Before we take a step in the direction of the café, though, Mars leans down and plucks a rock out of a crack in the sidewalk. He inspects it. “Also just in case,” he says. He places it on the back of his tongue, dry swallows it, and grimaces. This time, I don’t give him any crap for it.
Mars and I weave through the crowd and enter the little restaurant. A short man with close cropped salt and pepper hair bustles over and asks us something in yet another language I don’t understand. I can only tell it’s a question because of the upward lilt in his voice at the end, which is I guess a universal question tone.
Mars holds up a finger, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out some sort of device. It looks like a little white plastic hook, and he inserts it all the way into his ear canal until it disappears from sight. When Mars speaks, it seems to be in the same language the man spoke. They communicate rapidly back and forth.
The man smiles obsequiously and gestures grandly at a small table with a smudged checkered tablecloth.
Still holding my hand, Mars leads me to the table. We probably look like we’re on a date. Almost the moment I have that thought, Mars lets go of my hand, but he keeps his fingers on my shoulder as he helps me get seated. He doesn’t break contact while he sits down, and as soon as he’s in his chair, he slides his foot overtop mine under the table, like if he doesn’t hold me down somehow, I’ll float away like a balloon. He hands me a menu. “See if you can make any sense out of this. Try to order something high protein.”
I stare at a bunch of characters in an alphabet I’ve never seen before. “Your ear thing can’t translate writing?”
Mars rolls his eyes like my question is ludicrous, but seriously, if slipping a little thing in his ear can make him speak and understand a different language, why wouldn’t it translate the written word?
The short proprietor returns to our table. He has two brown bottles and an opener. He’s barely flipped off the metal cap before I’ve grabbed my bottle and drained half of it.
Mars picks up his bottle and sips it more slowly.
The man says something unintelligible to me, but I assume he’s asking me for my order.
I jab my finger at a random entry on the menu. “That one?”
Smiling, the man nods and turns his attention to Marston. “Make it two,” he says, holding his fingers up in a V. Then he points at my bottle. “And another beer for the lady.”
The man seems to understand Mars’s English, probably in combination with his gestures, and he bustles off.
I feel like my whole body has been tightly packed in a hard plastic shell and I grow and smooth out as I hydrate. “That might be the most satisfying drink I’ve ever had in my life,” I say.
Mars regards me with heavily lidded eyes, but he doesn’t reply. He just drums his fingers against the tabletop and flicks his gaze around the small establishment. We’re the only customers, so there’s not much to keep track of, but Mars’s eyes roam incessantly.
When the man drops off my second beverage, I take a small sip. It tastes like old bread, but strangely, it’s not unpleasant at all. “Where are we now?” I ask after the proprietor walks away, presumably to make our food.
“I’m not sure,” Mars says, a serious expression on his face, “but I think we’re still in Old India. Probably not that far from where we were before. I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. Just hold us steady. We obviously drifted and found a bit of civilization.”
I let my eyes close slowly and I take a steady, measured breath before I open them again. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
Mars shakes his head silently. “No. You’re not.”
I drop my eyes to the tabletop and curl my fists loosely in front of myself. “Marston, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I spoke to you the way I did before. I was saucy and impudent. I apologize.”
He darts his hand across the table and grips my wrist.
Surprised, my eyes fly to his face.
“Don’t apologize for being natural with me, and please don’t go all ‘subservient gray’ on me now, okay?”
“But—”
He squeezes my wrist harder. “No. No buts. Not after what we’ve been through. We’re in a situation and I need to know you’re being real with me. Be the person you were when you thought I was a figment of your imagination. I like that person. And that person calls me ‘Mars.’”
I feel a blush fly to my cheeks, but whether it’s embarrassment or pleasure, I’m not really sure. I take a moment to collect myself and wait for the flames in my face to die down. “What happened to me back there in the jungle?” I ask once the lump in my throat has passed.
Mars lets go of my wrist, but I still feel the pressure of his foot under the table. He takes a slow sip of his yeasty beverage. “Someone tried to Cancel you.”
Before I even have a second to ask him what that means, he sets his bottle down, reaches across the table, and grabs both my hands, wrapping his fingers around mine. “I’m sorry about how I was back at The Citadel, and then after, when we were in the jungle. I made assumptions about you that weren’t correct, and I acted like an asshole.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that. “It was a stressful situation,” I say. “Thank you for helping me.” I pick at the label on my bottle. The sweat from the bottle has caused the paper to bubble. “Will you please tell me what happened?”
Mars tilts his head and I can tell that he’s thinking, trying to figure out what to say to me. I’m anxious, but I try to tamp down on my nervousness and let him line up his thoughts.
After a long few seconds, he speaks. “I think a Watcher must have spotted and ID’d you in The Citadel. Somehow they knew how to find you.”
“I don’t even know where I am,” I interject, “and neither do you. How could anyone else find me when I’m not even sure what region I’m in?”
“It’s not about where you are right now. It’s about where you’ve been. They probably got you on the sidewalk outside the meditation studio. In all likelihood, The Healing Well is compromised. I need to talk to Mona.”
