“Doesn’t it sound great?” Ani said, turning to Avery expectantly once the advertisement was over. Her eyes shone, and he could almost feel her urgency. “I wanna see it. I really wanna. Please, Papa, please say yes. It opens this weekend.”

“I don’t know, honey. When did you become so interested in monsters and things? I don’t remember you liking them ... before.”

Some of her enthusiasm faded. “I don’t know. I just do.” Summoning her eagerness again, she made a sad, puppy-dog face. “Please Papa please. It can be my birthday present.”

A man brought back from the dead, he thought. That’s why she wants to see it.Well. Maybe it can help her work some of her issues out. But what if the man was called a monster by the townspeople, was persecuted and despised and got killed in the end for real? What would that do to her? Of course, growing up was painful. Wasn’t that what growing up was, really? And Ani certainly had issues to deal with. If she could identify with the man in the movie, and if seeing how he handled his problems helped her handle hers ...

“Sure, sweetie,” he said. “You can see it.”

“Woo-hoo!” She hopped up and hugged him, and he ruffled her hair. “Will you come with me?”

“Well, I’m not sending you alone.”

He left her just in time to hear the volume rise and the host announce the next act. On the host’s ghoulish laughter, Avery entered Layanna’s bedroom suite.

Where’s my movie? he thought, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where’s the movie for a man whose daughter was killed and brought back to life years later? He would most certainly like to see how that man handled his problems. Avery felt like he was shooting in the dark.

He was in the dark. Layanna had turned off the lights and, he saw after some blinking, curled up on her bed against the wall.

“May I ... ?”

She didn’t answer.

Concerned, he left the switch alone and sank to the bed, giving her a little space but letting her know he was there. She said nothing.

“Are you communing?” That’s what he called it when she reached out her mind to the other R’loth.

“No.” Her voice was very low, somehow choked. Had she been crying?

He risked squeezing a shoulder. She stiffened. Then, to his relief, she leaned into his hand, scooted over and wrapped her arms about him. He felt wetness against his chest and realized she had been crying. Strange.

“What’s wrong?” He forced a chuckle. “I mean, besides everything?”

“I’m just—this may sound strange—but I’m homesick, Francis. Seeing the body today, realizing there's another Collossum so close, so close and yet I can't make contact." She made a frustrated noise. "I just feel so isolated. Homesick and alone.”

“Of course you’re homesick. But you’re not alone.”

“I know.” She wiped her eyes. “It’s just that ... I am alone. Cut off. Cast off from my own kind. I know you’re here, and I appreciate that, but it’s not the same. Humans are so limited. Not intellectually,” she added hastily, though he wondered if she meant it. “I mean, you exist only in this one dimension. I exist across many, at all times, but you can’t interact with those parts, only this one. This one facet. It’s the most important facet, yes, as this is our anchor-plane, but still, you only know part of me, a small part, and I can never again be among those that could know me on those other levels. On them, I am alone. A pariah. Cut off from all love and affection, even contact, at least with others like myself.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely, kissing the top of her head. “It must be hard.”

“I was one of a great people, Francis. I was one of many, and we had purpose. Vision. Power. I loved my people. Loved them so much I sacrificed my very physical form to become human in this dimension in order to promote their agenda. Then I was one of the Collossum. One of few but still plenty, and united with purpose and vision and power, bonded even more strongly than ever, with a great destiny before us. But then ... the war. The Black Sect. I severed myself from the main body of the Collossum. I became one of the Sect, tiny in numbers, but in our smallness we were bonded so closely we were almost one flesh, one mind, and we had a purpose even greater than before. Then ... Uthua. They all died, and I fled, alone ... alone. No one was left, only myself and my son, who was only partly what I am, but that part was there. My other children were murdered because of my allegiance. Now Frederick is gone, and I’m utterly, utterly bereft. Yes, I have you, and Janx, and Hildra, and Ani, and I’m grateful for that, truly I am, but ... you can’t know. We’re a social people, we R’loth, communal to the point of losing one’s individuality at times, and on some planes our bodies and minds do join, sometimes in great, roiling groups. To be isolated ... I can’t take it.” She pounded a fist against a wall, then grimaced and sucked on the heel of her hand. “I hate it! Hate this!”

