Time thief, p.7
Time Thief, page 7
I tried to wrench away but Nash was too strong. I couldn’t budge. Teeth gritted, I kicked his shins, slammed my head back against his neck, managed to rip an arm free as he coughed. The fire that consumed our camp burned within me. All of it. I twisted and punched Nash in the jaw with all my strength.
He dropped me and grabbed his face. “Max!” I’d hoped he would give up, but an arm that felt as unyielding as steel locked around my waist and ripped me back against that hard chest of his.
That was an insanely hard hit. Had I used some power for that? There was no time to figure it out or to fight with Nash. I had to rescue Leif. Boots pounded in the field, drawing closer and closer.
Desperation and fury tore my mind in two.
“Stop …” Leif reached his hand for me like I had when Flare dragged me through the woods. “Goodbye.” He smiled.
Peace flooded me. Peace from the knowing look on Leif’s face. He’d made up his mind. It melted the anger within me into sorrow. Tears gathered in my eyes. A sob wrenched from my chest.
“He’ll be alright.” Nash’s voice whispered in my ear as he secured my wrists again. “The demons can keep him alive. They’re taking prisoners. You saw that. Your people are alive. They’ll want Leif. He’s valuable.”
Footsteps sounded near the woods. I had to be quiet or they’d hear. I fell, listless as Nash carried me away, Leif’s body blurring in my teary eyes.
“We’ll save him,” Nash said. “The smart way.”
As the ground raced beneath us, it blurred, and it twisted, and it tore in two. The slipping swept the earth away. I had no hope of stopping it. One moment, I was in the forest with Nash carrying me, abandoning Leif with our enemies.
And the next … Fluorescent bulbs burned bright overhead in our training room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My instructor knelt in front of me. “You’re wavering.”
I focused on the sliver of air between my stomach and the sharpened blade I hovered above. The skin all over my body burned in pain. The rest of the room, lined with the seven other students in our class, blurred in my periphery. My entire world fit onto the tip of this blade for the moment.
Pain scratched into my hands from using my power for too long. “It’s been thirty minutes. I need a break.”
“You’ll get a break when you deserve one.” The instructor’s sharp stare switched to Piercey. “Is it healed yet?”
I grunted as I strained to tilt my head to see Piercey holding the little bird with the broken wing. He didn’t respond and Kelvin wouldn’t stand for it.
“Answer me, now.”
“Concentrating.” Sweat beaded on Piercey’s forehead.
The healthy wing twitched and then snapped.
“Why did you do that?” Piercey jumped to his feet. Tears flooded his eyes. “It’s not his fault. Don’t take it out on the bird.”
“You’re right. It’s your fault. He has two broken wings now because of you.”
Piercey settled on the ground once more with anger tightening his expression. “It’ll be okay.” He stroked the bird’s head with a single finger. “I’ll figure this out.”
“What kind of healer can’t even heal a bird?” Kelvin leaned over him.
Tears slid down Piercey’s cheeks. He kept his eyes trained on the bird. Slowly the wings straightened as the bird wiggled on his palm. Healing required mastery of anatomy. It wasn’t fair to ask Piercey to heal a sparrow when he had never studied them before. Kelvin was in a mood today.
The point of the knife nicked my stomach. My eyes widened. He was right. I had been wavering. I squeezed my eyes shut and lifted myself higher.
Kelvin studied the sparrow. “Fuse the bones, Piercey.”
“You’re only making it harder.”
“Quiet, Piercey,” I whispered. Usually, I was the one losing it on Kelvin.
Our instructor lowered his head. “How will you heal your people in the midst of battle? What kind of healing Prophet will you be if you demand peace and quiet to work in? Pathetic.” Kelvin turned for me again. “And you. You should be able to hold yourself over this without breaking a sweat, Max.”
I shut out his voice. Never mind that I could shoot a bow better than he could. Or that I could crush all the bones in his body if I wanted to. He wanted to berate me and so he would.
