It was so much harder to damn the consequences once they arrived.

Isaac found himself floating, as he always did, in bewildered disbelief. Surely he could rewind his steps and try again. Surely he hadn’t managed to fuck up this badly.

Even as the sky boiled and shifted into an acid gray, and the ground shook beneath his feet, and the black waters churned, Isaac felt the solution was hovering just before him.

If he reached out, he could almost touch it. Undo everything. Start over.

And yet time slipped away and refused to reverse itself. The drum beneath the ground subsided into a low, steady murmuring, but the bubble was awake. Isaac could feel the difference.

It knew he was there. The whole sphere was an eye fixed on him. It wanted him gone.

And still the piano remained, mocking him. Over and over, its soft melody reminded him what a fool he was for following it. His misery was overwhelming; he might have sat there and wallowed in it, but for a flicker of movement on the horizon.

In the distance, through the pelting rain and gray light, the long mossy spikes began to uproot themselves, crawling out of the ground and unfolding into unnaturally long-limbed creatures.

They were enormous, tall and narrow. They moved over the swamp on spidery legs, stalking easily through the water. None of them were close, but some were getting closer.

The sight wiped away his self-pity and regret in a bolt of sheer fear. He could not tell what they were, but their sharp silhouettes and twitchy movement filled him with a deep-set revulsion. He froze, wanting to hide and realizing there was nothing to hide behind in the same moment.

He had to get back to the anchor, he decided. Back to the anchor and back to the Albatross. He fervently hoped they hadn’t left without him.

Trapped here in this hellscape, he could not fathom why he’d decided to run off in the first place. The song seemed a poor excuse. There was something else, some angry, frightened feeling that pushed him toward the nearest edge he could find.

Now he had to claw his way back up. He had only a vague idea of which direction he’d come from, but that was enough.

He resigned himself and set off into the storm, grim-faced and sodden, ignoring the piano as best he could. It had a bittersweet tune, but it was too light-hearted and leisurely for the hellscape that lay before him.

The flat mire of the swamp was cold and colorless. The moss creatures made strange black silhouettes in the distance, and the pools were inky, impenetrably dark.

Isaac waded across the intermittent muddy ponds, watching the rain crash into tiny, vanishing craters on the water’s surface. He could not see the anchor line through the gray haze. In all directions, the sky was featureless and blurry. The moss creatures were faraway shapes in the mist.

Isaac steered clear of them. He was just fast enough and lucky enough to avoid any close encounters—though at one point he had to crouch behind a muddy bank, waiting for one to pass by, while his hands squeezed each other until his fingers hurt.

When he stood up, wincing at the creak in his knees, the creature was only a collection of sharp black lines receding into the haze.

He stuck to the ridges after that, moving fast and low, sometimes scrambling on all fours over the slippery ground. He did not want to encounter one of the beasts when he was knee-deep in water with nowhere to run.

After a timeless stretch of pain and dampness and skittering, Isaac could feel that old, weary knowledge settling in—the certainty that something wasn’t right. He’d gone the wrong way, or they’d left without him. Either way, he would never see the Albatross again.

He’d just convinced himself that he was truly stuck, with a rising sense of horror, when the anchor loomed up out of the dim horizon.

It was so refreshingly angular, boxy and real. Isaac sucked in a deep breath and staggered toward it. His teeth were chattering but nothing could dull his elation. He was going to survive.

Miriam was the first to spot him. She was standing a dozen paces away from the anchor, looking out over the marsh. When she turned toward him, her face was a map of complicated emotions. There was certainly relief in there, but something dreadful too.

“Isaac Skinner!” she thundered. “You’ve got some nerve.”

Spelder was still sitting inside the cage, and his face was much easier to read. “You fucking idiot,” he said. “You should have stayed gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said, and he looked repentant enough—soaked to the bone, covered in dirt, shivering. “I shouldn’t have left.”

Harley sat on top of the anchor, her legs dangling down through the bars. She waved, but said nothing.

