“Yes. Every Connexion portal door has a one-centimeter portal built in, which supplies it with power direct from the central grid. And we…Oh, wait, that’s wrong.” He leaned forward, studying the screen.

“What is?”

“Our power usage monitor is offline, but its display function has frozen in a loop. How the hell did that happen?”

“Can you restore it?”

“Sure. Hang on.” Fitz typed quickly, muttering at his mInet. The graphics on the screen changed. Several red icons appeared. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed. “What is doing that? Not even our six-meter portals eat this much power.”

—

Callum sat beside Savi’s cot all day long. She slid in and out of consciousness in front of him. Some of the times when she woke, she seemed puzzled by his presence.

The doctor, a middle-aged South African man, ran through her injuries for him. Her clothes had protected most of her skin from the direct blast, he said, but her head and arms and hands had been exposed, and she was close to the bag when it detonated. Callum guessed her grains had been ruined by the explosion, or ripped away when the blast wave tore her flesh off; which was why Connexion Security didn’t know who she was when they dropped her through the portal. The surface wounds and burns were slowly turning septic, which if unchecked was going to produce severe blood poisoning. Connexion didn’t send metabiotics to Zagreus to counter that. And even if she somehow got through that, she would need modern medskin applied under controlled conditions to restore her natural skin. Her eye was damaged beyond repair, although the doctor thought the optic nerve was still intact, so an artificial retina implant might return her vision. His biggest worry was head trauma. Her responses were deteriorating at a rate the other injuries didn’t quite account for.

“Just a few hours more,” Callum told her in one of her better lucid periods. “I have to wait for my crew. They exposed themselves to get me here.” Though he was beginning to wonder if he dared wait that long. The sight of her, so weak and damaged, was agony. Delaying her admission to hospital was a violation of every feeling he had for her. Time itself became intolerable.

All day long he heard the voices outside, growing in volume. Not with anger, just the sheer number of people who were gathering outside the longhouse. Foluwakemi kept coming in to give him updates. Every human on Zagreus had arrived for the vigil. So far they were being patient, but expectation was growing. With that, tempers were shortening.

“Could you just come out and talk to them?” she pleaded.

“They wait,” he said forcefully, gripping Savi’s hand tighter so she moaned. “If Savi can do it, they bloody well can. When my friends arrive, then this is over. You have my word.”