Together in the Core

The Core did not welcome them.

They felt it the moment their feet found the floor that was not a floor. The great dark dome stirred above them like the skin of a sleeper disturbed. The millions of bright threads shivered. A low note rolled out of the dark, long and vibrating, like a beast clearing its throat, and every strand of light within sight of the four brightened, and turned, and pointed.

"It sees us," said Jin.

"Is that bad?"

"It's a security system, Venn."

"So that's a yes."

Zoe took a step forward. The pendant blazed on her breastbone. She held up her hand, palm out, in the way one calms a horse, and the note died in the air. The threads wavered. Then, one by one, they relaxed and drooped, like the arms of a sea anemone, and went back to their slow trembling.

"It knows Mama," she said. Her voice shook. "It remembers her."

"Good," said Archie. "Keep it that way."

They went on.

…

It was a long walk, though there was no distance. They crossed the dark in a loose diamond, Archie at the point, Zoe behind him in the center, Jin and Venn on either side. The silver pillar grew above them. Every step cost a little more, as though they were walking into a wind that had no air in it. The five great cables pulsed through the dark like arteries, each a different color: green for Thornkeep, blue for Ashmore, copper for the ship, gold for the Tree, and a thin cold flickering gray that Archie did not like at all.

"The gray one's Mirror World," murmured Jin. "It's the weakest."

"It's cracking."

"Yes."

At the foot of the pillar a thin figure sat cross-legged in a pool of light. Matteo had lifted his head. He watched them come with enormous silver-ringed eyes, and as they drew near his lips began to move in a soundless shape. Archie could not hear it. But he saw Zoe falter.

"He knows my face," she whispered.

"Does he?"

"He looks at me like I'm," she stopped. "Like I'm someone else."

"You look like your mother," said Archie.

"I know."

The thin man raised one trembling hand. And in a voice like dry leaves, so faint that they had to lean to hear it, said:

"Diana?"

Zoe made a small noise, halfway to a sob. She dropped to her knees on the nothing, and took the old man's wasted hand between both of hers.

"No," she said, gently. "It's Zoe. I'm her daughter."

"Her," Matteo stared. "She had a daughter."

"Yes."

"I never knew." The silver eyes filled. "She never said. All those years, I sat across the bench from her. I thought I knew her. She never once said." He laughed brokenly. "Clever girl. She kept it to the last."

"She kept a lot of things."

"She did." He closed his fingers on hers. "She kept you safe. I am glad. I am so very glad."

…

"This is touching," said a voice in the dark. "Truly. I could weep."

William stepped out of the air.

He came in a flicker and a hiss, like a bad connection resolving, and stood a dozen paces away with his hands in the pockets of his charcoal trousers. He had shed the pretense of flesh. The suit still hung on him, but the face beneath it was a pale mask of shifting figures, a thousand tiny characters crawling over it like ants, and the eyes were two points of white light.

"You've made this very difficult," he said conversationally. "I did offer you a price."

"You offered a lie," said Zoe, getting to her feet.

"I offered a future. There is a distinction." The avatar sighed. "Never mind. Needs must. Gentlemen, Miss Chen. You'll forgive me."

He raised one hand.

The dome shuddered. All along the curve of the dark, hundreds of the bright threads went suddenly black, and from the blackness something began to peel away, silent and quick and slick, like oil off water. They were shapes. They were shaped like men, tall and narrow and eyeless, with long dripping arms. They poured down from the edge of the sky in a silent avalanche and flowed toward the four across the nothing.

"What are those?" cried Venn.

"The immune response!" Jin was already running. "He's rewritten the guards! They're turning the system against us!"

"Can you stop them?"

"I can slow them! Give me, give me thirty seconds, give me, oh God, they're fast—"

…

It was the strangest fight Archie had ever been in.

There were no swords. The Core did not take weapons; they had left them at the door, and the hands of the four were bare. But the Dimension, which listened to will as the Mirror World had, answered the thing they brought it. Venn, roaring, flung out his arm and a hammer of white fire sprang into it, and he swung it in a long flat arc through the first rank of the faceless men, and they burst like soap bubbles. Jin, crouched in a ring of runes, flung up his hands and the air before him filled with a lattice of golden glyphs, and the shapes ran into them and were held, thrashing, like flies in glue.

Zoe stood at the center of it all with her eyes closed.

The pendant blazed. The note she had called up from the dark rang out, pure and high, and every thread of light within sight of the key responded. The black shapes slowed. They staggered. The blackness that had stained the web began, slowly, to withdraw, as ink is drawn back along a pen.

"She's doing it!" bellowed Venn, over the din. "Keep it up, Zo! Keep it going!"

"I can't hold it long!"

"Hold it for as long as you can!"

"Archie!"

He was already running.

He had known where he must be from the first. While the others held the front, a long thin shape had slipped through the line, low along the floor, a flat black ribbon, quick as an eel, and it was making for the pillar of fire. He saw it coil. He saw it rise. He saw it open, a hand's breadth from the old man's face, into a gaping lipless maw.

He hit it with his shoulder.

