Page 46 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

ANA MOVED HER fingers across the canvas, finishing the image of a swan gliding across a blue and white sky.

She wiped her fingers on a cloth lying on the ground near the chair where she sat. She glanced back at the white house with brilliant flower beds lining a stone path to the entrance.

“Ten minutes,” Diane said, lying in the grass beside her, looking out at the capital down below.

“I’m done,” Ana said, facing the painting again. She stared at it, the paint a fresh, glimmering reflection of the sky. The reflection of the sun gave it life, but even that would dry soon, and the image, to her, felt somehow incomplete. It seemed right.

“Did you ever find it?” Ana asked.

“Do you really want to know?” Diane replied, squinting into the sun, elbows back in the grass, legs crossed in front of her. “I’d guessed you weren’t asking on purpose.”

“So, you know?” Ana said, smoothing out the white, ceremonial dress she wore.

Diane lay back, folding her hands over her face.

She sighed. “The source of The Great Light. It’s tied to a blue shell.

It’s in the science division’s lab,” Diane said.

“So, unless we have one of the very special keys, we’re not getting in, but now we know.

It really does exist. It’s in the State.

I have to admit, I was convinced before, but having evidence… it’s unreal.”

“All right,” Ana said.

“That’s it?”

“It was a possibility that the State had it. Now, it’s a reality.” Ana watched the painting, digesting her feelings about The Great Light. She didn’t want to spend her final moments thinking about it.

“As for Jasper,” Diane said as if sensing her mood, “I haven’t heard from him, but he’s close, I’m sure. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Mystics come over that horizon any second. I bet Hailey’s nervous. I’d love to be in one of his planning meetings right about now—scrambling for a strategy.”

“And no word from Lethe or Cal,” Ana said, avoiding the topic again. She didn’t really want to linger on the idea of the Mystic invasion either.

“No. Not yet.” Diane checked her watch. “You have five minutes.” She turned back toward the house. “Everything is ready.”

Ana exhaled through her nose. She stood up, folding the cloth neatly over her stool. “I know,” she said and then eased down into the grass next to Diane.

The birds were chirping outside. They sat there and listened.

“Two minutes,” Diane whispered.

Ana stood and turned toward the house. “Let’s go inside.”

A group of people waited in the small, white house, looking up from their watches when she entered.

They cleared the path for her, and Ana walked between them to the bed.

She lay down over the stark, white sheets, the sheets they’d wrap her in before her burial.

Resting her head on the pillow, she looked up at the ceiling, folding her hands on her stomach.

Ana noticed a vase of fresh flowers in the windowsill when she walked in.

They had been brought by one of the secretaries sent from the State to document the last moments of any Numbers soldier.

The other people were official personnel, some she recognized, some she didn’t, but still a rather strange turnout for her final moments.

She’d been told a day or so ago that Hailey was regulating crowds, sifting through them for people with anti-State agendas and Mystic sympathies.

Apparently, he’d caught wind of her fame among the Resistance and had mandated that those allowed to attend her funeral be strictly regulated by the State.

It was either a subtle jab or a simple matter of caution.

Ana wasn’t sure about Hailey’s intentions.

She imagined it didn’t look promising that she’d returned at all from hunting Ares, much less that she’d returned alive.

If anything, she was surprised Hailey seemed willing to let her die in peace, but maybe he was just relieved she’d be gone soon and thought it best not to bring too much attention to her situation and make a martyr out of her.

Diane took a seat beside Ana in a chair near the bed. Ana was grateful for her attendance. Diane had lost several friends in combat on the border in the past few years, and she knew this wasn’t easy for her. Ana, on her own, wasn’t concerned about dying.

In fact, she’d waited a long time for this. The hardest part was imagining the pain of those around her.

She checked her Atlas, which rested on a small pillow by the bed, looking back up at the ceiling as she counted the seconds.

Three seconds left.

It was strange how her life and its struggles suddenly seemed so small.

Tick.

She closed her eyes.

Tick.

Held her breath.

Tick.

The Atlas was silent.

Everything was.

She waited in that still, silent darkness, waiting for some feeling, for the bed to disappear from beneath her, for her body to melt away, for some image or light to appear in the darkness of her head.

Sensation faded, like falling asleep but faster. Feeling seemed to vanish, swirling into some vacant space that could only vaguely be described in words.

She felt herself begin to fade, like falling asleep, and then it all just stopped.

Ana opened her eyes.

To her surprise, the same white ceiling remained above her.

She turned to her left.

Her Atlas was out of time.

She turned to her right.

The room was empty.

She sat up in bed, searching the room. Her eyes moved to the window and she stared through it. The trees were still outside, a leaf caught in freefall outside.

A shock ran through her body. She gasped, falling back onto the bed.

Another jolt. Pain reverberated through her. The room flickered.

Another violent jolt.

Ana gasped, sitting up from the bed, all sensation returned to her body. Everyone in the room flinched backward.

