, and Josef shot me a thumbs-up.

I hung my head, giving a quiet laugh. That was my team, all right.

“Okay,” I said, the word coming out as a sigh. “Ready to hear my side of it?”

It didn’t take me long to tell Joeb and the others everything that had happened to me. I had told it so many times, to Mr. Dimas and to Josephine, that I did so mechanically now, letting my brain detach from what I was saying and think about other things. Like how to get them all back to InterWorld Beta.

I hadn’t expected to run into so many Walkers at once. Honestly, I was concerned that having so many of them here would draw unwanted attention from our enemies, especially if we tried to Walk. Walking, if you weren’t careful about it, tended to alert the capture agents of either HEX or Binary. Not always, but they did have specific sensors for it. That’s how they’d find us, when we first discovered our power, before we even knew what was happening. …

Would Hue be able to take all of us at once? Or, if he was covering me, would I be able to Walk all of us through time? Though that many of us Walking at once would still have to blip some sensors, somewhere.

But, assuming FrostNight had been released, would they even care about what we were doing? You will not be able to Walk far enough away, Lord Dogknife had gloated to me. He’d left me alive on my home world; he obviously wasn’t too concerned with what I would or wouldn’t do. Would they even be paying attention enough to notice if that many of us Walked at once?

Damn it. There was too much I didn’t know.

“So, when Acacia sent me into the future to keep me safe,” I continued, “she sent me to a future version of InterWorld. I was able to get back, thanks to the tracer the Old Man injected me with, and Hue. Hue can act like an encounter suit and form himself to me. When he does, I can Walk to any timeline. It’s like … like I become multidimensional myself.”

“Is it safe?” someone asked.

“Yes.” Surprisingly, it was Josephine who spoke up. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not sure I trust that little balloon, but we Walked through time easily enough. And we found you.”

I nodded. “So, we do have a ship. It’s just a matter of getting to it, and powering it once we’re there. Once we get the warp engines up and running, we can take the ship to our own timeline.”

“Then what?” Joeb asked, watching me carefully.

I took a breath. “Then we split into two groups. One group is responsible for extracting new Walkers, and the other will be training. Hard.”

“Okay,” Joeb said, holding up a hand. “I know why we’re getting new Walkers; it’s what we’ve always done, and it ensures HEX and Binary won’t find them first. But what, specifically, are we training for?”

“To stop FrostNight.”

A moment of silence followed, then Joeb asked, “How?”

“I don’t know. But, if we can get InterWorld Beta up and running, we can use the library to research possible solutions.” That was met with more silence, and I sighed. “I know it’s not much of a plan. If any of you can think of anything better, believe me, I am all ears.”

“How long do we have?” Joeb said, after the silence had stretched for a moment more.

“I don’t know. It’s been days since I was dropped on my world. We have to act now. It may already be too late, but it’s either we do anything and everything we can, or we roll over and give up.”

“No one’s suggesting we do nothing,” Jo spoke up, a little sharply. I took a breath—I’d been starting to get frustrated, and Jo’s tone was a warning, a reminder that getting upset wouldn’t fix anything.

“I know,” I said, glancing briefly at her in thanks. “And I know you’re all willing to do whatever is needed.”

“One thing at a time,” Joeb said. “The first thing we have to figure out is how to get back Joey’s InterWorld.”

“InterWorld Beta,” I corrected under my breath. I wasn’t comfortable with it being referred to as mine.

“How many of us do you think your mudluff could take at once?”

“I don’t know. He took me with no problem, and he managed to take me and Josephine, but I don’t know if he could take all of us. I don’t know what would happen if we tried and something went wrong.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Joeb said.

“We’re not being safe either way,” Jo pointed out, “with so many of us here. If what Joey said about Joaquim and the way they powered him is right, they might be able to do that again. They might able to sense us, the way we can sense each other. They might come here.”

“Would they bother?” Joeb asked, echoing my earlier thoughts.

“I don’t know,” I said again. It felt like the millionth time I’d said those words in the last few minutes, and it was infuriating. I wasn’t being any help to anyone. “Lord Dogknife seemed pretty confident that there wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop them. Whether they’ll be watching us anyway or not, I …” I trailed off, unwilling to say those three words again. “I can’t say,” I said instead. It was a little better.

“Better safe than sorry,” Joeb repeated. “Let’s assume they can—and will—sense us, whether we stay in a group or Walk. That means we have to get as many of us to InterWorld Beta as we can. They won’t be able to follow us there, right?”

“Right,” I said, hoping desperately that I was right. I had to be. They didn’t have any way to travel through time, not like I could if I had Hue with me. “They can’t Walk through time.”

“No one can, except your mudluff. Thankfully.” Joeb smiled at me.

And Acacia, I thought unwillingly, and managed a smile back. I wondered if what Acacia did was technically Walking, or something entirely different. We hadn’t had much time to discuss the mechanics of it.

