Page 114 of Veiled Vixen

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - VALOR

So that’s what we do. It takes both of us to carry Lyra into the harem room. We put her on the empty couch, propped up with pillows. And then we’re just about to go back for Crux and Serpint—both surely dreading carrying those two walls of muscle—when I spy a lift bot that was stopped mid-trip carrying supplies down the hallway leading to Crux’s office.

I walk over to it, look up at Veila, and say, “Too bad we couldn’t just… bring this one online. To help carry Crux and Serp.”

Veila furrows her brows. “Maybe we can.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But we’re in charge here. So there has to be a way.”

It takes hours. Hell, we could’ve moved a dozen people to safety by the time we figure out how to turn on the bot without turning on anyone else.

We say his name—thank the sun every bot on Harem has an engraved nameplate on their person—and touch him—both of us, at the same time—and he lights up and comes to life. Starts slowly floating down the hallway like nothing happened.

We wait until his job is done, more out of our own stunned realization that we actually did it than any kind of consideration for his job, and then tell him to follow us.

We place Serpint and Crux on the couch next to Lyra and then we decide to go looking for Luck, Nyleena, Jimmy, and Delphi. To get them somewhere safe before time catches up with us again.

The lift bot we use for carrying. It doesn’t have that much lift. But we wake up another bot, one that is used for traveling, and ride it down to level one twenty-two.

We don’t know for sure that Luck and company are in the museum spinning up the node, but level one-twenty-two is on the way to the bottom level. So we stop to check it out.

The node is open. But it’s not any kind of spin node I’ve ever seen before. The center of it—which is usually gates upon gates upon gates, and sometimes a spinning galaxy, and sometimes a portal to an abandoned Angel Station, and possibly even a portal to Earth—is a flexible… gel? That might be the best word to describe what the interior of the spun-up node is at the moment.

It’s also not really there. Like it’s transparent. Like a shadow of a spin node.

And Luck, Nyleena, and Jimmy are… gone.

But Delphi is here.

She stands in the middle of the gel node with her arms in a position that indicates she was holding hands with people when she tried to cross through, but failed.

Jimmy, for sure. And probably Nyleena.

“She didn’t go with them?” Veila asks in a whisper.

“She did,” I say. “But it didn’t let her cross.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I sigh. “She’s not Jimmy’s soulmate. They were holding hands. That’s how Nyleena and Luck open the portal. They have to hold hands. And it only works because they’re soulmates.”

“Oh,” Veila says, deflating a little. “Oh, my God. That’s awful. So they got to the other side, wherever that is, and she… she’s still here.”

“She doesn’t even know yet.”

Veila puts a hand over her heart. “I feel sick just thinking about her waking up from the time freeze. We need to put her somewhere safe.”

“We can’t. She’s stuck in the portal.”

“What’s going to happen to her when we start time up again?”

“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I don’t know. But we should bring Tycho down here. To be with her when she does realize she was left behind. And Leonis too.”

“That’s her guy?”

“I guess there is no way past it.” I look down at Veila. “We are bonded to the ones they chose for us. Not even love was enough to get her through this portal with Jimmy.”