I hold absolutely still, transfixed by the look on her face. She believes this. What’s more… her belief is making her look at me differently. Like I’m something worthy. Worthy of this gift. Worthy of immortality. Worthy of her.
She’s whispering now because our faces are too close for speaking normally. “Galenos is a god in love with a mortal. There’s no shame in that—humans are the precious seed from which we bloomed. And does not every god love their creatures? Or their creations?”
She’s talking about me now. My heart’s ready to kill me with the pounding… or stop altogether.
“All along,” she whispers, “I thought your gift would manifest through your art. Your creative spirit was so strong, so vibrant, so passionate, I was sure it was knocking on the door of your soul. But I was mistaken. Or perhaps that was only the first step. And now you need a different kind of passion to complete the transition.” She leans forward. “To ignite your gift.”
Her lips are on mine, impossibly soft yet urgent. My body responds like it’s awoken for the first time in my life. My hands slide around her bodyform, my arms bringing her to me, my lips eager for hers. Her hands work into my hair, her lips part, and I deepen the kiss without thinking or wondering why any of this is possible. I’m drowning in the sensation of touching her, the length of her body against me, the feel of her lips hungry for mine. Hungry for me. Because somehow, this thing she’s created in me is finally making me worthy of her—and I need that more than I need air.
My heart soars in a way I didn’t know possible.
Her hand slips inside my toga and slides the weightless fabric off my shoulder. Her delicate but firm fingers probe the muscles of my chest. Everywhere she touches feels like it’s sparking with electric fire. I pull back, stunned, unable to believe this is actually happening. The cathedral lights play across her face. I slide a hand up from her back to touch the spots, chasing them with my fingertips. If there are angels, there are none more beautiful than her.
“Do you feel it?” she asks, her eyes wide.
I feel so much. “Feel what?” I ask, breathless.
She pulls me back for another kiss, slower this time and deeper, and I’m certain I’ll combust before we get much further. Her hands are on my chest again, touching me in a way that’s making it hard for me to breathe. I don’t know where to put my hands—anywhere I touch, she’ll feel them shake—but I want to touch her. I want to slide her toga off and consummate this fire that’s burning inside me, but it all feels too surreal… too insane…
Too fast.
I pull back again, my chest laboring like a fish drowning in air.
Her hands are on my cheeks, her eyes searching mine. “Is it coming?”
“Is what coming?” I swallow, my throat parched from my heaving breath.
Her eyes blaze an intense blue. “The fugue state. Can you feel it coming?”
A chill sweeps through me, knocking my fever down ten degrees.
I release her and step back, pulling out of her grasp. I heave a couple more breaths before I can force the words out. Before I can wrap my mind around the truth of them. “You’re trying to induce the fugue.”
Her eyes go wide. “I thought it would… I thought you wanted…” She takes a step back. “I’ve made a mistake.”
Tears prick my eyes, but my anger burns them off. “Yes. You’ve made a mistake. And so have I.”
I turn my back on her and close my eyes. I tip my head up and press my fists to my temples. I am such an idiot. She was using me, manipulating me, trying to evoke this state she thinks will bring out whatever she’s searching for. The Answer.
“Eli, I’m sorry,” she says, but the words don’t touch me.
The ascenders don’t care about people like us. Kamali said it. Cyrus too. All along, all of them have been saying it, and I believed them, believed it, in every case… save one. Because I wanted so desperately to believe something else. To believe is to love into being. I’ve been wanting to believe, wanting to love something into being with Lenora. But it was all just a delusional fantasy about the one woman I can never have.
“Eli, please.” Lenora’s hand is on my arm. I pull it from her grasp without turning around.
Everyone wants to use me for their purposes. Every ascender, at least. The humans in my life seem to actually care about me. I may not be entirely like them, but I want to be. I want to be as brave as Kamali. I want to be as devoted as Cyrus. They may be mortal, but they’re better than any immortal I’ve ever met. And it’s time I started using this gift for some good purpose, like they would—something other than being manipulated by ascenders.
