“So you don’t know about the realignment magic?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Are you all right? They said you were caught up in the explosion that killed Wallach and did this to Viv.”
“I’m fine, I guess.” I pulled a chair next to Viv’s bed and sat. “Mr. Wallach found a way to keep the invaders from getting into our world ever again. He wanted to shift our reality away from theirs, seal the cracks they use to get in. And it almost worked.”
“That’s insane. No wonder—” Jeremiah closed his mouth, pressing his lips tight against more words escaping.
“No, really, it was working. The anchors—the parts that connected the magic to our reality—they started to move. That’s what killed Mr. Wallach. He got caught in the field and it—” I remembered that twisted wax figure and swallowed bile. “And I brushed up against it.” I waved my bandaged hand at him again.
Jeremiah nodded. “Was anyone else hurt?”
“No. Just the three of us. It could have been so much worse.”
“She’s not dead. That means there’s hope.” Jeremiah didn’t sound hopeful.
The door opened, and Lucia entered. She didn’t look surprised to see us there. “I understand the surgery was successful,” she told me. “Glad to hear it.”
From Lucia, that counted as gushing happiness. “Thanks. They’ll finish the healing in a few days.”
“You’re still the luckiest person I’ve ever met.” She stood beside Jeremiah and regarded Viv. “No change?”
“None. Does anyone know what happened yet?” Jeremiah said, his voice tight with frustration.
Lucia didn’t take her eyes off Viv. “Pirolli is still analyzing the fulcrum. He and Osenbaugh have recreated the event, as far as possible without repeating it, and he says there was a microcellular event that altered the fulcrum to make it vulnerable to, as he put it, a percussive intervention.” She scowled. “He means it was weakened enough that hitting it could break it,” she said to my obvious confusion. “God save me from academics.”
“But Viv couldn’t have known that,” I said.
“I won’t know what Haley did or did not know until she wakes up.” Lucia’s scowl deepened. “About all we do know is she bashed it with her toolbox and the fulcrum shattered, releasing all the energy it had absorbed from the node along with its direct connection to the node’s energy.”
“She should not have survived that,” Malcolm said. “The power of a node is fatal to humans.”
“I know that, Campbell. She’s lucky all it did was drain most of her magic. Right now I have my best minds working on the problem. Haley ought to be dead, or at the very least brain-fried.” Jeremiah’s exhausted face went paler, but Lucia didn’t notice. “I don’t even know enough to speculate. It might have something to do with the node itself. Nobody really understands how the named Neutralities affect their nodes, and I only learned the oracle is separate from the node yesterday, so it’s even weirder than I thought. Or something about the store’s environment affected her. It’s all just random guessing at this point.”
My stomach chose that moment to rumble with hunger. Lucia’s lips curved in a half-smile. “And life goes on,” she said.
“Not for everyone,” Jeremiah growled. “Don’t you dare make light of this, Lucia.”
The smile vanished. “I’ve lost the most brilliant magus this node has ever seen, Washburn. The oracle was nearly destroyed. I am sorry for your personal tragedy, but don’t you think you’re the only one who’s suffering here. Haley’s alive, and we’ll figure out how to rouse her. Until then, I have work to do.” She nodded at me. “Are you going back to work tomorrow?”
I’d lost track of what day it was. “I guess so. I feel fine, just hungry. My hand doesn’t even hurt.”
“I’ll have a few auguries for you. Call Judy Rasmussen and let her know you survived. I made her go home around midnight. Right now I have to deal with the fallout from Palembang.” She was gone before I could ask what had happened with Palembang. She’d made it sound like everything was well there when we’d spoken before the realignment’s failure.
Jeremiah was staring blankly at the wall, his hand closed into a fist. I put my hand on his arm. “She’s right. They’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, but didn’t look at me. “Go get some food,” he said.
“You should come with us.”
He shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I’ll have to leave eventually to go to work tomorrow. Until then…I don’t want to leave if there’s a chance she’ll wake.”
“I understand.” I hugged him impulsively and left.
I thought Malcolm would take me to the central hub to be teleported out of the Gunther Node, but instead he led me along the magenta line to a big, low-ceilinged room that smelled of roast chicken and green beans. “The cafeteria,” he said. “It’s a little early for lunch, but they feed people twenty-four hours a day.”
“I had no idea this was here.” The cafeteria was unexpectedly cheery, its walls covered with posters done in a World War II art style, but with slogans altered to apply to fighting the Long War. I gazed at a picture of a Forties-era housewife in a cheerful polka-dot apron whose thought bubble read What the invaders don’t know WILL kill them! and wondered if there was a Warden marketing department that came up with these things.
Malcolm helped me fill my tray with chicken and a pile of green beans—even the food felt like WWII-era dining—and then cut the chicken into small pieces I could manage. Despite what Ruby had said, I didn’t feel much like eating, but my stomach ached with hunger, so I valiantly ate my meal and idly eavesdropped on the few other diners in the room. They weren’t talking about anything interesting, but maybe they were just influenced by the poster that read Be like Dad and Keep Mum!
While I was eating, Malcolm pulled out his phone and texted someone. Moments later, another phone buzzed with an incoming text. Malcolm withdrew my phone from his back pocket and handed it to me. GLAD YOU’RE WELL. STOP SCARING ME, Judy’s message read. I typed a reply one-handed and went back to eating. “I’m glad she went home,” I said. “Was I really there for thirteen hours?”
“Sixteen, counting the time it took you to wake up,” Malcolm said. He took a drink of coffee, which was all he’d helped himself to, and added, “I’m starting to feel the exhaustion of having fought at Palembang and then spent the night napping fitfully.”
I pushed my tray away. “Let’s go home, and you can sleep.”
Malcolm didn’t look as if he were exhausted, but I kept up a steady stream of conversation with him on the drive home anyway, to keep him awake. “Have there been any more attacks?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge. But I’ve been preoccupied.”
“Lucia would have said something.” I stared out the window at the passing cars. I’d lost enough time that I was disoriented by the sun being high in the sky instead of on the horizon the way my body told me it should be. “Was it really that remarkable, the factions fighting as one?”