Page 62 of Godslayer
“But you can?”
“I can. I had no problem adapting to any of the dimensions. None at all. But you can only live in Delta’s world, your world, and here.”
I let out a breath. “OK. Well, it’s not ideal, but?—”
“There’s more.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Ya see—” He swallows hard. “Ya see, I run off spark, as ya know. But these crystals here? And the spark I steal from others, it can’t powerme, Clara.”
“What do you mean? You just said that’s how you saved me.”
“Yeah, how I savedyou. But you—yourspark—that’s what runs me.”
“What are you saying? It’s like… a loop? I power you, I get weak, you steal spark to make me strong, and then you need to take it from me in order to work?”
Now he sighs. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Negative feedback loop.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. Because negative feedback loops must have some kind of self-regulation. And by that, I mean, it must have a way to turn off.”
“Why is that bad? Isn’t that what we need?”
“It is. But the consequences, Clara. It ends with us. We die.”
“We die?”
He nods. “Typically, a negative feedback loop self-regulates in a way where the effect reduces its own cause over time. In this case, though, the cycle is escalating instead of stabilizing. Which means it’s a runaway negative loop. Which means it can only end one of two ways. One. Eventually the damage I do to you by stealing your spark to power my augments, can’t be fixed.”
“And I die.”
“Or two. The level of spark that I need to steal to keep you alive becomes larger and larger over time.”
“So you have to kill more people.”
He nods.
“Well,” I sigh, making a bit of hair fly up around my face. “This sucks.”
“It does. So… the solution is that?—”
“We stay here. Where I can be replenished by the crystals.”
“Yeah. But?—”
“But that only applies to me. You can leave, but I have to stay.”
Tyse huffs. “Well, yeah. Technically. I’m not gonna do that, though. I’m not leaving you here. That’s why I’m thinking?—”
“We’re trapped.”
“I wasn’t gonna put it that way.”
“It’s true though.”
“There’s one more option.”
