Thresholder, ch 170, The Great Awakening

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Alright, I made this post twice, because my mouse has been double-clicking for whatever reason, and the "Next" button gets immediately replaced by the "Post" button if you double click insanely fast. The earlier version, which is now eaten, was just me complaining about stuff going on in my life, and apologizing for a lack of productivity, and really, was not worth reading. So congrats, you don't need to read that, unless you got an email about it.

Read the chapter instead, I guess.

~~~~

Perry stepped into the shelf space and immediately went to Grayspear.

“She has the harmonizer, she has the machine, what’s her next step?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Grayspear. “You’ve seen, I’ve shown you, we worked together but we were never friends, never allies, and there was so much she decided not to tell me about who she was and what she was doing. The machine is untested, at least with the harmonizer in place, so there’s that, but it’s also of no benefit for her to use it, it’s ideological, I think, something she thinks will make the world better, somehow. So she might set it up and use it right away, if she can figure out how.”

“And she might not be able to?” asked Perry.

“It’s a delicate device that I don’t fully understand,” said Grayspear. “If she has it, what does that mean? How would she move it? It must be stored somewhere, mustn't it?” Her eyes were slightly wide. Perry was talking too loudly, too quickly, letting his emotion get in the way of getting answers.

“Same place she was storing the rifle,” said Perry. “A worse place than this, I hope,” he looked briefly around the shelf, “but it might be better.” He controlled his voice, bleeding off the anger, some of it directed at himself. “I’m asking, from what you know about her, where and when she would use it?”

Grayspear opened and closed her mouth. “I … don’t know.”

The machine wasn’t mind control, not even close. It was something else, something that changed what people wanted, and it wouldn’t make them love and adore Queenie, nor would it compel them to follow her orders, at least if it worked how it did in testing. Instead, it would make them susceptible to particular lines of reasoning, and remove some of their inhibitions. They would turn on friends, family, the Commission … but only to the extent that they weren’t getting anything from those arrangements. It was perfectly possible for a married man to stay with his wife, finding their balance of personalities and responsibilities agreeable.

But then how had Queenie turned the Yuuksen? What had she offered them? Perry was hoping that it was something concrete, something that he could argue against, or one-up her on.

He did have the werewolf’s teeth, safely hidden inside his mouth. He wondered what would happen if he offered them that power in perfect Eshkee. It was a good deal, if you didn’t care about other people, or losing control. The mild regenerative powers even when not in wolf form might be enough to persuade a person. And while he could obviously be lying to them, that was why he had the Inspector power. But for that, he would have to find them first.

Perry tried to think about what he would do if he were Queenie.

“She would either use it to handicap her opponents or go on a recruiting spree,” said Perry. “But I’m thinking that she wouldn’t handicap her opponents, because she wouldn’t think that it would do anything to them. Seems like the people she’s fought against have gone after her like a dog after a bone, killing everyone in the way.”

“Recruiting spree, you mean … no,” said Grayspear.

“No?” asked Perry, not following.

“She would use the device, then bend people to her will, this is true, maybe,” said Grayspear. “But we don’t know the range, and neither does she.”

“She would target specifically then, yeah?” asked Perry. “The first time she flips it on, she won’t know whether it’s going to hit the whole city or just a single block, right? So she’d test, but … on a target or not?”

“I don’t know,” said Grayspear. “It’s possible that it will be the whole city. The calculations are complicated, and it made no sense to do them before I actually had the harmonizer in hand. I had never intended to broadcast anyway.”

“The calculations, do you have enough information that I could do them now?” asked Perry.

“If you are a mathematician capable of complicated arithmetic, then yes,” said Grayspear. “But you will have fooled me, certainly.”

“Just give me the numbers,” said Perry.

What followed was a discussion between Grayspear and Marchand, mediated by Perry, or sometimes with Marchand speaking in Perry’s voice, with the help of a chalkboard someone had apparently thrown into the shelf space at some point for communication and coordination — something that made sense, given that the communication and coordination people had been the ones to stock the place. It took twenty minutes, and Marchand arrived at the correct answer almost instantly, though he had wide error bars given that he didn’t trust virtually any of Grayspear’s methodology, and some of the numbers she had given were incompatible with the dimensions of the actual device, though not in any suspect way. Perry had used Inspection to get the numbers directly from her notes, which were a bit of a mess, never intended for public consumption. The research flowed a trickle of fresh power to him.

