27 - TYSE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T he job offer from Stayn for this week is security. Most of the time Stayn hires out his off-duty patrolmen for private bodyguarding when important people come into Tau City for meetings or whatever, and doesn't bother calling me in. But there's a big political thing happening this week and all his off-duty guys are busy.

I'm always the last one on the list when it comes to jobs he needs done, but I don't mind because nine out of ten times when he makes me an offer like this, I don't even take it. I've gotten used to the retired life. I like calling all the shots and have little interest in being accountable to people for coin.

But I feel the need for space after last night's conversation with Clara about her boyfriend. Actually, it's not all about her boyfriend, it's more that I need time to think about who she is because I think my first impression of her was wrong, so this job is a reason to get myself some space.

I don't make many mistakes when it comes to figuring people out. Normally, I have a highly refined sense of intuition and these instincts have saved my ass in the Omega Outlands on more than one occasion.

But it turns out that there's more to up-city Clara Birch than I first thought. Maybe even much more. It's not surprising that she has a boyfriend. She's pretty, she's young, and she's smart. Not to mention the hot body. Which is all I thought she was—the body—when I first found her down in the lower levels of the tower.

I'm still not sure what was up with the dress she was wearing, but she alluded to it being out of her control, and that makes sense. Because the Clara Birch I have started to get to know is not a tavern wench. Not even close. She's some kind of princess. Not in the literal sense, though maybe she is, for all I know. It's possible the Tau City she comes from has royalty. But it doesn't matter if she's got the blue blood or not, she's… refined. And you only have to spend a few hours with her to see it. Slutty dresses cannot hide the things she is inside and if there's one thing that's certain to me now, it's that Clara Birch is intrinsically polished .

Anyway, the part about her boyfriend that bothers me isn't the fact that he exists. It's not even the fact that she still has feelings for him. The part that bothers me is their history.

Childhood friends, teenage sweethearts, first loves.

That's a hard act to follow, even if he did send her into the tower as some ritualistic sacrifice. Given the choice to go back or stay, she would go back.

Which shouldn't bother me—she and I are nothing to each other—but it took me three hours to fall asleep last night after I got in bed with her. She had no trouble whatsoever putting me out of her mind and sleeping through the night. She passed out like a baby within minutes.

And then the first thing I started thinking about when I woke up—even as I was getting out of bed and opening the door for the phone delivery—was her .

Her. A woman who is no one to me.

And how I am nothing more than the inevitable… rebound .

Which kinda pisses me off.

I'm kind of a big deal. Well, was kind of a big deal. Yes, I am a failed augment, but being an augment at all puts me in the top point zero-zero-one most intelligent people of the known world. I have a pension, for fuck's sake—which most augments never even get because they die —and I'm only thirty years old.

I've got my whole life ahead of me.

Kind of. If I were interested in living somewhere other than Tau City Tower, and I'm not. Not at the moment, anyway.

This is another thing that's bothering me. She said no to the hotel offer last night, but she's probably rethinking that decision in the light of day. And once she gets some coin in her hands, she'll be doing more than thinking about it. And I guess that's my fault because I'm the one who set her up with a job with Rodge. But I can't just leave her on her own all day. It's the tower, for fuck's sake. It's not a bad place most of the time. But the people here… they're the farthest thing from up-city we have in this place. Someone needs to keep an eye on her and no one's gonna do it for free. The job with Rodge was the only choice on short notice.

So she's gonna get coin. And as soon as she figures out that she can pay her own way, that's what she's gonna do. She's gonna go get a room. Her own room. One with electricity, and heat, and AC, and screens. But the most important thing is that it will be a room she doesn't have to share with me.

Because let's face it, we're just a couple of fuckin' strangers who got stuck with each other simply because I stumbled into her on a day when she either lost her mind or walked through a dimensional portal.

And now that work's over, this is all I can think about.

I was pretty busy all day because the man I'm running security for is a politician from Lambda. He's got his own team staying close to him, but Stayn says he doesn't trust the politician—does anyone trust a politician?—and wanted me to follow him. I'm sure the man was thrilled about that, but what can he say? It's not his town, is it? If he wants to be here, he's got to put up with me.

But I'm only working days. Stayn has someone for the night shift, so it's just a little past seven when I walk back into the Ruin District and start climbing the outside steps to the tower.

