Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Pax didn’t stop her when she walked along the silver path that she knew he’d built. It was so strong, so bright. Just like her brother. Pax was shiny and bright inside and so was everything he built in the psychic world.
When she looked down at her hands in the black space lit up by his silver road, they glittered all silvery sunshiny. Smiling, she walked to the end of the road until she was in a room where things were broken and in the wrong place. It was a mess.
She began to put everything back where it should be, like how she sometimes filed things in her father, Miles’s, study. He wasn’t as disappointed in her as the rest of the family. She didn’t know why, when he was an 8, but she was happy about it. When she needed to hide from Grandfather, she sometimes knocked on his office door and asked if he wanted her to tidy his bookshelves.
He always said yes unless he was going to have a meeting.
And his bookshelves were always messy. Even though she couldn’t read as well as a grown-up, she could read enough to work out the words on even his big books, and the ones she didn’t understand—like “astrophysics” or “cosmology”—she looked up on her study tablet. So she could file her father’s books and other papers pretty good. The ones she really, really didn’t understand, she put in a pile to ask him about when he was free.
But here, in this room where everything was tumbled and broken, she didn’t need his help. She knew. The ones that were only a little out of place were easy to put back, but the broken pieces wouldn’t fit so she had to sit down and fix them before she could put them back. It wasn’t hard, but it took time and lots of energy.
Pax gave her his energy. You’re so clever, Theo, he said, and she realized he was in the room, too, but he was just sitting in the corner, watching her. I don’t know how you fixed that.
You built the road, she told her brother. I don’t know how to do that. Thank you for giving me your power.
He smiled and she felt it inside her mind.
They stayed in that room until she’d fixed and shelved every broken and confused piece. Then she turned and walked back down the road, and though Pax wasn’t with her, she knew he’d be there when she opened her eyes. He had to close the door behind her and erase the road.
She opened her eyes before he did.
The bird hopped up as soon as Pax opened his eyes. It fluttered its wings, squawked . . . and then spread those wings and flew away so fast that Theo almost felt a wing hit her face. She laughed. “We did it, Pax! We did it!”
Her brother grinned at her . . . and then the world went blank, both their bodies and minds shutting down without warning.
Chapter 18
“I could relocate with her to my family home.”
“No, Father wants to closely supervise her education and growth. She’s a Marshall and will remain a Marshall. That was part of our procreation contract.”
“She’s a child, Claire. Well-behaved and intelligent. There’s no need to isolate her to fulfill the requirements of the Protocol—it works just as well if I raise her in the Faber home.”
“The decision is made, Miles. Unless you wish to challenge my father?”
—Conversation between Claire Marshall and Miles Faber (15 October 2062)
WITH DARKNESS NOT far off and the electricity to the facility non-operational, Yakov knew they only had time to do one quick sweep. All they discovered in that rapid sweep was abandoned equipment, cobwebs, and zero sign of any computers, tablets, or organizers.
“We aren’t going to find anything more today, especially with the light about to go,” he said to Theo once they were back on the ground floor. “I’ve caught no scents that indicate recent passage by humans, Psy, or changelings.”
Theo looked around, her gaze a touch wild. “We haven’t found anything.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Which in itself is a finding.”
He barely stopped himself from reacting when Theo turned back to face him—with eyes that had gone wholly black. It should’ve been eerie and it was in a sense, but it was also beautiful in a haunting kind of way. “We won’t do any good bumbling about in the dark. We need a plan and the time to do a deep search. Whoever scrubbed this place can’t have eliminated every single piece of data.”
“They’ve had a lot of time.”
“Yes, but it’s a large area and maybe not everyone did what they were meant to do.”
Theo, her eyes yet black, refused to move. Jaw tight and shoulders bunched, that humming anger yet alive in her, she said, “I can’t leave with only emptiness where answers should be.”