“So it looks more like a city block,” said Perry. “Five at the most. She’s out there, right now, and if she’s recovered from our fight over the past few hours, it’s possible that she’s already used it.”

“How did you do that?” asked Grayspear, looking at the partial math that Perry had scrawled up on the board. In truth, the actuators on the gloves were capable enough to do most of it for him, just like they were able to type, if set up properly. “This was the work of weeks.”

“Not for me,” said Perry. He stared at the numbers. “Marchand, lay that on top of the map of the city, give me some understanding of the damage.”

“Sir, it’s unclear what we should expect,” said Marchand. “I have no basis for understanding our adversary’s motives.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He wasn’t sure if he’d feel better or worse with a map. “We made some noise last night. She … wants them after me, right? It’s what I would do, get the locals on my side. Maybe feed the Inspectors, if possible, though I don’t think she’s got a backstory that holds up to scrutiny.”

“She doesn’t know anything about the device,” said Grayspear. Perry’s conversation with Marchand was internal to the helmet, so to her, he was letting her stew in silence. “She won’t know this math.”

“She’ll use it and observe the math,” said Perry.

“No,” said Grayspear. “She doesn’t want it to affect her.”

“You’re sure of this?” asked Perry.

“No, not at all,” said Grayspear. “But hypocrisy would hardly be the worst thing she’s ever done.” She looked down at her body, which was, after all this time, still bound. She was handling it well: it had been hours.

“I’ll untie you when I think it’s safe to,” said Perry.

“I’ll need to use the bathroom,” said Grayspear. “You have a system in place?”

“No,” said Perry.

“I don’t know how often you do this,” said Grayspear. “I had supposed you were a professional.”

Perry looked back at the alien scribbles on the blackboard, the foul mathematics.

“I need to leave again, to find her,” said Perry. “If she understands it to be a local phenomenon, that changes her plan. She’ll target locally. What’s the center of power in this city?”

“The Commission,” said Grayspear.

“No,” said Perry. “I mean, where is the largest grouping of people with actual power, people who can kill? Unless you’re telling me that’s the Commission, which would be news to me. The K-men have dorms, don’t they?”

“If she turned them all …” said Grayspear, a far off look on her face. “But they would have some defense against that.”

“Would they?” asked Perry.

“They should,” said Grayspear. “Their power is not just in their strength and speed, but in their essence, though I’ve never studied one up close.”

“Can you make me into one?” asked Perry.

Grayspear opened and closed her mouth. Perhaps she was considering this as a path to escape, like Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps, or perhaps she was considering that she was at Perry’s mercy, alive only because he thought she was worth having around.

“It would take equipment I don’t have, and which you can’t get, not unless you’re willing to move against the K-men, and can kill one of them,” said Grayspear. She licked her lips. “But I could try.”

“Here,” said Perry. He went over to where the body had been stashed, and pulled it out to show her. Her eyes went wide, which was understandable.

“How long has he been dead?” she asked.

“Quite a while,” said Perry. “Two days, or thereabouts.”

“And he hasn’t rotted?” she asked.

“No,” said Perry. “Not even any coagulation of the blood. You can do something with this?”

“I’m tied up,” said Grayspear. She wriggled slightly for emphasis. “But … yes, maybe, if you have a knife that can cut through his skin, if I can open him up.”

“There’s nothing in your background that says this is an area of expertise for you,” said Perry.

“It might be,” said Grayspear. “If there’s a throughline between the K-men and the harmonizers, on stabilizing an area against the Flux and super-stabilizing a person — I’ve never had the opportunity.”

“Fine,” said Perry. “After I know what Queenie is doing, I’ll get you set up. For now, I need to go.”

“You won’t untie me?” asked Grayspear.

“I’ll leave that to my companion,” said Perry.

He went to Anaksi and had a brief conversation with her. She wasn’t doing well, he could see that, and he knew there was a risk that he would come back to find that she’d killed Grayspear, but he didn’t have much of a choice unless he wanted to tie her up too — which he really, really didn’t. In the past day, she’d gotten some kind of infodump from Marchand, and Perry still hadn’t gotten all the details on that, mostly because there had been too much else going on between Queenie and Grayspear. She was lost in thought, and nodded mutely, but he hoped that she could handle herself against a single late middle-aged researcher with no special powers.

