***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Magnus***

“I am so sorry! Aaah!” Astra howled in agony as four people, one among them Thalia’s father, gave it their all to set the bones of her broken arm and a dislocated shoulder. In theory, it sounded easier than it was in reality, considering the patient had reinforced bones and steel muscles that didn’t play along. So, two people were holding onto Astra’s torso while two more were pulling at her hand while manipulating the angle to set the bone and to realign her shoulder.

Meanwhile, I gave my best to stay still while Thalia tried to operate one of the many wooden splinters out of my cheek which barely missed my left second eye. When Astra’s improvised saw-grinder disintegrated spectacularly, I barely managed to raise my arm and protect my eyes. It was a reflexive reaction and I hadn’t considered the second set. Two centimetres lower and I would have been mostly fine.

“Don’t pull a face!” Thalia reprimanded me. “It’s already hard enough to pry this thing out without doing even more damage to your eye.”

“I am trying, but it feels like you are jamming your tweezers into my eye! Just pull the splinter out and be done with it. It hurts even more if you dig around trying to be gentle,” I complained.

Thalia gave a disgruntled huff and suddenly stabbed her tweezers into my skin, grabbing the splinter and jerking it out – and with it, the Second Sight on my left went all blurry.

“Fuck!” I cursed.

Thalia bent over me and frowned with a slightly intrigued expression. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to avoid. It’s bleeding over into the sensory area of your second eye. Guess next time you might just give it more time?” She shrugged. “But whether it heals in a day or a week isn’t my problem, is it?”

“You are an evil woman!”

She grinned.

An audible ‘pop’ and another scream signalled that the team of doctors finally managed to straighten Astra’s arm and shoulder.

“I am so sorry, I wanted it to be a surprise,” Astra whimpered for the umpteenth time.

“Well, we are still here, so I guess it was a surprise.” I tried to console her but then thought better of it. We were playing with powers which could kill us if applied wrongly. The least we could do was to think before performing an experiment which involved the warping of space. “But next time you should at least speak to someone about it! What did you think would happen? Except for turning our quarters to smithereens.”

The security personnel thought someone tried to assassinate us till we explained everything.

“I imagined it would be like a saw grinder,” Astra admitted. “Something to cut through heavily armoured opponents.”

I snorted. “Yeah, as long as you don’t lose control of the magnetic fields keeping the effect in place.”

“It shouldn’t have been a problem!” She countered. “I went through it in my head several times and the Math panned out perfectly.”

“Except for when you spin something magnetic, like magnetized iron dust, inside a magnetic field, which then induces a second magnetic field! Like a dynamo! And when you stop the particles violently by ramming them into a resisting surface it destabilizes the whole system. Conservation of energy, Astra. As soon as the field collapsed, all that energy you pumped into it had to go somewhere. Either as heat, radiation, or kinetic energy. I am baffled. You invent an almost perfect energy storage system and your first inclination was to use it as a grinding tool.”

“Energy storage?” Astra sounded as if she hadn’t thought of the true potential of her idea at all.

“Yes, it’s brilliant. Remove friction resistance by creating a localized area of warped space and wrap it in a flash step field. Now put a magnet inside it and you can spin it up as much as you want. It’s a flywheel dynamo with almost limitless potential as long as you can keep paying the relatively minor upkeep cost,” I ranted. “It’s the holy grail of any society. Forget about energy generation. It’s energy storage that’s the real problem.”

“So, I am a genius!” She sounded like she just had an epiphany and was in awe of herself.

I pushed Thalia’s tweezers out of my face and sat up to glare at Astra before I realized she was pulling my leg. She was grinning, so I raised a warning finger. “For that, you are the one who deals with the kids while we recover. Isaac will be over the hills once he learns that Mom is sick and has to stay at home.”

Astra winced. “You know, we are instilling the wrong message in them. Isaac is already of the opinion that his parents being sick is a good thing because then we have to stay at home.”

Thalia pushed me back down on the bed. “There is still a big one left. And over all that drama of you coming injured to the hospital, I didn’t get the chance to tell you that Mark and I will get a little one too!”

“Congratulations!” Astra squealed but hissed when she tried to move her arm.

“Just one?” I asked.

“It’s too early to judge. And now lean back, I have one more to get out.” Thalia pushed me back on the bed and a second later I had the tweezers once more in my line of sight.

