Rey ran us piggyback to within a mile of the Council building; first Krin, then me. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving either one of us by herself any closer than that. We walked together the rest of the way.
With each step forward, we moved closer to the people who had locked me up for over two days, who would have kept me captive until the end of time. I fisted my hands at my sides to try to contain my anger. I needed to stay rational if we planned to get in and out without getting captured.
We kept to the tree line, just in case some Council members or recruits happened along the road. But the journey was quiet. The three of us didn’t speak as we walked, and no one else passed by us. Tension hung thickly in the air. I guessed Rey and Krin were just as nervous about this plan as I was.
When we were hidden among a copse of trees about two hundred feet from the Council, Krin stopped walking and said, “Do you guys think we should warn Loken about what we’re doing?”
“No.” I shook my head. “He’ll try to stop us. He wants me as far away from these people as possible right now. Plus, we want him to be able to deny all knowledge of this.”
Rey nodded. “Agreed. We don’t tell Loken.”
Now that we’d arrived, this was going to be harder than it had sounded back at the village. We couldn’t very well just walk through the back door. I’d be rearrested—or burnt to an unattractive crisp—and my friends would be tossed in the cell with me.
While of course I didn’t want any of us to be locked up, I also worried that the loss of three recruits as opposed to just one might be damaging to everything the Council was trying to accomplish. The Ethereal team, especially, was small already without losing Krin too. If we caught up with Elder Kohler inside, and if we weren’t caught, we’d all have to go into hiding. Either way, my task force would suffer another loss.
“Krin.” I turned toward her. “You don’t have to come with us. Rey and I can handle this.”
Her face fell. “You don’t want me to come?”
“I don’t want you to get kicked off the task force.”
“And there’s no need for all of us to get killed.” Rey chuckled. “I’d rather have you safe.”
I could see the wheels spinning in her head. “I can take care of myself,” she snapped. “And we can help even if we’re not with our task forces.” She tapped her fingernails against her comm unit. “We know approximately when and where this is happening. In Vallara—probably right here in High City. In less than three days. We’ll be back here at the right time, and we’ll help any way we can. We don’t need task forces for that.”
“But—” I started.
“I’m coming.” She stormed ahead of us toward the building.
“Okay,” I said. “Any idea how we can get inside?”
Krin turned and stared at me wide-eyed. “We came all the way out here, and you don’t have a plan?”
“I have a plan,” I said, even though I had no plan. “We go inside, restrain Kohler, question him, and get the hell out of there.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s a goal!” Krin threw up her hands.
“I can get us in.” Rey unhooked his comm unit and showed it to us. “Elder Breather programmed our comms to control the trapdoor to the transport holding area. So we can move transports in and out.”
“But we don’t have a transport,” I said.
“We don’t need one.” He pressed a couple buttons on the screen of his comm.
The ground vibrated beneath us. Less than fifty feet away, the ground opened up. Two sides of a door in the dirt slid away from each other, revealing the underground transport holding area.
After a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, I left the cover of the trees and jogged over to the opening. I peeked over the edge, and then took several large steps backward. The floor of the transport area lay twenty feet below, with no stairway down.
“That’s a long way down,” I said as Rey and Krin joined me at the edge.
“No problem.” Rey grasped me around the waist and leapt into the hole.
A scream tried to rip its way up my throat, but Rey’s hand clamped over my mouth. We floated to the floor, his arm supporting me through the air. Rey left me and leapt back up to ground level. I watched, open-mouthed. A few seconds later, he and Krin floated down to the floor next to me.
“That was amazing,” I said.
“Being a Breather has its perks.” He smoothed back the front of his ponytail. “Plus, I’m handsome.”
I rolled my eyes at Krin, but she was too busy nodding to notice.
When we arrived at the elevator to the main level, Krin reached for the call button. I grabbed her wrist.
“Rey will go up first,” I said, “run around, make sure the coast is clear.” I turned toward Rey. “We have to go to the third floor, so check the stairs and the upstairs hallway.”
