by Lola Dodge
She hunched a little at being called out, but her cheeks reddened with determination. “That doesn’t tell us anything. It’s worse than knowing nothing.”
A crazy laugh slipped from my throat. “Exactly.” I wanted to pat her on the head. “I can see the past and future, but it’s chaos on a good day, and the stuff about me is twice as hard to nail down. When it comes to my clone…”
Tair’s arm looped back around my shoulder. His caramel-colored eyes warmed with support, and I remembered to breathe before continuing. “What if her control is better than mine? We already have evidence she’s helping the Seligo hunt down Reds.” And at some point, she’d definitely come after Eva and me and all of us.
We had to find her before that happened.
I’d dig and dig and dig until I found—
A wave of dizziness crashed over me. I would’ve fallen off my chair, but Tair reacted first, bracing my shoulders.
“We’re done here.” He knocked back his chair.
Eva lifted her hands, urging him to sit back down. “We’ve much to discuss, Alt—”
“Not tonight.” Tair cut her dead. “She can’t take any more.”
My head hadn’t stopped spinning. After lab tests and projections and being nearly electrocuted…
I was done.
Tair steadied me while Eva scanned me up and down, but if I looked anywhere near as awful as I felt, we were about to get a hall pass. “Very well. Report to me in the morning, and we’ll secure your transport to the next location.”
Tair led me out. When we made it a few steps down the hall, I finally felt like I could breathe. “Let’s not do that again.”
“No argument from me.”
I kept a tight hold on him as we headed through the maze of corridors. At this point, getting overwhelmed with timeghosts would probably put me on the floor. I just wanted to be quiet and not worry about what was coming in ten minutes or tomorrow or next year, or what havoc my doppelgänger was wreaking where I couldn’t see her. But I couldn’t not worry.
Outside, I kicked through the dew, regretting my no-shoes decision. As soon as I shivered, Tair tugged my hand, pulling us both up short. “I’d like to carry you.”
“I’d like to be carried.” Love it, actually.
Tair scooped me up like it was nothing, one arm behind my shoulders, the other behind my knees. I was leaning my head against his chest before I could think twice.
I closed my eyes. His even steps lulled me into a deep calm.
He was like magic. All the madness faded away when he held me. I’d never known what quiet was until I met Tair. The thought of going back to before…
I gripped his T-shirt.
Never. I couldn’t go it alone anymore.
“Almost there.” His voice was as steady and reassuring as the rest of him.
When we finally made it to my bunker, Tair gently shifted my weight to get at the print scanner. I’d been out of it when he’d brought me home earlier, but I smiled. “Two times in one day. I’ll forget how to walk.”
“I hope not.” Tair stepped around the clutter of papers to set me on the bed. “Not that I mind. Let’s just try to have a smoother day tomorrow.”
“I’ll try…” But we both knew how that went.
The bed frame squeaked with my weight. With his free hand, Tair propped me up with pillows and shifted the blanket to cover me. He didn’t let go for a second. He ended up sitting at the edge of the mattress, still gripping my hand.
I could’ve drifted off right then, but something about Tair’s posture…
I leaned to get a better look at his face. He stared into space, and his brows furrowed behind his frames. Not for the first time, I remembered how differently he and I saw the world. I was about to pass out while he stayed up agonizing over something that was probably my fault.
“Hey.” I pulled his hand to my chest. “Why so slouchy?”
He straightened right back to ninety degrees. “I wasn’t slouching.”
I bit my lip. I probably shouldn’t poke fun at him while I was trying to be comforting, but I liked the rare moments when all his manners and breeding slipped away. “I meant the mental slouch. You’ll bore a hole in my bunker if you keep staring at the wall like that.”
Tair let out a heavy breath. “We need to make some decisions.”
“I know.” I tugged his hand for emphasis. “We. That’s what you keep saying, right? You’re not allowed to get all glum on your own.” If anything, I should be staring miserably into space. I just wasn’t because I had Tair to lean on. I hoped one of these days I’d be strong enough that he could lean on me, too.
“I’m pensive. Not glum.”
I scoffed and reached to poke the worried ridges between his eyebrows. “That is glum. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.” Although… I poked the spot again and then touched my own forehead.
His skin felt springier than mine did. With his top-shelf genes, he’d probably never crease. Next time I had the clarity to peek at the distant future, I’d have to find some images of the two of us together. I’d probably look like a raisin while he looked twenty-something forever.
Tair’s soft laugh drew me back to him. “Your face…!” His eyes lit up.
That was the expression I loved. All glowing and unbuttoned.
I was leaning into him before I remembered we were supposed to be taking it slow, and by then it was already too late.
Our lips touched. Soft. His kiss was gentle, but totally overwhelming in the best way. Energy and life zinged through me as he pulled me into his arms.
I gripped his shoulders. Breathed him in. All the worries and doubts and dangers faded to nothing. My world was all Tair.
His heat. His breath. His soft and lingering touch.
I was fluttering.
The gentle kiss kept going until I was sure I’d melted away to nothing.
