Thresholder

Maya was gone, vanished, as though she’d left Moth Lantern Hall and then never so much as thought about returning to Crystal Lake Temple. Her room was searched, but there was nothing there. She had a thresholder’s mindset about things, it seemed, never wanting to put down roots, never wanting to acquire anything that she couldn’t take with her. There was suspiciously little of her, no fingernails or hair, nothing that could be used with tracking techniques. All of Moon Gate had been alerted and was to engage with her if possible, ready to bring her to justice as a murderer, which was sure something. Perry didn’t know what would happen if she died that way, but he hoped that another portal would open for him anyway, the same as if she died by his hand. He wanted to be in this world less and less with every passing moment.

Maya had said that in some worlds, thresholders were the top dogs, and in others, they were dirt beneath the feet of incredibly powerful individuals and organizations. Perry definitely knew which of those two he preferred. At least third sphere were rare, fourth sphere even more so, and he hadn’t attracted the attention of anyone higher up. At most, the master of Worm Gate might have a hard-on for going after whoever was responsible for the destruction of Moth Lantern Hall, but so far as anyone was concerned, that was Maya, which meant she had two entire sects gunning for her.

Perry focused himself on fixing March, which mostly meant focusing on cracking his extra vessel for its energy and having that energy flow out into the armor. The process was still mysterious, and he wished that he had access to the secret tomes within the temple library, but a quick conversation with Luo Yanhua had let him know that was a complete non-starter. She had offered to bring him a book to read on his own, so long as he told her the subject and it wasn’t restricted, but he didn’t want her to know that he intended to rebuild the core, not when she thought that he was possibly engaged in some kind of dark arts.

He’d told her that Maya had confessed to sneaking books from the library, though he’d left March’s part in that unspoken, and allowed Maya to take the full blame.

Almost every moment of Perry’s day was spent in training of one kind or another. He helped out with the students a bit more, given that he had a bit of an aptitude for it. He thought the real reason was that it gave the other second sphere some time to do things that didn’t involve teaching. When he wasn’t teaching, he was meditating, or sometimes working with Luo Yanhua, taking in ever-increasing amounts of moonlight and trying to reign in the wolf. The goal for him was to be able to withstand a blast to the face from Maya, along with some confidence during the next triple full moon. The goal for her was an understanding of how his ‘technique’ worked, as part of her continuing research project. The first ‘paper’ had already been released, shared to those within Moon Gate and further afield, and much of the pressure she’d been feeling was off. Perry had been given the paper to peruse, but it was just a pamphlet really, and he knew about ninety percent of what was contained within it, with the remaining ten percent being impenetrable jargon.

Xiyan was his only real friend, and Perry only barely had time for her. She wanted to sit and talk, and Perry wanted to sit and meditate, so they compromised and she talked while he meditated. It was a bit like having a podcast on while he was studying, with most of his attention going to his internal alchemy or the flow of energy along his meridians.

Most of Xiyan’s stories were fables of one kind or another, and he gradually found himself confused by the cultural offerings of the Great Arc. He would have thought that their stories would be ones where virtue was lauded and vice was punished, but many of her stories were more meandering, or unconcerned with comeuppance. One or two of them had pretty plain villain protagonists, which was just downright weird to him.

He asked her about it, and it took her some time to ponder the answer.

“I suppose stories are only stories,” said Xiyan. “People like to hear about crossing the rivers they cannot cross in their everyday life. It’s a vicarious thrill.”

He wondered whether that was what was attracting her to him, though he didn’t ask.

What Maya had said about her kept swirling in his mind, the idea that Xiyan was a spy, or at least had been ordered to report on him. He kept everything he was doing with the armor secret from her, though he didn’t actually lie about it, not technically. He said that he didn’t know how to fix it, which was true, and that he didn’t have all that much hope of ever getting it working, which was also true. What he did have was resolve, but he kept that from her.

