Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(50)

I turn away from it, too big, too much. Wandering instead through Dr. Pinkerton’s little collection while Zila and Fin keep searching. There’s something comforting about it—relics of a past Terra that have outlived the age they were born in. In a way, these objects are time travelers like us.

I mooch past an old boxy lump of plastic, with a circular number pad and a weird handset. There’s what might be a pistol of some sort, its surface pitted with tiny spots of corrosion. And in a case against the window …

“Holy shit,” I whisper, looking over to the workstation. “Fin?”

“There,” Fin murmurs to Zila. “Try that one.”

“I see it,” she nods.

“Fin!”

He glances up as I call. “Huh?”

“Come look at this.”

He frowns a little, but leaves Zila and Nari to it, stepping out from behind the console and crossing over to me. “What’s up?”

Heart beating wildly, I point to the object inside the case, spinning softly on its beam of zero gravity. A thin, silver, rectangular box. Perfectly mundane. Impossibly familiar.

“Isn’t that … ?”

His big black eyes widen, those pretty lips part in astonishment.

“Maker’s breath … ,” he whispers, looking at me. “That’s the cigarillo case de Stoy and Adams left for Kal in the Dominion vault!”

“Attention, Glass Slipper personnel. All engineering staff report to Gamma Section, Deck 12, immediately.”

“Scarlett,” Zila calls. “Finian, I believe you should look at this… .”

“Zila, you’re not gonna—”

“This is important, Finian.”

We exchange a glance, and I can’t quite seem to catch my breath as we hurry over to Nari and Zila. The pair are still huddled around the terminal, and on the holographic displays hanging in the air in front of Zila, I can see streams of data, glowing in the dark.

Most of it is totally incomprehensible to someone who spent her physics lectures wishing she was anywhere other than a physics lecture, but I can see the folder is titled “Project Glass Slipper.” And illustrated in glowing light above a flurry of unreadable charts is a familiar shape. A chunk of polished stone, teardrop-shaped, cut like a piece of jewelry, a thousand facets for the light to dance on.

A shape I recognize.

“That’s a probe,” I whisper. “That’s an Eshvaren probe!”

Zila leans back in her chair. “Interesting.”

“It’s a what now?” Lieutenant Kim demands.

“It’s an exploration device,” Finian says, wide eyes on the spinning display. “Created by an alien race called the Eshvaren. They launched thousands of them into the Fold, millennia ago. Our friend Aurora used one to unlock her latent psychic potential so she could continue the Eshvaren’s ancient war against …”

His voice fades as he realizes Nari is looking at him like he’s a lunatic.

“It’s a long story, okay? Point is, it’s alien tech. Hard-core.”

BOOM.

The whole station shudders as something, somewhere, explodes.

“WARNING: CONTAINMENT BREACH. EVACUATE DECKS 5 THROUGH 6 IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH.”

“They must have discovered one,” I breathe. “Here, in this time.”

“It is damaged.” Zila points to the broken edge of the teardrop’s point. “Apparently inert. Project Glass Slipper is attempting to discover the crystal’s properties. Potentially weaponize them. The main fragment is locked in the station core, being subjected to testing with quantum energy harvested within the dark tempest.” She frowns, manipulating the holographic controls. “But there is a much smaller fragment, which …”

The wall hums.

A wall panel above the computer slides away, revealing a cylindrical glass case like the others around the office. But instead of an antique suspended in a thin column of zero grav, there is … a tiny chunk of crystal.

Out in the dark matter storm, that pulse of quantum energy strikes the sail, arcing along the cable toward the station. Forty-four minutes since we arrived, just like always. And just like always, the fragment around my neck begins to glow black in response. But this time, that glow is mirrored in the chunk of crystal floating inside that case. Like twins, their intensity grows, each one exactly the same as …

“Holy shit … ,” I whisper.

My hand drifts up to the medallion around my neck. A medallion that, just like Kal’s cigarillo case, waited ten years in that vault in Emerald City. Put there by people who seemed to know what would happen before it actually did.

“Scar …” Fin stares at the glass case. “This is your crystal… .”

“How … ?” Lieutenant Kim shakes her head, looking between the crystal in the glass and the crystal around my neck. The shape is unmistakable. Identical. “How is that possible? If you’re from the year 2380?”

“I do not know,” Zila says. “But this is it. This is the cause of the loop. An interaction across time and space between the Weapon, this station, the quantum pulse, the Eshvaren crystals. All of it is entwined. Ouroboros.”

The pulse reaches the station.

The structure shudders, the lights around us flickering.