at a time. “According to Erin, we’ll be stronger when we’re manifest. Earthquakes will be easy. But we didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t mean to hurt those people. What happens if someone who doesn’t care that much gets that sort of power? Anyone who would make us is not someone who can be trusted. The earthquake tells us that. The earthquake says ‘this is horrible, now manifest, because otherwise, something even worse is going to happen.’”
Roger is silent. Dodger stays where she is, waiting. She’s the cold one: she’s the one who can reduce everything to numbers, weighing lives now against lives later. It’s not a part of herself that she’s proud of or has ever truly embraced. Here, now, it’s the most important thing she can be.
“Isn’t there a way we could make it not happen?” he asks finally.
“I think we have to see the whole equation before we can decide,” she says. “We’re not there yet. We’re in the middle of the problem. If we get to the end, if we manifest, maybe we can revise more than we can right now.”
And maybe they can’t. She doesn’t say that part, but Roger hears it anyway: it’s implicit in the pause between her sentences, sculpted out of silence and hesitation. He doesn’t want to hear it. The unspoken pieces of language are sometimes the most painful.
“How many people have to die for us?” he asks. “How can we pretend to be important enough to be worth that?”
“How many more would die if we took ourselves out of the equation and let someone else have this sort of power?” she counters. “I know you’re a good person. I hope I’m a good person. We won’t break things for fun, or because someone tells us to. We’re not perfect. We’re the best choice I can see.”
Roger sighs. It only takes one step to close the distance between them, one step before his arms are around her and his face is against her shoulder. She holds him tight, and they are matched in both placement and position, two halves of the same platonically ideal whole. They should never have been separated; they had to be apart, or they would never have been able to become individuals, would never have learnt how to span the missing places in their own souls.
“All right,” says Roger. “We’ll do it.”
They continue holding each other, eyes closed, until the shared mindscape fades away, and they are only two bodies in the back of a car, tangled together like a thorn briar, impossible to separate, dangerous to touch.
Erin, in the front seat, smiles and keeps on driving.
WAR
Timeline: 22:31 CDT, June 16, 2016 (same day).
“I understand,” says Leigh. “Comb the ashes: look for anything that tells us where they’re going. If you find Erin’s body, contact me. We need to know what we’re up against.”
She hangs up the phone before Professor Vernon can object. The man is old, almost used up, still trying to earn his share of the Philosopher’s Stone: he’s an excellent mathematician and was instrumental in their figuring out the necessary invocations to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, but he’s never been a good alchemist. Without the aid of Reed and his clever connections, Vernon would have given up the discipline entirely. No big loss. He’s unlikely to survive any confrontation with the cuckoos, and that’s fine too, as far as Leigh’s concerned. One less mouth to feed in the new world can only be a good thing.
Her skin feels like it’s on fire as she leaves her lab, walking fast, hands balled by her sides. Most of the rooms she passes are empty, their subjects long since flown. She’s taken a few of them apart herself, using their blood and organs in alchemical tinctures that have taught them a great deal about the universe. The subjects would probably think it was an unfair exchange, but that’s why none of them have ever been given a vote.
Reed stopped actively pursuing anything apart from the Doctrine years ago. The other manifest forces are too easy to create and refine. Other alchemists have snatched some of them up, pinning them in place; others have been able to manifest on their own, with no alchemy involved. Only the Doctrine has defied him, and so only the Doctrine matters: it is the alkahest, the universal solvent that dissolves everything else and allows the universe to be remade.
Leigh’s footsteps echo in shadowed halls, and the few who walk here