Anneeta is waiting for me at the top, once again looking like a child model in a fashion show for eccentric small people. Her skirt today is a ballerina tutu in pink and everything else—tights, shirt, boots, vest—is all different shades of tan and brown. The only other thing that's pink are the ribbons in her haphazardly plaited hair.

She's cute as fuck, this kid. But every time I see her all I can think about is how she shouldn't be cute as fuck. Because she's a homeless seven-year-old so addicted to spark, I'm not even sure she's technically human.

Of course, I'm one to talk. As an augment—failed or not—I'm not technically human either. But I look the part of failed augment. Anneeta here looks like… an avatar. Something artificially generated for virtual space. A little too smooth and perfectly imperfect.

"Hi, Tyse."

"Hey. Where ya been? I've been asking around for ya for two days now."

"Here and there. How's the lady doing?"

"Good, I think. Haven't seen her all day."

"She's working for Rodge."

"Yeah. Did you go up there?"

"I passed by on my way doing something else. I didn't say hi, though. Are you working now?"

"Kinda. For the week."

"Well, I was thinking… I could be her friend. If that's OK."

It should be OK. I mean, she's seven. No twenty-eight-year-old woman wants to hang out with a seven-year-old. Clara will be polite and say hello—because something tells me that being ‘polite' is kind of a thing for Clara—and then she's gonna forget all about the kid.

So it's gonna go something like this: Anneeta will be all, Hi, I'm Anneeta, the resident tower sparkplug. Would you like to have tea with me ?

And Clara—because I will have warned her ahead of time about the tea party invitation—is gonna be all, Very nice to meet you, small person, but I will have to decline your tea, for I hear it is atrocious .

And that's probably gonna be the end of it.

But I have questions. And giving Anneeta permission to hang out with Clara while I'm at work this week feels like a good way to get a few answers. Plus, I can keep an eye on Clara with Anneeta's eyes. It's pretty much a win-win for me.

So I pretend to think about Anneeta's request for a few moments, then sigh. Like I'm being put out. "Well, probably it's gonna be OK. But…" I crouch down on one knee so I can be eye level with the kid, then lean in, like I'm gonna tell her something secret. "When I ask her if she wants to be friends with you, she's gonna wanna know who you are and where you came from. Plus, if you do anything weird, it might scare her."

Anneeta is shaking her head before I even finish. "I won't do anything weird, I promise."

"Well, where should I tell her you come from?"

Anneeta looks confused. "I come from the tower."

"Yeah, but how that's work?"

Her eyes narrow with suspicion. "How's what work?"

"See, she's gonna ask questions about you. And I'm gonna have to tell her you're the one who led me to her."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Which is weird. So what do I tell her? I mean, about how you know everything about the tower."

"Well…" Anneeta tries on a smile. "We could lie."

I chuckle, then point at her. "We could. But we shouldn't. I like Clara. I don't want to lie to her."

"Oh." She's confused again. "Well. My head, you see?"

"Mmmhmm." I nod, rolling a hand for her to keep going.

"It sees things. Inside and outside. Well, of course outside. But it's different. You know what I mean?"

Here's the thing. I do know what she means. Because as an augment, I've experienced these inside pictures as well. Not to mention the outside ones, which is a whole other thing than actual reality. But Anneeta here is not augmented. She's seven .

And when she talks about seeing things inside and outside, she's talking about the veil . Something no one outside of Sweep even knows exists.

So seven-year-olds, who would never be augmented, should not be able to see the veil in the outside world or communicate with it inside their heads.

"Yes," I say. "I do know what you mean. But how do you see these things inside and outside of your head? And was it always like this? Or has it been changing over time?"

"You sound like a doctor, Tyse."

Oops. She's catching on. "Sorry, don't mean to. I'm just trying to find a way to explain you to Clara. In easy-to-understand terms. And if you tell me, I'll take you upstairs and introduce you to her right now."

Her suspicion fades. "You will?"

"Absolutely. She's gonna be thrilled to meet you. I bet you'll be having tea parties together by tomorrow."

I think Anneeta is lonely—she's just programmed herself not to think about it so it comes out as confidence—because her eyes immediately go wistful and fill up with longing as she pictures tea parties with Clara.

