Nightlights: Guardians of the Edge

9.6 --Thunder

"Guys!" Elian repeated, his voice shrill with panic. "Tower Effa is gone."

Fear shot through Ajax like a cold spike. "What do you mean, gone? Blown up?"

"It's no longer on the network. And my long-range sensors are picking up a... a disturbance. A portal? I'm notifying the other residents, and asking the other Towers to confirm my sensors."

Jehane, still leaning on Seth, said, "Can you tell where the portal leads?"

"I'm not even sure it is a portal. I shouldn't be able to detect a portal at this distance. And no, I can't. We'd need to access the news on the other side."

Jehane looked startled. "The news would know?"

"If it's a portal, it's gotta be a big one. I think the city would be left on the other side, though."

Ajax blinked. "Wow. Is this what they intended to do? Or was it an accident?" And he didn't know what he wanted the answer to be. If it was only a city—

"How could we tell?" asked Seth acidly. "I'm guessing an accident, though. What you get when you try jury-rigging a portal with an insane AI. Why the hell didn't they just use a latchkey tuned to Tower Effa?"

"If everybody was over here, they would have had to send somebody out through one of my two remaining portals. Walk into our not-very-subtle traps—Tower Effa has come back online!" Elian paused. "Sending... insanities. Start codes for genecode factories. It thinks it's at war again."

"Like Kentigern did?" asked Jehane, breathlessly, her eyes huge.

"Yeah. End state for all of us, I guess. We go down fighting. But this time its war is with whatever's on the other side of its portal. It's calling the local wildlife to it."

"Will the wildlife respond?" Ajax asked. His hands clenched into fists.

"Too soon to tell. But it's going to make more, if its factories respond. Stuff that hasn't evolved into the critters the Prowlers are familiar with. Stuff straight from the initial experiments with biological-Awakened crossbreeds."

"You mean... they've opened a gate in a city we can't access and are flooding it with hyper-engineered versions of the enemies that only we know how to fight?"

Seth pointed out, "The Prowlers use mundane weapons against the wildlife outside the Tower."

Ajax stared at him. "That would be a good point but—and maybe you don't know this—most people don't have mundane weapons more dangerous than kitchen knives or small handguns."

Seth stared back, his gaze cool and clear. "I do know that. But I want to find out what happened to the people inside Tower Effa."

"So do I!" snapped Ajax, his voice cracking.

Jehane looked puzzled. "Effa is still there, Elian said. Back on the network."

"More data coming in. I'm not sure if it is. Not as a tower, anyhow. But the portal would have opened under them, not through them, if it's at all similar to my portals. Whatever's on the other side would have been devastated, though."

Seth stuck his hands in his pockets. "Let's head over to the Portalry and see what comes through."

Although Elian had said he was notifying the other residents, he must have managed some discretion, because the hallways of the Tower weren't much busier than normal. Or maybe most of the residents just didn't care what happened to Earth anymore. It was a dark thought.

The Portalry had attracted a small crowd, though, clustered in front of one of the two remaining portals. As they joined the back of it, Jake appeared from one of them, closing a cellphone. "Mexico City. I love modern technology. The news doesn't have it yet, but the online gossip networks do. I got a message from our contact there. He can see the portal from his apartment building, a couple of miles away. It isn't closing like the gates built by Kentigern did. And he said his latchkey wasn't working."