He felt the emotion in her words, the tension in her body that almost vibrated, and he wished there was something he could do, something he could say, that would make it better, but he knew there wasn’t. In this, as with Ani, it was something she would have to struggle through herself. Layanna could never go home again, and there was nothing he could do to change that.

“We’re here for you,” he said.

She sobbed against him. “The lights! The lights of the deep, Francis! The lights!”

Chapter 10

During the next days, Avery all but lived in the laboratory. He and Layanna tried substance after substance, chemical upon chemical, but nothing proved even the slightest bit effective at killing the Starfish blood or tissue. One substance they tried was the nectar of a species of exotic plant known as the ghost flower. On the eleventh day, Avery arrived at the lab to find Layanna eating one of the blooms.

“What are you doing?” he cried. The species was known to be toxic if ingested. Not only that, but they had already tried using the substance in various ways, and it had failed to produce any appreciable result.

Layanna held up a hand to stop him as he took a step forward, meaning to do what he didn’t know—stick a finger down her throat, maybe. Shocking him still further, she reached out and grabbed the sample of Starfish tissue before her. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, and the air blurred around her.

*   *   *

“Here’s what we’re dealing with,” Avery said to a collected Prime Minister, Janx, Hildra and Layanna in Denaris’s office. They did not know what members of her cabinet may have been corrupted and so did not involve them. “We’ve discovered that the R’loth are controlling the Starfish psychically.”

Off their blank looks, Layanna explained: “I ate the bloom of a certain plant, and it connected me to the Starfish tissue on psychic levels. That piece of tissue, frozen aboard the Verignun and kept alive, served as a relay, connecting me with the Starfish it had come from. I was able to touch the creature’s brain, just lightly. From there I could sense that the Starfish, all of them, are linked by a psychic net, the links of the net being the brains of the Starfish, and that the net is controlled by the minds of R’loth beneath the sea. Using the sample tissue as a relay, I could just dimly sense them. The controllers. As soon as I did, I backed off, not wanting them to sense me.”

“Good move,” Janx said.

“The secretion from this flower increases Layanna’s mental abilities,” Avery said, “giving her the ability, we think, if she was able to ingest enough of it, to send out a psychic pulse—a lethal pulse. In theory, if she can absorb enough of this substance to build up her strength, bore into a Starfish’s interior and plug herself into its brain—and as the R’loth control them all in what Layanna describes as a psychic net, each of their brains is linked to the rest—well, if she can plug herself into one’s brain, Layanna can send out a deadly psychic blast to the others.” He gazed around at the group. “She can kill them all.”

Silence. The group looked at each other cautiously, then back to Layanna and Avery.

“You’re shitting us,” Hildra said.

Avery felt the corner of his lips twitch upward. “We are not.” Smiling fully now, he said, “We can kill them all.”

Another moment passed as they made sense of this, watching each other with new excitement, their eyes veritably sparkling with the possibilities.

Again the first to speak, Hildra said, “That’s fucking amazing.” Even Hildebrand chirped excitedly from her lap.

“You can really kill all the Starfish?” Janx said, skeptical, and Avery didn’t blame him.

“I won’t know till I’ve done it,” Layanna said. “But yes, I believe so. If I can plug into one’s brain, I can use it to connect to the whole net and send out the pulse.”

Surprising Avery, Janx threw back his great bald head and laughed. “Finally! We can strike back at these bastards.” His hands flexed into fists, then opened them, then flexed them again, as if he was imagining ripping the R’loth apart even then.

“It’s incredible,” Denaris said. “I’d hoped for something like this, but to have it achieved ...”

They all congratulated Layanna and Avery and let out whoops and celebratory chuckles. The sense of relief in the air was so palpable Avery felt like he could have wrapped his jaws about it and taken a fat bite. He felt it too, that hum, that glorious sense of imminent victory—or at least the possibility of victory. For too long they’d been running and hiding, unable to do anything but cower and hope the terror would pass them by. Now finally they could, as Janx said, strike back.

Still laughing, but now more serious, Hildra swung her gaze at Layanna. “Why the fuck did you eat the damned flower, blondie? It could’ve killed you, you dumb bitch.”