by Lola Dodge
Quanta took a nibble and instantly started beaming as she gobbled down the rest. “Thank Buddha. We haven’t had decent food in ages.” She was licking her fingers by the time we’d woven our way out of the market, and her coloring looked much stronger with the improved blood sugar.
I passed her the rest of my portion. “I can’t finish.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and I knew she didn’t believe me, but she ended up eating the rest anyway. I stopped for a few more snacks as we made our way through the rest of the market locations on our list.
If the Reds were here, they’d be well hidden, and I doubted we’d find any evidence of the clone. The Seligo wouldn’t let her out of the safety of Theta Citadel without good reason—if that was where she was being kept. We had nothing certain to go on.
If it came down to it, I’d rather pursue Reds. On the off chance that we found and recruited one or two, Quanta might be convinced to escort them to Eva’s new location.
“Skate park?” Quanta asked.
“We’d better check.” It seemed like a relatively safe bet. We already knew where the security cams were mounted, and I couldn’t fathom any Reds sticking around where their friends had been ambushed.
But if Quanta could pick a lead out of time, she’d pick it up there.
Navigating by the map on my com, I brought us down an alley toward the park. We heard the thumping music before we saw the space.
Ramps and bowls broke up the concrete, and onlookers huddled as a few teenagers rolled back and forth on boards and skates. Bright lights flooded down from above, but they had a hazy quality. I couldn’t place what was happening, but something about the park’s energy made my hair stand on end.
Quanta’s gaze darted a tad erratically, but to anyone looking she should seem awed by the skaters’ tricks. She took a step in front of me, letting go of my hand.
Then froze.
She reached back, and I gripped her fingers. “What?”
“Her.” Quanta jerked her head toward a cluster of skaters. Most were girls in leggings and midriff-baring tops. Some had dyed the ends of their black hair in bright colors, and each one held a board. None stuck out as dangerous, but the more I looked, they more they seemed to blur together.
One of the girls turned to face us. She had dark eyes, black, bobbed hair, and a face I recognized instantly. “Devan Coda.”
A Red Helix. And high priority.
She’d almost gotten caught in the Arizona Void not long ago. I didn’t know the specifics, but she’d slipped away while Cipher was drawing attention, and no one had spotted her since. Eva wanted to turn the girl Raven, but she hadn’t been able to corner her any more than Doctor Nagi had.
I wasn’t surprised. The few who survived life on the run tended to be resourceful.
And powerful.
Quanta lowered her voice. “Nagi used to make me look for her. She was the hardest one to find.”
“What can she—” Something moved at the corner of my eye.
“You.” Devan’s voice carried across the park like a whip crack. She stared straight at Quanta, rigid with hatred.
I put myself in front of Quanta, but the crowd was already moving.
Half of them sprinted away. The others circled in tighter, surrounding us. I didn’t reach for a gun—there were too many enemies to fight. But something was still wrong with their edges.
Devan’s powers?
I tried to keep calm. We hadn’t come for a fight. “Devan? We’re here to help you.”
“Liar.” Devan’s eyes blazed with anger. “You won’t kill any more of us.”
The air wavered like heat over asphalt. When the blurs resolved, I finally saw what had been throwing me off.
Illusions.
The innocent skate park kids disappeared. T-shirts fuzzed into armored vests. Their shoulders dipped under the weight of rifles and automatic weapons—all of which were rising to point at us.
I grabbed Quanta around the shoulders and drove us both toward the ground. Too slow, but I hugged her tight.
If she survived, we survived.
Chapter Nineteen
QUANTA
Tair and I fell. He jerked midair as the gunshots echoed.
Familiar pain jabbed my shoulder.
A dart?
We thudded into the concrete, and the air whooshed from my lungs. Two more darts already stuck in Tair’s shoulder.
Not bullets.
Good?
But we couldn’t stay on this timeline—not with Devan and her minions circling tighter, all blurry with more and more weapons that I was positive hadn’t been there before.
Tair yanked the dart from my arm, but a second one hit my other arm. I reached, trying to pluck it out, but numbness seeped into my fingers. I didn’t want to see how this ended.
I grabbed for our bookmarked page in time. The musty little apartment…
Somewhere…
Tair standing at my side…
I could see the image glowing, but my mental muscles whiffed as my thoughts slowed down.
I had to get us back. I had to…
Straining, I reached—
But nothing. I couldn’t grab the moment, let alone pull us back there.
Tair tried to shield me, but he was moving slower and slower, too.
“Got you now.” Devan loomed over us, and her smile…
Not evil, but angry. Vengeful.
“I’mnother…” My words slurred as the world faded at the edges.
I used the last of my strength to clutch at Tair.
We’d be okay as long as we were together.
Please keep us together.
Chapter Twenty
ALTAIR
Consciousness returned slowly.
I squinted against the bright lights of the skate park. My back was stiff against the concrete.
The skate park?
Adrenaline spiked.
Quanta.
I clawed myself upward.
She was gone.
