Dissonance: An Echo Trilogy Novella (Echo Trilogy, #2.5) (6 page)

Or Nik’s.

8

Matter & Antimatter

“It really was good to see you,” I told Dr. Ramirez while I hugged
him goodbye, meaning the words with all my heart. Not only had it been nice to
catch up, but I felt a huge relief having actually seen my former advisor in
the flesh. Whatever was happening to him in the
At
, Dr.
Ramirez was okay in the real, tangible world, and that was what truly mattered.

He returned my sentiment and said his farewells and nice-to-meet-
yous
, and I remained standing as I watched him weave his
way between occupied and vacant tables and walk out through the café’s wide
entrance. Only when he was finally out of sight, having passed through the
library’s glass doors, did I sit back down, stiff as a mummy. My relief at his
well-being was eclipsed by the wrongness emanating from the graceful little box
sitting in the middle of the table, surrounded by a moat of food wrappers,
napkins, drink bottles, and coffee cups.

“Are you going to fill me in on what’s bothering you, or must I
guess?” Dominic asked from the opposite side of the table.

I met his dark, worried eyes. “It’s that thing,” I said, pointing
to the box. “It
feels .
 . .” I
shuddered. “Wrong. It just feels wrong,
somehow .
 . .
like a really disturbing sucking void of, I don’t know,
wrongness
.” I
met Kat’s eyes. “Didn’t you feel it?”

She quirked her mouth to the side and shook her head. “But it’s
just a pocket watch.” Pushing her lunch trash to the corner of the table, she
reached for the box.

I grabbed hold of her wrist without thought, and she looked at me
with widened eyes. “I don’t think you should touch it,” I told her, trying to
smooth out the alarm tensing my features. “I don’t think
anyone
should
touch it.”

Nik slid into Dr. Ramirez’s abandoned chair and leaned his
forearms on the table, getting a closer look at the harmless-looking box. “And
why’s that?” He cocked his head to the side and pulled back a bit. “You sensed
something when you opened it—that much was obvious. Is it made of
At
?”

“No,” Kat said, voicing my slight head shake. “It’s black. It’s
kinda
pretty,
though .
 . .
in a weird way.”

Frowning, I stared at the box. The watch was pretty, what with all
that delicate filigree work and the striking black metal. But any attraction it
held was far overshadowed by its repulsive wrongness.

“What is it?” Dominic said, and I glanced up at him, only to follow
his wary line of sight to Nik’s face. He was absolutely still, his expression
blank and his gaze distant.

In a blink, his irises flashed from pale blue to opalescent white,
and his gaze locked on me. I saw an emotion I’d never seen in those eyes, set
in either Nik’s or
Nuin’s
face: horror.

Slowly, Re-Nik reached out and lifted the lid of the box. The
ticking intensified once more, as did the wrongness pouring out of the watch in
wave after repellant wave. He stared at the small, black soul-sore for several
seconds, then sighed and gently lowered the lid. “Perhaps I should have
anticipated this,
but .
 . .” He shook
his head, his eyes downcast. “I was unaware that any Nejeret alive had
developed the ability to create such a thing.” He looked at me again, his gaze
beseeching. “It
shouldn’t
be possible.”

“Re,” I said, drawing out the entity-in-charge’s name. “You’re
doing that thing where you only say really vague and cryptic things
again .
 . .”

“Oh my God, totally,” Kat exclaimed. “I’m glad it’s not just me.”

“It’s not,” Dominic said, with a miniscule nod of agreement.
“Please, Great Father, explain to us what it is you aren’t saying.”

Re-Nik studied each of us in turn as he considered how to word his
response. Finally, his opal eyes locked onto me, and Nik’s youthful features
grew weary under the weight of
Re’s
thoughts. “Ma’at—universal
balance—is not merely a concept, but a universal law of being woven through
everything in existence across all dimensions, all
planes .
 . .
all universes. You, my Alexandra, are the embodiment of ma’at as you sit here
today with the two driving forces of creation and destruction in this universe
nestled safely in your womb, equal and opposite in
power .
 . .
balanced.”

