Jasper coughs a few times as we drive, and each one ratchets up my nerves. I have no idea how long he has. If we go by yesterday, then at least four or five hours still, but I would have noticed the bruise on his chest while we were having sex, wouldn’t I? So it’s accelerating, making today’s timeline uncertain.
We go in through the back door, and Jasper doesn’t make a dig about my “Prestidigitator” password, which makes me even more nervous, as does the way he’s moving slower than normal. I lead him to the elevator, and when the door opens to the subbasement, I hesitate for a moment. Maybe this is the wrong choice. Maybe, instead of dragging Jasper around town, weshould go somewhere quiet. Somewhere private. Enjoy the time we have.
Inside, though, I’m afraid I won’t be able to save him. I can’t survive this alone. I mean, I probably can. Sooner or later, I’ll figure out what’s going on. But I won’t. I refuse to escape only to spend the rest of my life grieving Jasper and the fact I couldn’t save him. There was ultimately nothing I could have done for my mother, and it’s nearly wrecked me. Losing Jasper in here would be my fault, and it isn’t something I’d ever recover from.
“Now where?” Jasper asks behind me, jolting me into motion, and I lead him down the hall.
The door at the end isn’t glowing, and I’m torn between the fear that the room will be empty and that it isn’t. When I push the door open, the space inside is dim.
But the machine is there, and so is my mother.
“Woah,” Jasper says as he walks past me. He stares at my mom. “She looks like you.”
Everyone always said so. I never could see it. I reach out to run my fingers through her hair, then gasp when my fingers tangle in the strands. My mind reels. How is that possible? Last time, she might as well have been a hologram or projection. Now she’s here. Solid. What’s different? There’s two of us here now. And Indigo isn’t. Jasper and I have both died again.
I stare at my hand in awe. It’s barely enough information to form a hypothesis, much less a conclusion.
“What’s wrong?” Jasper asks.
“She’s—” I reach for her again, but this time my fingers slip through her like they did the previous day, and with it, all my fractured ideas go floating away.
Wishful thinking.
Jasper coughs, long and wet. I spin, expecting to find him on the floor, but he’s staring at the dials on the machine. “What do you think it does?”
Ugh. Despite my previous confidence, we’re never getting out of here, are we? So many questions still unanswered.
But at least Indigo isn’t here? Suddenly, being in control of my own death is a far more comfortable thought than waiting for him to pop up.
“Let’s go to my office,” I say.
“Your office?”
“There’s something I want to look at.”
“What about... what about her?” He glances up at my mom, still floating in her light-up cocoon.
I drag a finger through the glow, making it ripple. She blurs, like there’s a lag in a signal somewhere, before she seems to recombine, more solid than before. I’m not brave enough to try to touch her again, but my heart seems to beat in time with the gentle pulse of the light around her.
“She’s not really here,” I say, taking his hand. “But if we can figure out who built the machine, maybe we can figure out what it does and if it’s related to the loop.”
He holds my hand all the way up the elevator.
“If Clarissa or Ezekiel asks, our date has been one for the record books.”
“No way to avoid them?” His face is the colour of the elevator walls. I would do anything not to see them with him in such bad shape, but time is a cruel mistress.
“They were both here last time, so we have to assume...”
The end of the sentence freezes on the tip of my tongue and sends the rest of me subzero.
“Oh,” Jasper says with a cough. “Because of the data breach. I helped him fix that last time.”
“What time is it?”
“Just before eight, why?”
I stab at the panel, pressing every button I can until the elevator stops, one floor below my office.
