I knew it was morning. Not because light shone through the windows—the cell had no windows. I knew because I could feel the presence of the sun gods outside these walls. I knew because the ball of dread and grief that sat in the pit of my stomach for the last ten days had grown so large that it filled me entirely.
Loken stirred as I rolled over to face him. Still mostly asleep, he pulled me closer to his body. I brushed the fair hair off of his forehead and kissed him. My lips traced the metal threads at his temple. My eyes swept down along his body. Even covered by a blanket, the tight curves of muscle urged me to wake him for a repeat performance. But there was no time for that.
I shook him gently and whispered, “When do you have to go?”
“When my comm tells me the suns are up,” he mumbled into my neck, and then traced tiny kisses up my earlobe.
I tensed. If he took this further, I’d need a good excuse for turning him down. And I was a horrible liar. I breathed a sigh of relief when the kisses stopped.
“Loken,” I whispered.
No response. He’d gone back to sleep.
I counted sixty seconds before moving again. The suns had risen already, so his comm could alert him any second. My plan wouldn’t work nearly as well if I had to incapacitate him, so I had to move fast.
After a full minute, I tested Loken by squirming in his grasp. No reaction. I wriggled away from him and pulled the blanket up to his shoulders. That way, he wouldn’t notice my body wasn’t warming him anymore.
I dressed in yesterday’s clothing, which lay in a pile along with Loken’s clothes in the corner. I patted through the pile until I located something solid—Loken’s comm. I detached the device from his pants and clipped it to the waistband of my shorts. From the pile, I also withdrew the hooded jacket Loken had brought for me. The hood might come in handy.
As an afterthought, I grabbed Loken’s weapons belt and clasped it around my waist.
I pressed my hands to the door and slid them along the now-dented surface. Ether pulsed inside it. I felt it so completely that it nearly spoke to me. The door wasn’t metal all the way through. Two large slabs of steel enclosed a concrete center. I understood how to unmake it. And more importantly, because of the concrete, it would hold Loken inside. Next, I tested the glass wall of the cell, and was pleased to find that it contained no metal alloy.
The biometric pad for the door included a metal plate with some sort of etched design, and a digital readout running horizontally above it. I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and slammed my fist into the plate with all the ether force I could muster. The device crushed into the wall. The digital display blinked and went out.
At the noise, Loken shot upright into a sitting position. “What!”
I didn’t wait around to explain. I pressed myself against the metal door and willed the ether to pull me into and through the metal and concrete. I melted through the door before Loken had scrambled to his feet.
On the other side, I watched Loken through the glass. His mouth moved as he ran forward. He pounded the glass with his fist and yelled something. Muscles strained in his neck. The cell was soundproof, but I was relatively sure he was pissed off. Those were not pretty words his mouth was forming.
He pressed his hand to what remained of the biometric sensor. I couldn’t see the sensor from this side of the cell, but Loken’s face flushed red after a few seconds. His lips twisted in anger, and he went back to pounding the glass. His mouth moved into more words that I imagined were not complimentary.
Of course, I regretted that Loken would be angry with me when life as I knew it was ending. But my top priority was to save us. I couldn’t do that with Loken’s protective instincts hanging over me.
I blew him a kiss and raced up the stairs.
Loken’s comm unit read only twenty-eight minutes until the end of life as I knew it. The way I saw it, I had few options. I could find a place to hide and let the trained men and women of the Council do their sworn duty to protect us all. But if their idea of protecting us was to perform another rewind ritual—one that would leave us without their guidance in the next timeline, and without the ability to perform another ritual—then they had already failed.
Alternatively, I could release Loken and spend these last moments with him. But as soon as I let him go, he’d go running off to help the elders do absolutely nothing useful.
So it was up to me. Unfortunately, I needed information from the Council before I could do anything. I needed to know exactly where the Mages would show.
At the main level of the building, I raced up the stairs to the Council member offices. I was acutely aware of my unguarded back. If Elder Kohler saw me before I saw him, my back would be on fire and I’d be dead. But if I saw him first, I could defend myself. I was confident. My power thrummed inside my body, vibrating through the air around me.
