It was like being born anew.

  His form jerked from stillness. For a terrifying moment I thought that this was Danefer, the living god, and that he couldn’t die. But the writhing that commenced was a mortal dance.

  I was at once more exposed and more vulnerable than I had been in a very long time and yet strangely numb. It was shocking to realize that it was my skin, my own flesh, that was feeling the air. It was on my bare hands that the hotness of Danefer’s blood spilled. Between my ungauntleted fingers. It was my nerves, not the suit’s, that transmitted the shuddering breaths as he quaked beneath my body.

  And somehow, all these sensations were so distant. It was as if I was feeling and seeing in monochrome. The sensations were fainter, paler, weaker. The suit wasn’t siphoning the world’s stimuli and distilling them into my brain. It was my own primitive nervous system that I perceived reality through. And it was lacking.

  Thus it was that I felt as a baby would, fresh from the womb, barely aware. I lay on his spasming form, still clutching the knife that Katya had given me, my fingers slick with blood. I was beaten and raw from the long battle. I was weak and disoriented as a newborn. I felt exposed, I felt scared to be in the world without the shell of the suit. I had a sensation, just for a moment, that I might suffocate.

  His hands slapped at me. At first, trying to drive me off him, as though there was still a chance he could survive even as the blood geysered from the wounds in his chest and foamed from his grimacing mouth. Then the slaps weakened and he realized he was trying to grasp me.

  A flopping hand landed on my shoulder and those ancient fingers squeezed. The grip was weak, the grip of a dead man, but I looked to his face in response. His face was a mask of blood, foaming and frothing from his mouth, his eyes drunken with pain and blood loss.

  He coughed, blood spattering my human skin. He wheezed, trying to form words. All that emitted was blood. He coughed again and dragged in a rasping breath. The wound that my knife lay lodged in gurgled with bubbles as he inhaled.

  “You…” he said, though it was barely a word. It was a long drawn-out rasp of agony that wanted to be a word.

  Again the inhale, the shudders, the blood frothing from the wound where I had driven the blade through a lung. And again, the words that were almost stillborn, the last exhalation he would ever make. “... Must… Finish…”

  The light went out. I could have felt exultant. I had killed Danefer. I had ended the nightmare that had plagued me and the city I called home. But I couldn’t feel it. For a start, I truly couldn’t feel it. Without the suit my senses felt numb and somehow my emotions followed, oddly flat despite this highest of dramas. And there was a nagging fear that I had somehow made a mistake. He had allied himself with rapists and savages. He had waged war on Boston. But somewhere the thought nagged at me that he hadn’t been that far in alignment from Joel. They had seen something in Enki, in the Grid, that made them afraid. Something that compelled them to act against it. He hadn’t thought himself an evil man. He had thought himself a hero. He had thought himself a savior.

  Olaf was staggering forward. For a terrible instant I thought he would go the way of Danefer. He was wheezing as he stumbled forward. His huge hands waved at the priests huddled in the corner. “Stop it! Stop this thing! Now!”

  They didn’t react at first. They were in shock. They were not men of war, they were clerics and scholars. The violence that had been displayed before them could have left them unhinged. They had just witnessed the impossibility of Danefer Ma’at Ra himself reborn as a Sword. They had witnessed all his glory returned to him. And then they had seen him die, in his undergarments, killed by a man no better equipped.

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  Olaf roared, the roar becoming a jagged cough, “NOW!”

  They moved. They dashed to the relic Danefer had arranged. Their expressions did nothing to mask their confusion. They did not know how this device functioned. They didn’t understand it truly. I saw one nudge the other, pointing to a thin black cable that joined one piece to another. In that moment I recognized the Penaculum, the Oakcrest Relic that had been stolen, had been part of this monstrous relic.

  The priest who had been nudged shrugged, glancing nervously at Olaf, and took hold of the thin cable. With a quick tug it was free.

  The field died.

  As soon as it died I felt the floor beneath me shudder. Danefer’s body and my form lay on a mat of mystorium, the dust that had been our suits. The moment the field died the dust became a living cloud, swirling around me, cloaking me. I gasped, in pained pleasure, as I felt the world light up again. My sense of touch sharpening as the suit enveloped my limbs, the sounds and sights of the world regaining their vibrance as the helm formed around me. The pain of my body was no less, but the weakness I had felt as I clung to the embedded dagger was lifted from me.

  Then Olaf was at my side, a heavy hand on my back. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

  I nodded, rolling off the corpse.

  Olaf laughed, weakly, “I can’t… Ti… Did we just kill Danefer Ma’at Ra?”

  I looked back at the body with a twinge of sadness that I couldn’t explain. I said, “It looks like we did.”

  He straightened, hands on hips, looking down at the dead man. “Well… Shit…”

  As the suit finished forming and my HUD returned a scramble of numbers washed before my vision. I couldn’t process them as they blipped by so quickly. I snatched glimpses of them, but it ticked up like lightning.

  Level 47

  I wasted no time. I wanted to make sure Racquel was alright, but I knew that my own city was in deepest peril. At this moment, at any moment, that army of battle tanks would bring down the gates and the horde of murderers would pour in. I shuddered as I came to my feet, remembering the faces of the civilians we had abandoned in Albany.

  I pointed at the priests, “We’ve taken the chamber!”

  They looked at me, their faces ashen.

  Again, I said, “We’ve taken the chamber. Do you deny it? By right, we’ve taken the Tower.”

  They exchanged glances, one nodded slowly.

  My words were a rush. “Boston Tower is slaved to Buffalo, is that not right?”

  One of them stammered, “Y-yes..”

  I said, “There’s a corridor of order, the Order from Boston Tower, being used right now to elevate order for a formation of tanks assaulting the city. You can control that from here? You can turn it off? Redirect the order to the city? Goddammit, quickly now, can you do it?”

  “Y-y-es… of course…”

  “Make it so!”

  When they didn’t move I roared, “NOW!”

  They scrambled to their task. I turned and stumbled across the chamber. Olaf looked at Tara’s form and I could feel the regret, the resistance to leaving her. But he did his duty, falling to his knees by Magneblade’s bleeding, gasping form. There was déjà vu. The first time he had used his healing hands had been on Magneblade, that day in the snow, when he was a newly minted Griidlord himself.

  Racquel lay prostrate on the ground. I rolled her to her back and felt at her neck. The glory of the suit’s sensory inputs was on full display in my neural centers. I could feel her pulse, her breathing, the rush of blood in her veins. She was alive, her heartbeat strong, but she was unconscious.

  I glanced to Olaf. He was watching me, hands poised over Magneblade. He could only heal once, it seemed he was waiting on me in case there was a choice to be made. Had Racquel been on death’s door he would have let me choose her life over Magneblade’s.

  I nodded to him, “Do it.”

  His hands blazed with light as he pressed them down on the wound Tara had delivered to the Axe of Boston.

  I lay Racquel back down with care. I could only hope she didn’t have some unseen injury. I hoped I had made the right choice.

  I turned to the priests who were scrabbling at the screens and interfaces of the Oracle. “Is it happening? How long? Dammit, answer me.”

  One of them glanced back, sweat sheening his brow. “Just a moment. Just a moment. It will be… um… a minute, perhaps. About that. Leave us to our task.”

  I watched their hands fly as they bounded from console to console. I glanced to Olaf where he knelt. His hands were pressed to Magneblade but his head was up, watching me.

  I said, “I have to go.”

  He said, “Ti… You’re beat to hell…”

  I shook my head. “I have to see this.”

  I’d leveled up by killing Danefer. My skills were reset.

  The white lines scored the air and I formed a DOOR.