This was the angle-gate, that much we'd established. Created just a couple days ago by Justice, the last of his episodes in a courthouse, before he'd begun his rampage in earnest.

But its victim was no entity of law. Soran had been thrown in there, and from our conclusions, he was the only one with any chance whatsoever of leading us to a probability-space of anything other than the randomness that Aesa had already charted around Earth. This had to be our gate.

I swallowed hard and tried not to entertain the possibility that there was any other option. If we believed in Mage...with our lives...than this was it. Through that bizarre, hovering, black triangle, buzzing with some energy that wasn't quite in our dimension, was what we needed to stop Justice.

Which...as I sat here...seemed farcical. Some perfect tactical superweapon from another dimension, the silver bullet that would kill the greatest Exhuman threat ever conceived? It seemed outlandish, contrived even. And for us to learn about it from some strange, completely not-understood entity-thing which hung out in...and arguably killed...my ex-colleague?

The longer I sat here thinking about it, the more this seemed exactly as Aesa put it, a suicide mission. To say nothing of the little snippets of alarming information we were still getting out of Tobias as he walked around the gate, crooning like it was a beautiful baby.

"It's what?" AEGIS asked, her tone both sharp and flat at once.

"Why, of course it's one-way, what would you expect?" he chuckled.

"Athan, he says once we go through, we'd be stuck. They can't like, hold the door open or anything."

"I thought you knew. Your metaphor of a catapult was quite unerring."

"But your metaphor was a phone!" she snapped. "Phones dial both ways."

What we'd come here for was any possible hint of where the gateway led. But no matter how much Tobias stared at it and stroked his goatee, all I saw in there was blackness and unrecognizable stars. If they even were stars.

I knew what it was like in there. I'd been spaced by Justice, too, once. And when Rito picked me up, saving my life from a pocket of slowly-moving time in a vacuum in the void, she told me I should have been dead from radiation, too. My one experience out there, and I should have died three different ways.

Was it really wise to follow the letter and jump into that kind of shit? It wasn't like Mage's powers cared for her living...what if the whole thing was carefully-worded bait to send us catapulting to our own deaths, for whatever unfathomable reasons it might have?

It was just the three of us here. Al and Aesa were working on the launcher-phone-thing in her workshop, and we were hoping to find the third thing we needed before they were done. Having seen Rio at work, I knew just how fast a technopath could build, which was fine by me...but it also meant we had precious little time if we didn't want to be the ones holding everything up.

"So...what happens if we turn it on, point it at this gate, and don't have the tachyons or whatever?" I asked.

"Oh that would be very exciting," Tobias' eyes lit up. "You'd be annihilated, of course. You'd be fired down the line at an astounding rate, only to have nowhere to go at the end of it. I daresay parts of you might reach your destination?"

"Great," I fumed. "Maybe that's Mage's plan, we'll just zip over there, and some shred of my pinky finger will just so happen to land on the button that fires the dimension-crossing Justice zapper weapon."

"Oh that'd be marvelous," he beamed.

I shook my head at him. Maybe it was because he hadn't opened his mouth before, but somehow I'd gotten the impression that he was the most sane of Oasis' high clergy. But when it came down to it, he was just as ridiculous as Rio, excited by anything even remotely connected to his calling, including, or especially, death.

I was just about to spout something else sardonic and pointless when I felt something and stopped. A weird...surging...tingling. Like my hairs standing on end, but...backwards?

"Something wrong?" AEGIS asked, looking over from the angle-gate.

"Something's...definitely weird," I said. "But I'm not sure what. Do you guys feel anything? In the air?"

The two of them exchanged a glance. "No. Is it...hostile?"

I shook my head. "It's not like an ill intent, it's...I mean, it's like a breeze. It's something I'm feeling. You guys really aren't getting this?"

They again confirmed that they were not. AEGIS began scanning in other wavelengths and I started crawling around, feeling the floors for...I dunno, a source of the sensation.

It felt like I thought a hull breach in a spaceship might. All the air getting sucked out of here, in one direction. But there was a hole in reality right there, and it wasn't sucking anything through. If I stood very still and focused very hard, I could feel the tugging sensation, not on everything just...just some things. But all pulled the same way.

I frowned and started to follow, walking out of the decimated courthouse and towards the rest of the city.

Haydn was a small town, and this was our third time in it. First, to deal with what turned out not to be an Exhuman event. And second, to chase down Soran, and led up to a confrontation with Justice. So I'd started to get to know the place pretty well, mostly on account of there being not a lot of place here.

The tugging sensation was leading me from the courthouse towards the library, only a few doors down. A small building, but better cared-for and less pretentious than the last one I'd been in, when hunting down a bookworm Exhuman with Karu.

"Athan, are you okay? You're acting kinda...Rito-ified," AEGIS asked.

