Running through the maskhål as it collapsed was like walking quickly through the showrooms at her LitenVärld, the disorienting effect of seeing wildly different rooms stacked next to each other. The walls of the maskhål reflected and refracted images of other universes, all of them focused on her: a thousand different versions of herself, some nightmarish, some wildly surreal, others utterly mundane. All of these Avas seemed to notice something strange, looking up from whatever they were doing and staring toward Ava as she stared at them. It was dizzying, to look into these mirrors come to life. She was drawn to a set of universes that seemed perilously close to the one she was in right now: dozens and dozens of Avas trying to make their way down the tunnel of a collapsing wormhole. Some of those Avas were alone, sprinting through unburdened. In others, Captain Nouresh walked beside her, uninjured. There were more than a few where she carried Jules’s bloody, lifeless body.

In some of those mirrors, she watched the tunnel tearing apart at the seams, exposing a void that writhed out of its cracks, crumbling the maskhål even faster. In others, the Avas seemed to grow desperate, distracted by the reflections that surrounded them. They took a wrong step off the path and winked out of existence. They staggered under the leaden weight of the people they carried, and finally, in desperation, dropped them. One after another, the Avas around her met their ends; some bloodless and calm, sitting down and accepting their fate, others fighting and clawing as their existence disintegrated. She didn’t see a single one ahead of her, reaching the end of the tunnel and the stupid Nihilistic Bachelor Cube where this whole damn thing began. A thousand versions of herself assured her that it was hopeless.

It was a familiar refrain, one that Ava already knew how to ignore.

Ava dragged her eyes away from her reflections and focused again on the tunnel, just in time to realize that she was about to wander off the path and into the void that surrounded it. She staggered, nearly tripped, nearly dropped Nouresh, but managed to right herself. She forced the end of the tunnel to fill her vision, and pumped her weak legs even faster. It was like a nightmare; working so hard and seeming to move hardly at all.

She didn’t realize it until later, but it never occurred to her to drop Captain Nouresh. That stubbornness finally was useful for something.

The other end of the maskhål loomed suddenly in front of her, her own world rearing up like a startled horse. She shoved herself and Nouresh over the threshold, into the world she knew as the wormhole snapped shut behind her.