I instinctively laced my fingers together and pressed them against
my abdomen. It was difficult to wrap my mind around the thought—no, the
fact
—that the children I was carrying
were so terrifyingly important to, quite literally, everything.

“But ma’at is visible in a much more mundane way—everywhere and in
everything,” Re-Nik continued. “You are familiar with
At
,
but less so with its counterpart: the in-between, the substance linking this
moment to the next, interweaving threads of the At. There is no word for it in
a human tongue, for none was ever needed, but it is the very glue holding time
and space together.”

Upon seeing what no doubt had to be a flabbergasted expression on
my face, he leaned closer and said, “The fabric of the
At
alone could not sustain this.” He raised his hands slightly and cast a quick
glance around the room. “It would be chaos, constant change and perpetual
motion that has no meaning or form or purpose. Its balancing force provides
stability, opposing the
At
in every way. And as such,
At
is drawn to it, anchored by it, and the two forces combine
in perfect concert.” He breathed in and out slowly, studying each of our faces.
“And with their marriage comes creation.”

“Like matter and antimatter?” Kat asked quietly.

Ever so slowly, like a trio of unoiled marionettes, Dominic,
Re-Nik, and I looked at Kat.

“You
know .
 . . like how when
an antimatter particle gets together with its matching matter twin and they,
like, annihilate each other or whatever and release a bunch of energy and, um,
stuff.” She looked at each of us, her cheeks reddening. “What? I got a five on
the AP Physics test, okay? I know stuff.” Mumbling, she added, “Some
stuff .
 . .”

“Katarina is very astute in her comparison,” Re-Nik said with a
conciliatory bow of his head. “In fact, I would say that the concepts of matter
and antimatter are quite likely the closest modern science has yet to come to
explaining ma’at.”

I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “
Okay .
 . .
so this in-between antimatter stuff—is that what the watch is made of?”

Re-Nik nodded.

“And that’s why it feels
so .
 . .”
I shivered melodramatically.

“Yes and no,” he said. “Much like solidified
At
can be imbued with certain properties, such as the Hathor statuette that pulled
you back to ancient times, its counterpart can be anchored to an aspect of
creation, like a specific object or person. It’s an aberration of ma’at, which
is probably why it’s disturbing the twins so much, Alexandra, that you’re
picking up on their discomfort.”

“
Hmm .
 . .” So my weird
feeling all day really had been linked to the pregnancy, just not in the way
I’d suspected. “So, what happens after this ‘anchoring’?” I asked, sucking in a
breath and holding it while I waited for Re-Nik to respond. Because I was
fairly certain he was implying that the watch made of this in-between, anti-
At
stuff was anchored to Dr. Ramirez, and I was terrified to
find out what that meant for the kindly old professor.

“Annihilation?” Kat said in a small voice.

“For an object or a being without a
ba
,
no,” Re-Nik said, glancing at Kat, but once again retraining his eyes on me.
“Your Dr. Ramirez will be completely erased from the
At
,
in time, but it will not affect him on this plane of existence. But—” He raised
his eyebrows. “For a being
with
a
ba
—for any
Nejeret—it is a different matter entirely. The link created by the individual’s
ba
between the physical body on this plane and their
reflection in the
At
would mean that once their
existence was erased from the At, the same would happen to their body, here.”

I swallowed roughly. “But why would someone do that to Dr.
Ramirez? Why go through all the trouble to anchor this thing to him just to
erase him from the
At
?”