The empty hallway stretched before me as I crested the stairs to the third floor. I hurried down the hall, peeking through the window of each door on the right and, on my way back, peeking in the windows on the other side. Not a single soul occupied the rooms.
Gods be damned! I froze as soon as the thought played in my head, and followed it up with, Um, sorry. Please let me keep my power. I made a two-thumbs-up sign to the ceiling.
My footsteps clanked against the steps on my way back down. At the bottom, I hesitated, unsure of where to try next. The briefing room. Loken had said there was a morning meeting.
I raced back to the main level and toward the briefing room. As I ran, the female voice in the wall droned, “Please stay calm. Remain calm. Please stay calm.”
Not a chance.
With no window in it, the briefing room door gave me no hint as to what lay on the other side. I pushed it open an inch or two and peered in. As soon as I saw a full room of people, I let the door swing shut again. I’d found them!
Sucking in a deep breath, I cracked the door open enough to squeeze through. It closed behind me with a soft click. Luckily, the man closest to me towered above most of the others. I slipped behind him, where I hoped no one who’d recognize me would notice.
“If you see this girl,” came Elder Kohler’s voice from the front of the room, “incapacitate her—even it means killing her. We need to perform the ritual, not save lives that we’ll have back as soon as the next timeline begins.”
I peeked around the side of the big man who blocked me to see the front wall, where a humongous image of my face displayed. I gasped and shrank backward. I flipped the hood of Loken’s jacket over my head and tugged the top down to shadow my face.
“Time to get to it,” said Elder Kohler. “I hope to see you all in a few hours, enthusiastic to start this process over again.” Nervous laughter trickled through the group. “Take your places. Dismissed.”
Almost everyone in the room turned my way and began to push toward the exit. I ducked my head lower in the hood and joined the exiting crowd. At a hallway intersection, I pressed myself against the wall of the adjoining corridor and waited.
As expected, most people hurried through the hall toward their destinations. Some paused only briefly to exchange hugs or handshakes. Tension thickened the air with the unspoken goodbyes that no one was willing to admit might be final. Most appeared to be heading downstairs to the transport holding bay, either by way of the elevator or the stairwell next to it.
I recognized Elder Kohler’s gray-haired head just after he passed the hallway intersection. I waited until three more people passed between us before stepping back into the main hall. Kohler slipped out the back door, as did another elder nearby. Mauryn’s familiar figure went that way as well.
So the elders were performing their ritual out back. I didn’t care about the ritual right now, but I was relieved to know exactly where Elder Kohler was. I was relieved that he wouldn’t be setting me on fire without my seeing it coming.
I followed the other practitioners down to the transport holding bay in the basement. I took the stairwell, not wanting to stand still on an elevator. Anyone in the elevator car with me could recognize me, and I’d be caught.
At the bottom of the stairs, I kept my head down and followed the two people in front of me into the nearest transport. I took the last empty seat and closed the door behind me. We took off across the room and up the vertical exit. Outside, the transports shooting up from the holding bay split off into three groups. Our vehicle stayed with one of them. The other two groups of transports zipped off in opposite directions.
The seats inside were positioned in two rows across from each other. The man who sat opposite me eyed me, his expression implacable. I dropped my gaze to my lap and hoped the hood covered just enough of my face to hide my features, but not enough to make it look like I was hiding.
My already high stress level skyrocketed the longer he stared. I clutched my hands together in my lap to avoid drumming them against the armrest nervously. I debated whether I had enough control over my ether to protect myself if I ripped the door open and flung myself out of the vehicle. Just as my fingers inched toward the door handle, the man turned to look out the window. I released the breath I’d been holding.
We slowed at the top of a hill. When we stopped, I leapt for the door and jumped out before anyone could recognize me. Other transports stopped all around us. Practitioners spilled out.
The group of about sixty practitioners thinned out into a line, side by side facing north. Many of them checked their comms as they waited. Others glanced up at the ever-present countdown clock in the sky. I glanced up too.
Eighteen minutes.