the lab, using the invaders’ own power against them?
Static in my head. “—facts—” was all I could make out.
At least it was Sean’s voice. The last of the intruders were in the artifact storage area, which struck me as the true brain of the lab. I found myself there and got just a glimpse of the two invaders, easily as large as the ones I had fought just now, as they vanished.
Sean and the rest of my makeshift security team were picking themselves up off the floor. They were covered in bruises, some bleeding, and had clearly been no match for the invaders.
“Sean, where did they go?”
He just shook his head, trying to catch his breath. Sean’s arm was shredded pretty badly, and I realized that he couldn’t talk because some vital part of my systems, my ’verse, had been compromised.
Okay, think, think . . . “Hey, Doc?”
Professor Osborne showed up. I figured as the newest addition, there was a possibility that the intruders weren’t aware of him. “What’s up?”
“We’ve had visitors, and they’re not nice. I’ve apparently taken some damage . . .” It was at that point that I realized that my own nose was bleeding steadily. “Ah, shit, they managed to screw up my healing abilities. Okay, these guys are fast, and as soon as a real threat pops up, they vanish. What can I do?”
“I’ll work on plugging up any holes,” Geoffrey said. There was something in his demeanor that said he liked the action, that he might have excelled in scenarios and simulations classes at the Fangborn Academy. And then there was that reaction to the explosion at the demonstration . . . Maybe all of his life hadn’t been spent in an ivory tower or another multiverse.
“Could it be the Makers?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but yeah, could most certainly be,” he said as he examined the schematic of the lab. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got that thing, there, and whatever it is, it’s doing a lot to keep them out.”
“Wait, what thing? What do you mean?”
He pulled up the image of several artifacts. “I noticed that gold signet ring. Very posh. And the scarab microchip. Those are Order creations; they’re not something the invaders understand, and those pieces were confusing them.”
Porter’s ring, the last thing I took from him as his body disappeared under a flurry of violence from my lab assistants. He didn’t belong in the lab, I remembered, because he’d been jacked up on Order chemicals and enhancements. The scarab was the same, and it was keeping the Makers out.
“What about the sword, from Kanazawa?” I asked. That was on the screen, too.
“They were positively terrified of that.”
Interesting. I recalled that Quarrel had referred to “that alien thing” in Kanazawa, and now I wondered if he was referring to the sword or the ring Porter made.
“I’ve been studying that sword. Zoe, that’s crazy stuff. I have no idea what that is or does—but it’s major. Like I said, it’s not Order, it’s not Fangborn. Okay to keep working on that?”
“Sure,” I said absently. Then the timing hit me, and my stomach clenched. “Geoffrey, you’re the translator the librarian told me about, right? You came with the papyrus. Were you sent by the Makers? Were you sent to fix me? To control me?”
Dr. Osborne looked surprised I hadn’t asked this before. “Yeah, Zoe. Yeah, ’course I was.”
Chapter Sixteen
I was about to dissolve into a panic when Geoffrey said, “But I can’t function the way the Makers want, because of those objects. So basically, I get to play, hang out, think really big thoughts. You’ve given me so much new material—this is much more fun.”
“But they have access . . . to me.” I wasn’t ready to give up on that panic just yet: I’d given the Makers even more direct access to me than they already had.
“I’m telling you they don’t,” he insisted. “If they had . . . those things would not have failed. There’s something about you—and you said your blood had been tampered with by those TRG scientists, too, correct?—and these artifacts that keep the Makers at bay. You’ve got a natural resistance and an acquired one. Otherwise, you’d be doing what they want.”
“So . . . can you tell me what they’re thinking?” I asked, still worried, only a bit reassured. “Are you in contact with them?”
He cocked his head, as if listening. “Not really; I was supposed to have a mission, and because