While Thalia dug for the last splinter and Astra was patched up with a splint, I heard an angry scream which sounded like it came from the floor above us.

“Like mind control?” I asked.

He snorted. “Please, it’s hormones. Nothing as nefarious as a psychic.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s good.”

“No! It’s not good. Why am I the only one who sees the problem? Evolving nanites are bad, especially if they follow an unknown agenda! And I am not completely certain yet, but I think we observed at least one case in which they aborted a malformed fetus!”

I massaged my chin, wondering how to handle this. “It sounds like they perfectly integrated themselves with their hosts and are working towards their benefit. And while someone with a higher moral agency than I would have to judge your last point, you haven’t told me anything inherently bad from my point of view.”

Gurney shook his head, seemingly lost at my lack of a reaction. “I am surrounded by idiots.”

“Have you considered whether there is a commonality to all the new functions?” I asked. “An overarching goal they achieve? A guiding will, so to say?”

Gurney looked at his data and then at me. “I already explained why changing my nanites is impossible!”

“Nonono, Gurney. That’s not correct. You just told me you can alter their function if you can reprogram the majority of nanites in one fell swoop,” I pointed out. “At least that’s how I understood your explanation.”

Gurney gaped at me like a fish before he began working his mouth, but not a single sound came out.

It was then that I got a UI message marked as urgent.

I didn’t have to read all of it to get excited. “I am very sorry, Gurney. I just got a very exciting message and I have to run. I will drop in on you at the next opportunity to check whether you solved your little problem.”

Turning abruptly, I ended my visit as spontaneously as I started it.

Walking at a speed between forced marching and jogging, I rushed to the wormgate, barely remembering to inform Astra of my departure.

From there I returned to the flagship and gathered a few things before I made my way to the cells, elated at the new development.

Meanwhile, my sub-personalities were running hot with theories and possibilities.

Somehow, a patrol had caught Zacharias – or at least one of them. He was already imprisoned and being interrogated by Vanya.

Not more than twenty minutes later, I burst into the prison cell where Vanya stood with the ancients Mary and Felix, facing the prisoner. Gunnar was also present and taking notes. Zacharias was strung up upside down with his hands and feet pinned to the wall. His bindings were oversized steel shackles, leaving no doubt that even someone with above-average strength would have trouble freeing himself.

“I hope I didn’t miss anything?” I smiled and set up the folding deck chair I brought. Taking a seat and leaning back, I pulled the box with my refreshments closer and chose a cooled drink flavoured with some fruit mix. The caboose staff hadn’t been happy when I requisitioned the items on the fly.

“No, he hasn’t talked too much since we got him,” Gunnar replied slowly. “Excuse me, but what are you doing?”

“I am watching,” I replied cheerfully.

“Ah, if it isn’t Magnus,” Zacharias spoke, drawing everyone’s attention. “I wondered when you would show up. I assume you have many questions.”

“No, not really.” I popped off my drink’s cork cap and took a sip. It was the preferred way of bottling liquids on Tirnanog. “Asking you questions is just as dangerous as allowing you to run around the ship. You would inevitably learn what we want to know since I assume you are still connected with your clones. And knowing what your enemy wants to know is sometimes just as important as knowing things about him.”

Zacharias frowned. “Don’t you want to know what happened to your sister?”

“Of course I do.” I shrugged. “But I suppose you will tell me what you want to tell me and that’s it. You are an ancient with multiple bodies, so nothing I can do to you would truly affect you. There is no way of knowing whether you are telling the truth. If Vanya could do anything, you wouldn’t have allowed this clone of yours to be caught alive so easily. I have fought you, and I don’t believe for a moment some random group of scouts could apprehend you if you had resisted. So you are here because you hope you can learn something, or because you want to tell us something. Either way, I will get what I want out of this.”

“Which is?” Zacharias looked intrigued.

I leaned back and relaxed in my chair. “I strongly believe you are somehow involved in my sisters’ abduction. Why else would you know us by name? I don’t think of myself as a murdery person. Watching others suffer doesn’t give me anything, except for when they did something to me or mine. And you are too dangerous to imprison. So, even if it is just a foretaste of what is to come, I will just sit here and enjoy the sights till you croak.”

Zach laughed. “You are one sick motherfucker. So, should we start the meeting?”