“She's going to the Department over my dead body,” Constantine said. I looked up to see he was addressing Axer—something passing between them that I couldn't hear—their bond especially tight when linked.
“I know.” Axer's gaze remained connected to his, a grim set to his mouth—for as soon as he took his hand away, Constantine’s skin started to gray again.
I didn't have to hear their conversation to understand that there might be a path littered with our bodies before the end.
Chapter Fourteen: Body of the Sun
The death tortoise—full of picnic food to last it a week—swam through the sand to the south, then dove beneath with a screech.
I watched it disappear, then moved my attention back to the scorched remains of Corpus Sun.
Peering over the edge of a dune, we watched the factions of terrorists, soldiers, settlers, and scientists move in an uneasy detente under the thin dome I had erected over the entire site in my first negotiations with the Western Territories.
“Lovely. This looks like just the spot to start a revolution,” Constantine said amiably, a direct contrast to his true feelings, as usual.
Axer carefully miniaturized the supplies using the devices' own internal magic, and slung the bag already containing the miniaturized vehicle across his chest as he began scoping out the perimeter with Guard Rock. Constantine’s cat sat at the base of the dune, grooming itself in boredom.
I stared at the cat, then at Constantine—who shrugged in response. We resumed our vigil in tandem.
“Not a revolution,” I murmured.
“Darling, your entire existence is a revolution.”
My magic was still all over the site that surrounded what had once been Corpus Sun. A thin dome—a facsimile of the one that Constantine and I had tiptoed through months ago—covered the remains of the city. It kept out shifts and recycled a finite amount of magic within.
But the real jewel was the thick containment dome at the city’s center. An impenetrable layer of magical Saran wrap pulled an opaque dome over what had once been a five-block radius of shambling buildings, inaccessible at this stage to anyone without the key. A mystery that the Third Layer scientists and engineers on site had been pretending to chip at for months.
I touched the marble, girding myself. “We’ll need to deactivate the appraisal wards.”
Constantine's eyes narrowed in on the Third Layer scientists’ tent, locked down with wards between the exterior and interior domes.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, looking sharply at me. “This is your test case. Your results may be tainted by our presence.”
I pulled my lips between my teeth, wetting them. “What difference does it make now? It should hide us for a bit in a place we can use magic. Maybe for two days? And we need that.” I tried to smile at him; tried not to let my gaze slide to the sickly gray tinge of his skin.
His complexion was responding less and less to each influx by Axer—two people sharing one, emptying oxygen tank. I swallowed.
“The site already flags my magic,” I said, trying harder to smile. “And authorities from both layers have combed the site outside the inner dome a hundred times and turned up nothing. We might even make it out alive.”
Inessa had spouted the information last term during an effort to taunt me.
“...the evidence against you that Daddy's troops are currently searching for in Corpus Sun.”
Inessa had taunted me, hoping to scare me, but what she'd done instead was give me a heads up that the Legion was trying to access the site. The problem with Inessa’s declaration was that the Legion's search was illegal. And even Legion troops had to proceed carefully. Second Layer forces caught in the Third Layer would technically be considered a declaration of war that Second Layer politicians hadn’t been ready to commit to months ago.
A few whispers in the right Third Layer ears had upped the Third Layer presence immediately. The Second Layer hadn’t resumed their poking—unless they had been very, very careful about it.
The problem with a global police force in the Second Layer that answered to a vast number of politically disparate countries was that they weren't war sanctioned for any but the direst of circumstances. They could be sneaky and underhanded, but they had to get permission from the Council for acts of war.
That was the reason the Department hadn't been able to openly come after me in the Third Layer. Until they got a declaration, they had to be covert. Or they had to lure me to the Second Layer.
With current events in play, we were on shakier ground. A quarter of the Second Layer countries had already signed documents of war while we’d been turtling. It was the holdouts that were keeping troops out of the Third—hampering Stavros just enough to give us time we might not otherwise have. Axer had been right.
“Traces of the two of us and Price are already established here as well. The perfect camouflage.” Axer crouched down. He pointed at nearly invisible blocks of green near the external dome, then similar ones around the internal dome. “Trackers. Multiple types placed by multiple factions. They will go off as soon as someone tries to cross the beams. They need to be disarmed with something that can dissolve, then immediately renew them. But that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”
He looked at Constantine in challenge, eyes dark, and withdrew a thin tube from his cloak pocket.
I cringed. Constantine had used something like that on the wards at Excelsine, when letting Godfrey and his men onto campus, then sealing up the wards later. And he’d taken it as a challenge since then to make something less detectable for future ill plans.
But even though we’d be using his discoveries to help us, it still didn’t remove the thorn between them that Constantine had put the entire campus in danger—a population Axer zealously protected.
Constantine withdrew a vial filled with a vibrant green liquid and shook it lazily without looking away from the challenging stare of his roommate.
Axer frowned, halting his motion in lengthening the tube. “Is that all of it?” He looked at the ground between our dune and the dome, then at the tube, and the liquid in the vial. He sighed and retracted the tube, placing it back in his cloak.
“Well, I didn’t exactly pack for storming castles,” Constantine said. “This is plenty.”
“And what are you going to do with it exactly, throw it?” Axer said evenly. “Might as well just announce our presence by tossing Ren with it. There are fifteen scouts watching this section of the barrier.”
“Find the prettiest scout and lure her—or him—over to the barrier with your muscles while I deactivate a sliver in the field,” Constantine said lazily.
I cringed.
Axer stared at Constantine. “That is a stupid plan.” He was already pulling devices from the secret pockets and buckles in his cloak.
“And yours is…?”