Page 123 of Last of Her Name

I shut my eyes and try to think, try to focus. I twist my multicuff—

Of course.

The cuff is powered by Prism energy, just a thread of it coiled in a tiny battery that powers the flashlight, but that might be enough to access the wider network around me.

Ithasto be enough.

I wrap my hand around the metal, stilling myself. I let the chaos surrounding me fade away. I feel the quiet, slender current of Prism energy pulsing through the tiny wires inside.

For some reason, it’s Natalya Ayedi I think of at that moment, telling her brother that now is the time to lose control. No more hesitation, no more fear, no more doubt.

Instead of just observing the network of light spread around me, I fling myself wholly into it and don’t look back.

The Prism network sweeps me away.

It’s like diving into a river and finding the current is much stronger than you’d anticipated. There is nothing I can do but let it take me. I lose all sense of my physical body, instead inhabiting a new state of being, a disembodied mind. My consciousness is ripped from my flesh and bones, leaving my parents and Pol and everyone else far behind. Do they notice that I’m gone? Am I standing still, or has my body collapsed onto the ground? Will I even be able to find myself again?

I am reduced to a cloud of particles borne on a golden tide. I am a scattering of leaves torn from my tree by a storm-driven wind. I am stretched wider and farther, like ink through water, following the lines and channels and streams of Prismic energy that branch across space. All around me is light: pure, cleansing light that tumbles like water, a cascade of luminescent energy.

I fight to stay in control of myself, because the current threatens to rip me apart entirely. Here at the heart of the Vault, the Prismic flow is infinitely stronger than it was in the palace. Stronger, and deeper, and stranger. This close to the Prismata, I canfeelits pulse, like there really is a heart somewhere in that massive structure. But oddly, I don’t feel panic. Even as my consciousness unravels and my senses explode with alien sensations, I am not afraid. There’s no room for fear in me, because I am filled to the brim with wonder.

This is where all Prismic energy in the galaxy begins. This is the living light that sustains all humanity. I can feel it all—the billions of tributaries branching away from the source, threading the stars, flowing through every inch of the Belt. But the energy doesn’t just flow out—it also returns, carrying with it a jumble of information, like birds returning to their nest with scavenged treasures.

The Prismata iscollectingthings—intangible bits and pieces of humanity. It gathers moments and feelings and memories, draws them into itself, the way it’s drawingmein. I catch fleeting glimpses as these treasures hurtle past, reflected in the bright, gleaming facets of the Prisms themselves: the pattern of lichen dappling the back of a great Emeraultine sky whale, seen through the Prism-powered binoculars held by an excited little girl; the curse of a pilot trying to start the engine of an old and cantankerous racing ship; the flash of a neon sign in the orbital cities drifting over Alexandrine, advertising a night with a beautiful escort to a lone man standing below; the delighted laugh of a young programmer when the companion bot she has built powers on for the first time; the sob of an eeda looking at an image of a lost love on his tabletka, his webbed fingers pressed to the screen.

The moments the Prismata collects all have a similar theme. Each one is taut with emotion: excitement, frustration, desire, joy, grief. It isn’t the sights or sounds of the humans the crystal wants—it’s their feelings. That’s why it sent the Prisms to meet Danica and Zorica Leonova all those centuries ago; this is why it still sends them to us. The Prisms are its errand-birds, collecting human emotions and sending them back to their nest, nourishing it with human love and desire and rage.

The Prismata speaks in emotions, Danica said.

Now I understand what she meant.

The closer I get to the Prismata itself, the more fragmented the images become, until I can’t tell where they come from or who they’re about; everything tangible is stripped away until only the emotion remains. The light around me shimmers with a hundred different colors, and every color has a name: fury and lust and sorrow and happiness, many I have no name for but have felt before, like the feeling of music taking hold of you until you can’t help but dance, the oddly sorrowful aftertaste that sometimes follows a moment of delight, the expansion of the soul when looking at a beautiful sunset, the pleasure of being the first to share good news. All these wash over and through me, pulling me farther apart, spreading me thin, dizzying me. I nearly lose myself in them entirely. I have to struggle to remember who I am and why I’m here.

The Prismata. I have to reach it. I have to find Clio.

There’s no need to search for it. All I have to do is wait and let it reel me in. From Prism to Prism I bounce, reflected through space, borne on the unseen golden threads that bind all the crystals together. Threads that, inevitably, lead back to the center of the network, veins returning to the heart. I’m just a single cell in its bloodstream.

I know the moment I arrive, because everything goes still.

The halt is abrupt, leaving me jarred and dizzy. Though I don’t have any physical sense, the part of my mind where the Firebird connects me to the Prismata—where a tiny fraction of its energy passes through my neural synapses, weaving me into its vast network—is wide open. I’m exploding with sensations that are almostlikeseeing and hearing and smelling.

It reminds of the nights when Clio and I would sneak out for a swim in the lake near the vineyard. Out in the hills, there were no artificial lights, only the dusty, glinting stars above. They reflected on the lake’s smooth surface, so when I floated on my back, I couldn’t tell water from sky. Weightless, I’d imagine I was floating in space, my every atom lighter than air. That’s what it’s like now; separated from my body, from all physical sense, from gravity—I am free.

Gradually, I become aware of the Prismata’s pulsing song. It’s not music I hear, but a feeling that’slikemusic. It’s not something I could ever re-create, even if I had all the musical talent and all the best instruments in the galaxy. Here, the stolen moments I glimpsed on my strange journey have all been distilled down to their emotional cores. They gather and mingle and coalesce, colors blending until they’re all the same bright, dazzling gold. That one feeling, composed of so many others, is stronger than all the rest, and soon it wraps around me, pushing everything else aside.

That feeling is love.

The Prismata knows me. It welcomes me. It invites me deeper, to commune with it fully. And even though I can’t feel my physical eyes, I know I am weeping. I don’t doubt that back in my flesh-and-blood body, there are tears running down my cheeks.

I reach out and feel the mind around me reach back, curious about me, enjoying my adoration. It knows I’m here and it wants to experience me as much as I am experiencing it. I hold nothing back, but let it see everything: my fear of failing to save it, my anger at Mara and my parents and Zhar, my love for Pol. All the emotions that bind me together and make me who I am, like a different sort of genetic code. The Prismata sifts through all of them, its gentle love suffusing my being.

Stars, it is purer than I could have imagined. No wonder the Leonovs felt compelled to protect it. This is what I always sensed in Clio—a clarity of spirit far beyond my own. A soul untouched by greed and hate, existing in perfect harmony.

Volkov’s fears of it turning against us are completely absurd. If he could justknowthe Prismata, if he could connect with it the way I am connecting with it now, he would see how perfectly affectionate it is, an entity incapable of violence. The attacks the Leonovs made using its power were their own dark nature; it had nothing to do with the Prismata. They exploited it in the name of protecting it.

But enchanting as this strange entity is, I have to remember why I am here.

Clio? Are you here?