Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
It’s hopeless.
So I have to choose.
Lose one?
Or lose both?
Anneeta is lying down on the bench, her face sweaty and red. I’m sitting next to the window and Clara is slumped against my chest. About an hour ago I made it so that Anneeta and Clara can no longer hold hands. I allowed Anneeta’s head to come in contact with Clara’s leg, but over the course of the hour I’ve repositioned them a dozen times, at least, so that the contact is as light as possible. Right now, it’s just Anneeta’s hair touching Clara.
It’s not enough. But it’s still too much. Any more contact than that, and Clara dies.
I give Clara the last jump because I’ve made my choice.
I’m going to save her, not the little god.
But an hour after that I give up and just look out the window, trying my best to come to terms with a world where neither Clara, nor Anneeta, are in it. Because we’re all out of jumps and Delta City is still nearly five hours away.
The train is angling up now and it comes roaring out of the tunnel at full speed, running parallel to the sea. I haven’t been back to Delta since I was fourteen and they took me away for augmentation.
On that trip I didn’t get a private compartment on a high-speed train. I was packed into a Sweep cargo train, like all the other boys they were pickin’ up around the world, and we sat shoulder to shoulder for seventeen hours. No windows at all.
But this is nice. And even though the two girls I was countin’ on having a future with are unconscious next to me, I just stare at the scenery as it goes flashing by. The sea is so blue, the sky is so blue, and the sand is nothing like the sand out in the desert between cities. It’s black, not tan. And I know from experience that it smells like fruit. Oranges, to be specific.
I think back on my childhood when we used to run these beaches and each time my foot would hit the sand that scent would float up into the air. We used to run, and run, and run—just for the fuck of it. Just so we could smell it.
Every kid in Delta knows why the sand smells like fruit. Tiny, microscopic crustaceans live in it. And when you step on the sand, you’re just killing them. Millions at a time. The scent is just them dying. That scent is nothing but death.
I sit up, startled, when suddenly the overlay comes online. It’s the familiar sweeping waterfall of symbols that I can no longer read.
Except it’s different now. It’s… slow. And I realize I can read it. It’s spitting out information about the landscape rushing by. Data and figures scrolling down my field of vision. And something else, too.
Somewhere else, actually.
Because the veil has disappeared, at least through my eyes, and it’s like being back in the Omega Outlands where I could see it all. Only more. Landscape over landscape over landscape. World under world under world.
I turn, checking on Clara and Anneeta, because this is a good sign. If the overlay is working, then they’re helping me.
But they’re not. Anneeta is still red-cheeked and sweaty. Clara is still slumped against me, unconscious.
The only thing that’s different now is that my overlay is inside the compartment too. There are people in here with us. Two men and three women, one of whom is a teenage girl. They are talking, and laughing, and they are made of spark.
The overlay is stealing their spark. It’s coming out of them like…
I stand up, jostling Clara, walking right through one of the men. I know this phenomenon, but I have to search my memory for the right word because it was not something I ever learned to use as an augment.
It’s plasma.
There are lines of plasma bursting off their bodies. It stretches, crackling and snapping, like tendrils reaching out for me. They touch my body, and it doesn’t feel like anything. Not even a little bit of wind. But it makes me glow under the canopy of the overlay.
I just look at my hands, all lit up blue, and I know what to do with it.
I’m still not sure about Anneeta. I can’t trust her. It makes me sad, but she’s been lying. So I don’t feed her. I just feed Clara. I sit back down, trying my best to ignore the ghosts of another dimension sharing the space with us, and I hold Clara in my arms, giving her life back one second at a time.
By the time the train starts the long slowdown that will take us into Delta City, Clara is mostly awake. I’ve been giving her constant spark for hours now, but it’s just barely enough to keep her alive as Anneeta sucks it right back out.