“Tell me,” Kyon insists.
“In due course,” he says before looking over his shoulder and snapping his fingers. A medical attendant rushes forward with a blanket, forcing the Bee to step back from her post.
The Bird looks in my direction, piercing me with her eyes. She sniffs the air and says, “She listens now. Your Kricket.”
“I feel her too,” the Bee agrees.
A slow smile spreads over Kyon’s lips. “Kricket,” he says with a rough voice of someone who has been unconscious for a few days. I startle, not expecting him to say my name, let alone speak to me. “Must I wait for you to catch up to my time?” It’s a rare joke, since in my time he’s still in the pod, stabbed and unconscious, but here, he’s maybe a day or so ahead of me, unconscious as I am in the overup.
The Bird giggles. “You’ve frightened her, Kyon. You mustn’t amuse yourself at her expense or she’ll never love you.”
“As long as she respects me, I can live with her fear,” he replies.
Oh, I’m so going to put a knife in the other side of your chest, I think, feeling stabby.
“Fie! Now she’s angry with you. She indicates that next time the stabbing will be on the other side of your chest,” the Bird crows. “Oh, I like her!” She claps her hands like this is all a game.
The Bee’s tone is waspish. “Permission to make her go away?”
Ugh, you have to ask for his permission? Gross.
The Bird clasps her hands together with a look of pleasure. “She’s a free spirit!”
Kyon looks in my direction. “Catch up, Kricket. I’ll be along soon.” With Kyon’s approving nod, the Bee’s hands lift in my direction.
“Can’t wait, freak—” I’m blown off my feet and out into the blackness of space where I’m falling, falling, falling. I land on my back upon the enormous mahogany desk in Minister Telek’s office. Grasping my head and holding it, I realize I’m still somewhere in the future. I search around, trying to decide when I am.
Sliding off the desk, I rifle the room, looking for anything that will indicate a date. A steampunk-looking clock on the shelf nearby makes a metronome sound. Drifting near it to watch the pendulum, I see that it swings faster than it would on Earth. I read the dials that whirl as I interpret the date: it’s sixteen parts, Fitzmartin, which is Wednesday, two days ahead in time. In my time it’s still Fitzlutzer—Monday.
I move to the round table in the center of the dim room. It’s empty, having no flowers to replace the znous. Across from me, Manus’s watery habitat is no longer occupied; he’s gone but the tank remains. A small tremble causes ripples in the water, disturbing the soft murmur of the tank. Then, another much larger thump shakes the water a bit more. Golden light from the window behind me causes me to turn around. Through it, I track a burning ball of fire hurtling downward into the building next to this one. The impact of the explosion blows out the window, sending cascading glass into the room. Since I’m made of air, the glass passes through me, shining with fiery reflection.
I back away from the terror reining down on the Ship of Skye. I move toward Manus’s empty tank again, not knowing what to do. More explosions thump the ship; it begins to list to one side.
In a savage progression, the thumps grow louder: th-thump, thump, thuMP, th-thUMP, THUMP, THUMP—the wall to my side vaporizes in a fireball that engulfs the room and blows me sideways into the overup shaft.
I tumble, down, down, down.
I awake in my body with a wide-eyed gasp of air. My lungs burn as I struggle to take another breath. I feel like I’m waking from the dead. I’m shivering from cold, and my teeth chatter. I try to lift my hand to my forehead, but they’re both still confined behind my back.
Someone shakes me, rattling my already jangled nerves. “What? Stop it,” I grouse. I cringe because I’m in the arms of the dreadlocked soldier.
Sitting with me on his lap upon the soft, gray bench, he looks down at me with angry green eyes. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” I groan. “Now shut up. My head hurts.”
“I thought you were dead,” he murmurs. I squint at him. He’d be worth a second look if he weren’t such a knob knocker. His hair is light brown, but it has streaks of burnished gold in it. His hands are strong and rough. He doesn’t get his physique from exercise equipment. If I had to bet, he earns his strength in other ways.
“I’m not dead. Disappointed?” I scowl back at him.
“I’m becoming more so by the moment,” he replies with a frown. “Did you see the future?”
“It’s more like I went there. And I thought I told you to shut up.” I rest my forehead against his chest only because I can’t hold my head up on my own. I have a ridiculous headache. I might have stayed away from my body too long; I’m half-dead from it.
His hand slides up and down my arm and it takes me a second to realize he’s trying to warm me up a bit. “Tell me what you saw,” he orders.
Lifting my forehead off his chest, my eyes meet his green ones. “Kyon Ensin is alive . . . by tomorrow he’ll be fine—up and around and plotting our deaths. The Alameeda will attack on Fitzmartin—in two rotations—midday—sixteen parts.”
“How will they infiltrate the shields?”
“I don’t know—I didn’t see that part. The fact is that they do, and then they start blowing the crap out of this place.”
“You said you stabbed Kyon!” he says in an accusatory tone.
I take offense to the tone. “Don’t yell at me! My head hurts like someone hit it with a golf club! And I did stab him. The Flower-looking freak healed him—err . . . will heal him . . . uh, I mean—whatever! The fact is that by tomorrow night, he’ll be as good as new.”
“The Flower-looking freak? What’s a Flower-looking freak?”
“She’s a priestess—she had on an orchid dress—never mind!” I say in exasperation. “I don’t know who she is. I’ve never met her! But they completely knew I was there—will be there—ugh! They could sense me listening. This is such a paradox to think about.”
“Are you getting this?” the man asks aloud.
“Yeah, we got it, Giffen,” comes a voice from a small device on Giffen’s uniform.
“You’re not Comantre,” I state.
“No, I’m not,” he agrees.
“Who are you?”
“No one you know.”
“Fine,” I retort with growing hostility. “I’ll leave you to it then. I have to go.” I try to move from his lap, but his arms tighten around me.