“That’s hard to answer.” Acacia’s voice drifted up from my lap, weak and strained.
“Is there a better question?”
I think she smiled, but I couldn’t quite tell. “You could ask where we aren’t.”
“Okay. Where aren’t we?”
“Anywhere.” She took a deep breath, shifting to sit up. I helped her, keeping a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “We’re not anywhere.”
She looked awful. She still seemed dizzy and had the shakes, and her skin was pale and clammy. I offered her the flask again, but she shook her head.
“We’re not anywhere? So we’re nowhere? I’ve been in the Nowhere-at-All, and this isn’t—”
“No, it’s not the same.” She took another breath, raking her hair back behind her ears. One of her nails was broken, split to the quick and bleeding. “I dropped anchor. Without a destination.”
It was starting to make a little more sense, sort of. “So we fell through the world?”
She shook her head. “We fell through time.”
I looked around at the figures, misty and distorted, walking around us. It was like they were overlaid—one would walk right past, then bend down to pick something up from the ground. Then it would straighten and go on its way, except there would still be a figure standing there, looking at whatever it was. Then that one would go off in a different direction. They were all over the place, sometimes even walking right through me.
“Are you okay? He shot you.”
She nodded, moving part of her shirt aside to show me. The shirt itself was seared through, but the skin beneath it was unburned. Red, yes, with the faint start of bruising, but unburned. “Skin shield.”
“Is that…like a suit, or something?”
“Sort of. It’s not really something you put on like clothing—it’s just a…an energy shield. I’ve gotta recharge it, now…that was a strong blast.” She sighed, running her fingers over the area. Her fingernails sparked, circuitry pulsing with green light, and a thought struck me.
“Can you recharge this?” I held out the little shield disk I still had, the one I’d found on the mountain. Acacia took it from me, turning it over thoughtfully.
“I think so. It’s the same kind of thing as my skin shield, just…well, less advanced. No offense.”
I shrugged. Acacia held her hand out, palm up, fingers bent and apart. She rested the disk on her fingernails. A spark of electricity jumped from one to the next, around to four of her fingers; one of her nails was still broken. The disk glowed faintly blue.
“Neat trick,” I commented. She smiled, but didn’t respond.
I counted the seconds until she was done. Twenty, not the full thirty it usually took to fully charge a disk. Acacia’s fingernails were more powerful than anything we had.
She handed it back, and I powered it up. The surface of it flashed, then displayed a blue serial number: FB242.
“That can’t be right,” I muttered. Acacia looked at me questioningly.
“Did it work?”
“Yeah, but…this is the one I lost. The one the quartermaster got mad at me for. The one I had to leave on Earth F?986.”
“Where did you find it?”
“At the…” I realized I hadn’t told her about the rockslide yet. Maybe she already knew. “On the mountain. On top.”
“Are you sure it’s the same one?”
“Yes.” She looked skeptical. “I’m absolutely sure. The number is FB two forty-two, and my mother’s birthday is February twenty-fourth. I remember noticing that when I checked it out. It’s the same one.”
“So how’d it get there?”
“I don’t know. I saw it fall. I left it behind; I didn’t have a choice.” I powered it down, clipping it back to my belt. This was all getting immensely confusing. “I was trying to throw it to Jo when she was falling, but Joaquim grabbed her and they both Walked….”