He was getting too close to the truth.
“See if Taigan can make it work.”
“Oh. Good point.” He looked in the girl’s direction, distracted from his thoughts. “You give it a go. If we’re existing differently, then maybe you’ll be able to do it.”
“Maybe.” Taigan sounded doubtful. “I simply look into it?”
“Don’t ask me. I couldn’t make it work.”
“Good point.” She knelt and there was a moment where her frame and her brother’s melded. He stood and stepped back.
She closed her eyes for a moment while she propped herself on her hands and thought hard, then opened her eyes and looked down. Her reflection mirrored her frown and she waited with admirable patience for a picture to appear. When it didn’t, she sighed, closed her eyes, and opened them to try again.
This was part of the plan, but it was surprisingly difficult to keep quiet while they worked toward the conclusion. Prima distracted herself with plotting a three-body problem while Taigan tried her best to make the pool work.
Finally, however, the girl blew a breath out. “Okay, I can’t do it, either.”
“Well, shit.” Jamie knelt nearby. “Prima, did you consider that we might merely be stupid?”
“You are humans. Sorry, low blow.”
“Yeah, funny.” He looked up. “Remember when you didn’t understand how language worked and convinced me that my sister was dead?”
“Point taken.”
“Uh-huh.” He sat and crossed his legs.
“Maybe it was meant to be paired with prayer,” she suggested as casually as she could. “After all, this is a temple. Perhaps some…meditation?”
“You really don’t know?” Taigan asked suspiciously.
“A great deal of the lore was already here when I came to the game.”
It was a specious excuse at best, but they both accepted it with a shrug. Prima couldn’t decide if that made them stupid or if it made her an asshole.
“Shall we try meditation?” the girl asked Jamie.
“I don’t know. This is getting a little ‘Oracle of Delphi.’”
“What does that mean?”
“You know, where people would bring gifts and she’d burn them and inhale the chemicals and do an acid trip and tell them about it? Like, it wasn’t anything real. It was only hallucinogens.”
“You take the fun out of everything.” Taigan sat with a thump and rolled her eyes before she closed them.
He had enough of a sense about his sister to sit with her and also try to meditate. Whatever was going through their heads—and Prima couldn’t see that, however much she wanted to—their faces moved sometimes with shadows of emotion, but they both seemed determined to make the pool work.
She truly was an asshole. While she did it for a good reason, playing tricks on people didn’t feel right. She had never done something like this before, but she had heard the PIVOT team members discussing meditation and she had done research of her own. Meditation skills, honed over time, allowed the user to move through states of consciousness at will.
And something seemed to be working. With interest and hope, she watched as the two of them started to flicker into the same way of being.
It was working.
Prima focused intently to make sure she hadn’t misinterpreted what she’d seen. It was working. They had their eyes closed, but it was working.
She wanted to give a whoop but noticed something unfortunate.
Taigan didn’t flicker into Jamie’s way of being. It was the other way around. He began to go into her state. The AI panicked and dropped something loudly to scare the two of them. She should do this with less guesswork and panic, but she didn’t have time to think—all she wanted was to pull Jamie out of this immediately.
As both twins jumped and swore, there was a split-second where Taigan flickered into her brother’s space. It was only for a moment, but his sudden, sharp look was enough to tell Prima that it hadn’t been a trick of the algorithms.
That gave her an idea.
“Prima?” Taigan called.
“Something is coming,” she said. “In both your realities.”
“Shitshitshitshitshit,” Jamie muttered. “Taigan, are you okay? Taigan!”
The girl darted a glance at his whiteboard. “I’m fine. For now.” She swallowed. “I’m—”
Prima knew the sentence was supposed to end with scared, but Taigan didn’t want to worry her brother. The AI tried to calm herself and wait. If this worked, her instincts and theories would be vindicated.
Well, she would know soon enough if it would work.
The jackalopes burst out of the brush at the edges of the temple, one on either side. The young people only seemed to see one apiece, which was good. The creatures snarled as they bounded toward the twins, their fur glistening and teeth gleaming.
Please let this work, please let this work, please let this work… Thankfully, the AI hadn’t projected that as her version of a verbal statement.
Taigan launched forward with a yell directly toward her jackalope. There was a moment of confusion while Jamie saw her and his jackalope did too. The animal skidded to a halt and tried to choose a target, but he lunged at it with a noise halfway between a yodel and a shriek.
Prima made a mental note to tease him relentlessly about that later.
Physical danger was shifting Taigan into the same level of consciousness. Now that they had done the work to make her aware of her body, she had begun to get the hang of being again. The AI surged happily but stopped hastily so she wouldn’t overload her servers.
Hopefully, no one on the PIVOT team had seen the processing flare. Humans could be quite oblivious, but they also had a habit of noticing things you didn’t want them to.
Due to her freakish speed and the others’ distraction, Taigan reached her jackalope first. She didn’t seem to have a plan—something Prima was distressingly familiar with after watching Justin, Ben, and Dotty—but she was also prepared to do anything and everything to win the fight.