“You have ten seconds to heal that bird, Piercey.”
My friend’s tears fell onto the bird’s wings.
“Six seconds.”
Piercey’s face contorted. Sweat slid between his eyes.
“Two seconds, Piercey.”
The bird’s right wing fluttered.
“Now!”
A crushing force slammed into my back and threw me onto the blade.
Pain erupted in my middle.
My hands twitched as I fell onto my side. The knife stuck out from my stomach in a bubbling pool of blood. I couldn’t even scream. Shock and pain strangled my voice.
“Max!” Piercey dragged me onto his lap.
The cry finally squeezed out. I threw my head back and screamed.
Kelvin loomed over us. “Heal her. You both have an appointment in the white room in an hour. Don’t be late.”
“What is wrong with you?” Piercey’s voice hitched. “I haven’t learned how to work on an abdomen yet.”
“You know enough to do this, kid. Like I said, quit making excuses. You think I’m cruel? All of you have killed people with your power. If you can’t master it, you’re too dangerous to be kept alive.”
Kelvin walked out the door as Piercey screamed after him.
My vision waned, closing in on Piercey, so all I could see was his face. Hot blood poured from my stomach and drizzled onto the ground. The other students clamored for us now that Kelvin had left.
“Don’t panic …” I struggled to find my voice. “You’ve got this …”
And then I passed out.
Bright light shone into my eyes as I squirmed on a cold table. After years of entering the door of the gods, it had lost its mystery. Everything in the room was pure white. The walls. The chairs. The table. Like I was the only color that existed.
“Do you have any lingering pain?” The technician studied me.
“No. Piercey healed me well. Report back to Kelvin on how stellar his teaching tactics are.”
Piercey shook his head at me. He sat on a table across from me.
I tore an electrode from my head. “I’m tired of you gluing this shit to my head when you don’t need to. Why do you do it? I know this technology is way beneath you. Is it so I have some tangible proof that you can mess with me whenever you want?”
“Max,” Piercey whispered harshly. Kelvin had put the fear in him. Well, he’d only awakened my anger.
“Have you been experiencing any other signs of paranoia?” the technician asked, annoyingly unfazed.
My nostrils twitched. “You watch us and test us and poke us. Lie to us. I’m tired of pretending I don’t know.”
He opened his mouth to speak when the room went dark. I straightened.
Then came a woman’s voice. “I think it’s time we finally meet.”
I rose at the sound of the woman speaking. Piercey hopped off the table and moved beside me, grabbing my hand. I wasn’t sure if it was for my sake or his.
After several seconds, the lights came back on. The other side of the room looked completely different. It was pale blue, like our hallway, and it was outfitted like a living room, complete with an ugly floral love seat.
A woman sat there, watching me with sharp eyes. “My name is Dr. Henderson.”
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“You have so many questions, Max.” Her long black hair laid across one shoulder. “I’m afraid I don’t have all the answers you want.”
“Don’t have them or won’t give them?”
“Won’t give them.” Dr. Henderson smiled. “I’ve had my eye on you. You’re not easily distracted.” Her voice softened and she spoke to me the way I imagined my mother would have if I’d ever known her. “That’s why I’m meeting with you and Piercey. You two have been struggling, haven’t you?”
Piercey shook his head. “No, ma’am. We’re fine.”
I was only sixteen, but I was so tired. Tired like I’d lived decades and never got a break. “We’re not fine. We’re being held hostage at this school.”
She simpered. “You’ll be released when you can control your power well enough that you won’t hurt people anymore.”
Shame seared my heart. The eclipse. Not the one that haunted my future, but the one from my childhood. It was as if the two eclipses were entangled, tethered in time, and my entire life existed as a tug-of-war between the two, even now. Dr. Henderson was talking about the people I hurt back then.
I couldn’t let her distract me with my guilt. “I’m tired of hearing that excuse. Kelvin stabbed me today.”
