Chapter 139

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Nine

What did I expect, Connor thought to himself.

He thought that as he shot through the entry of the black cube that wasn’t so much shadow as a gateway to another world, another time and place.

He thought that as he tumbled through a void with no dimensions or volume.

He thought that an instant became infinity, which bent back on itself to a frozen point before he made the jump through the shadow wall.

In this infinite pinprick of matter curved onto time looped back over onto distance expressed as energy, the monsters fell with him and clung to nothing forever.

Their stench filled the vacuum, saturating nonexistent subatomic particles boiling in the icy heart of a neutron star.

It was all madness, all contradictions and impossibilities.

Connor accepted that. He wrapped himself in the protection of Toshiko, her ancient amulet, and the power of the architects who had created the prison.