No. It wasn’t. And it wouldn’t be. Water wasn’t the only thing being wasted. Eliot was on the clock. Subject Seven had been out of scanning range for hours now, and her readings were stuck at 23 percent. Too slow, too slow; her lungs shuddered the warning.
“Ooooh.” Imogen’s nose wrinkled. “You’re burning.”
When Eliot pressed her fingers to her arm, they left white prints. Unsurprising. It was her mother’s skin—pale like the north, ready to take on a thousand freckles at the first kiss of sun. She winced. It helped as much as it hurt, remembering these little things….
“Pink’s a great shade for hair, not so much for skin….” Imogen pulled out a bottle of the highest SPF money could buy. “Here. Apply liberally to avoid turning into a lobster princess.”
There wasn’t enough sunscreen in this world that could keep Eliot from getting fried, but Imogen was one of those people you just couldn’t say no to. A glass-overflowing kind of soul. In fact, the Historian was so eager to pass along the bottle that she knocked over her own empty pi?a colada glass. When she set the barware upright, she salvaged the tiny umbrella to wedge into the base of her bun. On anyone else the decor would’ve looked ridiculous, but Imogen made it fit. In a way, she made Eliot fit, too. The others seemed wary around her—even that hissy panda thing—but Imogen was a fount of conversation, not to mention knowledge. The offhand comment about Subject Seven’s birthday meant more than the Historian would probably ever realize. Eliot had assumed the blank spot by the birth date in Seven’s files was an oversight. SYSTEM ERROR. It felt too easy, too much to hope for, that he was, indeed, the one she’d been searching for.
Was he? This boy born outside of time?
Eliot still feared to hope. She feared a lot of things: being wrong, what must follow if she was right. There was no room for mistakes, and she couldn’t afford to act on impulse. Her certainty had to be at 100 percent, and right now the countersignature scanners were stuck at less than a quarter of that.
“Do you know when—” Eliot caught herself. It wouldn’t do to call him Subject Seven out loud. “Far and Priya will get back?”
“That’s like asking where a hurricane will make landfall.” Imogen laughed. “Farway is a force all his own.”
“I’ve gathered as much.” Eliot squirted sunscreen into her palm. “Do you enjoy working for your cousin?”
“I’d say with as much as for. Farway… he’s always been strongheaded, but sometimes he gets that strong head up his own tail. That’s when he gets into the most trouble. He needs people. We all do, really.” Imogen cast a glance at the Fortuna Pool, where Gram hovered in waist-deep waters, watching the blackjack tables. “I can’t imagine freelancing.”
“Don’t. It’s not a life to envy.” Eliot had forgotten how nice it was—sitting by a pool, applying sunscreen, chatting with someone who wasn’t a computer. “Did you know there’s a German curse that literally translates as ‘heaven thunder weather’? Himmeldonnerwetter!”
“Germans have the best words.” It said a lot about Imogen, that she followed this segue. It revealed even more that she appreciated cultured profanity.
“There are fantastic obscenities all over the globe. History, too. I’ve made it my mission to collect as many as possible. Reminds me that everyone’s got something to swear about—no matter where or when they live.”
“In Latin you can slander someone by calling them a pumpkin,” the other girl offered. “Cucurbita! Farway and I used to shout it at each other all the time, until Aunt Empra made us stop.”
Eliot emptied more sunscreen into her hand—the bottle was down to the dregs, and the stuff splattered everywhere. “I imagine that was quite an insult, back in the day.”
“Most people don’t like being compared to gourds,” Imogen said sagely. “So what about haze? When’s that curse from?”
Oh fex… She’d noticed. It wasn’t like Eliot to slip from the script: careful vocabulary, galvanized backstory. But the wig-snatching had rattled her more than she cared to admit. She didn’t mind going without a hairpiece; in fact, she preferred it (less heat and itch), but the suddenness of the loss—hair and gone—summoned a memory that was all knife. Six years old, stares from every side, cafeteria tears—where did she belong now?
So much had changed, and yet so much hadn’t.
“Haze… It’s an Australian word, I think. Twenty-third century?” Eliot hoped the Historian knew nothing about Down Under slang. These rabbit holes were getting harder to dodge. “I lose track after a while.”
The sunscreen bottle was tapped, but Eliot’s skin was too saturated to accept more regardless. She was sure that if she looked in the mirror she’d appear more wraithlike than usual. Blanched to the bone, half past disappearing. It would happen one day, she was certain. The Fade would catch her unawares, in a moment she could not escape.
Eliot pressed her arm again. White prints against white. Still solid. Still here. Even with the new layer of SPF she felt her skin slow-roasting. “I’m going to join Gram in the shade. Want to come?”
“Um, no.” Imogen’s body language was at war with her words. Calves taut, shoulders turned. “Not this time.”
“Most things look good on you,” Eliot told her. “Pining isn’t one of them.”
At this, Imogen removed her sunglasses. “Who told you? Farway? Priya?”
“It’s not that hard to see. Your eyes go all galactic when you look at him. Stars and stuff.”
The Historian made a mouselike sound and slipped the shades back on as if that could retroactively keep Eliot from noticing the lovey-dovey glow. “Do you—do you think he knows?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because… then we’d have to talk about it.”
“And?”
The other girl swiped up her pi?a colada glass and began scraping leftover fluff off its edges. “Why does everyone think it’s so easy to bare one’s heart for possible laceration? Hmm?”
“Not easy, no,” Eliot admitted as she stood. “But it just might be worth it.”
The Historian stabbed at dried coconut bits with her straw, grumbling.
“Carpe diem.” She shouldn’t have pushed, shouldn’t have cared at all. Getting attached to subjects and their affiliates only meant there’d be detaching later. Still, this rainbow of a girl reintroduced pumpkin profanity into Eliot’s mindscape, and that was no small thing. “You should try.”
Before it’s too late…
“Noted.” Imogen waved her off. “Now let me pine in peace!”
For all of Eliot’s judgment, the water felt blessedly cool when she waded into the Fortuna Pool, heading straight for the covered part, where people could swim up to the blackjack tables. Staff in shimmery blue shirts dealt the cards from a dry inlet. Gram watched one of the games from a nearby column. His stance was made of intense corners: keen jaw, shoulders straight enough to level a portrait. Eliot could almost see the numbers running through his eyes—+1, 0, +1, ?1, and on, and on.
“What’s the count?” she asked.
“Crux!” The Engineer started, his calculations scattering. “How do you keep sneaking up like that?”