The Machinery of Light

Teeth tearing through flesh that’s really something more—Linehan feels Sinclair’s claws rending him but he’s still pushing the man-who’s-no-man backward, shoving him up against the canopy-door as Sinclair’s blood gushes into his mouth, turning to acid as it does so—burning, overwhelming him with pain even as his teeth clash together, even as the thing he’s fighting keeps on rending him—

—even as Sarmax feints left, goes right, then lashes a kick against the Operative—who pulls his leg out of the way as the blade that’s extending from Sarmax’s ankle just misses hamstringing him.

“Oldest trick in the book,” he mutters, as he stabs Lynx’s dart at Sarmax’s face—

“This one’s even older,” says Sarmax, knocking the dart flying as he unleashes an almost impossibly strong punch—but the Operative ducks, grabs that arm, hauls Sarmax in as they start to grapple—

“Like we’re back in the ice,” he says.

“Ice is all there is,” says Sarmax as he gets the Operative in a headlock. The Operative tries to break free, but it’s no use. Sarmax always was the stronger. And now his former mentor is cutting off his air.

“Over soon enough,” says Sarmax.

“Like right now,” says the Operative—he shoves backward, smashing Sarmax through one of the screens. Shards of plastic fly. Blood’s all over the back of Sarmax’s head. But—

“Won’t save you,” says Sarmax.

“Think again,” says the Operative—he’s grabbing one of those shards, twisting his arm as he plunges it through Sarmax’s eye—

He’s blind now, Sinclair gouging out both eyes, but still Linehan fights on, pure dying adrenaline pumping as his opponent starts crushing his skull with fingers that may as well be drills. As the bone cracks, the brain within processes images: temples opening into universes that unfold onto the ramparts of all the heavens, all of it falling past him like myriad shooting stars, far-flung patterns somehow coalescing into the face of the woman he’s giving his life for and even with his ruined mouth he’s still going out smiling—

—whereas Sarmax just stares at the Operative for a moment with the one eye he’s got left. The shard protrudes from the other—

“Bastard,” he says.

“You just won,” says the Operative. “You’ll see her now—”

“Always …” mutters Sarmax—trails off, his remaining eye rolling upward in his head. The Operative springs to his feet, whirls—takes in Sinclair standing at the base of the pod, facing him—

“Time for your final lesson,” he says—just as Claire Haskell leaps from the pod—

—her body manipulating gravity itself as she throws herself onto his back like some kind of wildcat, biting and scratching and clawing while his mind reels back before her and she tells him exactly what’s on hers—

“Didn’t count on me getting out of jail, huh?”

“Whatever it takes to tame you,” he mutters, but the battle between them isn’t really a function of what’s going on between their bodies. Their minds surge into each other—hers billowing in from every direction, his coalescing around the core of Control that he’s absorbed—straining against each other, seeking even the most momentary of advantages as they navigate endless quantum architectures of no-space and no-time, begetting infinite numbers of progeny minds that swarm in upon one another, a growing cloud of probabilities as the no- room goes ever further out of control and the multiverses start to blur. Somehow Sinclair’s staying focused. She’s not. It’s as though he planned for this. Her mind’s unraveling through labyrinthine chains of universe, infinite regressions prior to the one she’s left, each universe a chunk of false time that hangs in the true reality, each one a fragment of some greater picture that’s still blurry. But through that haze she can see the Operative moving in —

“Stay back,” she mutters, knowing he won’t—

—can’t—as he grabs a piece of piping and swings it with all his might down upon the rear of Sinclair’s head— yet as it impacts with that skull, there’s a blinding flash as untold energies run along the pipe back into the Operative’s body; he’s blasted backward, vision collapsing in upon him, the last thing he sees is those two inhuman figures grappling—

—and it’s just the fraction of the merest instant, but she’s taking all she can get at this point—Sinclair’s distracted momentarily and she’s threading in through a wilderness of worlds to take advantage of that fact, diving in toward his center as—

—he sees what she’s doing and—

—shifts—

—gets past her—

—their positions reversed—

—her mind dropping back into her flesh—

—his accelerating out into the infinite—

—receding jaws snapping at her and missing—

—her brain blasting his body—

—which catches fire. What’s left of his meat is going up in smoke. She’s scarcely had time to process this when the entire no-room shudders—

—a force so great that even the Operative becomes aware of it, drifting back from death’s door, holding onto the writhing floor—

“Carson?” says a voice.

He opens his eyes. Haskell’s bending over him.

Except it’s not Haskell. It’s something that wears the face of every woman. Yet somehow all of them are the Claire he’s always known—

“Fuck,” he says.

“Easy,” she mutters.

“What’s happening?”

“Ever heard of a crash landing?”

She’s staggering out of the realms of no-space and it’s all she can do to maintain any kind of structural integrity as the wave-functions collapse and the membranes burn away and everything around her gets back to the business of being real, guiding this bubble universe back into the one that spawned it, infinite vectors all around and nearly all of them leading to the total destruction of her and everything else the Room contains. Her intuition’s now the only way out as she steers her own way back, all those existences flashing by until finally—

Fuck,” screams the Operative—a huge muffled boom that seems to pervade his very soul. He stares up at the eyes of Haskell, sees the screens flicker back to life all around—sees something on them that he just can’t even begin to comprehend—

“What the fuck,” he mutters.

“We’re back,” she says.

With a bang. As they reoccupy the space within the depths of the Moon—or rather, become that space again—compressed energy flows outward, the disintegrating membranes channeling a force that, thanks to her guidance, has almost no impact on what’s inside the Room. But as to what’s beyond—

“Fuck,” whispers Carson.

She says nothing, just cradles his head in her lap, watches on the screens in the Room as the entire Moon disintegrates—along with everything on it: the Eurasian legions on the cusp of victory, the Americans fighting with