Eternity's Wheel (9 page)

“Most of us do, honestly. Why did he send you off? And when?”

“I do not know why,” she said, looking briefly irritated at the interruptions. “You will have to ask Joeb.”

“Where are we even going?” Josephine asked. “Is there any part of this world that isn't completely messed up, or does everyone just hold their breath all the time? Or do you have another ship?”

“We do not have a ship,” she said, “but the dust only reaches so far.”

It was at that moment that I realized the strain I was feeling in my legs wasn't because of how far we'd walked, it was
because we were going uphill. I ignored the sudden thud of my heart against my chest. The thought of going anywhere near another mountain was daunting, at the least. . . .

I heard a hawk cry out above me, and looked up. Habit, really; I hadn't expected to see anything. To my surprise, though, I did. Barely visible, so faint I thought I'd imagined it, there was the soft glow of sunlight and the shadow of a bird passing over us. The miasma was thinning.

“It's a little farther,” Jari said.

“So you and your brother can send each other emotions?”

“Yes, and we are often aware of the other's general location.”

“Have you ever done it by accident?” Josephine asked.

“When we were younger, yes. Not as much now. If we are in pain or afraid, we often think of the other first, and then those emotions may send by mistake. Jarl once broke his arm playing by the foxwillow in the last summer days, and I knew immediately.” There was something in her voice as she mentioned the incident, the casual way she spoke of things I'd never heard of reminding me of my own summers taking day trips to the beach with my family or when my sister and I ate Popsicles in the shade of the giant tree in our front yard. There was a sense of familiar fondness and a deep sense of loss; whatever a foxwillow was, Jari would probably never see one again. I would probably never see that giant oak tree again, either.

She glanced at me, and I offered a smile. Josephine was silent as she walked behind me. We both understood.

“This way,” Jari said before I could say anything else, veering off to the right. The air was clean enough now that I could see the path outside our bubble, and we were definitely up in the mountains. The incline got sharper, and the air got gradually thinner.

“We aren't going to run out of oxygen or anything, are we?” Josephine asked.

“I doubt the mountain goes that high,” I said, and she reached out to punch my arm. The good arm, thankfully.

“I know
that
. I meant the bubble we're in.”

“Oh,” I said, glancing around. That might actually be a legitimate concern.

“We are not in a bubble,” Jari explained. “I am purifying the air around us in a small radius as we walk. You could easily reach outside of my range, if you wished.”

“And you can do that anywhere? Even underwater?”

“Yes.” She sounded proud. “Underwater, far underground, anywhere. It is specifically the ability to create the environment I need to survive, no matter what is around me.”

“And you said you can adapt, too?” Josephine asked.

“Yes. I can either create the bubble for those I am with, or I can allow myself to breathe wherever I am.”

“Do you grow gills or anything? Like, do you change your shape?”

“No, that is my brother's gift. He can become a water dweller; I can simply dwell in the water as is.” She sounded irritated again; I was beginning to guess that she thought her brother's shape-shifting was a better ability than hers.

“That's really cool,” Josephine said, and then we had to explain the colloquialism to Jari. By the time we got that sorted out, the air had cleared up enough that Jari dropped her not-bubble, and we walked into a makeshift base.

My knees went weak with relief. There were at least half a dozen temp camps, which could fit four people if you got cozy. There were twice that many Walkers doing various chores, and I recognized most of them—and one in particular, a girl most recognizable by her beautiful white wings.

“Jo!” I shouted, surprising myself as I darted forward. I was further surprised when she moved forward as well, meeting me in a hug.

Though Jo was one of the first people I'd interacted with at InterWorld, our relationship had always been chilly at best. Still, she was a teammate and (as far as I was concerned) a friend, and the first of either I'd seen in four or five days.

I hugged her tightly, though I was careful of her wings and she was careful of my shoulder. She pulled back almost immediately, looking embarrassed at her uncharacteristic exuberance. “Joey,” she said, her voice heavy with relief. “You're—” She cut herself off from saying the word
okay
; I obviously wasn't all that okay, given the sling, wrist brace,
and number of bandages on me.

