Time thief, p.10
Time Thief, page 10
Wren had said that it hadn’t been an easy conversation before they left. Our leaders had questions that no one could answer except for me. They had always respected that I didn’t want to discuss my past. That was over now. When I returned, I had to answer to the chief, and she was angry with me for withholding so much more than she’d ever imagined. To my surprise, Wren said Beast had been the first to say that they would wait for my return to attack the Prophet, because they wouldn’t be able to defeat him without me and whatever I had been hiding on this mountain.
I would have accepted Leif and Wren being angry with me as well, but they weren’t. It only fueled the guilt I felt for not telling them about my history. I’d wanted to protect them. Now, I was leading them to the most dangerous place in the world.
“Flare told us you’d agreed to work with her and brought us here.” Wren’s eyes were on the pink of the sunrise as we walked. Nash had ventured further up the path and Leif hung behind him, refusing to take his eyes off the other man for a moment.
“I am not working with her. She told me bringing you here was a gift.” I shook my head. “I think it’s a warning. She’s showing me what she can do and indebting me to her.”
“What about Nash? Do we trust him?”
I smiled at that. We. Because if I trusted someone, Wren would, too, no questions asked. Unlike Leif. “Enough for now.”
“He won’t be easy to take down if it comes to it.”
“No.”
Wren hesitated, voice gentler now. “If the worst does happen, with him or whatever awaits us on the mountain, we’ll need your power.”
Pain twisted my stomach. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “How long have you known?”
“Longer than Leif.” She hooked her arm around my neck and leaned on me as we walked, tall and slender. Always there to keep me grounded. “He told me the power is sealed. You’ll get it back. I have no doubt.”
And that was all she said. No questions asked. No details given. Just a nonchalant update that my circle knew I was a demon and always had known. Great.
Where Leif might have chided me for my shame or tried to make me laugh until I forgot, Wren only walked alongside me and let us be silent together. Though they knew my secret, they didn’t really understand. They hadn’t seen what I was capable of, but soon they might. What if they looked at me differently? They would always love me. But what if the precious comfort of their acceptance grew dimmer and things shifted? And what if I lost what I loved most in the world?
By the time we stopped to rest for the night, my stomach was in a tangled mess. That didn’t seem to matter to Leif, though, because he decided to pounce anyway. Nash and Wren both left to forage before bed while Leif and I prepared a fire. Hardly a minute had passed after they left when Leif ripped the firewood from my arms and threw it on the ground.
“Tell me the truth, now,” he said.
I frowned at the wood on the leafy forest floor and then at him. “What?”
“What? You know what.” Leif scowled. “Are you fucking the enemy?”
My jaw dropped in indignation. “Obviously not.”
“It’s not obvious at all.”
I growled and shoved him. “Don’t be an ass, Leif!”
He swatted me away. “Girl.” Warning filled his voice. “I’m not playing.”
“I’m not either.”
“Then make this make sense. Why is he here?”
Now real hurt spread over my chest. “You think I would compromise the most important thing in the world to me because of that? The only thing I care about is getting our people back.”
His expression softened, but it didn’t stop him from saying the next part. “You wouldn’t do it on purpose.” He held up a hand when I started for him again. “Don’t. I mean it.”
I lowered my fist to my side. “We need all the help we can get. He has inside information on the Prophet and Flare, and he’s one of the best swordsmen I’ve ever met.”
“Those all sound like reasons to me to never fall asleep around him. Max, you’re not this stupid.”
“Wren trusts me.”
“Wren is too trusting. You’re usually the first to say that.”
He had a point. I fell back against the closest tree. “It’s my gut, Leif. No matter what happens, I just keep feeling like he’s supposed to be here. And don’t you dare say it has anything to do with any kind of feelings for him, because it doesn’t.”
Looking unconvinced, he sighed. “I’ve always trusted you, but I don’t trust him. If he’s here, then we’re sleeping in shifts. My family is on the line, Max.”
“I know.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “Look, if we send him back now, then who knows what he’ll do? If he really isn’t on our side, he could go straight to the Prophet. If we keep him with us, we can watch him and kill him if he crosses us. Is there anything more trustworthy than my bow and your sword?”
Leif grinned now. “Hell no. Nothing. Look, if the time comes, you have to really kill him, though. You can’t let your emotions get in the way. And just know if he even looks at you too long, I’m ripping his windpipe out with my bare hands.” He lifted his fist in the air like he was imagining it. “Then I’ll shove it back down his throat, deep in there, and—”
“Okay.” I pushed off the tree. “Damn. I get it.”
He picked up the wood and hesitated. “I may have been a little harsh with you.”
“You were an asshole!”
“Stop being so childish.” Leif groaned. “Shouldn’t you have grown up more by now? You’re not a kid anymore.”
“You’re the one who should have grown up by now, you old man.”
“I am not old.”
“Arn would take my side, you know. He wants you to be more patient with me.”
Leif rolled his eyes. “Only a holy man could have enough patience to deal with you, girl.”
