The Julian soldiers knew an alternate route to Sector 180, a shortcut through side passages and segment-address corridors so far removed from the main paths they hadn't even been marked on the plans, or else they hadn't been part of the original plans at all. Roman gathered from their inside knowledge of the Apocryphos' layout, and from the snatches of conversation she caught as they made their way through the hidden passages, that the Julian Sect had been planning some sort of coup against the Executor and his followers, and that they had managed to infiltrate a number of the remote production facilities involved with Project Apocryphos. The soldiers who had captured her were one of several groups that had stowed away inside the component units of the fortress during the hyperspace transfer, some in hiding and others posing as authorized staff and personnel. But she also gathered that their plans hadn't worked out quite as they intended, and now they were retreating in a panic, just as eager to escape as she was.

As they arrived in the Sector 180 hangar, the soldiers ahead of her stopped abruptly, and for a moment Roman flinched back as well, remembering the Gnosis-like shadow in the corridor. So far they had been fortunate; they hadn't encountered anything like it on the way here, but they had felt the aftershocks of heavy impacts jolting through the fortress, and no one wanted to venture any guesses as to what they were. If the Gnosis phenomenon broke out again on a wide scale .... But Roman didn't want to think about the consequences. The Federation had spent the last two years dismantling its anti-Gnosis military programs; the 100-series Realians were the only anti-Gnosis equipment still in use, and that was because the other functions they served had made them indispensable to the military even when they were no longer needed to combat the Gnosis.

Roman wrenched free of the soldiers' grip on her arm--they seemed less interested, now, in keeping an eye on her than in escaping with their own lives--and pushed past the others to see what had stopped them. The sight hit her in the stomach, driving a wave of nausea up into her throat, and she turned away feeling lightheaded.

"What do you know about this?" said the woman who had confronted her earlier. "It was your unit that butchered our comrades, wasn't it?"

"Look," said Roman angrily, shaking her head so that the tails of her hair swayed, "I told you I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never seen these men before. But if we don't get out of here--"

She didn't have to finish. The floor of the hangar shuddered beneath them as a tremor arose from deep within the fortress, and by the time the aftershocks subsided they were running to board the escape capsules. In the confusion, Roman grabbed the Realian's hand and dragged her to an empty capsule. She hoisted the Realian inside first, then scrambled to climb in after her.

"She's trying to escape! Stop her!"

Shots pinged against the hull of the escape capsule. Something hot and sharp bit through Roman's ankle as she pulled her leg inside, and then the door panel slammed into place and more shots spattered into the hull as the capsule lifted off and accelerated toward the mouth of the hangar.

∞

On the bridge of the Federation ship, Juli stared into the spreading blur of distortion around the fortress. Shadows surrounded it now, like a wreath of smoke obscuring the object at its center, and the ship had retreated farther and farther back from the edge, driven up toward the front lines of the Immigrant Fleet.

I'll see you soon, MOMO had said. But that had been almost an hour ago, and they had received no word from the Astraea since then. And the resignation in Ziggy's eyes and in his voice the last time he'd spoken to her, over the static on the AEWS' intercom, had given her no reassurance either.

Letting them go this time had been the hardest thing she had ever done, harder than all the other times she had knowingly, and with their agreement, sent them into danger. They had returned safely from greater dangers before, but knowing that didn't make waiting any easier; it only made it more agonizing, her nerves fraying to shreds as she wondered whether this time, in spite of all their plans and resources and last-minute strategies .... But she couldn't even bring herself to admit the possibility, as if the act of acknowledging it would make it happen.

She walked over to an observational post and touched the Realian's arm gently. "Any sign of them yet?"

The Realian shook her head. "Negative, ma'am. We still can't get through anywhere. In addition to the spatial distortion, there are enormous amounts of data traveling through the AMN from an unknown source. All the standard channels are completely backed up; even the Federation Fleet is having difficulty coordinating its movements. At this rate it'll take hours to restore communications."

"How is that possible?" Juli peered around her at the screen, her apprehension flaring to a sudden spike of alarm. "It would take every terminal in the star cluster transmitting simultaneously to back up the network to that extent. What in the world could be sending all that information?" She leaned closer, peering into the flood of data cascading up the monitor. "It isn't ... it can't be the same as two years ago," she said, more for her own reassurance than out of any real conviction. Because if it is, she thought, we're done for. The Federation couldn't survive another disappearance phenomenon, not when the last had reduced it to a fraction of its former size. "Can you tell what it is?"

The Realian twisted around in her seat, and for a moment Juli had the impression of staring down into a face that mirrored both of her daughters' faces at once. She had always found it disorienting, like catching a glimpse of a familiar person in a crowd who turned out to be a stranger; now the near-recognition struck too close to her fears, reminded her that one of her daughters was long dead and the other was still outside, stranded somewhere between the Immigrant Fleet and the fortress. "Negative," said the Realian. "It just looks like a lot of noise."