“Of course you’re sorry,” Spelder groaned. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

“I woke it up,” Isaac said. “Look, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want this to happen. But at least I made it back. We can leave now.”

Their silence and bleak expressions said everything. Isaac swallowed. “We can leave now, right?” he demanded, as the chill climbed up his bones.

Miriam said, “Show him, Harley.”

Harley tossed a long rope down. It hung limp from the top of the anchor cage. The end of it was sliced cleanly across.

“That’s … oh.” Isaac looked up. Now he could see there was no line stretching from the anchor up toward the sky, connecting them to the ship. Now he could see the problem. “What happened?”

“The bubble cut it,” Spelder spat. “As soon as you pissed it off, you fucking bastard. You ruined everything.”

“Take it easy, Spelder,” Miriam said. Her voice was tired. “You can’t yell us out of here.”

Spelder subsided into a grumbling silence.

The rain felt like ice against his skin. Isaac sank to his knees. It didn’t make much of a difference at this point—he was entirely filthy and drenched. He struggled to understand how bad this was. “But … can’t we get in touch with the weavers? Ask them to bring the ship down?”

“Even if we could get a message up there, the Albatross can’t get down here,” Miriam said with strained patience. “It would crash. The aether is the only thing keeping it afloat.”

“Oh.” Isaac stared at the mud, watching rivulets of rainwater tracing little canyons in the dirt. He wiped his nose.

He simply didn’t have enough energy for despair. It was waiting to crash down on him, hovering like a guillotine over his head, but exhaustion reigned for now.

“You told them to give us four hours,” he said eventually. “Do you know how long it’s been?”

“Not more than three. But I didn’t count on the storm.” Miriam tilted her head back, closing her eyes against the rain. “It’ll be worse out there. They might have left already if they saw the line snapped.”

“So we’re fucked.”

“More or less.”

She did not say and it’s your fault, but Isaac felt the weight of the words nevertheless. Everything that happened now was his fault.

His mind buzzed idly around the issue and flitted away to other things: the low growl from under the ground, the ever-present piano, the dizziness that swept over him in waves.

“There’s one heading this way!” Harley shouted from the top of the anchor.

They all turned.

One of the great stalky moss-things came creeping out of the fog, growing larger with every step of those long, jagged legs. It was curving toward them, slow and steady, moving with mechanical indifference.

“Into the anchor,” Miriam ordered.

Harley slid down the side, hands skipping over the bars, and landed heavily in the mud. She ducked into the anchor cage, followed by Isaac.

Miriam was the last one in. She slammed the door shut.

“Now sit quiet,” she whispered. “This would be a good time to pray, if you’re inclined.”

Isaac looked around. The inside of the anchor was dark and cramped. The cage surrounded them, a net of living green, with bright gaps between the plants. The ceiling was dripping, and wet mud pressed up through the gridded floor.

To Isaac’s left there was Graham Spelder, head bowed, hands pressed together, face twisted into a scowl. He was wearing fingerless gloves, tattered around the edges.

To his right, Harley leaned against the bars, her mouth moving soundlessly. Her eyes kept flickering around the space and then drifting into an unfocused stillness.

Miriam stood in front of the door. Her arms were crossed and her staff rested in the crook of her elbow. She stared at Isaac and Isaac stared back.

The sheer force of her gaze burned him. He could not possibly feel more guilty. After a moment, he had to look away, scrubbing at his eyes with his hand. His fingernails were caked with dirt.

And then he heard it, over the discordant noise that ruled his head—the heavy thumping of low, uneven footsteps.

It reached them too quickly for its size. It was taller than Isaac had imagined, so high that its misshapen body was lost in the rainstorm. It seemed a half-formed creature, its dark legs emerging from the gray above.

Thud. One leg slammed into the dirt in front of the cage, and the ground shook. Isaac gritted his teeth.

Thud. Another leg, beside it. When he looked up, he saw only darkness through the woven plants of the roof.