Music still thumped, but the park was deserted. There were no witnesses and no one to ask where they’d taken her.
Devan. My fists bunched.
Why capture and not kill? Why take Quanta and leave me? Or was she already de—
Fear tightened every muscle in my body.
No. I wouldn’t entertain that thought.
Focus on the facts.
My watch was gone, along with the other tech I’d been carrying. I couldn’t track Quanta’s vitals or her location.
I had to focus. I had to find her. Adrenaline coursed through my limbs as I scanned the empty park again.
The security cameras.
That was the only way to see where they’d taken her. Eva’s people could get into the feeds.
I sprinted back to the apartment.
When I burst through the door, my heart clenched at the sight of Quanta’s clothes bunched on the bed.
I’m getting her back.
My hands shook as I picked up the com unit. I opened a secure line to Eva.
“Orpheus?” Sam’s face filled the screen.
“Eva. Now. Quanta’s been taken.”
Sam blanched and her image cut off. I stared at the blank screen while my pulse hammered.
Seconds later, Eva’s face appeared. “Altair? What’s happened?”
“She’s been taken.” The words felt like razor blades coming up my throat. The more I replayed our decisions, the more I blamed myself.
Eva’s hand drifted to her forehead. “Where? Not to Theta?”
“Not the Seligo.”
“What?” Eva’s eyes hardened. “Who then?”
“Devan Coda.” Admitting it made shame and anger pulse through my veins. “And the underground Reds.”
“Devan…” Eva took a moment to compose herself, but my thoughts kept racing.
What were Devan’s intentions? How many people did she have?
“She’s a difficult one,” Eva said. “Every time we make con
tact, she flees. As for what she wants…”
It felt like a boulder rested on my chest. My lungs ached with fear for Quanta’s fate. “Devan recognized Quanta. She must think Quanta’s the clone.” And if she tried to hold Quanta responsible for the clone’s actions…
“The backup team is en route,” Eva said. “What are your coordinates?”
“I’m at—”
The doorknob rattled. “Altair?”
That voice…
I whipped open the door.
Quanta stood wearing a white sundress, her black hair streaming down to her shoulders.
She smiled. “There you are.”
For half a second my heart soared. I reached for her—
And froze.
The details hit me like bullets.
Hair too short. Complexion a shade too pale. Red painted fingernails.
And a strangeness that forced me back a step.
“Altair?” Eva’s voice echoed in the silence. “Who’s—”
I slammed the unit closed.
Her smile faded. “Who were you talking to?”
I forced myself to meet her gaze. She looked at me expectantly, and the gray shade of her eyes was exactly the same as Quanta’s.
I felt drawn to her. And repulsed at the same time.
Her lips turned downward. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. Since you’re my partner.”
I still couldn’t react, struck with the reality of this situation.
“Let’s go back to Theta,” she said. “This island smells like fish.”
A man in body armor filled the doorway, and more moved behind him. She was making a request, but it wasn’t a request at all.
I had two options.
Fight back and die. Cooperate and be taken.
The decision took a nanosecond.
I chose to live. Quanta was still captive. And the girl in front of me…
“Come on.” She grabbed my arm.
Something tingled along my flesh. Like the first time Quanta and I had touched.
“Oh.” She pulled back her hand, and another shy smile turned up her lips.
Horror gnawed at my insides.
I’d accepted that the clone would be nearly identical to Quanta, but I’d never calculated the equation all the way through. If she were identical, then the same attributes that bound me to Quanta would bind me to the clone.
They did. But it wasn’t the same.
I knew her face, but the person underneath…
“Let’s go.” She grabbed my sleeve and tugged me toward the hallway and the waiting Black Helixes.
It would be nothing to brush her off, but I couldn’t raise a hand against her.
Instead, I let her pull me where she wanted, dreading what lay down the path ahead.
Chapter Twenty-One
QUANTA
Lights blinded me.
I sat tied to a chair, but that was all I could tell before the timeghosts crashed in.
Devan hugs a little boy who looks just like her; music thumps as she dances, moving her body to the beat and the pulse of lasers; baby Devan cries and is picked up by a figure whose face doesn’t register; a boy stands in a crowded pod station and fidgets with something in his coat, but Devan tugs him away; Theta Citadel looms on the horizon, smoke streaming from its glass towers; Black Helixes pour down an alley in two columns, weapons ready as they chase someone I can’t make out—
Gasping, I tried to force myself back to the present. The timeghosts felt slick with oil. Blurry and hazy. I didn’t want to see—
Devan runs; Devan cries; Devan glows like the sun; Devan wraps herself in a blanket; Devan leans against a wall; Devan’s shoulders shake; Devan’s hands burn like flames; Devan cries out—
Freezing water doused me.
I snapped back to reality so hard my neck cracked.
“Where are they?” Devan Coda stood holding an empty bucket, and I really wanted to punch her in the face. All I could do was shiver where I’d been tied.
