Kei

  It's still magic even if you know how it's done.

  --Terry Pratchett

  “Okay.” I blink once, more to show I’m treating all this with due gravity than out of any genuine surprise.

  Finding out my entire world is built on something as ridiculous as millennia-old experiments with crystallized light turned into clockwork creations – a supersolid spectrum of steampunk scale models floating in an extradimensional void…

  Oh, and then linked up to superhuman mental abilities and ancient attempts at AI…

  This made a great deal of sense, actually.

  The hilarious part is everyone is looking at me as if they’re afraid I’ll snap. I may be amnesiac, but I remember just enough of my life that the idea that everything in it is one series of interconnected cosmic jokes is kind of reassuring.

  I’m not about to snap, but I am about to burst out in laughter. Everyone looks worried about the self-evident strain on my face – even Chris and Hammersmith, who are literally inside power armor and a mecha, respectively. I can’t properly read the little floating obelisk, who seems preoccupied with something elsewhere, but that’s probably my imagination.

  Still, trying to fight an explosion of laughter only gets harder when you’re trying to hold a serious expression, and so finally I give in and it comes in peals that echo through the Maze. I think I giggle – no, let’s admit it, guffaw – for a solid minute before my training reasserts itself and I merely fight to hide a smile.

  “Well,” I say in a voice full of rainbows and sunshine, “that’s all good to know.” My smile is back and I shake with suppressed laughter.

  “Um, are you okay, Kei?” Christopher asks, his helmeted head tilting as he gazes over at me. His voice is as concerned as his body language, and I can read that through solid titanium. Literally, as it happens.

  I raise a hand and blink away tears of mirth. “I’m…” I gasp, “great. Seriously, that was good to hear.”

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” Gavin begins slowly.

  I wave a hand. “No, it all makes a lot of sense. I always suspected my life was the punchline to a long and elaborate joke.” I draw in a deep, steadying breath and look around at the others. “So… What next?”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Those technologies had a lot of implications,” Andrea says cautiously, eyeing me as her wings flex behind her with the barest ring of crystal upon crystal. “Especially when you combine them. With each other, with other breakthroughs… and with powers we don’t fully understand.”

  “So of course we mixed them all together and found out the consequences the hard way.” I nod. That tracks. “And so now we’re going to…?”

  “Close that gate,” Chris says, looking at the breach in the Maze. His gaze shifts to me. “Kei, is your power feeding it, like she said?” He gestures towards the obelisk.

  “I’m trying to pull it back, but yes, I think so,” I reply. I take a slow, deep breath and close my eyes. Deep within, I feel a gentle current flowing away from us and the gate. The energies are pointing like an arrow towards the center of campus, not the Maze. I wait a few moments to confirm what I’m sensing, then open my eyes and my Chris’ stare.

  “I’m about out of power, and not feeding this further anyway.” I point towards the heart of Waycross Academy. “Everything I’ve got left is heading there, not here.”

  All of them turn to stare mutely in the direction of the school.

  Andrea glances from Christopher to Hammersmith, then points at the gate. “Close it,” she orders. Andrea looks at the obelisk. “Any word on the school?”

  “Wait,” she says, “I’m getting a message from –” something crackles in my mind, and I hear nothing.

  And then I hear Anton, as though he’s right next to me. “Staccato Overdrive Protocols!” he snaps, as if someone’s life depends on it. Which, given how the day’s going, it probably does.

  “Wait, what?” I ask. That’s becoming a refrain today, even when I’m not saying it aloud.

  “Where are you, Anton?” the obelisk says in a tone that brooks no nonsense. And no obstacles. “Satellite scans are still disrupted.”

  “We’re at the wormhole aperture,” Anton answers, as though it should be obvious.

  “Am I missing something?” Gavin asks slowly, gesturing at the open gateway. “We’re at the wormhole aperture, and unless you’re invisible, I’m not see—”

  “The one in the square,” Anton continues.

  “By the Celestine Library?” Andrea asks in a tone that says she’s not really asking.

  “That’s right,” Anton says in a tone that says it should be obvious which one he’s talking about, and he’d really like to get back to the subject of first aid for the woman passed out in his arms.

  “Got it,” the obelisk tells him. “Gavin’s talking about the one here, or the one into the Unmaker’s realm he just collapsed, or the ones opening down there in the Labyrinth. Ignore him. Just feed Lyra her standard supplements and she’ll be fine, just like on the Island.”

  “He did what?” Anton sounds like he’s suffering from information overload

  Hammersmith sighs, her mech’s amplified tones echoing around us in a slightly metallic Voice From On High. “Forget Gavin. Just take care of Lyra. We’re coming.” She points a gauntlet at the gate and it emits a faint whistling hum as light blazes in its palm. A wave of heat hammers at all of us.

  “Just get here fast, okay?” Anton insists. “I don’t pack glycogen or whatever she needs.”

  “Just check her jacket. She’s always got a custom energy shot with the right mix of supplements to take the edge off. You’ll all be safer right now if she’s conscious.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll look. Just get here quick, all right?”

  “We’re on our way,” Hammersmith insists. A simultaneous flash erupts from the obelisk and her outstretched titanium hand. And then the Gate almost beneath our feet is smoothly closing as we watch.

  Hammersmith turns to face me, her mech’s jets rumbling to life. “Need a lift?” she asks.

  Patreon page for subscribers there. The first chapters released on here are already up there, even for free subscribers.