“But, Mars, it doesn’t make any sense. That stuff all happened at least an hour ago. Maybe a little more.”
“Plenty of Cancelers with that kind of range.”
“Wait. Are you… Are you saying somebody’s somehow messing around with my past?”
Mars raises his eyebrows, as if pleasantly surprised. “I didn’t expect you to catch on so quickly.”
“Well, it’s not like you’re talking in code,” I snap. I rip my hands out of his and reflexively ball the decrepit tablecloth up in my fist. I take a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry. I think I might be approaching the point where I have a psychotic break.”
“Can you try to hold off on that? I’m not sure you’re out of the woods yet.”
“Oh great, that helps a lot.” I force myself to let go of the tablecloth and watch as the wrinkles try to smooth themselves out. “Should you call her? Mona, I mean? You probably have a signal now that we’re back in civilization.”
Mars sighs. “I lost my satellite phone in the in-between. I grabbed you so fast, I didn’t stop to put it in my pocket, and it slipped out of my hand.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, feeling like a jerk.
“It’s okay. With a Canceler out there, I don’t really want to be making satellite calls anyway.”
“So these Cancelers, they’re like, time travelers?”
“Yes, but also no. I take issue with the word ‘travelers.’ Teleportation – Jumpers – that’s traveling. Cancelers can’t move around in physical space; they can only rewind time from a stationary location. They can’t Jump from place to place. They can only go as far as regular transportation can carry them during the range of their rewind, which makes their effectiveness limited. There are so many variables with time, even the most experienced Cancelers can’t turn the clock back more than about ninety minutes, so if you really need a situation altered, you’d better hope you’ve got a Canceler within str
iking distance.” Mars’s eyes shift and he stares over my head. “Hmm,” he murmurs absentmindedly.
“Everything you just said makes me go ‘hmm,’” I say, rolling my eyes. “What’s the cause of your ‘hmm?”
His attention snaps back to me, his brow furrowed. “Cancelers aren’t common. The fact that one was in place to try to rearrange your past is worrisome, I mean, beyond the already bad news that you got one sicced on you. I’m even more concerned now that Mona’s operation may be compromised, with the Watchers making a play on you so quickly.”
“How are you so sure it’s the Watchers?”
“The Citadel is the Watchers’ most heavily guarded compound. Their leader resides there, as well as much of their Parliament. It’s where they train their security forces. Whatever you saw in The Citadel, they’re scared, and they want to rub the event out of existence. I recognized the signs; I’ve seen attempted Cancellations before. Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed them succeed. What it does to a person’s brain…well, it isn’t pretty.”
“But I didn’t see anything! I swear, just the mustache guy, a room full of chanting weirdos, and the inside of a terracotta pot. Like, literally, I have nothing interesting to tell you about that place. Nothing.”
The proprietor scurries over and sets down two steaming plates of rice covered with a thick reddish orange sauce with chunks of something white poking up out of it.
“Thank you,” I say to his retreating back. I dish myself up a bite with a spoon and put it in my mouth. “Oh my god,” I moan.
“What?” Mars says, lightning fast.
“This is amazing.”
Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “With as much drama as we’ve had today, maybe tone down the food reactions a bit?”
“I’ll try, but wow, I’ve never had anything even remotely this good. Take a bite.”
Mars fills his spoon and slips it in his mouth. His lips quirk up as he chews.
“Incredible, right? What’s the white stuff?”
“Cheese. Next time you narrowly avoid being turned into a root vegetable, I guess I’ll know how to take your mind off things,” he says sardonically.
That statement sobers me, but I don’t stop eating. “I know you think it’s those Watcher guys, but I’m not buying it.”
“It’s them. You saw something; you just don’t know it. There’s no other reason someone would run a Cancel operation on you. It’s difficult and expensive.”
“But how do they even know who I am?”
“They’re called ‘Watchers’ because they have visions of the future.”
Mars’s voice has turned cagey. I know I barely just met him, but I’m sure of it. The question is, what is he hiding? And his response isn’t an answer. How could they ID me, and know my past, by observing the future? I shrug and take another bite, talking around my mouthful of rice and sauce. “Yeah, I know that. Grays are fully aware of Lumen powers, even if we don’t have them for ourselves.”
“So you understand how they ID’d you then.”
“Yeah theoretically I guess, but it still doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?”
I sigh, brushing my hair back from my face and clinking my spoon against the edge of my bowl before setting it down. I have to pause my meal for this. “Okay. Take a walk with me through the logic here.”
Mars spreads his hands on the table, palms up, as if to say, “go ahead.”
“I show up in their precious Citadel, right?”
He nods.
“If they had some vision of the future with me in it, and I’m showing up in the middle of their house, why didn’t they just stop me right when I got there? Why weren’t they all waiting for me to climb out of Mr. Moustache’s bed? Why weren’t they crowded around in that room, breathing weird and chanting?”
Mars puckers one side of his mouth.
“They weren’t,” I say before he has an opportunity to speak. “And they weren’t waiting for me in the halls, and they didn’t turn all their stupid terracotta pots upside down so I couldn’t climb into one. They didn’t know I was coming. There was no welcoming committee. They were just as surprised by my appearance as I was.”