Ten to twelve hours a day were spent inside the armor, inhaling energy and venting it out through his skin. The Lung Meridian was responsible not just for air, but for the skin itself, and it was getting a workout, growing thick. After five days, all the superficial damage to the armor had been fixed, including the arm that had been hit by a cannonball, but that left the microfusion reactor, which showed no sign of miraculously starting back up. With the hole sealed, it was all invisible to Perry, but he was working on developing the extrasensory aspects of his vital energy, which wouldn’t actually help all that much, because he didn’t actually know how to build a fucking microfusion reactor.

He would lay in his bed, wearing the armor, channeling energy, and think about that. He had no idea what process was actually deciding the shape of the armor. How did it know where to fill things in? When it filled in a deep gouge, was it like content-aware fill, or like returning to some platonic ideal of the armor, or his own conception, or … there were lots of possibilities, and testing it was incredibly difficult.

After nine days, the reactor still wasn’t working. There was no word on Maya, no hint as to where she might be. Perry wasn’t sure whether she could go without food and shelter, but he wouldn’t put it past her. He was also worried that the same process that was restoring his armor would work on her nanite gauntlet, though he was hopeful that she wouldn’t even notice it. If she could put it into skinsuit form and then thicken it up, she would be getting stronger without having to work on it.

On the tenth day, Perry had a breakthrough: the armor started the boot sequence.

He’d been flaring energy into it, as he’d been doing for over a hundred hours now, and stopped as soon as the boot sequence started, not wanting to risk damage — only to find that the armor died once again, the indicator lights turning from amber to dull gray, not even lit.

Perry stared at the armor. It was as close as he’d come to getting it to work, but he didn’t know whether it was a misfire from the reactor or something else. He also didn’t know if the armor was like a car, unable to function without the battery at least partially charged so that it could give the reactor a boost.

Hesitant, Perry started funneling power into the armor again. It took an hour or so, but the boot sequence started up again, and this time, Perry didn’t let up on the energy he was pouring out of his body. He was hyperventilating energy, something that would be easier to do outdoors, but couldn’t be done with the secrecy he required.

The boot sequence felt like it took a painfully long time, but it was doing something, which was more than the armor had done in the last ten days.

The helmet eventually lit up into low power mode, showing 1% battery in the HUD with a flashing light.

“March?” asked Perry, holding his breath. He was still venting energy through his skin, and only able to do that because the extra vessel, the wolf vessel, was fueling it.

“Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,” replied Marchand, voice stripped of his usual accent. “Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.”

Perry kept up with the flow of energy, straining. He wasn’t sure what was happening or why, but he needed March, needed him. He took another deep breath, trying to draw in energy through the lung meridian, because taking from the wolf vessel was getting painful and difficult. He was barely able to keep up with a proper baseline, but something was happening.

“Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,” Marchand said again. “Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.”

A minute passed, then two. The battery ticked up to 2%.

Perry finally let out a shaky breath. The battery ticked down to 1% again, but while he took a break, it hung there.

“Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,” Marchand repeated. “Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.”

“Dismiss alert,” said Perry.

“Alert dismissed,” replied Marchand.

“Status report,” said Perry.

“The microfusion reactor is non-responsive,” said Marchand, still in the default AI voice, blandly calm and American, clearly enunciated, modeled off the way air traffic controllers spoke. “Energy is battery-only. Shutdown is imminent.”

“Status of the cameras and microphones?” asked Perry.

“Cameras and microphones are operating within normal design parameters and specifications,” replied Marchand.

“All of them?” asked Perry.

“All cameras and microphones are operating within normal design parameters and specifications,” Marchand repeated. “Full diagnostic should wait until the microfusion reactor has been repaired.”

“Status of artificial intelligence,” said Perry, speaking quickly. His eyes were on the 1% battery indicator. He didn’t know quite how long they had. The accuracy when it was this low was pretty bad, though not as bad as it was at slightly higher percentages. He wasn’t moving so much as a muscle, hoping to limit how much power was flowing to the actuators and hydraulics.

“Artificial intelligence systems are nominal,” Marchand replied. “Computing is nominal. All computation areas are functional.”

Perry let out a slow, steady breath. “Show me the thirty seconds before the last shutdown,” said Perry.

