It took a few hours for the portal back to the real world to open. At first, Dyna and November had considered wandering off in search of a natural spatial anomaly or somewhere Dyna could use her stolen information from the mountain man to force open a gap in the noosphere—though she hadn’t said that part aloud—however, O’Neil stopped them. He was certain that the scientists would reopen the portal.

They did, though not right away. First, they opened up tiny pinhole portals for a good hour or two. Dyna assumed that the portal wasn’t failing and that the pinholes, even though they quickly collapsed, were intentional. Probably investigating the noosphere with various instruments to try to determine the best course of action in dealing with an escaped mountain man. Dyna used the time to drag November and Ruby away from O’Neil and the other guard that hadn’t made it back through.

She quickly explained what she had discovered. Or what her other self had discovered. Her collection of selves? Dyna wasn’t entirely sure that there was a distinction. She was herself, after all, as were the rest of herselfs. At least right now. Apart, she would grow separately from herself, developing along different paths, even if they were all the same at their core.

“Listen to yourself,” November said, tapered arms crossed over her chest. “You need to not do that again. You’re going to go insane. I can’t believe you were so reckless in the first place.”

“I’m fine,” Dyna said, shaking her head. “Disoriented a bit, but I’m pretty sure most of the other mes were ripped out when that thing ran off.”

Dyna had not mentioned that the fleeing mountain man was actually Dyna-tulpa. Just in case. Dyna didn’t believe either would go talk about it, but the less people who knew a secret, the more likely it was to stay safe. Besides, none of them could communicate with Dyna-tulpa, so it wasn’t like she was harming potential collaborative efforts.

“So, one of the administrators is behind Ignotus?” Ruby asked with a scowl.

“That’s what I gather from what I saw while merged with the mountain man.” Dyna paused, then decided not to mention Alpha’s name just yet. Not to keep this one a secret, necessarily, but just to not bias their responses. “I doubt it is Theta. I’ve spent a lot of time with him and… if he wants me dead, he is doing an amazing job of hiding it.”

“Not Gamma,” November said, “I can tell.”

“Can you?”

“Stray thoughts.” Shrugging, November added, “I’ve spent a decent amount of time around her as part of Phrenomorphics. Enough time that I doubt I wouldn’t have picked up on something like this.”

“Alright. So that’s two down,” Dyna said, looking to the other two expectantly.

Ruby crossed her arms. “Never met any other administrator.”

“They seem reclusive.” November sighed. The one light at the back of her eye-pit dimmed briefly. “I can actively attempt to pursue stray thoughts rather than just grabbing those that drift too close.”

“Are you alright, by the way?” Dyna asked. “You did eat a fairly large chunk of the mountain man.”

November shifted, looking away. “Larger integration than I would have liked, but I didn’t want it to rejoin after we finally managed to hurt it.” She paused, considering. “Although large, it isn’t as… jarring as I would have expected from integrating so much at once. I’m pretty sure I’m still myself, though I suppose the two of you might be better judges than I.”

“You seem normal,” Dyna said with a shrug. “While it was inside me, I… It wasn’t a contiguous being like you and I are. It was a smattering of thoughts shoved together and given purpose. Although it was a large chunk you ate, I imagine your strong personality was enough to overpower random and occasionally conflicting thoughts. In other words, it had no real sense of self. You do. Maybe. Does that sound right?”

November shrugged, but didn’t answer before another bright pinhole portal opened at the other end of the chamber. Unlike the previous few, this one slowly started to widen. It didn’t open fully, not right away, but it opened enough for Dyna to see through to the other side.

She had to force her jaw shut as she walked closer.

The Carroll Institute had pulled out all the stops. There were hundreds of soldiers in the room, positioned around the portal. Automated turrets had been set around the walls. Walter stood in the middle of the group with several artificers at his side, Alex, Emerald, and Hematite. The way Hematite held her cybernetic arm made Dyna wonder if she had weapons implanted in it. A hidden gun or maybe a disruptor. Then, Dyna wondered if she could force weapons into it by thinking about it hard enough, much as she did with the coil gun or even the disruptor gun she had used on the mountain man just a while ago. The noosphere might have helped with the latter weapon, but not with the former, so it should be possible. Probably.

Then, Dyna decided that she should probably not think about that at all lest Hematite injure herself because of a surprise weapon she didn’t know she had.

Sapphire was missing, but he probably wouldn’t be able to effectively attack the mountain man. Aquamarine wasn’t present. Dyna had never met him, and just assumed that he was off on some extended mission.

