The machine was clanging away, but everyone was waiting on her.
Lizza called it out. “Three… two… one…”
Charlotte pressed the button on the screen, and an indescribably small instant later, Oriel’s blade appeared in the SeXI MRI, back from the over-dimension.
A whoop went up that could be heard over the banging of the machine, which was already winding down, anyway—they killed it fast so the wards could go back up.
Lizza let out a sigh of relief. The blade appeared intact. They’d spent the last twenty-four hours mapping out the beacon extensively. This was the big test to see if it would bring back the object it was attached to. They’d reconfigured the machine to reach into the over-dimension, fix the measurements there, which should shove the object back into the reality here.
If only getting Oriel back from the shadow realm were as simple.
“Outstanding,” Charlotte said, coming up to her side. Tomaz was removing the blade from the machine. Tajael was on the phone, making sure all was well outside the wards, and inside as well. Richard and Jimmy were already swiping through the results on the monitor.
“Yeah.” Somehow, her victory rang hollow without Oriel here to share it. But she knew it was key to moving forward. “We’ll at least have this to show Daxon when he comes. The day after tomorrow, right?”
“Sometimes he comes early,” Charlotte said. “Or not at all. But we can’t show Daxon the sword because…”
“Oh. Right.” She forgot the boss-man didn’t know about the immortal realm. She’d only known about angels and shadow angelings and all of that for a week, and already, it had completely changed her. Inside and out. “We want to replicate this with living matter, anyway.” To Tomaz, who was reverently holding the blade far longer than he needed to, she said, “Can we queue up some potted grass to send out and bring back?”
He looked up from the short sword. “Sure. But you know we have to reconfigure in between.”
She frowned. That meant the grass would spend time in the over-dimension before they could bring it back. The blade was inanimate so it could stay there indefinitely without harm. She wasn’t so sure about the grass, but it was a good test. “That’s all right. We need something to show Daxon with your fancy camera.”
He nodded and regretfully returned Oriel’s blade to its black box.
Lizza turned to Charlotte. “If we’ve got a video showing a living matter transport and retrieval, do you think Daxon will spring for a second machine? It would make things a lot less risky, especially when we start transporting living things that might need an oxygen atmosphere to breathe.”
“Lab mice? So soon?” But it wasn’t like Charlotte was disapproving.
Actually, she was thinking Lab Scientist, but sure. They could start with mice. Or even something simpler. “You think we should send a Petri of single-celled organisms first?”
“Would make it easier to check for cellular and DNA damage, right?” She was giving Lizza a skeptical look as if Lizza was testing her.
And it was obvious, so yeah, she should have thought of it. And not jumped the gun too fast. “Right. The grass will get us plant cellular damage if there is any. I’ll see if we can get some tissue cultures overnighted to us. We can start once we run through the battery of grass pots.” Her voice was flat, though. More delays. But she had to keep her eyes on the prize and not get distracted by thoughts of Oriel.
Charlotte beamed. “I knew you were the right person for this.” She bumped shoulders with Lizza. “They’ll need room for both our names on that Nobel Prize.”
Liza smiled as best she could, but it didn’t last.
Charlotte frowned, but before she spoke, Tajael stepped up.
“All’s clear.” He lifted his chin toward the black box with Oriel’s angel blade. “Did we get it back in one piece?”
Lizza nodded. “If he ever wants it back, it’ll be waiting here for him.”
Tajael and Charlotte exchanged painful looks. The kind you have when you’re unsure if the person in front of you is okay or slightly deranged by grief. She’d seen that look before, too—lots of times.
She pulled in a breath. “Okay, I’m going to take a quick break.” She ducked her head and went for the door before they could respond. To Tomaz, she said on the way out, “I’ll be back in time for those runs.”
He nodded absently, already elbows deep in the machine.
She retreated from the lab, her pace quickening as she went, taking her into a dead-run by the time she reached the break room. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, then didn’t try holding back the tears. Her head thumped the door as she leaned back, letting them fall, and wondering why, suddenly, it all seemed overwhelming… maybe because none of it would have been possible without Oriel and his blessing. Maybe because he was off being tortured somewhere, maybe even dead—no, she refused to go there—while they were celebrating. That he might be truly gone by the time she got through all this. It was a tightness in her chest that she carried around with her 24/7.
Maybe she just missed him.
She pulled in another deep breath, stood straight, and wiped away the tears. She refused to mourn a man who wasn’t dead—at least, not as far as she knew. She’d spent too much of her life in mourning. Oriel had given her a new lease on life, and she wouldn’t let the ups or downs of that slow her… not until she’d paid him back. Or at least tried to.
She snagged one of the community mugs and popped a pod in the Keurig. While she waited, her phone buzzed in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw it was just email. She debated even checking, but it was her official The Point email address. She never got email at this address. It was her super-secret stealth research office email, which she gave to precisely no one and which was for internal use only. But everyone in the lab would just come find her or call her, not email.
Maybe it was Daxon.
She swiped it open, then quickly scanned, her frown growing as she went.
Then she started again at the top.
From:[email protected]
Subject: Need to meet
Lizza,
I love you, darling. I’ve found a way we can be together. Leave the Guards behind. Bring Mr. Charley. Meet me at Only the Bean at 5. I miss you.
Oriel
I love you? Darling? But then… Mr. Charley? How would anyone else know who that was?
A million questions were slamming through her brain, but just one clear thought buzzed the rest of them and laid them out flat. Oriel was alive! Not only that, he was contacting her. Or maybe not. Emails could be faked. And if they knew about Mr. Charley… her heart sank. Maybe they tortured that out of him and then killed him. Please, no.
This wasn’t proof of anything.
