“But you also told me that nothing can get in or out of Permovren right now. So how exactly would you get it here?”
“The most straightforward way would be to eliminate the seal,” Rune said.
I could almost have kicked myself. That was obviously the most direct method of getting the Kroten Yoso Va here, and I had completely overlooked it. Moreover, failing to consider that option had led to me asking what I now thought of as a boneheaded question.
“However, getting rid of the seal is the last thing I want to do,” Rune continued. “Once that’s gone, the murderer can get out.”
“And then all bets are off,” I said, remembering our prior chat about the difficulty in taking on an Incarnate with their full slate of powers. “So is there a way to bring it here without getting rid of the seal?”
“There is, but it’s tricky,” Rune stressed. “But as I keep saying, we’re not there yet.”
Chapter 46
After finishing my conversation with Rune, I teleported to my quarters, popping up in the living room. I flopped down on the couch and then rubbed my temples for a moment, trying to relax.
Thinking about everything that had happened of late — especially the most recent murder — I found myself sighing gloomily. I hadn’t known Pinion well, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t share in the grief I knew Rune had to be feeling, even if I couldn’t detect it. In addition, I felt Pinion’s demise weighing heavily on me, especially with it coming so close on the heels of Reverb’s death.
Basically, I had been brought in to find a killer, but my progress in that department had been astonishingly slow. Now, as a result of my slothful pace, there had been not just one but two additional murders.
Who am I kidding? I thought. These were Incarnates getting knocked off. If they — with all the things they could do — couldn’t save themselves or find the murderer, what chance did I have? Even if my research was accurate and my hunch about the killer’s identity turned out to be true, would it do any good? I seriously doubted that, when the dust settled, I’d be able to save the Incarnates. I wouldn’t even be able to save myself. I wouldn’t be able to save anybody — not Rune, not Endow, not Ursula…
I sat up, blinking in surprise as I had a sudden epiphany: actually, there was somebody I could save. Two somebodies, to be exact.
Incredibly excited (and well aware of the fact that I was about to break some rules), I then cycled my vision to the appropriate portion of the spectrum and teleported.
*****
I popped up in the Cosmos Corridor. Much to my dismay, however, someone was already there: Static.
He was in the middle of the room, with his back to me. I couldn’t quite see what he was doing, but got the impression that he was devoting single-minded focus to the task at hand. (I also couldn’t see what I was looking for, and so assumed he was blocking my view.)
I immediately made myself invisible. Basically, I wasn’t supposed to be there, and thus didn’t like the notion of having to explain my presence. Then, I remembered: even when I was invisible, Incarnates still possessed the ability to see me. That being the case, my little plan appeared to be over before I even had a chance to effectuate it — especially when Static, perhaps detecting my presence in some fashion, glanced around for a moment.
Swiftly scanning the room, his eyes passed right over me. Feeling that my cover was blown, I was about to make some flimsy excuse about looking for Ursula when — seemingly satisfied — Static turned back to whatever he was working on. In short, he was apparently so preoccupied with his current endeavor that he hadn’t noticed me. (Or, it suddenly occurred to me, maybe he had seen me but just didn’t feel it was worth his time to address me — a notion which actually seemed fairly likely.)
A few moments later, Static vanished in typical Incarnate fashion — one second he was there; the next, he was gone. With my view of the room now unimpeded, it only took me a second to find what I was looking for: the beam of light with the two figures on it. Not knowing how big my window of opportunity was, I swiftly put my plan into motion.
I dashed to the area where the receptacle was kept — the one Endow had used to save the sportscar driver. Grabbing it, I then hustled to the beam of light, where I happily noted that the two figures were still present, although they had moved significantly closer to the dimensional rift.
Slightly nervous, I opened the container. As before, it contained rows of colorful gemstones, all giving off a soft glow. At that point, however, I abruptly realized that my plan was half-baked at best, because I had no idea what to do next.
In essence, I had planned to tear a page from Endow’s playbook and use the gems to ensure that the guys on the light beam made it through the dimensional rift alive. The problem was that, although I had seen Endow use one of the gems, I honestly had no idea what they did or how they were differentiated.
Hoping that physical contact might convey some sense of the gems’ properties, I picked a handful of them from the container and held them in my palm, eyeing them fiercely. Unfortunately, that garnered me no better indication of their attributes.
“Jim, is that you?” said an unexpected voice.
Caught with my hand in the cookie jar, my knee-jerk reaction was to hide the evidence. Thus, I made the gems in my palm invisible — at least to human sight. (With my vision cycled to another part of the spectrum, I could still see them.) At the same time, I looked around for the origin of the voice and saw Ursula
