Grand Slam

My opponents would be changing their tune any second now.

“That’s…that’s the Warlock’s…” Railgun panted. Oh right, Vorpal Fire. They had no reason to think I was their Warlock.

Marshal Tispas’s face was slack with shock. The poor rak had just seen a sight to confirm some of their worst fears.

“The Human lied to you,” Railgun accused Tispas. “She lied…”

“…No. She didn’t,” the Marshal realized quietly. “He lied to her. Nora Clarke didn’t know he was capable of this.”

Hah.

I hadn’t even known I was capable of this until I tried. Both of me.

“…Forget what I said.” Tispas choked out. “Whatever force it takes. Issi, I’m sorry [Miss] Clarke, but he can’t escape…”

Ah. There it was. Like I said, it had been coming any second now.

Not that it made a difference. I had their number now. I might have been exhausted, but so were they. Fighting tired came down to who fought smarter, and right now I wasn’t just working with one whole mind more than any of them.

Coalescence was an interesting sensation, for both of me. New perspectives opened up, and exploring them in detail took less time.

Lawbreaker shifted stances, readying to do more than just block my movement. Railgun let out a shout and materialized another weapon—this one didn’t come one part at a time though. I had ideas about what they would each try.

They were playing for keeps now.

“Too little, too late,” I said, and summoned fire.

I/Nai hadn’t explained Vorpal Fire very well to Caleb/me. The details she’d/I’d used weren’t inaccurate, but they were misleading to someone who didn’t yet understand the finer points of Adept atomic science.

I/Nai didn’t make Vorpal Fire. I/she made Vorpal Fires.

It wasn’t one kind of fuel that burned. It was any combination of dozens or hundreds of nanofluids, each one designed to dump their heat content into a limited number of materials.

That unintuitive heat diffusion is what allowed me to create fire hot enough to disintegrate bullets only a few feet from my bodies and not barbecue my selves. Vorpal Fire wasn’t designed to heat air. So it didn’t.

Right now, I’d made it to melt certain exotic metals most, with a few extra traits added in to respond to whatever Lawbreaker had in store for me.

Marshal Tispas channeled the late Reaver’s ferocity. They handled their preferred halberd with skill and precision, but it was just a pole with a blade on the end of it, after all.

And both of me had done lots of sparring with polearms.

It was almost relaxing, ducking out of range and stepping around the ribbons of Vorpal Fire hanging in the air.

Tispas’s halberd clipped one of the flames and half the head came away melted. They tried to throw it at my face, but a new bloom of fire reduced the rest of the metal to nothing.

I sent some probing bolts of flame at the Marshal, testing their defenses. They danced backward, but unimpressively. The Marshal didn’t have the best defensive instincts…

Lawbreaker proved to have some unexpected offensive ones though.

A whump sounded from them and a small bullet materialized in motion headed my way.

No. Not a bullet. Way too slow, I could actually see it.

It was a dart of some kind, but it didn’t look pointed—

My paranoia flared, and I blocked it with a fresh curtain of fire. The dart didn’t explode like I expected it to, but a second one soared in a gentle arc over the curtain I’d just made. The new dart missed, slamming into the ground like a meteor. It couldn’t have weighed more than an ounce, but it left a crater a meter wide in the pavement.

Lawbreaker threw more at me in quick succession, not by hand though. They just appeared mid-air, already in motion. They were skilled enough an Adept to pre-imbue each dart with kinetic energy to follow their trajectories. It was like being shot at by a foam dart gun, only each one carried the force of a cannonball.

Railgun was conspicuously absent from the Marshal & Lawbreaker’s attacks though. They were either lining up a shot with their railgun, or conspiring to throw some more impressive thunderbolts at me again.

Fire was my tool of choice for repelling them both.

Most Adepts didn’t expect Vorpal Fire to move at all, much less the way it did.

Decomposing pockets of the fluid fuel beneath the surface let the flames gain momentum from internal pressure seeking new equilibrium. Between that and just creating new ones, Vorpal Fire gave the strong impression of moving telekinetically.

