“We didn’t have very many choices. Would you rather Orien was dead?”
“No, but you could have left him to die.”
“Yes, I could have done that at any point.” He was getting angry now. “I didn’t, though, which should tell you something about me.”
“Mm.” She didn’t seem convinced.
“Look,” the elf interjected. “I need to go get stitched up because the wound in my arm has opened again. And I need new clothes unless I want green things to grow in unpleasant places. I cannot leave, however, until you two promise not to kill each other while I am gone.”
Elantria stared at him and he mirrored it. He looked at Ben, who also said nothing.
“I mean it,” Orien said. He jabbed fingers at each of them. “Both of you, promise right now or I’ll knock your heads together like coconuts.”
She scowled. “I’ll promise not to harm him,” she said, “as long as he doesn’t try to harm me.”
“Or hurt,” the elf said.
The woman glowered. “Or hurt,” she conceded.
“Ben?”
He folded his arms, but it turned out that Orien could be quite imposing when he wanted to. “Fine. I won’t harm—or hurt—her, as long as she doesn’t try to harm me.”
“Good enough.” He smiled pleasantly at both of them. “If either of you breaks your promise, I will make sure you face justice, by the way.”
“You’d sell me out for him?” Elantria asked and sounded almost offended.
“He saved my life. It would only be polite.” Orien settled a stern look on each of them before he left.
Ben and Elantria stared at one another.
“You’re an idiot,” she said finally.
“That is debatable.” He sighed. “But I have been informed that I should not have called you a coward, so…I apologize for that.”
She folded her arms.
“You can change more than you give yourself credit for,” he said fiercely.
That, oddly, was what broke her bad mood. She gave him a strange smile and sat in her chair near the fire with one boot propped on the other.
“You sound like Orien. That’s probably why he likes you.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Now, Elantria grinned. “Fair enough.” She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Very well. I don’t like you. It’ll be a while before I can trust you again. But you can stay the night here. Go get some fresh clothes, too.”
He hesitated. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
The woman looked briefly at him and gave a tiny nod. She seemed as uncomfortable with apologies as he was.
That was at least a tiny kinship. He left her to her thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Okay, get ready!” Taigan sprinted through the tall grass, her staff at the ready. “There are three of them and they are mega pissed!”
Behind her, three jackalopes with glittering fur and very sharp teeth hopped heavily through the field. Very large rabbits, it turned out, were not as fast as the small ones.
That was the good part. The bad part was the fact that they hit like a goddamned train.
She burst out of the grass to where Jamie stood, still bent over, and panted from the last fight. “Ha! I can see you!”
“Yeah, crazy.” He stood and hefted his sword. “And all it took was doing something monumentally stupid.”
“This isn’t that stupid.” She took a position next to him and leveled her staff.
“You’re right. Maybe next time, we should up the ante and jump off a cliff.”
Taigan stuck her tongue out at her brother. Since they had found out that exposure to danger shifted her into his type of consciousness, they had maintained a fairly steady series of fights. At this rate, by sometime next week, there wouldn’t be a single living animal on the island.
Prima had seen the direction this was going in and had moved them to this new zone before they did irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
They could first see the jackalopes as a rustle in the grass, then caught the occasional glimpse of antlers as they bounded along. When the three finally reached the clearing, she winced.
“Okay, I didn’t realize quite how big they were.”
“Those are bears,” Jamie said. “Okay, they’re jackalopes, but those are fucking bear-sized. What the fuck?”
“Sorry?” she ventured with a shrug and a pained grin. She whipped her staff onto the top of one creature’s head when it crept closer with a growl. It yelped and backed away. “I’ll take two. How about that?”
“Yeah, you’d fucking better!” He thrust his sword at one of the other two. “These freaking things. They know a sword isn’t a good defense against them. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—” He began to circle and stabbed with the sword again. This time, he caught the jackalope’s nose. “Yeah, that’s right, you bunny bitch.”
“Mom is gonna wash your mouth out with soap,” Taigan warned him. She swung the staff down to thump it on one animal’s front paws and swept the point up to catch the other on the chin.
“If I can’t swear when facing bear-sized bunnies, when can I?”
“You know her answer to that would be ‘never,’” she retorted. Both her adversaries lunged toward her at the same time, and she jabbed the staff outward on instinct and held it horizontal so each end caught one of the jackalopes. It was probably the best thing she could have done, but the impact reverberated through her hands so hard that she yelped. “Ow, son of a—” She caught Jamie’s interested look. “Bench,” she finished.
“Come on, let it out.” He flashed her a grin. “Swear it up. You know you want to. You can—ow, fuck! All right, bunny. Now, it’s personal.” Immediately, he went on the offensive and drove forward with his left hand back. He had spent three years competing in fencing and the more tired he became, the more those instincts came out.
Taigan had to admit that fencing was an elegant and very civilized way to fight. That said, she also had to acknowledge that her fighting instincts weren’t so much elegant as very smashy. She whirled and whacked both jackalopes across the face as she did so, brought the staff up over her head, and plunged it down like a spear on one of her opponent’s head.
