Nero’s but jumped at the sound anyway. He emerged from the stacks on her left, his hands held up in a placating gesture.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a smile. He wore a pair of round glasses, and the cloak that had been fastened at his shoulder the night before was now loose, like a cape. “I didn’t know how to avoid startling you.”
She was glad she hadn’t taken off her bra the night before. “Did you follow me here?” she asked.
Nero raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly,” he said. “You know, there are some dangerous places you could stumble across in this building if you wander unaccompanied. I myself am working on half a dozen volatile experiments at any given time in my workshop. But more frightening still for you would be coming across Aelia before she’s had her third cup of coffee in the morning.”
“Well, thank goodness you just happened to come across me, then,” Sloane said flatly.
“It’s no coincidence,” Nero said. “I made sure that I would be alerted if any of you began wandering.”
“If your intention was to make us feel like we hadn’t been kidnapped,” Sloane replied, “that wasn’t a great thing to share with me.”
“I thought you might be more suspicious if I pretended to have simply happened upon you.”
“I would have been.” Sloane smirked a little. “What tipped you off? The door to the stairwell?”
“Not telling,” Nero replied.
The sun was climbing higher now, piercing right through the skylights above them. If she listened carefully, she could hear horns honking outside. Morning traffic beginning.
“Were you looking for something in particular?” Nero said. “When I was a student, I worked here, so I know my way around.”
“Maybe.” Sloane sighed. “Do you guys have . . . computers?”
“Computers,” Nero repeated. “Yes, we have them. But I’m not sure what good they would do you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The accessibility of information?” Sloane said. “I’d like to know at what point our universes diverged. It’ll be easier for us to acclimate if we know.”
“This is a library,” Nero said. “Computers are for engineers and scientists; if history is what you want, this is where you’ll find it.”
“So does the internet exist?” Esther was going to be so upset if it didn’t.
“It exists, but I don’t know anyone who uses it,” Nero said. “Why do you ask?”
“At home, people carry the internet around in their pockets,” Sloane said. “Everything you could ever want to know, in any language, is right there. That’s how I’m used to getting information.”
“And you say you don’t have magic.”
“It’s not magic,” Sloane said.
“I know.” Nero smiled a little. “It wouldn’t do us much good, I suppose. It’s difficult enough to communicate about magical theory in written form; I can’t fathom trying to share techniques your way. It’s much simpler to gather in person.”
Sloane couldn’t imagine something that couldn’t be taught over the internet. The year before she had learned how to replace a sink drain from a YouTube video. She had survived shopping for groceries in Germany by using an online translator. Even now, with her waterlogged phone back in the bedroom, she felt its phantom buzz in her back pocket, alerting her to an e-mail or reminding her about a doctor’s appointment. She had never had to explain to anyone why it might be useful. It was like having to explain why it was useful to drink water.
“Everything here seems backward to us,” she said. “Like traveling back in time.”
“You seem somewhat backward to us as well,” Nero said. “Let me show you. Tell me something you want to search for. Anything.”
“Okay.” She didn’t know what to say at first. There were so many things they needed to know about Genetrix in order to find a way home—even if they did it by defeating their Resurrectionist, which Sloane still wasn’t sure about. But she didn’t want to ask Nero to look up something about magic. She didn’t want Nero to be responsible for the information at all when she wasn’t sure that she could trust him. So maybe she could look up something he had said. Just to make sure he had been honest with them. “You said there’s a connection between this universe and ours,” she said. “I’d like to find some proof.”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to do that here,” Nero said. “Our knowledge of the connection is rooted in analyses of magical energy fields and—”
Sloane wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking of the footage ARIS had showed them in the