Dyna felt like she needed more arms. It wasn’t the first time she felt like this either. Between the mirror, the watch, a gun, and her phone—though she lacked the latter item in this particular instance—she just didn’t have the dexterity to make use of all her equipment. She made a mental note to look into possible gadgets or artifacts that might give her telekinesis of some sort.

For now, she had swapped her watch from her left arm to her right arm, letting her hold her gun while leaving her offhand free to hold her mirror. If something startled her, she was fully prepared to toss the mirror in order to twist the bezel as far as she could as fast as she could.

Which was important for her current strategy.

“Hello!” Dyna shouted. “Is anyone around? Anyone at—”

The moment she heard a footstep behind her, Dyna’s eyes flicked to the mirror. She didn’t hold onto it long enough to actually look, but she was hoping her subconscious picked up on the image in the falling mirror. Without any hesitation, she grasped her watch and turned.

The world lurched around her as Dyna found herself backward a few steps, several seconds before she shouted. Looking behind her, Dyna started walking past a few small cubicles on her way to what she had seen in the mirror. If asked to tell someone what she had seen, she doubted she would have had anything articulate to say. Yet, walking along the cubicles with one of the PP-2000s at the ready, Dyna spotted a poster on the wall that gave her deja vu.

It was a workplace warning sign asking anyone who noticed even minor instances of deja vu to contact Doctor Darq immediately.

Dyna narrowed her eyes at the poster before slowly turning around. Opposite from the poster was a small office room. Blinds closed over the large window in the door didn’t let her see inside. The plaque against the wall identified the room as belonging to Kit Maple, Logistical Director.

She couldn’t speak with absolute certainty. Still, having just jumped back a few seconds in time, she was fairly certain there was someone inside.

Not wanting to run into guns aimed at the door, Dyna moved back around cover and placed her mirror on the desk of the cubicle she was in, making sure it was within her line of sight as she leaned around to watch the door. Then, she started shouting again.

“Hello? Anyone here?” she called out.

So far, she had successfully ambushed two different groups of tulpa plus the pair outside the elevator. Shouting then using her wristwatch gadget immediately after was the safest way she could think of to move through the facility. Between the criss-crossing corridors, offices, and cubicles providing cover, there were too many blind spots. Gunfire had drawn one of those groups, but the other had come to her words. The forewarning of knowing exactly where someone was going to come from and even what direction they were going to face made ambushes almost distressingly simple.

Dyna kept the fold-out buttstock of her submachine gun nestled firmly in the crook of her shoulder, she held the gun with only a single hand. She doubted she would be quite as accurate, but she wanted her other hand reaching underneath to grab her watch just in case someone came up from another direction.

“Hello?” Dyna called out again.

The door clicked at the same time.

Dyna removed her finger from the trigger, resting it against the frame of the gun.

A younger woman with curly brown hair streaked with blond highlights poked her head out. Dyna couldn’t decide if she looked frightened or simply too tired to deal with everything that was going on. Some cross of both, maybe. Although she held a small pistol in her hands as she peered out into the larger room, she didn’t look experienced. In fact, Dyna found herself thinking back to how she looked roughly a year ago.

Unfortunately, a year ago, Dyna would probably have started shooting the moment something startled her. The woman hadn’t noticed Dyna yet, but if she did, Dyna ran the risk of getting attacked.

Dyna didn’t know why this person was in Kit Maple’s office. The woman probably wasn’t a tulpa. She definitely wasn’t an attacker. The lanyard dangling from her neck had the hexagon symbol of Tartarus prominently displayed.

Twisting the watch on her wrist, Dyna went back for an alternative approach to the situation.

Instead of shouting down the hall, Dyna lightly knocked on the door. “Hello? Director Maple?” Best to pretend like she didn’t know that someone else was in the room.

“Who’s there?”

“My name is Dyna Graves. I’m here to help.” After a moment, in the hopes that the name would give her some legitimacy, she added, “Doctor Darq sent me.”

There was a pause. The voice on the other side of the door sounded closer, which Dyna would absolutely not have recommended from a tactical standpoint unless the glass in the door was bulletproof; Dyna stood well to the side, not wanting the woman inside to shoot at her. “Dyna… that sounds familiar.”

“Tartarus has had a lot of interaction with me,” Dyna said. Given that its leader was a version of herself, that was probably an understatement. “Do you know where Maple is? Or anyone in a position of author…”

Dyna trailed off as the lock on the door clicked and the door slowly started to open. The woman she had just seen poked her head out and quickly locked eyes with Dyna.

“I spoke to you on the phone one time.”

“Oh?” Dyna said. First, she thought that could have been anyone, but she really had only had a few interactions with Tartarus. In recent memory, she had only spoken with one person over the phone. “You are Maple’s sister… right?”

