“Why, of course!” she said, perking up. “So polite! A rare quality in mortals.”
“I need to escape through that door,” Marasi said, pointing to the one in the rear wall, “which will soon vanish. I need the people outside to think I have left another way. With you. I understand you can vanish…?”
“Vanish? I’ll use Aon Tye-A,” Moonlight said. “But that is quite the blessing you ask. I’dneed distance and inclination…”
“Oh,” Marasi said. “Twenty-seven sixty-three, inclination twelve degrees? But can you really vanish—”
“Fine, fine. But if you flee through that door, they’ll find only me in here. An imperfect solution, devised by someone with poor planning skills. Here.”
She tapped Marasi on the forehead, then drew some symbols in the air with one hand. A second later aduplicateof Marasi appeared, made with some of Moonlight’s power. It started moving, though when Marasi tried to touch it, her fingers passed right through. That made it even more unnerving.
“Are you still here?” Moonlight said. “Scoot along, scoot along. Shay-I has it all in hand, child. I’ll deal with these, then make a great show of vanishing. Be certain to deliver the proper offerings for the blessing I’ve magnanimously gifted you, and be pious in your treatment of your gods.”
“Yup,” Marasi said. “Pious. I’ll be pious.” She stepped toward the door, then paused, noticing the last jar of light in the rucksack. She took the bag—which seemed to have some other useful equipment in it too—but handed Moonlight the burned notebook and leather folio of stamps.
“You’ll want these later, great one,” Marasi said. “They’re very important. Please take them and keep them safe.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, then shooed Marasi away with one hand, waving toward the breaking lines on the wall—which was being pounded in force now—with the other. “Hurry. They are almost through.”
Marasi threw the rucksack over her shoulder and—with regret—left her rifle. She needed to be inconspicuous, so the pistol she stashed in the rucksack would have to do. She also left the lab coat, counting on her clothing—still that of a common delivery driver, intended to blend in with the workers for the Set—to conceal her.
She then pushed through the door. As she closed it, she glimpsed Moonlight standing beside the Marasi doppelganger, drawing lines of light in the air with both hands as the far wall buckled and began to break.
Marasi ducked away from the windows—which were indeed one-way glass, disguised on this side as part of a large checkerboard pattern. She threw the rucksack over her shoulder and slipped into the peaceful neighborhood, hoping that this strange version of Moonlight would stick to the plan.
55
In the back of the truck, Wax found a mess of papers and equipment. And three corpses.
Feeling a grim sense of purpose, Wax climbed in and checked each of the corpses—just in case they were feigning. He stopped before the final one. She was bloodied but breathing, and when her eyes slipped open there was a faint red glow to them.
“Ah,” she said in a rasping voice. “Youaregood at this. We thought we had taken enough precautions. Yet here you are. Breathing down our neck. Such drive. Suchindividualism.A shame that Harmony got you first.”
Wax backed away, leveling the gun at her.
“This body soon expires,” the creature said. “You need not concern yourself.”
“What are you?”
“You know what I am,” she whispered.
“Trell.”
“Your sister becomes Trell,” the thing whispered. “The name and mythology I prepared for her to adopt. But she has not achieved it yet. And I am not Trell. Rare is it that I speak to one directly as I do you.”
“Autonomy,” he whispered.
“Yes. Pierced by my metal. Soul open to my touch…”
Wax drew back farther, uncertain what to think.
The woman smiled, blood on her lips. “You have nothing to fear from me. I will not intervene against you and your efforts. Your sister does not understand this, Sword of Harmony. She pleads with me to act, but cannot see: It is only in the struggle to survive that a person—a people—achieves their potential.”
“This city,” he said. “Everything in it. This is your fault.”
“It is the fault of those who strive for more,” Autonomy said. “And to their credit in the accomplishment. Though, I do not think your sister understands the nature of true Autonomy yet. Her attempts have a… fabricated, forced uniqueness to them. Not the raw wounds of true individualism.
“She will learn. The longer she holds the power, the longer she becomes an avatar of my nature, the more she will see and understand. If she survives. You should be proud of her. Though she flirts with her own destruction, her efforts have kept this world alive. I would have attacked it years ago otherwise.”