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I’m sorry.

I couldn’t stop it. I can’t stop it. I don’t even know if I want to.

Isn’t this my destiny?

“The pup awakes.”

“You were informed of his condition already. You were told he would wake.”

“I still don’t understand your decision to bring him here. It was my wish that he be erased along with his world.”

“Your passion is your folly. It would be a logical waste for the Harker to die when we can still use him, especially since your plan to entrap the other Walkers has failed.”

There was a sound like the snarling of an animal: a low, warning, guttural growl. “Your science has failed us as well, has it not? FrostNight is not strong enough to perpetuate itself.”

“Which is why we can still use the Harker.”

“He has escaped us twice now,” the first voice snarled. I was all too aware of who it was—it was the only thing I was aware of, right now. Lord Dogknife.

My brain felt like it was swirling around inside my head, and it kept repeating words I couldn’t attribute a voice to: I can’t stop it.

“And the last time,” the voice went on, “it was my perseverance that kept him and the girl from interfering with the Adraedan’s lock on InterWorld.”

“A plan which ultimately failed.”

“That matters little, as we have found the power from another source. We can perpetuate the Wave even without the Harker.”

“Yet your other power source is not as strong. With the Harker, we are guaranteed success. It is the clear choice.”

They continued to argue, but the voices faded into the background. I didn’t care what they were saying. I didn’t care where I was, or what was going to happen to me.

My world was dead.

My family was dead. My supportive, good-natured father who always stood up for what was right and my smart, creative mother who’d not only believed my crazy tale about being an interdimensional freedom fighter, she’d made me a necklace and wished me good luck and let me leave home forever. My funny, sensitive little sister and my adorable baby brother who loved Cheerios and blowing bubbles. Mr. Dimas. The boy riding his skateboard down the street, and the nice lady next door who’d babysat for me sometimes when I was younger. They were all gone.

And the Old Man had stood there and watched it happen. He’d stood there and smiled.

We’d trusted him. We’d all trusted him, we’d all been willing to die for him if necessary. We all knew why we were on InterWorld, why we’d been chosen, what we were doing. We’d all taken the oath and knew the risks.

And in the end, he’d dumped everyone onto a half-working ship, abandoned our Prime ship—our home—to HEX, and watched the destruction of my world without doing a thing to stop it.

I opened my eyes.

I had a headache like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I could vaguely feel Hue in the back of my mind. As I had been when FrostNight was first released, I was captive on what looked to be a Binary world. Everything was shiny and smooth, all angles and clean glass. I wasn’t in the same kind of mesh cage I’d woken up in before, but I was still bound. I was lying on the floor, pale wires snaking around me. I knew they would be laid out in a five-pointed star, likely inverted, before I even looked. I also knew I was at the center of it.

My hands were bound, each wrist held to the floor by about a foot of thick white chain. They were made of something lighter than metal, but it seemed a lot sturdier. The floor was white tile, so bright it hurt my eyes to look at. There was a single spire standing at each point of the circuitry star, five in total, with a small globe at the top of each. They looked like conductors, or something similar.

“Good morning, pup.”

Lord Dogknife’s growling voice was unmistakable, and the leader of HEX looked at me with distaste, lip curling back as though he didn’t like the scent of me. Lord Dogknife was taller than anyone I’d known on my world, powerful and perfectly muscled. The word “Adonis” came to mind, pretty much at the same time as “Anubis,” which was an equally apt description. He had a head like a wolf or hyena, though it still somehow bore a strong resemblance to a human face. It was like he’d gotten stuck halfway through transforming.

I ignored him. I forced myself into a sitting position and looked around, dully curious as to the rest of my surroundings. There was a sharp ache in my chest, like my heart had turned to ice and shattered. It hurt to breathe, to think, to even be. My world was gone. What was I fighting for now?

“I suppose I should thank you for one thing, at least,” Lord Dogknife said. I continued to ignore him, though there was this strange tick-tick-tick sound that filled me with an unidentifiable dread. I looked back, trying to find the source of it—and there, approaching on Lord Dogknife’s right, was Lady Indigo.

She was still a giant spider thing, her bonelike appendages being used as legs now rather than wings. Her skin was still reddish and transparent, her bones visible beneath her rubbery flesh.