I almost feel bad about lying to her, but understanding Anneeta's relationship to the decommissioned god's tower feels pretty critical in this moment—I do, after all, have a world-hopping woman claiming she was sacrificed to this very same tower god living in my room with me—so I push that guilt away.

Anneeta leans in closer to me, then looks over both her shoulders like she's checking her peripherals before meeting my gaze again. "I didn't always see things the way I do now."

"No?"

She shakes her head. "No. It just happened one day last year."

"Last year?"

"Yep. I saw a lady."

"What kind of lady?"

"She looked like Clara, but… different. And she walked out of that tower." Anneeta points to one of the ruins.

I look at the ruined tower for a moment. It's not completely gone but it's not completely there, either. "Then what'd she do?"

"Just… walked away. And when she got to the edge there?" She points to the imaginary boundary that separates the Ruin District from the Canal District. "She disappeared."

"What do you mean, disappeared? Like… into a crowd of people?"

"No. Just… poof." Anneeta makes a poof gesture with her hands as she says this. "Gone. Like she was never there. And that's when the other place showed up."

Well, now we're getting somewhere. "What other place?"

"That place." She points off to my right. At the ruined foundation of what used to be an ancient tower, opposite the ruined tower she was previously referring to.

I look at the foundation, confused. "I don't get it."

"It's there. Can't you see?"

"What's there?"

"The tower, of course." Then her gaze lifts up and she stares at the sky.

My gaze lifts up to the sky too. The… empty sky. "There's no tower there, Anneeta. It's just air."

"You can't see it because you're not me. But there's a tower there, Tyse. And when I climb the stairs and go all the way up to the top, there's a secret room too. A room where people go to see me the way I see them."

I look up at the sky and replay those words in my head. Because I know exactly what she's talking about. She not only sees the veil—which presents to augments as a kind of shimmer. A break in the fabric of reality. Or, rather, the possibility of one—but she interacts with it too.

In Sweep, I could see what she's describing. I could also travel across the veil and visit places where the spark was still very powerful. Everyone on my team could. That's the whole point of being augmented. And the whole point of having augments in the Omega Outlands was to manage these places. The details of which are complicated, but not specifically important at this moment.

But there were no people there. At least, that's what we were told. I certainly never saw any, though. It was just a place . A bad place, even for augments because it's gone ‘amok'. Which is actually a technical term in the Sweep, stupid as that sounds.

I turn back to Anneeta, place both my hands on her shoulders, and wait until she's looking me in the eyes with her full attention. "Anneeta. Can you see that tower? Like actually see it?" I nod my head at the empty air where the tower used to be, but isn't now.

She nods.

I let out a breath and stand up. Then I let my gaze wander up to where the tower would be if my augments were still working. There's not supposed to be any veils left outside the Omega Outlands. They were cleared hundreds of years ago.

Did they miss one?

No. That's not even possible. That was the whole point of augments in the early days. To clear the veils in all the tower cities. And even if they failed back then, the augments ran the cities for decades after sweeping. Someone would've seen it. Even now, plenty of augments come to Tau City for leave. Someone would've seen it.

Hell, seven years ago, I would've seen it. I still had some vision when I was discharged. Maybe I wouldn't be able to see an actual tower, like in my prime, but I would know something was there. Even if I couldn't see the overlay, I would've felt it, at the very least.

It can not be here.

But it is. I know it is. And it's got something to do with Clara.

"Anneeta, could you see this tower before you saw that first lady?"

"No. But I could feel it. And I couldn't see other ladies before her, either. She was the first one I ever saw. But then, after she disappeared, when I turned back to the ruin, it was all like this." She shrugs and opens her arms to indicate all the things I cannot see.

"How many towers do you see?"

She looks around, her lips moving a little as she counts. "Five. But not all of them are tall. Just this one"—she points to the empty space we've been talking about—"and that one." She points across the canal, to the other side of the Ruin District.

Two towers on either side of the God's Tower. Just like Clara described to me.

"Sometimes"—Anneeta points to the space in front of the God's Tower now—"there's a lot of people out there. That night we found Clara—well, the night before that, actually—there were a lot of people out there. And the night before that, too."

"What kind of people?" Because this… I don't understand. "Like… that kind of people?" I point to all the people in front of the tower right now.