Rey nodded. “If someone sees me, I’ll run. So if I’m not back in three minutes, hide. I’ll come get you as soon as I can.”
He pressed the elevator call button. I held my breath as the doors slid open. I braced for the possibility that someone would be in the elevator and we’d have a fight even before we reached the main floor of the building. Lucky for us, the elevator was empty.
Rey stepped inside, and the doors shut him in. As we waited, Krin’s foot tapped a rhythm against the floor. She stared at the doors, while I shifted my weight from foot to foot.
I counted the seconds in my head. Two full minutes had passed already. This was taking too long. I opened my mouth to insist that we follow Rey upstairs—when the elevator doors opened again.
“Let’s go.” Rey beckoned for us to join him inside. “Everyone’s out on assignment. The place is nearly deserted.”
Anticipation bounced around in my stomach during the short ride up one level. We stepped out into an empty hallway. I followed Rey, running on tiptoe to the end of the hall. He pressed his back against the wall and gestured for us to do the same. He peeked around the corner and then waved us forward.
Just as I turned onto the next hall, a woman entered through the back door, stepping into our path. Krin froze. I shoved her from behind, urging her to continue walking. The sound of my pulse roared in my ears. The woman glanced at us as she walked past toward the front of the building. She didn’t look back.
My heart rate slowed to a semi-normal pace. We raced toward the steps and took them two at a time up both flights. No one occupied the hall upstairs, and all the office doors were closed.
Krin and I took one side of the hallway, while Rey took the other, peering into the windows as we searched for Elder Kohler.
“Found him!” Rey hissed at the fourth door on the left.
We crowded around the door and ducked beneath the window.
“Now what?” Krin whispered.
“We go inside,” Rey said. “I’ll knock him out. We tie him up and wait for him to wake up.”
I peeked through the window and then ducked back down. “He’s facing the other way. Let’s go.”
Rey gripped the door handle and glanced at Krin, who nodded. He turned the handle and burst through the door.
Elder Kohler spun toward us, but Rey was faster. Rey rushed toward him, his elbow cocked backward. The elbow swung forward and clipped Elder Kohler in the head. He sank to the floor unconscious.
“Now what?” Krin asked.
We stared down at Elder Kohler’s motionless form.
“We tie him up,” I said.
Rey scratched his chin and spun a circle, examining the room. “Mm-hmm. With what?”
“I don’t know,” I hissed. “Tying him up was your idea.”
“Well your idea was to barge in here with no plan at all,” he countered.
None of us happened to be carrying around rope or handcuffs—although, in hindsight, that would have been a good idea. I scanned the room. I eventually landed on a weapons belt on a chair in the corner. I picked up the belt, removed the sheaths for the sword and dagger, and tossed the belt to Rey.
Rey caught it and turned the brown leather over in his hand. He pulled it taut. “This will do. Help me roll him over.”
We put Elder Kohler face down. Rey pulled his wrists together, wrapped the belt around one wrist, then the other, and bound them together with the belt clip. Krin yanked on the binding and nodded her approval.
Then we waited.
After a few minutes, I started to worry. “He’s still breathing, right?”
Rey rolled the man onto his back and held his hand under Kohler’s nose. “Still breathing.”
“How long does it take someone to wake up after being knocked unconscious?” Krin asked.
Rey shrugged. “It varies a lot, and Elder Kohler is not a young man. Let’s give him a bit longer before we freak out.”
I paced the floor, checking out the window into the hallway every time I passed the door. “How long have we been waiting?” I asked after too long.
Rey glanced at his comm. “Twelve minutes.”
I was close to calling the whole thing off, alerting the medics, and making a run for it—when Elder Kohler finally stirred. He groaned and tugged at his bonds. His eyelids fluttered open.
At first, he seemed to stare at nothing. His eyes glazed over as they darted about the room. He shook his head hard, then focused on us. “Rey, Krin.” His gaze landed on me and stayed. “Ashara. Is there something I can do for you three? Some reason that I’m tied up?”