“Don’t let it touch you!” Railgun warned their allies. “Not even a lick. Whatever they touch will be ash.”

“You can always run, if you want!” I grinned.

The Vorak were trying harder to kill me now, but I was actually taking it easier. Three opponents were just too easy to handle when one of them was Marshal Tispas.

They were a commander, not a commando.

They didn’t break a six on the twelve-point scale. Railgun clocked in at a neat four-three-four, and I gave Lawbreaker a two-four-four, but their offensive rating was trending up with their talents turned lethal.

What was familiar and routine to my ‘Nai’ half was new and illuminating to my ‘Caleb’ half.

The twelve-point scale, specifically, was something I/Nai was trained to be constantly mulling as it applied to opponents. I/Caleb had only heard about it once or twice, and certainly never been properly trained in it.

So I was simultaneously learning a new way of evaluating threats that I’d been using for years already…

It was strange and amazing to experience.

New tricks came to mind, begging to be tested. Possibilities both of me were eager to understand. They flashed through my mind. It was just fascinating to explore my own new reactions and familiarity to ideas, old and new…

Those thoughts seemed as important in my mind as the fight itself, and with two people behind my mind, I had the bandwidth to think through the fight, any tangents that fancied me, and even more.

…But just because I could, doesn’t mean I should.

Tispas might have been a far cry from a headliner, but they were still Adept, and neither of my selves were immortal.

Coalescence was new, and the advantages to it weren’t all clear, but one was.

Planning.

The superconnector was already good involving two people in each other’s thought process, but when Coalesced, it was entirely different.

Psionics already seemed effortless, giving people the focus to use them without distracting from other tasks…there was a reason I felt like only one person right now. Communication between my two selves was nigh instantaneous. It didn’t even feel like communication.

It just felt like thinking.

Ideas just came into my head, and their flaws immediately illuminated themselves. Revisions and fixes came just as easily. I had a whole extra perspective, not just doubling my ideas and processing speed, but doubling my ability to analyze my every thought.

Lawbreaker’s asymmetric solids were odd, but my extra brainpower picked up on a pattern with these darts. They didn’t disturb the air asymmetrically. The membranes hadn’t done anything to contain Railgun’s thunderbolts or my smokescreens.

Maybe the material only worked asymmetrically with solids—or things acting solid in the case of my kinetic bomb. A plan began to form.

The specifics remained fluid for now though.

As for Railgun, I/Nai had an idea that went unused the last time we’d fought. I’d gotten to cascade their special rifle and the charged shield earlier. I was pretty sure I’d identified what ‘color’ of selective interaction their electromagnetism was operating under.

I was hoping that meant I could make a few magnets of my own.

The planning didn’t take more than a few seconds in total.

God, Coalescence was just cheating.

“Bestir!” Tispas shouted, still swinging to decapitate me. “Go for friendly fire!”

“Wow!” I grinned. “That’s some commitment. Too bad it won’t be enough…”

Railgun—Bestir, their name must have been—changed tactics with that, immediately firing another blast from the new rifle.

A ground spike covered in ablative explosive threw the shot off course, but they quickly prepared another charge.

The first gun, they’d made one part at a time. This second one, they’d built all at once.

That wouldn’t be for no reason. Maybe rushing the creation was more likely to introduce flaws, or make the railgun less reliable in some form.

Lawbreaker and Railgun coordinated, staggering their attacks by a heartbeat in an attempt to catch whichever direction I evaded.

So I didn’t evade.

While the two of them lined up their shots, I built up mass in preparation.

Right before they could both pull the trigger, I threw out the biggest wave of ground spikes yet. A bouquet of thirty stalagmites erupted from the street, each one at least a foot in diameter and the height of telephone poles.

Tispas’s cascade discipline was good enough to sense it coming in time to dodge, and Railgun’s missile would punch through the ordinary spikes like butter.

But sight lines broke for a second, and that gave me the breathing room I needed.

