Kano was a few steps into the lab when she realized something was wrong. The energy present within the room had shifted. Now it was concentrated on two points—the discs that were part of the lab and something else, something moving. Ignoring Urick, Kano headed toward the new concentration until it was only a few steps away, but she still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It didn’t seem focused on anything in particular, so what was causing it to behave this way? Was it just a random fluctuation?

She was pondering what might have caused it when the energy reached Werisah’s headless corpse. Within the span of a breath, his body was transformed. His robes and soft flesh disappeared, replaced by an intricate lattice of gleaming orange scales. Though his head was still missing, it didn’t seem to bother him at all as he got up, and his voice projected from his altered form.

“I suppose I should thank you for freeing me,” he said, addressing Kano and Miusvon. “If it weren’t for you two, I’d probably still be trapped in there.”

“No problem,” Miusvon replied cheerfully. “Did you want me to kill you again? The first attempt doesn’t seem to have taken, but I’ll do my best to fix that.”

“Once was quite enough, thank you.” He made a sound as if clearing his throat, despite his lack of a head. “Anyway, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I was thinking I would repay the favor and kill you all.”

“And why would you do that?” Kano asked. “I thought you least maintained the pretense of doing the right thing.”

“Well, for one, you and your friend literally just killed me. And if that weren’t reason enough, your presence also risks disrupting my plans. First, I will—”

Kano raised her hand to silence him. “I have to say, I really don’t care what you’re planning.”

“Of course not. You’re little better than vermin. The same goes for all those with you. In fact, I misspoke. You’re less than vermin. At least vermin would have some role in an ecosystem. All you are is the remnants of a bygone age, with no purpose beyond interrupting the march of progress.”

“Progress to what? Total annihilation?” Kano laughed, trying to appear unconcerned, though inwardly she was trying to come up with a way out of this situation. For now, all she could do was try to keep him talking. “I don’t know if you’ve seen what the world is like outside your fancy labs, but if progress advances much further, there won’t be anything left.”

“Nothing of value has been lost,” the headless body said. “At least now that I’ve created a far superior being, immortal and greater than anything that has come before it.”

“Seems kind of lacking in the head department,” Miusvon said. “Don’t you think? You might want to get that fixed.”

“Yes, yes, very funny. And you would be right, if I still required anything so mundane as a head. Which I quite clearly do not, given that I’m speaking to you right now. But enough talk.” Before he took more than a step toward Miusvon, her weapon appeared in her hands, and she opened fire on him.

“Nove,” Kano shouted, “get the children out of here.” Waiting the split second it took Nove to obey, Kano looked back to Werisah to find a stream of vapor emanating from his hand toward Miusvon, which cut through her in a series of tiny holes across her whole body. Miusvon clutched her weapon and gritted her teeth, only for it to slide from her hands and disappear as she fell to her knees.

Lowering his hand, Werisah’s headless body turned toward her. “Aren’t you going to resist this time?”

“Would it do me any good if I did?” Kano watched the children’s escape from the corner of her eye, trying to gauge how much longer they’d take. He’d easily be able to catch them if he tried, especially given that they couldn’t leave the citadel, but she was hoping he might forget about them if they got far enough away.

“I suppose it might buy you a few more seconds of existence.”

“Weren’t you supposed to be working with An? What happened to that?” Clearly he’d given up on that, but it was the only topic she could come up with that might distract him for a while.

“I was, for a time, when there was still a purpose to doing so.”

“How can you be sure she’s not still useful to you? She already managed to finish her work. Imagine what else you two could accomplish together.”

“Has she now?”

Kano pointed to where the flower sat, still within its container. “Take a look. You might learn something.”

“I rather doubt that.” But he still walked over to it.

Taking advantage of the respite, Kano reached out with her senses. The other concentration of energy was now one with Werisah’s body. She tried to shift a little of it, hoping Werisah wouldn’t notice the movement of such a small amount, but it didn’t budge in the slightest. It was stuck there somehow, or it wasn’t obeying her commands. Either way, there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it.

She considered trying to rush him while he was distracted, but given how poorly their previous encounters had ended for her, she doubted it would get her anywhere. What he’d said about his new form didn’t strike her as an idle boast. He really did seem stronger than before. And he’d killed her relatively easily then.

“Is this it?” Werisah asked, sounding like he couldn’t believe it as he held the flower’s container up.

“Yep.”

“This is what she wasted so much of her time on?”

“Uh, I guess.”

“It’s somewhat hard for me to comprehend. I suppose she did strike me as frivolous; I just had no idea as to the extent. Well, no matter.” He swept the container from the bench and crushed it underfoot. “I take it that was all you had to show me of her work?” Without waiting for her response, he raised his hand toward her, and Kano realized she’d run out of distractions.

“Let’s make this quick,” Werisah said, “remain where you are and accept your death.” His influence settled over Kano, and she felt her body obey despite her will. But she wasn’t the same person he’d controlled before. To her surprise, Kano found that she could perceive his influence just as she could with the energy, and she cast it off with but a thought.

Werisah sighed. “Fine, if you insist on wasting my time, then I suppose we should begin.”

Kano dived behind the nearest bench and scrambled along the floor as tiny projectiles hissed through the air and drilled into the floor around her. Several of them seared holes in her flesh, driving her to even greater haste. Bursting from cover, she sprinted for the door, only for her heart to sink as she saw the children still standing there. What were those fools doing?

