“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Aquila said, cradling her cup of coffee and looking around their quarters, “and I’ve put you all in danger. I’m sorry.”

    All seven of them were gathered in the small apartment she had secured for Kasumi and herself. Every single one had changed back into their street clothes – Natsuki in her blouse and jeans, Yuri in a light summer dress, Sayori in her shirt and skirt, and Yukari in her shirt and jeans that somehow always looked a bit worn out on her no matter how new they were. Cap sat beside Yuri, wearing his button down shirt and slacks, the two almost close enough to be touching. Kasumi, back in her own blouse and skirt, gave Aquila a soft, comforting squeeze on the shoulder.

    “Lay it out for us,” Cap said. “Just what sort of trouble are we in for?”

    “Back when Cap, Kasumi, and I were getting Daiki Yamato home, I ended up trapped in my own information stream,” Aquila explained. “While I was there, I was able to see the entire multiverse – galaxies of story worlds in orbit around the hub worlds that created them. On almost every hub world, there had been a war like mine. As we travelled, I assumed that we’d never enter the orbit of a hub world that hadn’t already had its war. I was wrong. We’re in the orbit of a hub world whose war is just beginning.”

    Natsuki leaned forward. “So the murder of the protagonist was–”

    “Recruitment,” Aquila stated. “Somebody like me appeared before him with an ultimatum: join or die. He refused.” She stared at the coffee in her half-full cup. “I did that dozens of times in my war. The ones who refused never stood a chance.”

    “So whoever did this has been and gone, though, right?” Sayori asked. “Doesn’t that mean whatever was going to happen here has happened?”

    Aquila shook her head. “I don’t know. This is an active story world, so the information stream will be pushing an update soon. And that means that the protagonist will be replaced with a new version, and my counterpart will be able to try again. I didn’t, but during my recruitment stage I didn’t know that the information stream could replace people. This person might. Besides, it’s worse than that.

    “There’s a lot of variety when it comes to my counterparts in these wars between creations. Some are gods, or devil kings with the powers of one. But a lot are people like me – independent creations with an information stream directly attached to them. And if somebody like me knows to look, they can tell when information stream energy has been used inside a story world.”

    Out of the corner of her eye, Aquila saw Kasumi scowl.

    “How much energy did you use to insert us into this story?” Natsuki asked.

    Aquila sighed. “Enough that whoever it was would have noticed that something was off as soon as they arrived. They probably wouldn’t know what they were looking at, but there’s no way they could have missed it. And, there’s a good possibility they could have detected it from the hub world.”

    Sayori went pale. “If that’s the case...could we have been what brought the killer here? Is this murder our fault?”

    “No,” Cap declared. “Even if whoever it was came here because of our modifications to the story, everybody is responsible for their own decisions. They decided to kill the protagonist. Nothing we did affected that decision.”

    Yuri put her hand on Sayori’s and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re not at fault for this.”

    “But we can’t stay, can we?” Yukari said, leaning back against the wall.

    Aquila shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

    “So our choices are to go to the hub world and try to stop whoever this is or run,” Cap said. “Do I have that right?”

    Aquila shook her head again. “I’m sorry, but the only option we really have is to run. If we get involved, all that’s likely to happen is that some of us will get hurt or killed. Against somebody like me, even you, Cap, are an easy target. The only advantage we have right now is that my counterpart doesn’t know we’re here. All they have is a story world that feels wrong – and we need to keep it that way.”

    “That doesn’t sit well with me,” Cap stated.

    “I know,” Aquila said.

    “So what happens if the killer finds us?” Yukari asked.

    “If whoever it is finds me, they’ll try to recruit me,” Aquila replied. “And if they can’t, they’ll stop at nothing to hunt me down and kill me. I’m too powerful a wildcard to be allowed to exist in their war. If they find one of you, they’ll figure out that you’re from another story by reading your character description, capture you, and force you to lead them to me.”

    “We’d never talk,” Yuri declared. “None of us would give you up.”

    Aquila gave her a sad smile. “I can read your character description and I’ve put the ability to speak other languages into your head when you’ve needed them. Do you really think I can’t extract things from your mind too? My counterpart can probably do everything that I can – there’s no way you can protect me.”

    Yukari sighed. “So much for doing some steeple chasing tomorrow afternoon. I guess I’ll have to do it in some other world.”

    Sayori turned to look at her. “Steeple chasing...as in horse racing? That seems a bit tame for you.”

    Yukari grinned. “It’s bareback steeple chasing. Pity – I spent all morning acquiring safety equipment for it too.”

    “Do we have a place to run to?” Natsuki asked.

    “Home,” Aquila said. “We head towards the world Kasumi and I created. We go in a direct route, making the longest hops we can until we’re out of the orbit of this hub world.”

