Page 12 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

ANA SAT ON the examiner’s table, eyes perusing the posters and diagrams lined across the opposite wall.

They were images of bones and muscles, smaller pictures of complex prosthetics followed by a poster of the latest proposed network Madness traveled as it moved through the body, the nerves concentrated in the eyes, tongue, and fingertips.

She was rereading the process for the installation of artificial nerves and robotic limbs when the door opened. Jasper walked through with a long raincoat, tapped Ana on the shoulder with a folded piece of paper, and strode through the exit.

“You’re clear. Let’s go!” The door shut behind him.

Ana waited for Mech to hobble through the door and fall back into her chair near a desk crowded with books and notes.

She sighed, the old doctor looking weary even though the day was still young.

Her gray coat was as wrinkled as her face, a burned out candle on her desk a seeming reflection of her spirit.

“Don’t bust yourself up, please. I tuned up your arm and replaced the synthetic skin, but you’ve neglected it,” Mech said, lifting her leg up on the desk before reaching forward to rub her ankle. “And don’t let Jasper get you into any trouble. He’s got that glint in his eye.”

“Will do,” Ana said, slipping off the table after inspecting her left arm as she flexed her fingers.

“Hey,” Jasper called before he tapped his hand against the door frame and walked off again.

“Coming,” she replied, exchanging glances with Mech before she reached for her raincoat near the door.

“Take care of yourself,” Mech said, her cool, gray eyes watching heavily beyond her spectacles. “And next time you both sleep out in the rain, consider wearing those rain jackets.”

Ana shifted her shoulders in the plastic. “I want to feel it.”

“He’s feeling it too, you know.”

Ana approached the wall beside Mech, where she examined several shelves with large jars lined across them.

She knew Jasper’s feelings. She’d watched them like a spectator far removed from their influence, more so in recent years. They were beautiful in all of their compassion and sympathy. He felt more deeply than anyone she knew, and she admired him for it.

Mech turned in her chair, removing Ana’s Atlas from her coat pocket.

She offered it back to her. “This is harder for him than it is for you. Remember that,” she said as Ana took the Altas, returning it to her belt.

“It’s still functioning properly. Jasper insisted on checking the readings too.

Do you want to know exactly how much time you have left? ”

“No,” she said, looking back at the jars. She could gather a vague reading from looking at her Atlas clock. The specifics didn’t concern her yet.

Ana lifted a finger, tapping a jar with a ball of black sludge floating in it. The thing responded to the sound, squirming toward her finger against the glass. “What’s this?” She withdrew her hand.

“A very rough prototype.”

“Of what?”

“A human heart. Jasper saw one in the other room. I thought he would run out. He’s still so superstitious, a Mystic at heart, even though he acts like a Statesman.”

“They’ve come a long way from fake fingers and toes,” Ana said, disturbed by the revelation, but doing her best to wrestle back any obvious dislike. It wasn’t very patriotic to show any distaste for practices the Var had approved. “I didn’t think they’d dive back into this.”

Mech still rubbed her ankle in focused circles, and so Ana snuck a glance at the papers on her desk. She thought she might catch a glimpse of evidence that would tell her how long they’d been dabbling in the forbidden practice, but instead found a series of documents on Chronos.

Odd.

Chronos was the emergency Atlas that was tied to all of the criminals in the city. It was a fierce and powerful weapon. Ana had seen it only once, the device capable of freezing and entire battlefield in time.

It was a strange topic for Mech to be studying so diligently.

“Other substitutes have too many issues. Other options just don’t give like skin does either, even with the gels and buffers we make. You know we’ve been having issues for years. We had to explore something else. Madness pairs much better with human cells.”

Ana kept her arms by her sides, watching the writhing heart reach out like a ravenous parasite. Disgust writhed similarly in the put of her stomach and she couldn’t help but voice the smallest objection, despite her better judgement. “It mutates human cells. I think the prosthetics work just fine.”

“No one argues that it’s dangerous, but we can control it.”

The heart stilled in the center of the glass again, pulsing as if there were something inside of it trying to break out. It squirmed.

She heard her watch in the silence, something that was always certain amid obscurity. Whether it was a reminder of life or death, she wasn’t sure.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

“Ana,” Mech said.

Tick.

“Yes?”

“Jasper’s waiting.”

“Thanks,” Ana said coolly before pushing the door open and making her way down the walkway into the rain.