“Okay, that holds water. But once they discovered you in their compound and realized what you’d seen—”
“Which was nothing,” I interject.
Mars keeps talking as if I hadn’t interrupted. “Then they quickly arranged a Cancellation, and they had a Region Four-based Canceler track you down.”
“But that’s the thing. Do Watchers have visions of the past?”
“No. They can only see future events.”
“So how would they even know who they were looking for, or where to find me? They couldn’t have a ‘vision’ about something I’d already done, right?”
Mars presses his fingertips against his temples. “Dammit. You’re making sense and I don’t like it.”
I sit back in my chair and speak with firm conviction. “I don’t think it was them.”
“No one else would attempt to Cancel you,” Mars argues just as vehemently.
We stare at each other in a stalemate for a few seconds before I pick up my spoon, take another bite, and ask the question that’s been gnawing at me. “What’s to stop whoever tried to Cancel me from trying again?” My voice breaks on the last word.
Mars’s eyes soften. “Cancelers can’t travel back more than an hour or so, max. They tried to get you, but they failed. The window’s closed. They can’t try again.”
“What if they have someone here in Old India?”
“If they knew about our visit to this particular restaurant, there would have been a Canceler here when we showed up.”
“So what do I do? Stay in this restaurant forever because I know no one finds me here? That’s not exactly the way I want to spend the rest of my life, even though the food is amazing.”
“They can’t touch you while you’re in the in-between. We’ll be vigilant every time we change locations. If we have to, we’ll slip into the in-between again to hide.”
“The gray place?”
Mars shivers so slightly, it’s almost imperceptible.
“Yeah, that’s how I felt about it too,” I say. “It’s also not how I want to spend the rest of my life. I felt like I would choke on the mist.”
Mars takes another bite of his meal. “It’s just a stopgap measure. Once I get you back to Old Seattle, you’ll have the protection of our order, and you’ll receive training. You used the in-between for your trip to The Citadel, and then again from The Citadel to here, and you didn’t notice a thing. It’s only when you try to linger without going anywhere – which is what we did – that it affects people the way it did us.”
“What exactly is the in-between?”
Mars’s eyes flick left and right, and he lowers his voice. “We don’t know for sure. Our best theory is that it’s a netherworld that exists like a thin, flexible sheet between realities. Like, there’s the present, and the future, and in the middle – so that they don’t touch – is the in-between. Only a few people with the power to digest minerals a certain way can access it, but it’s always there, keeping the present and the future from colliding. Once inside the in-between, regular laws of physics either don’t apply, or they can be bent and shaped in ways no one could ever imagine on regular Earth. It’s our best working theory.”
“And are you saying that’s how I went from Mona’s meditation studio one second to Region Four in the next?”
Mars nods. “Yes, but…” He trails off, like he’s either not sure what to say, or he doesn’t want to say what he’s thinking.
“But what?” I prod.
He purses his lips. “Even with the different rules of the in-between, you shouldn’t have been able to do what you did.”
“Why not? And I’m not arguing with you,” I say, holding up my hand with the spoon in it, punctuating my words by jabbing the cutlery in the air. “I just honestly want to know why I shouldn
’t be able to do what I very obviously did.”
“Region Four is more than seven thousand miles from Old Seattle. I’m a trained Jumper with more than a dozen years of travel experience. More than that if you count the accidental trips I took before I was old enough for formal training. And do you know what my maximum range is?”
I shake my head.
“A thousand miles.”
I blink a couple of times rapidly. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I was in Northern Africa when I got the call that you needed help. It took me three separate hops with five-minute recharge periods between each one to reach you. And I’m a professional. You traveled seven times as far as I can – by accident.”
He has to be wrong. Something must be off with his math. “I’m pretty sure I ate a few mud pies when I was a kid,” I say a bit shakily. “And I can guarantee you I’ve never teleported anywhere in my life. Maybe I just had a lot of stored-up minerals, and I figured out how to use them, digest them, whatever, while lying there on Mona’s floor?”
“I’ve never heard of a first hop like yours. Ever. Most people are lucky if they can move from one side of the room to the other. Long hops are something you build up to with a lot of training. Your power…well, I got a taste of it – literally – when we fled Watcher Citadel. When I kissed you—”
“I thought you said it wasn’t a kiss,” I interject, zeroing in on that word immediately.
“Right, yeah, of course, wrong word,” he says.
The room is only lit by natural light filtering in through curtains, but I’m pretty sure I see a blush trying to creep its way up Mars’s neck.
“When I tried to draw your power out using mouth-on-mouth pressure, which is an extremely standard means that we all learn in our first year…” His voice trails off. “What question was I answering? I lost track.”
“You were saying why it was unlikely that I just had a bunch of rock dust or whatever stored up when I left Mona’s,” I say helpfully.
“Right.” He still seems flustered, but he’s back on track. “When I drew your power, it should have only been enough to get us outside The Citadel boundary. Maybe a mile down the road if we were lucky. And we ended up in Old India.”
Destination Unknown (Lumen Academy Book 1) Page 8
