Chapter One Hundred Thirteen: Interrupted Sleep
Using the last of her strength, Tami Abramov spit blood into her murderer's face.
The White Guardian responded by yanking Jack Noir's knife out of Tami's heart.
Gasping as her body succumbed to shock, Tami hardly noticed as she was thrown to the unforgiving marble floor by the two Prospitian Home Guards who restrained her. She could not focus on anything. What had the Home Guards injected her with? She could not heal. Her Song remained maddingly elusive. Fragments of familiar melodies beckoned faintly at the edge of her awareness, only to disappear when focused upon.
Only a few feet away, Adam lay on his side in a widening pool of his own blood, hands clasped to his slashed throat in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. He met Tami's gaze, and she saw terror in his eyes.
All the time she had known him, Tami assumed Adam had brown eyes, but now she could see they were actually deep red. How could she have missed that? I'll make more eye contact with people, she resolved silently, as if she weren't about to die.
Tami watched her own pool of blood inching closer and closer across the marble floor towards Adam's.
Just as the two blood puddles were about to touch, Tami's vision failed and she lost consciousness.
Tami awoke gasping, both hands flying to her heart. Had she just died? Was she covered in blood or was it just a cold sweat?
"Sorry," apologized the shadowy figure crouched next to Tami's bed, sending what felt like a jolt of electricity through Tami's spine. "Didn't mean to wake you so suddenly, but I-"
Shrieking nightmarishly, Tami leaped to her feet and delivered a sharp kick to the intruder's center of mass, sending the shadowy figure crashing back into the wall. Had the Dersites sent another assassin? Or had the White Guardian done so? It would make sense, wouldn't it? Kill both of her bodies at the same time.
"Are you alright?!" shouted Jurgen von Kessler from outside the bedroom door. "What's going on in there?!"
"There's someone in here!" Tami shouted back, feeling frantically for the light switch.
With a loud crash, the bedroom door was kicked open, revealing a five-foot-tall bipedal green-eyed Salamander wearing gray striped pajamas, a white nightcap, and holding in his left hand a small knife which he promptly threw at the intruder.
"Jurgen, wait!" Tami hit the light switch, but it was too late.
"And that's my liver, folks." Anna Carrero slid down the wall onto the floor, staring at the knife buried to its handle between two ribs in her lower right chest. "I can see you need a moment to calm down." Dozens of angry red bee stings dotted Anna's entire body. "Let's take five."
Tami barely had time to say, "Hold on," before Anna closed her eyes and disappeared.
"Are you okay?" Jurgen drew a second knife from his sleeve. "I do not understand. Was that a friend of yours?"
"Tam?" spoke Anna's voice from behind, sending yet another jolt of electricity up Tami's spine.
"Piss blizzard!" Tami whirled around to face another Anna Carrero, this one without any wounds or stings, where moments earlier there had been only empty air.
Jurgen yelped in surprise and hurled his second knife.
"Hey." New Anna, anticipating the knife throw, had already ducked, and the knife bounced harmlessly off the wall behind her. "I'm from ten minutes in your future. That version of me who just got skewered is going to reappear right here in about four minutes, and you need to be ready to heal her." She glared at Jurgen. "Would you mind telling fuckface here not to give her the dartboard treatment?"
"Excuse me?" An angry vein bulged from the side of Jurgen's head. "You slip into a dark room at night like an assassin and-"
"Don't waste a good rant on this one," interrupted Tami. "It's all just more entertainment to her."
"That's not entirely fair," protested Anna.
"I apologize for wounding your insufferably rude friend." Jurgen moved to exit the bedroom. "Wake me if you need me."
Tami jumped off her bed, picked up Jurgen's knife and handed it to him before he left. "See you in the morning."
"Also," added Anna, "when I reappear I'll be covered in bee stings. Long story. Could you heal those, too? Please?"
"Do I look like an Open 24/7 healing kiosk to you?"
"Tam! I got stung by a million bees!" exclaimed Anna, massaging the tender spot on her chest where Tami had kicked her. "How was I supposed to know you have a crazy amphibian friend who yeets knives into livers? You kicked me in the same spot. What did my liver ever do to you?"
"Jurgen thought you were an assassin. And so did I. It wouldn't be the first time the Dersites have tried. But I never expected it from the Prospitians." Tami sat on the edge of her bed, checking again for the knife wound in her heart which was no longer there. "My dream self was just murdered."
"I know. I saw the aftermath." The cheer was gone from Anna's voice. "Is that what you woke up from?"