“So, since we don’t know what would happen if something went wrong while we tried to Walk through time, we should go in small groups,” Joeb stated. “But, since we have to assume they’ll be able to sense us Walk and might send out scouts, we should take as many at once as possible. Thoughts?”

“I think the best compromise is to go in two groups,” I ventured. “Split right down the middle, and do it that way. Agreed?”

I glanced around. Most of the Walkers looked doubtful, but some of them were nodding. It really did seem like the best option.

“Okay,” I said. “I want Josephine to take both groups. She’s the quietest Walker I’ve ever met; if she takes you, you’ll definitely get there undetected. We’ll send any of the injured first—”

“Which should include you,” Joeb said. I shook my head.

“Not a chance.”

“You’re pretty beat up,” Jo pointed out.

“I’m not going first,” I said. “I’m making sure you all get there safely, and that’s final.”

“You’re the only one who knows firsthand about everything that’s going on,” Jo insisted. “If we lose you, we’re stumbling around in the dark.”

“We’re doing that anyway. You know as much as I do now. Jo,” I continued, when she started to argue again, “I want you in charge of the first group.”

As I’d hoped, that surprised her enough to derail her next protest. Instead, she said “Me? Joeb is …”

“I’ll stay with the second group,” Joeb said.

Jo frowned. “But Jai’s a senior officer, too.”

“And he needs a translator,” I told her, and there was a quiet ripple of laughter. Jai smiled serenely, not minding the joke at his expense.

“Any and all wounded—except me,” I clarified, as Jo started to shoot me a glare, “will go with the first group. This includes Jakon, Josef, Jai, Jo, and Josephine. Jo is team lead. Then Josephine will come back here, and take the second group. Agreed?”

“I am predominantly uninjured,” Jai finally pointed out.

“But you’re also a senior officer, and I want you there to help Jo in case something goes wrong,” I told him.

“Very sensible,” he agreed. “Shall we apportion ourselves into commensurate assemblages?”

I looked at Jo.

“Yes, let’s split into two even groups,” she said, catching my look. She almost smiled as she spoke.

I sat down with Jo, Jai, Josephine, and Joeb to figure out how we should be divided, while everyone else broke camp. Neither task took long, as five of us were already put in one group, and there hadn’t been much of a camp to begin with.

All told, there were roughly fifteen of us in each group (specifically, there were fourteen in my group and fifteen in the other—we always made a point to do an exact count for any mission). We stood a ways apart from each other, in case anything went wrong. Josephine looked stoic and determined, though I was sure she had to be nervous. I smiled at her as we stepped forward.

“Okay, Hue,” I said, and the little mudluff floated up from where he’d been in the hood of my sweatshirt. It was weird; while I rarely ever saw him shrink or grow, he always seemed to fit wherever he needed to. He was now bigger than the hood he’d been resting in, about the balloon size he usually was. I hadn’t even noticed him there, so he must have made himself smaller. I supposed that was one benefit of being multidimensional.

“C’mere, Hue,” Josephine called. He floated over, settling on her outstretched hand. I was worried that he wasn’t going to cooperate with her, or would bond with her for long enough to let her get back to InterWorld Beta and then wander off. I was hoping, if that did happen, that he would come back to me; the last thing we needed was to be stranded here until Hue decided to meander back. The little guy hadn’t let me down yet, though. He’d wandered off for weeks at a time, but he’d always come back.

“Do what you did with us before,” I urged, when Hue perched on Josephine’s hand. He flickered from blue to white, then flashed silver for a second. “Yeah, like that. Help her get back to the ship.” I wasn’t sure why silver reminded me of the way he’d flowed over me, but it did. … After a moment, though, I had it. The silver encounter suit I’d worn once had flowed over me in the same way. Hue had a very specific way of communicating with me, mostly seeming to rely on my visual memory. I’d always sort of wondered about that.

Hue bobbed up and down a few times, seeming to bounce against Josephine’s hand. Then he moved sideways, except part of him stayed on the tips of her fingers. He started to move around her like that, covering her slowly, like he had before. I suddenly felt anxious, like the first time my mom had let my little sister walk to the corner store by herself. I’d been certain she’d inherited my horrible sense of direction and would get hopelessly lost on the way there.

“Remember to center yourself,” I told her. “You’re not making a path, you’re—”

“Finding one that’s already there,” she said, standing still as Hue spread to her feet and up her torso. “I know. I’ve Walked several times over the past few days, remember?”

“Okay, okay. As for the rest of you”—I tilted my head to address the dozen or so Walkers behind her—“Josephine is Walking, you’re following. Don’t lose her. You won’t be able to find the path on your own; you can’t see the ones that weave through time.” I wondered if Acacia saw things the same way we did; if the timestream was like a bunch of paths that she could follow forward or backward.