“Ah, but that’s just it,” Re-Nik said, his voice soft,
cautious .
 . . dangerous. “This watch wasn’t
created with the specific purpose of binding to your Dr. Ramirez—the desire to
bond with elements of
At
is a basic principle of its
nature. Once given solid form, it will affect anyone who touches it until it is
depleted. The watch was simply created and, I’m assuming, given to Dr. Ramirez
with the intention of him passing it on to you, my Alexandra. It was sheer luck
that he handled it, anchoring it to the reflection of himself in the
At
, and that you have such a close tie to an echo containing
him. It was your first, and as such, you felt it deep in your
ba
the moment it was altered—or in this case, the moment
the echo reappeared in the
At
. My point is, without
that particular string of events, we wouldn’t have gone into this meeting on
high alert, and the worst could have happened.” He stared at me intently. “Any
of us
could have touched the watch.
You
could
have .
 . .”

I blanched, then looked at Kat. Her face was so washed out I
thought she might be seconds away from fainting. I reached for her hand under
the table and gave her fingers a squeeze. “You didn’t touch it,” I said, aiming
for reassuring but certain I’d fallen short. “You’re okay.”

Kat nodded, looking like she was about to throw up.

“So,” Dominic started, and we all looked at him. “I’m assuming
this—this
thing
didn’t simply burst into existence on its own.”

He’d voiced what I’d been too afraid to say aloud, and now
I
felt
like I was about to throw up. “So who could’ve made it?”

Crickets.

A sickening thought struck me, and I licked my lips, but my mouth
was so dry that it did no good. Reaching for my coffee cup, I took a drink of
tepid latte. “There’s no way that this could be like the Hathor statuette,
could it? There’s not some unexpected trip to the past scheduled in the near
future, where I go back and create this thing with the sole purpose of
destroying Nejerets—specifically
myself
—is
there?” My voice rose in pitch as I spoke, and a slight tremble started in my
hands. I let go of the coffee cup and pressed my palms against my thighs in an
attempt to control the shaking.

Re-Nik took such a long time to respond that my stomach twisted
into a nauseating tangle. “No, my Alexandra, the scenario as you’ve suggested
it is impossible. Only if you had complete access to
Apep’s
sheut
would you be able to create something like this
watch,” he said, tapping the box’s shiny lid once more. “And
Apep’s
sheut
is only compatible
with humanoids carrying the Y chromosome.”

Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind, I realized he’d just
told me one of my children would be a boy by necessity of the
sheut
that would be bound through every particle of his
being.

“So, either the future carrier of
Apep’s
sheut
is responsible for this,” Re-Nik said, “or Nik,
here, is not the only Nejeret to have been born with his own
sheut
.”

“But I thought you kept that from happening,” I said, panic and
disbelief battling for control in my chest. “You policed the timeline yourself
to make sure no other kids were born of two Nejeret parents.”

Re-Nik stared at me for several seconds, and then he shrugged. He
shrugged.
His only response to the
possibility that he might’ve failed in one of his self-proclaimed most important
tasks and allowed the birth of a Nejeret with the ability to destroy our kind
absolutely was a damn shrug.

I was at a complete and utter loss for words.

“
So .
 . . maybe this is a long
shot,” Kat said, breaking the tense silence, “but isn’t it possible that this
is just a coincidence?” Her focus skipped around to each of us. “Like, couldn’t
someone have made this—I don’t know—two hundred years ago or whatever and Dr.
Ramirez just stumbled across it and assumed it was for you because of your name
and everything, but maybe it was really for someone else with the same name?”
She deflated visibly, slouching back in her chair. “And now that I’ve said that
out loud, I’ve heard how stupid it sounds.”

“Not stupid,” I said, giving her knee a squeeze under the table.
“Just optimistic. It’s good to be able to see all the possible angles.”

I split my gaze between Dominic and Re-Nik for several long
seconds, then settled my focus on the more ancient of the two. I was confounded
by his apparent indifference to how this might’ve happened, but I put that
aside for the moment. “While figuring out who did this is definitely a top
priority, I think getting rid of the danger is probably a smidgen more
important at the moment.” As Dominic reached into his trouser pocket for his
cell phone, my eyes snapped to him. “Do
not
call Marcus right now.”