“Terrible plan,” Alex murmured, but he pressed his ring in and grabbed my thumb ring too.
“Now what?” I said. My central nervous system was on the verge of collapsing whereupon I would promptly go to pieces. I didn’t want to blather so I kept my mouth shut, but I did shake considerably as I climbed out. I gave Alex a look and he obliged me with quick time-pacing so I wouldn’t have to spend several minutes coaxing my knees not to buckle.
“Now,” Coreg said, pulling the third bottle out of his pouch, “we go to the last place they’d look.”
CHAPTER 10
#HideAndPuke
THE LONG, POINTED nose that poked out from the upturned neck flap of a baggy uniform twitched like a rabbit. It was green at the tip and dripped snot. But it was the mouth beneath that I stared at. His grin displayed teeth the color of fudge swirl ice cream. Coreg was dealing with this lazy guard whose pale green eyes held no sharpness and less intelligence. No bribe required, apparently. Coreg tricked him with a simple illusion, easy for a time-pacer. I wondered if any magicians on Earth were time-pacers; that would explain a few things.
We slipped past the guard and hurried on until Coreg stopped at an ornately carved archway.
“No line,” he said cryptically. He must have read the confusion on our faces because he went on. “We’re going to the Fringes. There’s usually a line of men waiting to go. Pain is free.”
Pain is free? What the heck did that mean?
“We’re going to a club, a pain-addiction club. They’ve all been closed down since the first evacuation. Pleasure clubs too. It’ll be a good place to hide and figure out our next move.”
We passed through the archway and walked down a long tunnel till we came to a chute.
“After you,” Coreg said.
I hesitated since I didn’t want to be first—not too keen on pain, I have enough of that once a month—nor did I want Alex to slip off and leave me alone with Coreg. I needed a stall tactic.
“Wait. What about our rings? Won’t they be able to track us?”
Coreg grabbed at my hand and twisted some inner ridge of my thumb ring. He did it too fast to follow. Alex worked his own; naturally he would have learned more of the ring’s functions than I had. It was just clunky jewelry to me.
Coreg frowned at me. “I thought you would have done that as soon as you left the Academy.” He clucked his tongue and made a face. “All right, down the chute.”
We didn’t move. Coreg urged me on, but I clung to Alex’s arm and Coreg got the hint. He lifted a foot to step up and into the chute. A moment later he slid off without a word and the chute closed. We had to wait for it to open again.
“Come with me,” I said. “Let’s not get separated.” Alex leaned in for a kiss and I stretched the moment for us.
The trip down the chute was speedy. We were doubled up like two third-graders on a playground slide, but this slide had speed and twists and turns. It was slippery too and then it started to narrow. We were forced to lie back and my head bumped against Alex’s stomach, his legs tight against my hips. The second I feared we’d get wedged to a stop the chute plummeted us vertically down and it felt like falling. The speed was necessary though to get us through the next section that was horizontal. My feet suddenly dropped out and we landed in a wad at Coreg’s feet.
Who wouldn’t giggle and snort after a wild ride like that?
Coreg, that’s who. He wrenched me to my feet and pulled me to follow. We were in a small room lit by blue light disks on a transparent wall. Through the wall I could see machines poised above tables. The machines looked like robots and dentist’s drills and radiation devices. Tubes and lines hung from most. Some tables had straps.
It was eerily silent as we stared. I didn’t want to ask Coreg what we were looking at. His words from before, pain is free, were enough to stimulate my imagination.
“We can rest on the tables,” Coreg said, “if you need to sleep. If not there’s another room where the technicians work. That’s where we’ll plan our next move … after I get some rest. I’ve been awake for thirty double-moons, traveling.”
He opened the door, walked into the room and picked a platform. The room stank of sweat and fear and mold.
I followed Alex on through the door Coreg had indicated. No way was I going to lie down on anything in that foul smelling place. Coreg stayed behind in the pain room.
