Miusvon was leaning against the wall in front of the lab, her silver coat patched and cleaned, with no sign of her previous injuries. With a ghost of a smile, she waved to Kano. “Hey, you’re finally back.”

“Did you want something?” It was good to see that she’d recovered, but if all she wanted was idle chatter, then Kano had more important things to do.

“I’m guessing you still want to deal with Werisah?”

“Obviously. It’s not like we can just leave him like that.”

Miusvon raised her hands. “Oh, I’m not disagreeing or anything. I just wanted to see if you were still committed. I’ve got an idea of how you might be able to get rid of him. An tells me you can control that energy to some extent?”

“That’s right.” She wasn’t entirely confident in her ability yet, but she was sure she could manage whatever Miusvon might suggest. Assuming it was possible in the first place.

“So you can divert it away from Werisah while I cut him out of the reactor?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“Wait, are you sure this is a good idea? I thought An said it would be disastrous if we broke the reactor while it was still running.”

“It’s okay, I already ran the idea by her. It should be fine so long as we don’t damage too much of it in the process.”

It sounded risky, but it was still the best solution on offer. “All right, then, are you ready to go now?”

“Sure.” Miusvon grinned. “And since we’d better get it done sooner rather than later, why don’t we race there?”

Kano was considering it when Miusvon ran past her. Scrambling to turn around, Kano stuck out her leg and tripped Miusvon. The other natural stumbled and Kano shot past her, laughing all the while. The mad chase through the citadel’s long corridors and endless stairways let Kano forgot all about her troubles, at least for a little while. It was a hard-fought contest, but Kano reached the reactor door first. Miusvon was probably still recovering, so it hadn’t exactly been a fair fight, but a win was still a win. “I guess that makes the score two-zero in my favor.”

“For now,” Miusvon said, clutching her side.

“Are you all right?” It would be absurd if Miusvon had survived Werisah’s assault only to die because of a race.

“I’m fine. D2on’t worry about it.” She gestured toward the reactor door. “Get that open, would you? I want see what I’m dealing with.”

The door opened at Kano’s touch, revealing the reactor along with the necromancer, who seemed even more a part of it than before. Bits of flesh and clothing had broken off him, becoming little bulbs like the rest of the reactor. It was getting to the point where it was hard to tell where the reactor ended and he began.

“Are you sure you can get him out? He looks like he’s in there pretty good.”

A long, thin-bladed knife appeared in Miusvon’s hand. “So long as you can keep him cut off from the reactor, I can cut him out. But first of all, can you even get me through to him?” She tapped the glass wall separating them from the reactor and Werisah. “And is it even safe for me to be in there?”

“Safe enough for a little while, I think.” There was a gap between where the glass ended and the reactor itself began, hopefully enough room for Miusvon to work. “Just don’t touch anything connected to the reactor.”

Miusvon eyed the countless, constantly shifting motes that made up the reactor. “You make it sound like that’ll be easy.”

“If it seems too hard, you can always give up.”

Taking Miusvon’s silence as acceptance, Kano imparted a small amount of necromantic energy into the biological seal Werisah left behind and forced it open.

“Ready when you are,” Miusvon said, trying her best to look unconcerned.

Kano drew dry, metallic-tasting air into her lungs. “I’ll let you know when you can start. Just give me a second.” Carefully shaping the energy around her to get the children to the citadel had been stressful enough. She wasn’t looking forward to repeating the process. But it didn’t seem like she had any other options.

She stared at Werisah, taking in every detail. Beyond the reactor’s gentle motions, there wasn’t the slightest hint of movement. Was he actually dead? It would make things a lot easier if he were, but until she had definitive proof, she assumed he was alive and that he would end up opposing their efforts through whatever means his connection with the reactor offered him.

Having learned all she could by looking, Kano closed her eyes to block out the unnecessary information and extended her newfound senses. It felt a little like gingerly extending her finger to feel something, except as a purely mental action. Now that she was focused on him, she could feel his connection to the reactor. There were countless tiny points of contact, all along his body, and these were even smaller than the bulbs that made up the reactor. They formed little channels, allowing the energy to flow into his body.

Using the energy around it, she grasped one of the points and pulled it free. There was a blinding flash, painful even through her closed eyes, and the whole room shook.

Miusvon cried out in pain and surprise. “What the fuck was that?”

“I messed up a little.” She knew the reactor was delicate, but the magnitude of the reaction was far beyond what she’d expected. It seemed even removing his connection with the slightest bit of force was out of the question. Given that this involved Werisah, she should have known this was going to be tedious.

“That was only a little? Please tell me if you think you’re going to mess up a lot so I can say goodbye to the world before I’m atomized.”