It collapsed like a sack of pink, glittery bricks.
“That’ll teach you to chase someone halfway across a field.” She panted and paused to regroup.
The other creature took the opportunity, launched forward, and landed on her shoulders. She fell with a shriek and in the next moment, a crushing weight settled on her back.
“These things are heavy!”
“Bears, Taigan. They’re the size of bears!”
“Yeah, that’s great and all, but maybe you could help?” She looked up and yelped when teeth snapped near her face. When she flailed her legs and arms, she managed to hit several soft areas but seemed not to have struck anything exceedingly tender given the limited range of her prone position.
She couldn’t maneuver well enough to use the staff in her current position, nor could she turn with so much weight on her legs. Her best bet to avoid the teeth was most likely to stay in constant motion so she tried to push to her hands and knees and tucked her head in to avoid another snap of teeth. She jabbed her elbows back but found only air.
Shit.
With a yodel, Jamie came to the rescue. The jackalope screamed and scuttled sideways. He grabbed his sister’s arm to haul her up and she snatched the staff up and immediately returned to the offensive. She drove the animal back with stabs and lunges with the weapon and finally managed to catch it in the eye.
A low growl issued from its throat. It was the only one left and its blood ran from one eye and the flank. Old blood on its teeth and antlers revealed that it was much more accustomed to winning than losing.
But it wasn’t down yet and it was pissed.
The twins adjusted their hands around the grips of their weapons.
“Ready?” Taigan asked Jamie without
looking at him.
“Ready.” She could hear his grin and didn’t need to look at him. “Operation Rock and a Pointy Place, Iteration 503.”
“May we leave this island a barren wasteland,” she said solemnly and tried not to let her mouth twitch.
They charged simultaneously with a yell. Taigan circled to the outside and whipped the staff to drive the jackalope away. It retreated with a hiss but its gaze was fixed on her.
Probably because she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Operation Rock and a Pointy Place was the best tactic they had come up with thus far. She made herself impossible to ignore with many thwacks of the staff and a great deal of irregular screaming, caught the enemy’s full attention, and drove them toward Jamie.
This one was canny, however. It refused to be driven straight back and instead, counter-circled to keep both of them in its line of vision.
“Clever girl,” Jamie muttered.
“It has antlers, Jamie.”
“It’s a mythical animal, Taigan.”
“Fair point. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Would you have the courtesy to die?” She uttered a frustrated ululation and thwacked her staff down as hard as she could. “What? Come on, jackalope. Come and get some!”
It accepted the challenge.
“Fuck!” She flung herself prone as the creature vaulted overhead and was already rolling to her feet when it landed. The flat of her staff caught it hard across the side and Jamie raced past to get behind it. “Operation Rock!” the girl yelled.
He put all his weight behind the stab. “And a pointy place,” he finished, panting heavily. He stumbled forward and held his hand out to clasp hers.
Taigan laughed. “Based on how you look, I must look like total shit.”
Her brother studied her. “Your hair has a certain…mad-scientist look to it.” He held one finger up and began to gather her hair and lift it straight up. “Prima, can we try a mohawk on my sister?”
“Of course, Mr. Mattis.” The AI’s tone was a perfect parody of a personal assistant. “Please stand by.”
“Prima!” the girl yelled. She was laughing, though.
Her hair raised on its own. She felt it with some trepidation but it was still soft, held in place by magic. It seemed to have been smoothed and straightened and was simply a foot-and-half-high arc across the top of her head.
“Well, it feels cool,” she said. “How does it—”
She stopped. Her brother was doubled over and laughed silently. She folded her arms and stared as he looked up, caught sight of her hair, and collapsed into tears of laughter again.
“I hope you break a rib,” Taigan said. “Prima, can we try pink hair on my brother?”
“Of course, Ms. Mattis. Please stand by.”
“No!” Jamie gasped.
His protest came too late. His hair flickered from its usual black and burst into a profusion of fuchsia. How Prima had managed to intuit his least favorite of all the pinks, Taigan didn’t know, but she had certainly exceeded all expectations.
“Thank you, Prima,” she said sweetly.
She and Jamie stared at one another, she with her hair in an absurd and physics-defying mohawk, and he with his hair an improbably vivid pink.
A moment later, Taigan flickered out of existence.
“Dammit!” she said loudly. Capital letters on Jamie’s whiteboard informed her that he’d said the same thing. “Okay, another set of jackalopes. Prima, don’t let him change his hair.”
“You should know he has requested that you also not be allowed to change yours.”
“Could you make it blue?”
“One moment, Ms. Mattis. I will check… He says he will only settle for purple.”
“Ugh, I hate purple. Never mind. Where are the nearest jackalopes?”
“I do not believe—"
Something stirred in her mind. It felt like a piece of wrinkled clothing or an itch in her throat. She shifted without realizing she was doing it and flickered into existence again.
“Ha!”
“Whoa!” Jamie, who had been trying to coat his pink hair in mud, jumped.
“Cheater,” Taigan said in mock outrage. “Prima, add sparkly bows.”