The technicians’ room was strange, boat-shaped and narrow with a shiny floor that did an amazing job of reflecting more items—torture devices?—hanging from the copper-clad walls. Curved rods spiraled from the ceiling like frozen pechan vines. The furniture in the middle of the room was long and connected, like arranging four poolside lounge chairs outward in a pinwheel.
“They work in here?”
“Guess so,” Alex shrugged. He stretched out on one of the long chairs and a tray popped up from the side with a complete set of controls labeled with Klaqin characters.
“He might sleep for days,” Alex said, pressing two buttons that did nothing. “Would it be mean to time-pace?”
“No, but don’t. We haven’t had a chance to be alone. Before we were, uh, boyfriend girlfriend we were together constantly. Now … not so much.” I patrolled around the edge of the room, checking for storage drawers or lockers or somewhere they might keep, dare I hope, snacks.
“What do you mean? We’re together all the time.” He jabbed at more buttons, probably hoping to find a video game screen and a joystick.
“Yeah, we’re together, but we’re not to-geth-er.” That was certainly as clear as I could make it, except to add, “Like alone together.”
“We are now.” He pushed the tray back over and patted his lap. “Here, girl.”
I wasted no slow seconds perching myself comfortably in his arms. I didn’t mind his dog reference. “Woof,” I said, so cleverly. I had it in my mind to teach him some kissing games, something I’d read in a teen magazine, but that thought flew out of my head with his first, warm soul-offering kiss. This was no game.
I suppose I made too many of those gaspy-moany-groany sounds or maybe that was Alex. At any rate I knew without opening my eyes that we were being watched. Total embarrassment. Coreg clucked, staggered toward us and collapsed into one of the long chairs.
I failed to think of anything clever to say. I rolled off Alex and stood up.
But Alex frowned, “What’s the matter, Coreg?”
Coreg’s eyes were shut, his features swollen and disfigured. What the heck? Had he used the pain machines? He looked terrible. We’d been apart, what, five minutes? I took a couple of steps backward and pressed myself against the copper wall.
Coreg groaned, not a happy groan, a sick groan. “Bad kakleti.”
“The third bottle,” Alex said to me, “he must have drunk some.” He swung his feet to the floor and stared at Coreg.
I moved closer to take a look. His neck had a rash spreading up toward his face. The glands of his neck were huge. I rubbed my right hand against my side to dry the moisture and reached out to check his temperature, pressing the backs of my knuckles gently against his forehead like my mother would do. He was blazing with fever. Tentatively I felt his neck; the glands were hard as boiled eggs. I knew what my mother would say, but would a full-blooded Klaqin’s symptoms produce the same diagnosis?
“He’s too hot, Alex. What should we do?”
Alex hopped to his feet and leaned over Coreg to perform the same temperature sampling and throat assessment. “Measles? Mumps? Huh. Bad kakleti could mean food poisoning. Coreg … Coreg, what do you want us to do?”
He lifted his head half an inch and opened his eyes, just slits, and groaned out a Klaqin curse.
“You should vomit,” I offered, then added, “but don’t soak it up on your uniform.”
Alex frowned at me and I whispered, “You don’t want to know.” I figured there was good vomit and then there was bad vomit. The uniforms might recycle whatever toxin there was in the kakleti back th
rough his skin.
A drop of moisture glistened on the tip of his nose. I pulled up the fold on his neck flap and wiped it for him. He eyed me with something between disinterest and wretchedness. He groaned again. The sharp scent of perspiration reached me; his uniform sure wasn’t working. I saw his hands clench into fists, tight enough to make his knuckles turn blue.
I sighed at Alex. “Tell me again why we’re here. Maybe we should take him back to his father.”
That got Coreg’s attention.
“No. This’ll … pass. But … I can’t … pace.” He rolled his eyes up toward Alex and gave him what had to be the most pathetic pleading expression.
I could have fallen over from the energy of Alex’s pacing. If we’d been traveling in space we would have gone a light year in no time. I thought we were underground and he wouldn’t be able to speed things up, but either the copper-clad room was helpful or the trip by chute had been more horizontal than I thought. Coreg’s glands shrank and his face dried. An invisible force of air ruffled his hair and several strands fell forward, hiding his eyes. He thumbed one behind his ear and rose up. He seemed completely cured. Except for the rash.