Having Railgun attack, even if it caught Tispas in the process, was a good idea.

It might have even worked too.

But it would be a lot harder for Railgun to attack relentlessly if I put them on defense first.

I came at them from above, having climbed up my spikes. They resorted to another crude shield to block me like before, but I wasn’t attacking quite the same way.

They fought from a long range, because nobody would be crazy enough to fight them up close. It was like boxing with a live wire; one touch and I’d be electrocuted. But I could fight up close without touching them.

A super insulated version of my quarterstaff wouldn’t do anything to get through their armor, but it let me strike to keep them off balance. My real attacks came from rocket knives, materialized three at a time, aimed at the gaps in their armor.

I could see the Adept get insulted. I wasn’t using Vorpal Fire offensively yet. The plumes I was maintaining were being positioned to keep Lawbreaker and Tispas at bay, but no flames drifted toward Railgun.

That’s right…get a bit more frustrated. Tispas is going to find an opening to knock me off balance…and then you can win by blasting us both…

Railgun was defending spectacularly though. Up close now, I could see there was an extra layer to their armor. Between the glittering orange plates, what looked like a black liquid quivered. Rocket knives that made it between the plates were deflected by the fluid.

It wasn’t until Railgun tried to counterattack did I realize what it was.

I jabbed my quarterstaff at their face, only for them to pull a neat move of martial artistry. They grabbed the staff, not to electrocute me, but pull me forward just a bit.

The fluid under their armor surged toward me in in a dimpled texture. I spun away too slow to avoid getting any on me. The black gunk sticking to my invisible armor and carrying an electrical charge.

It was some kind of ferrofluid. Had to be. Normal ferrofluids were cool, not harmful. But exotic ones were not something I wanted to tangle with.

Getting some on me was an accomplishment, but I reacted too quickly for Railgun to make anything of their opportunity.

Shedding the pieces of armor and reforming new ones didn’t interrupt me at all. I swung for the rak again in the same moment they tried to discharge another lightning bolt from their weapon.

The blast arced toward the splatters of magnetic fluid, and I dodged by comfortable margin. That would have worked if I’d been only Nai, to say nothing of how far I would have come just as Caleb.

Lawbreaker fell back, and it signaled that Railgun was building to something big. Tispas was still coming for me, ready to get caught in Railgun’s attack.

This was perfect.

I threw a column of Vorpal Fire at Tispas, melting a two-meter hole in the street when they dodged. I was playing along just enough to give Railgun an opening for their move. Tispas drew close enough to attack me again, driving me away from Railgun.

It gave Railgun room to reconfigure their weapon; its metal pieces sliding and interlocking from a gun into some kind of spear or pylon and thrust it into the ground.

Tispas leaped forward, materializing cables aimed at me. They were trying to trip me up, even for a second, so I couldn’t avoid Railgun’s attack. The cables weren’t anything special, just heavy inconveniences if one managed to hit me. But I understood what they aimed to do with them.

The first attack with the ferrofluid had been homing. Marking a target and then firing without the need to aim. This was the opposite. Railgun’s new pylon reminded me an awful lot of a Tesla coil, and it seemed like instead of an attack that followed where I dodged, this would be one that just couldn’t be dodged in the first place.

Tispas was trying to keep me close to Railgun’s pylon no matter what, block my escape with cables or even their own body.

Fine then. I could work with that.

I put up my bracers, intercepting a blow from Tispas’s halberd. The blow struck me heavily enough to push me within a few meters of the pylon, and that was enough.

Railgun’s accumulated charge peaked, and everything within thirty meters of the pylon crackled. The hair on my neck stood up in the heartbeat before I protected myself.

Best I could tell, Railgun’s pylon was for dumping current into anything nearby that wasn’t ground. The courtyard was relatively flat, so within the range of the weapon, Tispas and I were the only valid targets.

Heat is an insulator.

That’s an unintuitive concept, but if Railgun, Lawbreaker, the Century, and more all had their Adept specialties, then I/Nai was almost a generalist. But there was still something I/she was known for, and that was fire.

