'Every reality needs its fallen prince. He is within me now. All are within me.'
'Waldo, I'll never make it.'
'You will.'
A faint jingling reached Richards' ears. Silver bells on a harness. A noble squeak rocked the heavens.
On the floor, Bear's head stirred, his tired eye opened. 'It can't be…' said Bear. 'Geoff!'
Geoff came swooping in from the dark, a vision of burnished gold and chocolate brown. A flying helmet sat atop his head, a saddle of red leather on his back. A real giraffe now, with four legs, and a broad pair of wings. He circled Waldo and Richards twice, then came into a graceful landing, rearing and squeaking as he did so, his wings washing Richards with sweet wind.
'Now that's just showing off,' said Tarquin.
'Evening, lads,' said Geoff in a rich Lancastrian accent.
'A Mancunian!' Richards laughed; he was feeling somewhat hysterical.
'Bugger off,' said Geoff, 'I'm from Chorley.'
'He will take you.' Waldo floated into the air, light playing around his head, hair lifted as static, eyes glowing like Hughie's. He held out his hand, and Bear's ashes stirred. The pouch gifted him by Lucas leapt into the air, and flew into his hand. He opened it, and tipped the fragment of Optimizja into his hand. He closed a fist tight about it. 'All worlds require a seed,' he said. The none-ground rumbled and turned into itself, stone, earth and pebbles formed from hardened darkness, tiny streams of numbers coalescing into a new form of reality. Veins of lava crackled across the floor. It rose higher, under Waldo's feet, and Waldo ascended upon a pillar of stone, his arms spread.
'Are you coming or what, chuck?' said the giraffe, and knelt gracefully.
Richards swung his leg over the giraffe's saddle and took up the reins.
'Hey, Waldo!' he called up to Waldo. 'You're going to need a pair of protective avatars for this reality of yours. I'd say Bear and Tarquin will do a fine job.'
Waldo was now far above Richards, dark clouds swirling about him, flashes of energy racing away from him. He grew and grew, until Richards was within him, and before him. Waldo held up a fist the size of a galaxy, light spilling from between his fingers. His hair waved long, full of stars.
'We are beyond avatars. This will be a new Real, separate and beyond.'
'Call them protectors of a new kind of universe, then!' shouted Richards. 'See you later, Toto,' said Richards to Bear.
'No, you won't,' said Bear, whose head floated in and bobbed beside Tarquin in a swirl of primordial energies. 'I feel weird.'
'I know, it's just a figure of speech to make me feel better. You too, Tarquin, or Tarquinius, I suppose. Looks like you got a new lease of life, eh? Spend it well.'
'Will do, old boy. Same to you.'
'I…' said Richards.
'Bye bye, sunshine,' said Bear.
'Are we going or what?' said Geoff, and spread brown wings.
'Yeah, yeah, we are,' said Richards. He clasped his hat to his head. 'Hi-ho silver!'
The giraffe leapt into the dark, moving fast as thought. Ahead of them there was a door, very much like the one by which he'd entered Waldo's world from Reality 36.
Richards turned back to look at the glowing point at the centre of the limitless black. A booming voice rumbled across the empty cyberspaces, the voice of a man who was once Giacomo Vellini.
'I grow tired of the dark,' he said, and potential built within his words. 'Let there be light.' The titanic man opened a fist, and reality erupted from it.
'Oh, bollocks,' said Geoff, as the wave front of creation roared under him, lifted him high and tipped him. Richards had the sensation of tumbling through infinity, k52's hyperdimensional coding all about him, different to the Grid, different to the Real, as solid as either.
He fell through the door. It shut with a slam.
He was back in a more mundane form of virt-space.
Hughie stood there, a pained expression on his face, a cross between a demigod and an annoyed town mayor in his fancy suit.
'Richards?' said Hughie as he patted at his stomach. He rubbed around the place k52 had speared him. 'What the devil is going on?'
Richards pulled himself up off the floor of the empty Reality 36 and jammed his hat back onto his head. 'You're never going to believe me.' 'Really?' 'Well, maybe. But later. We have to go.' 'Why?' 'Because the entirety of the Reality Realms is about to be annihilated by a nuclear strike. Might get a bit of dodgy feedback if we don't scoot. Trust me, it's no fun being at the centre of that kind of thing. Shall we?'
Hughie nodded, lost for words for once.
There was a stutter in the firewall surrounding the Reality Realms' Grid spaces, and Richards and Hughie fled back to their base units.
Otto woke groggy and nauseous, mentaug and brain swelling like the sea with thick static-like sensations. He pulled himself up and swung his legs off the immersion couch. The v-jack slipped from his head, and with its stimulatory magnets gone from his cranium he went from wildly disoriented to merely fuzzy.
He took in the room. Other than himself and the mortal remains of the unfortunate Waldo, it was empty of human occupants,
Something was wrong.
Chloe lay on the floor, case cracked.
Valdaire would never drop her phone.
Otto scooped her up and ran from the building. As he went down the dank corridors he turned all his cybernetic enhancements to maximum — risky in his state, but the complex was about to be turned into ash and, although he couldn't outrun a bomb shockwave, he would at least give it a spirited try. He rapidly assessed what could have occurred to make Valdaire be so careless with her closest friend. His mind kept returning to the same answer. Kaplinski.
He ran out into the main body of the tank garage.
Sure enough, in the failing light Kaplinski stood outside, one arm clamped round Valdaire's throat, holding her off the ground. She stared at Otto, unable to speak, her hands clutching at Kaplinski's distended forearm. She was not struggling, but hung there desperately, attempting to keep the pressure off her neck. Otto snatched up the bar Marita had hit him with earlier, and walked into the square.
'Klein!' shouted Kaplinski, 'looks like I got here a little too late. How's it feel to damn the human race?'
Otto circled the other cyborg cautiously, his senses thrumming, data processed lightning-fast by his mentaug. Kaplinski's body still burned with the strange energy signatures he'd seen on the train, but he was malfunctional. His face had not healed properly, half of it still black bone. There was visible damage to his knee. Evidently the tesla cannon had compromised several of his systems, healthtech included.
He was not invulnerable, then. Otto had a chance.
'Look at us, Klein! Two broken toys, used and thrown away. k52 offered better, and you did not listen!'
'Kaplinski! In five minutes this place is going to be levelled by another of k52's traitors. You hear that? He's going to nuke this place, you along with it.'
'Fitting!' said Kaplinski. Strange light shone from his retinas, the wild look of a wolf caught in headlights. 'That you and I should die together, if not as comrades-in-arms, then at least in war, and as worthy enemies.'
'The damn war's over, Kaplinski. Stop fighting! Let Valdaire go.'
'Listen to yourself!' spat Kaplinski, 'always for the other, always thinking of anything but yourself when you could take anything you wanted. You make me sick, Klein.'
A counter rattled down in Otto's head. On the far side of the square stood a large Chinese airbike. His mentaug adjutant played dozens of tactical scenarios, but each one ended in failure; there was no way to get Valdaire, get on the bike and get out of there before the bomb fell. He could not possibly take on Kaplinski and win in that time.
'I wanted to be more like you, you know? I wanted to be a better man. I did try, Klein! I did try to stop