His speech was eerily calm and just above a whisper. The rasp of his damaged voice grated on my already frayed nerves. I couldn’t tell if his tone was threatening or entirely a result of his long-ago accident. I recalled the heat in that stream of fire he’d shot at Loken and me. A shiver crept its way up my back.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” I leaned in close to him. “About why you locked me up. And about my father.”
“Before we begin, will you do an old man a favor and sit me upright in that chair?” Kohler jerked his head toward the chair behind his desk. “My back aches.” He wriggled on the floor to make his point.
Rey and I hooked our hands under Kohler’s arms and half-lifted, half-dragged him into the chair.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much. Now what are your questions?”
“Why was it so important to include me on the Ethereal task force?” I shoved my face right up to Kohler. Our noses almost touched. “You kept looking at me during the briefing. And you put my training above the other Ethereals when you assigned Loken to our task force.”
“The reason is self-evident: you are an Ethereal. We need Ethereals to combat the Mages. As many as we can get.” His eyes radiated calm logic. I didn’t buy it.
“You don’t need Ethereals to kill Mages. You need Benders and Breathers. I’m an untrained Ethereal, and you seemed to focus on me from day one. So why was I added to the task force?”
Rey stepped behind Elder Kohler and yanked his bonds downward. Kohler’s teeth gritted.
“You think I’m going to give you information if you cause me pain?” He raised an eyebrow. “I have experienced plenty of pain in my life. I can endure a little more.” He stretched his neck upward and angled his head to the side, giving me a better view of his scarred throat.
Up close, his neck was like a patchwork of pale-white skin. The flesh looked soft, vulnerable, like small squares of skin pasted together haphazardly. I pulled my gaze back up to his face, willing my insides not to squirm at what I’d just seen.
“How’d you do that?” I pointed at his neck but didn’t glance at it again.
“A little accident in the lab. A poorly executed experiment.” He gave an exaggerated frown. “I’d be happy to tell you about it, but I’m not sure you’d like how it ends . . . Is that the question you came here to ask me? You tied me up to ask about an old scar?”
“Why am I on the task force?”
“I’m going to answer your question,” Elder Kohler said. “But not because your friend back there is pulling my arms out of their sockets. I’ll answer because you should know how dangerous you are.”
Dread knotted my stomach. I suddenly regretted all of this. My gaze slid toward the door. I wished I were on the other side of it right now.
“Over the objection of every other elder, I personally selected you for that task force after your ability manifested in the last timeline.”
“Why?”
“I expected you to be stronger than everyone else. Given Mages’ attraction to practitioners, I needed to keep my eye on you.” He added, nonchalantly, “Elder Ethereal was particularly against it. Her vote was for killing you in your sleep.”
“Why did you think I’d be stronger? And why did she want to . . . kill me?” I choked out the last two words.
Elder Kohler didn’t answer right away. He looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to decide how to proceed. “What do you know about your father?”
My eyes narrowed. I’d wanted to have this conversation, but I hadn’t expected Elder Kohler to prompt the subject. “Not much,” I said. “Just that he died before I was born.” I hesitated, and added, “How did he die?”
“An accident in the lab. Nothing of note.”
“He was my father,” I said through gritted teeth. “His entire life was of note.”
Elder Kohler didn’t respond.
“How did he die?” I clenched and unclenched my fists, then darted another glance at the door.
“You don’t want me to describe the exact manner of your father’s death. It won’t be pretty. And I wouldn’t want you to be sick all over my office floor.”
Krin blanched.
“Tell me,” I said.
He shrugged. “If you insist. Your father died attempting to transfer his consciousness to one of the elders. Fried his own brain. Almost fried mine too.”
I had the sudden urge to run for the restroom and empty my stomach contents into the wastebasket. I fought to keep the feeling out of my expression. But by the way Elder Kohler’s lips twisted into a smile, I knew I’d lost the fight.
Kohler continued, “But that’s not relevant to what you really want to know.”
“And what’s that?”