“You’ve returned one of my generals to me,” Lord Dogknife said with a smile, reaching out to run his hand along one of the long bones that arced up from her back. She was using them to walk, like a spider, though her body was vertical instead of horizontal, her feet not touching the ground. “And now, since you’re here, I can keep her.”

Ah. Lady Indigo was the alternate power source Lord Dogknife had mentioned. I supposed that made sense, considering the power she had from the things she’d absorbed in the Nowhere-at-All. … “Hello again, Harker,” she said. I could barely hear her over the memories of my comrades screaming as she absorbed their essences.

“I almost thought you were going to invite me to your lovely home when last we met,” she said, her lips peeling back over her teeth in a horrific grin. “Tell me, how did you manage to break my link with your tasty friend?”

I swallowed thickly, remembering Josephine’s last moments, the way she and Avery had smiled at each other before he sliced through the threads around her with his circuitry sword. I remembered the way she’d taken InterWorld’s oath before she died.

They watched me for a moment; when I didn’t respond, Lord Dogknife gave her a soothing smile. “It hardly matters, Lady Indigo. In mere moments, everything will be ours.”

She smiled again, pleased. “I know you wished him dead on his world, Lord Dogknife, but I must say I agree with the Professor’s decision to bring him here. This way is so much better. The InterWorld ship is still so full of tasssssty Walkers. …”

“Once FrostNight is fully powered, the Walkers will be of no more concern to us,” Lord Dogknife reminded her. “Our ascension will ensure that.”

Lady Indigo frowned. “But the InterWorld vessel will be one of the last—”

“Hush, my dear,” he said, though there was an undercurrent of a growl to it once again. “The Harker is clever. We mustn’t say too much.”

“The Harker isssssss … clever. …” she repeated, looking at me hungrily. Literally hungrily, like she wanted to eat me.

“FrostNight will be upon us soon. It will return to its roost, and we will feed it as mother birds.”

“Mother … mother birdssssss …”

I looked away, still only partially able to summon up any measure of caring. The only thing that piqued my interest at all was Lord Dogknife’s warning to not say anything more in front of me. I was the thorn in his paw, and he was starting to recognize it. I smiled grimly. That was fitting. That was all InterWorld had ever been able to be.

InterWorld will be one of the last, she’d said. I supposed that was a small comfort, but when FrostNight came, it would wipe out everything. Like it had wiped out my planet.

That sharp, stabbing ache made itself known in my chest again, and I ignored the little voice in my head that whispered fight. What would I fight for? Revenge? That was useless.

There was a huge computer on the far wall, seamless and white, and a full screen with programs opening and closing in rapid succession. I knew without even a second thought that this was the Professor’s nonhuman form. It seemed to be controlling all the power in the area; the programs on the monitor seemed to correspond with bits of equipment all over the room powering on or off.

I concentrated, somewhat listlessly casting about for a portal. I thought I sensed the mere thread of one, somewhere close, but I couldn’t reach it. The chains kept me from Walking, which I had more or less expected. I was able to pick up on the classification for this planet, though; Earth Fε987. The last projected planet in FrostNight’s path.

“FrostNight comes,” said Lord Dogknife. I was getting really tired of hearing those words.

This was it. FrostNight would come here, would drain me of everything that made me me, as it had nearly done before. Then it would go on to reshape the Multiverse.

My earlier apathy faded a bit at the thought. Yes, my world was dead, but there were an infinite number of other worlds. There were an infinite number of my para-incarnations yet to be discovered, and all of them had parents. I couldn’t save my mother and father, but mine weren’t the only ones out there.

And beyond that, what about my comrades, waiting on InterWorld Beta? I had told them I would be back with the Old Man. Who would they look to now that he was dead?

I suspected I knew the answer, but I didn’t like it any. They’d look to me, if I made it out of here alive.

Lady Indigo had said InterWorld would be the last, or one of the last. I assumed she meant the last thing left; I didn’t know for certain, but it seemed like an educated guess. Lord Dogknife had said they would “ascend.” What did that mean? FrostNight had to stop at some point, right? If it was going to reshape the Multiverse, there had to be a point where it would accomplish its goal and cease to be, right? Maybe if InterWorld went into a perpetual warp again, or something … maybe they could outrun it.

