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VALCAS LOOKED at me; his eyes glazed with sadness, without a trace of guilt.
Bile lurched up my throat as I thought of the possibility of having suffered and mourned in Susana, a place created and built by someone I loved. “No...tell me it wasn’t you.”
He shook his head. “I promise, I knew nothing about it.”
“Then why’s everyone looking at you like it’s your fault?”
Ray cleared his throat. “The records say that the TSTA enlisted the help of a man who loved his wife. He completed his task in exchange for paying a fine that he and his wife could not afford.”
I cringed.
“The man’s name,” continued Ray, “was James Hall.”
Valcas hung his head in shame.
Pressure constricted my stomach.
Enta was wrong. Sable hadn’t been able to pay the fine for the Daily Reminder she’d created, the tome that reset Valcas’ timeline. Her husband—Valcas’ father, Jim—paid.
Everyone in Susana had paid.
My heart pounded as I tried to keep myself from shaking.
Time is relative, a measurement. Without it, one becomes Lost. But with time, one becomes fixed. The Lost are free. The claimed, the Found, remain tethered to the TSTA.
The words sang in my head once again. Valcas’ father may have been the Found, claimed by the TSTA, tethered to it. If he’d built Susana, then he may have tried to leave the message that had shown through its portal, a warning—a cry for help to anyone who might see it. But it was too late.
I took a deep, calming breath. “Where did you find this information, Ray?”
He grinned. “President Bree accessed my computer with a passcode, using her voice. I recorded it.”
“Oh,” I puffed, remembering Ray’s ability to record both sights and sounds—the way he’d mimicked voices from the bridal shower, playing back every word that had been said. I’d been impressed when Mom first showed the recording to me. I hadn’t realized what a powerful skill it was.
As if shivers weren’t already tugging at my spine, Ray stated three words in President Bree’s clear, hateful voice: “Lost and Found.” I almost threw up.
“I downloaded the files,” said Ray, this time in his own deep rasp, “before President Bree would have a chance to catch on and change the password.”
A twitch from Ivory caught my eye. She and Nick had stayed quiet the entire time. I looked more closely, noting the red splotches that circled her eyes. I couldn’t even imagine how she and Nick were taking all of this. They looked miserable. Ivory lost her job. Aboreal had created the TSTA; and, now, Ivory’s Overwrite—intended to protect Nick—meant nothing. Nick would be rejected by both Aboreal and the TSTA no matter what. The TSTA may not be able to access the Clock Tower; but Aboreal may still try to regain control over it. Who knew how it would end?
The only thing that made some sense was that Aboreal preceded the TSTA. Presumably, Jim Hall wasn’t born until after the TSTA had already come into existence. Visions of the Lost who had surrounded me in Susana flashed in my mind; some came from times earlier than Jim Hall’s Folkestone, England; others from places much more archaic.
I frowned. “How is it possible that the world—Susana—that Jim created was able to capture Lost from the past, like those who disappeared after we set them free? Wait, no, don’t tell me—” I clenched my forehead, pulling at the roots of my hair. “Somebody did some kind of Overwrite thing to reset time in Susana?”
Valcas frowned. “Time in Susana was supposed to be reset to the time in which the TSTA first formed. At least that’s what Ray read to us from the project documents.”
“Ha, well, I suppose that’s why we didn’t see any cavemen, then,” I said grimly. My comment earned a disgusted grunt from my father. I sighed. I wasn’t the only one who’d heard enough. “Ray, can I talk to you for a moment?” As if my request wasn’t obvious, I quickly added, “Alone, outside the tower.”
I stared past Valcas, who I could feel gaping at me. I didn’t want him to follow, to anticipate my next step.
“Sure,” said Ray, handing his laptop to Lily and rising from the floor. I caught my breath as he neared, finally noticing what I’d missed during all the excitement back at the TSTA. Ray was tired. His lips were set with determination, but he didn’t fool me. Redness streaked his blue eyes; his brain had to be fried. And here I was about to ask him for more help, to give more of himself to me. “Thanks,” I said, humbled.
