Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
The sex was nice, but it doesn’t change anything. I need answers. I need to know what is on his mind. I need to know why he’s afraid. Because he is. I can feel it. Not of those men back in the tunnel, though. He’s afraid of something else. Which scares me more than those augments, to be honest. Because Tyse Saarinen is not the kind of man who scares easily.
Spark can trigger it, though. That first time I gave him a shock of spark back in his old room in the tower, I scared him. Not because it hurt, but because he knew what it meant that I have this power.
Powerful people are a threat.
And really powerful people are a problem.
Tyse knows I’m expecting an explanation because he didn’t turn to face me as I dressed, even though I wasn’t trying to be quiet.
When I join him, he simply slips his arm around my waist and pulls me in close.
“They’re pretty,” he says, indicating the crystals.
“They are,” I agree.
“And they’re full of power.”
“I can feel it.”
He turns to me now. “They fill ya back up. It’s like a recharge for you.”
I can tell that he’s choosing his words carefully. That this is the explanation I’m expecting. “OK,” I say. “So what’s it mean?”
“Well, it means you’re good now.”
“I just wasn’t good before.” It’s not a question and he doesn’t answer.
He redirects to the point. “You’re here…” He sighs. “You’re here to power me, Clara. That’s why Delta sent us on this mission. Your spark is how I have the power to move through worlds.”
I think about this for a moment. It’s not exactly a revelation, which means, this isn’t the important part. “So what went wrong?”
He huffs a little laugh here. “Well. First of all, I didn’t know. I’ve been… I’ve been stealing spark from other dimensions since the train ride into Delta. We ran out of jumps. You almost died. But the spark is so thick in the Alphas that once we came out of the tunnel, it was enough to… I don’t know what it did. But I could see other people in the car with us. People from another dimension. So I stole their spark to give it to you. That’s how I saved you and Anneeta. I killed an entire family to keep you alive.”
I have no words for this. I’m not sure which part of that admission hits me hardest. The idea that people died to keep me alive or that Tyse is the kind of man who will kill a whole family to have my back.
“Say something, Clara.”
“What else?”
“What?”
“There’s more. I know there’s more. What happened today when you started taking me through dimensions after the ambush?”
“Yeah. I was getting to that. You don’t seem to be able to live in most of them. You can’t breathe the air, for some reason.”
“But you can?”
“I can. I had no problem adapting to any of the dimensions. None at all. But you can only live in Delta’s world, your world, and here.”
I let out a breath. “OK. Well, it’s not ideal, but—”
“There’s more.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Ya see—” He swallows hard. “Ya see, I run off spark, as ya know. But these crystals here? And the spark I steal from others, it can’t power me, Clara.”
“What do you mean? You just said that’s how you saved me.”
“Yeah, how I saved you. But you—your spark—that’s what runs me.”
“What are you saying? It’s like… a loop? I power you, I get weak, you steal spark to make me strong, and then you need to take it from me in order to work?”
Now he sighs. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Negative feedback loop.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. Because negative feedback loops must have some kind of self-regulation. And by that, I mean, it must have a way to turn off.”
“Why is that bad? Isn’t that what we need?”
“It is. But the consequences, Clara. It ends with us. We die.”
“We die?”
He nods. “Typically, a negative feedback loop self-regulates in a way where the effect reduces its own cause over time. In this case, though, the cycle is escalating instead of stabilizing. Which means it’s a runaway negative loop. Which means it can only end one of two ways. One. Eventually the damage I do to you by stealing your spark to power my augments, can’t be fixed.”
“And I die.”
“Or two. The level of spark that I need to steal to keep you alive becomes larger and larger over time.”
“So you have to kill more people.”
He nods.
“Well,” I sigh, making a bit of hair fly up around my face. “This sucks.”
“It does. So… the solution is that—”
“We stay here. Where I can be replenished by the crystals.”
“Yeah. But—”
“But that only applies to me. You can leave, but I have to stay.”