In the moment of cold-water clarity, I spotted the other people hanging at the edges of the room. I sat tied in the middle of the grotty concrete square. Dozens of them stood around, vibrating with tension and holding weapons, but they looked so hazy…
The tranq must still be messing with my vision. I swallowed and shook as much water as I could from my hair. “Where is who?”
Devan hurled the bucket, and it clanged across the floor behind me. “Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not.” As much as I wanted to ask where she’d hidden Tair, I didn’t dare bring him up when she was pissed to the point of shaking. I’d rather keep myself the focus of her anger.
“Where. Are. They.” Devan forced each word through gritted teeth. “Kiri and Aliya.”
Two girls’ names. Two girls dragged from the skate park.
And if Devan thought I was the clone…
Crap.
Light shimmered around Devan’s bunched fists. “You’re going to tell me.”
What could I possibly say to explain this? Only the obvious came to mind. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“I know exactly who you are.”
“No. You know my clone. I’m an innocent fellow Red.”
Critical hit.
Devan went rigid. The others—
Vibrated?
I scrunched my eyes, trying to clear my vision, but I knew I wasn’t hallucinating. Devan had to be doing something with her powers.
She recovered before I could figure out what. “Not buying that story for a second.”
How did I prove I was different than my clone? The thing was made from my DNA, and we were pretty much the same. From head to toe. “I’m with the Shadow Ravens.”
Devan’s lips pressed into a hard line.
Not good.
Think. I had to think. There had to be something…
But everything I knew about Devan I knew because the Seligo had wanted me to find her. That probably made me exactly the same as the clone in her eyes.
“I have the tattoo.” I knew she didn’t have the eye mods she needed to see Eva’s secret ink, but… I was scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I glanced around the crowd. Maybe one of them was a defected Raven who could back me up?
But the more I looked…
There were more than twenty people in the room, but all I could hear were Devan’s footsteps as she paced the concrete. No chatter. Not even breathing.
And why could I even notice that? I should be drowning in timeghosts—
No way.
Was I that dense?
I pulled every scrap of focus I could get and eased down my mental walls. Devan’s ghosts. Devan’s ghosts.
And more of Devan’s ghosts.
No one else.
Because no one else was in the room.
“Unbelievable.” I wanted to scream, but all I could do was tug against the plastic ties holding me to the chair. They gave—a little bit too loose. Because Devan Coda wasn’t exactly a criminal mastermind.
“What?” Devan took a step closer.
I was so done playing her games.
“Let me tell you how this is going to go.” I straightened my shoulders and held her gaze. “You’re going to cut it with your fake posse—because I know it’s just the two of us in here—and untie me really carefully. Then you’re going to take me to Tair, and we’re all going to have a nice long call with Lady Eva about clones and Shadow Ravens and how to get your friends back.”
“Lady…” Devan’s dark eyes widened. For a second, I thought she actually believed me. Then light blazed from her fingertips. “Liar.”
“Fry me or whatever.” I wasn’t backing down. “But Tair will tell you the same thing I’m telling you, and you need us both if you want to go after my clone.”
She bunched her hands back into fists, and the glow faded. Then all the people disappeared like smoke. Devan folded her arms. “Who’s Tair?”
“The guy you brought in with me?”
Who else?
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Dread rumbled in my gut.
“Bring him here. I want answers from you.”
“You…” My throat dried.
But why?
There was no reason to panic. Tair was free, and he’d find me as soon as he shook off the tranquilizers. I just couldn’t shake the flutters of dread.
Ignoring Devan, I let down my walls and tried to focus on the most important thing. Where’s Tair?
Devan’s timeghosts sprang up first, crowding tight. I bit down and used all the willpower I could muster to brush them off. I didn’t want to see her.
I needed to see Tair. Was he already on the way?
My head pounded, but I concentrated on Tair and the skate park. We’d fallen and then—
Devan hauls me onto a motorcycle’s side cart and then covers my limp form with a blanket. She roars away, leaving the skate park silent. Tair lies limp and alone.
The thread of the past started to shift, wanting to follow Devan and me, but I gritted my teeth against the pain splitting my head and forced the focus back to what I really wanted to see. What happened to Tair?
Woozy, Tair claws to his feet. Then he’s sprinting—
My brain felt like it was tearing in half, but I bit down. I had to see this.
He barrels into our apartment and dials into the com. Eva’s voice comes through, but I can’t make out the words.
The doorknob rattles. “Altair?”
I stand in front of him in a sundress—
I gasped back to the present.
My voice. My face. But not me.
The clone.
Pinpricks of white fuzzed my vision.
She has Tair.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ALTAIR
The clone sat across from me in a hover ship packed with Black Helixes. She wore a pleasant but deeply unsettling smile.
She wouldn’t stop staring at me.
I gripped the edge of my seat as the ship flew ever closer to Theta Citadel and all its dangers. The Helixes hadn’t restrained me, and they seemed not to care what I did as long as I came quietly. They simply loomed while the clone kicked her feet and smiled.