Wide-eyed, she looked over to see her Altas, out of time. She searched the room, watching each face that mirrored her shock.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

She blinked, searching the world around her. It wasn’t her watch this time. Her watch was gone.

She was out of time.

“Who has a watch?” she asked.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

No one spoke. She scanned the crowd, looking for answers.

She grabbed her Atlas.

“It’s out,” she said, scanning the room. “Is it out?” She pushed it toward Diane, who scrambled with it in her hand.

“Ana,” Diane said, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s out.”

A few people in the room eased back as if she were a ghost.

Tick.

Tick.

“Who has the watch?” Ana shouted. They moved farther back. Someone scrambled to take off their watch and toss it to her.

She snatched it out of the air. It wasn’t the one she was looking for. She dropped it on the bed.

A whirring sound purred in her ears. She looked down at her metal arm and then up when several people looked back toward the door.

Hailey stood in the doorway.

“You.” She glanced down at her mechanical arm. She looked back up at him. “You!” She charged toward him, the bed slamming back up against the wall as she pushed off it. Guards intercepted her, Ana wrestling through them as she shouted, “How dare you? You monster!”

Hailey didn’t blink. He looked her in the eyes and this time, for the first time, she felt that he saw more than puppets and lights. He saw her.

“One day, you’ll understand,” Hailey said. “We needed someone who’d already run out of time… That was the missing piece, the perfect match.”

“I’m supposed to be dead!” she screamed.

“Consider yourself dead,” Hailey said, backing out of the house. “Bring her,” he said, “Malik, go ahead and tell the physicians it worked.”

“You don’t own me!” She fought against those who held her, unable to employ anything beyond her blind rage. “I’ll use it against you. I swear—I’ll use it against you!”

“You’re too good for that, Ana,” Hailey said. “As quick as you were to use your own time, you couldn’t bear to abuse others for selfish reasons like revenge.”

“Ana!” Diane called as they started to drag her off. “You can’t do this!” she shouted to Hailey.

“Ana had her life,” Hailey said. “She should be grateful. As Chronos, she’ll get to experience many more.”

“Take it off!” Ana shouted. “Take it off me now!”

“That’s not possible. Sedate her,” Hailey said, crossing his arms behind his back as he looked back at her.

Ana broke loose, busting the nose of one of her detainers as another one approached with a needle.

She snatched the needle, preparing to use it against another person holding her before she heard the whir of an Atlas and time swallowed one of her shoulders.

She tried to break away from it. Another activated over her legs.

They wrapped her wrists in rope, forcing her forward.

She dropped her weight, thrashing as they dragged her outside.

They held her down as they shoved her into a carriage.

Hailey looked out the window as she stared at him in sheer hatred from the floorboards.

The emotions flooded her with heat, the constant pressure of her detainers keeping her still.

One of them shoved a rope into her mouth when she tried to bite.

They shut the carriage doors, and it started off.

Ana didn’t take her eyes off Hailey, breathing savagely through clenched teeth on the rope.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ana,” Hailey said after a while, still looking out the window, chin propped up on his fist. “You dedicated your life to the Numbers. This is an honor you’ve been selected for.

We need Chronos, and after the unfortunate…

results of the previous hosts, we needed to try something new. ”

She didn’t move her eyes from him.

“Your skills in close combat, your shortened life span, your near obsessive loyalty to the State, and your temperament made you the best candidate for this test,” he said, finally looking at her.

“You judge my harshness, but one day you’ll understand.

You don’t want the Resistance to use you as their symbol, do you?

That’s not what you are, and we both know it.

” He knelt down before her, reaching a hand toward her face.

“I think you’ll find your position with Chronos to be much more to your liking. ”

She thrashed away from him, shouting through the rope in her mouth as she kicked her legs.

They held her down, and she felt a needle pinch her neck. A cool feeling rushed through her veins—a sedative.

“That’s the one problem with a martyr,” Hailey said to one of his colleagues sitting across from him. “They complain when you give them life.”

A few of the men chuckled.

She slammed her eyes against the humiliation as the carriage came to a stop. They pulled her out, loosening the rope from her mouth, and she stumbled forward.

“We’ll take her into the labs,” Hailey said. “At least until she comes to terms with her responsibilities.”

They walked her through the main hall, the guards pulling her up as she stumbled over her own feet, dizziness swimming through her brain.

Her eyes rested on the metal arm, the triggers suddenly making sense, the weight suddenly making sense. She’d never used an Atlas prosthetic before, but she knew the trigger system intuitively.

She felt one of the detainers loosen their grip slightly as if in response to how she fumbled.

Muffled voices were talking around her.

She tested her fingers against the rope. Two of the detainers started arguing, and she realized one of them was the one whose nose she’d broken. She heard Hailey’s voice again.

She shook one of her detainers off, sensing the weak grip, and hooked her fingers into the triggers of her arm. She pulled it back as far as it would go.

Chronos activated with a blast.