scalp. Wondered when she’d gotten it.
“Maybe it wasn’t just my injury keeping me from remembering this place. Maybe my mind just couldn’t hold it all.”
And instead, forced those fragments out in nightmares that had left her sick and shaking for years.
“But now there’s no choice.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. And another, steadier this time.
“I need those memories back.”
Esme turned back to Nettie, who’d cautiously inched back to the bars dividing their cells.
“And I need you to help me.”
27
“Is that…” Gavin took a step back.
“Of course, it’s me,” Coracle said. “I was listening to that meeting, decided I should take a look. Besides, Adena and Rhela are worried about Esme, and obviously, I can get here faster than the rest of the Garrison.”
“Obviously,” Gavin agreed, mind still scrambling to catch up.
The cat, finished with the conversation in his own time, as they so often are, had already turned around to examine the Archive.
“The floor was shielded at one point, I believe,” the cat said, sauntering away from them, tail high. “But it’s weakened over time. Probably the newer colonists didn’t know how to maintain the system properly.”
“How is he getting that information?” Jormoi whispered to Gavin as they followed the cat.
“How is he even here?” Gavin answered back.
Coracle crouched in front of a display of four bookshelves, radiating out from a central point.
Gavin looked around, calculating. This would be the precise center of the room, he estimated. Tapping the shelf in front of him, he frowned.
These were of some dense metal, disguised to look like wood.
“Considering you’re not in the field all the time I would have thought you’d spend more time expanding your general knowledge,” the cat said as he eased around the edges of the shelves, then smoothly leapt to the top. “Your ancient languages are sorely lacking.”
Gavin watched the cat with narrowed eyes. “What are you looking for up there?” he asked. “By the way, we’re kind of busy keeping up with current languages for assignments. Ancient ones don’t seem terribly practical.”
“But then you’d have already answered at least one of your questions,” Coracle announced. “Also, I suspect this rotates. Come see.”
In an instant both Jormoi and Gavin were at the top, staring at the point the cat tapped with one paw.
“The materials are different here,” Coracle explained. “Just in the center.”
Gavin looked down, estimated how much floor would be uncovered if the entire structure rotated just forty-five degrees.
There’d easily be enough space for a passage.
Jormoi and Gavin jumped down again, searching for the trigger.
Coracle didn’t bother to jump, just reappeared at their feet. “Even if it was locked, I should be able to tell if there was an additional power flow routed through this area. I think you’ll find that it’s been disengaged altogether.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gavin said as he eyed the shelves.” It’s between me and Esme. I’ll get it moved. Now, tell us what you’re doing here. I’ve had enough mysteries for now.”
He paced the perimeter of the shelves, looking for any indication of a weak spot, any potential point of leverage.
There.
He hunched down, controlling his transformation to the subtlest of degrees, then crammed his claws into what had been the slightest space between the floor and the bottom of one of the four arms of the shelf.
He heaved, muscles straining against the mass.
“It’s really quite simple,” Coracle said, grooming himself, then settling down to watch. “You live on Ship, correct?”
Jormoi at his side, Gavin wrenched the shelves again, feeling the cracks in the foundation as the mechanism began to rupture.
This wasn’t just furniture and dusty tomes; this was something more. Something rooted far beneath them.
“Yes,” he grunted and heaved again.
“Historically, ships do have away vessels.”
“We know that,” Jormoi grunted as he strained against the shelf. “We’ve got the air sleds.”
“You have the air sleds. Ship has me. An autonomous remote program.”
For a moment Gavin was distracted by a terrible possibility.
“Do all Ships have something like you?”
An army of talking, sarcastic, walking-through-the-walls cats.
“Why would I give away someone else’s secrets?”
Void.
Someone else’s problem.
Some other time.
Right now, there was this… thing… and it needed to be destroyed.
Esme was down there somewhere, and no hunk of metal, locked and fused though it may be, was going to keep him from her.
“One, two, three!”
With one final burst of effort, he tore the entire structure out from the floor, swinging it to fling it away, crashing into the interior wall of the Archive.
Panting with the effort, Gavin stared down into the long stairway that coiled below his feet.
Automatic lights begin