Eventually Tair eased me back to my pillow, lying beside me as he smoothed his fingers through my hair. “Quanta…”
I pulled away long enough to kiss his nose. “I like when you say my name.”
He groaned. “You’re hurt.”
“Getting better by the second.” Cuddled tight against him, I felt like we were all alone on a cloud of cotton candy. Hurt didn’t exist.
I wanted to stick this moment in a bottle and keep it forever. Or just rewind us back again and again, staying here instead of dealing with tomorrow.
That thought cracked the fantasy.
We weren’t safe, and things probably weren’t going to be okay. As much as I wanted to keep this moment a pure and precious thing, I had to plan for the worst. If something happened tonight or tomorrow, we needed to have a reset point ready to get back to. “I’m going to set a new save point.”
“Go ahead.” Tair slipped off his glasses and rested his head on the pillow next to mine.
My heart wavered. Maybe I was corrupting the moment, but it would be cake to wind time back to this. I couldn’t forget if I tried.
I let out a breath and with it, made sappy Quanta take a little vacation. Instead, I flexed my mental muscles. I concentrated on the connections between Tair and me—both physical and mental. Closing my eyes, I tried to lean into his senses and let them seep into me.
As he gently combed his fingers through my hair, I noticed the millions of details I never would’ve picked up on my own. The rhythm of our breathing. A hint of rust in the air. The rustle of my sketch papers over the humming of the ventilation unit. Tair and I snuggled perfectly together.
I fixed all of it in my mind. It took longer than usual—my head still throbbed, and passing out would’ve been a lot easier than focusing—but piece by piece, I memorized every detail of the present like a fully fleshed-out page in the book of the universe.
For a split second, my vision doubled and dizziness rolled down my body. Now the scene was bookmarked, and later when all the pasts and futures were roaring through my head, I knew this memory would glow brighter than all
the others.
If things went wrong the way they always did—this was our escape hatch.
At least for a day. I had to be more careful about refreshing our save. Every few hours would be better when it looked like a full day was my hard limit.
I exhaled. “All done.”
“Mmm.” He shifted to pull the blanket back over me. It had gotten lost in all the fun. “I felt it.”
Maybe I was cloaking myself in the illusion of safety, but the fact that this bit of my power still worked gave me a twinkle of hope. I might be unstable, but wasn’t I always? At least a little? I might get worse, but I could still get better.
I moved closer and snuggled into Tair.
Tomorrow, we could deal with all the badness pressing in. But tonight…
I was taking a break with the person who was slowly taking over my world.
Chapter Twelve
ALTAIR
As Quanta drifted to sleep, I tried to organize my thoughts, but there was no way to stay on task. She mumbled softly as she nuzzled deeper into my arms.
Nothing made me happier than seeing her content, but I had a feeling that leaving this bed would shatter the feeling for both of us.
The clone compounded our problems. With Quanta’s growing instability and the general danger of remaining at the compound…
Time was moving and we couldn’t stay still.
I needed to clock more hours in the lab. The solution for bringing Quanta back to equilibrium might give us a method of destabilizing the clone.
If I could isolate the cause.
Quanta stirred again. I stroked her hair, trying to lull her into a deeper sleep.
What was the most rational way to move forward?
No matter how I thought through possible dangers, leaving Eva seemed insane. Her research and resources would be vital to Quanta’s health. And Quanta’s health was my priority.
But Quanta’s priorities?
I didn’t need to ask. I’d seen the plan in her eyes.
She wanted to go after the clone.
Just the idea made my muscles torque. Quanta wasn’t at her best. Even if she was, I couldn’t go along with this. It was too soon. We’d barely escaped the Seligo the first time, and she had to be able to function before she could consider any kind of mission.
We couldn’t go off on our own.
If I was as smart as I was supposed to be, I’d go straight back to the briefing and tell Eva exactly that. Instead, I tucked Quanta’s head against my shoulder and closed my eyes.
The alarm on my watch pinged us awake at five thirty.
Quanta hugged me tight, still groggy with sleep. “Too early.”
I couldn’t help a smile. “Feeling better?”
She made a sleepy moan and scrunched her eyes shut tighter.
“I’m going to the lab. I’ll be back in time for breakfast.”
She muttered something about waffles as I slipped away. I tucked the blanket back around her and tried to ignore the pang at walking away. The threat of destabilization made leaving her that much harder, but it was exactly why I had to get to work. I’d started culturing samples last night, and I wanted to check the progress before moving off compound sent everything into chaos.
Three hours later, breakfast was the last thing on my mind.
I gripped the edge of the foldout countertop.
It was worse than expected. All of it.
Quanta…
I headed to straight to Eva’s lab. Her assistants darted away when they saw the expression on my face.
Only Eva would meet my gaze. The sadness in her eyes twisted like a knife in my gut.
“How soon?” I asked.
“Weeks. Possibly less if the current acceleration keeps pace.” Eva sagged onto a stool.
Weeks.
Or less.
It felt like the air in the room had been switched with cement. “How do we reverse it?” And why was she declining so quickly?