“Alive,” I filled in. “So are you. I'm glad,” I said honestly, and we exchanged wry smiles. It was kind of like that right now; “alive” was about as good as we could hope for.

“I am also pleased to see you relatively well, though not uninjured,” said another voice, one I would have recognized immediately even if not for the overabundance of formality in his tone.

“Hey, Jai!” Oh, what the hell—I hugged him, too, something he accepted with a hint of surprise. “Are you all right? I haven't seen you since . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what to call it. I couldn't say
the accident
, because it hadn't been one.

“I was fortunate enough to remain mostly unscathed,” he said, “and I attempted to provide the same fate for our comrades. With little success,” he added softly, his brown face filling with sorrow. I squeezed his shoulder.

“It would have been a lot worse without you,” I said.

A small crowd was gathering around us, a crowd of people I recognized. They all took turns waving or greeting me, saying they were glad to see me or expressing relief that I was alive and here. There was the rest of my team aside from J/O: Josef, twice my size and built of thick, dense muscle, and Jakon, my sleek, furry wolflike cousin, and others who weren't on my team but had missed me anyway. J'r'ohoho, the centaur from a primitive world who'd nevertheless excelled in his science classes, and Jaya, with her
red-gold hair and sweet voice.

They were all here, all glad to see me. It was a homecoming, of sorts, the kind I hadn't yet had at InterWorld. No one here had been glad to see me before, had given me hugs, or said they'd missed me. It was nice, not just for myself, but because Josephine was watching with a quiet understanding. I was glad she could see the camaraderie we felt for each other firsthand.

“How did you get here?” I asked finally, raising my voice to be heard above the chatter.

“That's something you and I should discuss,” said a new voice, firm but not unkind, and a few people stepped aside to reveal Joeb.

“Hey,” I said in greeting, another wave of relief washing through me. It wasn't just that I was glad to see him. He and Jai were both senior officers, which meant I wouldn't be the only one making decisions now. I didn't have to do this all on my own anymore.

“Come sit,” he said, gesturing to a few travel cots that were set up around a portable heater. It was warmer now that we could actually feel the sunlight, but I imagined it got cold up here.

Joeb and I sat down on a cot. All the others followed, some also sitting on cots and others on the ground, leaning against one another and otherwise getting comfortable. Apparently, it was story time.

“The Old Man pulled me into his office six days ago,” Joeb began, his brown eyes serious. “He said there had been a security breach, a leak he'd just discovered.”

“It was Joaquim,” I said. A murmur went through those listening.

“It can't have been,” someone said.

“We'd've known,” someone else insisted, and a few other voices rose up in agreement.

“It
was
Joaquim,” Joeb said clearly, his voice rising once again above the chatter. He let that sink in for a moment, glancing out over the faces of those assembled. “Captain Harker confirmed it before we left.”

I looked out at them, too, seeing the same disbelief I had felt, the same betrayal that had been twisting at me for days. “He's dead,” I said, and Joeb looked at me. “He was a creation of Binary . . . and HEX,” I said, and another murmur went through the crowd. “They're working together now. They used a combination of science and magic to create what they call FrostNight, and they used me and Joaquim to power it. Acacia helped me escape, but Joaquim was . . .”

“Killed?” asked Jo, when I faltered.

“Used up,” I said, unable to look at her. I couldn't look at anyone; I kept remembering Joaquim's face, still contorted into a mask of fear and anger, no emotion or depth or life left in his eyes at all. “He was powered by magic. And us, of the essences that are stolen when we're caught by HEX.”
Now I did look at her, and all of them, my gaze roaming over the faces of these comrades who were just like me. They all looked as sick as I felt.

“FrostNight,” Joeb said, after a moment of silence. “What is it?”

I took a breath. “Basically? A self-perpetuating supercontinuum that rearranges all of time and space in its path.”