Tami nodded. "Did the White Queen survive?"
"Yes." Anna sat next to Tami and offered a hand, but Tami did not take it. "What's wrong?"
"We needed you out there. Where the fuck were you? Or should I be asking when the fuck were you?"
Anna needed a drink. Her hands trembled slightly. "I'm here now."
Tami scoffed. "For how long?"
"Thirty seconds or so. But you'll see me again just a few minutes after that. Hold that thought; it's healing time. Are you ready?" asked Anna, taking only the time to add, "See you on the other side," before vanishing.
"Good talk," was all Tami could say before the stabbed and stung-to-hell version of Anna reappeared suddenly on the bedroom floor.
Bleeding profusely from her newly acquired chest wound, Anna lifted a hand to wave weakly at Tami. "Has, uh, has Future Me already talked to you?"
"Yep." Tami knelt at Anna's side and took a deep breath, allowing Anna's Song to saunter into her mind. "How did you manage to get stung by so many bees?"
"Well, I was taking my dead past self to her quest bed, and all these bees came to help with the resurrection, but I was also being chased by a Dersite ship which came very close to blowing us up." Anna winced as Tami laid hands on the wound. "The bees were a bit startled from the explosion, as you can see. Being transported ten thousand years into the past probably didn't help either. Can you Muse it all away?"
"I should leave you a few to remember me by." Bright emerald light began to shine from beneath Tami's hands. "Lucky for you, I am haunted by the thought of leaving work unfinished."
Anna gasped at what felt like ice seeping into her liver and the surrounding tissues. The sensation reminded her of gulping down fresh water after a long period of thirst. Slowly, the pain of her wound ebbed away. When Tami lifted her hands from Anna's liver, not even a scar remained, and all of the bee stings in close proximity to the healed wound had also vanished.
With the somber, gentle core themes of Anna's Song returned to stable harmony, Tami shifted her focus to the livelier, attention-grabbing surface melodies which struggled to sustain themselves amid the growing discordant noise caused by so many bee stings. "Hold still."
A sudden warmth coursed throughout Anna's body, accompanied by a tingling resonance which made her skin crawl. She breathed deeply, gritting her teeth and clenching her trembling hands. Within a minute or two, the discomfort faded, along with the remaining stinger welts, leaving Anna with unblemished skin and no more pain.
"Thanks, Tam." The relief was enough to make Anna weep. "Thank you."
Tami's frown softened a bit, but did not melt away. "If you think you're off the hook for-"
"Sorry, you're gonna have to hold that thought." Anna stretched and stood up. "I need to hop back about ten minutes to prime you for this. Remember? Then I could really use a nap. A long one. Seriously, I can't even begin to tell you how crazy my past few days have been. Once I get some rest, you can interrogate me as much as you want. From your perspective, it will only take a couple minutes."
Tami forced herself to count to ten silently. "You say that, but you'll probably just disappear like you always do and I'll only see you again the next time you get hurt."
"Not true." Anna, feeling suddenly weary, suppressed the urge to yawn, knowing a yawn at this moment would likely make Tami explode. She walked over to the closet door. "When's the last time you've been in here?"
Tami shrugged. "Dunno. A while?"
"Have you looked in here at all today?"
"No."
"You're sure?" prodded Anna. "One hundred percent positive?"
Tami's impatience began to simmer and she made no effort to hide it.
"Is there room for me to sleep in there?"
A laugh escaped from Tami's throat. "You're kidding."
"I'm serious."
"Sure, there's room," conceded Tami, "but it won't be very comfortable sleeping on the floor."
"Right you are, Tam. Right you are." Anna walked over to Tami's bed, grabbing the quilt and all the pillows and stowing them in her sylladex. "Mind if I borrow these? You'll get them right back."
"Most people ask to borrow something before they go ahead and take it," remarked Tami.
"You're a lifesaver," said Anna. "And just in case you don't believe me…" She opened the closet door, revealing yet another Anna Carrero fast asleep on a nest of pillows on the closet floor, buried within the comfort of Tami's quilt. "See? Looks like I've been sleeping here the whole time just to prove a point. Mind blown, right? What can't I sleep through? Feel free to wake me whenever. See you on the other side!"
With that, Anna closed her eyes and disappeared back in time, leaving an astonished Tami alone with the Anna fast asleep in the closet.
Astonishment quickly gave way to irritation.
"Wake up," commanded Tami, jostling Anna lightly. "Hey. Wake up."
Anna continued stubbornly to sleep.