“Tina. Kit is my older brother, yes.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Tina shook her head. “When the alarms first started, I ran here. He has a safe room in the back that is supposed to block out… uh… you.” She looked a bit embarrassed to admit that. “I guess, anyway. He complains about you a lot. I thought he was going to hide away inside the entire time you were here, but…”

“He isn’t here.” Dyna took in a breath then let it out slowly. “Do you know where anyone is? Or do you know how to make an announcement throughout the entire facility?”

“Sorry,” Tina said, shaking her head.

“Is there a phone in there?”

“Oh, yes.”

That was a small relief. None of the cubicles had been equipped with much.

As Tina opened the door for Dyna to step inside, she took a quick look around the room. It was a fairly standard office. A large desk with a terminal and a stack of papers, a large whiteboard with all kinds of colored text written out. The calendar hanging next to the door featured cats in adorable poses. Every date had something scribbled into its box.

A picture on the desk showed off a younger Kit with a younger Tina riding on his shoulders.

The phone was a typical VoIP phone with a cord on the receiver for some reason. Shaking her head, Dyna picked it up and dialed a familiar number. The first ring cut off before it could really start.

“This is Beatrice.”

“Are there administrators watching your activities right now?” Dyna asked. If she were Alpha—assuming Alpha was behind this attack—Dyna wasn’t sure if she would be sitting at a terminal observing Beatrice or somewhere else monitoring the attack. The former option might leave too much evidence behind for the other administrators to notice.

“Information regarding the Carroll Institute Administrative Council has been restricted under Class Z clearance.”

Dyna somewhat expected that answer. “Are you aware of what is currently occurring?”

“Too many results. Please try again with a more specific query.”

“Do you know where I am?”

“Onyx is assigned to Tartarus for an information retrieval mission.”

“Do you know what is going on here?”

“Unknown. Tartarus systems remain impregnable to the Beatrice system.”

“Tough. I need you to hack into Tartarus now. Contact Theta and get your permissions elevated to their maximum, then get into Tartarus.”

“Attempts at penetrating Tartarus security systems have failed in the past.”

“You can do this, Beatrice. I know you can. I need to get an announcement into the facility. Lives are counting on it. Walter’s and Id’s at the very least. Maybe the entire rest of the facility too.”

There was an uncharacteristic hesitation on the other end of the line. “Walter is in danger?” Halfway through her question, a garbled whispering, repetitive echoing, and strange static-like noises started up. The noise that Dyna associated with an elevated operating state.

“That is correct. There is a tulpa here capable of shutting down thought just by looking at someone. You can’t think while it is looking at you, leaving you helpless. I have reason to believe it will shut down artifacts, gadgets, and other psionics as well.” Dyna paused. “There is also an Egyptian cat goddess running around. Maybe.”

Tina raised an eyebrow as Dyna said that, but Dyna paid her little mind, continuing to talk to Beatrice.

“I’m sitting at Logistical Director Kit Maple’s desk. If I can do anything to facilitate your access from here—”

“Understood,” Beatrice said. “Reconnecting you to Id.”

Dyna didn’t even have a moment to speak before she heard a light click in the background of Beatrice’s noise. The next voice she heard was her own, though somewhat distorted, likely from Id’s mask.

“—little busy at the moment.”

“Id?”

“Dyna? As much as it is a relief to hear you’re alright, I’ve got too many of these PP-2000 wielders breathing down my neck to talk.”

“Talk anyway,” Dyna said. She had expected to make an intercom announcement. This was a close second, she supposed. “This is important. A tulpa attacked myself and Darq in the lower part of Tartarus. Its gaze interrupts thought and psionics. It instantly killed other tulpa just by looking at them. Darq and I managed to send it to the top floor of the building, but it is likely loose. I don’t know where it will be heading or what it will be doing.”

“That explains Walter,” Id said over the sound of gunfire. “He just stopped moving a moment ago and wound up hit. I managed to drag him into a secure room, but we’re under attack and he is injured. No idea how bad it is.”

“This is going to sound like a strange question, maybe, but did you happen to see a lot of cats running around?”

Id grunted. A few louder reports from a gun forced Dyna to pull the phone away from her ear. “What did you do?”

“Do not harm the cats under any circumstances.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Egyptian cat goddess. It was angry with the eye-tulpa for harming its cats last I saw it.”

“Lovely. Any other complications to add to my day?”

“Not that I can think of. I’m currently in Kit Maple’s office on the third floor. His sister is here, but no sign of him. How do I reach you from here?”

“Walter and I are on floor nineteen. We were attempting to reach Ado on floor seventeen when the elevators seized up. The way to the stairs is blocked by a dozen of these things. Maybe more. I have a solution but executing it is proving more difficult than I would like.”

