The pulse hit Vasek and did not bend.
"Im... Impossible!"
The Architect's body came apart.
Not violently. Carefully. Each wrong-jointed limb separated at its own point. His torso folded in on itself. His head came free and spun backward through the air. The grey ichor that was his blood splattered in directions that did not obey gravity, and Vasek's flat black eyes watched from his spinning head with something that might have been respect.
Then the fold began to collapse.
Without the Architect's constant attention, the pocket dimension could not maintain itself. Reality started reasserting. The impossible sky cracked. The stone beneath Owen began to resolve back into what it should have been. The other prisoners who had been scattered through the fold started appearing in visible locations again, their positions suddenly fixed and definable instead of subject to moment-by-moment refolding.
Owen pushed himself up.