Through Adeptry, heat, heat transfer, heat capacity, these were all things that I/Nai had come to understand intuitively on an unparalleled level.

Electricity, current, is just the motion of electrons to equalize charges. Heat was just energy, and electrons moved more excitedly in hot materials.

It was harder for electrons to move through those hot materials, whose electrons were excited and lively.

Cold was a great conductor for all the opposite reasons.

Protecting yourself from current meant blocking the current from reaching you with an insulator, or giving it something even better to travel through with a conductor.

I did both.

A curtain of Vorpal Fire erupted around me and Tispas while a crown of frigid ground spikes surrounded that. Materializing things to be colder than their surroundings was hard, especially the colder you tried.

But Nai/I was really good at the opposite trick, and those skills translated.

The current didn’t come in the form of a lighting bolt this time. It was invisible, electrical energy transmitted through air as efficiently as Railgun knew how.

However cold my ground spikes had been, they quickly heated. My cascade faltered as their solid structure began to melt from the heat and current they were channeling into the ground.

Even while my own curtain of fire and spikes protected us, Tispas still attacked me.

I could have rolled the dice and tried to kill him there, but in that close of quarters, with Vorpal fire only a few inches away? I gave them a five percent chance to get lucky and burn me instead. Those odds just weren’t worth it.

I withstood their attack, staying strictly on defense until I sensed that the electrical pylon was spent.

The second its discharge was over, I kicked away Tispas, ready for whatever attack Lawbreaker had for me. They went simple, shooting at me with their pistol.

I put a shield on my arm quickly enough that none of the rounds made it to my armor, but the thing was large and limited my movement.

Which is probably the point…

Even with Reaver down, they hadn’t given up, and were still adjusting tactics trying to kill me. Best not to drag things out then.

Railgun took advantage of the reprieve, shifting their pylon weapon back to the railgun/thunderbolt rifle. I wanted to watch the change more closely, to find out how the gun could fire both Mach metal slugs and bolts of lightning, but I stayed disciplined.

The shield might have not let me move much, but it was fantastic defensively. Lawbreaker’s bullets didn’t make it through, nor could Tispas and their halberd get around me quick enough.

That reprieve of my own let me direct my combined cascade up the nearest wall and onto the building’s rooftop.

With my own cascade to guide the creation, I remotely materialized a special sort of simple rocket, ready to launch straight up.

Someone was going for a ride.

Railgun was slow to recover from their pylon trick. They were moving sluggishly, failing to reposition quickly enough to fire more bolts from their railgun at me.

Tispas and Lawbreaker flagged too, struggling to maintain the intensity of their aggression.

Even I was slowing down. My lungs were desperate for every scrap of air they could suck down. More than once I’d fought off the impulse to tear my air mask. Even I wasn’t moving with the same agility I’d started with, but unlike my opponents…I’d kept a little left in the tank.

Their reactions were slowing, and I was ready to go for broke. The fight was dragging out, we were all at our most exhausted...

So they didn’t expect it when I fired my maneuvering jets again at full speed. The acceleration made my bones groan, but I was still prepared to withstand this much, but no more. I swept around Lawbreaker’s hasty membrane and went fast enough to make Railgun miss another shot. That opening was enough to go for the Marshal.

Tispas was a step too slow to avoid the point-blank blast of Vorpal Fire I slung at them. They fell under a pile of teal flames.

Next was Lawbreaker; I’d had enough of their asymmetrical bullshit. My timing was intentional; I’d waited until Lawbreaker was standing just a few feet from the hole I’d melted in the street.

I started materializing dozens of gallons of water right above Lawbreaker’s head.

The deluge fell on all of us, and I magnetized myself to the pavestones to keep from being swept away. My cascade told me Railgun resorted to the same trick.

Most of the water drained into the hole, and Lawbreaker realized what I was up to immediately. They tried to leap away from the hole, but a kinetic bomb in their path blew them back toward it. Fluids didn’t agree with Lawbreaker’s creations. The water swept right through them like they weren’t there and washed the Vorak toward the hole in the street.