Dr. Henderson scooted forward. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Max. We give autonomy to the people in your world, including the Sacred School. That’s very important. There isn’t anything we can do.”
“Why? Why do you have to silently watch?”
“There are many things I can’t tell you.”
Rage made my mouth taste bitter. “Yeah. Because you’d compromise your experiment by making your subjects aware.”
She sat back, thrown, but only for a moment. Then she smoothed out a wrinkle in her pants. I imagined she had few wrinkles in her life. “My, my. Perhaps the library at the school is a little too robust for your needs.”
“It would be much easier to control me if you denied me an education. You know, like you do with ninety-nine percent of the world.”
“You’re angry.”
“I’m more than angry.”
“It’s fair. I would be, too.”
“This mountain has technology that the rest of our world won’t hope to have for thousands of years. The people think you’re gods because you come from a more advanced civilization. You let them pray to you while you watch them suffer in silence. I deserve to know why. Why are you running tests on me? What are you trying to learn?”
“Stop, Max.” Piercey’s voice shook. “The gods won’t tolerate dissent.”
Dr. Henderson waited until we’d both fallen quiet. “There are worlds like yours all over the cosmos, Max. Young worlds with growing civilizations. We want to learn how to help them develop without having to suffer through all the war and chaos that comes with social evolution.”
I blinked. “You’re watching us all kill each other to learn how to keep others from doing it? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Piercey grabbed my shirt and tugged me back to his side. “The whole world is the experiment, not just the school. There’ll be more like us, Max. More experiments. More worlds.”
A hint of pride shone in Dr. Henderson’s eyes. “I can’t lie to bright young people like you. It’s true. One percent of your population has the neural implant that allows you to manipulate matter at the quantum level. Other worlds have greater numbers with power. I know it’s hard, but you wouldn’t be better off without us, and this data will save more lives than you can comprehend.”
“This is just great.” I raised my hands. “The most evolved species in the cosmos are total idiots. Why do you think it’s okay to experiment on people?”
“It isn’t okay. We can’t pretend it’s ethical. Still, math doesn’t lie. The number of people who will suffer in these experiments is the tiniest fraction of how many people it will save from suffering.”
The white walls snapped black and specks of light pierced every inch of the room. Stars glowed in the darkness, growing until raging suns dominated the room. Above us a planet teeming with light green water appeared, and another to our right, one chilled with mountains of ice. More. Zooming past us too fast to see. People popped up on the walls. Children laughing. Children screaming. Rapid flashes of life and death far too overwhelming in number to take in.
“They’re all suffering.” Dr. Henderson folded her hands on her lap.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the blur of faces, nauseous.
“You can help us end it. My society has long since evolved beyond death. Now it’s time for others to do the same.”
I struggled to find my voice. “Go help people. Stop experimenting.”
“It’s not as simple as that.” Darkness overtook the room once more and light gradually dawned on the floor, rising up the wall behind Dr. Henderson. A breeze that I could actually feel kissed my cheek and carried in the smell of berries. We stood in a dimly lit forest.
Beside me, Piercey turned in a small circle, marveling at the transformation.
“Sometimes our best attempts to help actually hurt.” Her voice was as mild as the breeze now. “We need to prove which interventions are effective at helping young worlds evolve with less suffering. Interventions that preserve a world’s right to self-determination.”
I clapped my hands so loudly that it made my ears ring. “So moving. You are truly worthy of worship, aren’t you, Dr. Henderson?”
Her mouth straightened. White crashed onto the walls, leaving us bereft of all the life from moments before. “I have tolerated your disrespect and foolishness long enough.”
“The truth will come out. What do you think everyone will do when they find out? It’ll be chaos. Good luck having reliable data then.”
Dr. Henderson sighed. “You just don’t understand, Max. You can’t tell anyone about this. No one can. It would mean the end of your world.”
My muscles froze. I couldn’t even try to speak.
