I scan the final set of specs and shiver. “You want this done by midnight tonight?”
“All I require is a working prototype. Make it solid enough for one use, if you prefer. But I do need to prove to my contacts that you’re the real deal. Quickly.”
I rake my hands through my hair and think things through. This is crazy. Huge drift voids on demand? I can do it, but I’d have to repurpose a bunch of stuff in my lab. That won’t be easy. “How small does the prototype need to be? Are we talking a big briefcase maybe?”
“One that fits in this.” The Scythe sets a sleek black briefcase onto his tabletop. “And only this.”
“So, it needs to go in a super-small case. That’s not possible.”
“You always say that to Fritz, and then you always deliver.”
Something in his tone makes my blood boil. “I could just find my own buyers, you know.”
The Scythe chuckles again. “Once the Merciless tear through your home, you and your family won’t be breathing, let alone able to reach out to alternate buyers.” He finishes his drink and sets down the empty glass. “Face it. You need me far more than I need you.”
My spine stiffens. “You’ll double cross me.”
“And miss out on my ongoing paycheck from your services? Have you learned nothing about me after all these years?” The Scythe leans forward in his chair. “One minute remains before 9 a.m., Meimi. Do I call my contacts, or do you try to run?”
I’ve heard people talk about their heads spinning, but I literally feel like my brain is on a Tilt-A-Whirl. I press my palms onto my temples, hoping I can squeeze some clear thoughts into my skull.
All I can think is that I have thirty seconds left.
“All right,” I say quickly. “You’ll have the prototype by midnight.” Maybe.
“Excellent.” The Scythe taps a few buttons on his desktop. “Fritz, cover things up for Meimi.”
Fritz’s familiar voice echoes into the room. “Yes, sir.”
“Glad we could come to an arrangement,” declares the Scythe. “I’ll send Fritz to pick up the prototype from your home at midnight. You can keep the data pad and specifications. My gift.”
I slip the device into my backpack. “We didn’t discuss something. How much will you pay me?”
“Ah, we didn’t cover that topic, now did we?” The Scythe gives me one of those looks where he could shoot me dead and not care one bit. “Why, your payment is that you and your family stay alive.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I’m not Fritz. This isn’t up for discussion.” The Scythe gestures toward the door. “If you don’t mind, I have some calls to make in order to assist Fritz. There are some members of the Authority who will be very pleased to learn their bank accounts have miraculously increased, in exchange for wiping your science crime away.”
“I’ll leave you to it.” I don’t wait for more chatter. After grabbing the briefcase, I haul my butt toward the exit. With every step, the same question keeps repeating through my mind.
Am I doing the right thing? And why would anyone want small equipment to build large drift voids on demand?
In the end, I decide there’s no point in worrying. Whatever the reason, building this prototype is the only way to keep me and Mom alive. When it comes to creating the device, I’ll put safeguards on my safeguards. No one will be able to use it twice or figure out how I put the thing together.
At least, I hope not.
Chapter 16
The moment I step outside the Scythe’s door, Fritz sets another sack over my head. I don’t gasp or put up a fight. Why bother? Get me out of here already. In no time, I’m back outside the drainpipe and hoofing it toward home.
As I race along, I plan how to build the prototype. Computer code flickers through my thoughts. Next I see different components from my lab lining up inside the briefcase. Pieces of wire mentally snap into place around them, along with a host of brackets, sensors, and data chips.
I can do this.
By the time I reach my door, some kind of greenish drizzle has started to fall. I lift up the metal flap that covers my security pad and freeze.
Someone’s upgraded our security system. There are no more codes to enter. Instead there’s a pad for placing my hand to confirm identity. There’s even a retinal scanner installed as a double layer of security.
My heart jumps into my throat. This enhanced security system makes me feel less safe than ever before. Mostly because I didn’t build it. But I know who did.
Thorne.
I suppose that should make me feel a little better. After all, Thorne did ask if he could make the enhancements. It doesn’t, though. This is major tech that he installed in under an hour. Even if I had all the parts handy, this project would take days. And didn’t he say something about integrating his Sentient as well? Who is this guy? I mean, beyond the obvious alien thing.
Whoever he is, standing out in an acid rainstorm won’t help.
I set my palm against the scanner. Green lights flicker—both across my palm and into my eyes—before a smooth feminine voice speaks.
“Welcome home, Meimi.” With that, the door opens automatically.
Wow. A new security system that even talks. This really should be a good thing. So why have I broken out in a sweat?
Rushing inside, I make my way to the kitchen. Mom sits at her favorite chair, staring out the window. Miss Edith stands at our stove, heating up another pot of tea. She looks up as I approach. “Meimi.”
“Hey, Miss Edith. How’s Mom?”
“Same as always.” She purses her lined mouth. “You’re home early.”
“We only had a half day today at school in order to...uh…”
“What, dear?”
I’m a scientist, not a professional liar. “To celebrate President Hope’s birthday.”
“That was last month.”
“Well, we’re still celebrating.” I stalk around the kitchen, scanning for more signs of security upgrades. “Everything okay in here?”
