just long enough to shake its head angrily and flick those tears on long trajectories through the darkness. She flexes her fingers, where she always wished she had blades, and millions of intelligences feel a touch of something they will never comprehend. There is a mind above them and among them, made of them, as mysterious to them as Network once seemed to her.
Don’t worry about that old thing, says Observer with a smile. We can always make You a new one.
It takes her a fraction of a second to realize that Observer is referring to her body. That old thing. She experiences a moment of doubt as her intellect and instincts tangle on the subject of body death, but she shoves it down. She takes a breath with that old thing, recognizing even as she does it that it will likely be her last one.
This is what I was made for, she says, to herself as much as to Observer. If I have to die trying to protect my people—
Practically anyone would do that, says Observer with a laugh. The important question is: would You kill to protect your people?
Sarya the Daughter answers in action, not words. She explodes toward that single subspace corridor, lightning and blades and rage. She shreds connections by the thousand, pulling intelligences into herself so violently that she can feel the waves of fear echoing through them. She is doing them a favor: she is freeing them from Network, but they do not understand that, not yet. They scream, somewhere inside her, but Sarya barely hears. She has senses for nothing but the corridor to that distant solar system.
Go, Daughter.
Sarya goes. She burns a trail straight outward, gaining kilometers per second. Time slows as her mind expands; the particles of each second tick past as she adds millions of minds to her collective. But she is not building a mind; she is building a bridge. She is escaping a Blackstar before the mind that controls it realizes she has turned on it. She keeps her gaze on her goal, on the single subspace corridor that leads back to where she came from. She will leap from mind to mind through this web, like electricity. She will burn a hole through the Network itself.
Go, Daughter.
All around her, Sarya feels defenses rumbling into life. They are ancient mechanisms, set in place eons ago. But they are clumsy, and she is agile. They may take minds offline before she reaches them, they may set traps for her questing tendrils, they may sever entire branches from her own personal Network as they seek her out, but Sarya the Daughter dances like a Widow and strikes with all the fury of a Human. She accelerates, every mind she absorbs adding to her abilities and momentum. She keeps her focus on that single corridor, the doorway that leads to her future.
Observer may still be speaking, but she can no longer tell the difference between His voice and her own gigantic subconscious. This is Sarya the Daughter, says one or the other, a daughter of three mothers! She is Human. She is Widow. She is Network. She is the lightning in the storm, She is the blade in the darkness. She is a raging wildfire. She is, above all things, Network’s undoing.
And now she has reached the edge of the Blackstar. She takes a breath, prepares herself to leap into the great cloud of starships circling above it—
And then she feels it.
She searches through herself for the threat. Somewhere, her instincts tell her, she is in danger. Somewhere in this churning mass of minds in minds on minds—
There it is.
Back in the Visitors’ Gallery, which contained her entire self only seconds ago, Network has mounted a counterattack. From the balconies and bridges, from every opening into that space, a stream of drones is issuing. They are not the drones she is used to seeing, the ubiquitous Network machines. These are bigger, harder, darker. They have implements she does not recognize.
Network is not attacking her mind. It’s attacking her body.
Sarya has no choice in the matter. Just as she speaks without knowing how, she defends herself in the same way. Her drones close ranks around her body, guarding her, but they are no match for these things. She seizes her attackers’ minds as quickly as she can, but these are different; they would literally rather die than obey her. As soon as one detects that its Network has changed, its