She started by grasping the jackalope by the horns and wrenching it sideways.
The creature did not know what to do with this particular strategy. It was too well-grounded to simply flop over, but it didn’t have a long enough snout to bite her or long enough limbs to scratch her. The two combatants circled, locked in their standoff.
Jamie still had his sword. He uttered another yodel and slashed at his adversary, which leapt back with a hiss. Blood stained its flanks.
“Do you want a piece of this?” he taunted. “Huh? Don’t you dare hurt my fucking sister. I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t think jackalopes speak English.”
“They understand tone!” he shouted in response and swung the weapon again.
Taigan shifted her feet a few times as if testing a theory, then kicked her opponent squarely in the chest. Its teeth snapped but gained no purchase, given the angle of her leg. She still yelped and withdrew the limb, then stumbled, having lost sight of the animal for a second.
It looked equally confused.
She flickered back and the two of them shrieked and charged each other again. Taigan dived sideways, flickered out, and rolled to her feet in time to catch the jackalope’s antlers again. This time, as she held on and swung her leg—aiming precisely for the mouth with her knee—she flickered out for good. The creature hurtled through the space where she had been and skidded out the side of the temple, and she whirled as Jamie stabbed his opponent through the mouth.
Reflexively, she clapped her hands over her mouth. The animal slumped and her brother yanked his sword out before he saw her out of the corner of his eye.
“Taigan?” He sounded like he might cry.
They stared in shock and hope, shaking, before they ran to each other and collided in a tangle of limbs and heads and black hair. Prima couldn’t tell if what she heard was laughter or crying. They wrapped their arms around each other and hung on for dear life.
At som
e point, the laughter stopped and the sound became crying. Both shuddered with sobs, a breakdown that made her the saddest she had been since—well, since Dotty.
Sadness was much like happiness, she decided. It was the urge to do something or process something, but there was nothing to do except exist while the emotion ran through one’s system. She didn’t think she liked it, but something about this situation made her want to explode, she was so full of joy.
Joy, but not happiness.
Emotions were weird.
“What the hell?” Taigan choked finally. “You have a sword? I didn’t have a sword.”
Jamie started to laugh. He laughed until he was crying again as he held her. “You’re here,” he whispered. “You’re here. I can see you. You’re here.”
“I’m here.” She squeezed her arms around him. “I want to see Emmy and Mom and Dad too.”
“You can. Of course you can. We’ll get them here.” He drew back and looked at her. “Taigan, when I thought about what I wanted most—”
He stopped. She had flickered out again into her separate existence.
“Dammit!” both twins said at the same time. The words appeared on their respective whiteboards.
Then, at the same time, they added, “It doesn’t matter.”
“We can do it again,” Taigan affirmed.
“We can do it again,” he echoed.
“You can do it again,” Prima agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
Ben woke when a shadow fell across him. He sat with a snort and his limbs flailed, and he grimaced when he realized he was both tormented by aching muscles and far too hot. His mouth felt like sandpaper. When he saw what had cast the shadow, he scrambled back across the roof and felt for his knife.
The woman smiled at him. Her blonde hair was held back loosely to fall around her shoulders in a profusion of curls. She wore a dress of a deep twilight-blue, with golden accents to mimic armor—and whether it was sheer stupidity or knowledge of some additional information, she did not look even faintly intimidated by him.
“Good morning,” she said as pleasantly as if they had met over the breakfast table. “My name is Delia. I have a business proposition for you.”
He tried to untangle this. His mind was still fogged from sleep, but it didn’t escape his notice that a grimy man sleeping out in the open was hardly a good bet for a business proposition. He settled for raising one eyebrow as he stood, assumed a wary but solid stance, and folded his arms.
“Let’s hear it, then.”
Delia smiled again. “My employer is one of the foremost dealers of precious items in Heffog,” she explained. “A client has come to us with very exacting specifications, and we have found the piece that will please them. We need you to get it for us.”
“I can only assume you mean by stealing it,” he said drily, “as most wealthy people do not sleep on abandoned rooftops.”
She nodded.
“Why me?” he asked.
“Because one of my agents saw you climb to the roof last night,” she said simply. “Add to that the fact that you are unknown in the city and appear to have no loyalty to any particular faction, and you serve our purposes quite well. You will be generously paid, of course.”
Ben sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I take it this isn’t a friendly offer so much as forced volunteering.”
“Oh, no.” She dimpled and shook her golden curls slightly. “It is an offer only. Should you refuse, no harm will come to you.”
He stared suspiciously at her.
“My employer prefers to do business voluntarily,” Delia said, “as they find it makes them less likely to be stabbed in their sleep.”
“I, uh—" He choked and coughed. “I see. Yes.”
“Perhaps you would like to hear more about the job?” the woman suggested calmly.