“Both your mother and I are fine.”
“So who changed the security system?”
“It was that nice young man, Thorne. He’s rather handy.”
A fluttery feeling takes up resident in my chest. “Where is he?” I ask.
“Down in your workroom.”
“Oh.” For some reason, that’s all I can get out.
“Why don’t you go say hello?” She lowers her voice. “I think he fancies you.”
“Why? What did he say?” I hate the desperate edge to my voice. I don’t care about some handsome guy who enhances security systems. And who’s also an alien that maybe I had a telepathic connection with.
Ugh, my life is strange.
“He said something about helping you,” adds Miss Edith.
“Right. I’ll just go to my workroom now, I guess.”
So that’s what I do. But with every step, my limbs shiver with a crazy mix of fear and excitement.
I’m about to see Thorne again.
Minutes later, I push open the heavy metal door to our basement. Inside, my lab is a mess of wires, computer parts, and souped-up monoliths. Before, I’d thought my place would be pretty sad compared to what I imagined was inside Mom’s lab. Now, I can appreciate my workroom for the little slice of awesome that it is.
Sure enough, Thorne is here and waist-deep into one of my monoliths. The guy doesn’t even look up as I approach. It gives me a chance to appreciate the play of muscle on his legs.
Scientifically speaking, the guy is ripped.
“Hi, there,” I say.
No reply.
Thorne might not be acting rude, though. After all, the guy’s head is deep inside a monolith, so there’s that.
“How’s it going?” I ask, my voice louder.
Thorne’s attention stays focused on something inside the monolith. “Slowly. Your systems need a ton of upgrades. There’s not much I can do without the right gear.”
&n
bsp; I twist my fingers together at my waist. “Look, maybe I should have said this before, but I was a little distracted. You should know that Mom and I flipped this factory into two-dimensional space-time. Now our government may be sending over soldiers to pick up everyone. Although I hope they don’t because I just made a deal with a criminal overlord named the Scythe to prevent that.”
Thorne stops fiddling around inside the monolith. Leaning out, he looks up at me. The boy’s all square jaw, brush-cut hair, and intense brown eyes. The connection we had in the kitchen comes back again. I don’t need to look down to see I have blue particles around me again. Emotions stream through my heart. This time, all of them come from Thorne.
A fire of protective rage.
Electric jolts of affection.
The chill of determination.
The sensations are overpowering. For a moment, I forget that they are all probably figments of my imagination. Words tumble from my mouth. “These feelings…” I stammer. “What do they mean?”
“That I don’t care who’s coming or what the risks are. I won’t leave you, Meimi.”
I suck in a shocked breath. The motion severs the ties with the particles. All of them disappear. I choose to ignore how comfortable I’m getting with this mind-meld thing. Part of me is still pulling for the mental breakdown option.
Thorne rises. “You’re mine to protect.”
“Why would you say that? You don’t know me.”
His gaze locks with mine. “The past, present, and future are all constructs. In some dimensions, they all exist at the same moment.”
I nod. “Sure, that’s one of the first things you learn in drift science.”
“In many of these other places and dimensions, you and I already know each other. In fact, our connection is so strong, it’s bleeding over into this reality. My people call it finding your transcendent. It’s incredibly rare. Not to mention, unexpected.” He gives me a sad smile. “Especially for me.”
So I’m this guy’s transcendent? My head fogs over with memory. Did I dream about transcendents? I push to recall. Sadly, no matter how hard I press, I can’t remember anything else. There are more traditional ways to get answers, though.
“Something happened between us in the kitchen,” I begin. “Is that true, or am I having some kind of hallucination?”
“It’s true.” He steps closer. “It happened.”
Images pop into my mind. RCM1. Godwin. The Lacerator. “This isn’t the first time it’s happened. The Authority—that’s our government—has this genetically enhanced attack animal called the Lacerator. Not an animal exactly; it’s more like a particle monster.” I huff out a breath. “This is so hard to explain.”
“Did it look like this?” On Thorne’s arm, his Henley changes back into body armor. “Now, I’ll slow the process down.”
Sure enough, once the transformation moves more slowly, I can clearly see the tiny particles that hover over his skin as they realign into a new shape.
“Definitely. That’s what the Lacerator looked like.”
“That wasn’t a monster. It’s what I was telling you about before. The Sentient. Most exist in a swarm. Most likely, this Lacerator of yours is an independent cyber swarm.” He moves even nearer, stopping when his body warmth seeps into mine. “If they are interested, a swarm can choose to link to people for short periods of time.”
I blink hard, trying to process this news. “So all that was real.” All of a sudden, my legs feel wobbly beneath me.
“This is a lot of information,” says Thorne gently. “We can discuss it another time. I don’t wish to overwhelm you.”
“No, I can do this.” Some small part of my mind says my dreams have been preparing me for this moment, but I’m too focused on Thorne’s to consider much else.
“Tell me. What happened when you encountered the Lacerator?”
“I could feel its emotions. Images also appeared in my mind. It was some way of communicating with me. But with you, it was different. I got these crazy visions of us doing things together.”