Marchand played the video without comment. It took place during the day, and conclusively ruled out Maya, who had been with Perry at the time. The interior of the armory was quiet and still, and it took Perry a moment to notice the woman, who was partially hidden behind one of the shelves. The error log was shown at the bottom of the video, and it was going nuts, scrolling information faster than Perry could read any of it. That made sense, because there was some kind of magic at work, black smoke obscuring the woman’s features. Perry wasn’t even sure it was a woman, except that there was something about the way she moved, along with her height.

She was regarding the armor, watching it from afar. There was a glint of a blade in her hand, and the hand was obscured too, wreathed in the same ethereal smoke.

The video cut out before anything could happen. The display had gone dead, and March had gone silent.

“Fuck,” said Perry.

The video had clarified nothing, except that it wasn’t Maya. The timing just didn’t line up. But that left the question of who it could be. Was the smoke technique something that anyone could learn in this world, or a specific branch that could point at some individual? Was it someone from Moon Gate or a third thresholder? The list of second sphere women in the temple was relatively short, no more than a half dozen total, and none of them had any incentive to stab March in the chest, even if they had the capability.

Perry would have to watch the entire video back, from the moment the mystery smoke lady came into the armory, but the cloaking was also suspicious. Were they deliberately hiding from the camera, or from everyone else? What would a person have seen?

If it was a third thresholder, and they were working against him and Maya, then Perry thought he was probably completely fucked. Assuming a third thresholder, the murder outside the temple had been to draw them out and open up the armor for an attack, which had been carried out flawlessly and only uncovered because Perry had been able to bring the armor back from the brink.

It put Perry in an exceptionally paranoid mood.

Nonetheless, Perry had found a way back for March, not through the resurrection of the microfusion reactor, but through pouring vital energy into him. Luo Yanhua had said that March had pathways, and she must have been talking about the electricity that flowed through the power armor, radiating from the core and spreading out to the extremities in much the same way vital energy did. If Perry could charge up March, turning one form of energy into another, then the loss of the reactor was still incredibly painful, but it didn’t mean the loss of March, nor a whole host of capabilities that March brought to the table.

Perry worked through the night on charging up March, pushing through his limits. Once the armor was powered up again, he kept going. It was getting easier, but not by much, and it felt like an enormous amount of vital energy needed to be expended in order to get the percentage to tick up a single percent. Without the wolf vessel, it probably would have been impossible.

“Establish a new power setting, stringent,” said Perry during a brief break.

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand. His ‘personality’ had been restored to him, which was much more of a relief than it maybe should have been.

“Strip out every single function that’s not vital for computation,” said Perry. “No microphones, no cameras, power the display off and go audio only, stop power amplification to the limbs and body, stop cooling and heating except for what the processors need …” he trailed off, still trying to think what else there was to cut.

“I’ve done so, sir,” said Marchand.

“Good,” said Perry. “You’re on stringent power setting until I say otherwise.”

“Done, sir,” said Marchand.

“When I’m not talking to you, go to sleep,” said Perry. “Shut down cognition and processing unless you hear me say ‘March’. If I say it and I’m not talking to you, go back to sleep.”

“I don’t have a sleep mode, as such,” said Marchand. “But I will do my best to comply with the spirit of the request.”

“With all that, how long do you think you can run on a single percentage point of power?” asked Perry.

“The energy stored in the batteries doesn't deplete linearly, sir, making it difficult to precisely measure how much is left,” said Marchand. “Additionally, as the batteries age, they hold less of a charge, which complicates the matter a good deal, and that’s without taking into account numerous instances of shock damage.”

“Right,” said Perry. He was almost happy to hear the pedantry. “Just … estimate. Give me a number.”

“Assuming I’ve been put into ‘stringent’ mode, each percentage point displayed should equate to ten minutes, sir,” said Marchand. “It would perhaps be ten times that if I were to ‘sleep’, as it were.”

“Good,” said Perry. “Then go to sleep, please.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “I shall endeavor not to let the bedbugs bite.”