I turn to face Lenora. Her skin has gone ashen gray, and I’m glad. Because I have no use for her emotions right now. Only what she can do to help me free my family and friends.
“Let’s get something straight,” I say. “I control the fugue. I control this “gift.” We do this how and when I say. And you do not get a vote.”
She looks abashed. “Eli, I was genuinely trying to help. You have to believe—”
I stop her with raised finger. “I don’t have to believe anything.”
She frowns, then gives me a small nod of acquiescence.
My anger is still hot, but it’s calming a little. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to use the fugue to find Augustus. And when I do, I’m going to steal his personal key. Then we’re going to use that as leverage to get him to release everyone.”
Her eyes go wide. “You can do that?”
“Yes.” I smirk at her surprise. “I can.”
I charge into the bedroom where I left Kamali, only to find Galenos there as well.
They’re chatting about something. I’m still hot with anger at Lenora and ready to barrel ahead with our plan—stealing Augustus’s personal key—but Kamali’s expression stops me cold. It’s a weird kind of surprised stare like she’s never seen me before. Galenos has a full smirk that’s clearly directed at me. It’s not until he raises an eyebrow to Lenora coming in behind me that I realize my toga is still half-off, hanging below my bare chest.
My face heats even more. “I need better clothes.” My words are clipped by embarrassment and directed at Galenos.
“I’ll… see what I can do.” He pauses by Lenora on the way out, and I’m sure they’re having a transmitted exchange at my expense, but I don’t care. It’s Kamali’s stare—at me, half-naked—and then the subsequent examination of the empty floor in front of her that sinks my heart lower with each beat. Whatever she’s thinking, she’s not wrong. And I deserve whatever judgment she has. But I can’t afford any of that right now.
I step forward, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes keep flicking to my bare chest, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if there wasn’t a slightly disgusted look on her face.
“I need your help,” I say simply, then wait for whatever accusations she wants to throw at me. We might as well deal with those first.
Her brown eyes finally settle on my face. “How?”
Relief trickles through me. I should have known—Kamali has always been a better person than I am. “To get into the fugue state. I’m going after Augustus.”
She frowns and draws back. “You’re going after him… in the fugue?”
“I’m going to steal his personal key.”
That shocks her enough that she struggles for words.
Before she can recover, Galenos returns with a white shirt and coarse brown pants in one hand and knee-high black boots in the other. “I’m afraid I’m rather short in the clothing department for human males, and I doubt Celeste’s wardrobe would fit you. However, a few decades ago, I went through an unfortunate costume phase. This one’s for a 17th-century pirate. It seemed the least objectionable.”
I grimace but take the clothes from him. It’s easy enough to slide the pants on under the toga, but they’re entirely too short, cutting off just below the knees. Then I figure out they tuck into the boots. The shirt, on the other hand, is ridic
ulous. The sleeves billow out with wide, frilly cuffs halfway down my arms, and it doesn’t button at all, just hangs open. I’m nearly as bare-chested as before. Kamali looks much more revolutionary in her black t-shirt and jeans.
I give her a pained look.
She manages not to laugh. “It is better than the toga.”
I shake my head.
“Can you really obtain Augustus’s personal key?” asks Lenora, who is hovering at the door, like she’s uncertain if she should come in.
“Yes,” I say. “But meditation might not be strong enough to get me in the state I need. Can you reprogram a monitor patch like Marcus did to manipulate my brain chemistry and induce the fugue?”
She looks to Galenos, who says, “I have a full med suite in the back.”
Lenora disappears from the doorway, rushing with ascender speed off to finally make herself useful.
I take a seat on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go ahead and try without the patch,” I say to Kamali, who’s still wide-eyed at what we’re doing. “I’d much rather do it with meditation if it will work. Fewer after-effects, I think.”