Without looking behind me, trying not to care about the looks the rest of the group exchanged, I plodded downstairs and opened a door to an alien sky.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” said Ray, closing the door behind us. “I wish I’d been able to infiltrate the records earlier. I’m sorry, Calla.”
My lips parted in disbelief. “You think I came out here to criticize you?”
He shrugged.
“Ray, you’ve done more for me than most people in the worlds. You’ve been a really good friend, supporting me every step of the way. You helped me find my father and discover secrets about the TSTA. You were part of the team that freed me from Susana. Why would you need to be sorry?”
He leaned in and looked at me more intently. I was used to his penetrating stares, which were usually the result of how he recorded and processed whatever he was listening to and watching. But this time, the feeling that I was being recorded was gone. It was as if he’d lifted a veil to show more of himself to me. I shrank beneath the intimacy of it.
Ray looked away momentarily, giving me a chance to clear my head. “You led us to Susana and solved the mystery of my tattoo. More than that, you found and saved my sister. She’s my twin, Calla. You’ve retied a bond that I thought had been severed forever.”
I released a breath out of the side of my mouth. “But I don’t feel like I’ve done anything. I didn’t find Susana so much as it found me. And I can’t help what I am—that I inherited my father’s travel talent. That praise goes to whoever gave me that talent to begin with.”
“I don’t disagree, but you still chose to use your talent. That’s what matters. That’s what will always matter. It’s why you are who you are.”
Leaning back against the outside of the Clock Tower, I looked up at the sky—purple, jeweled, like a bruise set on fire. Never had I imagined that I’d be where I was now or that I would have experienced more than the life I’d had at Lake Winston. Friends like Ray hadn’t existed for me. I doubted I ever would have met him without Valcas. And somehow my heart had chosen Valcas; our paths had converged through space and time.
Ray smiled. “If you didn’t ask me out here to question my methods of gathering intelligence, then what’s on your mind?”
“I don’t deserve it, but I need your help. Again. For something that might sound ridiculous. I’m not sure what I’m getting myself into, but I don’t know any other way around it.”
“Whoa, calm down.” He pressed his hands to my shoulders, giving me that open look again.
“You’re not recording, are you?”
His eyes blinked beneath raised brows. “No, that takes too much energy, and right now I’m too tired. How did you know?”
“You look different. It’s not a big deal. I was just curious.” I paused long enough for the silence to get uncomfortably long. Best to just get this over with, I thought. “It’s about Valcas and our timelines—”
He dropped his hands and glanced at the ground. “I see. You want me to figure out how to give you two more time together.”
“Yes,” I murmured, “I have an idea, but I’m not sure it will work. Do you understand how our worlds overlap? How his can be a world from the future, one in which I exist, but only for a fraction of his lifetime?”
Ray leaned against the tower next to me. I watched him as he pointed at the sky. “Ignoring the color, what’s missing out there that we take for granted on Earth?”
“The sun, moon and stars.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I can’t see them.” I shifted uncomfortably. This was starting to feel like a lesson from Edgar. No wonder Edgar’s silhouette got along so well with Ray.
Through the side of my vision, I caught Ray’s grin. “I don’t know what types of celestial bodies are in the Clock Tower’s galaxy, but I could probably find out with enough research. My point, however, is that we can’t assume there’s nothing there just because we can’t see it. There are galaxies out there that are so far away that the light they emitted at their birth hasn’t reached us yet. They’re so many billions of light years away that by the time we see that light, we won’t know whether that galaxy still exists or not.” His cheeks colored, presumably at my dazed look. “What I mean is—just because we can’t see our stars from here, doesn’t mean they’re not out there somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.”
“Do you think all that’s related to time travel and the timelines of persons living in the different galaxies?”
“Yes, I do. Our various methods of travel are what help us realize that there are overlaps. It could be that our distance is what creates the measurements of time, which quite honestly, I’m not sure are really there.”