What Charlie X, in rags, had told him, as something clicked into place behind his eyes. Would click off again, for in those days and those versions Charlie X could never hold on to his self for long.

That one time. In that one place. With Moss and Grayson preoccupied and Chen a fortress-sentinel.

“I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. You were just a dream I had. A dream I made. That’s all you are.”

Chen had trembled, tamped down the urge to dissolve and in that dissolution take Charlie X into the dark with him.

For that would be surrender.

Moss had put forth the rules to govern Chen’s more useful equations. Moss’s “tidal pool rules,” which included: Stay still, be small, bring the right camouflage, know good hiding places, become a symbiote or parasite, be poisonous or venomous, be able to regenerate body parts.

If you wanted to survive, reduce all motion to zero over long stretches of time. Trust the current. The current. The current. The species already there. How at high tide the water rippled across all of the tidal pools, even those that had been inviolate, their own tiny kingdoms, before.

If this were the purest City. The one that most rippled through all the others and the Source. If this was the one, then the effect would be greatest here.

But: Be tiny, be motionless. Take your time. Perhaps it would not be the first wave or even the thousandth. Because direct was defended. You contaminated the wall of globes inside the Company, then went to the Source. The portal wall, the magic mirror that led back to where the Company came from. You let it trickle in, like a slow-acting poison that was actually:

Life, again.

She could feel herself, sometimes, using the tidal pool rules to do the things she wasn’t doing here. Phantom sensations. Of standing in the ravine. Of watching her doppelgänger set off, with Chen by her side.

Memory of Grayson turning to her and saying one of these three things:

“This time. This time. I feel it.”

“Someday. We’ll go back to your tidal pools.”

“How many times has it been now?”

Say a number that felt low. That felt hollow.

Like one of Chen’s equations was screaming to get out. Like one of Chen’s creatures, trapped in the wall of globes.

iv.

for you cannot give us
what we already have

In this City, as in all Cities, the three knew they would find the foxes. Moss loved the foxes, while Grayson suspected them—thought them already too clever, believed, perhaps, the foxes had led to their failures, as much as the insidious nature of the Company had.

Chen had no opinion, for in his calculation the foxes must always be part of the plan. So he wasted no emotion on them one way or the other.