His eyes narrowed. His voice was as clear as I’d ever heard it. “We have precious little time until the end, and you are taking too long to get to the right questions.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Which are?”
“If you know the truth, you’ll think twice about making reckless decisions in the future.”
“If she knows what?” asked Rey, who still stood behind Kohler. The muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed.
Elder Kohler’s mouth turned upward into a sly—though not comforting—smirk. “Your father was the first one to foresee the end. Like the current Seers, he couldn’t see what caused it, but he knew it was coming. And he knew we were out of time.”
I shook my head, hard. That couldn’t be right. That didn’t even make sense. “My father has been dead for almost nineteen years.”
“I’m well of aware of that,” Kohler said. “Your father foresaw the end several months ago—in the original timeline.”
My head continued to shake side to side. “No. My father died long before that. Nineteen years ago.”
“Not in the original timeline, he didn’t. The timeline that all of you”—he jerked his head toward each of us, one at a time—“thought was the first timeline was the second. We performed the first rewind ritual after your father’s prophecy. The elders didn’t believe him. So we tricked a bunch of other Council members into helping us, and we did it without the elders’ approval. The only consciousnesses we were able to preserve in the rewind were mine and his.”
A hundred questions raced through my head. Too many questions. Not enough time to ask them all.
“I was doubtful about the whole thing,” Elder Kohler rambled on. “I went along with it because Nole felt strongly. We went back as far as we could. We thought that would be a year or two, plenty of time to avoid the end he’d predicted. Apparently, we were stronger than we thought—much stronger than the elders are now—because we took ourselves back over nineteen years.” Elder Kohler paused to chuckle, bitterly. “Nole had admired your mother in the original timeline. Had a bit of a crush on her after meeting her at a Ratem festival. I guess he saw a second chance with her.”
“Someone’s coming!” shouted Krin from her spot by the door.
My whole body froze. We had no plan for getting caught in this office. We’d be trapped, with no other doors except the one leading into the hallway.
“No. Wait,” she said. My nerves tingled, on edge. “False alarm. It was just someone going into her office. But hurry up!”
Elder Kohler jumped right back into his story. “We elders refer to each person in this timeline as an echo. Have you heard that term yet?”
I nodded.
“We call it an echo because we’re all different than we were in our original timelines. We’re attenuated. Less. Weaker. Yet still a remnant of what we once were. Some of our scientists say that the degree to which we are different from our original selves depends on how many repetitions we’ve experienced.” His eyes locked on mine. “And how long it’s been since we were originals.”
The truth hit me suddenly like a brick in the chest. “Did I exist in your original timeline? Was I ever born?”
“Now you’re asking the right questions.” Elder Kohler’s smile grew wider.
Krin tore her gaze from the door. Her eyes widened. “Asha’s more powerful than everyone else because she’s closer to being an original? She wasn’t rewound by nineteen years the first time around. She didn’t exist yet. So compared to everyone else, she . . . she’d attract every Mage on the continent!”
“So you’re the smart one of the bunch.” Elder Kohler leaned back in his chair. His face looked too relaxed.
I gripped the armrests on either side of Kohler’s chair. I was tired of these games. “What does all of this mean?”
“The Mages started toward here in the middle of the last timeline, immediately after your ability manifested. They will continue to be drawn to you. When your uncontrolled powers collide with theirs, it will be the end of us.”
“How do we stop it?”
“Kill yourself,” Elder Kohler growled. His smile disappeared for the first time since we’d started this interrogation. “It was a mistake for us to let you live after your ability manifested. I thought maybe you were the key to saving us. Now I believe Elder Ethereal was right all along. You’re a menace.”
“We have to go!” Rey grabbed my shirtsleeve and yanked.
“What?” Before the words had left my mouth, my nostrils filled with the scent of burning leather.
A stream of smoke floated upward from behind Elder Kohler’s back. He was burning through the belt we’d used to bind his hands. He’d be out any second, and we’d be in flames.
Krin threw the door open. The three of us bolted from the room and down the stairs.