She stared and stared at her phone, frozen in place. Finally, her mind unlocked, and she replied.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Need to meet
Oriel,
Got your message. Need more proof.
I miss you, too!
Lizza
She waited. And waited. And sipped scalding hot coffee and waited some more. Finally, a response came… but it was just a bounce-back.
Email undeliverable.
By now, her hand was shaking. What should she do? It was nearly the end of the day. A quick glance at the time said she had just over an hour. Only the Bean, a quirky coffee shop on the way to her apartment, was super close, but still.
No matter what, she couldn’t just sneak off. Even if she could make it past the angeling brigade that guarded the office and the building at large, she would be risking the entire project. And she couldn’t do that. Oriel wouldn’t ask her to do that—would he? She knew he wasn’t a fan of the whole idea—the breaching of the barrier between the realms—but he was also the guy who sacrificed himself to make sure she could carry on. Who convinced her to continue her work even when he was uncertain. For certain, he would never have her jeopardize herself or the project… not unless it was necessary.
But was this Oriel? She couldn’t be sure.
She pocketed her phone, snagged her mug of coffee, and hauled it back to the lab. Everyone was gearing up for another run. Charlotte and Tajael were having an argument/discussion about whether it was too soon to drop the wards again.
When Charlotte saw her, she said, “Tell the overprotective angeling of light that we just need this one run for Daxon, then we can take a break for the night.”
“We need the run,” she said to Tajael. “Also, I got an email from Oriel.”
Everything in the lab came to a screeching halt.
Charlotte just blinked.
Tajael frowned. “An email? Oriel doesn’t… how could you get an email from the shadow realm?”
She lifted her shoulders in an elaborate shrug and pulled out her phone to show them. “Maybe shadow angels have hotmail?” It was a joke. Her voice cracked as she said it.
Tajael’s expression just got more disbelieving as he scanned the email. “This… Lizza.” He looked up, sympathy written on his face. “You have to know this isn’t real.”
She scowled and took the phone back. “Well, it’s certainly real. The question is whether it’s from Oriel.” She bit her lip and refreshed her email. Still, just the bounce-back message that said her email to him was undeliverable. Tajael was right—everything about it screamed fake.
Tajael and Charlotte exchanged concerned and pitying looks. Lizza had seen those kinds of looks before, too. The kind that said they were worried she wasn’t right in the head. Driven by grief into crazy acts. But she was entirely in charge of her faculties—she just hadn’t sorted out the best course of action.
“Oriel would not put you in danger like this.” Tajael seemed very certain about that.
And it was hard to argue. “No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed, re-reading Oriel’s email for the tenth time. Bring Mr. Charley. She kept stumbling over that part. “Unless I was already in danger…” She looked up and met their skeptical expressions with a confidence of her own. “And this is code for something else.”
“Code for what?” Tajael asked, but he seemed less certain now.
“I don’t know.” She pressed her lips together, trying to puzzle it out. “I love you, darling… he never called me darling. He didn’t say—” She stumbled over her words because she did love him. “We hadn’t gotten to I love you’s yet, okay? This is him saying, Be suspicious.”
Tajael was nodding for her to go on.
“For the record,” Charlotte said gently, “I do think he loved you.”
“Well, he’ll just have to come back and tell me himself,” Lizza blurted out, mostly to fight back the tears. She shook her phone at them to get back on point. “It’s like everything that follows from there should be suspect. How we can be together. That I should leave the Guards behind. He knows that’s dangerous.”
“Right,” Tajael said, certainty back in his voice. “He’s warning you it’s a trap.”
“But then there’s this part about Mr. Charley.” She narrowed her eyes, reading it again.
“Who’s Mr. Charley?” Charlotte asked.
“Exactly,” Lizza said. “Oriel’s the only one who knows. And I can’t see some shadow angeling torturing that out of him. It’s just too obscure.”
Charlotte’s expression turned grim. The techs were all listening carefully with slightly horrified faces.
Lizza swallowed. “I can’t know what this is really about. But by mentioning Mr. Charley, it’s like he’s saying, This part is real.” She grimaced. “He truly wants me to meet him at the coffee shop. And I believe he does miss me.” She missed him so much, it was like a hole in her heart.
Tajael was shaking his head. “It’s a trap, Lizza.”
“Yes… but maybe not a trap for me.”
Tajael lifted his eyebrows, but she could tell Charlotte was coming around. “So you ignore the part about leaving your Guard behind,” Charlotte said. “You come with the full complement.”
Lizza nodded. “We don’t have much time to set it up. But this could be Oriel’s chance to get out of whatever mess he’s in. I’m sure that’s not why he’s doing it—even in shadow, I’m sure he’s doing this because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. That it helps me, all of us, the experiment, humanity… something. So, we come prepared, every angeling you’ve got, only hidden, and we help him in whatever way we can.”
Tajael was scrubbing his face. “For the record, I’m against this.”
Lizza scowled at him. This was her chance to rescue Oriel! She would not let Tajael stand in her way. To his credit, he seemed to get that right away.
He held up his hands in surrender. “But if you believe this is truly a message from Oriel, then you’re right. The angeling I know would never endanger you unless it was to protect you from something even greater.”
Lizza gave a sharp nod and checked the time. “We’ve only got an hour.”
“I’m on it.” Tajael pulled out his phone and hurried out the door of the lab.
Charlotte reached out and squeezed her hand. “Be careful, Lizza.”
“Right.” She took a deep breath and turned to include the three techs, who were staring at her with concerned looks. “In the meantime, the science must go on. Daxon’s going to be here soon, and we need stuff to show him. Keep going without me.”
Then she strode to the door to follow after Tajael.