She isn’t telling you everything. She’s afraid to betray you again.
We should be afraid too. And a part of me still is. Everything in me yearns to tell her about our plans, but all I can think about is the moment in the train yard outside Newage when we realized we were stepping into a trap. All I can see is the memory of Talin’s regret in her eyes, and the way she had been forced to give us away.
No. Too risky.
Talin looks down and produces something else from her pocket. “I have something else for you both,” she signs, repeating the same through our link. “I know you’ve been searching for answers on the artifacts.”
She unrolls a slip of paper covered in sketches and scribbled notes.
I recognize Constantine’s hand immediately; it’s the same curving script I’ve seen sign declarations hung around the city. Jeran leans over as we unfurl the page and study it. Then I utter a soft gasp.
This looks like one page of many, a partial blueprint of a cylindrical object that looks like the Early Ones’ artifact.
Thatisthe artifact.
It’s a schematic drawn of the interior of the cylinder, with the same inner ring of smaller metal rods and a hollow center. But in this drawing, there is something inside the hollow center.
A drawing of a human.
It’s a person lying within the cylinder, hands folded across the chest.
I can’t read the Karenese, Talin says as we read.What does it say?
I look up at her. “Where did you get this?” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “Constantine has hidden himself away in a private chamber,” she signs. “A room filled with these kinds of schematics. He’s in bad shape.”
Jeran points to a block of text scribbled along the side of the cylinder. “This is a translation of some text from the Early Ones,” he murmurs. “An experimental machine of theirs.”
I scan the entire paper before my gaze hitches on the bottom of the paper.
“‘In this mechanism,’” I read slowly, “‘we find probable cause to believe that a human subjected properly to this energy may find aging slowed. Evidence toward this theory. Evidence contrary.’” The text cuts off abruptly at the bottom of the page, pencil drawings of arrows sliding off the page and presumably onto another sheet.
“Aging slowed,” Jeran whispers.
And then I understand, at last, the true source of Constantine’s obsession with these artifacts.
I suck in my breath at the same time Talin does.
“Immortality,” I whisper in unison with Jeran.
Immortality, Talin confirms through our link.
His search for the artifacts was never about harnessing the Early Ones’ energy to power all of the Karensa Federation, nor was it about learning their weaponry. It was always about one thing and one thing only: Infinite Destiny. The belief that Karensa can accomplish what the Early Ones couldn’t—and in doing so, rule forever.
Constantine has hunted for them because he believes the power within those artifacts might be what can cure his weaknesses, grant him eternal life.
“Does it work, then?” Jeran whispers as he scans the rest of the page.
I shake my head. “If it did, the Early Ones would still be here.”
But Constantine won’t give up. He believes he can figure out those artifacts, Talin adds.He has been searching for immortality for so long. The research I saw in his private chamber proves it. He genuinely believes he can harness this energy and achieve the impossible.
I narrow my eyes as I tap on the paper. “And in the process, he’ll kill everyone here.”
What do you mean?
“Here.” I point to a small cluster of Karenese words scribbled in the center of the mechanism.