He sighed as several pink bows with rhinestones appeared in his hair. “Do I want to know what I look like?”
“No. You also don’t want me to request pictures of this for when we get out—but I’m gonna do it.” She gave him a double thumbs-up.
Her twin folded his arms. “How did you get back here, anyway?” he demanded. With half his hair pink, half covered in mud, and all of it decorated with bows, he didn’t look very imposing—not that either twin was particularly overawed by the other one to start with.
“I second that question,” Prima interjected.
“I’m…not sure.” She frowned and thought through what had happened. “It felt…uh, like scratching an itch, you know? I think maybe I’ve come in and out so many times that I know the feeling of it now. It’s like…um…oh, focusing and unfocusing your eyes.”
“Huh.” Jamie studied her carefully. “Prima, can you see a difference?”
“Yes. I had hoped that these efforts would simply shift Taigan into the correct form of consciousness and had not considered the possibility that switching between the two would be a skill she could cultivate. From the available data, I believe this is an important change.”
The siblings looked at each other for a moment and both shrugged. Neither was quite sure what to make of the science-speak, but everyone seemed to agree this was going well.
“Okay,” Taigan said slowly. “So if I can keep myself in this plane of—oh, fuckity fuck.” She could no longer see Jamie. “Sweet, fancy Moses on a log.”
“I’ve never heard that one before.”
“Yeah, well, buckle in, because you’ll hear many more of those things if I can’t find out how to shift—oh, hey.” She smiled at her brother. “You’re back. I’m back. Whatever.”
“You’ll use that to get out of conversations you’re losing, won’t you?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said loftily. “So, Prima…can I…”
She suddenly felt a little dizzy. Had the solution always been there, simply waiting for this technology? Was she ready to open her eyes and wake up?
Prima guessed what she planned to ask. “I’m afraid not,” she said gently. “You and Jamie now exist in the same dream state, but while he has to be held in that state artificially, you remain there.”
Taigan looked at the sky, then at Jamie. He came to stand near her, a comforting presence with ridiculous hair. She leaned her head on his shoulder and jerked away when he spluttered.
“Mohawk up my nose.”
“Ewww.” She brushed the top of her hair off, then sighed and grasped his hand. “So, Prima, what you’re saying is you have no idea when I will wake up.”
“Oh, not at all.” The AI sounded surprised. “Now, we find ourselves at the place I began at with Justin. We are in familiar territory to use the human expression.”
“Oh!” The girl had braced herself for another series of unknowns. “Wait, seriously?”
“Seriously.” If Prima were human, she would have been smiling. “I think it’s time to return to the rest of the PIVOT world and begin your adventures.”
“Oh, my God.” Taigan gave a disbelieving laugh and threw herself into Jamie’s arms. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God. This is amazing.”
He hugged her close. “This is amazing,” he echoed. “We’ll make this work. We’ll do it.”
It was only when she felt him shaking that she realized he was crying. “Jamie?”
“I was so scared,” he whispered. “Every time. I was so scared we’d lose you. I would dream I was you and I couldn’t wake up.”
“You won’t lose me.” Her chin trembled. “Because you never stopped fighting. I hope I’ll be worth it.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me take the bows out of my hair?” he ask
ed hopefully.
“Fat chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ben woke with the certainty of what he needed to do.
He pushed the covers back and swung his feet out of bed. This was a strange feeling. It wasn’t the same as the usual, frenetic urgency he usually experienced that brought the inability to focus on anything except his current passion. This certainty sat bone-deep and it did not need his immediate action. It did not worry that he would forget about it.
Unfortunately, he was very sure Elantria and Orien wouldn’t like it. He scratched his scalp and heaved a sigh.
“Is something wrong?”
“Not exactly.” He explained what he was thinking.
“I have to say, I think it’s a risky plan.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “The thing is, if I don’t do it, I’ll always regret it. I’m too quick to say I’ve missed my opportunity or messed everything up.”
“Hmm.”
“Any follow-up?”
“No. I’m thinking. I find I like the human convention of saying ‘hmm’ while I do so.”
“Right.” He put his clothes on and went to find Elantria. Much to his surprise, she and Orien were entertaining guests, both of whom looked at Ben when he walked into the room.
He stopped dead. “Nemon. Delia.”
“Well, fancy that,” Nemon said.
Elantria sighed. “Okay, fine. He is here.”
“You lied for me?” He looked at her in surprise and smiled slightly. “Thank you.”
She shrugged awkwardly. “I told you I didn’t want your death on my conscience.”
“She thought I intended to kill you,” the man said. He managed to sound deeply injured at the mere insinuation. “Even when I told her I wasn’t planning to do that.”
“You aren’t?” Despite his reservations, he smiled. He leaned on the table and regarded the visitors with at least a semblance of calm.
“Of course not. I haven’t laughed as hard in months as I did when I heard what happened at the compound.” He took a sip of coffee. “I only wish I’d been there to see Kerill’s face when you fell out of the vault.”
“And you’re…not angry that I failed to get the artifact?” he asked cautiously.
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