A short silence followed my statement. Those who'd had any manner of basic classes at InterWorld Prime looked appropriately concerned. Others, such as Jari and Josephine, looked like they had absolutely no clue what the hell I'd just said.

“Okay,” said Joeb, who was one of the ones looking concerned. “What is its path, exactly?”

“Everywhere. It's a self-aware manifold; it can reach into any dimension.”

“It has to disperse eventually,” someone ventured from the crowd. “Doesn't it?”

“I don't
know
,” I snapped, then put a hand to my forehead. I hadn't meant to be short, I was just frustrated; I didn't know nearly as much about this as I needed to. I'd seen it created, but I still knew next to nothing. “It was powered by
us
, by me and Joaquim and all the souls they'd infused him with. They got all of . . . them, all of him, but I escaped.”

“How?” someone else asked, and I wasn't sure if I was imagining the hint of suspicion or not.

“Acacia,” I said, and Joeb held up a hand.

“Hold on,” he said, looking at me sympathetically. “Why don't I tell you our side of the story, and then you can fill in the gaps for us.”

I nodded, grateful, and he continued. “The Old Man called me into his office two days after we extracted the twins.” He nodded to Jari and the hawk. “He said there was a leak in InterWorld, and that everyone was in danger. He instructed me and several other officers to take small groups of people off Base for training, and not to return until we heard from him. He also gave me an ADT”—he pulled an advanced dimensional tracker, a small, circular device, from his pocket—“and told me to keep an eye out for you.”

“For me?” I accepted the tracker as he handed it to me, staring down the screen. It had exactly one blip, a little red dot in the center. Me. “I'll be damned,” I muttered, staring at the dot. I remembered sitting in the stark white infirmary, barely feeling the shot as it stabbed into my arm, still numb from my injuries and Jerzy's funeral the day before. “He had me injected with a tracer the same day he sent you off Base. Hours before, I'll bet. He said it was for my own safety, but now I'm not so sure.” After all, this wasn't the first time the tracer had come in handy. The Old Man had to have known it would, but how?

Acacia
, I realized, my hand clenching around the ADT. She was a Time Agent. She must have known this was going
to happen, must have warned the Old Man.

I did my best to fight down a surge of anger, and instead handed the ADT back to Joeb and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Why couldn't she have warned him about any of the other horrible things that had happened in the last week? Jerzy's death? Binary and HEX working together? The Professor sacrificing his “son” to create a self-aware soliton that will erase everything in the Multiverse, for God's sake! She didn't find any of that to be
half
as important as having me injected with a tracer?

“Joey?” Joeb's voice pulled me out of my thoughts, and I realized I'd completely lost track of the conversation.

“Sorry. What?”

“I asked if you knew why Captain Harker hadn't contacted us yet. I mean, I assumed I was waiting for you, but I imagine you haven't brought us orders to go back to base.”

I shook my head. “No. They're . . . InterWorld is compromised,” I said, hating the words as they left my lips. There was the sound of a collective intake of breath from everyone sitting around me. “It's been locked on to by a HEX ship. They're running, I don't know where to and I don't know for how long. I think they're stuck in a perpetual temporal warp, at least for now.”

“I was afraid of that,” Joeb said. At my look, he shrugged. “The InterWorld formula is . . . it feels like a broken link right now. Like it wouldn't take me anywhere if I tried to use it.”
He sighed, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, turning his head this way and that to stretch muscles made tense by worry and stress. I knew the feeling. “So that's my side of it. We've been sitting on this mountain for the better part of a week now, running some rudimentary training and waiting to either hear from the Old Man or see your little dot show up on the ADT.”

“What about the other officers with their teams? Do you know where they are?”

“I don't know if any of them actually made it off Base,” he admitted. “I grabbed my recruits pretty quickly—my teams, and what I could of yours.” He nodded to where Jo, Jakon, Josef, and Jai were sitting nearby, listening.