Chapter 32: The Siege of Lock Five
They attacked at what Pi calculated was the optimal moment: when the Eraser’s negation tools were cycling between frequencies, creating a 3.7-second window of reduced power.
3.7 seconds. That was all they had.
“Go!” Jake screamed, and chaos erupted.
Epoch moved first. She froze the space around Lock Five in a bubble of crystallized time, buying them precious seconds. The Eraser’s tools slowed to a crawl, negation waves rippling in slow motion like amber waves trapped in glass.
Ink surged forward, spreading across the Door’s surface, filling the cracks the Eraser had made with its own liquid substance. It screamed as the negation energy burned through it, but it held. A sentient stain, sacrificing itself to plug the holes in reality.
“Ink!” Null shouted.
“Just… fix… the stupid… lock!” Ink gasped, its form flickering.
Jake channeled. Not a spell, not a technique—raw, unfiltered, infinite mana poured directly into Lock Five’s weakened structure. The ancient symbols blazed gold, then white, then a color that didn’t have a name. The lock’s integrity began to climb: 34%… 41%… 53%…
The Eraser shattered Epoch’s time bubble like glass. It turned, faceless head regarding the assembled army of misfits with something that might have been contempt.
“Interesting,” it said. “You brought help.”
It raised one hand. A wave of negation—larger than anything Jake had seen before—rolled toward them like a tsunami of absolute nothing.
Gerald stepped forward. A middle-aged man in a cardigan, holding a cup of tea, standing in the path of annihilation.
“I think,” Gerald said mildly, “that we should give this a try.”
The negation wave hit him. And stopped.
Not reflected. Not absorbed. Just… stopped. Because Gerald was the concept of trying, and you cannot erase the idea of trying without erasing the possibility of all future action. Even the Eraser’s power had limits when it came to concepts that were woven into the fabric of sentient existence.
“Fascinating,” Gerald said, sipping his tea. “That tickled.”
The Eraser, for the first time, took a step back.
Jake didn’t waste the opening. Lock Five’s integrity hit 78%… 89%… 94%…
The Eraser lunged. Not at the lock—at Jake. A focused beam of pure negation, aimed directly at the source of infinite mana.
Null intercepted it.
She threw herself between Jake and the beam, her void-body absorbing the negation energy. Void meeting void. Nothing consuming nothing. She screamed—a sound that was also silence, a paradox of pain that made the broken dimension shudder.
“NULL!” Jake caught her as she collapsed, her form flickering in and out of visibility. “Null, stay with me—”
“Lock… Five…” she gasped. “Finish… it…”
Jake poured the last surge of mana into the lock with one hand while holding Null with the other. The symbols blazed. 97%… 99%… 100%.
Lock Five sealed with a sound like a cathedral bell rung in the heart of a star.
The Eraser screamed. It was the first sound of emotion Jake had heard from it—rage, frustration, something that might have been fear.
Then it vanished. Not retreating—relocating. The negation signature appeared at Lock Six.
“It’s going for Memory,” Lyra said.
Jake looked down at Null in his arms. Her void-form was dim, barely visible. Pi hovered over her, projecting medical equations that looked desperate.
“Null. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you,” she whispered. “Did we save it?”
“Lock Five is sealed. You saved it.”
“Good.” Her form flickered. “Jake? I think I understand now why humans make such a fuss about friendship. It’s… not meaningless at all.”
“It’s really not.”
“That’s annoying. I preferred when everything was meaningless. It was simpler.”
Jake laughed, even though his eyes were burning. “Rest. We’ll handle Lock Six.”
“Without me? You’ll be hopeless.”
“Completely hopeless. That’s why you need to get better fast.”
Null’s form stabilized—barely. She closed her void-eyes and went still.
Jake stood. Epoch, Ink (diminished but alive), Gerald (still holding his tea), Lyra, Pi, and the Remnant gathered around him.
Two locks remained. The Eraser was already working on the next one. And their strongest fighter was down.
“Lock Six is Memory,” Jake said. “If it falls, we forget why we’re fighting. We forget each other. We forget everything.”
“Then we don’t let it fall,” Lyra said.
Jake nodded. Thirty-one hours remained on Pi’s countdown.
He picked up Null gently and carried her toward the Door.