After getting back from Florence Court (courtesy of her Uncle Steve) she was grounded. It was completely ridiculous for her, a twenty-three-year-old woman, to be grounded, but she had limited capacity to move around. And if she was going to act like a child, as Uncle Steve said, she would get treated like one. He’d tucked her into bed with Mendel and a Kindle, which wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t had those blueprints burning a hole in the back of her head. The Kindle had a selection of books she’d been wanting to read, even.

But. She had things to be doing.

She gritted her teeth and waited for night to fall, and when the rest of the house fell silent, she set the Kindle aside and got out of bed. The shift to Mistral didn’t hurt, but Mendel barked at the change. “s**t!” She hadn’t thought that the glamor would work on animals. She shifted back and held up her hands. “C’mere, Mendel,” she said, beckoning her dog over. Holding his furry face in her hands, she made the shift again. “It’s me. See?” And one more time, she shifted to Anabel, and then back to Mistral Page. “See?” He smiled a doggy smile at her and Mistral wrinkled her nose at the smell. Dog breath! Ugh.

That gave her an idea. Mistral smiled back at Mendel, and said, “Hey boy, want to go on a trip?” Mendel was there to be her service dog, right? Alert her to problems with her… her-ness… before they became bigger problems. She could certainly use someone like that when she wandered the corridors of the labyrinth, since Babylon was not an option. Quickly, she retrieved the parts of Asimov’s device, blueprints and machinery both clutched to her chest before she returned to Mendel and grabbed gentle hold of his collar. The dog cocked his head at her, and she said the oath to Mistral quietly, like a secret between them.

They reappeared in the page’s laboratory, where she had left from last time. Mendel took the sudden change of scenery stoically, pacing off to examine the dusty corners, as Mistral sorted through the drawers of the lonely desk for the sole visitor’s pass she’d found. She clipped the sliver of crystal to Mendel’s collar and said, “Come on, boy, we’re not going to find anything here.” Mendel followed her out of the lab, and if she hadn’t heard his claws on the floor she might have thought she was alone. What a good dog.

Without other humans to chaperone, Mistral found she could go much faster. Sometimes she would pass traps and cough, which was a pain because of the recent surgery, but she didn’t have to wait for anyone to take apart spike traps or anything. Still, she was limited by her own physical capability; eventually, she had to stop and sit down. She was on the fifth level of the labyrinth (four to go!) when Mendel growled at her. “Okay,” she said, “I’m sitting. I’m sitting! Okay?”

She turned to the nearest door, not particularly anticipating resting on the floor of the corridor; it opened, smoothly, to reveal… “What the hell,” she said, stepping inside the featureless cube. The door slid shut behind her, and no amount of waving her hand at it or declaring herself Mistral’s knight would make it move. “Look, I need help,” she said to the cold crystal walls. “I… there’s something I have to do. A project. I have to complete it, okay? And I need to know where I can--”

Something flashed in the walls, and the room jolted to life. Mistral staggered and fell, banging her shoulder roughly on the smooth wall as the stone walls past the crystalline edges continued downwards at an angle. She didn’t drop the device, nor the plans she’d been given. It was precious, a project from a thousand years ago that she felt bound to complete; she’d rather get thrown into a wall a thousand thousand times than let harm come to it. She sat on the floor of the… elevator?... as it moved. Mendel whined, and Mistral reached over to pet him roughly behind the ears just as the stone, abruptly, ended.

She felt like she could see forever. As far as she could see--there were no walls in sight--tables, shelving units, and crystalline containers lined a dark room. Lights flickered on, one by one by one. Some of them had gone out, no doubt simply too old for the filament or however they were lit. There was enough light that she could see the endless empty shelves, tables of equipment left to rust. “This is what became of my wonder,” she asked, a stinging in her eyes. She blinked a few times, quickly. All this lost knowledge, everything the scientists of Mistral had known, was gone, except for the device she still carried in her arms. The elevator passed into darkness again, and finally ground to a stop. Stone slid back and the crystal there moved.