“I’m working on a few angles.” She rubbed her temple. “Slowing the progress may be the best I can do if we can’t isolate what’s accelerating the decline.”
“We’ll find it.” But my voice sounded hollow, even to me. “If reducing stress is the goal…” Leaving the Shadow Ravens—and humanity in general—could be the cure, but if Quanta and I went off on our own, we’d be vulnerable to the Seligo.
If we stayed with Eva—even with a reduced team at some other site—we’d be stuck in the same downward spiral where more stress on Quanta meant less stability and less stability caused more stress.
Quanta might find more peace in some isolated corner of the Voids, but being too far from Eva wouldn’t do us any favors. Even if we distanced ourselves from the main Citadels, most Voids had patchy governance at best, and the places we could hide would be too isolated or too lawless.
There had to be another option.
Chapter Thirteen
QUANTA
My stomach growled.
I rolled over and hit the empty spot where Tair was supposed to be. The pillow was still dented where he’d rested his head.
My heart gave a little pang. That had been the best bedtime ever, and I’d been looking forward to waking up next to him.
Timeghosts clamored and my head still ached. I tried to see past the ghosts, but I could barely make out my feet as I swung them over the edge of the bed. I sat still, hoping the visitors would go away.
No dice.
The ghostly blue sheen of figures and landscapes bled over and through everything in my line of sight. None of them were the helpful ghosts that told me what to do to fix my problems. They swooped in and out so fast I could barely tell who or what was there. Between the bursts of smells and noises, I couldn’t decide if I should be dizzy or nauseated, so my body went with both.
I groaned and contemplated staying in bed for a few more days. This had to get better.
Right…?
For a split second, I caught a glimpse of future Quanta.
Bodies sprawl in every direction, limp in the grass, collapsed in front of the shipping containers—
Nausea hit me hard. I gripped my stomach.
That wasn’t some hazy future of me going nuclear in one of the Citadels. And it wasn’t this compound, but it was a compound of Eva’s—maybe the next location she meant to take me to.
Because those were Shadow Ravens on the ground.
It couldn’t happen like that. I wouldn’t let it.
And I was officially done waffling about it.
Odds were, Tair was already at his lab, getting in a few more hours of test tube time before Eva told us our next coordinates.
The thought of putting on shoes occurred to me, but it took all my focus to feel my way to the door. Outfit changes were not happening.
When I finally managed to get the door open, Cipher jumped back, her hand half raised. “You knew I was coming?”
Not even close, but her shocked expression was the first good thing about this morning. “I see all. I know all.”
“Bullshit.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t lying too much—seeing everything just wasn’t as handy as it sounded. “If you’re selling cookies, I’ll take everything you’ve got.”
She shook her head. The movement of her hair blurred with the bluish timeghosts, and I lost her underneath layers and layers of past and future Ciphers. When I managed to blink her back into focus, she’d taken a step back. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Peachy was my go-to answer to that general question, but I couldn’t get the word out when my head hammered and my spine still ached and crawling back into bed sounded like the best possible way to survive this day. I gripped the doorframe. “It’s rough.”
She chewed at her lip ring as she looked me over one more time. “We wanted to tell you we sourced the video location.”
A jolt scattered some of the timeghosts for a second. “We?”
She snorted and jerked her head to the left. I p
eered outside to find Knight leaning against the side of the bunker. Should’ve figured. The two of them didn’t spend much time apart.
I stayed firmly in the doorway. “Where?”
“The Voids near Theta Citadel. On a middle-of-nowhere island chain.”
Theta Citadel?
I’d barely ever heard it mentioned. Not that it wasn’t huge and important and all, but it was on the opposite side of the world. “How near?”
“A few hours by ferry.” Knight finally stirred, moving to stand at Cipher’s side. “We’ve heard rumors of underground Reds holed up near there, but the Lady’s never had a strong presence near Theta so we can’t confirm much.”
I’d only been thinking as far as our enemies at Alpha Citadel.
Rookie mistake. What else had I missed?
A wave of dizziness rolled over me, but I managed to tighten my grip on the doorframe before I face-planted.
“Are you…?” Knight snatched back the hand he’d reached out to me. So did Cipher.
Their absurdity cracked right through my funk. I laughed at their horrified expressions. “You guys have to stop being so helpful.”
Cipher jammed her hands into her jeans pockets. “You have to stop falling all over the place.”
Couldn’t argue with that. “Did you tell Eva and Tair this news, or was I your first stop?”
“We told Sam,” Knight said. “But both of them are holed up in the Lady’s lab. I’m handling the last of the compound break-up, and we’re all out of here by tonight.”
“Then I’m going to the lab.” New info meant we had decisions to make, and I didn’t want Eva assigning me to some bunker in East Bumble to sit things out until I stabilized.
Because what if I didn’t stabilize?
I wasn’t ready to think through that timeline yet, but I was pretty sure everyone would start treating me like glass, and that would drive me batty.
Both of them stepped back farther as I exited. Knight’s pitying look was sharp enough to cut through the static of timeghosts. “Shoes?”
