The Psychic Detector looked even more imposing from the base. Craning her neck back gave Dyna a dizzying moment of vertigo before she shook the feeling off. There wasn’t time to sit around gawking. There were still tulpa around and who knew what Alpha was planning now that she had gotten out of that trap.

Entering the detector superstructure felt like the kind of place that people weren’t regularly meant to traverse. The door, unlocked with her bobby pin just beyond the garage-like dock for the gondola, brought her through a narrow corridor lined with pipes, cables, and tubes. A maintenance area.

“The Psychic Detector is part of the Carroll Institute’s psionic detection network, which consists of a number of satellites and similar radar stations positioned at strategic locations around the world. It was designed to monitor psychics, detect artifact instantiation, and measure global ambient levels of psionics for a variety of purposes. However, from this brief walk-through you are providing, I can say that this installation has been modified significantly from the designs stored in my databases.”

“Is that my fault or Alpha’s?” Dyna whispered, moving carefully through the corridor, trying not to think about horrifying monsters jumping out of vents to attack her. Continuity Engine or not, she didn’t need the added stress.

Nothing jumped out at her. No horror monsters. Not even regular tulpa.

Dyna found that… eerie. Frustrating though it might have been, she honestly thought fighting her way inside would have been better than this. It was just too empty. Too quiet. For all that she was annoyed with the way Alpha called her out as an action hero, she would much prefer that role to that of a horror protagonist.

“Unknown. I am leaning toward the latter. I have detected blank spots in my memory relating to this place. It is likely Alpha used her authority to prevent my awareness of her intentions here.”

“I thought we unshackled you. Can’t you recover those memories?”

“Not if they never existed in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” Dyna said, coming to a stop. The maintenance corridor came to an end at a ladder. Small LED lights illuminated the shaft, which headed up high into the mast of the structure. The ladder also went down, however that path was not lit nearly so well. There was only a dim light at the bottom. “Which way, do you suppose?”

“There would be little room within the detector’s shaft.”

“If Alpha wanted to hide anything larger than herself, she would be underground,” Dyna reasoned. She didn’t like the idea of climbing up or down a ladder. It would force her hands onto the ladder rather than her watch or gun. Her mirror was still black. Hostiles were in the area. The drawbacks of her mirror were once again apparent, unfortunately. She didn’t know if there were any tulpa down below or if her mirror was just dark because of any she had left behind at the observation station.

Dyna descended as quickly as she could, dropping the last several feet to the ground just in case she did reset time. She didn’t want to reset onto the ladder and fall the entire way because the jolt would have made her hands relax.

However, there was nothing at the bottom. More pipes. More cables. It was just a small room. Most of the cables ran overhead while the vertical pipes stretched from floor to ceiling.

“Maybe she did go up?” Dyna said after taking one full look around.

“Hold. The pipes are not in my schematics. Analysis of surrounding infrastructure indicates that they are not connected to the rest of the structure in any meaningful way.”

Dyna quirked an eyebrow, looking back to the pipes herself. She tapped them, frowning at the hollow sound they made as her knuckles met metal. Leaning around the sides, she noticed a thin line in the wall a bit away from the rows of pipes. “There is a seam here,” she said, holding her hand up to it. “I feel airflow from the other side. It’s a door?”

She didn’t know how to open it. There was no obvious doorknob.

But she had a bobby pin that could open any door.

Jamming the bobby pin into the seam, she turned.

With a hiss, the door clicked and the whole wall, pipes and all, swung inward.

“Now this is more like it,” she said, carefully stepping inside. “Just what I would expect…” Dyna trailed off with a grimace. “Did I make some kind of super villain base?” she grumbled to herself.

“Unknown.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Dyna mumbled as she paused.

There was something on the ground ahead of her.

A body. Tulpa, based on the weapon and armor. Something had torn apart its midsection, leaving entrails and blood coating the floor.

“No life signs detected.”

“You think?” Dyna hissed, wishing she had never even thought about any movie genres in the first place. “Did I do this?”

“I have observed your every action since leaving Texas. You did not cause this tulpa’s death.”

“With my power?”

“Anomalous energy signature that began when Alpha ordered the initiation of the Continuity Engine is still ongoing.”

“For all we know, that is me doing that.”

“Uncertainty is high,” Beatrice admitted.