They slipped down my drain and I poured some Vorpal Fire in after them before capping it with a slab of grey crystal.

“That leaves one…” I said, turning to Railgun.

All alone, they had no one left to hold them back. But that worked to my advantage. They wouldn’t hesitate to draw on as much charge as they could.

I was ready. If my first idea didn’t work, then I had a few more.

“They went down,” I warned. “You’re going up.”

The hefted their rifle, but before they could pull the trigger an invisible force yanked them off the ground.

I’d puzzled out the massive charges they fired the railgun with came partially from special magnetized augmentations inside their own body. Railgun could get struck by real lightning and only get singed. Their body didn’t even suck up the charge—it supplied one.

But unlike Lawbreaker, the electromagnetism specialist was quite symmetric. That left them vulnerable to being moved by matching or opposite charges.

The half-rocket, half-kite on the nearby rooftop was a powerful magnet. It carried a charge opposite to the one I’d felt Railgun build up half-a-dozen times by now; one strong enough to interact with Railgun’s, even a hundred feet away.

This time when the same charge was built, my kite rocket’s charge pulled it in, dragging Railgun with it. My rocket shot skyward, sailing through the hole in the canopy Tispas’s arrival had created.

“…And…that’s that,” I said, peering at the Vorak.

Except there was a groan nearby.

“No way…come on…Marshal, you survived that?” I said, strolling over.

Tispas clawed their way out from under some scorched rubble, but with only one arm. The other one was gone, only a charred stump in its place. The same half of their face was angry, singed, and swollen so much I could only see their one eye.

“I legitimately don’t know how to feel about that,” I admitted. “You were the only one I was really trying to kill. Did you notice? I threw the fire right onto you, no special plan, no convoluted twists to give you a fighting chance…

I pressed my boot onto the Marshal’s shoulder, painfully pinning them against the ground. Tispas failed to contain his grunt of agony.

“Railgun’s probably cleared the colony air barriers by now, but if they manage to separate themselves from the rocket, they can fall back inside the local atmosphere. If they’re lucky they’ll only suffer hard vacuum for ten seconds? Maybe twenty? Not exactly safe, but not a death sentence either. Not for an Adept like them.

Taking my boot off the rak’s back, I strolled a few steps, looking at my handiwork. The courtyard intersection we’d been fighting in was burnt and battered. It hardly felt real that most of it had been me and not the Vorak.

Tispas tried to pick themselves back up to their knees.

“Lawbreaker too. I doubt they’d drown. You are furfish after all. But the fire I dropped after might do the trick. Might not. I give it a coinflip, really. Depends on if their own Adeptry can save them. See, if I really wanted to make sure all of you were dead, I just wouldn’t need anything fancy; I’d just burn you. I mean, come on! I was trying really hard to set up different attacks and layers at once. Multitasking like this is hard enough for a mind like mine, one like yours wouldn’t even be capable of it…

Tispas struggled to push their torso upright, only for me to kick their chin and send them sprawling again.

“But I really didn’t want to be the kind of person to kill all the subordinates but leave the boss alive. It really, really irks me that you lived at all, much less that it only cost you an arm,” I said coldly. “You gotta understand Marshal, I’m trying to figure out what I should do with you. I won. We’re getting off this moon, and you don’t really have the available forces to stop us. So the dilemma I have now is…what. To. Do. With. You…

“I should kill you. I really should. [God] knows you would in my position. But…you are helping Nora. And you did try to spare my life. And you’re not a threat like this. So if I killed you, I’d be executing a defenseless idiot. It would leave a bad taste in my mouth. So congratulations, you get to live,” I drawled. “Have fun at Reaver’s funeral. Lawbreaker and Railgun’s too if they don’t make it. Maybe Coalition forces will find you like this and capture you properly, maybe your rak can help you pull out of the colony in time. I don’t really care. Not my business. This was all just self-defense. I’m not really supposed to be involved in battlefields.”