“You guys ready?” Josephine asked, and was rewarded with silence; we were all trained well enough to know that if there was a chorus of yeses, we wouldn’t hear the one person who was saying no. She glanced at me and I nodded, so she took Jo’s hand and inhaled—

—and vanished, which was what it looked like when someone Walked. They were gone in the blink of an eye, like they’d disappeared into thin air, midstep. I could feel them leave, because of my own ability to Walk; it was like sensing a door opening and closing when you’re alone in a room. You know it happened, even if you weren’t looking.

“Okay,” I said, turning to my group. There were a few faces I recognized; Joeb, of course, and the twins, who had asked to stay with him. Jarl was no longer a bird, and his resemblance to his sister was striking. The one hope I had of telling them apart was the neatly trimmed beard on his face; his hair was just as short as Jari’s and he had her same red hair and bright green eyes.

I put a few more names to faces, like Jirho and Jijoo, and one or two others I saw around the back. They were all people I was used to seeing here and there, but there weren’t many of them (aside from J’r’ohoho) I had regular classes or training sessions with. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes for Josephine to get back.” Assuming everything goes according to plan, please oh please, just this once let everything go according to plan. … “So we’d better get ready.”

“If she’s traveling through time,” Jirho piped up from the front of the group, “shouldn’t she be able to come back immediately? Just a few seconds after she left?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. Conversations with a Time Agent had given me a basic grasp of this stuff, and I hoped I sounded sure enough that they wouldn’t question me. “She’s still anchored to her personal timeline. She can stay in the past for as long as she likes, but time will keep moving. If she stays for five minutes, she’ll return five minutes from when she left.”

“That’s disappointing,” someone else said. “What’s the point in time traveling if you can’t go back to fix mistakes?”

“What’s the point of being able to Walk?” I shot back, and a few of them looked thoughtful. There was no point, really. It was just something we could do, and we were lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your perspective) to be able to use it to our advantage in a war.

“Once we get to InterWorld Beta,” I moved on, “there will still be a lot to do. I’ve got the basic functions running on solar power for now, but we still have to charge the transducers. Once we get the soliton array working, the engines will be able to move us forward and backward again. Then we can get the ship back to our timeline, and we won’t have to rely on Hue to get us back to base.”

“How are we powering the transducers?” J’r’ohoho asked. It always amused me to hear the centaur version of me talk about technology; though he’d come from a tribal society that had practically just invented the wheel, he’d taken very quickly to all his science lessons and was usually top of the class.

It was so like him to ask the hard questions.

“We’ll find a way when we get there,” Joeb cut in, probably sensing that my answer was about to be another version of I don’t know. I was, again, immensely grateful. “Let’s worry about one thing at a time.”

I had only just finished speaking when I once more had the sense of a door opening nearby, which fortunately meant we had one less thing to worry about. Josephine stepped back through thin air a few feet from where she’d been previously, looking quite pleased with herself. Hue (again seeming smaller than he should be) was perched on her shoulder.

“Welcome back,” I said, over the small round of cheering that bubbled up as she reappeared. “Everything go okay?”

“No problems,” she said. “I dropped them off in the courtyard.” She paused, her pride at a job well done fading. “Some of them were pretty upset to see it like that.”

I nodded, glancing at the others. I had explained about how I’d been sent to future InterWorld and found it destroyed, but knowing it wasn’t the same as seeing it. InterWorld Base Town was home as much as the places we’d all come from had been, and seeing it like that was more than hard. It was hopeless. It felt like we’d already lost. “We’ll get it fixed up again,” I told her, though I was saying it for everyone. “It’ll be better than new, and then we’ll get back to our InterWorld and rescue the rest of us. It’ll feel like home again.”

I held out both hands, one to Josephine and one to Joeb, and nodded at the former. “Let’s go. Why don’t you do the honors?”

“Oh? I figured you’d want to do it yourself, you’re such a mother hen,” she shot at me, but she looked pleased. “Okay, Hue. One more time.”

Hue (who seemed to be a shade or two paler than his usual neutral color; this probably was tiring him out) flowed over her once again, barely brushing over my fingers where Josephine was carefully holding my injured hand. Then she Walked, and so did Joeb, myself, the twins, and the nine others with us.

It felt different this time. It was like stepping through a door, as usual, but we found nothing on the other side. No path. Darkness closed around us as we went over the threshold, so quickly that none of us had time to warn one another. I felt Josephine stumble and fall, and I followed her, pitching headlong into a void.

Joeb’s hand slipped from mine, and my mouth opened and my vocal cords vibrated with a shout, but there was no sound. There was nothing at all.

I clutched tight to Josephine’s hand, but I wasn’t even sure I could still feel it in mine. I thought I smelled perfume, something sweet, like roses. I heard something, too, an echo that might have been a breathy laugh, and then the darkness swallowed me whole.