"Excuse me," said Juli. The Realian moved aside and Juli leaned over the keyboard. She glared at the screen, biting her lip in frustration. "You're right. I can't make sense of any of this." It wasn't Lemegeton, or the data that had moved through the UMN two years ago, collapsing the Federation in its wake, but it wasn't the shadow network either; at least, the shadow network didn't appear to be acting on the AMN directly, although the two were so inextricably entwined that a real intrusion would be nearly impossible to detect. "It looks like some sort of virus in the source code. The AMN structure itself is being altered."

"Altered?" Miyuki came up behind her, leaning over the back of the chair to see the monitor. "Who could be doing such a thing?"

Juli was too deep in concentration to pull her eyes away from the screen. "I don't know, Miyuki. I'm not sure where the virus came from. I suppose the enemy, or the shadow network itself, could be hacking into the AMN to block our communications, or--" She couldn't go on, because she couldn't decide which of the dozens of other worst-case scenarios crowding at the front of her mind was the most likely, or the most troubling.

"Wait a minute!" cried Miyuki, pushing past Juli and the Realian and usurping the chair for herself. "I recognize that file signature. That's not a virus, it's ... some kind of proprietary code developed by the AMN Division. And ...." Her hands trembled as she entered a few rapid keystrokes. "And it looks like it was uploaded to the AMN just a few hours ago. But that's impossible!" She wheeled around in the chair, eyes wide with dismay. "If I'm right, then this program would have to have been transmitted from somewhere inside the Dämmerung."

"What?" Juli's thoughts raced again; the last thing she needed now was another conspiracy. She gripped Miyuki's shoulder. "You mean someone in the AMN Division is sabotaging the network?"

"I--I don't know," Miyuki stammered, her jaw quivering. "But it sure looks that way. And if it keeps up at this rate, the AMN won't be able to handle all that traffic. It'll just shut down, and--" She gave a shudder and turned away, clutching her face in her hands. "All of our hard work, and--and everything. We'll have to start all over."

Juli stepped back slowly from the terminal. Somehow, she didn't think they would have to worry about starting over. They wouldn't get another chance.

∞

MOMO stared down at her hands, saw them trembling in the red warning glare from the monitors.

"Are you okay?" said Doctus, making her jump.

"Y-yes," said MOMO; her voice shook as fiercely as her hands did. "Are the reinforcements still arriving?"

"I think so," said Doctus. "The hyperspace transport system appears to be functioning normally, but the rest of the net's still down. The radar's getting jammed too. And the spatial phenomenon around Apocryphos is still expanding. If we don't get caught up in the fighting, then ...."

MOMO nodded, silent. They were trapped between two advancing waves, waiting to see which one would break first. "Doctus," she said after a few minutes, "did you know?"

"Did I what?"

"Know. About the shadow network. About what would happen if we tried to link the real and imaginary-number domains." She stared into her lap again, bunching her skirt in her fists. "You didn't, did you?"

For a long moment the only sound was the static from the monitors. "No," said Doctus finally. "Not all of it. I knew there would be unforeseen consequences, but I never imagined anything like this. And if I had known, I ... well, I suppose I would have thought twice about it. I guess we all would've, if we had known more. But it's a little late for that now, isn't it?"

"Yes. No," said MOMO, shaking her head. "I mean, it's too late to prevent what's already happened. But it might not be too late to stop it, right? If the AMN shuts down, maybe ...."

"You think we can just rebuild it all over again, is that it?" The sudden edge in Doctus' voice, hard as a blow from the flat of her hand, made MOMO flinch. "You think it's going to be that easy? Scientia's plan was the result of a hundred years of research. We can't just--"

"I know. I'm sorry. I just thought ...." She narrowed her eyes, smearing the blur of light across the sliver of her field of vision that remained. "I thought maybe if I stopped it for a while, it would stop the shadow network too."

"You--" This time her tone made MOMO jerk around in her seat. Even behind the inscrutable shells of her glasses, Doctus' gaze was fierce, terrifying, and MOMO had to look away. "You're the one who's flooding the AMN?"

MOMO couldn't answer; she bit her lip and stared through the blur in her eyes. A tear dropped from her chin and landed on the back of her hand, and somehow that made her feel a hundred times worse. She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I told the programming team to do it. After the meeting."

To MOMO's horror, Doctus began laughing, and not in the smug, cynical way she usually did. She sounded genuinely amused, or appalled, or insane--it was hard to tell. "You really are Mizrahi's little girl, aren't you? I have to admit, I'm impressed. I didn't know you had it in you to be so ruthless."

MOMO nodded miserably. She hadn't known either.