By the time breakfast rolled around, Perry was exhausted and very hungry, as well as incredibly tired, but Marchand was at a full charge. With some refinement of technique, he’d been able to get it to something like five minutes per percentage point of charge, which meant a full eight hours of work. It remained to be seen whether it was worth it, but this looked like it might be the long-term solution. He was going to have to work on efficiency, getting more power in less time, but that seemed like it would come with practice.

In a combat scenario, it was enough power that it might actually make a difference, though Perry was very aware that he was eventually going to reach a point where the armor was holding him back. It was designed to amplify a mere human, and really, it was overdesigned for that task. But at a certain point, Perry would be putting enough power into a punch that the armor couldn’t keep up with him and it would start to be damaged in the process of an all-out brawl.

“You’ve been silent,” said Luo Yanhua after breakfast. He’d had his eggs and greens, and was ready to return to his room to sleep the sleep of the dead.

“Silent?” asked Perry.

“You’ve wrapped yourself up in something,” said Luo Yanhua. “It’s good to train, but not good to train too much.”

“No?” asked Perry.

“A person is more than their pursuit of technique,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is important to observe the rites, to partake in conversation. You have few friends in the temple, but you can speak with me. I know you considered Maya to be a kindred spirit, and that it must have been a blow to learn of her true nature.”

“It was,” said Perry. “But I need to train, to get better. She’s out there somewhere.” And someone else is too.

When Perry got back to his room, he went over the video footage a few times, even though it was a drain on the battery he’d spent so much effort filling. He watched the woman enter the armory, slipping in through the door as though it had no lock on it whatsoever. She moved like a rat, slinking, face never shown, hands never shown. When she struck, it was sudden, her small blade flashing forward as she lunged at Marchand. She took a moment to admire her handiwork, then slipped off again. He assumed that was what she was doing, anyway, but in the video it was just a shadowed face, unmoving. March had still been recording video, at least for a little bit, but captured nothing of note during her departure.

The nanite listening system had been active during that time, and Perry had March make a map of everyone in the temple, as best as their location could be determined. Perry was extremely well positioned to play detective from a technological standpoint, but from a social standpoint, had almost nothing. He wasn’t a member, wasn’t particularly liked, and no one had any incentive to answer his questions. Worse, he needed to keep what he knew at least a little bit secret, because he didn’t want to admit any part in the listening program that Maya had set up.

The nanites were still working, and still in communication with March, but the very first thing that Perry had done once everything was working again was to completely lock out Maya from so much as talking to Marchand.

It seemed as though Maya hadn’t been back to the temple at all after what had happened at Moth Lantern Hall, though it was hard to tell. Not knowing where she was grated on Perry, and made it feel like she was setting a trap. It was also possible — likely, even — that she was engaged in the dark arts, trying to power herself up for the inevitable confrontation. Perry was relatively safe within Crystal Lake Temple, but that safety clearly had limits if someone had gone into the armory, destroyed the armor, and then left without getting caught or punished.

By the time fourteen days had passed, Perry had fallen into a new normal. He was still getting used to the way the moons affected his mood. The moons were new, with only a slight fingernail of white to them, and he felt no lust, hunger, or aggression, not beyond the usual. Instead, there was loneliness, which stemmed from a lack of human contact, creeping, aching loneliness that ‘conversations’ with March couldn’t cure.

Perry talked with Xiyan, because she was the only one around. He had thought her affection for him would fade over time, but it had, if anything, grown deeper. She was always full of questions, mostly about the other worlds he’d been to, but often about his plans, motivated in part by the very correct idea that he wasn’t going to stay long.

“You still don’t know where Maya is?” asked Xiyan.

“No,” said Perry. “I have no idea.” He had some hope of tracking her nanites, but he certainly wasn’t going to say that.

“And the armor?” asked Xiyan.

“I’ve given up on repairing it,” said Perry. “For now, it’s just a matter of focusing on meditation, gaining power. I might have to wait for her to make the first move, but when she does, I want to be able to bring my full power.”

