"What?" My three spirits spoke in unison.

I nodded: "They have the Sword of the Angel."

"But… how?" Suisei asked. "It should still be on the beach where I left it!"

I waved my hand and conjured what I'd seen.

The interior of the inner cylinder was truly beautiful. Symbols and patterned designs glowed electric blue within its golden-yellow walls of stone. Three dome-shaped buildings ringed round by entry arches surrounded a broad platform topped by a small patch of alien forest. The Sword hovered over the soil and the shrubs, suspended in front of a portal to a world of orange dunes, with something like a dead Sun suspended in its pitch black Night. Every few seconds, a bolt of energy rasped off the Sword and leapt to the portal's rim, swirling around the edge as it drifted in.

Suisei stared at it with a haunted expression.

"How can they have the Sword?" Mr. Himichi asked. He glanced at Suisei.

"If there is more than one world and more than one Angel," Ileene suggested, "who's to say there can't be more than one Sword, too?"

I pointed at the Sword in the memory. "But that's literally the same Sword you held!" I said.

"No," Suisei shook his head, "not necessarily. Angelfall happened in my world, too. Our Lassedicy rose up to worship Tachyon Azon, just like yours did."

"So, there's more than one Tachyon Azon?" I asked.

"Genneth, don't forget," Suisei said, "there was already a version of myself here when I first came to your world. Like Ileene said, if that can happen, there's no reason why it can't happen to the Angel and His Sword."

Mr. Himichi scratched his chin. "Azon might have fractured across different universes. Also, it's possible that this sort of multiplicitous existence is natural for Azon's kind."

Ileene waved her hands frantically. "Just stop," she said. "Stop stop stop!"

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Of all the questions I have, how the hummingbird aliens got the Sword isn't even in, like, the top five." She stared at my memory and pointed at the portal. "I want to know what that portal is," she said, "and what the hummingbirds are doing with the Sword!" Shuddering, she briefly wrapped herself in her arms. "Now that I think about it, I also want to know what they'll do when they learn that Dr. Horosha here has a sacred Sword, too!"

My jaw went slack. "Fudge, I hadn't thought of that."

Suisei narrowed his eyes. "The energy current is flowing from the Sword to the portal. If I had to guess, I would say the Sword is maintaining that portal."

"To what end?" Mr. Himichi said.

"We can only speculate," Suisei replied. "Perhaps they have been using it as a power source, or as a means of travel."

"The portal could be part of the Lodestars," Mr. Himichi said.

"Does anything here look like… well, whatever the hell a Lodestar is?" Ileene asked.

I clenched my fist and jaw. "Okay, that does it," I shook my head and made Xs with my arms, "no more putting this off." I looked my ghosts in the eyes. "We need to recover the Sword ASAP."

"What about stopping the superweapon?" Ileene asked.

"We have twenty-four hours," I said. "That's still plenty of time to figure out what—"

—Ileene's eyes widened; she staggered back, utterly spooked.

Mr. Himichi looked shaken, while Suisei narrowed his eyes.

"It seems we have company."

I turned to look.

A dodecahedron as white as a blank page was moving toward us, floating down a hallway. Outside of geometry class, shapes aren't the sort of thing that made a person flinch in terror, but this one was the size of man and surrounded by swarms of cones and stellated shapes that shrieked like clashing knives as they moved and seethed.

"INTRUDERS," it said, in a loud, grating monotone. The whole thing pulsed with a deep, gut-churning drone.

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We stepped back.

"IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!"

Mr. Himichi glanced at me. "Genneth, now would be a good time to—"

"—I'm trying!" I said.

I was doing everything I could to get us out of there and decouple myself from the ship. I clenched my fists, closed my eyes, visualized all sorts of useful metaphors, and made lots of concentration-indicating subvocalizations.

And none of it did anything.

"I—I can't! Something's holding me back!"

It didn't take a genius to realize what that something was.

With a gulp, I turned to face the very angry dodecahedron. "What are you?"

"INTRUDER GENNETH, THIS IS AN ANTIVIRUS UNIT. VYX MODULE 44,864,962 IS INFECTED. SEVERANCE PROTOCOL HAS BEEN INITIATED."

The labyrinth shook. A ravine opened in a distant corridor where the maze began to drift apart.

"Severance protocol?" Ileene asked.

"Guys," I said, "the labyrinth is literally breaking up all around us!"

That probably had something to do with it.

"MODULE 44,864,962 MUST BE CUT OFF FROM THE FLEET."

Lights flashed on the dodecahedron's surface. For a brief moment, all of its movements ceased.

"INTERLOPERS AND INTRUDER GENNETH: YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS COMPONENTS OF THE BLIGHT. YOU WILL NOW BE DESTROYED."

