Dyna was in a full-on panic and she knew it. Her periodic therapy sessions with Doctor West had gone over how to identify such situations and calm herself down from them. Knowing what she knew now about her power, knowing that the administrators had known all along, certain aspects of those therapy sessions came across in a different light. Doctor West must have gone over calming exercises specifically to help her stop before she could destabilize the world around her.

None of those lessons were helping now. This was a creature that she couldn’t fight. Not only could she not fight it, but any attempts others made would be compromised because she existed.

Maybe if they got it into the real world, she could use her ability to crush or explode it before its gaze could disintegrate her creations. If it was anything like the Hatman or the mountain man, she wasn’t sure that crushing it would be enough. They weren’t like regular tulpa.

“No, they are not,” Darq said, walking alongside Dyna as she explained her panicked state of mind. “So you understand my wariness toward the plan to allow it out of Tartarus.”

“It got in here. It can surely get out. The longer it stays here, the more damage it will cause,” Dyna said, ducking her head as a large mechanical arm picked up one of the damaged containment units. Gel dribbled out from a small melted swirl of glass, but the bird-like tupla contained within had yet to escape. “We can’t physically damage it here. Even if my power causes problems, we’ll still have a better chance out there. So, unless you’ve got a better idea..?”

Darq paused, frowning to himself as he dipped his hands into his laboratory coat pockets.

Dyna’s eyes roamed over his coat with a frown of her own. Darq had come back from dealing with Helios looking like he got into a fight with a barbecue grill and lost. Much of his formerly light blue coat was covered in soot. Small patches of burned cloth were missing entirely. The hem still smoldered, leaving a thin trail of smoke in his wake. Despite his attire—and his hair, which was much darker than when he had left because of the ash—he otherwise looked unharmed. No burn marks on his face or hands or even through the new gaps in his clothes.

“If I stay here, in Tartarus, will my power affect things back out in the real world?”

“That was something I planned to test with you before…” Darq waved a hand vaguely, pulling out that remote control he had taken from the armory earlier. “No sense detaining you if it doesn’t stop your ability, after all.”

Dyna stopped, narrowing her eyes. “You are planning on keeping me here?”

“It is a contingency. Had that cube I showed you earlier turned into volatile antimatter, you would never see the light of day again. You passed that little test, however. As Id so helpfully demonstrated with her little experiment on the flight over, you do have some limitations to your ability. The world alters to match your expectations, but your own knowledge limits that alteration.

“Or perhaps your power simply protects you from the consequences of its actions, meaning nothing harmful—as a result of your power—would manifest in your presence.” Darq sighed. “There was so much testing to get through,” he said with a sad shake of his head.

Crossing a catwalk to another section of the facility, he stopped and looked back. “Come along. We’ll go with your plan for now,” he said, lips tight. “Though I do wonder how well the Tartarus facility above will handle this entity’s presence. Some portion of it was made by you.”

“Great,” Dyna said, still wary. Though she had just asked him how to stop her power from working, he had yet to answer her properly. She wasn’t sure that he knew. So long as her power did work, she wasn’t sure that she could actually be captured. Even if she fell into a vat of psionic nullifying goop, she might be able to do the same thing as the eye-tulpa and destroy or otherwise get rid of it.

If it worked for that thing, it should work for her.

“So, we can’t keep it here,” Dyna said with a frown. “And if we take it up to the real world, it will destroy Tartarus there too. I…” Dyna trailed off as a strange thought occurred to her. “I almost don’t want to know the answer to this, but is the Carroll Institute real or something I managed to dream up?”

Remote control in hand, Darq pressed a few buttons before answering. “It is real. Most of it, anyway. No doubt your presence has caused some alterations. I have never actually visited, so I cannot compare its current state to its state before you became aware of its existence.

“The situation might not be as dire as you think, however.” Darq looked over to Dyna with a smile. “Did Id or Ado mention the Continuity Engine?”

“She did,” Dyna said with a nod of her head. The Carroll Institute had mentioned it as well. Ascertaining its purpose or nature was one of the objectives she had received before boarding the jet that had brought her to Tartarus. “She didn’t say what it was. Only that it was required for Tartarus to continue functioning.”

“Ado created it with heavy input from Id, who I presume used her knowledge of you to help design it. The Continuity Engine maintains local ontological inertia. In other words, it forces the nature of being to continue unaltered and with continuity in both past and future.”

“Do you have other words that are just a notch simpler?”

The dark lenses of Darq’s welding goggles turned, locking directly onto Dyna. “It was designed to stop your power from functioning. Changes you made and reality itself will continue without bowing to your whims. The noosphere elements you force into reality will not breach the barrier between thought and form under its area of influence.” He laughed, then shook his head. “It is the answer to your earlier question. Within Tartarus, your power is nullified.”