“Run!” she tried to shout, only for the words to die in her throat as a burst of gray light filled the room.

Blinded, Kano staggered forward and tried to push the children along, dreading all the while Werisah’s lethal stream, which was soon to pierce her exposed back. Werisah didn’t have eyes in the first place, so the light probably posed no obstacle to him. But her death never came. By the time she’d pushed the children ahead of her and out of the lab, her vision had started to clear, and she looked back to see Werisah clutching at his chest.

Was he making some sort of joke? She was trying to understand the humor of whatever it was he was doing when she noticed his scales were turning to liquid and flowing down his body. Was his form far more unstable than he’d implied? She looked back to see the children holding hands in a tightly knit group and radiating gray light.

“What’re you doing?” Kano said, half to herself.

“Helping,” came the reply, the children speaking in perfect unison.

The light intensified, and Kano heard bits of Werisah’s liquifying form splatter against the ground. She turned to see that he was deteriorating faster than before but was still moving, and he seemed to be recovering from his initial shock. Even if they reduced him to a puddle, would that be enough to stop him? If he could survive without a head, he might be able to survive that too. They needed a more permanent solution.

Kano reached out once more, trying to strip away some of his energy, but it was just as unresponsive as before to her commands. It was almost as if it were stuck. Was that possible? And if it was, what could she do about it? She tried cutting him off from the flow of energy as she had while he was in the reactor, but it had no effect on the energy already inside him, and the severed connection would quickly restore itself without her concentrating on it.

She bit her lip. There had to be something else she could do. Was this all the power she’d gotten from Karen was capable of? There had to be more to it. Kano couldn’t imagine her creator’s ability had been so limited. Changing tactics, she tried to destroy the energy within Werisah rather than moving it or commanding it but was met with no more success. The light was already fading around the children, and just guessing would take too long.

What other functions would it make sense for Karen’s ability to have? She’d been obsessed with preserving herself, so was there some way she could use the energy to protect herself? First Kano tried making a barrier around herself, but all that did was arrange the invisible and immaterial energy around her to no tangible benefit. Thinking maybe she needed to take the energy into her body instead as Werisah had done, Kano summoned the largest concentration she could manage in the span of a few seconds.

Though significantly less than the amount currently within Werisah, it was still enough for her to worry about what might happen to her. Not that she had the luxury of pausing to worry about the possibilities. The energy entered her body, and to Kano’s surprise, she didn’t feel any different. Was she supposed to do something in particular with it? As a start, she absorbed it and distributed it evenly through her body.

A mild electric thrill passed through her insides in time with the energy’s progress, and her exhaustion melted away, leaving her rejuvenated. She stood there waiting for something else to happen. Surely that couldn’t be it. So she had new energy in her body, so what? What was she supposed to do with it? It wasn’t like she could use it to generate a force field, like in the good old days.

She was ruminating on all that she’d lost as she watched Werisah’s body start to recover, when a familiar field of blue energy crackled to life around her. Holding her hand up to her face, she stared at the glow, unable to believe what was happening. Then her lips slowly peeled back in a wide grin.

“It’s okay,” she said, as the last of the children’s light faded. “I’ll handle it from here.”

Nodding, the children fled in a disorganized group. Whatever had bound them together appeared to have faded with the expenditure of the energy Kano had given him. Nove scooped up Miusvon, leaving just Kano and the necromancer.

“What is it you have there?” Werisah asked, his body pristine once more except for the missing head.

“Why don’t you come over here and see?”

He pointed his palm at her and unleashed the stream of tiny projectiles once more. This time, all they did was fizzle against her force field, just as she’d hoped. “No, I think I’d prefer to keep my distance for the moment if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure, I’ll leave you be. Right after you die.” She advanced toward him while he backed away within the narrow confines of the lab. From what she’d seen, she could easily catch him if he tried to run, and she wanted to savor this moment. She wanted him to have plenty of time to see what was coming and contemplate his end.

“Now that I think about it,” he said, “An’s research has far more merit than I gave her credit for.”

“Is that right?” Kano maintained her pace, amused at his pathetic attempts to stall her. “So you feel bad about stomping on her flower?”

“Er, but of course. It’s this energy that’s to blame, you see. Once it’s coursing through you, it’s like you’re a completely different person. Were it not for its influence, I never would have betrayed An. Certainly not for such a self-serving reason.”

Kano could almost believe his excuse if she didn’t have the same energy within her without it having any effect on her mind. “Just like you betrayed Eomonsa?”

“No, no, the two situations couldn’t be more different. Eomonsa was a terrible danger to the world. It was in everyone’s best interest that he was stopped.”

“Then why were you working with him in the first place?”

Finding his back against the wall, Werisah stopped. “I hadn’t yet come to appreciate the extent of his insanity. It can be hard to tell at times, and—”

With a wave of her hand, Kano bisected his torso. His legs were next, then she went to work breaking down his body into the tiniest pieces she could manage and extracting the energy that remained from them. When that was finally done, she dropped her force field and sat down beside where his body had fallen before its destruction.

For all that she’d wanted to destroy him before, now she was just happy she wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. One less threat to the children and everyone else. All that was left now was the reactor. But that could wait until An woke up. Until then, Kano could do with some rest. Using her force field again had taken more out of her than she realized.