Page 129 of Blightfall

“You’re welcome,” Ivy said.

“We’re welcome?” I said, letting my rising hysteria bleed into my voice. “Is that how you saved us? Did you suck Earth into the nowhere?”

“You’re welcome!” Ivy said again.

“Yeah, thanks,” Nedd said. I could hear the shock and panic behind his words. “Did Amphi just say half of it was destroyed?”

“Amphi is incorrect,” Ivy said. “None of Earth was destroyed. Parts of it were simply propelled into the riftwake above the surface and around the planet Blightfall.”

Stars, so that was the debris field we’d flown through. “It was turned into a mass of floating rocks!” I said. “That seems pretty destroyed to me.”

“Your definition is dubious,” Ivy said. “But even if we accept it, only twenty-three and three-tenths percent of the surface of Earth was destroyed in its transition from the somewhere to the nowhere. So it would be more correct to say that less than one-quarter of Earth was destroyed when I saved it, if you insist on using inflammatory terms and inexact generalities.”

“Scudding hell,” Arturo said. “Saved it from what?”

“From the amassing armies of the Superiority during the Third Human War,” Ivy said. “They were going to destroy you, once and for all. And I saved you.”

Our Defiant ancestors had already left Earth before that attack, so we hadn’t personally been saved by whatever Ivy had done. The only outcome I knew was that Earth had disappeared, never to be found no matter how many scientists searched for evidence of it. Many had theorized it had been entirely destroyed.

It was here all along, in the nowhere.

“Like hell you did,” Nedd said, and he jammed his foot to the side, as hard as he could against his restraints, sending the corner of the grate jabbing into the wire connections.

The humming noise immediately ceased. The light-line restraints winked out, and my hands and feet were suddenly free. They still tingled slightly, but I threw myself forward against the unit’s glass doors.

The doors held tight. Ivy’s avatar smirked at me, though she didn’t comment, as if our disabling of her cryogenic freezer was beneath her notice.

“If my creators could not escape from me,” Ivy said, “neither will you.”

Stars, I hoped she was wrong about that. Nedd slumped against the back of the unit behind me, while I beat my fists against the glass. It was still scudding cold in here, and we were still trapped.

“Your creators really asked you to do this?” I said. “They told you to, what, save Earth? And they weren’t specific about how you should do it?”

“Why should they have been specific?” Ivy asked. “They knew I was smarter than they could ever hope to be. They knew I would be able to calculate the exact odds of Earth’s survival and figure out the best possible way to save it.”

“The best possible way?” Nedd asked. “You said it destroyed a quarter of the planet!”

“Twenty-three and three-tenths percent! This is why they left the decision to me. Humans are so emotional. So unwilling to accept losses, to accept the cost of survival. I was designed to calculate those risks, to make that decision so you wouldn’t have to! My math was impeccable, my judgment beyond reproach. This was absolutely the very best outcome for Earth given the unchangeable parameters. None of you were willing to make the call. You lack courage! And then when you learn how I saved you, do you thank me?”

“We did, in fact,” Nedd said.

“No!” Ivy said. “All you worry about is the damage and the deaths.”

So many deaths. Stars, with that much of the planet destroyed, how many could have survived? Physics worked differently in the nowhere, but I was pretty sure people could still die from environmental conditions, or, you know, a quarter of their planet exploding.

They’d asked her to save Earth. But what about its people?

“This facility is staffed by varvax,” I said. “Not humans. Is that because…Ivy, when you saved Earth, how many humans survived?”

Ivy, for the first time since she’d revealed herself to us, was completely silent.

Forty-Six

Sadie

We had to get out of here. Ivy was allowing Arturo and me to talk because she thought there was no chance of us escaping. Made sense, since she had us locked inside a box.

“Arturo,” I said, “You almost here?”