Perry left the shelf space, flying up high into the air. It wasn’t even dawn yet, and the moon still hung in the sky, giving scant illumination.

“Sir, our opponent is a sniper with excellent vision,” said Marchand. “Any time we fly, we risk giving her a sightline.”

“Yes, in which case she gives her position away,” said Perry.

“You’re using us as bait, sir?” asked Marchand.

“I don’t think she’ll shoot,” said Perry. “I think she has business here that doesn’t relate to us. If a bullet to the head had killed us, she’d have taken the machine and scampered off to another world, but repeated engagements don’t seem like what she’s after.”

“You think you have a handle on her, sir?” asked Marchand.

“No,” said Perry. “But I have some inkling as to her character.”

Perry sat in the air, waiting for a shot that never came, a full five minutes in which he should have been seen, if she had eyes as good as he thought she did.

“Coward,” Perry muttered under his breath.

“Sir, there appears to be a commotion to the east,” said Marchand. “I know we do not often concern ourselves with the business of the locals, but this might be relevant to the pursuit of Queenie.”

Perry looked to where a giant red circle had been overlaid on the HUD, highlighting a plume of smoke that was lit from beneath by fire. Charlonion was a dirty city, and there were plumes of smoke coming up from different places all through the day and night, but this was bigger, more serious, and happening when the city should have been asleep.

Perry flew, very cognizant of the fact that he might get shot at any moment. The armor would protect him — had protected him before — but there was still a risk of pain and incapacitation if one of those bullets hit him wrong. There was also a possibility that Queenie had other tricks to pull out, something she could use at a distance, enchanted bullets or depleted uranium, though he figured if she’d had those, she would have used them right from the get-go.

The fire was enormous, and was halfway through burning up a city block. People were awake and moving on the streets below, but mostly looking on helplessly as the fire burned through wooden structures. There was a fire brigade that had arrived and was putting out the flames, but they had come too late, and the pitiful power of their water was doing almost nothing to combat the fire. The question, it seemed, was whether the blaze would cross the street, though it wasn’t a particularly dry day.

“Look for evidence,” said Perry. “People acting strangely.”

“By the standards of this city, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “I guess we don’t have data on fire protocols, but — are those looters?” He’d spotted a pair of people breaking the windows of a storefront. Almost as soon as the window was broken, they’d started hauling out jewelry.

“It’s difficult to say whether this is normal opportunism, sir,” said Marchand.

“They’re working together,” said Perry.

“The Yuuksen were seen working with Queenie,” said Marchand. “And the device did not preclude cooperation, it didn’t seem.”

Perry didn’t have a good handle on how people would behave if under the effects of the device. He had only two real examples to go on, the two that had come in when he was working with Grayspear, and he didn’t think that either had illuminated all that much, especially not in the context of group dynamics.

“No way the fire isn’t related,” said Perry. “There aren’t fires in Charlonion that often.”

“Is that a fact, sir?” asked Marchand.

“It’s a guess,” Perry admitted.

He looked down at the firefighters, who were toiling away with a pump, trying to get more water. Is that something that they would do out of rational self-interest? Perry didn’t know. He supposed that an economist would say that yes, certainly firefighting exists within a framework of human utility maximization, homo economicus, but he hadn’t read enough of the relevant writings to say how they handled emotion and connection. Presumably some smart guy had figured it all out, and Perry had never sniffed the nuances of the arguments.

“Sir, there’s a chance we’re in danger, if we’re in range of the device,” said Marchand.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “No helping that.”

“We could leave, sir,” said Marchand.

“Do you think this was a test shot?” asked Perry. “These people just don’t look any different.”

Were the cluster of women talking amongst themselves off to one side of the fire there because they were concerned for their loved ones and arranging homes for those who needed them? Or were they gravitating toward each other because they were interested in trading advantages, securing some future benefit from allowing a known quantity into their home? Surely charity would still exist even if there was no feeling of goodwill toward each other.

It would be kind of funny if Queenie had used the machine and nothing at all had changed. Perry very briefly wished that he’d taken schooling in economics rather than geography, before remembering that the field of economics was incredibly dull. Still, it might have made better sense of whatever was going on down there, if there was anything going on down there.