It was above them. He held his breath.

There was a terrible scraping noise that made every hair on Isaac’s body stand up.

One of its legs was scratching the top of the cage. It went back and forth, sending little showers of sawdust down from the ceiling. All four of them stared up with the same open, shocked faces. Dead faces.

Isaac could see the next few moments as if they were carved into stone. The monster would break through. They would scatter like rabbits, and it would get all of them. One by one.

Just as the ceiling splintered, and the long, spiked leg pierced the center of the cage, Isaac found an alternative.

“Move!” he shouted at Miriam. She blinked and took one step over.

Isaac went hurtling out through the door of the cage.

He stopped, inhaling sharply. The monster stood on three legs, peering down at him with a single round white eye. It was much taller than the anchor. It looked all wrong, lopsided and spindly, like a child’s drawing of a spider.

Isaac jumped and screamed and waved his staff in circles, drawing its attention. It bent down toward him, reaching a dark limb forward.

Isaac ran. Fear lent him wings.

He went over the swamp like a wild thing, skipping puddles and dodging pits, charged with hot adrenaline. His plan had been half-formed, perhaps ill-advised, but there wasn’t time to make a better one. Staying alive for another few seconds was all he could hope for now.

Inexplicably, in spite of everything, he felt happy. He had no future to worry about.

The heavy footfalls of the thing chasing him were loud enough to make his heart jump. The piano in his ear seemed to whisper hurry, hurry. But there was another sound, an odd squelching scrape he couldn’t make sense of.

When he risked a glance back, he saw that while the beast stalked after him, its leg was still caught in the anchor. It was dragging the whole cage behind it, with the other three still inside.

Isaac would have been caught in a few seconds otherwise, but the anchor slowed the creature down, saving his life. Its gait was awkward, unwieldy. It moved like a wounded animal.

He hoped the others were alright, being hauled through the shallow water and crests of mud, but he didn’t have much worry to spare. His lungs were filling up with fire. He couldn’t sprint for much longer, but he didn’t need to.

Just up ahead, the gray sky curved down to meet the black water, a firm line marking the edge of the swamp.

His face split into a grin as the details clicked into place. Now he had a real plan. If he was lucky it might even work.

He never faltered or second-guessed himself. There was no point. This was the only option he had, so he seized it with both hands. Isaac sped up, and everything else slowed down.

The rain fell in curtains, the creature beat a tattoo in thumping pursuit, and the gray wall loomed up like the end of the world.

Isaac stopped on a dime. His feet continued to slide.

When he looked back the monster was crashing toward him, that one white eye staring like a malevolent god. In a splashing, ungraceful collision they both went flying over the edge.

The world outside the bubble was a spiraling blue storm. The rain smelled like charged metal, keen and electric, and it came from every direction.

As Isaac began to fall, his left hand reached out blindly. His fingers brushed over a mossy limb and he grabbed it, clutching it to his chest.

As he’d suspected or wished or prayed, the monster was dead. Whatever force kept it alive vanished as soon as they left the bubble. It hung limp in the tempest, tossed like a rag doll in the spinning wind, the anchor still impaled on its leg. Isaac trailed behind it, barely clinging to the slippery moss.

It started to break apart in his hands, like damp soil. Isaac screamed, but the wind stole the sound right out of his mouth.

And then the anchor spun under him. He kicked wildly and hooked one of his legs through the wooden bars. Dangling from the cage, with rain filling up his eyes and nose, he coughed and sputtered and flailed. The moss melted into dark shreds around him and was eaten by the whirlwind.

A hand seized his arm. More hands hauled him up, pulling him into the cage by his shoulders. He fell against the floor, which became the wall, which became the ceiling. He fell again, landing beside a gaping hole in the anchor.

“Hold on!” Miriam screamed in his face. Her words were barely loud enough to be heard over the storm. “And get rid of the plants!”

Isaac clutched one of the bars, steadying himself, and felt the tip of vertigo in his stomach as the cage spun over. It took him a while to make sense of Miriam’s second command.

