Act V, The Black HoleChapter 39
Chapter 39: Two Crossing Stars
Layla counts angles on the platform while two lights climb the sky together.
Layla had the cannon on her shoulder and her cheek against the stock. Over the rail the Singularity burned, wide open, and the Mother Matrix stood in the middle of it with its wings spread.
Enders were climbing the rail again. Ruby’s scythe met them. Angela’s shield stood over the team, pale and humming.
Two girls rose off the platform. Guinevere’s wings were bright and gold. Vexana’s were violet. They climbed side by side.
“Vexana... to the future where you are.” Guinevere’s voice carried down, clear.
“This is the final farewell,” said Vexana.
Layla knew a last word when she heard one. She had heard enough of them in the Northeastern sector.
“Not on my count,” she muttered.
At the top of the climb the two looked at each other once. Their lights ran together: one streak red-gold, one violet, crossing and crossing again until they were two stars, bright as fireworks.
Two who trust each other pull more out of a suit than the same two apart, Joe had said. Nobody has ever explained why. Layla watched it happen and still could not explain it.
Beside her, Fanny’s blades had come down a hand’s width. She did not seem to know.
Chang’e’s voice came on the command channel, small and exact.
“I have its signature. The chest opens when it fires. It’s gathering again now. Forty meters up, a little left of the crown.” A pause. “Eight seconds.”
Weak spot, thought Layla. When it attacks. Obviously.
Then she did what she did best. She counted.
Not kills. Angles. Forty meters, the bay wind from the left, the rail under her elbow for a rest. Once she had counted sixteen kills and been proud. Now she counted angles for a girl she had called a traitor.
“We don’t aim at the chest,” she said. “That’s theirs. We make it look at us, so it strikes at us, so the chest opens.”
“Fanny, thirty degrees up, left of the crown. Ruby, hold the rail. Angela, keep the shield high and open me a lane. On three.”
“Understood,” said Fanny.
“Ready!” said Angela.
“One. Two. Three.”
Light went up from the platform. Her own shot first, a thin line. Fanny’s blades threw their arcs after it. Angela opened one pane and closed it. All of it met on the Matrix’s armor and burst.
The white eyes swung down. An arm rose toward the platform. The chest plates split.
“Now,” Layla said, to nobody.
The two stars went in under the raised arm.
They struck the open chest together. White light broke over the platforms, and the roar knocked Layla’s hair flat. The shot that had been gathering never left. The Mother Matrix lurched back one step.
One step. Its wings flung wide, and it stood.
The Singularity’s light dragged at the two stars. They slid sideways into it and were gone.
The Singularity burned on, still open. The Matrix still stood in it.
“Did it...” said Ruby.
“I don’t know.” Layla lowered the cannon an inch. “It moved. I can’t tell if one step is enough.”
Fanny had not raised her blades again.
In the sudden quiet, Layla’s cannon hissed, hot against her cheek.