"Yeah, sorry. I just...you really don't feel that?"

"Does it feel like a code-X?" she asked, cracking her knuckles over a frown.

"No, just like...there it is again. It's coming from over there."

We were very close now, and I remembered the first time we were here, and the new construction that'd taken over this area.

Either Haydn wasn't at-risk enough to warrant evacuation, or it was too important to evacuate, because despite the global crisis and the time of night, things seemed lively over here still. I recognized the pre-fabs as military, and the way they had rerouted the street around the miniature base informed me that whatever was going on here was more important than straight streets and civic order.

There was a dark, walled-off building, almost fortress-like in its construction, but tiny. No windows, no doors that I could see, just...reinforced walls of metal and concrete. And power lines, lots and lots of power lines, which I realized was what was drawing me here.

Whatever was in that conspicuous building, it was pulling a ton of power, an almost-irresponsible amount. I'd been feeling the draw through all the power lines in the city around me, all converging here.

It had to be important, but you couldn't really tell by looking at it. It was the very center of this little cluster of military buildings, though. There were some pre-fab barracks, a mess tent...not a temporary cloth tent, a permanent one, white with building-sized poles. And what looked like offices, all with guards, looking as alert and bored as guards always did.

I realized it was strange to see people out and about. Every single person I'd seen in the last few days was either panicking or fighting, or my friends. To see people just...there, doing their jobs? It was bizarre.

"What did you find?" AEGIS asked. "Oh. The fort."

"You know this place?"

"Athan, we've been here," she laughed. "Do you remember Celia and Ajax?"

"Yeah. He was a huge jerk, and she was even spacier than you."

She glared at me. "Thanks."

"What? That's not an insult to you."

Her tone told me otherwise as she soldiered on. "Well, they were from a parallel Earth. I guess they had their own catapult-thing, and ever since they came through, if you recall, security robots had followed them. Which is bad, because rampaging robots showing up at random...but good, because apparently the robot tech from that Earth was way better than ours."

"Wait, you think this is like, the backside of a stable-dimension whatever?"

"Stable-linked probabilistic binding. And yeah, probably," she shrugged. "Doesn't do us any good though, as we just established, the gates are one-way only."

I was about to reply when I saw something. Lurking in the shadows near the building, with all the stealth capabilities of a woman wearing pure-white at night, a figure definitely trying to remain hidden nonetheless. And doing a terrible job of it.

"What do you think she's doing?" I asked.

AEGIS bit her lip as she watched. "Hiding? Do you think she's supposed to be there? Should we alert the guards?"

"I dunno." It was weird for there to be problems which weren't ours for once. What a depressing thought that was.

We watched her for another minute before I felt the electrical energy build to a crescendo, where it all peaked and unloaded at once.

"Woah, I felt that," AEGIS said, looking around. "Huge electric impulse just now."

"Yeah," I nodded. The lights in the base had flickered even. The guards seemed completely unphased, so this must be normal for them. "I guess...an EMP blast, from the feel of it. You said there were robots sneaking through the portal?"

"Oh, very smart," AEGIS cheered at me. "That probably explains it. And that's what you were feeling earlier, wasn't it? Only an electropath could sense that kind of charge generation through the grid like that."

"Guess we should head back," I sighed. "Nothing here for us."

Something about the woman hiding rubbed me the wrong way though. I didn't want this small, functioning facility to go down to sabotage or something while I was standing right here. The number of functioning places in the US were dwindling already.

But we really should go. I gave it another second of thought, and then advanced on the base.

"Um, hi," I said to the guard out front. "Hey, sorry to bother you, but we were just passing by and noticed...there's a woman hiding in there. Is she supposed to be there?"

The guard barely turned to peek, and laughed.

"Yeah, that's just Celia. Boy, has she got it bad."

"Celia? The same one, you think?" AEGIS asked. I shook my head and she sighed at me like I was being difficult. "Brown hair, white, tall and a little thin, wears glasses?" She asked the guard.

"Tends to get super, duper distracted when thinking," I suggested.

Again he laughed. "Yeah that's her. How do you know her?"

"Oh I, err...I used to work for the XPCA, when they thought this was an Exhuman phenomenon."

"Oh really? No shit." He looked me up and down, and took in my leg. Didn't ask any follow-up questions, about evacuation or my retirement, which I appreciated.

"Do you mind if we go in and talk to her?" AEGIS asked.

"Oh this isn't a secure area. A few of the buildings are. Just go on in, and if someone tries to stop you, stop," he laughed.

"Well he seemed pleasant," AEGIS said as we strolled further in, advancing on the woman in the white coat in the bushes. As we drew nearer, it became clear that it was a labcoat, the same as several of the others were wearing in the buildings I thought were offices.

"Celia, hi," I said.