    “And how long would that take?” Natsuki said.

    “Assuming we’ve got to pass through most of the story world galaxy to get out, two to three weeks. I’m afraid my normal view of the multiverse is very limited, and unless there are dramatic differences between them, I can’t tell one hub world from another at a glance. So, we have to assume the worst about how far we have to travel.”

    Cap frowned. “Okay, so we have to run. I guess we don’t have a choice. But, there’s, what, hundreds of thousands of story worlds out there? Mathematically, the odds of the killer coming across us should be astronomical, right?”

    Aquila shook her head. “I wish it was, but my counterpart now knows that there is something out there that shouldn’t be. So, they’ll be looking for it now. Every time I use an information stream power, it’s like sending up a flare. When we leave a world or arrive in one, they’ll see the residue from it.”

    “So they can track us,” Cap stated.

    Aquila nodded. “All we’ve got on our side is stealth. My counterpart will know that there’s an anomaly, and after a couple of jumps they might figure out that it is a person moving through story worlds, but that’s it. If we’re lucky, they’ll be distracted by some of the other story worlds we’ve already visited. So, we need to keep our heads down, stay as far as possible away from the main action of the story, and pray.”

    “And while we’re in each world, your counterpart will be recruiting and murdering protagonists,” Cap said.

    “That’s a distinct possibility, yes.”

    “How am I supposed to accept that?” Cap demanded.

    “I don’t know,” Aquila replied. “All I know is that if you get involved, you’ll be leading them to the rest of us.”

    Yuri took Cap’s hand in hers. “It will be okay. You’ll have me...us...to help you through it.”

    Aquila swallowed the last of her coffee. It was cold. “I won’t lie – this will the hardest thing any of us have ever done. The only power Kasumi or I will be able to use is transporting us from one world to another. If she tries to use her sketchbook to create something for us or I try to make a change to a story world, it would be like setting off a forest fire of flares. That means what we can carry with us out of this world is all that we will have to work with.”

    Natsuki gave her a wry grin. “Just us and our wits, then.”

    Aquila nodded. “The travel is going to be more dangerous too. The longer I take screening worlds as I get ready to jump us, the more information stream energy I’ll be using, and the more likely we’ll be detected before we can leave. So I can’t guarantee that the worlds we travel through will be safe ones.”

    Cap chuckled. “Reminds me of when we were getting Daiki Yamato home.”

    “A bit, I guess,” Aquila said. “But we didn’t have somebody hunting us then.” She glanced down at her leg. “This had better go better than that trip did. I still wake up with a stiff leg from that wound.”

    “What’s our worst-case scenario?” Cap asked. “For this war over our heads, I mean.”

    Aquila took a deep breath. “In all of the wars I saw when I was in my own information stream, the worst were when my counterparts tried to collide the story worlds with the hub world. Sometimes, a miracle happened and they were stopped. But there were plenty of voids in the multiverse where they weren’t. If a collision happens, it takes out the entire galaxy around the hub world, and any story worlds from another galaxy overlapping with it.”

    “Can we improve our odds?” Yukari said. “Have Kasumi give you more powers while the killer is looking elsewhere?”

    Aquila shook her head. “When my miracle brought Kasumi back to life and tethered my information stream to her, we became a closed system. Nothing new can be added. We know – we tried once a few years ago, and it didn’t work. I can let her use part of my own powers of creation through her sketchbook and give her my ability to learn languages, but she can’t add anything new to me. If I had to guess, a critical mass of people is required for an information stream to push an update, and Kasumi alone isn’t enough.”

    “So we land in a new story world, try not to be noticed as we get away from the action, and then jump to another one until we’re safe,” Cap stated. “Seems simple enough to me.”

    “We’ll need to raid the kitchen,” Sayori said. “Concentrate on non-perishables. Take as much as we can carry.”

    “We might want clothes too,” Yuri added. “Different costumes to help us fit in.”

    Kasumi shook her head. “We can’t eat clothes. We can make excuses for what we’re wearing, but we still have to eat.”

    “We’ll have to pool all of our remaining coinage too,” Natsuki added. “From here on, we can only spend it on essentials, and it has to last us three weeks.”

    Yukari straightened up from the wall and stretched. “Kitchen party, follow me!”

    Yuri gave Cap a smile. “I guess that’s us too.”

    “We should go too,” Sayori said, looking at Natsuki. “I think planning-wise, Kasumi and Aquila have this one.”

    Natsuki nodded. “I guess they do.”

    Aquila watched the five of them file out of their little apartment. Then she put the coffee cup down on the table. As she let go, she willed her hands to stop shaking. They didn’t.

    “We’ve got this, right?” Kasumi said, taking Aquila’s hand in hers to steady it.

    Aquila stared into her eyes. “I don’t know, beloved. This time, I just don’t know.”