“My poor Meimi. You must have so many questions.”
“I do, but I’m also in trouble. If you can find Luci and manipulate the Sentient, maybe you can help with this.” I zip open my backpack, pull out the Scythe’s data pad, and hand it over to Thorne. “I told you I made a deal before. Here’s what it is. If I can build this by midnight, then the Merciless won’t attack my home. Can you help me?”
Thorne stares at the walls. “You don’t wish to run away.”
“No, I’m staying here. The Scythe will find me wherever I go, and besides, this is my home.”
“I could counter attack.”
“Not the Authority and not within a matter of hours.” I firm my stance. “This is my plan. Will you help?”
He meets my gaze again before answering. “Yes, I will.”
I exhale. “Excellent.”
“Do you wish to also contact Chloe and Zoe? I understand they have skills that may be useful.”
My eyes widen. “Who told you about them?” I hold my arm, palm forward, in a motion that means hold on. “Let me guess. Miss Edith told you?”
Thorne nods. “Before you arrived, Miss Edith was, uh, very forthcoming with information.”
“Ugh, I don’t want to know. Let’s get to work.”
“Let’s.”
Thorne then gives me a full smile. It’s stunning. Little crinkle lines form by his eyes and everything. Plus, he has dimples. That’s such a problem. I’m still not sure I believe all that stuff about us knowing each other in different dimensions. Even so, it’s nice to have someone help me on this project.
Rubbing my forehead, I try to focus on something other than his grin. “I have some diagrams on my worktable. We can adapt them.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Thorne steps over to my ancient music player from RCM1. The thing is covered with scratch marks and food stains of indeterminate origin, but it works. “Music?” he asks.
“Yes, I need a beat when I work.”
Thorne purses his lips and presses the Play button. Revival rock blares from the speaker. This stuff is super old, but since there’s no music industry anymore, I’m happy to find whatever. The lead singer screeches out the lyrics to a remake of Seven Nation Army.
I wince. “Too loud?”
Another one of Thorne’s dazzling smiles comes my way. “No, it’s perfect.”
I’ve never had a helper in my lab before. I’m not sure how it would be with anyone else, but for me and Thorne? It’s like an intricate dance. He takes apart an exotic matter detector; I write code for a power burst.
We don’t talk.
Music thrums through us.
Every once in a while, our hands or bodies brush, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that I liked it. Thorne is solid everything.
Thought.
Muscle.
Confidence.
Everything Thorne touches ends up looking like a finished product, not a rough prototype. All in all, we make a pretty good team.
Some small voice in the back of my head says that after this prototype is built, he must leave to find Luci. Should I go with him? If we traveled together, I’d love to ask him a million questions about my parents, ECHO academy, his home planet, and this transcendent stuff. But I set aside those thoughts.
The prototype must come first.
The hours stream by, and before I know it, I’m installing my big red button atop the sealed briefcase. I’m a big believer of making it easy to know how my inventions get activated.
Inside the briefcase, the device is a careful weave of circuit boards and wires. Thorne and I ran a ton of diagnostic tests. No question about it. This thing will create a massive drift void at midnight on Saturday night at the Learning Squirrel High School.
What if the Authority can scan into the briefcase somehow and figure out how we built it? I hate to think that I’m helping Godwin. That said, I keep reminding how Thorne and I put in fail
safes on our fail safes. They shouldn’t be able to reverse engineer anything. In the end, I decide that there are no good choices here, only belief in my own judgment.
So I decide to trust myself as well.
When midnight comes around, the new security system talks through a freshly installed comm unit on the wall.
“Meimi, someone’s approaching the back entrance.”
The smooth voice startles me out of writing instructions for the Scythe. I punch off the music and turn to Thorne. “I got this. It’s Fritz.”
“I won’t be far away.”
I nod, close up the briefcase, and hightail it to the back door. The green rain is pounding now. When I open the back door, Fritz looks like a drowned swamp rat.
“You got it, ya?” The fake accent is back.
“Yes, instructions are here.” I hand him a padded envelope and then turn over the briefcase. “I still hate the idea of Godwin having this.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t use it. Just wants to run diagnostics.” Fritz shoots me another look that seems guilty, but it’s gone too quickly to be sure.
“Actually, that makes me more nervous than before. The Scythe said the Authority would actually use the thing. What’s this really about?”
“Proof of your skills, Meimi. Don’t worry, we’ll all get rich off this.”
Fritz shoves the briefcase and envelope under his coat and then turns away. I watch him trudge off into the night.
Not sure how I know this, but there’s no question in my mind: Thorne is standing behind me, looking over my shoulder.
“I don’t like this Fritz,” he says.
I tilt my head, thinking. “I trust Fritz more than the Scythe.”
And with that thought, all the adrenaline leaves my system. Suddenly, I’ve never felt more cold or tired. Shivers rack my spine.
“You need sleep,” says Thorne.
At the mention of the word sleep, I let out the mother of all yawns. “Yes, I do.” I turn around and realize how close Thorne and I now stand to each other.
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