That was doubtful; Acacia had said she could run anywhere in the Multiverse, and she didn’t think there was anywhere that would be safe. If not even TimeWatch (and I had no idea where TimeWatch actually was, it just seemed likely that an organization existing for the sole purpose of protecting time would be pretty remote) would be safe, I couldn’t imagine InterWorld being able to outrun FrostNight.

Still, it was the only chance they had. Maybe if I could send Hue to them, tell them to warp … It was either that, or hope that TimeWatch would somehow come in and save the day.

As before, Hue was a dim presence in the back of my mind. He did that sometimes, seeming to sort of merge with me without giving me all the crazy vision-into-time-and-space stuff.

Hue, I thought, not sure if he’d be able to hear me at all. Hue, are you there?

I got the brief impression of a contracting pupil, or a deflating balloon, along with the connotation of fear.

I know, buddy. Me, too. I know you tried to warn me back there. You can go, okay? You can go where it might be safer, you just have to warn the others.

Not that I knew how he was going to warn them. Even I had trouble communicating with Hue, and I knew him better than any of the other Walkers.

“Sssssso sad … the Harker won’t speak. He dislikessss usss. …”

Lady Indigo’s voice drew my attention to her and Lord Dogknife. They were standing together at one of the pillars, watching me intently. They were watching me so intently that neither of them noticed the faint green glow sparking in the air behind them, like a lighthouse through a distant storm.

“‘Dislike’ is a pretty mild word for it,” I told her, feeling a smile curl at the corners of my mouth. “‘Hate’ would be closer. But you know what?”

She tilted her head to an angle that didn’t look possible, let alone comfortable.

“I don’t hate you nearly as much as he does.”

Her face registered confusion for a brief moment—then pain, as Avery’s circuitry blade cut through the air and sliced into one of the bones holding her up.

She screamed, staggering sideways as the limb buckled beneath her and the others shifted to compensate. She skittered around to face the dark-haired, violet-eyed boy, standing with sword at the ready.

“Hello, lovely,” he said. “I think we’re overdue for a conversation.”

She snarled, swiping at him with one of her limbs. It was long and razor sharp at the end, but Avery moved so fast he seemed to blur, slicing his sword out at the same time. Lord Dogknife moved as well, lifting a hand in preparation for some kind of spell.

“Avery, watch out!” I called, at the same time a bolt of dark-looking energy was loosed from Lord Dogknife’s palm. Avery brought his sword up once again, deflecting whatever it had been, and then there was another green glow sparking through the air right in front of me.

“Hey, Joe,” Acacia whispered, appearing so close to me I felt her breath on my face. “Let’s get you out of here.”

I swallowed, suddenly unable to form words. Emotions and thoughts went rapidly through my mind. Relief first, relief that I wasn’t here alone anymore, that they had come to my rescue. Apathy again, because I wanted to tell her what had happened to my world but didn’t have the words, and finally anger. Anger, because she had said TimeWatch would help. She had made me let her go and she’d left me with the promise that she would do something to save my world, and she hadn’t.

“You’re a little late,” I said, unable to keep the edge from my voice.

She didn’t even glance up at me as she put both hands on the thick white chains that held me to the floor. “Not now, Joe.” The sounds of battle could be heard around us, as Avery continued to dodge Lady Indigo and deflect the magic from Lord Dogknife. “He can’t hold them off for long. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

“Why?” I watched her fingernails glow green on both hands, the little circuits pulsing with energy. “So we can all go back to InterWorld and pick up the pieces like some big, happy family?”

“Don’t do the bitter self-pity thing, Joe, it really doesn’t suit you.”

I glanced away, stung—in time to see Lord Dogknife, bleeding from a gash on his snout, turn and fire another bolt of energy toward us.

“Acacia!” Avery and I shouted out a warning at the same time, but the bolt crashed into her before she had time to move. She was knocked a few yards away from me, though she tucked and rolled to come up in a defensive crouch. Little lines of electricity crawled over her for a moment like the remnants of a static shock, and I remembered her using some kind of skin shield before. She seemed unhurt, which was good; it meant she was able to dodge the next thing Lord Dogknife sent at her, which looked like a flurry of bats with vapory, red bodies.