“Anyone we can help?” asked Perry as he looked at the building. The power armor was fireproof, up to a point, though he didn’t know quite what that point was. He needed air to breathe, but the armor had a tank, and he could suppress the need for oxygen for as long as it would take the place to burn down. The final problem was falling beams of wood or other structural collapse — and the chance that someone would see him and try to have him arrested.

“Unclear, sir,” said Marchand. “It doesn’t seem like a problem that we’re particularly equipped for. The building has been emptied, if the scattered reports from the ground are correct.”

Perry was tempted to do a better check, maybe land on the roof and have Marchand do a sonic scan.

The bad feeling started in his guts, along one of his meridians there, and quickly spread through his body, hitting his head with an unpleasant sharpness three seconds after it had come on. Perry rose up into the air, following the sword, feeling the sharp pressure against him increase. He was trying to fight it, but it was coming from everywhere, like the ambient energy of the world had become sharp as a needle, pointed right as the base of his skull.

It faded as the seconds passed and he put more distance between himself and the ground, but he didn’t stop until it was entirely gone.

“I think that was it,” said Perry.

“What, sir?” asked Marchand.

“You didn’t feel it?” asked Perry.

“No, sir,” said Marchand.

“Along the meridian that connects us?” asked Perry.

“It might help if you told me what you were referring to,” said Marchand.

“Just this … pain,” said Perry. “I think it was the weapon, Grayspear’s thing.” He looked down at the city. “This fire wasn’t started because she used the weapon, I think it was started so she’d have a test bed, some place she could look at and know for certain whether it worked or not.”

Perry looked down at the people below. They were much further away now, but still milling about at a safe distance from the buildings that were on fire.

“Fuck,” he said. “She’s down there. Or … out of the blast radius.”

“The machine is down there, then?” asked Marchand.

“Yes,” said Perry. “We need to triangulate it, destroy it.”

“Are you certain that you have immunity, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Not at all,” said Perry. “The pain … it was doing something to me.”

“Then perhaps we should stay back,” said Marchand.

“If we don’t stop her, she’s going to keep doing this,” said Perry. He began dropping without waiting for any further argument. It seemed obvious to him that they couldn’t just sit back and be cowards about it. They were going to need Grayspear to figure out something, to have an understanding of the underlying reality, what was being broken when the machine turned on at full blast.

Marchand didn’t actually offer any further objection though, perhaps seeing that it was pointless, and they dropped fast, down into a piece of the city that was in bedlam.

People were fighting each other in the streets, and those that weren’t fighting were running. If the looting had just been normal behavior for the city, it had ramped up immensely, the storefront that had been broken open now home to a group of people who looked like seagulls fighting over spilled trash.

Perry felt nothing pressing against his vessels, no hot tingling sensation against his mind. Whatever had happened, it had passed now, leaving this destruction in its wake.

“Map it,” said Perry. “See the edges of this … behavior.”

He began circling the fire as Marchand began the mapping, spiraling outward, watching what was going on down there. It was a long shot, trying to figure out the borders of the machine this way, then hoping that Queenie would still be around, and the only way that it would work would be if she hadn’t been standing right next to the machine while it went off — and Perry wasn’t too sure about that. She wanted people to be like this, to live without the bonds of family or nationalism or a personal code or … whatever else this thing stripped away.

Perry saw a fight going on in the streets a block over from where the fire was still burning itself out, and dropped down without thinking about it too much, mostly because a man was getting the shit kicked out of him by a group of four men taking turns at him.

When Perry landed next to them, the fighting came to a stop as everyone looked at him. It was still dark out, but Marchand had intuited what Perry was there to do, and recessed lights on the armor had lit up, putting the scene into sharp relief and ruining the night vision of everyone around.

“Why are you hurting that man?” asked Perry.

The four assailants had their eyes half-covered, because of the lights, but one of them spoke up. “He’s a landlord, a bastard,” said one of them. “Better he dies.” He seemed, for a moment, like he was about to resume kicking the man on the street, who was better dressed than the rest of them.

“Don’t you fear retribution?” asked Perry.

“In the night, during a crisis?” asked the man. “And there are four of us, better to spread the blame.”

“You hatched this plot just now?” asked Perry. He stepped forward, and the men stepped back, clearing a path.

“None of your business,” said the man.