She nods and climbs onto the bed behind me. When she rests her delicate hands on my shoulders and starts kneading, I realize what a mess of emotions I am: anger at myself and Lenora, shame at being so easily manipulated, embarrassment that Kamali knows without a word of explanation… and excitement at the prospect of taking down Augustus. None of it is conducive to relaxing into the fugue state. I try to shove all of it aside and focus on finding the ascender who’s holding my mother captive, probably mentally torturing her, after convincing her to implant his experiment inside her body seventeen years ago, then betraying her…
Okay, rage isn’t helping either.
I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. I try to imagine all the anger, all the pain, floating out of my body on each exhale. Just when I’m convinced there’s no way this is going to work, Kamali’s soft voice begins.
“Imagine all your negative feelings are strings wrapped up into a ball. Wind and wind the ball, with each turn capturing your anger and binding it tight. Now take the ball and place it in a box. Lock it and put it on a very high shelf. The negative emotions are in the box, waiting for you, but they are separate from you now, leaving behind only peaceful emotions. You’re calm. Relaxed. Floating on a placid lake with only the smallest of ripples on the surface.”
It’s working. My anger still seethes inside the box, a wasps’ nest waiting for me to return, but for now, Kamali’s fingers work relaxation into my muscles, and her words are doing the same for my mind. I breathe in and out, timing it with the slow sway of my body with her hands. Footsteps scuffle the floor, but the sound is distant, receding.
“You’re in a safe place…”
“Nothing can harm you here.” The voice has shifted, deepened. I open my eyes. I’m in the shop with the master painter—he’s re-emerged from the darkness, where I last left him. He seems to be my portal, or at least the first stop when I come peacefully into the fugue with Kamali’s help. I’m just sure he’s some famous Dutch painter from the past—I study his face, vowing to search the nets to figure out which one the next time I have access.
For now, I have to get out of this room. “I need to find Augustus,” I say, hoping that will draw me toward him. I don’t know where the master’s ancient studio is, but these rock walls are no more real than the blackness he sunk into before.
“It’s all real, Eli,” he says. “As real as you or I.”
Which doesn’t mean much, I think.
“It means everything,” he says, but I’m focused on finding a way to lift out of this vision and go to wherever Augustus is—I know he’s somewhere in New Portland, holding everyone captive. I try to will myself there, but the aged wooden benches stay stubbornly present.
“My friends are being hurt,” I say to the old man. “I need to get out of here, so I can help them.” I’m about ready to leave the fugue altogether and start over with Lenora’s device. Not that I really know how to do that either.
“A bridge gains its strength from the trusses,” he says. Before I can ask what he means, he reaches a single, crooked finger toward my forehead. I don’t feel the touch, but it blows me apart. The master and his workshop vaporize, and my mind expands. For a moment, I see so many levels, so many visions, stretching infinitely in all directions, above and below, and sideways in ways I don’t understand… then I telescope down, sucked back to earth… and I’m floating above New Portland.
“Thank you, old man,” I mumble with relief. I try to focus on Augustus again, which is tough, because I have no idea what he looks like, in ascender or fugue form. But I feel a tug anyway. I zoom through the towers, drawn to the outskirts of New Portland and a sprawling campus of buildings. The walls are insubstantial, like before, but the bright lights of the ascenders moving within are clear. They flash past me as I descend into the building, past a hundred levels, to a subterranean complex that’s even larger than the buildings above ground.
The tug grows stronger. I’m close enough to the forms now to see them more clearly: most are sequestered in their own rooms. These must be the captured members of the Resistance, although it’s hard to tell the difference between humans and ascenders in the fugue. One figure grabs my attention as I drift past: Cyrus. He’s passed out on a cot, one arm hanging down and a look of pain on his face.
“Cyrus!” I can’t help calling out, but he doesn’t wake up.
