I could feel these newborn delvers in the vision—growing more and more “loud” as they began to fill the lightburst. In those moments, they truly became alien to me. I’d been able to follow their journey in these last two visions up until this point—but here they changed dramatically.
They rejected everything real I’d ever known. They embraced not just the lack of change—they rewrote their very souls to thrive in a place with no time, no distance…nothing at all except themselves. How could they reject love, growth, life itself?
I almost did something similar, I admitted. I almost walked off into the nowhere and let everything I’d ever loved fade away. It was a distressing thought.
“This frightens me in ways I can’t express,” M-Bot said. “The realization that I’m capable of doing the same thing…” His drone turned in the air to look back at Chet. “It seems suspicious that the delvers would delete their memories, and then people would start to forget their memories in here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think it’s clear from previous visions that the memory loss is a newer thing. In fact…it seems much stronger with regard to people I love. Memories of my friends have vanished faster than my memories of Gran-Gran’s stories. Maybe because the delvers’ main source of pain was someone they loved? Someone they deleted from their memories?”
“It appears likely,” Chet said as the lightburst in the vision grew ever brighter. “That light shining out, spreading through the belt—we exert an incredible pressure on this place. Even I didn’t realize…”
“So what does this tell us?” M-Bot asked. “They were so afraid that Spensa would come here. Is it just because they didn’t want her to know what they were?”
“More that they suspected in these memories were secrets to their pain,” Chet said. “They didn’t know what that pain was, but they knew if we found it…we’d be capable of destroying them with it.”
“I…don’t think I know how to do that,” I said. “Even after seeing this.”
“But you do,” Chet said, smiling toward me. “Isolate them, Spensa. Make them feel alone. That will crush them, cripple them…and as they have no bodies, just cytonic minds, you should be able to extinguish them.”
“That seems…harsh,” M-Bot said. “Couldn’t we somehow remind them of their humanity, like we did to you?”
“I don’t know,” Chet said. “I think that won’t work, not now that they’re prepared for it. You can’t force someone to be kind or to accept growth.”
“It’s war, M-Bot,” I replied. “War is always harsh.”
I didn’t know how we’d isolate the delvers, but it did feel like a start. Brade isolated my mind in the nowhere for a while, then tried to imprison me. Could we do something similar to one of the delvers? Chet was right, this information would be extremely useful. At the very least, I’d been able to see how he reacted to that man in the vision, the one who had created him. The delvers might react similarly to an image of him.
“Scud,” I whispered. “We need to get this knowledge out and give it to the others. The answer to defeating the delvers, or at least resisting them, is in the things we’ve learned.”
“Time for our final sprint, then,” Chet said.
I nodded. As I’d always felt, it was time to head for the lightburst. Despite that knowledge I lingered in the vision, watching the lightburst grow. Soon it reached the size it was in our time. The vision finally faded. As it did, I felt an awareness—an attention—snap into place from ahead.
They’d spotted us.
You are here! the delvers sent. You reject our truce!
I pushed back, shoving them out of my mind. But they simmered and started gathering themselves for a fight.
“They’ve seen us,” I said to the others. “Let’s go.”
We ran toward the ship, each footfall increasingly firm. I had to get out. This was why the delvers had tried to keep me from advancing any farther, why they’d been frightened of me all along. They knew. The secret was in what I’d learned. Maybe it was what Chet said—isolating them. But it could be something else.
If smarter minds than mine could get this knowledge—someone like Rig—then surely they could figure out what to do with it. I hauled myself up onto the ship’s wing, then helped Chet up before slipping into the cockpit.