One of them, who had been standing near the back, turned and ran, and the rest of them broke, scattering down alleyways that they surely knew better than Perry ever could. He let them go, and helped the injured man to his feet. If they’d been trying to kill him, really trying, they hadn’t done a particularly good job of it — someone had clearly stomped on his head and broken his nose, but a lot of the damage he’d taken had been from kicks to his body. He spat up blood and leaned his whole weight against Perry as Marchand turned the lights off.

“Are you okay?” asked Perry.

“I saw their faces,” the landlord said. “I’ll gut them in front of their wives. I’ll snap the fingers of their children.” He spat more blood, forcefully this time. “You’re with the Commission? Why aren’t you hunting those dogs down?”

Perry pushed the man away, tossing him to the ground. He didn’t want any part in that. When the machine stripped away social bonds, sometimes what was left behind was vengeance and cruelty. Perry rose into the air, leaving the man behind.

He spotted Queenie at just about the same time as Marchand did. She was on top of a building, standing at the edge of it, looking down with a smile at the chaos below. The red scarf was whipping in the hot, smoke-filled winds.

“Hold fire,” said Perry as the shoulder gun rose.

They were too far for a proper shot. Perry closed the distance, moving as fast as the sword would allow, but he was still far away when she spotted him. She didn’t pull her sniper rifle from nowhere though, she gave him a friendly wave.

When Perry was close enough, he commanded Marchand to shoot, aiming straight for her head, but the bullets didn’t seem to do anything at all, deflected off into the dark or swallowed up whole somehow. She had still not made a move from her perch, and Perry drew closer, ready to slip into the shelf space if she somehow activated the machine again. He was going to come at her with the sword, if she let him.

“Hoy there!” she called when he was thirty feet away.

“Why did you do this?” asked Perry. He hovered above the city, gripping the sword tightly.

“Oh, well,” said Queenie as she looked at the fire. “Had to see whether it worked, didn’t I? Didn’t think the fire would go so well, to be honno.”

“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you,” said Perry. There was no sign of the wounds she’d taken.

“I heal up well,” said Queenie. She finally looked over at Perry. “It’s Perry beneath there, right?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” said Perry.

“Nah, it’s you, chubbo, I thought so when you turned into a wolf and tried to bite me, but I couldn’t be sure you weren’t a Peony instead.” Queenie laughed to herself. “I’ve got a bubble up, no way you’re getting through it, though I know you’re sure to try. Just wanted to talk, and figured you’d come running.”

“Easier ways to get me to talk,” said Perry. “Less deadly.”

Queenie stroked her scarf. “I can feel it when someone dies. Three dead, so far, and that’s probably the ones that deserved it most.”

“You have to understand that I’m going to stop you,” said Perry.

“I know you’ll try, chubbo,” said Queenie. She grinned at him. “But here, I have a gift for you.” She reached up to the scarf and plucked a thread of it out, winding it around her finger a few times until it was separated from the main mass, then tossing it to Perry. By rights it should have unraveled and fluttered down to the ground, but it held together, as a ball, and he was able to catch it, even though it felt like she might have just handed him a live grenade.

“What is it?” asked Perry, holding it out away from himself.

“It’s so we can talk,” said Queenie. “You know, I’ve gotten a lot of brutes in my time, never one who’s much for conversation, but you were with Doctrix Grayspear, her assistant, so that means you’ve got more brain than some of the other chubbos.”

“Psychic communication?” asked Perry, holding up the bit of what looked like yarn. He wanted nothing to do with it. He couldn’t trust it, naturally.

“Links to this one, a large enough bit that we can pass somethin’ through,” said Queenie. “Come on, haven’t you ever wanted to talk to another thresholder? Share war stories?”

“I’ve talked to almost everyone I’ve ever fought,” said Perry.

“Oh?” asked Queenie. “See, that’s interestin’, that, I’d like to hear more, and seems like talkin’ at a distance is the only way, if you want to kill me so bad.”

“You shot me in the head,” said Perry. He was now twenty feet from her, close enough that he could use the Inspector’s power on her, at least according to the testing he’d done with Anaksi. Normal Inspectors were less effective than that, and those starting out could sometimes only handle touch range.

“And I’ll shoot you again,” nodded Queenie. “Not sayin’ otherwise, chubbo.”

“You have plans,” said Perry. “Long term plans. Sitting around plans.”

“Might be, might be not,” smiled Queenie. “But I wouldn’t tell them to you now, would I?”