Then I’m pulled into a room with a woman curled up on her cot, sobbing: my mother. I reach a hand for her, and the motion yanks me to her side. She’s still crying, and the tears choke me as if they’re mine. Rage threatens to well up and consume me. I place my hand on her head—and I’m instantly inside her mind. The totality of my mother’s life starts to flood into me… but I don’t want this, can’t take all of this, don’t want to know any of it…
I stumble back.
My mom wipes her face, still turned away from me, then burrows her head into her pillow. She’s calmer now, her breathing smoother. No more crying.
Only a fraction of her life was transferred to me, but it’s enough. Too much. I know everything she felt for Augustus, every word that he spoke, every lie he told. Every intimate act they shared. It’s this knowledge that drew me to her, but her tears aren’t for that… they’re for me. Because my mother is convinced that Augustus will find me and destroy me. I focus everything I have, all my rage, all my horror at what Augustus has done to her, into a singular purpose: finding him.
I’m sucked out of my mother’s cell so fast, I can barely track what’s happening… until I’m suddenly stationary in Augustus’s office. He’s transmitting something to another ascender in the room with us. Their words are streams of blue mist that flit between them. I poke a finger into it, and I can sense everything: the data, the words, the images they’re speaking with. It’s unrelated to anything I care about, so I pull back. Augustus’s fugue form is large and commanding. His face is sharp-boned, and his shoulders broad, all of it speaking of a physical kind of power. But we’re not in the physical realm now. As far as I can tell, he has no idea I’m present. I move behind him, and his bald head seems singularly vulnerable.
I plunge my hand into it.
I’m squeezed into an infinitesimally small space then exploded out again.
I’m drifting. In grayness.
Augustus is gone. The world is gone. There’s nothing but nothingness, and I’m trapped in it, immobile, floating without purpose. The gray wisps curl around me but remain formless, like the pieces of myself that are scattered somewhere within it.
Kamali, I think. Bring me out. But nothing happens. I would panic, but the grayness dulls everything, every emotion and thought. It’s slowly dissolving my need to leave, like I’m being pulled apart, molecule by molecule… I force myself to focus. I concentrate on Kamali, her steady hands and calm voice… I can almost hear her calling me…
I suck a
ir into my body. It’s trembling, but I’ve had much worse.
Kamali’s hands are on my shoulders, crouched in front of me at the edge of the bed, but she leans back when she sees I’m awake. “You’re back.”
I smile. “I heard you calling my name.”
She scowls. “I wasn’t saying anything.” Then she shoves away from me and retreats to the head of the bed, folding herself up and locking her arms around her bent knees. “I don’t like this. I never know when to wake you.”
Did I just imagine her voice in the fugue? I frown. “You did just fine.” I don’t know if I brought myself out this time or what, but the way she’s scowling and folded up… that’s bad. I need to not lean on her if I can avoid it.
I take a breath and a quick mental inventory—my contact with Augustus was incredibly brief, but I managed to get the one thing I came for.
“Did you find him?” Lenora asks. She and Galenos are standing at the foot of the bed, staring at me like I’ve morphed into an alien creature right before their eyes.
I give her a small smile. “I have his key.”
She hurries over like she’s going to embrace me. My frown holds her at bay. Her hands pull back and clasp onto each other instead. “I’ll need access to the key,” she says.
“I know.” While I’d love to destroy Augustus myself, I don’t have the first idea how. And just brushing against his mind sends me hurtling out in the gray nothing-land of the fugue. I doubt my human intellect will have a chance against his ascender one, even with his personal barrier down.
Lenora frowns a little. “There’s a technique to probe human conscious thoughts and memories without the nanite prosthesis—”
“I know,” I cut her off. “Augustus is using it on my mother to find me.” A sour feeling rises in the back of my throat: I can literally feel my mother’s pain as he scoured her mind. I feel her violation, her shame at betraying me through no fault of her own, and the physical discomfort itself. Her memories are so vivid, it’s like they happened to my own brain matter—it’s worse than anything Augustus has done to her prior to this. And he’s doing this to everyone on account of me.
The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series) Page 20