Anneeta shakes her head. "No. Those are real people. The people I see are ghosts. And that night before Clara came, I saw ghosts. I saw her ."

"Wait." I stare at the tower, trying to picture this. Then I look back at Anneeta. "Did you see her, the ghost Clara, walk through the tower doors?"

Anneeta nods. "I did. I followed her—I always follow them—but she wasn't inside when I got there."

"You always follow… who ?"

"I mean." She turns away, not looking at me. "I don't see them."

"But you just said you saw the lady last year. And the crowd?—"

"Well, yeah! I do see them !" She's turned back to me now and her voice is higher in pitch and a little bit frantic. "But that's it. That's all I see."

She's lying.

I think about this for a moment, then decide this is as far as I can push her. She's said too much and she's backtracking now so any more discussion is pointless. It's all gonna be lies. If I want more information—that's true, anyway—I need to give her space. "OK." I look down at Anneeta. "Thanks. For the info. Come on, let's go meet Clara."

Anneeta might not trust me enough with the truth, but she might trust Clara. And the three of us need to have a very serious conversation about what is happening here.

Anneeta follows me into the tower and up the stairs, hanging back a bit, like she's nervous or something. Which is out of character for her, so I'm thinking about these possible reservations when I walk up to my door and reach for the handle.

This is when I hear voices. I flip the handle and kick the door open, Versi already at high ready, then just stand there, unable to react because I'm so stunned at what I'm seeing.

A hologram floats in the middle of the room. A hologram of me. But not just me. Jast, Myra, Stepan, and Kirt are all dead on the ground at my feet, holes in their heads the size of my fist, because this is my discharge proceedings and it's playing the worst moment of my life right out in the open.

"How?" The word comes out before I realize that Clara is on the other side of the hologram and I can just barely make out the spectra she's holding between her fingertips.

Still, even though the hologram is playing and she's holding the spectra up, I am still unable to figure out what the hell is actually going on. Because… there's no spectra player. I don't even own one. I keep the spectra because… well, it's mine. My time in the Sweep was two-thirds of my life, if you count recruitment and augmentation prep. I couldn't just toss it aside like it meant nothing.

Clara's eyes find mine and she startles, dropping the spectra, and the hologram disappears

I glare at the woman on the other side of the room. "What the fuck are you doing? Where did you get that?"

Immediately, she's apologizing. "I'm sorry! It was an accident. I kicked the stool over and the top opened up and?—"

"You found a box. My box. Which you then opened! Ya had no right!"

"I didn't know what it was. And I tried to put it back, but it shocked me! And then it rolled away and when I picked it up the next time, that… that… picture appeared in the air! Like magic! I didn't do anything! It just appeared!"

I force myself to take a breath and calm down. Of course she has no idea what a spectra is. She can't even find a word to describe the hologram she was watching. But nothing about what she just said makes any sense, either. How did she make it play? It's not supposed to play just by touching it.

"Here." She bends down, reaching for the spectra.

"No!" But this command comes out too late. She's already pinching it between her fingertips. The hologram springs open again, and my team—my dead team—once again fills the room. I want to rip it out of her hand, but I still can't make sense of why it's playing. All she's doing is holding it. Like she's… "Oh, fuck."

"Take it." Clara thrusts the spectra at me. "Just take it!"

I step forward and reach for it, desperate to make my past disappear, but instead of disappearing, something else happens when our fingertips touch. A massive jump of spark bursts through me and suddenly the entire room is covered in veil !

It shimmers for a moment. But when I withdraw my hand from Clara's, it all disappears. "Make it come back!" I say this while looking Clara directly in her eyes.

"Make what come back?"

"Ya didn't see that? Ya didn't see the veil that appeared when our fingers touched? It was all over the room!"

"I don't know what you're talking about! Just take it!" She thrusts the spectra at me again, but this time when I reach for it I use both hands, clutching at her so she can't drop it or withdraw. And again, when we touch, the veil appears.

Only this time, it's not just a shimmer. It's an overlay. A complete fucking overlay of the room. With stats, and labels, and everything. Like I'm back in the Omega Outlands clearing a ruin.

"What are you doing? Let go of me!" Clara struggles to get out of my grip, but I hold tight, just looking around, amazed, and afraid, and… relieved all at the same time.

"You're doing this," I tell her.