Then time readjusted itself as Alex stopped pacing.
A quick Klaqin word of thanks was in order, but Coreg wasn’t the thankful type. In fact, he acted angry at Alex.
He spun his thumb ring and read out the Klaqin time. It meant nothing to me, but Alex understood.
“Twelve double-moons? I paced us that far into the future?” He ended with the same Klaqin curse Coreg was fond of using.
I spotted some white hairs on Alex’s head and wondered if that was related to the fierce pacing he’d been doing. “Yeah, so? Looks like no one’s found us yet. That’s good, isn’t it?” I studied them both for reactions.
“Yes and no,” Coreg said. “I told you they’d never look for us here, but in the space of twelve double-moons who knows which alternate plans have been enacted. The evacuation could have been accomplished in six. We might be alone on Klaqin.”
Right. The Adam and Eve thing again. Not gonna fall for that.
“Or?” I lifted both eyebrows and tilted my head.
“Or,” Coreg scratched at the rash, “they’ve sent another time-bender to Gleezhe.”
“But the only other … crap, my brother!”
Every experience we’d had on Klaqin reminded me of a row of knots in a giant tapestry. The looms of fate were weaving a terribly complicated picture. If they couldn’t find me … if they sent poor Buddy … if he couldn’t manage the bending … if Marcum was expecting me …
Marcum …
“Or,” Coreg went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “they might put out an execution order on someone in your family.”
“What? Why?”
“To flush us out.”
Oh, crap. I bent and Coreg, or maybe Alex, paced. We wobbled back and forth, the pressure and the air in the copper-lined room heating up. Coreg rose to his feet and we kept the standoff churning through the time and reality around us. His rash receded and the color in his face changed, darkened. His eyes gleamed and I couldn’t risk something unknown to continue this stalemate. I let the hiccups come and dropped to the floor.
CHAPTER 11
#Discovery
I TOOK A few prolonged breaths and waited. Nobody was helping me up. Boyfriend, boyfriend, where are you?
More breaths. No air. Hey, I wasn’t breathing at all.
I stared up at Alex who stood transfixed.
Coreg too.
I was the only one of us whose eyes could move. If this wasn’t me doing a phenomenally slow time-bend, then what was it? A hiccup in time?
Time. At least I could see and think.
Think about time. Not twelve double-moons. I didn’t believe it. Suddenly I didn’t believe any time at all had passed. In some random way we’d created a time-stoppage similar to what Marcum could do. That had to be it.
Lights. Camera. Cue the action.
But I could not move. Hashtag stuck in time.
Yes, stuck in time and now with a vision: I saw men on those horrible tables, turning deep purple and black, crying out in pain—and liking it. I saw technicians sitting in this room, scanning readouts and listening to the cries of addicts. A clear image came to me of Marcum’s blue-black head pressed to a window, watching the addicts as a ramik clanged and the lights flickered. Marcum looked as disgusted as I felt. Next to him was Coreg, smirking and smug with a secret knowledge about the club. The scene changed; they were gone. I saw the technicians taking note of their departure and scurrying around this room, sending and receiving information, recording meetings, and paying no more attention to the stream of addicts who helped themselves to automatic devices.
Gasp. End of vision.
Movement.
Alex’s hands were under both my armpits and he hefted me upright.
“Another one?” he said.
I nodded. The vision had dissipated but I was left with an impression of defiance and of time stopping. I looked to Coreg. “Check the time again. I don’t believe it’s been twelve double-moons. Not even one. I think we’ve had an out of time experience like what Marcum can do.”
Coreg scoffed, but he checked his ring and the readout of a control on the wall. He clucked softly. “One time unit since we left the thotti, that’s all.” The look on his face said what he couldn’t: he’d been wrong and he didn’t understand what had happened.