At once, she was assailed by a memory.

“Asimov, my love, it’s time to go.” Standing over one of the desks in the knight’s laboratory, her mother removed one last cultivar from its pot, transplanting it from one of the ubiquitous crystal pots to a simpler fiber one. The Jacob’s ladder glowed a pale, luminescent violet. “Be a dear and help me carry this up, won’t you?”

She took a few steps forward, holding out her hands for the fiber pot. As she watched, her mother turned to one of the haptic keyboards. Once, it would have been a learning opportunity; though she was near grown, she was still learning the duties of the knight of Mistral. Today, at the end of the era, the last day of the laboratories, it was not. Yet, by habit, Asimov watched, plant clutched in her arms. Her mother hit six keys in succession. “I am Raziele, once knight of Mistral,” she said, to the spinning circle that appeared projected on a crystal screen. “It is time.”

From nowhere came a voice: “Has the line of Mistral ended, Raziele?”

“No,” said the woman who had been the knight. “But we must leave, to protect the Wonder. It will be preserved.”

“It will be preserved,” the toneless, everywhere-voice echoed.

The screens went dark. The lights, all except those from the transport, went out. Last of all, the haptic keyboards flickered off. “It’s fine, my love,” said Raziele. “We must go now. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”

Mistral opened her eyes in the present day to Mendel’s cold nose in the palm of her hand. On the floor laid her blueprints and her past self’s device, and on her face were chilly tears. The lights flickered, dimly, and then brightened to an antiseptic white. She picked up the device, the blueprints, and proceeded to the only chair in the room--a high, three-legged device. Mistral had to hop to get on to it, but once she was there, it proved quite comfortable. Mendel paced away, pausing on the planting beds. As Mistral looked at the empty tables, empty cabinets, a screen flickered to life.

It shone that spinning wheel at her, letters in the language of Babylon and Mistral glowing beneath it. Thanks to that memory, she knew what to do. “I am… I am Anabel, page of Mistral,” she said. “Uh… it’s time to wake up.”

Nothing happened. She tried again: “I am Anabel, page of Mistral. It’s time to wake up.”

Beneath her hands, where she leaned onto the counter, a haptic keyboard appeared. She screwed up her face in concentration, and hit those six keys she’d seen her mother press. And this time, she said the words, and the voice responded.

“Hello, Anabel, Page of Mistral.”

Mendel stopped what he was doing, looking for the source of the voice. His tail flagged, and Mistral just--she hoped this thing would provide the help she needed. “I need help,” she said to the voice. “I don’t know what you are, or where you are, or how you’re still alive, but… I have this device. I need to assemble it. The parts are here, I know they are, but… I can’t find them alone.” It hurt to admit weakness, but it helped that the voice had no physical body, no eyes to judge her with.

“I am the Code,” said the voice, and the image of the wheel on the screen fractured apart into many pieces. “I will assist.” The screen pulsed with blue light, refreshing itself.

Whatever the Code was. Maybe Babylon knew? “You will assist,” she asked, leaning forward eagerly. “How will you assist? What are you?”

“I am the Code,” it repeated. “I will assist. What do you need, Anabel, Page of Mistral?”

She chewed her lip. “I need help,” she said. “Other knights, who can help me find the pieces of this device. So I can improve our chances in the fight against Chaos by assembling it.” Her hands tightened on the device her past self had constructed, knuckles gone white on metal that had never seen Earth before she’d brought it there. “Without this, I don’t know if I’ll make it,” she said. Why was she explaining herself to this stupid thing? It was probably just a program, no more able to help her than to hinder her. “I need to be able to talk to my peers quickly, without taking time to write and stamp something.”

The Code paused for a long time, and Mistral was unsure if it was even still listening… whatever it was. But it finally said, “I will assist.”

Just like that, it was gone.