As he shook his head and blinked the water out of his eyes, he saw that Spelder and Harley and Miriam were already hard at work. They were each braced against a side of the cage, methodically ripping the plants off the bars and tossing them into the storm.

Then Isaac understood. They needed to float, and the plants were weighing them down. His hands were clumsy and shivering, but he began slowly twisting the green stems until they snapped and hurling them into the tempest.

It was too loud and too cold and too wet. Up and down switched places frequently. Still, the cage held together and Isaac kept going until his fingers were numb. There was no alternative.

It was remarkable how quickly it became boring. Wretchedly uncomfortable, yes, but still boring. He could get used to anything but monotony.

Over an unmeasurable length of time, the roaring of the storm eased up; the torrential rain lightened to a sprinkling of tiny droplets that seemed to hang in the air. The white-blue star peeped through the clouds above, and the cage’s tumbling slowed into a gentle spinning.

When they’d cast aside the last plant, the anchor had just enough buoyancy to float steadily upward. There was a strange feeling carried by that sudden brightness and fresh, damp sky. They were all quiet for a long time.

As the light unfolded over the remnants of the storm, the air took on a dazzling, crystalline quality. Everything looked new, untouched, glistening. Isaac tilted his head back and basked in the star’s warmth, until—

“There!” Harley said, pointing out of the cage. “There, there, there!”

Isaac followed her gaze to the distant silhouette of the Albatross, and felt happy enough to cry.

All of them screamed and shouted and banged on the sides of the cage. Their riotous noise drifted out across the gulf toward the Albatross, until at last it turned and swam toward them.

The moment still trembled with possibilities, great and terrible alike, and Isaac could not quite believe they were safe yet. He was doubtful until he felt the warm wood of the ship’s deck under his feet, and heard the crew chattering with Miriam in swift, overlapping voices, and saw the dripping candles that illuminated the hold.

What convinced him, though, was that pang of regret as the weavers sat down at the loom. They were leaving Oshun.

Already, Isaac wanted to be back. There was simply nothing else like it.

***

Felix hung from a single thread, and that thread was the fractal. He’d been looking for something perfect all his life, and everything else had failed him.

The fractal could never fail him. Every flaw came from his own mistakes, and he erased these over and over as he grew closer to the truth.

The fabric was perfect, and the fractal mapped that perfection, and the equation linked them together in the most elegant way possible. He’d always been good at math, and this was the culmination of math—indeed, the culmination of every field, every type of research, every possible question.

Felix wanted the universe tied up with a bow. Nothing else was good enough.

So he returned to the lab, both to escape and to plunge boldly forward into scientific enlightenment. In practice, scientific enlightenment usually turned out to mean scribbling on a ratty graphbook and squinting at a projector, but Felix didn’t mind that. It was meditative, in a way. At least he was making progress.

He left all his problems at the door—Caleb and his accusations, his obnoxious students, the thing hiding somewhere in his brain. The lab was sacred, and none of them could touch him in here.

It was good to be back.

It was even better to see his assistant again. There was something so earthy and sensible about Rufus. He sat at one of the lab tables with an open Bolex camera in front of him, eating a bagel.

“Don’t get crumbs in there,” Felix snapped. “Those things are expensive.”

“Oh.” Rufus glanced up. “You’re back.”

“A hello would be nice.”

“Hello.”

“Maybe even a how are you doing?”

“Good, thanks,” Rufus said. “But I think this camera’s jammed.”

“What?” Felix peered into its dark innards. He didn’t know how the cameras worked. That was one of the reasons he kept Rufus around. “Can you fix it?”

“Maybe.”

“Why do I even keep you around?” Felix sank into the chair beside Rufus, pressing his palm against his forehead.

“Because I haven’t left yet,” Rufus said agreeably.

“Fine. Leave the camera. We can get started with the other eleven.”

