all your brothers. But you need her to realize it. So pull yourself out of this time freeze and wake her up!”
CHAPTER TWO - CRUX
A soft, familiar tap-tap-tapping drags me out of the dream.
Was that a dream? Corla, the twins, SB19, the… place. Where was that place?
Tap-tappity-tap.
Time is a loop, there is no free will, ALCOR is bad. Is he really bad?
God, that’s so disappointing. I’ve been pulling for him. I really have. I like the dude. Love him, actually. I want to be on his side. But—
Tappity-tap.
Then buzzing.
I open one eye. Everything is blurry, but the tap-tap-tapping continues. The room is sideways and I realize I’m in my office, head on desk.
More tapping. Little pitter-patter of feet. Then Flicka appears in my field of sideways vision. She leans her head to the side to make things appear right side up. And that just bothers me for a moment. Because I’m still sideways, but yet she’s not.
An illusion. How fitting.
She leans back on four of her spindly legs, waving the other two like arms, as she begins to buzz again.
“I don’t understand you,” I croak. My throat is so dry it feels like I haven’t had a drink in decades.
She flies up, down, taps her feet, flies up again.
You’d think beebots would just learn to speak Prime Standard. I mean, they’re smart, crafty little fuckers. Why don’t they just speak the common language?
“I need a translator.” I grunt as I try to lift my head up off the desk. This one action almost takes more effort than I can muster up. Why am I so tired? I wonder about this for a moment, then remember.
Time freeze.
Who knows how long I’ve been here at my desk.
Flicka buzzes, then puffs a pink mist out from her ass.
I inhale before I can stop myself, imagining all the nasty things this beebot’s potion might do to me before I realize… I feel better.
So I sit up. Flicka is buzzing around my face, still talking. I pinch the air together, opening up an air screen out of habit, then instantly remember the chaos of ‘before’ and that the air screens are out of service. But, to my surprise, it works. The translator appears automatically because my screen is set to detect speech not in the common tongue, and I come into Flicka’s tirade mid-conversation.
“… and then the whole thing went to shit!”
Well, tail-end, from the sound of things. “Wait.” I sigh, rubbing a hand down my face that pulls the memories out of the dream I just woke from. “Start over. I didn’t hear any of that.”
Was it a dream?
“Delphi!” Flicka squeaks. “We need to go get Delphi!”
“Where is she?”
“Stuck in the spin node!”
“Stuck in the spin node.” I repeat the words back dumbly. But in my defense, they make no sense.
This sets Flicka off. Words start spilling out of her so fast the translator has a hard time keeping up, so I only catch bits here and there of the rant. But this is what I piece together.
Valor and Veila took over the station.
I think I kinda knew that.
Veila stopped time.
Yeah, this sounds familiar.
Everyone on the station is frozen and the Princess Rebellion is no longer raging.
Hmm. Nope, that’s a new one.
“And now Veila is in control of everything and Valor is helping her. They peeked into the future and now they know! We have to leave! Right now! We have to get Delphi, because I have big plans. And you need to take care of Corla!”
“OK.” I sigh and put up a hand. “Yeah. About that. I get it. I’m supposed to wake her up. But I’m not sure I need Delphi—”
“You do! You absolutely do! And Tycho can’t come! Don’t you see? Veila put them together and they can’t be together! Ever!”
That just makes me sad. I picture Delphi and Tycho in that place I was in the dream. Was it another reality? They were so small. So happy. So playful. It felt right. And even though I don’t feel much of a connection with the Delphi of this world—or any connection at all with the Tycho of this world—I kinda want to go back and see what’s happening to those kids. My kids. Because they are my kids. That was me. I was inside him for a brief period. I had Corla in my arms. We had a bed, and a room, and some kind of home. We lived in a place with traffic and people outside.
And then I’m thrown back