"Doing what? I'm not doing anything!"

"You're…" It takes a moment for all my training and experience in the Sweep to come rushing back, so I don't have the right word for a few seconds. But then it's all there. All the data I was used to is falling down my field of vision like a fucking waterfall.

Clara struggles harder, her eyes wide in shock.

My augments have come to life again and my eyes are throwing off a blue light so bright, it lights up the dim room, casting eerie shadows across the chair and the bed.

But I don't care about the eyes, or the color, or the hologram, actually.

I am working again.

This is when I notice that there's blue light coming from between the cracks in the metal shutters over the windows. I walk over there, dragging Clara with me because I've still got a hold of her hand, and look through. The overlay is covering the entire Ruin District. "Holy fuckin' shit."

Clara leans in, trying to peek through the shutters. "What? I don't see anything. What do you see?"

The ruins are whole again. Tall towers, but nothing like the towers just beyond, in the Canal District. They are maybe… ten or fifteen floors up. And they are not made of shiny metal or glass, but plaster, or mud, or something primitive like that. The tops are domed and the domes are blue.

But the most incredible thing about what I'm seeing is the canal. A bright blue line with beaches on either side that runs straight down the city, just like Clara described it.

There are people down there, too. Just walking along stone paths, talkin' and shit. Having a normal life or whatever. Wearing clothes I've never seen before. Like… desert clothes. Loose things, long things, in every kind of neutral color.

" What ?" Clara says again, her voice more desperate now. She's looking all around, leaning in and back, trying different angles to see what I'm seeing. "What's out there?"

I let out a breath and take a step back. Then I look her in the eyes. "It's your city, Clara. That's what's out there."

"What? How?" She leans in, once again looking past the shutters. "I don't see anything."

"That's because you're not augmented. You're not programmed to see what I see. But you're programmed to do something else though, aren't ya? Who sent you here?" Then I hold up her hand, the spectra still pinched between her fingertips. "You're doing this, aren't you? You're powering it somehow. How are you doing this?"

Clara shakes her head at me, denying it as she renews her attempts to wriggle out of my grip on her hand. "I'm not, I swear!"

"It's not her."

I turn, and Clara gets loose, dropping the spectra into my hand so the hologram disappears, and with it goes the veil and the overlay and the waterfall of data.

Anneeta, who I had forgotten about, steps into the room still looking very much like an unreal little girl.

"What?" I ask her.

"It's not her. Not all of it, at least. It's me, Tyse. I'm the one powering this."

The silence is thick after Anneeta says these words. Mostly because Clara and I are both very confused, though for different reasons. I take another deep breath, trying to slow my heart rate, and then point to the chair. " Sit ." I'm looking at Clara. She doesn't even object, just does as she's told, perching on the edge of the cushion in an upright position. Though I think if she wasn't so confused and had her wits about her, she would definitely object to my commanding tone.

Then I turn to Anneeta and point at the bed. "Close the door and you sit too."

Anneeta sighs, but doesn't resist. She closes the door, then walks over to the bed and sits down, looking up at me with those big, brown eyes of hers.

I pace the room, still trying to even out the rhythm of my booming heart, and then, after a couple seconds of this, I stop between the bed and the chair, looking back at them.

Clara has no clue, so I direct my first question to Anneeta. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. I can't help it if the spark lives inside me and comes out whenever it wants."

"Spark did this?" I pan a hand to the room, which is now empty of all evidence of what just happened, of course. Because I am holding the spectra and for whatever reason, I can't power it up the way Clara did. "How, Anneeta? How did spark play the hologram on my fuckin' Sweep discharge spectra when Clara touched it?"

"Well…" Anneeta does a little shrug here. "She's…" Her eyes roll up, like she's thinking. "It says she's a conductor. But I don't know what that means."

" Who says that !" This comes out way too loud and both girls jump.

"The… god?" Anneeta's voice is small now. Like I scared her.

I exhale in frustration, then rub both hands down my face, trying to stay calm. When I look at her again, I've got more control over my tone. "There is no god in this tower, Anneeta. You and I both know this."

"You keep saying that, but you see all the evidence of him. It's all over the place. You heard the generators in the lower levels. You saw the power, remember?"

