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. Buthowdo 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…emptysky. “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 sheinteractswith 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 aplace. A bad place, even for augments because it’s gone ‘amok’. Which is actually a technical term in the Sweep, stupid as that sounds.