Twelve cameras was ideal, but partial coverage was better than no coverage at all. Every additional strip of film was more space for the fractal to unfold, more fodder for the algorithm, more data points to divine the shape of reality.

It didn’t matter, though. As soon as Felix flipped the red lights on, someone coughed from the doorway. It was more of a hack, really, an ugly rattling noise. He knew immediately it was Lucretia.

“What,” he said, putting on his gloves, “do you want? I’m in the middle of something.”

“The investigation is over.”

He turned around, leaning against the table, braced for impact. “And?”

“Based on the evidence, we concluded that your behavior endangered the Rambler’s crew and contributed to its destruction.” She was looking past him, her eyes half-lidded, holding out a crisp white envelope.

“What is that?” Felix asked, eyeing it with distaste. He wanted to muster some defense, to bluster his way into an argument, but he didn’t have the fire for it. He felt cold.

“The notice of your suspension.”

“Suspension?” His voice wavered. Suspension was better than getting fired, or demoted, or losing his lab. Still, it was no slap on the wrist. “That’s absurd. I am vital to the Institute and removing me would be catastrophic. Can’t you just give me a letter of concern or something?”

“We’ve given you enough letters of concern. I’m starting to think you aren’t reading them.”

Felix typically burned them in Natalia’s fireplace without opening them, but SEIDR had no way of knowing that. He crossed his arms. “Well, then, I’ll just go directly to Victor. At least he understands how important I am around here.”

“Hilariously enough, it was Victor who suggested we suspend you,” Lucretia said. There was no hilarity in her tone. The envelope was still dangling from her hand, blindingly white.

Felix didn’t want to accept it, but he was rapidly running out of options. He glanced at Rufus, but his assistant was staring into the broken camera with exaggerated focus, ignoring the rest of the room. Coward.

“You need me,” Felix said.

“Which is why you haven’t been terminated.” She pulled out a cigarette. “Yet.”

“Don’t be so theatrical. You can’t scare me.”

“Then take the fucking envelope already.”

At last Felix reached out and plucked it from her hand, holding it out like a venomous snake. He ripped it open, scanning for the critical line. Where did it say—ah.

“A month?” He could handle a month. “That’s ridiculous.”

“No. Ridiculous is keeping your job after you get five people killed.” She took a step back, standing just outside the doorway, and lit her cigarette. “And we’re shutting down the lab.”

Rufus finally looked up.

Felix halted, frowning, uncertain. It took him a few seconds to realize she’d saved the worst for last. “Shutting down my lab? Are you joking? You—you—you don’t have the authority to—”

“The director signed off on that letter. It’s all in there.” She nodded toward his hand.

“You can’t!” His voice rose uncontrollably. “This is my—I earned this!”

“And now you’ve lost it.” Her expression and her tone were both flat. “In the future, I suggest you follow our weaving procedures to avoid incidents like this.”

Felix was speechless, a rare and terrible state. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Sorry,” Lucretia said.

He was surprised at this momentary show of decency, until he glanced over his shoulder and realized she was talking to Rufus.

Rufus shrugged, and Felix lost his mind.

“Fuck that,” he said, storming out, past Lucretia and her cloud of foul smoke, down the narrow bridges and pathways of the Academy. He did not have a destination in mind. He just wanted to outrun this terrible, terrible news.

He ran out of steam halfway down the cliff and ended up ducking into his classroom. It was already a miserable space, so it seemed like a good place for his miserable self. The lights were darkened, the chairs empty, and when he sat down at his desk he felt like the sole performer for an audience of ghosts.

He read the letter from Lucretia, thoroughly checking every line for a way out. At the bottom, Victor Belka’s ornate signature mocked him with its extravagant flourishes.

There were no loopholes or second chances. The lab was gone. Rufus was gone. Years of research, years of his life, wasted. All because of Caleb and his stupid accusations, Spelder and his stupid orders, and the demon which should have swallowed them both.

It was not a good day for Felix. He fell over his desk and cried.