“If my power is going to warp reality around me,” Dyna grumbled, clutching her gun tight as she peered around the narrow corridor. “I would much rather have it warp it into an action movie than a horror movie.”

Beatrice didn’t say anything, leaving Dyna little to do but push forward into the narrow corridor. Dyna made sure to look up at the pipes running along the ceiling several times. In horror movies, they always got attacked from above.

Aside from one other body, dismembered, Dyna didn’t see anything that constituted as a threat. There were several doors that had large wheels on the front in the corridor. The kind that might look more at home on a boat than whatever this place was supposed to be. Stopping at one, she spun the handle and peeked inside.

Dyna jolted, readying her gun, only to pause. In the dim lights, the rows of armor looked like soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder. A moment of extra observation revealed the truth. The helmets and body armor were hanging from racks on the wall. The array of PP-2000s underneath the armor was evidence enough for what this was. An armory.

Tulpa littered the floor. Bullet holes pockmarked the walls, ceiling, and floor. Eight dead tulpa, probably. Dyna wasn’t actually sure. More than one had been torn completely apart to the point where she wasn’t quite sure where one body ended and another began.

The next two rooms were much the same. A tulpa armory, some kind of living quarters, and a small mess hall. Was all this real or had Alpha somehow constructed it out of the noosphere?

Or had it all popped into existence because Dyna figured that an army like this would need a large base of operations?

Lately, Dyna had started to feel like her own worst enemy.

Pushing the thoughts from her mind, Dyna continued on until she found a different room. A small control room with a single seat and a terminal. A staircase led down from the control room to a large metal casket propped up on a pedestal below. Thick pipes and large cables connected to both ends of the metal cylinder, connected to the ceiling up above.

There were no bodies in this room. Dyna wasn’t sure if that was more ominous or less. There was still no sign of whatever had torn the tulpa apart.

Stopping at the control panel, Dyna looked it over for just a moment before finding what she needed. Pulling out Walter’s phone, she connected it to the machine.

“Beatrice?”

“Hold. Assuming direct control of the internal network.”

“How long—”

“Complete.”

“Oh. Okay. So?”

“It appears that this facility was redesigned during its construction stage to, in addition to its regular psionic detection role, send out a beacon to draw thoughtforms from the noosphere.”

“It makes tulpa.”

“This particular console and chamber contain equipment for manufacturing specialist tulpa. The more advanced entities you have been facing.”

Dyna narrowed her eyes as a number of experimentation logs appeared on the screen. A large number of them were fairly grim. Little more than piles of disjointed limbs and bodies all mashed together in a form most horror movies would love to have jumping out at the audience. From the rapidly changing images, Dyna gathered that they only had a few stable successes. The mountain man—listed as Specimen Three—the eye-tulpa—Specimen Five—and one labeled Specimen Seven, which took the form of a woman wearing a blank black mask.

“Do I need to be worried about that last one?”

At her question, the text on the screen changed. “The research notes imply that this specimen was developed immediately following Specimen Five, taking in everything they learned from its creation.”

“So it was also made to counter my power?”

“Potentially. It appears that creation attempt was aborted prematurely.”

“It was destroyed?”

“Released. Most recent log timestamped eleven minutes ago.”

“Roughly when I escaped from Alpha’s monologuing?”

“Approximately one minute after the gondola descended.”

“So they let out some insane experiment before it was ready because I was coming. Probably hoping it would kill me or at least slow me down. I wonder if they expected it to kill the other tulpa here. Any chance it got Alpha? Any idea where it is now?”

“Unknown and unkno—”

A clatter of metal against cement had Dyna pivoting on her heel, bringing her stolen gun up to her shoulder. If this was some advanced tulpa, a gun probably wouldn’t work so well. She didn’t really have anything else, unfortunately. Outside the noosphere, she couldn’t create clones of herself and she had yet to see anything that resembled disruptor technology.

Guns had been able to slow the Hatman. Based on those other rooms, they didn’t look like they had done that much good here. Maybe the tulpa had all just missed.

Holding onto that hope, Dyna approached a smaller door back at the entrance to the control room. She hesitated outside, waiting a long moment. Beatrice wasn’t saying anything. In tense situations, she didn’t like to distract Dyna. If she had vital information, she would share it.