“The entire purpose of your world is this experiment. If you compromise it, the council will shut it down precisely because it is unethical. Once an unethical experiment is unproductive, it cannot be allowed to exist.”
“You’ll … You’ll destroy an entire world? You can’t do that. You can’t kill us all.” I backed up for the door before I remembered there was no door. No escape. I was at her mercy. Beside me, Piercey looked like he had vanished from his body.
“The less you know, the better,” she said. “I didn’t want to share any of this with you. But I’ve been watching you. You were going to fight until you got answers. Now that you have them, let your world live in peace.”
I gasped for breath. It felt like my throat was closing. “This can’t be real. You can’t just destroy entire worlds. You aren’t gods!”
“We are the gods of this world, child. We created it. We can end it.”
Piercey’s eyes still looked vacant, but his lips twitched in silent words I couldn’t hear. I stared at him, trying to figure out what he said.
“Tell her, Piercey,” Dr. Henderson said. “You know the truth. You already suspected it.”
A single tear slid down his face.
“Tell her and make her understand why she must stay silent. If you care for her, you’ll do this.”
He turned to me. His eyes looked like those of the dead. Dr. Henderson had killed the life in him. “They have total control. Our world isn’t real.” His voice was dry. Monotone. “This is a simulation, Max.”
I bowed forward, unable to fully comprehend the words.
“Don’t be scared.” Dr. Henderson spoke calmly. “You’re real, Max. All of you are real people who died as babies in your natural world. We uploaded you here to give you what you lost far too young. It isn’t so different from how my people live. We all uploaded to a digital universe long ago. We are the Kethios—the ultimate ascension. It’s okay to leave behind our weaker, physical forms.”
A hoarse gasp ripped apart my throat.
“It’ll stay okay as long as you’re quiet.” Her voice drifted past like the breeze, the threat buried in softness. “Be a good girl, Max.”
My life here mattered. Piercey mattered. I mattered.
None of this was real. But it was all I’d ever known.
And it could slip away at any time.
CHAPTER NINE
For a long while after learning the truth, nothing felt real anymore. Then one day, Leif and his family breathed life back into the world, into me. In my memory, the sun shone brightly on that day, even though I’ve been told since it was actually cold and cloudy. It was after I had left the Sacred School. The first time Leif took me hunting. That day in the woods, I shot a deer I had to squint through the thick of trees and thickets to see. Leif howled, and danced, and lifted my arms in victory. That was the first time his family and neighbors had meat in a couple of weeks.
It had started with the jolt in my heart when Leif celebrated my shot. Later, when I saw him fill his toddler’s bowl with venison stew, when chubby little cheeks broke into a grin, the jolt sparked into something I hadn’t felt in a year. Joy.
Our world might not have been real, but we were, and our connections to one another were woven into the fabric of existence, as real, more real, than anything that had ever been. Certainly more real than the Kethios.
“How do you feel?”
I stiffened at Nash’s voice. He’d carried me away after I passed out and didn’t seem to trust me when I told him my fainting spells were nothing to worry about. We sat on the leafy floor, quiet for the ten minutes that I’d been awake. I searched the green canopy overhead like I would find answers. I not only had to save my people from the Prophet of the Valley, but now from the Flatlanders.
“Max?”
A growl rumbled in my chest. “I feel like I abandoned my heart and soul.”
Leaves crunched as he scooted closer. “You honored Leif’s wishes.”
I crossed my arms atop my knees and settled my head down, turning my face to the side to see him. His jaw was reddened where I’d punched him, swollen enough to notice with just a glance. “Is your face okay?”
“I can tell the world I narrowly survived a direct hit from the great Sharpshooter.” He smirked and touched the spot. “I’m fine. But you hit a lot harder than I thought you could. You’ll break your hand if you keep hitting like that.”
I tucked my hand beneath my knees so he couldn’t see it. It wasn’t even sore. With that one hit, I’d somehow managed to accidentally draw more power than I had in a while. Still, it was nothing compared to what I’d once done.