"I do, and I did, but there's still no god here. If there was, don't you think he'd be a little pissed off that several thousand uninvited guests are living in his fuckin' tower?"

"Don't you think he is ?"

Anneeta and I stare at each other as these words of hers sink in.

I break away first. Then turn and look at Clara. "Tell me what happened."

"I told you. I found that disc by mistake. I picked it up, it shocked me, so I dropped it. And the next time I picked it up that picture appeared. The… hologram, or whatever."

"You can't blame her, Tyse. It's your fault too."

I turn to look at Anneeta. "Explain."

"You're the augment. Without you, I can't make a veil. And without her"—she points to Clara—"you can't see the veil I make. So." She shrugs. "It's all of us."

I stare at her for a few moments. Then my gaze travels down to the floor where the footstool is still overturned. My eyes dart up to meet Clara's and she pleads innocent with her hands.

"I told you, Tyse. It was an accident. I didn't mean to see that stuff. Your… that… hearing, or whatever."

She watched my discharge hearing. And she saw what I did to my team.

I upright the footstool then position it in front of Clara and take a seat, looking her in the eyes. "You can leave, if you want. I'll still pay for a hotel. I'll even walk you into the Canal District."

Anneeta stands up, objecting. "She can't leave! We're gonna be friends! You said so!"

"You…" I point to her, annoyed. "Go home now. Wherever the fuck that is."

"But you promised!"

"Tomorrow, Anneeta. OK? Tomorrow . I need to talk to Clara."

Anneeta's eyes find Clara's now. "Don't go anywhere. We're friends now."

Clara sighs, then forces a smile. "I won't."

"Promise you'll be here tomorrow. Promise ." Anneeta is not convinced. But honestly, neither am I.

Clara nods, her body language more compelling this time. "I promise."

"Fine." Anneeta walks to the door, pulling it open. But before she walks through, she shoots us one more look over her shoulder, directing her words at me. "You'll figure it out, you know. Probably soon." She smiles at me, revealing that gap in her teeth.

Before I can ask a million more questions about what she just said, she's gone, the door closing softly behind her.

I turn to Clara. "I'm serious about the hotel. I won't make a big deal about it. And I'll still help you. In whatever way I can, at least. I saw your city, Clara. It was just as you described. I saw your canal and everything. The towers with the domes. And people walking around in traditional desert clothes."

"Oh, my god!" Clara jumps up. "What?" Then she goes back to the window and peeks out. "You saw it?"

"I did." And now I know for sure that she's not lying. I know I said I believed her, but that was just something you say when the only other choice is to call someone crazy. I didn't wanna do that, so I said I believed her. There was even evidence. A bit of it, anyway.

But this? This is something else entirely.

"I don't see anything, Tyse. Make it come back!"

"Didn't ya hear? I'm not running this thing." I point to the augments in my head. "Anneeta is. She's a child of the spark. She was born in it. She's not right. It affected her brain. But there's no denying that I saw what I saw. She made my augments work. She's not lying and neither are you."

Clara peeks back out the window, still hopeful for a glimpse.

"Sit down, Clara. We need to talk."

She keeps looking for a few moments, but finally sighs and sits back down in the chair so we're facing one another. I'm struggling for words, my mind spinning with the idea that she saw me kill my team, and what she might think about that. Which is a stupid thing to worry about after what just happened, but there it is.

Clara finds her words just fine and starts asking questions. "What was it then? Can you tell me that? I mean, you said you believed me."

"I did. Kinda. But the overlay"—I nod my head to the window—"that's irrefutable evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

"The veil."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"It's…" It's hard to explain is what it is, but I think back to how it was explained to me the first time I saw it. "It's like a mirror, only instead of seeing a reflection, you see past it. Into places that should stay hidden."

"And you're sure it was Tau City?"

"Yeah. It looked… familiar. From your description. I know different worlds exist. I've seen them before in the Omega Outlands. But they're dead. There are no people there, Clara. And I know this isn't a lie because I was there for years. I know what's there. And it's not people. It's just ruins, and remnants, and… other things . The Sweep sends us there to clear the veils because if we don't get rid of them, bad energy seeps through and infects this world. Well." I blow out a breath. "Not here in the cities. Only in the Outlands. The veils haven't been in this part of the world for hundreds of years. But forget all that."

"Forget all that? Nothing else matters but that! My city is right out there!" She points to the window.