She almost fell into the bushes she was crouched behind.

"W-wh-who's there!" she barked, assuming a ridiculous mockery of a karate pose. She squinted at us and adjusted her glasses while fending us off with her other hand. "Is that...Sergeant Chair?"

AEGIS had to excuse herself as she almost spit up from laughing. I had to grin myself, though mostly at her reaction. "Um, that was 'Chariot', but, yeah. I guess you remember me."

"Hard to forget. You tore through our minds and then dumped us off back here unceremoniously."

"Uh, yeah, sorry about that." I guess...the last time I saw them, I'd kind of dragged them out to where Saga was being kept and had her do her code-X thing to verify that these two weren't an Exhumuman threat. Things had gotten so messed-up after that, I'd completely forgotten.

I frowned at myself, standing there like an idiot and mumbling at her. "No, sorry. That was a lame apology, you deserve better. I'm really sorry, it was just a precaution. You were from another dimension, and we just didn't understand. I'm sorry you got caught up in that."

She blinked at me. "Oh. Um. Thank you. I...that's very nice of you to say."

AEGIS gave me a smarmy little thumbs-up, but put it away as Celia turned to face her. "And I don't believe we've met? You're an AI aren't you?"

"What?" AEGIS blinked at her. "How can you tell?"

"Was it not obvious? The hair, the eyes, the synthetic skin? I'm sorry, were you incognito?"

"No, I...I mean...kinda, I guess but…" her eyes were wide as she stammered. "Uh, most people just assume I'm a body modder."

"Oh. Right." Celia held her chin thoughtfully for a moment.

"I guess--" I said.

"Shh."

Right. I forgot about this part of her as well. She was still standing there in thought as a tired-looking man walked towards us. Looking around, I saw plenty of them, seemingly dispersing all at once, this one, and several others, en-route to the chow hall. But this one was unique in that he stopped to join us.

"Oh, she's thinking," he said.

I recognized the voice, even if I'd forgotten the face. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to still find the two of them together. "Uh, Ajax, right?"

"Sergeant Chair, as I live and breathe. No wonder she's got the ticker spinning. How are you holding up, man?"

Apparently almost without thinking, he offered, and I accepted a soldier's embrace, our arms clasping at the forearm, and going in for just enough of a hug for our shoulders to touch. The very manliest of hugs, and zero pats on the back.

"You seem good," I said. "I was just apologizing to Celia here for how we treated you guys last time."

He frowned. "Yeah that was pretty rough. But I should apologize too. We really busted your balls, when it wasn't your fault. I should've known you were just doin' a job, should've taken my complaints up the chain."

"Wow that's...really, uh, mature of you, if you don't mind my saying."

He laughed, a short, barking laugh, that made Celia blink.

"Oh, Ajax!" she squealed. "I was going to surprise you, shoot."

"What were you thinking about, Ceel?"

"Huh? Oh. I was thinking how...we didn't have body-modders in our world. And they didn't have human-like robots in theirs. I was trying to suppose if I'd have made that assumption differently if I had shared their background."

He smiled easily. "What assumption, Ceel?"

She shook her head and laughed. "Never mind. You hungry? You're off today, right?"

"Yep, and yep. End of a twelve-hour shift," he said, stretching. "Hey, I'll catch up with you in a sec, okay? I'm gonna have some words with Chair here."

"Sure," she nodded, and then adjusted her glasses after the gesture. "I'll be inside? Nice to see you again Sergeant."

"Sounds good." He grinned at her until she disappeared indoors, and then turned to me with an intensity and a smile I never expected. "It's like God sent you here, Chair. I've been busting to tell someone."

"Uh?"

He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small golden ring. "I don't think I can do it now, not with this country going to shit like ours did back in the day. But soon, I'm gonna ask her."

"Woah, you're going to marry Celia?"

"I'm gonna try," he laughed.

Well that was unexpected, but his delighted enthusiasm was impossible to resist. I found myself laughing and clapping him on the shoulder like we were old mates. When I'd last seen them, they seemed so broken over the death of their mutual friend, and it was apparent that both of them had liked her more than each other.

And now he was a lot more whole. He explained how he was going to therapy for his anger issues and PTSD, when he realized that he was never going to be a good enough man for her if he didn't change. I just kind of stood there, listening, nodding along, while contrasting that this was a real man, who effected real change, while I was a dumb piece of shit who just bumbled through life.

'Cause, I mean, he was right. I didn't deserve AEGIS' loving treatment, not with how selfish and awful I was to her all the time. Maybe I should look up going into therapy after all this, if we survived. The transformation on Ajax seemed enormous.

But as pleasant as it was, I had to cut him off before too long. Even if we had no idea what we were doing, I still had a mission. Vegas was still under imminent threat, as was the rest of everything.