Tispas, fought to raise their chin high enough to meet my eyes.

“You’re…dangerous…the Beacons,” the croaked.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” I said in mock comfort. “I’ll make sure everyone knows it’s your fault. Because you know the only thing you had to do to sort out this Beacon mess?”

They stared back at me blankly.

“Ask,” I said. “I don’t even think you would have needed to declare a cease fire or anything. All you had to do was be willing to ask me if I could cooperate over these Beacons. But instead you made threats, coveted the information you knew might convince us…all you had to do was take the tiniest step toward meeting me halfway, and I would have. I would have pouted the whole time, been frustrated and upset at you changing your tune, being inconsistent, even deceptive. But I would have met you halfway. Nora too.”

“The Coalition…would never have allowed it…” Tispas croaked.

“Maybe Laranta wouldn’t have played [ball] with you, maybe, if you’d asked her, she wouldn’t have told me…” I conceded. “But we’ll never know now, will we? Because you never tried. You know Atho Azinza? What am I talking about, you’re a fleet Marshal, of course you’ve read Azinza. You remember this one? ‘Curiosity without fear’ is what?”

“…Endangerment,” they quoted.

“But fear with out curiosity is not caution,” I continued the quote. “It’s idiocy. Next time? Don’t be an idiot. Remember your due diligence and actually make sure talking won’t solve your problems, don’t just assume it. And I have just the thing to help you remember…”

I put my hand on their head and cascaded their brain.

“See, I’ve learned a lot about psionics the last few months—I ought to have. It’s really not… feasible… to shove things into just any mind. You can't do it by force. It works best when the person is willing to accept them. The reflex to reject foreign and unfamiliar structures of thinking is just too strong..most of the time. I accidentally forced psionics into my own...well, 'I' forced psionics into someone's brain by accident. See, strength can be depleted, even mental reflexive strength. After Korbanok we were exhausted, depleted…I just wasn't prepared to reject the structure...kinda like you are now.”

Neither of me had any experience putting psionics into a Vorak brain, but my intro-module was already adapted for three different flavors of alien. It should be flexible enough for a fourth.

“Feel that?” I asked, dropping a special version of the intro-module into the Marshal’s mind. “You’re on death’s door, you’re in pain, your focus is lousy…you don’t have the strength to push away my construct. Don’t you worry. It’s not harmful. It’s the same thing I’ve put in dozens of aliens already. Look it over. Learn about what I made. Realize just how stupid this [crusade] of yours really…is…what’s this?”

As I stayed in contact with the fresh module, I found something became visible in his mind. A flat oblong piece of thought, printed with the words ‘Daniel Martin’.

A little psionic dogtag.

“Martin…” I whispered. I’d never learned his last name before. The Marshal must have seen Daniel in his last moments. Gleaned something from his mind, probably even by accident.

There was no way Tispas wasn't aware it was in their brain. Was this what had them so paranoid? Something they couldn't begin to approach or comprehend carved in their mind, innocently nagging at them for months? It wasn't special. The construct didn't do anything. It was even simpler than the psionic pages I/Caleb kept mental files with.

Marshal Tispas's paranoia had been fueled by just two words on a flat oval.

Ridiculous.

Idiotic.

I couldn’t just snatch it out of his mind. Psionics were about addition, not subtraction. But there was no way I was leaving it in the Marshal’s mind.

Luckily, I was still not Caleb Hane. I could feel the balance in myself shifted toward that half of me for the moment, but I was still two people of one mind right now. Things not normally possible were available to me.

I couldn’t just magically remove the dog tag, but I could add something that could...move it for me.

It was like a toy robot, only good for one action. But dropping my improvised construct into Tispas’s mind went off without a hitch. The toy robot grabbed the dog tag and flung it away.

My mind caught it.

“Be seeing you, Marshal,” I said.

“What did…what did you do?!” they asked.

Not bothering to answer, I left Tispas on the street and started making my way north.