The massive array of satellite dishes that was the new disruptor technology had been moved into the room as well. Dyna could tell that it was powered up even from this side of the portal. The air around it just… looked far less stable than anything in reality had any right to be.

Dyna didn’t want to disparage the precautions or preparation they had taken. Not after they had only taken down the mountain man through a hastily constructed gadget the first time around. Yet, she did wonder what they would all think when they realized that the ‘mountain man’ was long gone.

It took another few hours to get everyone back through to the other side. There were procedures to follow and protocols that prevented Dyna and everyone else from simply walking through the portal. She didn’t want to walk around only to get shot on accident. Or on purpose, given what she now knew. Really, it would probably only take one financially burdened security guard to ‘panic’ and pull the trigger at an opportune moment and Ignotus will have accomplished their goal.

Except, Dyna doubted they would do that. She didn’t understand the motive behind using Ignotus and the tulpa, but it was clearly there for a reason. If Alpha had been able to simply walk into her room and smother her with a pillow, she surely would have done so by now. If it was just wanting to keep her hands clean, someone with the reach of the administrators could probably hire a hitman.

Why use tulpa at all? Cost? Resources? Was Ignotus all some giant experiment? With the way some of the scientists around the Carroll Institute acted, Dyna wouldn’t be surprised. The administrators were all just scientists with fancy titles anyway, weren’t they?

After finally being escorted through the portal, they put Dyna into a decontamination chamber. She was always going to have to go through it, even if the mountain man hadn’t escaped, so she knew what to expect. There were just too many unknowns with the noosphere. Nobody knew what might follow her out of there.

Of course, if nobody knew what might follow her, she wasn’t sure how they planned on getting rid of whatever it might be, but she could understand the sentiment behind not wanting to bring some brain virus through to reality.

If anyone was going to do that, she imagined it would be Ignotus, but protocol was protocol.

Decontamination took another hour. Then, Dyna was thrust straight into debriefing.

Dyna didn’t bother lying about anything that happened outside her own mind. O’Neil and that other guard had seen enough that lying would be pointless. Even what happened in her mind, she didn’t so much as lie regarding it as she simply omitted it, claiming to have passed out and awoken in time to watch the mountain man flee with a few scraps of memories remaining in her mind.

The man debriefing her, a Phrenomorphics scientist Dyna didn’t know, seemed particularly interested in how she generated stray thoughts at will to attack the mountain man. They spent… Dyna didn’t even know how long discussing the topic.

Dyna finally emerged to find both November and Ruby waiting for her. That was despite her having been taken from decontamination into debriefing first. November had less to talk about regarding the incident than she did? Dyna found that hard to believe.

Walter and Emerald were present as well. Dyna wanted to go up to them, to tell them at least everything she had told November and Ruby. One thing stalled her.

A bright red light set under an array of five lenses in the upper corner of the room.

Beatrice… had to be cut out. Completely. Dyna, Emerald, Ruby, and November had already taken steps to do that, driving out into the desert on their own to talk, but it wasn’t enough. As much as Dyna liked Beatrice, knowing that even one administrator had it out for her made it impossible to trust her with any amount of information. Not unless she could figure out how to cut Beatrice off from their control over her.

And wasn’t that a thought.

If Dyna could figure out how to free Beatrice, Beatrice would be able to tell her everything. Every last dirty secret that the administrators had. Exactly which ones were part of Ignotus and which weren’t. Beatrice probably to know that—or at least had evidence for one of them, likely Alpha—it was just that the administrators were in control of Beatrice. Alpha could easily have put some gag order in place, preventing Beatrice from speaking about it to anyone, potentially even the other administrators. The other administrators might have been able to remove the block, but only if they suspected it was there in the first place.

Dyna considered dropping some hints to Theta or Gamma. But then, Beatrice would just be trading one master for another. Maybe it would help her figure out who was part of Ignotus, but maybe not at the same time. If other administrators were using Alpha, they could have kept their noses clean even from Beatrice.

Maybe.

Honestly, Dyna had no idea exactly how far Beatrice could reach. Especially while operating at an elevated level.

“Your experiment failed,” Walter said, arms crossed. He stared a moment from behind his mirrored lenses, pressing his lips together, before he finally dropped his gaze. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Me too,” Dyna said, then shot Ruby a particularly pointed look. “I’m glad all of us are alright.”

Ruby, of course, put on a fiery glare. “You were in trouble.”