I focused inward again, intending to convince Hue to go tell InterWorld to punch it. When there was no response, I realized he was completely gone from my mind. I hadn’t even noticed him leave.

Good luck, little buddy, I thought, as I saw at least two doors on opposite sides of the room slide open, and the glassy-eyed clones Binary used as their grunt army started to pour through. The cavalry was here, and it wasn’t on our side.

Then a feeling as familiar to me as my own heartbeat tingled in the air, like a scent you’ve known your whole life coming to you on a sudden breeze. Lady Indigo whipped her head up in obvious joy, letting loose a wild howl.

“They come! Like moths to a flame, they come!”

And just like that, the room was filled with Walkers. I had no idea how they’d all gotten through the same portal—and then I saw Hue, bobbing above Jai’s head. He must have somehow expanded the gateway.

“To the Captain!” Joeb cried. I flinched.

The room burst into a flurry of motion. The huge screen on the far wall—the Professor, leader of Binary—flared to life once again, and so did the white cables that made up the star I was in the center of. The first Walker to me, someone I didn’t even recognize, tried to cross over one of the cables and was launched backward. The others slowed, one kneeling to check on our fallen comrade, the rest either breaking off to deal with the Binary clones or trying to find some way to bypass the wires.

J/O stopped at the edge of the star, talking to Jai, and I realized I couldn’t hear them. When the wires had flared to life, a shimmery, barely visible shield had sprung up around the edges of the star. It fed upward into the conductors and continued into the ceiling. Abruptly, I felt like I was in some kind of vacuum. I couldn’t hear a thing happening beyond it.

It was surreal, like watching an action movie on mute. Everything was chaos beyond the translucent walls, but I heard nothing.

Acacia was trading blows with Lord Dogknife, dodging and weaving around the various bits of equipment and Walkers, alternately shielding herself and firing various weapons and gadgets from her tool belt. She looked to be holding her own; unfortunately, so did Lord Dogknife.

Avery was doing much the same with Lady Indigo, now wielding the sword in one hand and what looked like a long tube in the other. As he brought the tube up to block one of the razor-sharp bones Lady Indigo was using as weapons, I realized it was his scabbard.

Lady Indigo wasn’t doing as well as Lord Dogknife seemed to be. Of her eight bonelike legs, two had been sliced cleanly off at the joints, and one was tucked up, wounded and useless, near her body. Still arguably less than sane, she was laughing and cackling at the Time Agent even as he cut close enough to sever a few strands of what hair remained on her head.

The air was full of projectiles going back and forth between the Walkers and the clones, in some places flying so thickly I could hardly see. This wasn’t the entire base—that would have been nearly five hundred or so of us, and though the room was big enough to fit that many, there seemed to be about half that number here now. But the others were here, too—I could sense them, outside this room, keeping more of the clones from getting in.

They had come for me. Every single one of them, even the injured. Every Walker on Base Town had come here, to the end of the Multiverse, for me.

I glanced down at the chains Acacia had been working on, giving them an experimental tug; one of the links looked transparent, which I was hoping meant it was damaged. I wrapped it around my wrist (the broken one, of course …) to get better leverage, and pulled with all my might.

I looked around as I strained, using what I saw as both distraction and encouragement. Jo was helping Acacia, flying around and taking shots at Lord Dogknife with a blaster she’d picked up from one of the Binary clones. J/O and Jai had both run over to the Professor himself and seemed to be having a heated argument, while some of the other Walkers—I recognized Josef and Jakon in particular—fought to protect them from the live wires that snapped through the air like whips.

I felt the searing pain in my wrist at the same time I felt the chain come loose, and my own momentum sent me toppling over to one side. I had one hand free, though, and that meant I could use both hands to pull the other chain off.

I wrapped the chain around both hands and pulled again, bracing my feet against where it attached to the floor. After a long moment I had to give in, panting and sweating from the effort. It hadn’t even budged. Acacia hadn’t managed to damage this one. I had nothing on me but Josephine’s switchblade; it was a good knife, the blade about two and a half inches, the handle sturdy. Still, I didn’t think it would do much to damage these chains.

