239 General Power 9

She'd been going about this wrong. You couldn't kill a Way. It was a Way. And you couldn't kill a Neverwere. You couldn't put something out of existence that didn't exist in the first place.

Five seconds left until the end of the world.

She felt the creature's anguish reach its fever pitch in response to its contact with her mind.

Zero seconds left until the end of the world.

But she wasn't afraid anymore, because she knew the answer. She didn't need any more time to stop the end of the world.

She couldn't kill this creature. But she could heal it.

She felt the Way's core begin to collapse in on itself — she felt the end of the world begin —

She saw it all in her mind, the hole tearing in the middle of reality, all of Earth collapsing into the hole left in the middle of Site-17. That vision of her drifting off into space…

And she said, "No."

She reached into the forming hole in the world, into the heart of the suffering, broken Way, and she pulled it inside out. She pulled the Neverwere right out of it, and into…

Into essence. Into existence.

Inside Site-17, the earth and sky shook for nearly a full minute.

And then all three of them, Sigurrós, the Neverwere, and the broken Way, disappeared into thin air, leaving only dust and quiet behind.

[...]

In a maternity ward not so far away from Site-17, in the world of the mundane, a newborn baby took in its first breath of air. The quickening. The moment when, metaphysically speaking, the soul enters the body.

The baby had matted black hair and bright brown eyes. It had red baby gums and pliable baby fingers and soft baby skin. It had cartilage and tendons and bones and blood and a mind.

It was real. It existed. It was happy.

Epilogue

"I have to admit," Alison Chao said, surveying the crowd below, "I didn't expect that outcome."

Next to her, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir kicked her feet. "I couldn't kill it. I had to make it real."

"You realize that's never been done before, right?" Alison asked. "The Neverwere can't be truly real. That's their defining factor. It just… breaks the laws of the universe to say otherwise."

"Maybe the problem is with the laws of the universe, then," Sigurrós said.

***
Sisters