"Y'know, I actually thought maybe you might be able to help," AEGIS pondered aloud. "We're trying to cross dimensions, like you guys did. And we're super stumped in finding what we're looking for."

"Well I'll help however I can, but I don't pretend to know the first thing about all that brainiac crap. Even Celia, she's a thousand times smarter than me, and she says she doesn't know anything about it. She's got her PhD in chemistry, if you don't remember, though she's working on a masters right now in robotics."

Jesus. Was it just because they were thirty, or was this just how put-together human beings were supposed to be? They'd survived a dimensional apocalypse, and she was going to grad school.

"Yeah I guess, probably not. We're supposed to find something from the dimension we're trying to jump into. But I guess it's stupid to think that you guys really have any connection to that."

"Uh huh. We only did that once and sorta...by accident. Unless you were headed back where we came from, don't think I could help."

"Thanks anyway," I cut in. "I don't wanna keep you from dinner, or from Celia. You guys...have a good time, yeah?"

"Yeah, brother," he said, pulling me into another embrace. This one with a single back-pat. "You, too."

I watched him go. Watched him light up at seeing her again, even though it'd just been a minute since they parted. She stood from the table where she'd put food down for both of them, different foods on each plate, knowing what each of them liked. And when they sat down together, I could see the chemistry, the excited chatter, how they leaned into each other, laughed readily, smiled broadly.

It hurt. More than it should have. I was jealous, and AEGIS really did deserve better than me. And when I turned to her, I found her with a thoughtful look on her face, that I felt I should have understood better than I did.

"I...had the thought," she began "but it seemed...too implausible. You don't think that angle-gate really does go back to their dimension, do you?"

"I don't know how it could. We're supposed to find some kind of weapon, not a...bombed-out husk of Earth."

"Yeah. But...we are supposed to find something. To hear Aesa speak of it, most of the void is just insane nothingness. Another Earth...that's a place, where something like that actually could exist." She frowned. "And besides, we're already taking a huge presumptuous leap of logic with the angle-gate. We're assuming that Mage's power is right, and based on that assumption, that the gate leads somewhere at all. Isn't it exactly the same stretch of logic to take literally the only cross-dimensional things we know, and suppose that they're the tachyons we need?"

"I...I guess? When we turn this device on, we're just going to die, aren't we?"

She gave me a grin. "Well. Statistically, yeah."

"But we have to try, don't we?"

She watched the two of them as they broke into laughter over something anew. Their food was practically abandoned on the plates before them; it seemed that the hunger he'd admitted earlier wasn't for that kind of sustenance. And watching closely, I could see time and again when his hand went to his front pocket, where the ring was hidden.

He wanted to whip it out, then and there, every second. He wanted to be married to this woman he loved without any further delay. But he also wanted to give her the best, to do things right and dramatically, to create a memory she could hold onto, of the two of them.

God, how it needled me. I hated feeling this petty, but hated even more feeling so inferior. I was legit happy for them. They were fine people, better than fine, now that he wasn't a jerkass.

"We don't...have to," AEGIS whispered. "We could just...take Aesa's offer. Hide out with her, stay safe until...until Justice leaves, or whatever."

I could tell that she was feeling something completely different in watching the two of them. Maybe imagining us like that. Maybe just reminded of what love looked like.

But as much as I loved AEGIS, as much as I'd give anything to be those two right now, we weren't. They were them, and we were us. And while what they had was beautiful, what we had...was the slim possibility of protecting that kind of beauty.

Maybe not today, maybe not even this year, but someday, if he wasn't stopped, Justice would come for these two. This happiness and love would be cut brutally short, because of the insane Exhuman's purge of purity. And we were the only ones who had a shot to save it, even if it was remote, nearly-suicidal.

We had to take that shot, right?

"Right?" I asked AEGIS.

She squeezed my hand. "You wouldn't be Athan if you didn't," she sighed. "Are we settled, then...are we...taking the risk that it's their Earth we're going to?"

"I don't see any other cross-dimensional shit around here. I mean, aside from the killer robots, but that's the same thing."

She nodded pensively. "I'll go ask, then. We don't have any time to waste."

"Yeah," I agreed glumly, not wanting to intrude, but also not wanting to spend any more time here. "Let's go kick down their happy bubble I guess."

"It's for their good too, Athan."

I nodded. But that seemed like a worse argument, the more I saw how happy they were. Shouldn't it be the other way 'round? I was glad she volunteered, because I didn't know that I had the fortitude to go break them up right now.

"We're trying to save them, from the worst thing imaginable. Worse, still, for them, than for anyone else," she said. "Because they've already lost their world before. I can only imagine how much it hurt and how long it took to heal. And now it's threatening to happen again. But we can stop it, and they'll help. I know it."

"Yeah," I agreed numbly. "I just wish bad things stopped happening to good people."