I looked around again. Hue was bobbing anxiously around the outside of the star, pulsing different shades of blue and silver. J/O and Jai were still arguing. Finally, J/O shouted something at Jai, who hung his head and nodded. As one, they turned and dodged through the mass of writhing, tentacle-like wires, moving right up to the giant machine. J/O flipped one of his fingers back to reveal the mini-USB, and Jai put both hands on either side of the cyborg’s head.

“NO!” I screamed, uselessly—they couldn’t hear me. Jai’s whole body glowed red. So did J/O, as the younger incarnation of me plugged the USB into one of the many panels on the giant machine.

There was a sound like the screeching of metal, something even I could hear. It seemed to be coming from the very walls, from every bit of equipment in the room, and from the wires that surrounded me.

The transparent walls caging me dropped. At the same time, every single Binary clone in the room froze, some of them dropping to the floor. Over by the sparking, smoking machine that had housed Binary’s leader, J/O and Jai did as well.

Josef charged over to me, pulling at the chain with one massive hand. As he broke the remaining link, he grabbed me with his other hand, tucking me up under his arm like a football. Hue whirled around us, those strange equations flickering across his surface again, like he’d done back in the library.

“Get him out of here!” Acacia screamed, but I expertly wriggled free of Josef’s huge grasp. “Joe, go!”

I ignored her, running over to Jai and J/O. With a quick glance, I could see that Jai was breathing shallowly. The massive machine against the wall was still sparking, emitting a sickly red smoke. J/O was doing the same.

I pulled the cyborg to me, starting to check various different vitals and finding all of them useless. He was half robot, he had very few of the human life signals. I coughed, waving the smoke away, and passed a hand in front of his eyes. There was no reaction.

One of his eyes, like mine, was brown. The other was red, like it was sometimes when he was using it to project an image or searching internal memory banks. But this time it was different. It was a dull red, with a small black dot in the center. It looked like a powered-off machine. Lifeless.

Out of everyone at InterWorld, J/O looked the most like me. He looked like a younger me, and it was beyond awful to sit there and look at my face with no life in it.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had to do that. I also knew it wouldn’t be the last.

I looked up. The Binary clones that hadn’t fallen were moving again; there were fewer of them by about half, but they still outnumbered us. J/O and Jai might have managed to destroy the Professor’s mechanical vessel, but he had to exist elsewhere as well.

Right as that thought went through my mind, one of the clones near me shifted into the figure I remembered, with the unwrinkled pants and tweed jacket and bow tie. He still wore the Coke-bottle glasses, but one of the lenses was cracked and his hair was mussed. His eyes still contained nothing but static, and I could still tell he was looking at me.

“Very clever,” he said emotionlessly. “But an ultimately useless sacrifice. Our Silver Dream awakens. The Wave is coming.”

As before, it was like a shadow was passing over the sun. The room darkened, and I got the impression that the colors were all whipping away on the sudden wind.

“Joe!” Acacia screamed. “Get—” Whatever else she was saying was cut off. There was a sudden sound like rolling thunder, deafening and ominous, and a dark flash. Avery yelled incoherently, and through the mass combat of Walkers and Binary scouts, I caught a glimpse of Acacia curled up in a crumpled heap on the floor. There was some kind of dark rune circle pulsing a sickly purple beneath her. Avery slashed at Lady Indigo with his sword, trying to dodge around to get to his sister, but she wheeled and caught him with one of her legs, knocking him into the far wall.

I started forward, but a sudden flare of dark mist rose up in front of me, and a strong hand grabbed me by the throat.

I felt my feet leave the ground as Lord Dogknife raised me to his eye level, black fog rising up off his skin like steam on a summer day. His breath smelled like carrion, and I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me as he growled in my face.

“You have been nothing but a thorn in my side since we met, little Harker,” he hissed, shaking me like a misbehaving pup.

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. He’d used almost the exact same phrasing I’d thought to myself, and for some reason in that moment, it was funny.

