Titans of Chaos

I said, "Leader, listen to me! I can see what is going on. The laws of nature in the room-"

Vanity looked like she was about to break down. "Amelia is now second in command. Do whatshe says."

Oops.

All eyes turned toward me, including the penetrating, silver-white eyes of the girl hanging inmidair outside the window.

She smiled a truly chilling smile, as cold as the far side of the moon. "Come out, come out,prelapsarian. I part my hounds and give you a running start: You look swift. Your ham is firm andthigh is sleek. Am I not generous? Otherwise you are surrounded."

I said, "Colin, Andromeda gave you this room and you gave it to me, right? In the eyes of the law,how far down, or how far up, do the boundaries go?"

Quentin answered, "To the core of the Earth, and up to infinity."

The moment he said that, the uncertainty collapsed, and I saw, like a forcefield, the lines flushwith the square floor of the room. Four walls of light dwindling to a vanishing point farunderfoot, and reaching upward like a slowly expanding cone overhead. The moral energy lineswere gathered around it, trying to get in, but they could not cross the boundary. My property.

Colin grunted. "What he said. Leader, let me rip her head off, huhn?"

Victor said, "Leader, your orders?"

"Everyone hold hands," I said.

Lady Phoebe was right. I was fast.

I pulled the suddenly weightless team "past" the ceiling, the attic, and the roof tiles withoutdisturbing them. I was still directly above the room, still within the cone of my legal property, andaccelerating straight up. Zero to Mach four in thirty seconds.

Victor slid through without much problem, though it did kill him, until I tilted his monad back inplace and the mechanical processes of his life started again. The fact that Colin had been able tomake his deadly dream-environment friendly to me made me think I could do the same for Victor.

(In hindsight, Colin should have been the one impossible to pull into the fourth dimension, butmaybe he can turn off his anti-Amelia-ness somehow. Maybe he was inspired to pass through theroof.)