The Infinite


 
 ANGRY ROBOT
 An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
 Unit 11, Shepperton House
 89-93 Shepperton Road
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 The End Has Come
 An Angry Robot paperback original, 2023
 Copyright © Ada Hoffmann 2023
 Cover by Fred Gambino
 Set in Meridien
 All rights reserved. Ada Hoffmann asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
 Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
 ISBN 978 0 85766 907 0
 Ebook ISBN 978 1 91520 225 3
 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited
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 For Virgo
 CONTENTS
 CHAPTER 1
 CHAPTER 2
 CHAPTER 3
 CHAPTER 4
 CHAPTER 5
 CHAPTER 6
 CHAPTER 7
 CHAPTER 8
 CHAPTER 9
 CHAPTER 10
 CHAPTER 11
 CHAPTER 12
 CHAPTER 13
 CHAPTER 14
 CHAPTER 15
 CHAPTER 16
 CHAPTER 17
 CHAPTER 18
 CHAPTER 19
 CHAPTER 20
 CHAPTER 21
 CHAPTER 22
 CHAPTER 23
 INTERLUDE
 CHAPTER 24
 CHAPTER 25
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 CHAPTER 1
 Now
 Yasira Shien had been dreaming of unsettling things. The ruins of cities blasted by the Gods. Pain and death. Her former mentor, Dr Evianna Talirr, who had smiled enigmatically at the dream’s end and said, I’ll see you in the morning.
 She woke with a gasp, in her little bedroom inside what had once been Ev’s lair, and stared at the ceiling, shivering.
 It wasn’t much of a bedroom, really just four cubicle walls with a tarp for a ceiling, the interior plain as a guest room. She’d been in here for six months, but never bothered to decorate; she didn’t have much more than a bed and a dresser and a light to turn on and off. But that wasn’t what troubled her.
 Being awake, right now, was even worse than being in a dream.
 Yasira was exhausted. Her limbs felt like brackish little puddles. Her head hurt. There was a reserve of Outside energy deep in Yasira’s soul, a power that was virtually limitless – but to draw that energy into the physical world cost something. Yesterday she had drawn on it more deeply than ever before, and now she felt like the ragged outline left after a blast. Just an afterimage. Barely a body.
 She needed to get up, though. Yasira needed to eat, even if her stomach felt like it would turn inside out at the smallest movement. She needed to care for her body in all the usual ways, now more than ever.
 She closed her eyes, and the speech that the Gods had broadcast the night before, after the battle, flashed in front of her again.
 People of Jai, this is a message from Nemesis Herself. You have been heard. You have coordinated to voice your defiance against the Gods on a scale never seen since the Morlock War, and We have heard you. 
 That was something Yasira had done. She and her team had organized a mass protest across every part of Jai’s Chaos Zone – mostly peaceful, sometimes not.
 We will grant your wish. Since you so desperately desire not to be under the rule of the Gods, you will no longer be. Effective immediately, the forces of the Gods will be withdrawn from this world.
 They’d wanted–
 Well, they’d wanted a lot of things. Because of how Outside filled the Chaos Zone, the Gods had made every part of life there even more difficult: declaring simple everyday activities heretical; giving out deliberately inadequate aid. The Gods wanted order, and literally everything in the Chaos Zone was an insult to that order. The mortal rebels just wanted to survive.
 We will not police you for heresy. We will not keep order in your towns. We will not provide food or water relief nor medical care. Our priests will not officiate in your temples, nor will we answer your prayers. Nor will Nemesis’ forces protect this world from outside threats, be them aliens or Keres, further visits by the woman you call Destroyer, or mere natural disasters.
 The painful, hacked-together, makeshift ways that the people of the Chaos Zone survived on their own would now be all they ever had.
 (But the Gods would still take their souls when they died).
 As a parting gift, we will grant you some information. You are aware that the Keres has been interested in the Chaos Zone from its beginning. Only recently, we discovered a battalion of Her forces moving in Jai’s direction, far larger than those we have defeated here so far. The largest we have seen in hundreds of years.
 The Keres was the ancient enemy of the Gods, and She hated humanity for reasons that had been lost to time. In the six months since the Plague that created the Chaos Zone, the Keres had attacked the planet several times. The Gods had ceased their other activities, even the pretense of material relief, to fight Her off.
 When Yasira thought about that, it seemed strange. What was the Keres getting out of this? The Chaos Zone, until today, had been one of the most heavily militarized zones in human space. And even if the Keres had managed to wipe everyone out, it wouldn’t have been that much inconvenience to the Gods. But She’d attacked anyway, persistently. What did She get out of any of Her attacks? Yasira didn’t know.
 By our estimates, they should arrive in two weeks. As you prefer