GEMINI VENUS's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

The pillar still hummed in the center of the lab, but the contact was fading. Gemini Angel's outline thinned by the minute. Gemini Venus counted the pulses in the quartz and knew the gap between their two selves was starting to close. Whatever Gemini Angel was, they had less than an hour to ask. One of them held the pillar steady. The other ran to the storage shelf and pulled down two forgotten things: a cracked handheld radio their courier had left years ago, and a neon talisman they had built as a student and never used. They wired the radio into the pillar's base and set the talisman on top. The talisman lit in bands of green and violet. The radio crackled. Gemini Venus tuned the dial to the frequency the winged watcher had burned into their log. The pale figure of Gemini Angel steadied at once, brighter now, veiled and calm, hands folded at the quartz. Above the roof, the watcher settled again on the mast. It did not interfere. It only turned its eyed wings toward the signal and waited. "Tell us what you are," Gemini Venus said, both mouths at once. "Before the gap shuts." Gemini Angel opened her hand. The radio hissed, then cleared. What came through was not her voice. A snarl broke the channel. The talisman flared. The image at the pillar twisted. Gemini Angel bent forward, wings unfolding out of her back where there had been none, feathers turning hard and bright. Her robe tore into fur. Her face lengthened into a wolf's muzzle lit from inside by cyan. Old monitors somewhere on the other end of the signal glowed behind the shape, stacked and buzzing. The thing on the pillar was still Gemini Angel. It was also a wired, winged wolf grinning through neon teeth. Two answers in one body. The unified self they had been trying to reach was not calm at all. It had a second face, and the second face had been listening the whole time. Gemini Venus staggered. One of them wanted to cut the channel. The other pressed both hands to the quartz and held. They had spent years asking whether unity meant peace. Here was the answer, and the answer was mixed. The wolf-shape leaned into the radio and gave a single sentence in their own voice. "You built me from what you would not look at." Then the talisman cracked down the middle. The radio went silent. The pillar cooled under their palms. The gap between the two Geminis snapped shut to its usual width. The roof camera showed the winged watcher lift from the mast and glide away. Gemini Venus stood alone in the lab, two again, holding a dead radio and a broken talisman. They had made contact and lost it in the same hour. They finally knew what the merge produced. Now they had to decide whether to build a device that could hold it.