Xiyan looked up at the moons. “She will wait until a night like tonight, when the moonlight provides you little power.” She turned back to Perry. “I worry for you.”

“The moons aren’t going to matter much longer,” said Perry. “Changing back and forth is within my grasp. Give me another week and I won’t be a threat to anyone unless I want to be. Once I can return to human form under the light of the full moon, I’ll have removed the last vestiges of a drawback, but I can already tell that’s going to be the most difficult aspect. Turning into a wolf on command … I haven’t been able to try, since I don’t want to go outside the temple, but someday soon I’m going to go train in the woods under Luo Yanhua’s supervision.”

Xiyan nodded, but looked troubled, her mouth slightly downturned. “You will be gone soon.”

“Maybe,” said Perry. “I’m not reaching the limits of what I can do here, but I feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome in more ways than one. This world is more dangerous than most.”

“I will miss you, deeply,” said Xiyan. Her hand was pressed against her chest, right over her heart.

This conversation, like many they’d had, was taking place outside of his room, with him at the threshold. She wanted to come in, to lay with him, to become a concubine or courtesan or whatever they called it when you had sex with a girlfriend before marriage. Perry had never been as tempted as he was at that moment. He could handle the full moon’s lust, but this was different, an ache for touch or some semblance of companionship.

In the middle of his moment of temptation, she slipped past him. When he turned to look at her, it was with fear that she would have done something to March, but she had laid down on the bed, with her head on his pillow. She was looking at him with a demure expression, downcast eyes and a faint blush.

“There would be trouble if someone saw you in my room like that,” said Perry.

“Then shut the door,” she said.

Perry shut the door. He kept the shutters drawn, which let little light in the room, but it was still more than enough to see by. His eyes were better in the dark since becoming a wolf. Xiyan had shifted slightly, spreading her feet. She was wearing loose pants whose fabric draped across her.

Perry laid down beside her. She moved her face close to his. It was a mistake, he knew that as he was making it. For a moment he thought that she would simply kiss him, and maybe some part of him was thinking that this was simply cosmic karma in action, that she would be to blame rather than him, a seductress, but she didn’t make a move, and he kissed her, feeling her soft lips.

“Lie back,” she said when their lips parted. She placed a gentle hand on his chest, and he did as he was told.

Xiyan had been demure and simpering for almost the entire time he’d known her. She wasn’t that young, but it had reminded him of a schoolgirl crush, the kind that freshmen girls had sometimes had on him when he was a TA. He hadn’t expected that she would take the lead, and had no idea what she had in mind, but she was on her knees, tying back her loose hair into the bun she normally wore, and in his experience, that really only meant one thing. What was shocking was how efficient and casual she was being, as though this was something she’d done before, though for all he knew, she had.

His heart was beating faster. She moved on top of him, hands still dealing with her hair, thighs pressing against his legs.

He saw the dagger when it was too late, and she brought it down, two-handed, right as he was moving to stop her.

The blade sunk straight into his stomach, two inches below his sternum, and she yanked it down, slicing him open. The pain was unimaginable, and he spasmed beneath her as the blood rushed out of sliced arteries. She stayed on top of him, and dodged to the side as he reached out for her.

“I’m going to watch you die,” she said, leaning forward to speak softly. It was affectionate, loving, a tender declaration.

Perry moaned and tried to yell, but he could see his intestines starting to spill out of the long gash in his stomach, and the bed was soaked with blood. He focused, making every effort of will to get just two words out.

“March, fire!” he moaned, hoping that it was even halfway intelligible.

Xiyan looked over at the armor, bloody dagger at the ready, eyes alert. The gun popped up and the servos adjusted in milliseconds. She tried to move, but his hands were gripping her thighs, digging into them hard enough to bruise, and the rapid-fire shots from March hit her three times before she rolled away. March stopped firing when she was out of his sight, then started again as she raced toward the door. She was dripping blood and wheezing, but still spry on her feet, and she barreled out the door as another two shots hit her in the back. She hadn’t fled into the temple though, she had exited the door into snow, a different place altogether.