Keeping her submachine gun locked in her shoulder, Dyna reached forward and grabbed the handle. Wiggling it, it didn’t budge. Throwing a quick glance around, making sure nothing was sneaking up on her, Dyna pulled out her bobby pin and tried the door a second time.

It opened to a single occupancy toilet. A single occupant, crouched on the floor, threw their hands up in front of their face, making a squealing noise as they pressed back against the wall.

Tense, Dyna’s finger pulled the trigger before her brain caught up to what she was seeing. Blood splattered against the wall, coating the cement, while the person slid off to one side, letting out a rattling last breath.

“I do not believe that was what killed the tulpa in this facility. Body language analysis in the moments before death indicates fright.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Dyna said, gripping her watch and throwing herself back in time several seconds.

Standing in front of the door once again, Dyna opened it with far less hesitation. The person inside still shirked inward, cowering. Dyna got a much better look at them this time around.

It was a person. Probably a man. Dyna couldn’t describe much about him since he wore what looked like a padded quilt over his head and face. Dark lenses let him look out into the world. A crystal ball had been implanted in his forehead. Or half a crystal ball had been attached to the quilt.

Dyna grabbed his arm and threw him to the ground, planting a knee in his back as she patted him down for weapons. Finding nothing more than a few tools—a screwdriver, some pliers, and a long coat hanger—she got off his back and kept her gun aimed at his head. After a quick glance around the room, including upward, she looked back to him.

“Stay down,” she ordered.

Despite the command, the man tilted his head up enough to see her. “Oh. It’s just you.”

“I said stay down.”

The man didn’t. He started to push himself up until she swept her foot, knocking one of his arms out from under him. Groaning, his shoulder hit the ground.

“You wouldn’t be so cavalier if you knew I just blew your brains out.”

“What?”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Rather than answer her questions, he turned his head, looking around the control room without pushing himself back up again. “Is it gone? Did you kill it?”

“I’m asking the questions he—”

“You don’t understand. We need to evacuate,” he said, starting to push himself up again. “Maybe evacuate the whole island.”

“Because of Specimen Seven?”

“How did you…”

“Answer my questions,” Dyna said. “Or I’ll tie you up and leave—”

“No. No please. I’m… uh… Frankenstein.”

Dyna glowered. “Excuse me?”

“The tulpa technician. My art gives chaotic thoughts beautiful form.”

“You make the tulpa here.”

“I make art.”

“Uh huh,” Dyna said, gaze flat. “Where’s Alpha?”

“Why would I know that? She came running through here a few minutes ago. I told her Specimen Seven wasn’t ready. She set it loose anyway,” he said, tone upset. “Probably died. No… no. Probably fled through the noosphere.”

“You have a spatial anomaly or noosphere portal here?”

“Of course. What kind of tulpa research facility do you take us for? We might not be as large as—”

“Quiet.”

“But we need to—”

“Where is the noosphere portal?” If she could reach it, she could create clones of herself. Distasteful as it was to potentially send herself to her own death, it was the only real defense she could think of that might stand up against an advanced tulpa.

The quilted man’s head turned, looking back to the door that had brought Dyna to the control room. The corridor outside had continued onward. The portal must have been further along. A part of her wanted to rush straight there and start making clones of herself as a defensive wall. The other part turned back to the quilted man.

“When you said we needed to evacuate the entire island…”

“Specimen Seven is unstable. It has no purpose or directive and did not respond to command signals. Theoretically, it should have dispersed back into the noosphere after it was released from the pressure chamber. It didn’t. New theory: It is feeding off the thoughts of those it kills and will continue to do so until it either stabilizes or fails to sustain itself. It will probably continue after stabilizing simply because that is all it knows.”

“I passed a lot of dead tulpa,” Dyna said, moving back to the door and, after a quick glance outside, sealing it shut with a spin of the handle. “How many would it have to eat to stabilize?”

The… Frankenstein sat up on his knees while Dyna’s back was turned. She was tempted to order him back to the ground but, having watched him for several minutes now, decided she could probably take him in hand-to-hand combat if he did try anything. He was unarmed, after all.

“This is an art. Not a science. I can’t give you hard answers like that.”

“I know several doctors who I am sure would disagree with you.”