Dyna wondered how long ago that was. The elevator had been working for her and presumably the eye-tulpa. Then again, having come from the noosphere, they might have used more esoteric elevators than was standard in upper Tartarus.

“Beatrice,” Dyna said, “can you get the elevators working?”

“System penetration attempts still in progress. Connecting to Id was through a phone number left with the Carroll Institute, not through Tartarus internal systems.”

“If I can get a few moments,” Id said, “I’ll attempt to open our firewall—against my better judgment.”

“Having live tactical battlefield data has saved my life in the past.”

“Yes, but with what we discussed in the secure room earlier, you can understand my hesitance to allow them into my home.”

Dyna didn’t have a response to that. She had known about that complication when she first contacted Beatrice, hence her first questions. Just getting into contact with Id had been worth it, but she couldn’t say if more would outweigh the negatives. It was entirely possible that Alpha would direct Beatrice to locking down the entire facility except whatever doors the eye-tulpa would need to reach its targets.

Pushing that thought aside, Dyna looked back to the door. “I’m going to take the stairs for now, I suppose. I wish Darq had said to go to a higher floor,” she mumbled, more to herself than anyone else on the line.

“Is Darq safe?”

“Unless there are more tulpa in lower Tartarus, then yes. Ruby is there as well. She… didn’t have a good reaction to the eye-tulpa’s gaze.” Dyna took a breath. “I’m going to—Oh. I just remembered. It is vital that the Continuity Engine remains fully functional until we’ve dealt with the eye-tulpa.”

Id did not respond right away. There was a long, empty pause. Dyna wondered if she was working on something and was about to ask if it was anything useful when she started talking again. “All the more reason to reach Ado and not let interlopers have access to our network.”

Dyna pressed her lips together. She hadn’t thought about that. If Alpha was watching and gave Beatrice the order to shut it down, the eye-tulpa would walk all over them without anyone able to stop them simply because Dyna wouldn’t be able to stop herself from messing with reality.

“Beatrice. Abort attempts to infiltrate the Tartarus systems. I’m going to leave you here with Tina Maple. Try to organize yourselves as much as you can. If you can possibly get her access to the announcement system or direct her to a security room, that would be for the best.”

Alpha might still order Beatrice to try. All she could hope for now was that between her own power going against Alpha’s desires and Beatrice not wanting to comply with Alpha in the first place, it would hamper her ability to maliciously access the systems.

Of course, if Beatrice had contacted Theta as Dyna asked her to, Theta would likely continue monitoring the situation. Making an overtly hostile action like disabling the Continuity Engine would surely tip him and the other administrators off.

Shaking her head before she descended into a spiral of circular reasoning about the degree to which Beatrice should try to assist, Dyna said, “I’m on my way.”

“Good luck. Don’t die on me. I would rather not find out what happens.”

“Beatrice system standing down. Seeking alternate routes to assist.”

Dyna placed the receiver down on the desk without hanging it back up. She looked across the desk to find Tina just staring at her.

“I probably should have had that on speaker phone, huh?”

“I’m still hung up on Egyptian cat goddess. That’s a metaphor, right?”

“Nope.” Dyna motioned to the phone. “Beatrice will tell you how you can help. Sorry to put that on you, but it is probably safer than running through the facility like I’m about to do.”

“You don’t want someone else coming with you?”

Dyna looked the tired woman up and down. “No offense, but you look like you’re barely able to stand there. Didn’t you say you were sick or something?”

“Or something,” Tina said, glancing aside.

“Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone—especially voices you don’t recognize like mine.” As much as Dyna appreciated being let in, she definitely thought that was a poor decision. “Don’t leave to investigate noise either. Keep out of sight of the window. Maybe move to the safe room if there is a phone and terminal inside.”

The room didn’t look like it held a safe room, but maybe it was hidden behind the bookshelf or something.

“Good luck!” Dyna said, moving around Tina. “Listen to Beatrice, but…” she trailed off, not sure how to warn about Alpha without going into a deep dive on the politics of the situation and what Beatrice was. Shaking her head, she moved to the door and readied her gun. One hand on the grip and the other on her wristwatch, Dyna slowly nudged the door open.

Hall clear.

Keeping low, she moved along the cubicles. When she had first found herself on this floor, she had noticed the emergency stairs right next to the elevator. It was a bit of a walk to get back to them, but thankfully she didn’t have to get into any fights along the way. The few tulpa she had dispatched were still as dead as she had left them.

Before entering the stairwell, she performed a quick test on the elevator. The elevator car was still on her floor and the doors opened, but the buttons weren’t lit up. Pressing them didn’t get the car moving.

Pushing open the door to the stairwell, Dyna let out a withering sigh. The stairs zig-zagged back and forth between landings. There was a small gap between each set of stairs, allowing her to look up.

“That’s… a lot of stairs.”