Zavier swung his gaze back to him, calm and almost glassy. “Oceana, of course. She appeared in the surf and the foam. So inhuman, so much more. She told me everything.”
Danny laughed again. “All right. Oceana spoke to you and told you Aetas was trapped in a prison Chronos created. That doesn’t explain why time is still running in Rath and Khurja and—and Meerut, after their towers fell. Did Oceana explain that while you were chatting by the seashore?”
“Not in so many words,” Zavier said as the distance left his expression. “Scheming against Chronos would be dangerous for her. But she gave us clues, and led us to Aetas’s prison. Although his power is trapped, it still leaks through the edges of his cell, infusing the water above. We’ve found that if we use this water on the cities we wish to free, and then destroy the towers, time continues on.
“But we can’t use this method for every tower in the world. It would take years. We need to free Aetas so that he can help us do away with the towers for good.”
Danny stood and walked the length of the room. He stopped before the window. “That can’t possibly be true,” he said to his reflection in the glass. “It can’t.”
Zavier joined him. An extension of the airship, possibly the bridge, could be seen above the window. Without a word, Zavier pointed up to it, and Danny’s eyes followed. Big block letters spelled out a name:
PROMETHEUS
“We need to help him, Danny,” Zavier said quietly. “He relied on us once, and Chronos locked him away. We have to free him. We have to break his chains.”
“Why are you so fixated on this idea?”
Zavier clenched his jaw. “I have an interest.”
Judging from Zavier’s tone, he had much more than a simple interest. There was something disturbingly familiar in Zavier’s eyes, but Danny couldn’t identify it.
He waited for Zavier to explain. When he didn’t, Danny pressed his cold palm to his forehead. “You think you know everything, but you don’t know a thing about the clock spirits. If you keep destroying towers, the spirits will die. Did you know that the spirit in the Meerut tower was named Aditi? She’s gone now, because of you.”
“Meerut and Lucknow were both essential to our plan. I’m sorry it had to be that way, but—”
“Lucknow?” His heart gave a sickly jolt. “You hit Lucknow, too?”
Zavier interpreted the dread on his face. “We waited until Miss Richards was out of the city.”
Thank God. “That … That still doesn’t excuse what you’ve done. It’s only another death to add to your growing list. Can you really have that on your conscience?”
“You’re being overly sentimental, letting the Enfield spirit cloud your better judgment. You must realize that your relationship with the clock spirit is not real.”
Not real.
Danny grabbed Zavier’s shirt and slammed him against the glass, hoping it would break, wanting desperately to push him out into that endless field of clouds.
“Not real?” he snarled. “What the fuck do you know about what’s real or not? You may be an expert on Aetas and Chronos and all that nonsense, but I know about clock spirits, and I know that you can’t do this without destroying them.”
Without destroying Colton.
Zavier put a hand on Danny’s, trying to pry it off of him. “You’re blinding yourself to the bigger picture by limiting the scope. What would you do if Colton was gone, Danny? You’d keep on living. The world would keep on turning. With Enfield already—”
He stopped suddenly, gray eyes shifting.
Danny’s stomach dropped. “Already what? What did you do?”
Zavier sighed. “Not us, Danny. Someone attacked Enfield. The town is Stopped, at least until we free—” He grunted as Danny shoved him against the glass again.
“What happened to Colton?”
“Danny, listen—”
“What happened?”
“The tower was hit. Time Stopped. We … don’t know where Colton is right now.”
Panic, hot and searing, rose up Danny’s throat. He spun around and lost his bearings, tripping over his chair. “I have to go,” he panted. “I have to—”
He broke out into the corridor and ran. But he was still weak, and it only took a few seconds for Zavier to overtake him. He struggled, nearly freeing himself before another pair of hands seized him.
“What’ve you told him?” Edmund’s voice.
“Only the truth. Hold on, I’ll need to sedate him again.”
“No!” Danny screamed.
But his sleeve was pulled back and the needle slipped into his arm once more. He tried to say Colton’s name before he was carried away by greedy darkness.
Meerut had been combed over, the surrounding areas searched, but there was still no sign of Danny. It had been a few days, and with each passing one, Daphne felt the lump in her stomach grow harder and heavier.
There wasn’t much to go on. Meena said they had arrived at the tower, found the water around it, and then the tower exploded. She had awoken as she was being carried away from the rubble.
“The last thing I remember of Danny,” she’d said, “was him yelling at me to get away from the tower.”
Meena was still in a daze, still processing everything that had happened. Akash could usually be found at her side or hovering nearby. Today, though, his protectiveness had begun to infuriate her, which was a good sign. If she had enough energy to get angry, she’d be all right.
Daphne remembered when the new Maldon tower had fallen. How it had crushed Lucas, but not before a gear had buried itself in his chest.
The thought was too close to her own private horror. The Dover tower might not have been leveled, but she could have died that day. The clock spirit helped her restore Dover’s time before her own ran out.
Dryden, Harris, and Crosby were frazzled. It was bad enough that towers were falling and no one knew why. Now an English mechanic was missing.
How would Danny’s parents react to the news? Or Danny’s friends?
Or Colton?
It was obvious now that she and Danny had been forced to split up for a reason.
She was such an idiot.
Taking a deep breath, Daphne tried not to wallow in those thoughts. They would find Danny. She would find him.
At least they’d brought back his things, which had been dumped in his cantonment room. Kneeling, she opened Danny’s pack and rifled through the clothes that needed washing, the shaving gear, the jar of aloe he’d used to protect his skin from the sun. Daphne’s hand brushed a piece of paper. She drew it out and unfolded it, her breath catching. It was a drawing of Colton. Danny must have done it; she recognized his lines from the clockwork sketches in his case reports.
A sudden sadness passed over her, and she carefully put the picture away. The look Danny had captured in Colton’s eyes was not for her to see.
She sat on the bed and stared at the far wall. Why would they take Danny? Why would they single him out? Where would they take him? It didn’t seem real. It felt as though Danny would come strolling into the cantonment at any moment, asking why everyone was so worried.