As much as the bickering could annoy me, I loved it just as much, and I loved having Leif and Wren back with me. When I settled to sleep that night with Leif and Wren both close, I finally had a touch of peace. But it still wasn’t enough to keep me from slipping away in my dreams.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wind rushed beyond the Sacred School and tore over the cliff, carrying away pebbles from the rock we sat on.
Piercey stared past the Valley below with eyes still as the dead themselves. He didn’t need to tell me what he was thinking about. I could feel it as powerfully as the wind.
“We’re real,” I said.
“Then we’ll still be real when we wake up in the real world.”
I closed my eyes. “What is the real world, Piercey? She said her world is digital. Her people all uploaded. There may be nothing physical to return to.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s out there? Where we come from? Who we are?” He turned to face me. “You want to fight to keep this prison they built for us?”
“I’m the one who has wanted to escape the school for years.”
Piercey threw his head back and laughed. “Listen to yourself. The whole world is the school. It’s all under their control. It’s all fake.”
“Our life is here.”
“What about our life out there? What if we all have families waiting for us to wake up from this world? Who knows whether Dr. Henderson told us the truth when she said this is the only life we’ve ever known.” He reached for my hand then, life in his eyes for the first time since we found out. “Let’s be free. We don’t even have to fight. Just jump.”
I recoiled. Pebbles scattered over the cliff’s edge and fell until they were too small to see. “I’m not jumping. Don’t you even care that you’ll lose me?”
His expression fell.
“I doubt they’ll let us remember any of this if we do get to live beyond this world. We’ll lose everything we have, including each other. I won’t be me anymore if I can’t remember my life.”
He turned his face back toward the cliff. “I didn’t think you’d be willing to participate in their experiment, even if rebellion cost you everything.”
“Living is not giving in. Dying is. This is our life. Ours. We should take this world back from them. Not abandon it, abandon everyone in it, to the whim of false gods.”
“You can’t fight a god, Max.”
I rose and turned my face into the wind so it would dry the tears that filled my eyes. “I won’t surrender to death, and I won’t be her lab rat either. I’m leaving this school. I’m going to live. Maybe I can’t take our world back, but I’ll take my life back. One day, I’ll figure out how to do more than that. I’ll figure out how to beat the Kethios.”
Piercey lowered his head. “You’d rather fight than be free.”
I knelt down and wrapped my arms around Piercey’s shoulders. Settled my head against his back. “You feel this?”
The wind roared against us.
“This is real. This right here. If we feel, we are.”
Piercey was quiet for a long while. We sat that way with silence and wind between us.
When he spoke, his voice was stripped of emotion. “The white room must be beyond our simulation because the laws of physics seem to be different. If there’s a way for the gods to let us in, there must be a way to break in.” He squeezed my hands. “If we can break into the white room, we should be able to also break into the infrastructure of the simulation. Break into their control.”
I knit my brows. “If we hack into the interface of our world and take control from them, they could physically destroy the hardware we’re on.”
“Destroying hardware is risky. Do they have a fail-safe? Are we separate from the other simulated worlds they’re experimenting on? Destroying us could destroy their entire project. Maybe they would just let us live freely.”
I settled my forehead against the back of his neck. “You’re too optimistic. Dr. Henderson doesn’t look like the type of woman to let go. She’d fight for control.”
“But would she destroy us?”
“That’s a major gamble.”
“Might be better than jumping off a cliff.”
Piercey had spent years helping me plan to escape, and still he refused to actually do it. “Would you really do it, Piercey? Would you actually try to take back our world from the gods?”
The quiet that followed said it all.
I sighed. “You always find the answers and do nothing with them.”
He glanced behind himself, where I still held him. “I find the answers for you. I can’t deny you anything, Max. I’ve never been able to.”
We were growing up. I heard it in his words. Felt it in his strong grip on my arms. This wasn’t like when I first came here at eleven and he held me when I was homesick. Or when I pulled him close after he’d failed his first healing test. The children in us couldn’t survive long in a place like this. We were growing into more. And my arms around him had grown into more, too, into something he wanted but I never quite did. I should have let go then as I felt that stillness settling between us, only it was hard to let go of the only person who’d never let go of me.
“Stay in this world, Piercey.” I held him a moment longer. A moment too long. “Stay in my life.”
I made myself release him then and I walked away, leaving him to feel the emptiness of someone letting go. Because if he jumped, he’d let go forever.
“You matter more to me than the world. I’d risk it all for you.” I said it softly. So softly, I didn’t know if he’d heard me.
The slips to the future and past were getting worse, so every time I fell asleep, I lost my hold on the present. At the very least, I was recovering quicker. This time, not even Leif noticed something was wrong.
