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Myla frowns. “That, I don’t know. I can ask around and see if anyone who was in the engineering program with me has connections, but… I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” August says. She’s already thinking through contingency plans. Do they know anyone skilled in espionage? Or who’d be willing to sleep with a security guard for the cause?
“You have a bigger problem, though,” Myla says.
August snaps back into focus. “What?”
“If all this is right, and it’s an electrical event… when they cut the power in September, it’s not only that you won’t be able to see her. She might just… blink out.”
“What?” August says. “No, that can’t—the train broke down before, when she was on it. She was fine.”
“Yeah, the train broke down,” Myla says. “But there was still power in the line. And maybe it was okay before you, when she never stayed in one time or place for long enough to be there when they cut the power to the tracks for maintenance, but if we’re right about how strong your connection is, you’ve got her pinned, here and now. She won’t be able to avoid it.”
The reality of that spins out: Jane would have been fine if she wasn’t stuck here and now. The Q has probably lost power or had its power cut a hundred times before, but Jane always missed it, until August. Until August fell in love with her and got greedy with kisses and turned herself into a weight holding Jane in one spot.
And now, if she doesn’t pull this off, Jane might be gone forever. Not now. Not then. Nowhere.
Maybe Jane was right. This is her fault.
“August,” Myla yells through August’s bedroom door. “August!”
She buries her face in her pillow and groans. It’s seven in the morning, and she didn’t get home from work until four hours ago. Myla is really betting on not getting stabbed.
The door flies open, and there’s Myla, wild-eyed, a soldering gun in one hand and a string of lights in the other. “August, it’s a nerve.”
August squints through a wall of her hair. “What?”
“My sculpture,” she says. “The one I’ve been working on for, like, ever. I’ve—I’ve been looking at it all wrong. I thought I was supposed to be making something big, but it was right in front of me with all this Jane stuff—the branches, the lights, the moving parts—it’s a nerve. It’s what I do! Electricity of the heart! That’s what the point of view is!”
August rolls over to stare at the ceiling. “Damn. That’s… genius.”
“Right? I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before! I have to thank Jane the next time I see her, she—”
August’s face must fold into something tragic, because Myla stops.
“Oh, shit,” Myla says. “You still aren’t talking to her?”
August shakes her head. “Five days now.”
“I thought you were gonna go back after three?”
August rolls back over and curls around her pillow. “Yeah, that was before I knew trying to save her life might get her killed. Now I feel like maybe she was right to want me to leave her alone.”
Myla sighs, leaning against the doorframe. “Look, remember what we said when you first moved in and I made you listen to Joy Division? We’ll figure it out. We have most of a plan now.”
“I think I know everything, but I don’t,” August mumbles. “Maybe I started with a relationship difficulty level too far above my skill set.”
“Oh, we’re in self-pity mode,” Myla says. “I can’t help you with that. Good luck, though! Talk to Jane!”
Myla leaves August in her unwashed sheets, feeling sorry for herself, tasting strawberry milkshake on the back of her tongue.
Her phone buzzes somewhere in the tangle of her bed.
It’s probably another passive-aggressive text from her mom, or Niko in the group chat checking the household rice inventory from the grocery store. She grumbles and fishes it out from beneath her ass.
Her breath hitches. It’s Jane.
Put the radio on.
