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…pictureappeared 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—mydeadteam—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 inveil!
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.
“Makewhatcome 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 amworkingagain.
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.”
