Oona stepped through the electric-blue threshold, parting the air like water.
The others were gone. She entered the quantum core of the tower, weaving through time’s fabric—universes multiplying around her.
She blinked. A hummingbird hung in the air like an ornament, wings frozen mid-beat as if time itself hesitated.
“Sarah?” she called, her name carried away by the wind, faint against the vast landscape that had emerged.
No answer.
In front of her, red sandstone cliffs, striated with ochre and amber, raced to meet a metal-blue sky.
And there, suspended over the yawning chasm between two mesas, twisting in the warm desert breeze, hung Sarah.
Oona watched the child spin slowly over the abyss, arms straining, clutching the rope with white-knuckled hands; she battled herself, her fatigue, the pull of gravity. She couldn’t see what anchored the rope—only where the cliff ended and the abyss began. A drop into nothingness.
“Sarah…” she called again, then turned, searching for Kael. “She’s here!” Oona shouted, but she saw no one else. Only the painted cliffs.
She felt the wind at her feet, sculpting small dunes. As the hummingbird left her finger, it circled her head before seeming to tickle her, alighting almost on her shoulder, its wings a blur of iridescent color.
“Go away,” Sarah said, her cry suddenly cutting through the wind. She didn’t look at Oona, or anywhere. Her only focus was maintaining her grip on the rope. “I have to do this.”
“No,” Oona said, shooing the bird away and moving closer to the edge. “I’m here now.”
“You’re the one with the destiny,” Sarah said, a bead of sweat trailing down her temple. “Not me. I will fight Nexus while you flee—go!”
Warmth touched Oona’s cheek as sunlight broke through the parting sky. Around her, verbena, poppies, and paintbrush bloomed from the cracked desert floor—like the very blooms of code the prophets had spoken of.
It hit her hard: she was the chosen one. It had been her all along; she was the final iteration. This was her destiny, to carry the key. The prophets had spoken of her.
“You must leave now,” Sarah said, fingers locked and grip trembling as she dangled. “Go, where Nexus can never, ever find you.”
Oona glanced back at the doorway, which cleared like smoke blown away, leaving an origami of time. Inside, she saw young Kael and his sister playing in a forest clearing, sunlight dappling their faces.
She could go back to them—stay with both of them.
She, Oona, had been the one who left them during the last Android War, scouting a way forward. She had made a mistake. She wasn’t there to keep them safe.
Kael’s sister paid the price.
“You can save Kael’s sister,” Sarah said, straining as she held on. “It's not just an echo. You step in, that moment never happens. You can bring back Martha, too.”
The portal clouded and shifted, revealing a vision of Sarah in the castle hall—running from Martha: hurt, confused, needing someone she couldn’t find. Oona realized: this was what had happened when she left. The vision beckoned her, but she wasn’t there to help.
The portal quietly drew her in.
“I need you then, with Martha, in the castle hall,” Sarah called, stronger despite her struggle. “You’re the one to step back in time and fix this, fix everything. You’re the one. Escape Nexus…”
Oona walked toward the portal, drawn by the possibilities it offered. Martha peered at her from the other side, wise… and kind. Her gaze held forgiveness, and Oona moved closer, reaching through the glassy membrane.
Hands across time, she felt her fingers draw closer… touching Martha’s. Then Martha’s smile trembled, fissuring like cracked stone.
Terror overtook her face as it split open—smiling, then peeling down the middle to reveal a screaming skull.
“Stop,” she hissed, the warning like acid.
Oona snapped back, recoiling, pivoting around to Sarah, hanging in the wind, frowning with eternal effort.
Oona’s heart pounded; her chest ached with regrets. She wanted to step through and fix every wrong the world had dished out. But Sarah’s terror, still suspended above the abyss, pulled her back.
But she took one final glance back—
And she saw hummingbirds and bees flowing in and out of the doorway, a living border, the power of the portal warping reality itself.
Inside, Martha had vanished, and the vision shifted again. They coaxed her toward the little cottage she remembered from when she was first made, where she had found Kael and his sister playing innocently beneath the trees.
She could step through. Rewrite history. Save everyone. Make everything right. Nothing was written in stone.
Then she remembered Martha, and the warning made her shake. This moment, where she stood, was her reality.
The past and the future—until Nexus had opened up a twisted timeline—were phantoms, terrors, universes where this Oona didn’t exist. She let that truth settle.
Guilt gave way to resolve, and she turned toward Sarah, twirling over the abyss, gripping the rope for dear life, locked in her eternal struggle, trapped there by Nexus—and the tower.
She shook off the temptation to heal the past, focusing on her task.
“Let go,” Oona whispered, the words filling the vast space around them.
Sarah’s pupils widened, her head shaking in denial.
“Forgive yourself,” Oona continued, moving closer to the edge. “The past is meant to be past.”
“No,” Sarah insisted. “You are perfect, not me. I am...” She trailed off, but her eyes spoke volumes—of Martha, of Jory, of all the choices she had made, the mistakes, the rejections, the wrongs, everything.
“You don’t need to be perfect, Sarah,” Oona said gently, understanding blooming like the desert flowers at her feet. Oona let that truth settle. “You need to be—human.”
She gestured toward the portal with its tempting visions, its promises of corrected pasts. “And you, as human, have access to a greater power.”
Sarah looked down into the abyss, searching for a bottom, an end, a truth, anything. There was nothing to see. No bottom.
Then she looked up at Oona, their gaze meeting across the chasm—amber to amber, machine to human, past to future.
Sarah closed her eyes and…
Let go.