While my Caleb half’s body had fought off four otters, my Nai half had been going after Shaper. They’d reached a critical mass of creatures. Against any other Adept, even an uncoalesced Nai, it would have been game over.

But like I was now, numbers weren’t enough to overwhelm me.

Every creature died in flames, but Shaper slipped away anyway. Picking their mind out from those of their creatures proved more difficult than I’d expected, and I didn’t want to get dragged into a prolonged chase.

After burning through this many creatures…Shaper wouldn’t recover enough mass quickly enough to build a creature big enough to dig for the underground pylons.

And since no headliners were moving to take the power substation, the rest of the Vorak forces seemed to be settling into the outskirts of town for a siege.

They wouldn’t make any progress gaining control of the colony power systems until they went on the offensive. That could take days while they licked their wounds.

The Jackie Robinson would be long gone by then, and us with it.

Which meant I was no longer contributing on this battlefield, which made continuing to risk myself here unworthwhile.

My Nai self could break into one of the north tram platforms and have one ready for Tasser and my Caleb self on arrival.

“Hey,” I said, holding up a fist. “Four rak down. Mind telling local forces they might be able to bag Marshal Tispas in person if they hurry?”

Tasser bumped my fist, but he looked worried.

“I kept Serral apprised,” my friend said. “I don’t think people are going to believe it without seeing it though. I was watching, and I hardly believe it myself.”

“Sorry about not communicating more,” I said. “I’m…two minds right now. It felt easier to focus on what was in front of me…us…gah. It’s hard to put it into words.”

“…Are you still connected with Nai?” he asked.

“I am Nai—” I started to say. “I mean…yes. Still connected. I’m Caleb. I’m just…also Nai, until we rendezvous, I think. I pushed this body of mine pretty hard. I might need help walking soon.”

“Yeah. You got it, brother,” Tasser said.

“[Hermano,]” I told Tasser. I clutched Daniel’s psionic dog tag.

“What?”

“[Hermano] is [Spanish] for ‘brother’,” I told him. “Daniel called me that when he was in my head.”

“Hermano…” Tasser said. “I like it, but are you sure you’re doing alright?”

“Yeah. I’ll make it.”

We stayed off the rooftops while we went north. Without the adrenaline pumping so much, I was feeling the massive fatigue I’d built up in both my bodies—the human one more than Farnata. Staying Coalesced helped with the pain, trading it back and forth kept the worst of it in a sort of suspension. But it would all come down on me when I stopped passing the buck to myself and back again.

I led Tasser underground as we neared my Farnata body’s location.

Ow.

Coming back closer together made differentiating harder. Just talking about who was moving closer to whose position was getting tangled.

Trying to figure out how to get the tram running was making my brain hurt worse.

“Okay…” I said, coming into sight of…myself. “Aghh…okay, okay. Differentiation again…just in reverse, right? Disentangle…”

I counted the fingers on my hands again, deciding to go alphabetically.

“Five fingers, I’m Caleb,” I said. “Four fingers makes me Nai. Okay…okay…in three…two… one.”

The superconnector pulled back and identity snapped back into place.

I was just Caleb Hane again.

“Ow…” I winced. A killer headache broke out instantly. The same appeared to be true for Nai.

“You two okay?” Tasser asked.

“More or less,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“I feel like my brain is going to squeeze out my ears,” Nai said. “Can you see about getting the tram going? And making sure Serral knows we’re coming?”

“Of course,” Tasser said. “You two just collapse on the tram, I guess.”

Nai and I did just that while Tasser rummaged around in the booth on the platform.

There was nothing for Nai and I to say to each other right now. We’d been exposed to each other’s every thought until moments earlier.

Tasser threw a lever and our tram lurched into motion. He burst out of the booth, leaping aboard with us.

The three of us broke out into grins as the tram rolled north for Coskit base.

We arrived a few minutes later having broken out into fits of laughter. We were all alive. We’d kicked the Vorak in the teeth.

And this time we were all getting off this moon.