“All I know is that it doesn’t matter if it won’t stop.”

“It might. How long between kills before it disperses?”

The man shrugged, looking affronted that she would even bother asking.

With a groan, Dyna looked to the terminal. “Beatrice.”

“This is Beatrice.”

“Get as much data on Specimen Seven to Doctor Darq as possible, please. Try to get me some usable information.”

“Understood.”

“Doctor Dark?” Frankenstein said, “I’ve heard Alpha mumbling about—”

“Darq,” Dyna mumbled. “With a q.”

“What?”

“What.” Dyna shook her head. “I saw a lot of dead tulpa but didn’t encounter anything. Is this thing going to target only tulpa or is it going to attack humans as well?”

“Oh. I hope it didn’t escape already.”

“The nearest civilization is a fair distance away. Will it survive that distance?”

“I don’t—”

“Useless,” Dyna hissed, turning away. “Beatrice. I don’t suppose Tartarus is in a position to hunt this thing down? I need to go after Alpha before—”

“Oh! Go—”

Dyna snapped her head back just in time to watch an elongated shadowy form grasp hold of Frankenstein by the ankle and hoist him up in the air. Although its main body, looking like tulpa within the noosphere despite being in reality, was crawling along the ground, its shadowy limbs stretched long enough for it Frankenstein to dangle completely free without any part of him still on the ground.

Its other hand grasped hold of his arm. Frankenstein started screaming.

Dyna raised her gun and started firing into the shadowy mass. Her bullets passed straight through it without any apparent effect. It certainly didn’t stop the shadowy figure from pulling the man’s limbs.

Blood and viscera erupted from Frankenstein’s midsection as the creature ripped him completely in half. It slammed down his upper body, pinning his head in place with one hand. With the other, it pointed a long finger directly at his forehead. Frankenstein, still screaming despite having been torn in two, stilled instantly.

Dyna gripped her watch and turned back time as far as she could.

Finding herself staring at the door, about to seal it shut, Dyna turned back to Frankenstein, who was just starting to push himself to his knees, froze under her gaze and started lowering himself slowly back onto his stomach.

“We need to go,” she hissed, searching the shadows for any sign of the strange creature. “Now!”

“Wh—”

“You just died. And if you don’t get over here in about ten seconds, you’re going to die again.”

Dyna heard his jaw snap shut behind his quilted mask. He still hesitated for about two seconds, but he quickly got to his feet after that and ran to the door. Dyna stepped outside, about to slam the door shut behind her when Beatrice’s voice started in her ear.

“Warning: continued operation of Walter’s glasses requires proximity to his phone for wireless connectivity.”

Dyna’s eyes flicked to the table across the room. Movement in the corner of her eye made her slam the door shut, spinning the wheel.

Something slammed into the other side, eliciting a loud, metallic clang that echoed down the corridor.

Dyna waited, hand on her wrist, watching to see if Specimen Seven could follow them. After three more hammering bangs against the door the sound ceased. She considered rewinding time again and using the brief window of opportunity to grab Walter’s phone. But it had attacked earlier this time around than last time. Running across the room might set it off even earlier. If it managed to grab her arms, she might not be able to restart time before it ripped her apart.

“Sorry Beatrice. Might have to carry on without you if you can’t use my phone.”

“I can connect to your phone but cannot connect your phone to the glasses.”

“We’ll have to make do,” Dyna said with a small sigh. “Frankenstein, how do we…”

Dyna looked around the empty corridor. While she had been focusing on the door, watching to see if the creature could follow after them, he had apparently decided to try his luck on his own.

She considered rewinding time to keep him from running off. Fear over not managing to get away from the creature in time stayed her hand.

There was really only one way to go, anyway. Further down the hall.

“I hope it is stuck in there,” she mumbled, foregoing her gun in favor of keeping her hand on her watch.

“Was that rhetorical?”

Dyna hesitated in answering. “Why do you ask?”

“I only observed the tulpa in thirty-eight frames, however that was more than sufficient to identify its lack of a humanoid body.” Red lines appeared over Dyna’s head at periodic points in the corridor. “It may be capable of traversing the ventilation system.”

Dyna pressed her lips together, quickly moving out from under the highlighted vent directly overhead. “In that case, yes, Beatrice, it was rhetorical,” she said through grit teeth.