"Flibbertigibbet…"

I didn't need an augur to know that I had a great deal of running in my near future.

Several of the cones floating around the anti-virus unit doubled, then tripled in size. The dodecahedron abruptly launched itself at Ileene like an incoming sledgehammer. It bashed through her side, deleting her flank and her right arm. Pixelated trails drifted out of the wounds instead of blood.

She fell over and screamed.

I rushed forward to help her off the floor.

"Run!" Suisei yelled.

We did.

Behind us, the anti-virus unit slammed head first into the wall. "ERADICATE THE BLIGHT!"

I glanced back. It had pried itself free. Rapidly, it spun around in place and aimed its ramming cones at us.

"ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

I yelled and moaned. I focused on Ileene's wounds as we ran down the hallway. Thankfully, unlike my attempt to leave, this wyrm-power still worked. The smoking pixels coalesced, Ileene's body regenerating before my eyes.

"UNSANCTIONED PROGRAM DETECTED!" the dodecahedron shrieked. "ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

The labyrinth's pale, malachite-patterned walls shattered like crystal as the anti-virus unit bashed through it. Suisei managed to lunge back and pull me out of the way just in time.

"It must be tracking your powers!" he said.

Oh fudge, I thought. But no; no. I was not blaming myself for this. There was no way I could have known using my mind-powers would get the shape police on my tail.

"Fork!" Mr. Himichi yelled.

I looked ahead. There was, in fact, a fork in the road, dead ahead.

That gave me an idea.

I pointed down the fork's right branch. "This way!" At the same time, I took the first thing that came to mind and summoned it on the fork's left branch. If the anti-virus unit really was tracking my powers, hopefully this would throw it off our trail.

Somewhat predictably, the first thing I thought of was a pangolin, which appeared in the hall on the right.

"UNSANCTIONED PROGRAM DETECTED!" the anti-virus unit bellowed. "ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

I closed my eyes.

Sorry little buddy, I thought.

The raving polyhedron turned toward the pangolin with a bloodhound's speed, and charged, its vicious cone-teeth spinning around like nightmares and drills. It barreled forward, shattering the wall at the middle of the fork in the path.

We took that as a sign to run the other way.

"Shit!" Ileene cursed. She stumbled, skidding to a stop, gyrating her arms in circles.

A crack tore across the floor of the corridor directly ahead. That whole section of the labyrinth ripped away from us. The sound was like an avalanche, and only grew louder as the gap widened.

Desperate, I decided to take a gamble. The anti-virus unit had said its job was to sever the ship's connection to the rest of the fleet, right? Well, maybe if we were on the side that was being severed, it wouldn't chase us.

"Don't stop!" I yelled. "Jump!"

I dreamed of frogs' legs. Leap! Jump!

While Suisei and Mr. Himichi kept on running, Ileene stared at me like I'd just lost my mind.

"Jump!?"

Then I grabbed her and did just that.

"Jump!" I yelled.

We flew clear over the ravine. Ileene and I landed on the other side, kneeling on one knee.

"ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

The anti-virus unit rocketed down the hallway.

"Go!" I said.

"Genneth!"

I glanced back at Mr. Himichi. "Go!"

I stood my ground while my ghosts ran ahead. The dodecahedron hurtled toward us, only to ground to a halt right in front of the break in the corridor. Its many parts kept whirling about, stabbing at the air.

"ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

I smiled, and then turned the other way. The path forked several times in the next stretch of hallway. Suisei and Mr. Himichi ran down one of the branches, with Ileene following not far behind. There was a door-sized portal in the wall not too far ahead of them.

"Guys, it's alright!" I said. "We're safe!"

At the exact same time as they turned around to face me, a second anti-virus unit came barreling down one of the other forks up ahead.

"UNSANCTIONED PROGRAM DETECTED! ERADICATE ERADICATE!"

Oh, fudge me!

These anti-virus units were real bundles of joy, weren't they?

I conjured another distraction, this time a tree, rather than a pangolin. I summoned it directly behind the anti-virus unit. The irate polyhedron swerved around and charged at the unsuspecting conifer.

I ran toward my companions. Unfortunately, a third grating monotone brayed from around the corner up ahead.

"UNSANCTIONED PROGRAM DETECTED!"

"Genneth!" Mr. Himichi yelled.

"I'm trying!"

Desperate, I closed my eyes and tried to break my link with the ship.

No cigar.

"ERADICATE ERADICATE!"

Suisei turned to face the portal in the wall. All things considered, it looked rather inviting. He glanced at me, and then gestured at the portal. "After you."

Then we leapt in, and the portal spat us out somewhere completely different.

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