Chaos (25 page)

“Jas.” Ford breathed her name into her ear and she froze. He slid his hand up her neck to tangle in her hair and pulled her close. “It was a long time ago. Now, it’s just you, I promise.”

He pulled back just enough to press his lips against the frantic pulse in her neck. Then he moved higher, along her jaw, her chin. “I don’t know what any of this means. But I know one thing: I won’t let you go.”

Finally, his lips were against hers again. They kissed until they were both breathless. This kiss was different from any of the other kisses she’d had, which were wet and sloppy and uncomfortable. Kissing him was like falling, or floating. It was
right
.

She couldn’t be without him again. At any moment she might get pushed into another day or another year. He might stay lost to her in time forever.

“We need to figure out how to stop this,” she said. “
All
of it.”

“There might be someone who can help us.” There was hesitation in Ford’s eyes, and she could tell he didn’t like what he was about to suggest. “Miranda might know.”

The name gave her an uneasy feeling. She’d been so worried about dodging the Executors and rocketing back and forth through time she’d forgotten all about her
original intuition that Miranda was at the heart of this whole mess. That Miranda might even know where Luc was. “Who is she?”

“Another Radical, like me,” he said slowly. “She knows about the tunnels of time and hates the Unseen Ones even more than I do.” He chewed on his lower lip, lost in thought. “Or she might not. Miranda has her own agenda. She’s unpredictable, even for a Radical.”

“We have to try,” Jasmine said, even though there was a leaden weight in her stomach. “How do we find her?”

“Through the Crossroad.” His eyes were like a summer storm, turbulent and wild.

The Crossroad. The Executor had brought her through the Crossroad—or
would
bring her through the Crossroad tonight, in some version of the future. Her stomach flipped at the thought of navigating the spinning vortex of color again. She had felt like she might drown.

But with Ford, it couldn’t be that bad. At least, she hoped so. And she would be brave for him. “All right,” she said. She felt as if the words were lodged in her throat, strangling her.

Ford laced his fingers through hers. Then he brought her hand to his lips, kissing each fingertip gently. “Remember what I promised you,” he said. “I won’t leave you again.”

They had taken only a few steps when a now familiar voice filled the air.

“Ford,” the girl Executor called out.

Ford stiffened and pulled Jasmine behind him.

“Don’t come any closer.” Ford’s voice was low, and sparks danced along the edges of his fingers. “What the hell do you want?”

The girl, to Jasmine’s surprise, held up her hands. “I’m not here to fight you. I’ve come with a message from the Unseen Ones. An offer of peace, if you will.”

Jasmine could feel Ford’s fury. The sparks grew brighter. “They convinced the Tribunal to lock me up in Kinesthesia. Why the hell would they offer me a deal?”

“They’re prepared to grant you full immunity and your freedom,” the girl said as she met Jasmine’s gaze.

“A pardon.”

“The Unseen Ones don’t negotiate.”

“They want this matter resolved civilly—and quickly.”

Jas took a step back, away from Ford, who had gone still.

“Give us the girl, and we’ll give you your freedom.”

Jasmine watched Ford with a sinking feeling. He hadn’t moved. What if he took their offer? Freedom was a potent motivator, maybe even more so than revenge. She couldn’t fight them all.

“One human for endless existence, Ford,” the girl said. “You could burn as brightly as you want. Isn’t that what you want the most?”

He stood unmoving, and his silence told Jasmine all she needed to know. She turned and ran for the street.

The suns’ heat burned down on Miranda. Every inhale felt like fire burning her lungs. She squinted against the brightness.

Rhys had spent out his life in this barren world. Now she would die here. Would that have made her former lover happy? She thought of him, stuck in his dark world, all alone except for the Figments he helped. It was all because of her, because he risked it all to save her. They were born of the same chaos and should’ve spent eternity together.

He would say that the universe obeyed the heart, but she knew better.

The universe obeyed the Unseen Ones. Because of them, she had lost everything.

But she would have the last laugh. The fire that had started in the Crossroad had followed her into this world.
The eternal flame, she knew, would keep burning until everything was consumed. Already the fire licked away at the red sand, and spiraling stems of smoke curled upward, clouding the suns in a thick gray haze. The world melted around the flames, like a piece of paper fed into a fire, falling into the swirling darkness below. Into unknown parts of the universe.

How long would it take to destroy the entire Land of the Two Suns?

And after that … the rest of the universe?

For you, Rhys
, she thought, glancing toward the cliffs where she knew he had lived.

A movement above caught her eyes, and for one fleeting moment, she thought it might be Rhys, that somehow he hadn’t died. Her heart leapt inside her chest and she tried to call out to him, but the dryness of her throat prevented any sound from escaping.

The figure shifted and melted out of sight, but not before Miranda saw that it was simply a Figment who had been standing on the edge of the cliff. Had it been watching her?

She pushed herself slowly to her feet. The horizon dipped and dove crazily, and she staggered to the left, barely staying on her feet. She started toward the cliffs, one agonizing step at a time. At the base of the cliffs, she had to stop and rest her hand against the sharp rock so as not to fall. She looked up, following the lines of the rocks, and felt a moment of despair. It was too far. She was too weak. She collapsed to her knees, breathing hard.