Tami retrieved a partially full water bottle from her sylladex and upended its remaining contents over Anna's face.
Anna screeched in alarm and ripped out her earplugs as she was awoken suddenly from an odd dream about transforming wine back into grapes.
"Naptime's over." Tami stowed the water bottle into her sylladex. "You have explaining to do."
"I thought I took care of that." Anna picked herself up and stepped out of the closet, rubbing her bleary eyes and looking around to regain her bearings.
"One last loop." Tami glared at Anna. "Your words. Remember? One last teeny tiny lil' loop, you said. Then you kissed me and poof. Off you go. But not before telling Cruz and me to go to Prospit, which, by the way, got us killed. And you were nowhere to be found. Now you come crawling back for more healing, certainly not to apologize, and…" Tami frowned, noticing a faint purple mark on Anna's lips. "Jesus fuck, Anna, you're drinking again? That's wine on your lips!"
"It was just a taste." Anna instinctively wiped her lips with the back of her hand. "The first consort I bumped into on my planet was a vintner named Scipio, and he made me sample some of his stock. His grapes were out of this world. It would've been rude to refuse. I had to be diplomatic, Tam."
"Really? Scipio made you do it?" Tami's glare drilled deep into the core of Anna's soul. "This vintner entered your mind, robbed you of your free will, and forced your brain to send the necessary signals through your nervous system to make your hands tip the wine down your throat?"
"He did try to threaten me with a sword at one point," said Anna. "I had to win his trust. How am I supposed to do anything on my planet without befriending the locals?"
"Do you remember how many times I cleaned you up after you projectile puked all over us both?" continued Tami. "Remember how many times I held you while you shook and shivered and swore you'd drunk your last drop? And you drank again?!"
Anna exhaled slowly. "I can see why that makes me look mildly irredeemable."
"Mildly?"
"I've hurt you."
"Would you look at that, everyone? Anna Carrero climbs a mountain of personal growth to arrive at a fleeting moment of empathy. She looks ahead and sees more mountains to climb if she wants to keep growing. Does she continue? She feels tired."
"I'm sorry."
Tami continued to glare at Anna.
Anna met Tami's gaze, refusing to look away, and after a moment the hard edges of Tami's glare began to soften.
Silence filled the room for nearly a minute before Anna felt it was safe enough to speak. "So." She watched Tami carefully. "Why do you want me around?"
Tami blinked, frowning. "What?"
"You heard me."
Tami's frown deepened.
"You'll probably just disappear again and I'll only see you next time you get hurt." Anna picked up Tami's quilt and pillows, tossing them back onto the bed where they belonged. "Your words. More or less. I'm paraphrasing a bit; from my perspective, you said it twelve hours ago. Close enough, though, right? You want to see me more. Even though you think I'm insufferable."
"You are insufferable."
"Cool." Anna arranged Tami's pillows neatly against the bed's headboard. "So why do you want me around?"
Tami remained silent.
Anna straightened Tami's quilt, tugging each corner taut and smoothing out the creases. "Wanna know what I think?"
"I know what you think." Color rose in Tami's cheeks. "You aren't subtle."
"Neither are you." Amusement glinted in Anna's eyes. "You're blushing."
"I am not."
"Tam."
"Fine." Visibly flustered, Tami sat down on the edge of her bed. "For reasons I may never comprehend, I like you too," she admitted. "When you aren't being shitty."
Anna blinked.
"Which is arguably most of the time," added Tami. "It's hard to take you seriously when you say you're done with time traveling…" She gestured to the closet and the bloodstained floor. "…and then you time travel all over my bedroom."
"I didn't want to do any of that!" protested Anna. "In my defense, I had a knife in my liver. Getting stabbed hurts, Tam, even when you're immortal. You'll have to forgive me for not wanting to give your Salamander friend a chance to skewer me twice. What's the deal with that guy, anyway?"
"He's a composer," said Tami. "He's teaching me his symphony so we can rescue his people from limbo."
Anna sat in the spinning chair at Tami's computer desk. "I smell a juicy story."
"Nope." Tami climbed into bed, yawning. "I'm going back to bed. If you get to sleep twelve hours before explaining yourself to me, I get to at least finish my night's rest before explaining anything to you."
"If you need more sleep," offered Anna, "I could always wind you back a couple hours and-"
"Absolutely not." Tami burrowed into her quilt and closed her eyes. "Keep your time travel to yourself."
"Do you want me to go?"
"Why do you want to stay?"
