“Gladax always thinks she knows best,” said Azaroth. “Video games are bad because she’s too old to play them, but it’s fine for her to learn Ond’s digital algorithms for teeping through the whole city’s minds at once. Good thing Ond’s doing a bad job. If our telepathy wasn’t a mess, Gladax would boss us even more.”

“Watch your tongue,” said Atamu uneasily. “Good old Gladax. Lili and I have to go process our cuttles now.”

As Atamu and Lili prepared to jump back to the Hibrane, they dropped the moai body forms they’d been wearing and took on the appearance of thirty-foot-tall Pacific islanders wearing flip-flops, T-shirts, and ragged shorts.

“How do you change how you look?” asked Thuy. “I never saw that before.”

“It’s a vibby new trick I figured out,” said Azaroth proudly. “My spike is that we can mold our orphid-based false-body images anyway we like. I wish my aunt Gladax would learn this. I couldn’t believe on Orphid Night when she showed up on the Lobrane wearing her green sweatpants and that crappy dragon T-shirt. And then she starts telling you Lobraners she’s an angel?”

“I think plenty of them believed her, Azaroth,” said Lili gently. “Gladax has mana. Don’t disrespect her. She might hear you even now. And that makes me scared.”

“Good old Gladax!” said Atamu, as if repeating a formula.

“She won’t hurt me,” bragged Azaroth. “I’m family.”

“But we’re just dumpty cuttlefishers,” said Atamu, putting an end to the dangerous conversation. He did a slow tumble, folding into a flat image that became a line and vanished.

“Wait, wait,” Thuy called before Lili could disappear too. “Describe how you jump between the worlds, Lili. Jayjay and I want to figure it out, and Azaroth can’t tell us anything useful.”

“I use a special rongorongo chant,” said Lili.

“Can you teach it to me?” asked Thuy.

“The chant isn’t a row of things to say,” said Lili. “I think it all at once. Bye!”

Lili’s arms and legs shrank into her body, which turned upside down, inside out, became a disk, a line, a point—and was gone.

“I’m almosting it,” said Jayjay. “How about you, Thuy?”

“Today’s the day, kiq,” said Azaroth. “That’s what you call each other, isn’t it? Kiq.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Thuy, feeling anxious. “So today I’m supposed to take down Luty, destroy the nant farm, finish Wheenk, learn Chu’s Knot, and go to the Hibrane?” She wished she was still staring at the sea. Or eating breakfast.

“Right,” said Azaroth. “And Luty is the whole reason I came here. To warn you. That jitsy Bim Brown? He’s not any chief of police at all. He’s a security goon. Works for humpty Luty in the ExaExa labs.”

“Okay, but how come my beezies said his coordinates matched the police station’s?” said Thuy.