“Okay, well, if you want to avoid that, please shut up and let me work.” Refocusing, Kano found to her dismay that the part she’d tried to remove from Werisah was whole and unbroken. Against her natural inclinations, she’d have to take a subtler approach. After considering the problem for a few moments, she tried shifting the energy so that there was a buffer of empty space between one of the points and the rest of the reactor. It only took a few seconds, and just as she’d hoped, the channel was cut off without anything dramatic happening.

She repeated the process a few more times, growing more confident as she went, until she realized the first buffer was starting to fill with energy again. Was the reactor doing that on its own? Or was it Werisah? She emptied the space once more only to find that the next one along was also starting to fail. Though her approach seemed to be working, it clearly wasn’t going to hold for long. “Can you cut him free in a few seconds?”

Twirling the knife in her hand, Miusvon leaned in and looked Werisah over. “I think so, why?”

“Because I think that’s as much time as I can give you.” She might be able to maintain the buffers for a little while after they were in place, but one of them was bound to overflow eventually and restore Werisah’s connection to the reactor. If that happened while Miusvon was still cutting, then she was probably right about them being atomized.

“Got it. Then I’ll just have to make it work.”

“Then get ready to go on the count of three. One.” She closed her eyes and mapped out a rough outline of Werisah’s body. Concentrating on all of it at once was already making her head hurt, but there was no time to complain.

“Two.” Now came the hard part. Working simultaneously all around him, she shifted the energy back. The sudden strain of so much precise control was far greater than she expected, and for a terrifying instant, her vision darkened, but she managed to maintain her grip on consciousness and the energy.

“Three.” Now that Werisah was cut off, all she had to do was keep him that way.

Without warning, several of the channels linking Werisah to the reactor vanished altogether. It was so sudden that she nearly cried out before she realized it must be Miusvon’s doing. In three quick spurts, his connection was all but severed, but to Kano’s surprise, it didn’t make maintaining the buffers any easier. Though there were far fewer, the amount of energy trying to get into them was proportionally greater.

The pain in her head had intensified to the point where it felt like something was boring through her brain. She was seeing flashes behind her closed eyes, but there was no turning back now. She just had to keep the energy away from Werisah a little longer. Fixating on that was all that kept her going.

Compared to her previous progress, Miusvon’s removal of the last few connections was agonizingly slow, but she was nearly done. In Kano’s half-conscious state, it took her a little while to notice the building concentration of energy around Werisah. By the time she saw it, it had almost reached her buffer with enough intensity that she had no chance of diverting it.

“Pull him out!” Kano shouted. “Right now!” The connection wasn’t completely severed, but whatever happened would be far less disastrous than if they let Werisah’s connection to the reactor be restored now.

Kano heard Miusvon start to say something before all sound disappeared, and with it all sensation. Yet to Kano’s surprise, she was still conscious. She tried to open her eyes, but she was unsure if she’d succeeded or not, as everything remained black. It felt as if she were floating in an endless void. Had she somehow ended up becoming part of the reactor like Werisah had? The thought would have made her shiver, were she still capable of that.

With so little reference, it was hard to judge the passage of time, but after what felt like a few minutes, her senses started to recover. First came the pain. Her head was still aching, though not as badly as before. Then a blur appeared, which slowly resolved into the reactor room. Werisah was lying motionless on her side of the glass, while Miusvon was slumped over in the hole Werisah had made.

Trying to push herself up, Kano’s arms failed, and she struck her head on the floor. After a few more tries, she got up and stumbled over to Miusvon. Clutching the natural’s silver coat, Kano shook her. “Are you alive?”

There was no answer, so Kano kept shaking her until she let out a groan. Her eyelids fluttered, and she looked up at Kano like she’d never conceived that a being such as Kano might exist. Eventually her confusion passed, and she exhaled, long and loud. “Well, that was a bit of a ride. What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“The last thing I remember was pulling Werisah out of the reactor after you started yelling.” She looked over to where the necromancer lay. “Is he dead?”

Kano helped Miusvon out of the hole and stood over Werisah. There was still no sign of movement, so she gave him a sharp kick to the side of the head. Satisfying as it was, it didn’t elicit any response. “Seems like it, but it’s hard to tell with necromancers.” She’d thought both he and Eomonsa had died, when in fact they were very much alive, much to her annoyance.

“Probably best to make sure, then.” A carbine appeared in her hands, and she pressed the barrel against Werisah’s head. Once she was done, there were bits of brain scattered all across the floor. After taking a moment to inspect her handiwork, she nodded, and her gun disappeared. “Things got a bit hairy there toward the end, but it seems like we came through it all right in the end. You did a good job at whatever it was you were doing, so thanks for that.”

“No problem. We both wanted to get rid of Werisah, after all. Hopefully An won’t take much longer with her work, and then we can break the reactor too.”

Miusvon winked at her. “I’m looking forward to it.” She slung Werisah’s headless body over her shoulder and walked off.