Page 58 of The Space Between Stars

He could just check for interference…

Calver blinked. What was he forgetting? Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember how he’d even tampered with the lamps in the first place. The more he tried to recall, the further the memory slipped.

This had happened before. This mental fog. It meant only one dreadful thing: the memory belonged to the Survivor. Now he would need to retrieve it.

His need to know outweighing his fear-of-knowing, Calver used the knife to pry open the glass again, exposing the ruxechorin core. Holding it in his palm, he exhaled deeply and slipped into the Void. The answer was there instantaneously. His hands moved without thought or focus, pressing the blade against his fingertip until a single red bead appeared. Then Calver did what only he could do. The one thing of value he had been able to offer Fankalo. The one reason she’d kept him with her for six years, despite the problems he presented.

He set his blood against the core and found communion with it.

Calver’s eyes closed as he settled into the familiar pattern with which the void flowed around him when he held a distortion device attuned to Aetech’s stratum. It was a flow that seemed tilted—like a note out of tune. That was right. He’d done this before, thousands of times. With intense focus, he began to pull the flow, rerouting it toward Dreiden’s stratum—his stratum. But something was off this time. He might figure it out, if he could only—

The dishwasher entered the wagon.

Chaos, if there had ever been worse timing. Calver shook his head. As he surfaced from the void, a tingling set into his limbs. Clarity struck him cold. How had he not realized he’d been doing this with his blood all this time? What else had the Survivor repressed?

Niklaus leaned against the shelves of meal trays and nodded at the disassembled plate shield. “So, what’s your interest in this thing?”

Calver fought the spiral. And what was wrong with him.

“And, ahm, what could be wrong with it?”

What indeed? And why hadn’t Fankalo told him she was using his cores to make copycat plates? This was from the shipment she’d intended for Dreiden to replace, had his demolition been successful. She had laughed when he asked her how the judiciary would react to an operation so clearly contrived. “Half of running a business is having two-thirds of the judiciary in your pocket.”

How hadn’t he realized then that she’d pulled the wool over his eyes? She’d created fifteen thousand of these plates without telling him… Chaos, did it burn.

“Are you trying to figure out how it works so you can steal it?” Niklaus prodded. “Many have tried. Many have failed.”

A statement that might have been valid, had Calver not given Fankalo the resources—his own fated blood—to replicate it nearly a decade ago.

Niklaus snorted and drank from his canteen, the contents of which smelled stronger than water. “Telling a lie is one thing, but lying about Aetech trade secrets under my nose doesn’t display prime intellect.”

“I’m not sure I’ve come to understand your version of a joke. It’s a matter of tone, really.”

Calver let their eyes meet for the first time during this conversation.

Niklaus’s brow wrinkled. “You… you don’t know who I am?”

Calver turned back to the plate. After testing the core a half-dozen ways to be sure the distortion influx retainer was still in place, he reassembled it. Niklaus watched it all.

“Probably?”

Niklaus pulled a knife from the hoard of utensils. “That nearly sounds fun.”

Calver gripped the device’s handle and gestured for Niklaus to go ahead. Niklaus tossed the knife toward him. The moment it connected with the blue-tinted field, it ricocheted off with alarming speed. Niklaus ducked, narrowly avoiding impalement between the eyes.

“Heavenly halouchas! You could have given me a bit more warning.”