Chains of Loss (11 page)

“I think I know a way.”  She braced herself.  “Stay with me and help me keep you safe?  I don’t know what I’d do if I was alone.”

“I—I can do that.”  Mycah didn’t know what frustrated her more—that he hadn’t said what she’d expected, or that she
knew
she’d been disappointed when he hadn’t. 

“See, I have a plan to keep you safe—safer, at least.”  He knocked a hand against his own chest.  “I don’t need all of this.  If I give you some, you won’t get shot again.”

She looked him up and down.  He had to be kidding.  “How exactly will that fit me?  And how will you stay safe, then?  Are you even wearing anything under that stuff?”

“Oh, sure I am.  Here.  Let’s try this…”  He pulled her close again, then suddenly released her and stepped back.  “There, how’s that?” 

She started to ask what he meant.  The question died in her throat as a tide of warmth swept over her.  Her clothes had—no, it wasn’t just her clothes.  She yanked off a glove.  She felt no different, but her hand looked like carved obsidian.  A new question formed.  “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a bit of my flight suit, split off to protect you.  About twenty kilos’ worth…it can’t do much, but it will block another bolt.” 

Derek continued, but Mycah didn’t hear him.  The only thing that had really sunk in was that the black coating on her skin and clothes was armor.  Armor that – despite Derek’s declaration – didn’t appear to weigh anything. 

She couldn’t stop staring at it.  She’d thought for a moment that it had gone under her gloves but on top of her other clothes; she’d been wrong.  Her sleeves felt as if they were sealed to her flesh, but the moment she pulled they came away cleanly and the black drained from them. 

She hadn’t seen her skin underneath; just more black.  How far under her clothes did it reach?  Did she really want to think about it? 

“And you’ll be able to alter its appearance when your hardware’s online.  Until then, I can do it for you, if you want.”  Derek finished his speech and was beaming at her.  She shook her head.  She could even see it on the sides of her nose. 

“Can you make it…I don’t know, normal? 
Not
like – like this?”  She gestured, but her skin was already clearing and the substance congealed into a pair of pants and a vest.  She shuddered.

“Is that better?”

“A little.”  She felt for buttons; there weren’t any.  “How do I take it off?”

A seam
formed
under her fingers; the vest split open when she pulled there.  She watched, fascinated, as it reformed when she set the open ends together again. 

It took her a moment to find her voice.  “Okay, that’s a lot better now.”

“It’s not very effective like that.  It’ll take a couple seconds to cover your face if it has to.”

“I’ll try not to let them hit me in the face.”  She paused.  “Exactly how good is this…armor?  What can I expect from it?”  She ran her fingers across it.  It was rock-solid, but she could see it bend with her body when she moved.  She twisted about and was surprised at how comfortable it felt.  It seemed almost weightless.

“It should be able to – well, it would have stopped the bolt.”

“Really.”  

“Easily.”

“What about energy?”

“It’s not conductive or flammable.  You should be much safer.”

“Hmph.  We’re not going to be safe at all if we don’t keep moving.”  She hesitated.  “Thanks.  Again.”

***

Mycah was quiet, so Derek let her have peace.  She’d gone through two near-death experiences in a matter of hours.  On top of the adrenaline and other hormones that this would leave in her blood, she could also be in an altered state after the transfusion. 

Besides.  He had plenty to think about.  The strange letter’s contents, for one, were clearly ludicrous.  Precognition was impossible on the scale the writer had spoken of.  Just like faster-than-light travel, which had apparently brought him to this planet in the first place. 

He quickly came to the conclusion that, in the face of another thing
known
to be impossible for millennia, perhaps he shouldn’t completely write off precognition either.  He was so absorbed in this line of thought when they stopped for water that he almost missed seeing Mycah break the second law of thermodynamics.

His brain screeched to a halt.  What had he just seen?  He threw his mind into the rush to play the memory back.  She had reached into the water.  The infrared sensor indicated a temperature surge in the water around her hand as she had made a grasping motion…and then she had lifted a full cup from the water.  A cup made of ice.

He returned to regular time.  She finished drinking from the cup and offered it to him.  He stared at it, but didn’t want to touch it. 

“Mycah,” he said, “what did you just do?”

She smiled.  “I’m from Fae Lake.  I’m good with water.”  His confusion had to have been clear on his face, because her smile faded.  “What?  I grew up around Waushan.  It’s what they do.”

Derek wobbled.  Faster than light travel’s possibility was one thing; precognition another.  Either could probably be explained, but if the laws of thermodynamics were mutable...

He took a breath to compose himself.  What exactly to ask?

“I saw,” he started, “you reach into the water and pull out a cup made of ice.  Where did the cup come from?”

She shrugged.  “I made it.”

“How?”

“When water gets cold enough-”

“I know where ice comes from.  How did the water get cold?”

“I pushed out the heat.”

“Pushed out the heat.  With what?”

“Sorcery.”  She smirked.  “What else do you use for moving around energy?”

“And what is sorcery?”

“Do you have a point with these questions?  I’m not really in a mood to play around, so if you’ve got something to tell me, go right ahead.”

He swallowed hard.  “I have no idea what you were talking about just now.  I’ve never
heard
of sorcery.”

“Really.”  She swiped her hand over the stream and a wave splashed at him as if she’d pushed through it instead.  She hadn’t touched the water.  Was she telekinetic too?

He nodded, dripping.  “Really.  I have no idea how you just did that.”

“You just…focus on it.  Everybody does it.”

“Not where I come from.”

“What about runes?”