“Where is the machine now?” asked Perry.

Queenie laughed. “You think the machine is the be-all, end-all? That this is the whole kit?” She shook her head. “Nah. The harmonizer isn’t even enough, that’s clear, hardly has a range on her, does she? But Grayspear is dead or worse, and everythin’ else will need to be me, I s’pose.” She nodded to the yarn in Perry’s hand. “You keep that, so we can have a chat, so I don’t have to worry about you tryin’ to kill me every —”

Perry swept forward, sword flickering out of its sheath, and he slammed against an invisible force that the sword did nothing to cleave through. It bounced away instead, sending ripples of strength up his arm. Queenie had jumped at the motion, pulling her sniper rifle out like she meant to use it as a shield, but when the sword hit whatever was stopping it a second time, she slipped the enormous sniper rifle back where it had come from.

“Well, I’d have had some egg on my face if you’d gotten through, wouldn’t I?” asked Queenie. She smiled wide. “Picked this trick up a few worlds back, haven’t had much chance to use it.”

Perry probed the edge of the space between them with his sword, tracing what was stopping him. It did seem spherical, which had been his first guess.

“I don’t think I would ever be that confident in a piece of equipment, not against an enemy with a weapon from across worlds,” said Perry.

“Well, maybe you’re just not built like me,” said Queenie. She was keeping up the smiles, as much as she’d flinched when he’d come in with the sword. “Now, I know I’m a good bit faster than you, so we can sit here and talk, and when I’m ready, I’ll take off. From then on, if you want to talk, well, you can spin a yarn.” She smiled again, but the smile faltered. “You have that where you’re from? Spinnin’ a yarn?”

“Yeah,” said Perry. “You’re not from Earth, are you?”

Queenie laughed. “Never heard of it. But you can tell me all about it later.”

Perry watched her. It was impossible for her to read his expression beneath the helmet, not that he was allowing it to move an inch.

“Well, go on then,” said Queenie. “Tell me about yourself.” She folded her arms. “I get a reasonable fellow — finally! — and he’s the silent type? But you were talkin’ plenty in the saloon.”

“How much of that was true?” asked Perry. “About you?”

“Oh, almost none,” said Queenie. “I was born a princess, if you can believe that. Did you have princesses on Earth?”

“We do,” said Perry. “And I don’t believe it.”

“Well, that was me, princess to my core, long way in the past now,” said Queenie. She sighed. The block was mostly done burning, having spent its way through readily available fuel. It would probably sit there burning more slowly now, and hopefully, wouldn’t spread much. “And now I do this.”

“You can’t keep doing things like this,” said Perry. “You’re killing people. You understand that, right? You didn’t use the machine on yourself? You have basic empathy?”

“They live down there in a society of chains,” said Queenie, sweeping a hand to encompass the whole city. “I’m just freeing them, that’s all.”

“You really believe that?” asked Perry. “That things like family are chains?”

“You had family, back on Earth?” asked Queenie. “Because I had family, and I was always doin’ stuff for them, never thinkin’ about myself, destined to shit out five or six babies and die after a life of service, and you know, I thought I deserved it?”

“People are dying,” said Perry. “They’re losing bits of themselves.”

He thought of himself as good at argumentation, and he was making a hash of this, maybe because he was still trying to evaluate this as a combat scenario. She was obviously fine with killing people. She had no empathy, or if she had empathy, it was that tough-love kind, where kindness had to come with pain, for their own good.

“They’re losing the worst parts of themselves,” said Queenie. “I saw you down there, did you know? Those men, beating up that landlord, a man they despised, who they held back from killing because they thought that was the decent thing to do, the way to be a member of society. They unlearned it fast and proper. Brought a tear to my eye.”

“They were going to kill him,” said Perry.

“And see, some people, the world is better off without,” said Queenie. “If you learn one thing fighting across the worlds, it’s that.”

Perry tried attacking her again, and again the sword bounced off the bubble. Queenie didn’t move this time, just smiled. He wondered whether the laser would work on her, but he didn’t have it set up — light was moving through the barrier, he could see her, which meant that a concentrated beam of light could hurt her too.

Instead, he used the Inspector’s power on her, attacking at the same time, with March making the decision to fire. It happened all at once, with the chosen scene being one of brightly flashing lights, but the barrier held, and while Queenie flinched again, moving backward, she got to her feet and shielded her eyes.