Perry didn’t have time to process that. He was bleeding out, dying, and his mind was racing even as he was going light-headed from blood loss.

There was only a single out.

He’d been cracking the wolf vessel for energy, trying to draw out as much as he could while keeping it closed, but he needed it all now before the world went dim. He kept his eyes open, fighting off unconsciousness, and put every ounce of will into breaking the vessel, releasing the energy, straining with all his might.

The door to his room opened again just as the vessel began to release its energy.

The transformation was sluggish, fur coming out slowly, claws extending more gradually instead of sprouting in an instant. The wound in his stomach was closing, slowly, his split abs stitched back together, his guts slipping back inside like noodles slurped up from a bowl of ramen.

The woman at the door wasn’t second sphere, she was first, one of the servants who dealt with the cleaning.

The hunger was overwhelming, the wolfish vessel depleted. He’d been taking too much from it, writing checks it couldn’t cash, the sluggish transformation proof enough that he’d overdrawn. He let out a growl as she fled. It was all he could do to hold back and not chase her, his instincts so strong it felt like his body was being drawn to pursuit.

One of the second sphere disciples was next to the door of the room, a woman with strangely blonde hair. She was in a fighting stance, but there was clear fear in her eyes. She advanced on him anyway, as though she was going to kill the giant wolf herself. It was pure stupidity, and he lunged at her as she stepped into the doorway, snapping down on her with all the force his withered body could muster. He tasted blood and skin, and bit her again as she struggled away, snapping his head from side to side until she stopped moving. He bit meat from her thighs, swallowing down cloth in the same bite, feeling the warmth of it as it slid down his gullet. He was nourished with every piece, and was scarfing it down, worried that someone else was going to come and interrupt him.

As his strength returned to him, so did his senses, and the gravity of what he’d done began to sink in. They were outside, waiting for him, ready to kill. He had been a bad dog. The hunger had been overwhelming, a compulsion, something that had to be satisfied, and his horror at having done it was overshadowed only by how much trouble he was in.

He went to the suit of armor and gripped it gingerly in his mouth, biting down on the metal. His mouth wasn’t quite large enough for it, not even around the waist, but he set his teeth in on the thigh. This wasn’t the wolf, it was Perry, a thinking creature underneath the wolf’s frenzy. If he thought about the dead woman, he would have to stop, and if he stopped, they would kill him.

He leapt out of the room, armor in his mouth, and put on as much speed as he possibly could, clearing buildings and putting distance between himself and the temple. He was hit from the side as he moved, but it wasn’t by the arrow he’d feared, it was moonlight, a stray beam of it from someone who hadn’t known better. It splashed off of him, rejuvenating and reinvigorating, and he ran all the faster, dodging trees and scurrying up hills to put more distance between himself and his pursuers.

His conscious mind was churning below the wolf’s. Xiyan, with more power than she should have had, running even after being shot five times, through a door that led out into the cold. He’d had no choice but to transform, and to not eat when someone came had felt impossible.

He stopped, the armor still in his mouth, and listened, ears perked up. He’d run a three minute mile, and was now far away from Crystal Lake Temple. The adrenaline was flowing through his body, keeping him amped up, but if he was being chased, it was only slowly. They would be able to find him, to follow him at their leisure — he’d left too much of himself behind, a pool of his blood they could attune to and track.

He spat out the suit. The moons were still new, and the vessel still weak and overworked. Transforming back was easy, and once that was done, he slipped into the suit as quickly as he could, naked skin pressing uncomfortably against the suit’s interior.

He tried not to think about the dead woman with the blonde hair. He knew her name, but didn’t want to think about it. He had seen her around. When her name did surface, he blamed her death on Xiyan, or on the wolf, not on his lack of control. He tried not to think about it, not the fear on her face, her bravery and stupidity in facing him, the taste of her blood in his mouth, or the satisfaction of her meat making its way down his throat. He tried.

He needed a plan. Maya was to the winds, Moon Gate would surely be after him, and Xiyan — or whoever she was — was almost certainly the third thresholder.

There was only one place for him to go: Worm Gate.