“Except for those things I created for your test.”

“Sorry, let me rephrase. Within upper Tartarus, your power is nullified. The whole reason I brought you down here was to escape the Continuity Engine’s influence.”

“Oh.” Dyna nodded. That did make sense. Kind of. A part of her wondered if she was being manipulated again. This time into thinking that her power didn’t work within Tartarus, thus making it not work within Tartarus.

Deciding she didn’t really want to know—it would be easier to not affect everything around her that way—she asked, “How do we get eye-tulpa up into the real world then?”

“It is still fighting Bastet. Luring both into a lift would be optimal. Tartarus will protest freeing Bastet, but my position here is not merely for show. I do have override codes,” he said, pushing a few more buttons on his remote control.

“I’m hearing a ‘but’. Let me guess, the elevators aren’t any more real than anything else down here?”

“Technically, there is no lift. Just a rip in space. But yes, you are correct.”

Dyna closed her eyes, thinking. From the moment the eye-tulpa first removed its sunglasses, it had damaged everything around it. But it hadn’t destroyed things immediately—or, it hadn’t destroyed objects immediately; Dyna’s clone had vanished almost instantly. Thick metal shields around the containment units had protected the glass within during the few short moments that its eyes had been on the devices. When Dyna had dropped it into a containment unit, it had taken quite a large amount of time to burn through the gel and the glass.

“How long does it take to transition between this Tartarus and the real world?”

“A few seconds,” Darq said. “Never actually measured it. However long it takes the lifts to move through the rips in space.”

“Then I have a plan. We just need an elevator filled with psionic gel.”

“And you’ll create that for us?”

“My power still works down here, doesn’t it?” Dyna said, tapping the side of her temple. “How do we do this? Do you have a lift ready or should I try to conjure up an elevator as well as a load of gel?”

“One moment,” Darq said, tapping a few more buttons on his remote. He paused, checked the time on his wristwatch, then pressed two more buttons.

A shudder wracked the facility. Unlike the earthquakes caused by the eye-tulpa’s destabilization, this shudder felt far more intentional. As if the entire facility were moving on a conveyor belt.

Ahead of them, a catwalk slid apart, breaking away while one section dropped downward and their side lifted up. Initial shudder aside, it didn’t feel like they were moving. Perhaps they were stationary while the rest of the facility was moving around them? Or maybe motion just didn’t translate well within the noosphere. A new slice of the facility crossed overhead before descending down into position at the catwalk. As soon as the relative motion stopped, the catwalks extended and Doctor Darq started up a light jog toward it.

Dyna started jogging just to keep up.

“The platform currently containing the eye-tulpa and Bastet has been repositioned below the entrance to Tartarus,” Darq shouted over his shoulder. Banking his jog around a long row of standing servers, each with dozens of cables plugged into them, Darq eventually reached a much larger control panel and array of monitors.

He grimaced at the sight of one. Dozens of cats were clawing the eye-tulpa. Several clawing at its face tried to gouge out its eyes, much like Dyna had attempted, but the moment their paws crossed his line of vision, the entire cat vanished into dark wisps of thought. The swarm of cats were swiftly being replaced even as they were eliminated.

There was no sign of Bastet on any of the monitors.

Darq’s grimace was probably aimed at the facility itself, however. It looked like the eye-tulpa had been in the same spot for quite a while. There were a few containment tanks around but the metal slats shielding them from view were pockmarked and full of holes. A thick layer of gelatin coated the floor around one of the more damaged tanks. The glass was still mostly intact, but it wouldn’t be that way for long.

Snatching a few levers that made him look like he was playing an arcade crane game, Darq directed one of the massive grasping claws over the heavily damaged tank. It latched onto the sides and began lifting up, but the eye-tulpa must have glanced in the crane’s direction while fighting off the cats. The cables simply vanished and the large container fell several feet.

Dyna winced. Her first thought was that the container would shatter on impact, but she caught herself and forced her mind into rejecting that conclusion. These tanks were made out of sturdier stuff than that. They could survive a fall from space without being damaged. A few feet was nothing.

Both Darq and Dyna let out a small sigh of relief as the container simply tipped on its side and rolled against a nearby wall.

“What’s stored in that section of the facility?”

“Esoterics. Generally not as powerful as our more deific guests, but often possess odd or unpleasant effects. Were the Hatman in my collection, that entity would be stored here.”

“Don’t want any escaping then,” Dyna said, looking down at the control panel. One of the icons looked like a wrench. Tapping it, two small robots emerged from a wall and approached the fallen tank. They set to work on the glass, filling it in and stopping the leak of gel.