“Inspector powers?” she asked. “How’d you swing that?” She lowered her hand and let the full effect of the flashing light hit her. “Not real though, is it?”

Perry swore. He’d hoped that she would at least drop whatever guard she had put up, and now he’d revealed a power he’d been hoping to use later.

“What about the Yuuksen,” said Perry, dropping the imagery he’d been sending her. He had to hope that this defense had a weakness he wasn’t seeing, because right now it felt impenetrable. She hadn’t moved from her spot, maybe that was something.

“What about them?” asked Queenie.

“You destroyed their tribe,” said Perry. “Converted them, didn’t you? What happened to them?”

“They’re my little helpers now, aren’t they?” asked Queenie. “All I had to do was convince them that I was going to lead them to good fortune. Why do you care?”

“Because I care,” said Perry. “I want them back. Fixed.”

“Can’t fix it, chubbo,” said Queenie. “Wouldn’t fix it if I could. It’s nothing to fix. You thought those men should just sit there, tied to their tribe as it slowly failed, dead because of convictions they were taught as children? How does that make sense, chubbo?”

“I want to make a deal for them,” said Perry. “You don’t need the men, they’re probably just slowing you down, and with the machine fixed, you have other people you can offer … whatever it is you’re offering.”

“Not takin’ that deal, chubbo,” said Queenie. “Too much risk you’ll stab me straight in the back, and I’ve gotta be honno with you — I’d do the same.”

“The whole point is that you don’t have to be honest with me,” said Perry. “But I’m willing to honor a deal, if it’ll save the Yuuks.”

“Nothin’ to save, chubbo,” said Queenie. “They’re better off with me. And you can’t have them, whatever reason it is you want them. Now me, I’m off.” She pointed at him. “You keep that yarn on you, and we can talk some.”

“Give me half the Yuuks,” said Perry. He held up the ball of yarn. “Then I’ll leave it on me, at least most of the time. I assume you’ve got tracking of some kind, but whatever. That’s the deal.” The bigger worry was that the psychic thread had some kind of power to it, that she could use it against him at a range, a vector of attack.

“Alright, chubbo,” said Queenie. She laughed a bit. “No idea why it’s so important to you, but you can have them, all of them, easy as. But you have to talk. Tell me about what it’s been like for you. And I’ll do the same, always did enjoy a good talk.” She nodded, like it was all settled. “Now, you gonna shoot me as I go?”

“Would it work?” asked Perry.

Queenie laughed. “I’d rather you not. Felt like we were gettin’ a bit of rapport goin’, chubbo. I’d hate to think that you wanted me dead.”

“I haven’t met anyone with a bubble like this,” said Perry. He flicked his wrist and tapped it with his sword. “Shocked that you didn’t use it before. I figure it must come with all kinds of drawbacks, for you to only use it here and now.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll see,” said Queenie. She slipped her sniper rifle out of her extradimensional space, and Perry was once again struck by how it seemed to be larger than her. She politely pointed it away from Perry, pulled a lever that locked something into place, then gave a small salute to Perry before blasting off.

Perry shot at her. Of course he did. He hit too, striking her in the face, and he was rewarded with a spray of acidic blood that rained down on the houses below her, but it didn’t stop her in the slightest, and the second blast of her rifle took her further away, with the shoulder gun shooting after her as she went. It scored another hit, Perry was pretty sure, but then she was beyond his range, even as he raced across the rooftops trying to catch up.

<Bastard,> he heard in his head. He looked down at the yarn in his hand. <Do you have any idea how much that hurts?>

<Had to,> said Perry, pushing at the mental fold that felt like the source of the voice in his mind. When he concentrated, he could feel it pushing up against one of his vessels, and he was relieved that he could effectively block it if he had to. That didn’t stop it from being used as a tracker, or some other kind of weapon against him, but he was less worried than he’d been when she passed it over. <I don’t know what kind of thresholder I’d be if I didn’t try to kill you.>

<Well, I’m off to lick my wounds again,> said Queenie. <But when I’ve holed up and finished with that, you and I are going to have a chat at a very safe distance, alright chubbo?>

Perry sighed. <I guess I don’t have much other choice. I want those Yuuksen though.>

<Will do, boss,> Queenie replied.

She was still to the wind, but she wanted to talk, and to Perry, that felt like a win.