“What about them?”  He looked up the definition, then grimaced.  “Do they do weird things too?”

“No, they’re normal.”

“Okay.”  He stopped.  Normal for whom?  “But they do things?”

“If you use them right, yes.”

“How?  No, don’t answer that.  Start from the beginning.”

“If you say so.”  Mycah leaned over, hands on her knees.  “What’s the beginning?”

“What in Tarus is going on?”

“You tell
me
!”

“Look.  What you just did there, with the cup.  You pushed heat from a cold place towards a hot place.  Right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s against the second law of thermodynamics.”

“Well.  We’re not there, are we?”

“What?”

“Who’s going to prosecute?”

“Thermodynamics isn't a place.  It's a set of statements that show what scientists have observed about the way things work.  All science is then based on those statements being true.  If those statements weren't
really
true, then all the research that draws from them has to be done over.”

“That's bad, isn't it?”

“This would set me back about two thousand years.  Maybe more.  So yes, bad.”

“Oh.  So what do we do about it?”

“I think I'll pass out first.”

“Will that help?”

“Not really.”

“Skip it then.”

“Okay.” 

“We shouldn’t stop,” she said.  “We’ve lost too much time today, but I will teach you what I can while we’re moving.  Okay?”

***

Derek huddled against a tree.  He wasn’t cold, but the contact was slightly soothing.  It was something he hadn’t seen much of before last week, but his ancestors had known about trees and understood them. 

Magic.
  His brain balked at defining what Mycah had described.  She had declined to demonstrate anything other than her flagrant violation of thermodynamics; she claimed their pursuers might be able to detect it if she wasn’t working with water.  Her descriptions had broken down whenever Derek had asked why, and when they’d made camp she had fallen asleep almost immediately. 

Still.  She had given him information, and he had dutifully created a wiki and filled it with every word she’d said.  He also added details of the frozen cup. 

Eventually, maybe he’d understand.  He’d seen essential laws of physics broken.  Perhaps there was something else at work here, some hidden machine or bizarre trick.  Maybe his implants were broken and he was really stuck in a simulation, or he was dying of blood loss and hallucinating. 

His reverie broke when his implants alerted him to an incoming signal.  A millisecond later, his hopes were dashed; the broadcast was coming from Mycah’s budding cybernetics.  She had entered REM; without contrary instructions, her implant was automatically trying to access the subcontinent with a radio pulse.  Fortunately, subcontinent login pulses were weak; unless they connected with routing devices, they wouldn’t persist past a dozen meters.

Still…she should shut it off, and she didn’t know how.  He could teach her how, easily; he just needed to log in.  It would kill some time, get him some rest, and give him something else to think of other than magic.  He took a moment to check the sensors, then settled into a trance.

Moments later, he was at the hub.  A console rose at his request, displaying details of the single available node: Mycah’s dream.  He willed himself inside.

The room flickered into existence.  Derek immediately recognized it as a memory; most of the objects in the room were conceptual.  Mycah was dreaming of a place where there had been a few specific objects and many unimportant ones; the incidental things were all perceptive archetypes, and doubtless looked different to Mycah than they did to Derek.

To Derek, the room was a common room, filled with gleaming tables and chairs.  There was an elevator on the wall, a door, and a counter, but the distance between them fluctuated, betraying a discrepancy in scale. 

There were only a handful of discrete objects in the dream; three women or girls, huddled around a heating vent, facing away from him.  Specific objects in a memory were always things the dreamer had interacted with; hence, one of them had to be Mycah’s avatar.  Derek approached them cautiously.  Since he wasn’t actually asleep, his ability to interact with them was limited.  His chances of actually being able to hear what they said were low, but he didn’t want to intrude on a private exchange between Mycah’s friends.  He edged around them until he could see their faces. 

The first figure was probably a taerlae.  Her face was edged by black hair that was interrupted by bands of white, as if it had changed color repeatedly as it grew.  Most of her other features were blurred; Mycah’s subconscious was superimposing the woman’s more recent appearance with how she had appeared when the memory occurred.

             
The second’s face had no such discrepancy.  She was about fourteen, with red hair and pure white skin.  Her eyes were rimmed with tears.  She was beautiful, but radiated sadness. 

The third apparition was hunched as if cowering.  Her hair, skin and clothes were a uniform, ashen grey.  Derek had to kneel to see her eyes; they were like orbs of confined smoke stuck in an emaciated face.  They blinked.  She was aware of him.

“Mycah…?” 

The grey lips moved in a whisper.  “Not safe.  Never safe here.”

“It’s okay, Mycah, it’s just a dream.”

“Go.  Leave.  Never come back.  They never do.  Except him.”  The voice was still soft, but it had gained some urgency.

“What do you mean?  Who never comes back?  Who is he?”  Derek could feel her dread leaking into his mind. 

“Everyone leaves.  It’s just me.  Me and him, and he's coming.  Go.”

“Mycah.”  Derek hoped that repeating her name might bring her to a more lucid state.  “Mycah.  I’m here, and I’m not going to leave you.” 

“You will leave.”  Her hand reached up, the grey skin cracking to reveal live embers underneath.  “Everyone leaves.  It keeps them safe.  Safe from him.  Safe from me.”  Her finger trailed across his cheek and he recoiled from the heat.  “Go.  It’s better that way.”

“Who is he?”

Everything stopped.  The avatar’s eyes were fixed on the door behind Derek.  He heard the door open, and footsteps began to approach.  With every step, the dread in the atmosphere increased. 

Mycah’s voice met him like the gentlest breeze.  “Go.  Now.  He is coming.”