I’m sorry, Rhys
. It was fitting that she be alone. She deserved it.

She wished she could tell him that despite everything, she
did
still love him.

Miranda felt the smallest hint of wind. But no. The touch was too persistent to be natural. She opened her eyes and saw dark fingers wrapped around her wrist, tugging her gently forward. Two Figments were beckoning her forward.
Her
Figments—her shadows. She recognized them immediately because they were
her
shadows.

Their touch was insubstantial but strong, steady. Like a wind lifting her to her feet. They drove her forward, half carrying her into the dark crevice in the cliffs that would take her to Rhys’s home. It was cooler inside the rocks. Miranda breathed a little easier, though she could not have stood on her own. She was so close to the end now.

At last they reached Rhys’s home. Miranda saw the cage, empty, where Rhys had kept Mags, the crow that had served as his eyes. And the bed, also empty.

She would lie where he had lain. She would die there, pretending she was in his arms, until the fire consumed her.

The Figments edged closer to the bed, as if they could protect her from the oncoming flames. Miranda reached over and slid her hand across Rhys’s pillow, as if they would be touching even in death.

Soon the flames were eating away at the rocks around her, bright orange and red fingers grabbing and turning
substance to smoke, to nothingness. They were beautiful, the colors that blazed at the end of the world.

The cliff peeled away, shriveling into ribbons of flame, leaving a gaping hole directly in front of her. Smoke swirled and grew darker, growing so black that it appeared to be one solid mass moving down the cliffs. The fire hissed and sizzled.

And began to retreat.

That was when Miranda realized that the dark blanket rolling down the cliffs was not smoke but Figments. They were throwing themselves down the cliffs, at the fire. Thousands and thousands of them, a flood, a torrent.

Then Miranda understood.

The world would not fall apart under the flames. The Figments had sacrificed themselves to the fire.

Miranda gave in, at last, to the dark.

The fire had reached the tunnels now. Smoke stung Luc’s eyes. If he didn’t hurry, he’d suffocate before he could find a way out.

Every few seconds, the entire tunnel shuddered, as if inhaling a trembling breath.

Rhys had said once that the universe was alive.

What if time flowed like blood, pumped through the veins of the tunnels? Maybe the key was to turn it around, force it to
physically
flow backward. But how? He had done so much damage already, and though he had patched and reconnected the wires he had hacked through so carelessly in anger, he could feel the tunnels trying to expel him, to push him out.

Sparks leapt above him. They seemed to be going in every direction at once. How would he know which way was back and which was forward?

He scanned the tunnels again, examining every visible curve. Then something hard slammed into him from behind and he flew forward. He spun around and tried to back away, but she shoved her foot into his chest and he stumbled backward again.

“What the hell are you doing?” he gasped.

There was a cut along Tess’s cheek and she looked wilder than he remembered. Out of control—like Miranda.

“Look what you’ve done!” she said. Her voice was a wild howl of grief. “You’ve ruined everything!”

Luc staggered, feeling the tender spot on his ribs where she had kicked him. “I’m trying to put everything back the way it should be.”

Tess’s eyes flashed. “Didn’t Rhys tell you? Everything is connected, Luc. You can’t change one thing without changing everything. And your stupidity has put the whole universe in danger. I should have stopped you sooner, but Miranda interfered. There’s no one to help you now.”

Tess picked him up and threw him against the wall of the tunnel. He dropped the kitchen knife. The wall immediately began pulling at him, sucking him through the thick blackness.

“No.
No!
” he shouted, tugging at the clinging membrane of the tunnel wall that stuck to him like tar. Tess slammed into him again, propelling them both through the wall and back into the Crossroad. Immediately, Luc smelled smoke, and remembered that the Crossroad was still burning. He could feel the extreme heat choking
him. He watched in horror as the hole in the membrane closed in on itself, sealing off the tunnels once more.

Suddenly, he and Tess were no longer whirling through the Crossroad but falling, falling, for what seemed like forever. It hit him that they’d fallen into another world. And with the clanging of metal all around and sparks flying everywhere, he realized they’d ended up in a familiar place: Kinesthesia.

Luc had landed on top of Tess, and for a moment she simply disappeared, her body shuddering into nothingness as though in response to the impact. He gasped.

Just as quickly, Luc got up and began to run through the gridlike mechanical world, even as Tess began to reform herself: hair, legs, arms weaving together like a TV image coming slowly into focus.

He dodged the showers of white sparks erupting from enormous gears that grated together. He remembered what Corinthe had told him: how this was where the logic of the universe originated, the order and the time. A world laid out across a massive metal grid, hovering over an endless abyss. Only the steel grates beneath his feet kept him from plunging into the infinite nothingness below, and Luc could see gaps where the floor had already collapsed.

The fires from the Crossroad had reached this world as well. Horrified, Luc saw what Tess meant when she said he had endangered everything. Enormous gears grated and scraped with horrendous screeching sounds. Some of them stuttered and slipped before catching.

Corinthe had said Kinesthesia housed the heartbeat of the universe. If that was true, Luc knew the heart was on the verge of death.

Was that why the Crossroad had pushed him out here, to the center of everything in the universe? So he would witness what he had done?