"We don't have much time left," said Anna. "I'd rather spend it with you."
Tami lifted her head and looked at Anna through blearily cracked eyelids. "Not much time left?"
"Before everything goes dark." Anna shrugged. "Hey, maybe we all survive. Who knows?"
"Anna." Tami did nothing to hide the impatience in her voice. "Say one more vague thing and I'll defenestrate you."
"Fine." Anna walked quietly across the bedroom and sat on the end of Tami's bed. "I don't know exactly why or how it happens, but I've seen Skaia turn black in our near future."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Completely black," elaborated Anna. "No more light. Imagine the sun going dark."
Tami sat in silence for nearly a full minute before asking, "How long do we have?"
Anna shook her head. "If I tell you, you won't be able to stop counting down. And that's no way to live."
Tami frowned. "Well, what happens after?"
"No clue." Anna shrugged. "I've never gotten a vision from beyond that point. And when I try to look, all I see is nothing."
"Can't you check? Physically, I mean." Tami sat up, resting against the headboard of her bed. "Why not go to that moment, jump forward a week, see what you see, and immediately report back?"
"Hard pass." Anna shuddered. "I'd rather hang out with you. Maybe you could give me another chin-guitar lesson?"
One of Tami's eyes twitched. "You will call it a violin if you want to live."
"Deal." Anna offered a hand to Tami. "Chin-violin."
Rolling her eyes, Tami shook Anna's hand to seal the deal. "I don't have time to teach you now. But ask me again when all of this is over, and we'll talk."
Anna smiled. "So. About those warm fuzzies you have for me. Do they include physical attraction?"
"Are you for real?" Tami's heartrate spiked and she felt her face beginning to flush again. Hoping to hide it from Anna, she quickly slipped underneath her quilt. "We are not having this conversation now. I need to get back to sleep."
"Just saying. You're cool, brilliant, funny, remarkable, and yes, I find you extremely attractive," declared Anna. "If you're interested, I'm interested. And if you aren't, then no hard feelings; I'll never bring it up again. Also, can I crash here?"
"Didn't you just sleep for twelve hours?"
Anna yawned again. "It was interrupted sleep."
"You can sleep on the futon downstairs," said Tami from underneath her quilt. "There are extra blankets in the hall closet. Help yourself. I wake up at dawn for exercises with Jurgen. You can start out tomorrow by cleaning your blood off my floor."
"Sounds like a plan. I love it." Anna stood up from Tami's bed and hesitated, not wanting to leave yet. "Sorry for giving you so many headaches. And thank you for letting me stay. See you tomorrow."
Lying still, Tami frowned at the little worm of doubt deep within her mind. Had she been too harsh? True, Anna could be annoying at times. Infuriating, even. But was she malicious? Mean-spirited? Evil?
Tami poked her head out from underneath the quilt and risked a peek, but Anna was already gone and had closed the bedroom door behind her. Even through the closed door, Tami could hear the sound of Jurgen snoring in the other bedroom. How had he managed to fall back asleep so effortlessly?
Closing her eyes, Tami waited for sleep, but sleep did not come. Only memories of dying. How long had it been since she died? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? She hadn't thought to check a clock. There hadn't been any clocks in the White Queen's throne room. Only cracked marble walls. Ruined tapestries. Wounded soldiers and rubble strewn across the floor. Jack Noir's headless corpse. The White Guardian and his Home Guards.
The White Guardian stared coldly at Tami as he plunged Jack Noir's knife deep into her heart.
Tami's eyes flew open. Heart racing and palms sweating, she bolted upright in bed and felt a strange phantom ache deep within her chest. "Fuck." Feeling sick, she jumped out of bed and hurried down the hallway to her apartment's upstairs bathroom just in time to paint the inside of the toilet with vomit.
After the initial puke came several rounds of dry heaving. When the dry heaving finally died down, Tami began to feel much better. "Thank you, endorphins." Wiping her mouth with a square of toilet paper, she flushed the toilet and exited the bathroom. Upon reaching her bedroom, however, the sight of Anna's blood on the floor made her stop.
For a short while, Tami stared at the blood.
With a weary sigh, Tami turned around and headed downstairs to the kitchen, grabbing some bleach from under the sink along with four big wads of bunched-up paper towels. On her way back upstairs, she saw Anna already fast asleep on the futon in the den. "Not fair," she muttered, ascending to the second floor and entering her bedroom.