"Not exactly. But anyway, I meant what I said about the hotel."

Her whole face scrunches up. "What?"

"I know what's on this spectra, Clara. I know you saw what I did."

Finally, some of the tension flows out of her in a long exhale.

"So like I said. I'll take you down to a hotel?—"

"Why would I do that?"

"Why the hell wouldn't you? You saw what I did . You know I'm lying."

She sighs, looking down, then laughs. But it's one of those incredulous laughs that only comes out when things have spiraled so out of control you've got no other choice than to give in and accept it.

She looks up and meets my gaze and she is fully in control of herself. This is up-city Clara Birch speaking to me right now. "My boyfriend, the love of my life, he sacrificed me to our tower god. Real or not, Finn did that. That's the first thing. Which… honestly, I'm over it because he was confused, and scared, and trying his best with the knowledge he had."

I figured as much, but I don't say this out loud.

"But the tower god is bullshit, I don't understand this world or my place in it, and the only ally I have is a murderer who didn't even tell me his real name when we made introductions."

Her polish is sparkling right now, that's how careful she's being with these words of hers.

"Sorry about that. It's just I haven't been Tymothy for years now. It never even occurred to me, Clara. I'm just not him anymore. I'm Tyse."

She puts up a hand. "Let me finish, please."

"Of course. Continue."

"It's a lot to process. The betrayal, the inexplicable dimensional travel, or whatever. And the man I'm now seemingly connected to via this… spark magic. Nothing about it makes any sense at all. But it must. It has to." She stares at me with those blue eyes, almost begging me to agree with her.

"Why do ya say that? I mean, does it have to make sense?"

"Is the world logical? Does it have rules?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"Well, my guess is that it does. Everything obeys the laws of nature."

"Do they? Because that hasn't been my experience."

She hesitates for a moment. Then lets out a breath. "I was afraid you'd say that. Because you're right. The rules don't make sense. None of this makes any sense at all. But that's because we're missing critical information. If we could just find this missing information then it would make sense. It would follow rules. Like that thing. What happened with that disc?" I'm still holding the spectra in my hand, so she takes that hand and pries open my fingers to reveal it in my palm. She doesn't pick it up. "What is this?"

"It's a discharge record?—"

"No. I understand that part. What is it?"

"A hologram. Which is like a video, but it plays in the air because it's made of light. However"—I hold up the spectra between my fingertips—"it needs a player. It's not supposed to just play by itself."

"So why did it?"

"You."

"Me what , Tyse? I didn't do anything but touch it."

"You've got spark in you, Clara. Like Anneeta does. Wherever you came from, it must be overflowing with spark if it's such a part of you that you can hold technology in your hands and make it work."

"Well, of course I have spark in me, Tyse! I'm a Spark Maiden! But in my world, I was a weak one." She holds up her hand and wiggles her fingers at me. "It's mostly just in my…"

She doesn't finish. She doesn't have to.

"Well," I say, "Critical information obtained. I guess that's one mystery answered. Whatever a Spark Maiden is, it's a pretty powerful thing if you can store it inside you and use it whenever you want. Like you're a human-sized jump, or something. See if you can make it happen again."

She hesitates, but can't fight the curiosity. Her fingertip barely connects with the silver casing of the spectra before the hologram springs to life.

I look around, waiting for the augments to kick in like they did before, but there's no overlay of the veil between worlds and there's no waterfall of data falling down my vision screen. It's just me, shooting my team in their heads.

Clara gasps when she realizes which part of my discharge hearing is actually playing, then withdraws her hand, making the hologram disappear. "Did you see it?"

"The overlay? No. Anneeta was right. She's the one powering my augments. Well, it's us, I guess. The three of us…" I stop, trying to think of an easy way to explain it. "We're like a circuit."

"But what's all that mean , Tyse?"

"Fuck if I know." I blow out a breath, frustrated with myself because it's not entirely true. So I take another stab at answering her question. "I guess it means… we've been given power and we should probably do something with it."

"Do something like what?"

There's only one clear answer here. It sucks, if you ask me, because I'm starting to get attached to up-city Clara Birch. But it's rather obvious, so I just say it. "Get you home, that's what. And if you still trust me, after watching what I did to my team, then I promise, I will get you home."