As angry as he was at me for leaving him with Axer during the battle, then pushing him away from Stavros and Kaine, Constantine's fury was pinpointed elsewhere with true rage. “You brilliant, stupid, empathetic girl—giving them a way against you. I know ways around your designs. And they will rue this decision. Ungrateful, backstabbing ingrates.”
Axer’s gaze was analyzing and accounting for everything around us—the dead space, the apocalyptic shift now happening outside of it, and the contents of the supply bag. At some point during the madness, he had tucked a small device into his ear.
“I think the fact that three separate Third Layer terrorist leaders—including Vincent Godfrey's son—are heading toward the compound at high speed might have something to do with our expulsion,” Axer said, tone mild, gaze anything but.
Vincent Godfrey had been killed trying to destroy campus on Bloody Tuesday. I shuddered to think of his son's aims.
“No reports yet on this location,” Axer said, tweaking a buckled device on his cloak. “We have at least five minutes. Well done, Ren.”
Five minutes? I picked at the cuff. We were already exhausted from the earlier events of the day. We couldn’t sustain this madness.
Constantine’s eyes grew darker. “With Ren's wards, that complex could have repelled whoever they sent. No, the elders had this planned—long before the news hit the frequencies about the mass Awakenings. I guarantee it,” Constantine said darkly. “Insipid, panicked, backstabbing shivits.”
Axer spared him a glance. “You give too much credit to their ability to ignore ties that were woven long before any of us was born.”
I looked at my broken home ties—both sets of them. The people in the Western Territories compound weren't terrorists, no matter what the Department tried to spin, but the intertwining between factions across the Third Layer were rich, horrific, and complex. The many terrorist fronts had been demanding my release to them for weeks, but had been kept in check by the Territory elders and the long range plans we had collectively been spinning.
I was reminded of something the elder who had lived in Aurum had said to me:
“We are human, with all the fierce love and destructive hate that comes with it. While many clasp the hope—soft and gentle—that your magic could provide better lives for all in ten years' or twenty's time, others have a fiercer hope—the kind that rubs flesh with revenge, pride, and courage—now or never, a brasher and more desperate emotion.”
With my new status as the highest enemy of all states, it would pit anyone who had me under their roof against all others.
I was dangerous.
Constantine stepped toward Axer. “You know, this looks nothing like your island paradise—the one with overwhelming excess magics that the governments are always trying to sanction—with its ruminating bench where you can pick apart the motivations of people far and remote in the safety of your physical and magical separation from the rest of reality.”
There was a world of subtext strumming beneath every word—lies, liar, lying, hatred, loathing, pain. The two had been at detente for the last few months, revolving around a single common ally, but detente was different than forgiveness or friendship. Nothing had been solved between them—the giant morass of whatever was in their past still lay before them.
A giant pile of twigs, leaves, and tinder awaiting the dry season.
“After that lovely series of jumps, I don't need a bench to know that going to Itlantes would be an end game for all of us right now.” Axer was slowly rotating, gaze taking in every point in the distance. His shoulders were tight. For as little as he cared for nameless faces in a crowd, he was never unaffected by his roommate. “How many more hops can we make in that thing?” he asked me.
“Will’s design makes it unlimited as long as the recycling unit is engaged.” It was a joint project he and I had done with Loudon, Kita, Patrick, and Asafa. “But that doesn’t help us with the tracking issue.”
The Department could easily track the magic in the Second Layer, as could anyone in the other layers with a device designed for tracking travel magic.
Axer split his focused attention between his roommate's continuing rage—Constantine was now doing something with a cube he’d pulled from his pocket—my gathering of the pad, the broadcasts he was listening to on the small device in his ear, and the landscape at large. “It’s a marvel of between layer travel, but it’s not made for stealth.”
“Not yet,” I conceded. “I don’t think I can do better than this spot.”
Not if anyone in the Third Layer figured out a pattern—and patterns, unfortunately, came instinctively to me.
“We can't sustain ten-minute jumps for long, even if we could achieve them,” Axer murmured, head cocked, listening to something. “And though I have little sympathy for the people hunting us, unless we really do want to pave it—and possibly ruin the other layers at the same time—we can’t repeatedly churn the Third Layer. It will destabilize before we complete ten more jumps.”
I could probably do something about the destabilization—and probably kill us all in the fourth attempt with how controlled I was now—but jumping around with ten minutes' lead and having to stabilize every time would make us sweeper snacks within a day. I looked up, expecting to see one of the vulture-like animals circling.
“Our arrival here was just noted.” Axer's expression turned grim. “As of this moment, you are listed as kill on sight in the four other layers, if the murderer can transfer you to a Checkpoint in ten minutes' time. They are even handing out single use permitted First Layer Checkpoint transfer devices—like the one we used to transfer the ferals—free to anyone who registers. Anyone transported by one is taken straightaway to a detention facility at the Checkpoint.” He paused briefly before continuing, “And Ren, if you end up at a Checkpoint, you will disappear into Stavros's hands immediately and will be out of our reach forever.”
I expected Constantine to start swearing again, but he had gone unusually still, furious temper cooling into something colder and harder to chip at.
Axer looked at him, and I could see the slightest bit of unease run through Axer at whatever he was reading on his roommate.
“So, we...” I couldn't even finish the statement. Hide? Run every ten minutes—waiting for someone to take us during a last stand?
“The Third Layer isn't going to want to give you up to the Second. I had thought maybe a particular spot in the Fourth...” Axer shook his head. “But we should stick to the Third. If you are taken here, we still have the chance to find you.”
And vice versa—the more important point, to me, until I could safely absolve them from my fugitive status.
I touched the marble I always kept in my pocket. The marble that was far emptier than it had once been—still pulsed.
“Most of the places I’ve been to have been tracked and noted,” I said.
“Death.” Constantine looked out at the landscape, lips pressed tightly.
I looked at him. “I know you are furi—”
“Ours,” Axer said.
I stilled and looked at them.