“Well, there is some good news,” Carlee said.
“Plenty of places to pee in privacy?” Stefani said.
“We’re going to be able to enter Petra’s territory without a fight. The door has been left wide open for us.”
“Well, I guess Jane was right in leading us in this direction, then,” Jeff said.
“She rarely makes a mistake,” Carlee said. “I get glimpses of other realities sometimes. Intuition and gut feelings, mostly. If I meditate long enough, I can get a little more than that. But Jane . . . she’s on an entirely different level than anyone I’ve ever witnessed.”
“Speaking of which, it looks like she’s given the signal—back on the road again. You’d think we were late for a date or something,” Stefani said.
They started their journey again a few minutes later, weaving around the shattered metal bodies of the leeches. Hundreds of them were strewn about, stretching on for miles. Jeff had seen what a single leech was capable of, but picturing such a large-scale firefight was difficult. It made him feel intensely mortal.
Once they were clear of the battlefield, they proceeded slower than usual. The added sense of caution created a pit in his stomach. He ran his human hand over his metal arm, feeling the intricate detail and cool surface. He’d seen what it had done to flesh, but he wasn’t sure how it would stack up in a fight against a leech.
“You’re nervous,” Carlee said.
“That obvious?”
“Yes.”
“Smart,” Stefani said. She kept her gun in hand and eyes focused on the horizon at all times.
“I just . . . that was one heck of a battle that happened. Way worse than the skirmishes with warlords back home or at that village. You two can press and have all sorts of weapons and experience and stuff.”
“And you feel exposed and unprepared?” Carlee asked.
“Yeah . . . I guess.”
“You’ve got your robo-arm and matching robo-leg,” Stefani said. “And that rugged smile.”
“I don’t think any of those will be much help against a leech. Or Horus,” Jeff said.
“We’re not going to be fighting any Apostles,” Carlee said. “We’re only going to get close enough to throw the other one off our trail. Jane knows what she’s doing.”
“I hope so.”
“Would it make you feel any better if I gave you a lesson on how to press?” Carlee asked. She smiled before he could even answer.
“I won’t allow it,” Stefani said.
Stefani’s forbidding of his pressing was an encouraging sign. Currently, he felt like he was the last person on earth capable of pressing, but if Stefani was worried about it, that meant she thought he was close enough to be a danger. It also meant that Apostles were close. And he knew pressing brought Apostles.
Jeff paused. He’d been so focused on his own well-being, learning to be a vagrant, and finding a way to avenge his brother that he had never stopped to think about why Horus had been close to Fifth Springs, where the vagrants had found him shortly thereafter.
The thought sent chills down his spine.
“It’s fine,” Carlee said. “No one is successful on the first try. And we’ll start really small. Shouldn’t alert any of the Apostles to our position.”
“Not that,” Stefani said. “Handsome will need a few days—I can tell. It’s just, we can’t have him pressing wearing those rags.”
“What are you saying?” Jeff looked between Carlee and Stefani as he pushed the thought from his mind. He needed to learn this; he could figure out if the vagrants belonged on his list for drawing Horus to Fifth Springs later.
Stefani set her gun down for a minute and rifled through a supply box on the other side of the transport. A moment later, she pulled out a dark gray vagrant uniform and a set of the body armor they wore. Jeff stared at it hungrily; he’d seen a little of what the suits were capable of, and he longed to have one.
“Here you go,” Stefani said. “Don’t embarrass us while you wear it.”
Jeff held it up, admiring the workmanship and inspecting the various pockets and pieces of armor.
“Try it on,” Stefani said.
“Now?”
“Can’t learn to press until you have it on,” Stefani said. “Transport rules.”
He pulled his shirt off and nearly went for his pants before he realized that Stefani was still watching him.
“Sorry,” Stefani said as she looked away.
He hurriedly pulled his uniform on and noted that it fit him perfectly. It even snugly fit over his metal appendages.
“You pressed this in,” Jeff said.
“Of course we did,” Stefani said. “You covered your privates yet?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t have all the pieces of external body armor on yet, or the cloak and hood, but he was fully covered.
“Well, look at you!” Stefani said.
“You look like you could fight a leech with your bare hands,” Carlee said.
He focused on figuring out the rest of the pieces of his uniform to keep himself from blushing at the compliments. He felt good. The change of clothes had somehow helped to calm the nerves that had been tightening his abdomen.
“I knew we were smart to save him,” Stefani said as she turned back to her gun.
“That’s exactly what I remember you saying,” Carlee said.
Jeff attached the cloak and looked himself over, wishing he had a mirror. He couldn’t help but think about what Chad and Dane would say if they saw him now.
“I’m ready for my first lesson on how to press,” Jeff announced as he sat down. Thinking of his brother and his former friend had brought a quick end to his feel-good moment.
“But you’ve had many lessons on how to press already,” Carlee said. “What did you think those other lectures were about?”
“History?” Jeff said. He ran through what he could remember in his head and didn’t recall anything about pressing.
“In a way, they were designed to teach you the history of our people. In a way, they were designed to teach you the hopelessness of using your powers to fight the Apostles, so you don’t throw your training away. But most important, they were to teach you how to press.”
“I think I might have missed something.”
“What is history?”
“Stuff that happened in the past?”
“One could say that history is a recounting of the endless choices made by countless individuals that resulted in us being on this path together now. Do you know why that’s related to pressing?”
“I thought that’s how we could sense things that happened in other realities,” Jeff said. “Not see the future, but see the present in a different time line.”
“Very good. I haven’t failed completely. Now, doesn’t it seem strange that you can sense pieces of different realities and time lines?”
“Of course. It’s crazy.”
“Now, since you know that those other realities exist, and you have felt them and seen them before, wouldn’t it stand to reason that there is a way to connect with those other realities?”
“Sure.”
“And if you know you can connect with those other realities, wouldn’t it make sense that there would be a way to build a more powerful connection between realities? What if I closed my eyes and tried to strengthen that connection between this reality where those clothes lie at your feet and a reality where a spare uniform rests there instead?”
Carlee closed her eyes, and Jeff stared down at the clothes he had just removed.
“And what if I were able to do it?” Carlee asked. “What if I were to press that other reality onto our own so powerfully that for a split second, our time lines merged?”
The air glimmered and twisted at the pile of clothes in front of his feet.
“And what would happen if those two realities were pressed on top of each other . . .” Carlee paused briefly.
In an instant, the air returned to its natural self, and a brand-new, folded vagrant uniform sat where his old clothes had been a moment before.