Page 57 of Godslayer
“Ourworld?” Tyse asks. “702 isn’t my world, Clara.”
“Wow. Really?”
“What?”
“Notyourworld,myworld. What the fuck, Tyse?”
“I’m just saying. We don’t have to stay in 702. That’s all. That’s it. And this place?—”
“Which is called… what?”
“Zero point fourteen forty.”
“Zero point?”
“It’s a fractional world. Very low. Between zero and one.”
I want to ask what that means, but even if he knows, and even if he’d tell me, it wouldn’t have any significance. I don’t have a frame of reference for ‘frequencies’ and ‘resonance’. It’s all very blah, blah, blah.
So why am I trying to start an argument with him about it?
Because he’s hiding something, Clara. And it goes against our code.
Hiscode, actually. Not mine. He was the one who made a big deal about loyalty and lies. How he wouldn’t put up with them. How he would have my back, so I must have his. That washiscode. My code is… well, just be nice to people and it comes back to you. It’s really as simple as that.
And right now, he’s not being nice to me because he’s treating me like abracelet.
Seeing—or, more probably, sensing—my growing frustration, Tyse slips his arms around my hips, locking his hands behind my back and pulling me close. “It’s been a long day. For me, and you. Let’s just rest here. We’ll have some food,and look around a bit, and talk, and sleep. And then, when we wake up, we’ll make decisions together. Wherever you wanna go, Clara Birch, we’ll go.”
It’s pacifying. Somewhat insulting because he’s assuming that I can be placated by yielding. And while I would like to clarify this for him, just for future reference that I am not that easy, his next move is a kiss and… well… Iamthat easy.
Because I like it.
I likehim.
I trust him too. Even if he is keeping something hidden, I don’t think Tyse Saarinen has it in him to hurt me. Whatever he’s hiding, there’s a good reason for it.
So I give in and kiss him back.
15 - TYSE
The moment she starts kissing me backI relax. Her questions were warranted, but so was my reaction. Ithasbeen a long day and I don’t wanna think about what happened. It’s been all up in my face for fuckin’ hours now and I need to forget.
So instead of pullin’ back after the kiss starts to come to a natural conclusion, I slip a hand down to the button on her pants and pop it open. I’m watchin’ her face when I do this. Her eyes are closed and she smiles, looking forward to what comes next.
I pull the zipper down as well, slippin’ my hand inside. This makes her back buckle a little, like her legs are weak. And while I know she’s OK now, will be OK as long as we’re here in the presence of these giant spark crystals, I’ve depleted her so many times today, it’s probably gonna take days, maybe even weeks, for her to recover from all the fuckin’ spark I stole.
On DayOne.
It couldn’t be helped.
I had to. Because the thing is, all these things I can do with my brain—all these augments. They need power. Andsheis that power. I can steal it from other places and it works just fine if I’m using that spark to build her back up.
But it turns out that my augments don’t run off stolen spark from other worlds. They run onClara.
And without the augments, I can’t hop worlds. So when we get stuck in worlds where, for whatever reason she can’t breathe the air, but I can, I need to steal more of her spark to get us the fuck out of there.
This day—Day One—was nothin’ but hours and hours of endless, nightmarish, world hopping. Hopin’, each time I found a new frequency, it would be a place where Clara Birch could live.