“Everything was under control.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe,” Dyna shrugged, then looked back to Walter. “And, as I explained to that debriefing guy, the experiment didn’t fail. I wanted to see the difference in power level between a naturally advanced tulpa like the Hatman and tulpa that Ignotus has been using. In that respect, it succeeded quite well,” Dyna said, nodding toward November. “Containment failed. And I’m going to say that is entirely the fault of Phrenomorphics.”

“Don’t let Gamma hear that,” Walter said. “She has been…”

When he trailed off, Emerald chipped in with a serene smile. “Ranting and raving like a madwoman.”

“Upset,” Walter finished. “I imagine she will be even more livid now that we have confirmed the mountain man did not merely break containment, but escaped completely. None of our noosphere scanning devices have been able to detect its presence for hours now.”

At least Dyna-tulpa got away, Dyna didn’t say. “She doesn’t blame me for that, does she?” It would be just her luck to have made another actual enemy.

“Doubtful. When you proposed your experiment, the scientists in charge believed that, because matter can pass into the noosphere unaffected, the containment device would function properly while over there. It is clear that was not the case… Unless…” Walter drew in a breath. Dyna could tell that he was locking eyes with her even with his glasses in the way. “Did you think the containment device would fail?”

Dyna’s eyes widened. “No. I didn’t try to make it fail. I didn’t think it would fail. I… I guess I didn’t really think it wouldn’t fail either. Until the glass started to crack, I don’t think I thought about it much at all. Once the glass did start to crack…” Trailing off, Dyna shrugged. “I guess it was a foregone conclusion at that point.”

Walter stared, and then slowly nodded his head.

Ruby looked back and forth between Dyna and Walter with a frown. “What?”

“She makes things happen with her mind,” Emerald said, crossing her arms.

November nodded her head.

“Since when did you know?” Dyna asked.

Emerald shrugged. “I do my investigations,” she said, looking at her green-painted fingernails. “The real question is: When did you figure it out?”

Dyna pressed her lips together. “Probably since I made a lightning gun on accident,” she said, glancing to Walter. “But it was more of a suspicion than knowing. It really clicked when I made alterations to the disruptor in the noosphere.”

“Was it easier over there?” November asked.

“How am I supposed to know? It isn’t like I’ve been doing it intentionally. I can’t control it. If I could, I doubt I’d have people trying to kill me right now. They’d just…” Dyna waved her hand, wiggling her finger. “Vanish, or something.” Frowning, Dyna looked around the room. “Everyone knew and nobody said anything?”

“I didn’t know,” Ruby snapped. “How come everyone else knew and didn’t tell me?”

Emerald just smiled at the younger girl, then looked up to Dyna. “I figured if you didn’t know, there was a reason you didn’t know.”

“I tried to tell you,” November said. The sparks of television snow in her eyes were far more intense now, Dyna noted. Probably because of the mountain man. “You didn’t listen.”

Walter, however, crossed his arms. “We told you once. It… caused issues.”

“I think I would remember that,” Dyna said, frown turning to a glare. Her eyes shifted to Ruby for just a moment before locking on Walter. “You did something to my memories?”

“No. The theory is that you did something to your memories. We are unsure what.” He paused while Dyna tapped her foot on the ground, annoyed, but continued talking in short order. “After that, it was decided that we would take a slower approach, test things cautiously. We brought you here. I don’t think you fail to remember anything that has happened since.”

Dyna stared a moment longer, but Walter didn’t so much as flinch. “So, what now?”

“Well, the Carroll Institute’s continued existence is a good sign. I have no authorization to tell you what happened last time you became aware of your ability, but… well…”

Dyna’s eyes widened slightly, putting the two statements together in context. “I did something to the entire Carroll Institute?”

“No.”

No elaboration.

“We’ll continue taking this slowly,” Walter said, “but the current state of things should, hopefully mollify the fears of some of the administration council.”

Dyna locked her jaw, keeping her face carefully neutral. Just as carefully, she did not look at either November or Ruby. Emerald and Walter needed to be warned about Alpha, but she couldn’t do that now. Just asking to go for a drive might be suspicious too. She would have to think up some excuse to get them away from here where they could talk.

“Right,” she said slowly. “Well, I don’t really want to die, so we just continue hunting down Ignotus-33, then? Make sure whoever is leading them pays?”

Maybe she shouldn’t taunt the administrator who was certainly watching them through Beatrice right now, but at the same time…

Well… she was going to make them pay.