Jasper was waiting on his horse. Ana hopped up onto her own, and they started walking their horses through the town. They’d barely cleared the edge of town before Jasper spoke.

“Ares betrayed the State,” Jasper muttered mockingly. “Now we know why. Why aren’t you angry?”

“Because I have to do my job anyway,” Ana said.

“What if Ares has turned on the State for a good reason? What if we’re the bad guys? Ares agreed to serve the State under one condition. He was very vocal about that,” Jasper said, keeping pace. “You can’t be okay with this.”

“We don’t know anything yet,” Ana said, picking up the pace into a trot.

“If The State was trying to create black bred people again, there is no way they could keep that a secret. I think it’s something else.

Ares has served the State for fifty years.

He could have just as easily wanted a change of pace. ”

Change of pace. Listen to yourself , Ana thought. She wasn’t any less uneasy than Jasper about the whole thing. He could very well be right, but he’d ruminate on that, stress it to such a degree that she’d find it hard to follow through with her mission.

She knew that if she didn’t do what she’d been told, more than a few lives would be at stake. Hailey likely had a list of her favorite people in his office, all ready to take the sunrise execution for her if she did anything but succeed or die on her mission.

“Change of pace?” Jasper repeated, and from his lips, her reasoning sounded even more absurd. Jasper was smarter than her—always had been, and she felt foolishly transparent trying to mislead him.

“Jasper, I just wouldn’t focus on it, all right? Maybe when we talk to Evira, we can ask her about this too. Ares could easily have other motives,” she said, and knew he wouldn’t argue with her there.

She had a bit of leverage in their discussion. Having had the rare experience of talking with Ares, she could pretend to have more insight into the enigma he was. That didn’t mean she did, but at least Jasper would leave the issue be for a while.

He did. They started their journey to Richter. Jasper rode behind her, their speech replaced by the rhythmic clap of galloping hooves. He didn’t broach the topic again when they stopped to camp for the night, nor the nights after.

* * *

By the time they reached Virasa’s cliff’s outside of Richter, it seemed easy to forget Jasper had brought it up with such insistence.

Ana basked in the familiarity of the cliffs, the famous beauty with the roaring spray of the ocean to the right and foggy green plains to their left. They’d traveled to Richter many times when she’d been active in the Numbers.

She lifted a set of binoculars as the town peeked past the rocky hedges near the path.

“What three values did you pick as the most important in that seminar in Saltin? You don’t kill, steal, or lie?” Jasper asked.

“Yeah. When I can help it.”

“Just thought I’d ask you before I also ask where all the raisins in my mix bag went. There are only peanuts left.”

“Yeah,” Ana said, looking through the binoculars at a tree in the distance. She kept steady on the horse as she spotted a bright red bird sitting on a branch. “That’s me.”

“When did you even get time to get in here?” he asked, rummaging around in his pack. “You denied it last time.”

“It was Diane last time. She eats all the peanuts. I told you. Top three rules.”

“You lied a few months ago when you denied stealing those binoculars you’re using right now,” Jasper shot back.

“I didn’t kill you for them. To be fair, you asked about your blue ones.”

“Oh, good, so as long as you don’t break all three rules at once.”

“It’s the spirit of the ideas,” Ana explained simply.

“That you’re breaking.”

“I don’t organize my shirts by their shade of brown.”

“I don’t stuff them under my bed,” Jasper argued.

“I don’t do that,” Ana said, turning away from the binoculars to see Jasper eating out of a packet of peanut butter with a cinnamon stick.

“Where did you get that?”

“As if I’d tell you,” Jasper sang.

“I’ll find it,” she said before hopping off her horse. She started walking alongside it, stretching her arms up into the sky. She walked on the grass tufts in the center of the road to avoid the puddles. “You have any wax?”

“No. Why?” Jasper replied with a raised brow.

“For my boots.”

“You forgot your saddle wax? Just rub mud on them. They can’t look any worse. You should have worn the ones Salem bought you.”

“Yeah—oh.” She started patting her pockets.

“What?”

“Salt.”

“You forgot salt? You’d think after so many years of doing this, you would have learned it by now. You know, I brought extra lighter oil because of last time.” He chewed on the cinnamon stick thoughtfully.

“That was ages ago.” Ana laughed.

“Chilly rain really freezes something into your memory,” Jasper shot back.

“You could bear to make a few mistakes every now and again,” Ana said.