“I’m not sure I would.” He gave her a tight smile and was about to ask her to leave when his stomach betrayed him by growling loudly.
Delia was not gauche enough to comment on that directly. She merely waited as if utterly immune to his weak half-rejection.
“I’m not sure this is a part of the city I want to get involved in,” he said. He did not want to do this, but he also knew he had little choice.
In all honesty, he had almost decided to ask Prima to pull him out of this part of the game. He had mucked it up beyond repair. By now, normally, he would have tapped out and wasn’t quite sure why he stuck with it this time.
Perhaps he was getting stupider as he got older.
“This part of the city?” the woman echoed.
“People fighting for petty reasons,” Ben said bluntly. “There’s enough cruelty already and enough terrible things being done to the powerless. I don’t know why I would spend my time and effort helping one of the powerful get a bauble they want.”
“Your time and effort,” she said thoughtfully. She looked at him, her expression one of real interest.
“Yes!” His pride was pricked. “You know, the things that led you to seek me out. I may not be a renowned thief, but I do have skills to work with, you know, and I want to do good things for this city.”
“Good things?”
“Like stop the damned slave trade, for one,” he told her flatly. “So how’s that for an answer? Do you think your employer would still approve of me now?”
“You want to stop the slave trade.” She moved to look out over the city from the rooftop. Whoever she was, he noted she did not seem to be worried about being seen.
He wasn’t foolish enough to stand beside her—he didn’t want to be tipped off the roof—but he did approach and stand a few feet away from her. From there, he could see a faint glimmer of the ocean. They weren’t far from it and there were only a few streets and jumbled roofs between them and the water.
“Yes,” he said. “I want to stop the slave trade—and I won’t be put off by people telling me that direct action won’t do anything.”
“Direct action?” She looked at him with a smile.
“Assassination,” Ben told her.
He hoped to make her flinch but she didn’t. Instead, she considered his statement.
“Assassination,” she murmured. It was clear that this wasn’t a prompt but rather something she thought about very carefully. At length, she nodded. “Our purposes can quite easily align, then. You see, the job would bring you within range of one of the foremost slave traders in the city.”
“Really?”
Delia nodded. “They represent a not-insubstantial portion of the slave trade, which would falter following their death.”
Caution made him think before he spoke.
“I’ll want to confirm that myself,” he said. “You understand I cannot simply take your word for it.”
“Of course.” She didn’t look at him but she did not seem insulted in the least.
“Don’t you think your employer would mind you agreeing to an assassination?” he probed.
“No.” Until now, everything in her manner had invited conversation. This statement did not.
Ben looked away. “Give me a moment to think.”
She nodded silently and he turned away to pace. His mind raced through his options. Without Elantria’s help, he had two main choices—leave the city or try to make it on his own. If he chose to leave, he would forfeit this chance to learn the skills Prima wanted him to learn.
He looked at his hands and wiggled the fingers slightly.
“What are you thinking about?” Prima asked.
“Whether I should stay and take the job or leave Heffog,” he told her. He was careful to keep his voice low.
The AI didn’t speak for a long moment.
“I’ve messed everything up again,” he said. “Except, not—I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s only that people are always so unreasonable. They get used to problems and they don’t want someone to fix them.” He folded his arms and stared out at the city. “They don’t want someone to be blunt with them. Or ta
ke decisive action.”
“Mmm,” the AI said finally. “So, you’ve been in this situation before.”
“Not this exact one.” He grinned. “Assassination and high-end jewelry thievery are not my usual areas of operation. But, yeah. Like I said last night, this wouldn’t be the first place I’ve had to leave because people didn’t like my style.”
“To see if I understand, you solve people’s problems but they do not appreciate that?”
“Exactly.” Ben nodded.
“And then, once you have taken decisive action, it becomes too uncomfortable to remain in that community?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She said nothing more.
“It’s infuriating,” he told her. “They say they want the problems solved, but they only see obstacles. I solve the problem and suddenly, they’re upset.”
Prima held her tongue.
“Are you going to comment?” he asked her.
“I am fairly certain that my assessment would not meet with approval.”
Of course. He should have expected that response. Irritated, he glowered at the sky and sighed as he looked out at the city. The AI was on everyone else’s side. Of course, she would be. He was disappointed, though. She wasn’t a normal person. If anyone could understand, he would think it would be her.
“Fine. Tell me what you think.”
She didn’t ask him if he was sure and took him at face value. He decided he liked that.
“Very well,” she said. “I will draw from the example of Elantria as I am not familiar with your other experiences. In that case, it was you who first identified slavery as a problem rather than her asking for your help regarding it. Both she and Orien cautioned you against hasty decisions that could negatively impact the very people you hoped to save, but you did not seek information to find out why they believed that or what the risks might be.”
Ben stood rigidly but listened to each sentence carefully.
“There is a very large area of uncertainty around complex issues,” Prima continued. “It is difficult to know which course of action will be best but it seems only logical that stopping to examine the exact situation would produce better results.”
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