Azral shook his head in brusque bemusement. “You beg me for hints and now reject the full answer. You’re a fool.”
“I am a fool,” Theo admitted. “I’ve been one as long as I can remember. But you know what? You came at me on the second-worst day of my life. You showed me everyone I care about in horrible danger and then somehow expected me to grasp the intricacies of the universe. For a master of time, you have shitty timing. You also killed Bill Pollock. So no, I don’t trust this answer of yours. And I don’t believe for one second that you just happened to save us from a dying Earth. I’m pretty sure it was healthy until you came along.”
In the sharp and frosty silence, Theo grew convinced that Azral’s next move would be lethal. Instead the white-haired man merely summoned a single strand of light from the wall. The moment it hit Theo, he felt a vague sense of familiarity, like a numb hand on his arm.
“What . . . what is this?”
“The path of return,” said Azral. “This string will lead you back seventy-six minutes to the place you and your companions still suffer. If you proceed slowly enough, you’ll witness events in reverse and note all the timely decisions that enabled your escape. Perhaps you’ll succeed in duplicating this outcome. Perhaps you’ll fail and lose more than one friend in the process. It seems a needless risk to take when you’re already here, but I suppose fools will do as they do.”
Long seconds passed as Theo pondered the heavy new task ahead. Azral shined his cool blue eyes on Hannah.
“Seh tu’a mortia rehu eira kahne’e nada ehru heira.”
Theo eyed him strangely. “What was that?”
“An old expression of my people, a rallying mantra for the soldiers and scientists who kill for the greater good. ‘I shall feed Death before I starve her.’”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You think me a monster when I’m merely a crusader. My parents and I fight for the greatest purpose of all. If we succeed in our endeavor here, we’ll save countless trillions of lives. We will starve Death like none other before us.”
Theo narrowed his eyes. For a cynical moment, Azral looked as silly as a biologist explaining the benefits of cancer research to his lab mice.
“Small comfort to the ones you serve to her,” Theo groused. “When’s it our turn?”
“We didn’t bring you here to kill you. On the contrary, we’ve labored to keep you all alive. Do you think it was fate that rescued you from your coma? Was it the hand of God that pulled Hannah from the brink of a fatal concussion? We’ve provided you with comfort and aid at every turn, Theo. And yet even now as I offer a means to save the child Farisi, you see me as an enemy.”
“How am I supposed to know what you are to us when you won’t tell us what we are to you?”
“Crucial,” said Azral. “There are those among you who are crucial to our plans. I would think that’d be obvious by now.”
“But what do you want with us?”
Azral regarded him with a jaded leer. “I see the futures better than you, child. Telling you now serves no benefit. You’ll know when it suits us.”
Theo chucked his ethereal hands. “So we just go about our lives in the meantime, hoping we don’t do anything to piss you off.”
“If you hinder us by accident, you’ll be duly warned as the elder Given was.”
And if we hinder you on purpose? Theo wondered, before he could stop the thought.
The mist on the wall grew dark and stormy. Azral floated toward the swirling exit, then turned around to bathe Theo in an icy stare.
“Look to the strings, boy. See what becomes of our enemies.”
He disappeared into the fog, leaving Theo alone in this quiet scene, this teasing preenactment of better times. It seemed utterly daft to throw himself back into the fray and risk Mia’s life in retrospect. And yet the more he thought of Azral, the more he feared the numbing effects of this talent. If he had access to a billion Mias, how long before he stopped mourning the loss of one or two of them? How long before he shrugged off the death of one measly Earth?
He worked his hands around the lone strand of light and found it as solid as a rope. With a hearty tug, he pulled himself toward the past, determined to reverse engineer their escape from the office building. Theo didn’t care how long it took him. He had all the time in the world to get it right.
THIRTY-FOUR