It was getting harder to keep information to myself as we traveled. Everyone deserved more from me, including Nash. It was just so hard to make myself share it. I told them pieces of the truth that wouldn’t endanger them. I’d been recruited by the Prophet in my homeland on the other side of the world to train at the Sacred School when I was eleven, but I’d run away before becoming one. Nash had asked if the gods gave their powers to me. I’d said I didn’t make it that far, even though the truth was that I’d been born with the power. But now they all knew that I had a friend on the mountain who stayed, and would be as powerful as the rest of the Prophets by now.
Nash had been the most persistent in asking me questions, but I’d been persistent in ignoring him.
It hadn’t worked any favors in regard to the tension between us. I couldn’t stop thinking about how he worked with Flare, which only made me angry again about him serving the Prophet. I understood his reasons, but I couldn’t respect them. I would have found another way.
At least, I wanted to believe I would.
The anger would churn with my worries about whether Leif was right and I’d made a mistake, until Nash met my eyes. That instinctive pull to trust him would overwhelm my senses, and I couldn’t decide whether that meant I absolutely should not have been listening to myself, or whether I should. I’d always followed my gut in the past.
The next time Nash had pressed me for information, I glanced at the narrow space between us. “You should be careful.”
He raised his brows, confused.
“Leif is watching you and he already described to me in detail how he will brutally murder you if you get too close to me.”
A grin climbed up one side of Nash’s face. “Really?” Nash glanced behind us and I did as well. Leif stared directly at him with his hand resting on his sword, walking close enough that he could reach him with one swift lunge.
“You’ve made your point,” Wren whispered to Leif.
But the man would not be swayed and kept his glare on Nash.
I was surprised when Nash smiled in response and turned so that he could see everyone as he walked backward. “I grew up with a sister.” Then, he tapped his left shoulder. “I had a bad wound a few years ago. It’s slight, but my flexibility is not quite as good on this side. If you get just the right angle behind me, it can be a problem in battle.”
“Are you mocking me, boy?” Leif asked.
“Just giving you reassurances. I can’t fault you for protecting Max. If I got to see my sister again, I’d do the same.”
Wren’s expression melted. “That’s sweet.”
“No. You think you can charm people.” Leif shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to me what your intentions are. I won’t trust you.”
Nash shrugged. “Fair enough.” He took a large step away from me to the side, but it only made Leif grumble.
The encounter had distracted Nash from interrogating me, at least. I had to focus on strategizing how to make it up the mountain and get my power back. Perhaps, if I killed the instructors, it would unlock my abilities.
And what if the gods decided to prevent me from even stepping foot on the mountain?
I rubbed my sore neck as we walked.
After another day of traveling, I finally had to break it to the group that to make it to the Mountain of the Gods we would have to cross forbidden lands, and that our method of transportation also happened to be forbidden.
“I don’t understand.” Leif crossed his arms and eyed me. “It’s a beast?”
I held back my sigh. “It’s called a train. It transports resources from the mines to factories where things like our weapons are made, and then to the edge of the forbidden land where the Prophet’s people move everything on the highways.”
Nash scratched his nose with his thumb and scoffed. “You soften it with your made-up words. Forbidden and holy are the only descriptions that matter. The Prophet ensures death for anyone who tampers with those lands.”
Leif waved a hand in the air. “Max survived the Mountain of the Gods. She’ll teach us to survive the Prophet’s forbidden lands. What I want to know is whether the Prophet keeps such a powerful beast under his control all the time? That must exhaust him. Perhaps, it’s a weakness.”
Nash glanced at Leif. “Exceptional point.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not a beast. It’s not alive. It has no mind. It’s made of metal, like our swords, and powered by energy, kind of like the electricity in the Prophet’s village.”
“The closest villagers say it roars like a beast,” Nash said. “So loud that it shakes the ground.”
Wren nodded. “I’ve heard of something like this. The Prophet can use the souls of the dead to animate nonliving things and use them for his will.”
Leif gave a skeptical look. “That’s some made-up shit, Wren.”
Her brows furrowed in frustration. “How is it any less made-up than some mindless train beast?”
I snorted and coughed to cover the reaction. “You’ll understand when you see it.”
“I’m not sure I want to understand,” Leif mumbled.
The others nodded in agreement.
I chuckled. “So none of you want to ride the train?”
“No,” all three said at once.
“Well, then you really won’t like the Mountain of the Gods.” I walked backward so I could see everyone. “You could turn back and let me go alone.”
“No,” Leif said, eyes narrowed.
I shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
As we drew closer to the route the train took, the scenery changed. Beside me, Nash’s face looked shadowed as he shifted toward the foothills of the Mountain of the Gods where the industrial zone was hidden away. No one dared venture there, not even the most fearless of scavengers and looters. What the Prophet called forbidden was taken seriously, especially with the shadow of the mountain looming over it. Might and reputation were far better deterrents than the best defense. Even the demons feared stepping too close to the forbidden foothills.
Really, it was an area filled with mines and factories run mostly by machines and the disciples of the creators, Prophets who were gifted inventors. Unfortunately, they tended to not be as gifted in warfare, which meant that most creators in the world fell to the control of ferocious Prophets, like Eskel the Ruthless.
