Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

I swallow and lean back on my palms. He’s right. It’s stupid. A suicide mission. The repercussions will be…well, let’s say not pretty. Best-case scenario, Lex pulls it off, saves Stein, and we end up with what? Two Lexs? What if he alters everything that happens after her death, including finding me, and it’s all erased or, worst case, potentially punches a hole in the fabric of time. All valid points that I’ve made, only to have him dismiss my warnings with one word.

Dox.

I don’t realize I’m chewing my bottom lip until Ethan reaches up and pulls it free with his thumb.

“I know” is all I can say, because he’s absolutely right. And if there were any way to stop him, I’d do it. But there’s not. There’s no card I can play that he won’t trump. “We just have to hope the Dox works.”

Ethan doesn’t say anything, but I can feel the tension radiating off him. I want to be angry at Lex for the choice he’s made, but I can’t. Not really. If it were me, if Ethan were the one dead, I’d burn the world to the ground to get him back. It’s neither the right choice nor the rational choice. But that’s love for you. Leaning over, I rest my head on his shoulder. He wraps an arm around me.

“We could stop him. Steal the Dox,” he offers. But I know it’s no use.

“He’d find some other way. Or he’d just go. He was never very good with restraint,” I say with a faint smile. Alexei had been told no his whole life. No, he couldn’t play swords with the other children. No, he couldn’t ride the horses. Somehow, though, that never seemed to stop him. It just made him more determined to do it anyway.

“It’s just so monumentally stupid.”

I let out a deep breath. “It’s what I would do.”

Ethan snorts. “No. You’d do what’s right. You always do.”

“No, if it were me, and if it were you, I’d do it just the same.”

He tips my chin up so I’m looking into his eyes. Instantly, I’m melting. The room is hot and my stomach is tight. My breath catches as he gazes down at me. Something about the way his eyes droop, the way his cheeks flush with color, makes my heart race. I’m shaking all over. All I want is for him to lower his lips to mine, but it’s as if he’s frozen. I don’t know how long we stay that way, locked in that moment, before I can’t take it anymore.

Closing the distance between us is as natural as breathing. His arms are around me, and my fingers are clasped behind his neck. He tastes salty and sweet. At first, he just lets me kiss him, but suddenly his calm breaks like a dam and he’s kissing me back. Desperately, deeply. His hands are everywhere—in my hair, on my face. I can’t breathe. I’m drowning in him. Slowly the urgency wanes, leaving us in a soft embrace. I pull back first, only to gasp for air.

His lips are swollen and he’s looking at me from under his lashes.

“I just had to do that. In case I don’t get another chance,” I mumble, half-apologetically.

He grins wildly. “Oh, you’ll get another chance. I’ll make sure of that.”

He leans forward again but, before our lips touch, a train whistle blares, driving us apart.

“Anastasia?”

It’s Gloves in his weird wheelchair.

“It’s Ember. And yes?”

“If you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you. In private.” He eyes Ethan, who shrugs.

Ethan presses a quick kiss to my forehead. “I’ll go find your brother.”

Once the room is clear, I slide down the ramp. Gloves motions to the ratty couch.

“I wanted to talk to you, too,” I begin, folding my legs under me as I sit, leaning against the arm of the sofa. His chair blows a column of steam and clicks to a stop as the engine dies. “My brother. Why did you bring him here? Why target us?”

He takes a deep breath, folding his gloved hands in his lap. Oh, I get it. Gloves.

“You and Lex are special. Hmm, perhaps we should go to my office so that I might begin at the beginning.”

I wave my hand in a “go on” gesture, then follow him into a smoke-filled room. He motions for me to take a seat on an old bench.

“I would appreciate your discretion with the information I’m about to give you.”

I hesitate. The idea of keeping secrets doesn’t sit well with me. “I can’t promise. But I’ll do my best. I do need you to tell me the truth about Tesla and why you broke off from the Institute.” The party line has never sat well with me. They told us it was because they were selfish and wanted to pillage history, but the more I begin to understand Tesla and what he’s capable of, the less sure I am about his motives. About any of their motives.

He nods, as if that’s good enough. “Tesla had an assistant. The first Rifter. He discovered her abilities after a freak lab accident. Once he realized what she could do, he was like a man obsessed. Long story short, he found us. The originals. There were five. He mapped our family trees, using our genealogy to discover the source of our abilities. And he found a common thread.”

He pauses as footsteps pass by, and then he goes on. “A royal thread, as it happened. He began experimenting. Trying to gather as much sample DNA from the line as possible. He also identified people with high potential for the gene. Your family was on the short list.”

I shift, bringing my legs up to my chest. “So why Lex? Why not Mother or Father?”

“Tesla convinced a like-minded man to help him. A man from your time. A man with access to you and your family. A man of science.”

“Rasputin.” The name slithers past my lips like a ghostly snake, sending shivers up my skin. He was my friend. Confidant. The only person I trusted other than my own family. Violent memories crash to the front of my mind. Him taking blood from Lex and me. Trying to cure Lex’s hemophilia. The transfusions. Him brushing my hair. Singing folk songs. Bile rises in my throat like acid.

Him walking out the door for the last time. Mother telling us away with tears in her eyes, about his murder.

“Yes. He was working for Tesla.”

I don’t know what to say, so I settle for biting down on my lip.

“Of your siblings, Tesla felt only you and your brother showed enough potential to warrant training. By this time I and some of the others—disgusted by his growing obsession—had gone our separate ways. But we had a spy. She told us about his plans for you and your brother. She died getting us that information.”

I sit back and let the sofa engulf me. There are too many words and, at the same time, no words at all that can help any of this make sense to me.

“Ember, we tried to get you both. It was our intent but…”

“But what?” I croak out.

“But you stopped me.”

I shake my head, racking my brain for some memory of seeing him that day. “I don’t remember that.”

He waves his hand, dismissing my claim. “Yet you did. You brought your brother to me. Told me to take him. You called me by name.”

He lets those last words hang between us until I can fully absorb them. “Wait. That means I knew you. Me. Not the past me, but right now me. I was there.”

He stares at me, as if silently challenging me to put the pieces together. It’s like with the first key. At some point I go back to that day, and I make sure Lex is taken by the Hollows. Why would I do that? It doesn’t make any sense.

“But it’s a Fixed Point. Flynn told me. I can’t go back and change what happened.”

With the flick of a switch, his train engine growls back to life. He tosses a handful of coal into a chamber under his seat and it bellows steam from the pipes in the back. “Which can only mean one thing. You aren’t changing anything. You will go back again because you always have. Your actions are part of the Fixed Point, so maybe it’s not naturally occurring. Maybe, just maybe, you create it.”