I don’t know how long I talked. He’d ask questions on human culture and sometimes small details about Lee or Kee’s actions or statements. When I did remember them, he’d nod slowly as if it meant something to him.

  I couldn’t be sure that was a good thing.

  He’d found the story of The Thing That Eats particularly interesting, both because I’d been able to tap into Lee’s power when creating a sword and because of Amy’s spear. She’d stabbed the Thing and seemed to be at least as responsible for killing it as I was.

  He’d been at least as interested in the fact that the Bloodspear could absorb me, asking a series of questions that amounted to, “But how much of you do you think it could absorb? Do you think it could reach into other universes?”

  I held up my hands, “I have no idea. I’m not in any contact with other versions of myself except when I meet them.”

  He chuckled, “You’re young. The connections take time. Don’t worry about it.”

  Though I wanted to ask, “Does this mean I have a future?” I didn’t want to remind him of the decision he hadn't yet made. By that point in the story, his reflexive hostility seemed to have gone away. I responded with, “All I know is that Lee seemed worried enough to intervene.”

  Govan nodded slowly. “I think that says something by itself, but go on.”

  Not knowing what he could sense, I did not dwell on what Melisende had told me about Bloodmaidens being able to kill Artificers. He didn’t need to know.

  He’d also found the incident where we’d felt an Artificer trying to scare us into revealing our awareness of its existence interesting, commenting, “That sounds like something Halas or Bakanan might try. Too bad we can’t ask either of them.”

  He’d laughed when Tikki revealed herself as Kee and been quiet when I mentioned the Ghosts, Rachel’s training, and our familial connection to them.

  “I hadn’t recognized it, but I saw it when I looked at you. I doubt you can see this yet, but beings like us have an equivalent to your DNA that exists somewhere beyond the physical, and it’s affected by more than the physical. You inherit from Nataw and an unnamed Ghost, but you’ve been affected by Lee and Kee. I see bits of them as well as other entities. I don’t know what those would be, but again, go on.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “There are other entities on your level of power?” I asked.

  He turned to the right as if looking for them and back at me. “Yes. Many weaker like the Thing you described or the dragon you faced. Some are strong and mysterious enough that we don’t know their names. We’re not even sure that they exist, but sometimes we find evidence of powerful entities, and we don’t think it was us. Of course, that may well be a delusion. Since we split into factions, we don’t know what the others are doing. Plus, the Ghosts… We’ve always assumed that they were weaker or more specialized than we are, but we don’t truly know, and we do know they can kill us.”

  He stopped, staring at me. “I look at you, and I can only wonder how much we’ve underestimated them. You’re too young to have developed as much as you have. I’d guess that you were 500 or 600 years old if I didn’t know that you were in your early 20s. If more of your people are like you and waiting to be trained, our people, and especially the Destroy faction, have made a terrible mistake either in not destroying worlds where we’ve been mixed into your heritage or in remaking ourselves to become sterile.

  “But never mind,” he added, “go on. I want you to finish.”

  Hoping I hadn’t told him too much, I kept on going. He had an unerring sense of where to ask for more detail, so I couldn’t hide much of anything, and we made it to the present date. I only managed to hide the conversations during the process of getting here, ending with, “After you grabbed me from the portal, I’m sure you could feel where I went—the distant future, an alternate Mars, and finally the Mars base in the future, which is where you grabbed me.”

  He stared ahead, past me to somewhere else, saying nothing, only breathing.

  I wondered what was going through his head or perhaps, heads. This scene might exist in an infinity of additional universes. In how many of them was I dying at this moment, or perhaps before or after?

  I didn’t want to push him to kill me, but if he wasn’t going to, I had stuff I needed to do. Plus, the combination of quiet and a life and death judgement made the moment stretch. I don’t know how long it stretched because my suit had shown the same time-4:18 pm— since he’d pulled me here.

  I said, “Anyway, that’s it. That’s all of it. The only way you find out the end is if you send me back.”

  We sat there for a few moments more, the empty, shattered landscape around us echoing the expression on his face and maybe mine, too.

  Then he laughed, and while it was a laugh, I wasn’t sure I could call it a happy laugh. It stopped short of a sob, but never became a guffaw. He said, “I know, but if I did kill you, it would be an ending. It’s just… I tried to enter the Core Device. I can’t. There is no way for me to get through. I’ve tried everything I can think of in universe after universe. The only way Nataw is freed is if you do it.”

  He stared at me, “If I let you go, I leave the Core Device with Lee and the Live faction, and somehow I fight my own people alongside you. If I kill you, I leave my brother inside it forever. No matter what I choose, I betray myself, but… I can’t betray Nataw. I also find that no matter how strange your form, I can’t kill one of our young.”

  He reached out, creating an ugly tear in reality behind me. Through a crack of pulsing power, I saw the portal in the submarine bay control center.

  "Go," he said. "I hope someday to hate myself less."

  I fell through the tear toward the portal.