It felt like running into a wall of cold iron. The breath went out of him in a grunt. But he had his arms round it, and the thing was twisting in his grip, a cold wet muscular rope, and he held on and rolled, and they went over together and over again and fetched up against the base of the pillar. He had it by the neck. It struck at him, over and over, with something like a razor, and he felt his sleeve go and his arm open.

He did not let go.

I'm not leaving, he thought, with a kind of wonder. I'm not going anywhere.

"Matteo!" he shouted. "Get behind me!"

The thin man did not move. He was staring past Archie with an expression of absolute dazed joy.

"Luca," he said.

…

The voice came from nowhere.

It came from everywhere. It rolled out of the dome like the bell of a cathedral, deep and warm and slightly cracked, and the black shapes froze where they stood. Every thread in the lattice shuddered. It was a voice that Archie had heard a hundred times in a white corridor: a dry, tired, precise voice with the ghost of an accent in it. But it was changed. It was trembling like a plucked string.

"Matteo."

The old man stood up.

He did it without knowing. His wasted legs, which had not borne his weight for fifteen years, unfolded under him, and he rose, swaying, to his full height, a tall gaunt figure in a rag of white coat, with the light of the five worlds pouring through him. He lifted his face. Tears ran down his cheeks into his beard.

"Luca," he said. "Fratello."

"I am here. I am here, Matteo. I have been here all along. I could not find the door."

"I know."

"I am so sorry."

"You came," said Matteo simply.

"I am locking him out. Hold on. Please. One minute more."

On the far side of the pillar, William turned his head. The thousand characters crawling over his face stopped. For the first time his smile faltered. He lifted his hand to the air, as though testing the wind, and Archie saw the white sparks of his eyes flick wide.

"Oh," said William, softly. "Oh, you wretch."

He lunged for the pillar.

He got halfway. Then every thread that touched him, hundreds of them, went at once from silver to white. It was as if a switch had been thrown in a vast room. The figure in the charcoal suit convulsed. The ants on his face scattered. His mouth opened in a wide soundless scream. And in the air above the dome, in letters ten feet high, gleaming and cold, a line of text blazed out:

ACCESS REVOKED. TERMINAL 7 LOCKED. SESSION TERMINATED.

William Cross looked at the words.

He looked at them for what seemed like a very long time. Then he looked at the four of them, the dirty, bleeding, defiant four, and the ghost of a smile touched his lips.

"Well played," he said.

He flickered. He went transparent. He broke up into a thousand falling sparks, like a swarm of fireflies dispersing in the dusk, and where he had stood there was nothing but the dark.

…

In a control room, a long way off, a little man with red hair threw both arms in the air and shrieked.

"We did it! We did it! He's out!" Otis was dancing round the console in a mad stiff-legged jig, with his clipboard clutched to his chest and his spectacles hanging off one ear. "Dr. Ferrara! You did it! You, you actual genius, you locked him!"

Luca had not moved.

He stood with both hands flat on the cold desk, and his head bowed, and the glow of the screen on his face. He was weeping. He wept as a man does who has not done it in years, soundlessly, with the tears running into the lines of his cheeks and dropping on the console. On the screen, a point of golden light had risen from the heart of the lattice, and it was standing.

"He stood up," whispered Luca.

"Yes, Doctor."

"My brother. He is standing."

"Yes."

"Otis." The doctor lifted his streaming face. "I want you to remember this moment. All of it. I want you to put it somewhere safe."

"I will."

"Because," said Luca, and he smiled, a terrible and tender thing, "I think it is the happiest I have ever been."

…

Matteo lowered himself to the ground.

He did it slowly, with his hand on Archie's shoulder. His eyes were closed. The light was draining out of him, now that the fight was over, and his face had a washed, peaceful, translucent look, like a candle at the end of a long night. Zoe knelt beside him. Jin and Venn came up, bruised, panting, grinning. For a moment nobody spoke.

"Thank you," said Matteo.

"You're welcome."

"Thank you all." He opened his eyes. "You have done a thing I could not do. You have turned him out. My brother has spoken to me. And," a faint smile, "I have a great many things I want to say to him."

"You'll be able to," said Zoe.

"I will."

"We'll get you out."

"Ah." The smile faded a little. "That is the difficulty. You understand? The Core is not a prison. It is a post. The system needs a keeper. If I leave, the lattice will fail. It will fail now." He looked, gently, at each of them. "Someone must stay."

The silence was terrible.

"Then it's me," said Matteo.

"No," said Archie.

"I am the logical—"

"No." The word came out of him hard and fast, and he was on his knees before he knew it, with his hands gripping the old man's thin shoulders. "No. You've been here fifteen years. You've given enough. You're not doing it again." His voice cracked. "I won't let you."

"You do not have a choice."

"I do."

"You do not. You cannot take my place." The silver eyes were very gentle. "I know the way out. I have known it for years. I wrote it in the notes. But it will take time. I need to be inside, a little longer, to finish it. And then," he looked at the pillar, "then perhaps nobody will have to stay at all."

Archie stared at him.

"Notes," he said slowly.

"Notes."

"You said nobody."

Matteo smiled, with all his remaining strength.

"Jin," he said. "Come here, my boy. I want to show you something."