The Way Back (Champions of the Crystal Book 4)

Chapter 18: Memory

"Oh my God," Aunt Euphrasia moaned. There was an odd thump at the other end of the line, and a moment later a voice Scotty identified as Aunt Euphrasia's housekeeper said, "Hang up! We have to call the doctor!"

Scotty had done so, numbly, without even identifying himself. An hour later, after the Mulhearns had settled them into the guest room and gone back to bed, helpless to do anything more until morning, Scotty had sneaked out of the guest room and downstairs to the den. He'd spent an uncounted length of time staring at Mr. Mulhearn's gun cabinet. Ways of circumventing the lock had flitted across his mind. He had laid a hand on the cool glass and thought about the logistics of loading one of the hunting rifles. Maybe he'd do it outside; less chance of being caught there. Maybe he'd go back to his own house. He didn't want to wake Sabrina up.

The thought of his sister was like a cold bucket of water emptied over his head. He turned and went back upstairs without even thinking about it. Their parents were dead; Aunt Euphrasia might be dead too, for all he knew. He didn't know what was going to happen to them. But he did know he wasn't going to leave Sabrina to face it alone. He was all she had.

He sat beside her bed and held her hand as she slept, and then, finally, he was able to cry.

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Sabrina disengaged herself from the computer interface, after a few fumbled attempts, and carefully lifted the helmet off. Renkayta looked at her for a moment, then turned back to what she was doing. They were all used to Sabrina taking breaks, and it wasn't unprecedented for her to be a little upset by what she had experienced in Scotty's memories, so no one stopped her or asked her any questions.

Tirqwin was engrossed in the same activity she'd been involved in; so was Khediva. Ford was explaining The Adventure's schematics to a group of Wayship engineers imported especially for the purpose. Sabrina never even considered interrupting any of them. She just went straight to her room and laid down on the bed. It was only when her cheek hit the pillow that she realized it wasn't her room; it was Ford's, the one she'd slept in her first night here. The pillow smelled like him. She found it comforting. Hugging herself and trying to stop shivering, she tried to relax, to stave off the migraine forming behind her eyes, until merciful unconsciousness swallowed her.

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She was cold. She was lying on a plane of ice somewhere, freezing to death. Or perhaps in an abandoned section of Giandrah, buried and forgotten, all the heat leached from her body into the unforgiving stone.

I'm dying. I don't want to die, she thought vaguely.

There was movement nearby; someone was wrapping her in something. She couldn't feel it, not really. Someone was saying her name, urgently.

"Please don't let me die," she whispered.

Someone held her, tight enough for her to feel it. She sighed with relief as she lapsed back into unconsciousness.

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She was warmer now. The air smelled better, richer. She couldn't open her eyes, but she could hear sounds. They were familiar, comforting somehow. They belonged. This was a place she knew.

There were voices there, three of them. She knew them. She knew their names, even if she couldn't place them just now. They would come to her in time, if she lay still and listened.

"So evidently it's a cumulative effect, accelerated by the trauma of that last memory scan."

"Miah's breath! How could you miss that one?"

"I do not know. Khediva?"

"It starts out quite normally. We did not know. I wish we had. Niavar, no one is more horrified than I. Except, perhaps, your father."