After using two wads of paper towels to directly mop up most of the blood, Tami doused the hardwood floor with bleach. She waited a few minutes before cleaning up the bleach and drying the floor with the remaining paper towels. Some discoloration remained on the floor, but it was good enough for now.
Tami went back downstairs to throw away the sullied paper towels, and only then did she realize how much blood she had on her hands. "Yikes." She made another trip to the upstairs bathroom, washing her hands no fewer than five times before feeling finally satisfied that all the blood had come off.
"Is a full night's rest too much to ask?" After drying her hands, Tami returned to her bedroom and burrowed once again underneath her quilt. She breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, closing her eyes and waiting.
Once again, sleep would not come, leaving Tami frustrated.
The smell of bleach was too strong.
"I know, I should've diluted it with water," she muttered, swinging herself out of bed and opening the windows. "Sue me."
Unfortunately, there was no breeze outside to help ventilate the bleach fumes. Coughing, Tami gathered up her quilt, wearing it around herself like a cloak, and exited the bedroom. Where could she sleep? Jurgen was using the other bedroom, but sharing a room with him was out of the question because of the loud snoring. Anna had already taken the futon. Tami considered throwing down some pillows and sleeping on the upstairs hallway floor, but that honestly felt like too much work.
Almost in a trance, unable to decide where to sleep, Tami wandered downstairs to her apartment's front door and opened it, stepping outside into the crisp night. It was too dark to see the sand dunes and crystal trees. She took a deep breath and sat on her front stoop, leaning back against the wall next to the front door and gazing up at the sky.
Tami would normally have been calmed by the stars, but there were no stars here. Only an empty black sky.
Well, nearly empty. A planet, appearing as little more than a small point of non-flickering light, rose slowly in the eastern sky. It was either Gwen's or Gino's planet, but Tami did not know which. No replacement for the stars, of course, but it was better than nothing. She stared at it, searching for solace and finding none.
The air was still.
Silent.
Gathering the quilt tightly around herself, Tami rested her head back and closed her eyes. She waited for sleep, but sleep still would not come. Breathe in, breathe out. The seconds ticked by, congealing into minutes which she tried not to count. Within such silence and stillness, Tami's restless mind could no longer ignore memories of her dream self's final moments. Memories of dying in a pool of her own blood.
Dark red blood poured from the deep slash across Adam's throat. Struggling to breathe, he made a horrible gurgling rasp as he tried and failed to speak. He reached out to Tami and seized her by the arm.
Tami's eyes snapped open.
She sprang immediately to her feet and backpedaled from pools of blood which were no longer there. "Dream," she murmured, breathing deeply. "Just another dream."
Gino's planet – or Gwen's – occupied a slightly higher position in the eastern sky. Tami had not nodded off for very long. She gazed at the solitary point of light in the sky and focused on breathing gently until her racing heart calmed down. Eventually, she stopped sweating, her hands stopped shaking, and weariness returned.
Tami really missed the stars. Would she ever see stars again? Tears stung at her eyes and she promptly wiped them away. She continued to sit in the dark as the temperature gradually dropped, and it was not long before Tami began to shiver.
"Fuck it." Unsettled by the empty night sky and afraid of being alone when her next bad dream arrived, Tami went back inside, closing the door behind her and heading straight over to the futon. She touched Anna on the shoulder and, with much more vigor than her previous attempt, successfully jostled her awake.
"Tam?" mumbled a half-asleep Anna, cracking open one of her eyelids. "What'd I do this time?"
After a moment's hesitation and another deep breath, Tami said, "I'm having trouble sleeping. Will you cuddle with me? Yes or no?"
Anna blinked, both eyes now wide open.
"I realize this is a bit sudden," said Tami, "but every time I'm about to fall asleep-"
"Yes," interrupted Anna, recovering quickly from her surprise. "No need to explain yourself. My first death was definitely the weirdest, but once I knew what to expect, the next couple were a bit less scary." She lifted the blankets and invited Tami in. "I could use some cuddles, too. My past few days have been off-the-rails bonkers. I went back to Earth, Tam. I got into a shootout with the police! Which wasn't my fault, by the way. And I hope you like Auntie Anne's Pretzels, because I got-"
"No more talking." Tami slipped under the blankets and rolled onto her side, gathering her quilt into a big bunch and curling up around it. "We can talk tomorrow." She tried not to think about anything Anna had just said. Doing so would only prolong her quest for sleep. She hugged her quilt tightly. "Now let me die my daily death."
Anna snuggled in close and held Tami in a gentle embrace. "Nighty-night. Deathy-death."
Tami closed her eyes.