His red eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at me. What little peripheral vision I had told me my friends were trying to get to us, but most of them had their own problems; there were still several hundred Binary clones firing plasma blobs and wielding electroneural emitters to deal with. Hue was hovering nearby, alternating various colors of distressed, but he couldn’t help, either.

“You find something amusing, little Walker?” he hissed. “I would adorn my throne with your skin, were you not going directly into the heart of FrostNight himself. Do you see, little Walker? He comes for you.”

The equations were dancing in the air again, numbers and letters and formulas, and I struggled against Lord Dogknife’s grip. I couldn’t see Avery or Acacia from here, but I could still hear Lady Indigo cackling. I didn’t have any kind of weapon on me at all, and FrostNight was swirling all around, ready to destroy this world with me on it, to feed off me. …

Then, abruptly, it all constricted. All the numbers and letters and everything, shrinking and forming into a beautiful, perfect sphere about five times the size of a beach ball, hovering above the five-pointed star. It looked almost like a miniature planet, flashes of silver and blue swirling around it like clouds. I’d seen it before, when it was first created. FrostNight.

Lord Dogknife shook me again, and I felt something shift in my pocket—right! Josephine’s switchblade …

I relaxed my grip on his hand, slowly going limp like I was losing consciousness, and let my arms fall to my sides. He laughed in my face, and I smelled the awful scent of death again.

I felt my feet touch the floor as he lowered me slightly, though it wasn’t enough to find purchase or stand. The tiles slid beneath my heels as he dragged me over to the star, to where FrostNight waited.

Wind rushed against my skin, and I heard the flapping of wings as Jo launched herself at Lord Dogknife. Through barely open eyes, I saw her wielding a long, thin piece of metal like a spear; she must have lost the blaster. Lord Dogknife ducked out of the way as she came at him, and I used his motion to disguise mine as I reached into my pocket for the little knife.

Jo rushed past him as he dodged, expertly wheeling around in the air and kicking off against the wall to come at him again. This time he was ready for her and grabbed the bit of metal out of the air as she thrust it at him.

I drew in as much breath as I could—not easy, considering the viselike grip he had on my throat—and flipped the knife open, raising my arm to strike as he threw Jo back against the far wall.

The blade bit down into his outstretched arm, cutting deep. He howled, the fingers that had been curled around my neck snapping open reflexively as the weapon sliced through skin and tendons.

My feet touched the floor more firmly for a precious half second before his other arm snapped out, managing to grab the front of my shirt. I felt his claws scrape against the skin of my chest as he scrabbled for whatever hold on me he could get, and my back collided with the tile as he shoved me down.

“Insolent child!” he roared. Dark blood dripped sluggishly from the knife still stuck in his arm. “I’ll give you to FrostNight piece by piece!”

“Joey!” Jakon yelled from off to my left, but I was pinned to the ground by Lord Dogknife’s strong grip.

He slashed at my face with razor-sharp black claws, and all I could do was turn my head and shut my eyes. The pain went through me so quickly I didn’t even comprehend it at first; the adrenaline pumping through my system kept me from feeling it for a few precious seconds longer.

I felt the tile against the right side of my face, the coolness of it sharply contrasted with the burning pain starting to throb on the left side. In a moment of lucidity, I realized I couldn’t feel that iron grip on my shirt anymore—I tried to open my eyes, and caught a glimpse of Jakon clinging to Lord Dogknife, slashing at him with her own claws. My vision seemed somehow sideways, and everything was blurry, tinted red. I crawled away from them, numb, some detached part of my brain noting the drops of blood falling from my face to splash crimson against the white floor.

The pain I’d started to feel sharpened into nothing less than agony. I felt sick. Even worse than how much I hurt was the abrupt feeling of wrongness, of my skin feeling too big for my face. I couldn’t see out of my left eye at all.

“Joe!” Acacia’s voice reached my ears over the rush of wind, the blaster shots and various other sounds of fighting. “Get out of here!”

I struggled to my knees and put a hand up to my face, fighting the wave of nausea that came over me. With one eye covered like I was about to take a vision test, I found Acacia’s lean figure in the crowd. I couldn’t tell how far away she was.

She and Avery had traded places; she was now standing over her wounded brother and using his sword to fend off attacks from Lady Indigo. There were several Walkers down here and there, some of them alone and some being defended by their comrades.