That taken care of, her eyes shifted around the control panel until she spotted a familiar button. Slamming her finger into the trapdoor button, the eye-tulpa fell along with all the cats attacking him. They landed in a gel-filled vat.

Dyna hit two buttons in rapid succession. The first sealed the container just like the previous container she had trapped him in. The second button raised the tank out of the floor.

Without a word of collaboration between them, Darq already had a second crane positioned over the top of the new container. Lifting the container up, he swung the entire assembly through the facility and into the top of a waiting elevator platform. As soon as the crane was out of the way, he slammed a fist onto the control panel.

The elevator launched upward like a rocket without flames or exhaust. It continued up into the air high enough that Dyna could see it over the top of the control panel. The massive cavernous laboratory they were in had a ceiling. For a moment, Dyna thought the elevator would crash against it.

Just before striking, the elevator vanished in the air.

“One problem dealt with,” Darq said with a grin.

“Dealt with? Try mitigated.”

Darq shrugged. “Not my department. Now, I need to get Tartarus repaired before something else escapes. Then I need to figure out how it got in and try to patch that hole in our membrane. After—”

“I need to get back into the real world,” Dyna said, interrupting his task list. “And Ruby…”

“It might be best for her to remain here until she has recovered.”

“I might agree to that if I trusted you, but you just admitted that you wanted to detain me here indefinitely.”

“A contingency. Don’t be offended. I have a plan to detain everyone I meet and most everyone I don’t. Rest assured, Tartarus would not allow even you to escape if I thought you should remain among my collection.”

Dyna wasn’t so sure about that. She seemed to have quite the control over the facility. Unless that eye-tulpa had just so happened to be standing on already existing trap doors over empty containment vats. That seemed highly coincidental. It was far more likely that her power had brought those realities to this place.

She didn’t say so, however. Not wanting to give the good doctor any reason to try to detain her, she simply gave him a look. “If anything happens to Ruby…”

“You need not fear anything from me. I have no interest in beings that lack the potential for mass calamity.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, then nodded her head. “How do I get out? Is the elevator waiting or do you have to call it back down?”

“Calling it back down would not be a wise decision until we have confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that the eye-tulpa is not still within the elevator.” Darq half-turned, pointing. “That elevator will take you up.”

Following his hand, Dyna frowned. She hadn’t been paying that much attention with her concern over the eye-tulpa. Still, she couldn’t recall there having been an elevator just behind the control panel.

With one last glance at the doctor, who had turned back to the control panel without a word, Dyna walked over to the elevator.

“Floor three will see you somewhere you can find assistance,” Darq said without turning around. “I sent the tulpa to the very top of the facility in the interest of keeping it as far away from here as possible. Good luck!”

Dyna didn’t bother responding. She did press the button for the third floor anyway. Leaning back against the wall, she felt the very faintest of vibrations in her feet. It didn’t feel like she was moving up at all. Certainly not like she was rocketing up to the ceiling of the noosphere-adjacent facility.

Just as she forced the idea that she had been tricked out of her mind, the elevator transitioned into real space. It didn’t feel any different, but the transition was obvious nonetheless.

Even the deaf would hear the whooping alarm blaring in the center of her mind.

The elevator dinged, doors opening to an office area that Id had skipped over during their earlier tour.

Two PP-2000 tulpa turned.

Dyna’s hand snapped to her wrist and she wrenched the face of her watch backward. Something stopped it from turning fully. Before she realized what was happening, Dyna was back in the elevator just as it crossed the threshold between the noosphere and the real world. The alarm sounded in her head, but she forced it from her mind.

Dyna’s pulled her gun and flicked the laser pointer on. The moment the elevator dinged, she opened fire before the tulpa could face her. Although Id had taken their electronics, she hadn’t asked for any weapons. Thankfully.

Carefully stepping out of the elevator, mirror in hand, Dyna approached the tulpa and nudged them with her foot. Neither moved. Neither shifted into a shadowy state to ignore her bullets.

This was the real world.

It was under attack as well.

Ducking down, Dyna freed the PP-2000s from their former wielders, slinging them over her shoulders. Not sure what she was getting into, she wanted to be prepared. Especially since she wouldn’t be able to use her primary psionic power if Darq’s comments about the Continuity Engine had been true.

Well, it wasn’t like she had used it in past confrontations. At least not consciously.

As long as there weren’t any advanced tulpa around aside from the eye-tulpa, she would be fine until she met up with someone else.

Dyna winced, but grinned as she realized she didn’t even have to worry about altering reality to bring an advanced tulpa around.

Looking around the office, she pressed her lips together. Id did have other employees, right? Kit Maple and Gloria Ado, at the very least. Were they on this floor or had Darq sent her here for some other reason?

Shaking her head, Dyna pressed forward.

Nothing to do but search.