“This is a resistance headquarters.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was going to say them.
Coreg blanched. Then cursed. “Yes. You … you did what Marcum …”
Funny how my brain was processing and drawing conclusions without effort. I knew what he was going to say. “You brought Marcum here so he’d react and show his time-stopping ability. Right?”
He nodded. Stunned, obviously. I knew exactly which emoji to paste on his forehead.
“When I was sent to the Academy,” he paused, obviously not wanting to reveal some long-kept secret, “I’d been tasked by Second Commander Dace with trying to expose Marcum’s ability to stop time. Dace had been sure he could do it, based on a genetic study he had, and he’d ordered me to bring Marcum here—to shock him—in the hope of activating what he called the TS theory. If it worked, his men were in the technicians’ room ready to record whatever happened and on hand to escort a very important prize back.”
“Well, it worked on me. Just the sight of those awful machines. Gross. Plus the plan to use my brother and make me the mother of a new race … and then the thought of an execution order—”
Alex hugged me and suggested we focus on something else, like finding helpful information about the resistance, since we were here already. I nodded agreement, but I stood where I was reviewing the vision, Coreg’s revelation, this TS theory—obviously Coreg was transliterating it so we’d make the connection: Time Stopping theory—and the fact that Marcum could do it now, but not then.
I didn’t think I stopped time; it was more like bending to the closest possible point to stopping. I doubted I could do it again.
I went to work slowly, pawing through every panel, drawer, cupboard and shelf, but my mind was churning over these facts.
The technicians’ room turned out to be a treasure trove of information, not only on every client—that stuff would be useful for blackmail if they did that kind of thing on Klaqin—but there were also caches of stolen documents, recordings, and holographic studies that gave us insight into more of the club’s secret endeavors. This was definitely resistance headquarters and Coreg admitted to knowing it all along.
“I thought we’d be well-hidden here,” he said, a pile of thin plaques spread across his lap, “and I expected at least one resistance worker to be on duty.”
“Klaqin or Gleezhian?” Alex asked. He seemed to be accepting this as if he’d had the vision instead of me. In fact, he acted downright unconcerned about our current dilemma: we were in resistance terr
itory and no one was around to help us.
Coreg clucked lightly. “Klaqin. This was a Klaqin resistance center. Headquarters, like she said. The Gleezhian refugees are distinctly separate. There’s some interconnectedness, but ultimately their goals are different. Dace was a leader … in the government, in the Academy, and in the Resistance. He was willing to give his life to get you here, time-bender. He did give his life. He was on that pursuer ship … the one that took the Gleezhians’ freezer charge and then imploded. Remember?”
Right. Our first space battle.
“I’m so confused.” I slumped into the farthest long chair and leaned back. “My mind is like butter.” I closed my eyes and imagined myself in a lounge chair on the beach. I used to slather myself with tinted tanning lotion, listen to music and fall asleep in the sun. If I concentrated then maybe—
“Selina, don’t time-bend now. Simply rest a bit.”
I raised one eyelid a millimeter and assessed the two guys. Alex whispered to Coreg to ignore me for a while. They went back to examining drawers and cupboards and various data. They were getting along fairly well. Coreg was intent on decoding a particular piece of information and the two of them began a conversation that I’m sure no political science professor on Earth could follow. I listened, eyes completely closed again.
I was stunned to hear that Alex had learned some Klaqin history. With the same mental aptitude he had for music he could see correlations in Klaqin and Gleezhian governmental strategies as if he were listening to a symphony and extracting the beat, recalling the tune in a different pitch, or whistling it backwards. He’s such a genius. He and Coreg discussed the Klaqin Wars as easily as rehashing a football game.
I rested.
After a while I sat up and asked what more I could do. I’d be no help in going through the written data we’d found or the recordings and holographs. Coreg could quickly skim the Klaqin writings and Alex could listen to a few seconds of Klaqin recordings and identify voices by their musical tones: Cotay, Dace, Merlig, Esko, Stetl-glet, and more. But what could I do?
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