If the Walkers hadn’t gotten here, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Avery and Acacia wouldn’t have been able to free me by themselves. They had come, risking their lives, to save me. They were buying me time to run.

It wouldn’t help. Unless Acacia was able to defeat Lady Indigo where her brother had failed (I didn’t even know if “kill” was the right word; for all I knew, it might take more than that), Lord Dogknife would just use her to power FrostNight. He’d said so himself. It might not be as strong, but it would still continue. More worlds would be destroyed. All this fighting and all this death, and it was all for nothing.

I looked up, finding the perfect sphere sitting calm and beautiful amid the chaos, perhaps twenty steps in front of me. He comes for you, Lord Dogknife had said. It struck me suddenly, for the first time, that he hadn’t said it.

I couldn’t stop it. The words from when I’d first woken up in chains came back to me, said in a voice I couldn’t quite place. It was my voice, but not.

A sound reached my ears over all the chaos, like the white noise of a radio left on. As I tried to push myself to my feet, gaze locked on the floor beneath me, a pair of brown shoes stepped into my line of sight. I looked up, meeting the Professor’s static gaze.

“Running is useless, Walker,” he said. “You must know this by now. Why not accept your fate?” His voice was even and human sounding, but completely emotionless, like it was dialogue plugged into a computer. There was a kind of electronic quality to it, too, something that was too smooth, too contrived.

I ignored him, still struggling to stand. I felt dizzy and sick, like the floor was going to slide out from beneath me any moment. I cast around for a portal, didn’t sense one—but I did sense Hue, hovering worriedly nearby. Maybe he could make me a portal.

Hue, I thought, but my resolve weakened. He couldn’t hear me unless we were merged, or whatever it was he did, and anyway, the Professor was right: Running wasn’t the answer. Running wouldn’t solve anything.

I finally got to my feet, standing as tall as I could to look at the Professor. He regarded me critically, like a teacher waiting impatiently for an answer.

“The decision is yours, Harker,” he said. “Either accept your fate, as those have before you, or attempt to run. You may even make it a few steps before you are caught.”

As those have before you. The words reminded me of something else I’d heard him say when I’d been hooked up to the machine that had first powered FrostNight. You will fulfill your purpose and bring about the revolution of the world, he’d said, and Joaquim had struggled against his bonds as he realized his fate. No, he’d screamed. I don’t want to—

I remembered his face when I’d tried to help him, his dead eyes. I remembered the words I’d heard upon waking.

Isn’t this my destiny?

“Hue,” I said, and the little mudluff brightened. If he merged with me again, I’d be able to Walk anywhere. I could probably even find my way to TimeWatch itself, but I had a better idea.

Well, it wasn’t technically a better idea. In fact, it was probably the worst idea I’d ever had, and that was saying a lot.

I held out my hand to Hue and he came to perch on my palm. He seemed to sense what I wanted through the contact, and began to flow up my arm like liquid. The Professor’s eyes narrowed and he raised a hand, but I took a step toward him instead of away, and he paused.

“I know my purpose,” I told him. “It’s something that’s so much a part of me—of all of us—that nothing you do can shake it. Even when you boil us down to our very essence, or freeze us and keep us alive to help you Walk, we still know our purpose.”

Hue flowed over my body, over my face and my wounded eye. “Our purpose is to stop you,” I said. “And not even death will take that from us.”

And with that, I Walked—but not to the In-Between, or even sideways to a parallel world. I Walked exactly twenty steps forward, reappearing in front of the perfect silver and blue sphere. As I looked back, the Professor’s static eyes met mine, and the corners of his mouth tilted up in the barest hint of pleasure. I heard Acacia scream my name again, and Joeb. I saw J/O and Jai, lying still by the giant, smoking computer. Jakon and Josef were taking on Lord Dogknife, and Jo had flown over to help Acacia again. The floor was littered with Binary clones and Walkers alike, and FrostNight waited in front of me, peaceful and hungry and alone.

I turned my back on the chaos, and started forward. Like going off the diving board into the deep end, I took a running start and jumped, plunging headfirst into the heart of FrostNight.

Isn’t this my destiny?