“I won’t miss it again.”

He nods. “When is the next placement test?”

“Six weeks,” I say.

“And after that?”

“Six months.”

He looks at his screen, then back at me. “That will be too late.”

“They’re that close?”

I’ve always known if Eldridge scientists ever figured out a way to remotely retrieve intel I would be out of a job. There is no grace period on the temporary employment visa given to traversers. The moment I’m terminated, the visa dissolves, and I will be escorted out of the city’s walls just like Starla. If I can’t get hired into a permanent position, if I can’t make myself indispensable like Jean, I’ll end up back in Ash.

“Bosch is hinting at a big announcement next quarter, something that will increase profits.”

“Like cutting payroll.”

Jean nods. “It might be something else, and a lot can go wrong even if he’s confident, but we can’t gamble on their failure,” he says. “Can you be ready in six weeks?”

I shrug, but when he narrows his eyes I answer properly. “Yeah. Yes. Yes, I can. I have the hang of the comparison portion, I’m good at writing the actual reports and establishing conclusions. But that stupid memorization section is almost half the score and I can’t convince my brain it’s important to hold so much useless bullshit.”

He types something into his computer. “You’re right about your reports; don’t leave anything out and you’ll be fine. For the next six weeks I’ll quiz you on the demographics of each world, starting with the closest by degree to the furthest. The last two weeks before the test date, we’ll do a full review of all portions of the test.”

    “There are three hundred and eighty worlds. You think I can have over sixty worlds studied by next week?”

“There are three hundred and eighty-two. Worlds that used to resonate but have gone silent are included on the test too.”

“I wasn’t even working when 382 went dark!”

“Then you’ll get to learn something new. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Riveting.”

I stand up. It’s nine hours until my next pull, which is nine hours that just got earmarked for studying.

“Have you reviewed the file for 175 yet?”

“I haven’t had time.”

“Make time.”

“Why?”

“One Seventy-Five is a future world.”

“Why is that a problem?”

I want to ask, Why does that scare you? but Jean and I are alike enough that I know he’d never admit to being afraid.

“Because you didn’t just die there. You were murdered.”

He’s too superstitious. He sees future worlds as premonitions. I am not like him or anyone else from outside of Wiley City. I don’t have faith in things I can’t see. But when he says murdered, I get goose bumps.

“I’m sure it’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’d be more worried if it were natural causes.”

“Cara, if this other you—”

“There is no other me.”

It’s a stupid thing for a traverser to say, but it’s closer to being true for me than it is for anyone else.

“Just look into it.”

“I will. I will.”

* * *

WHAT I DON’T tell Jean, what he should already know, is that I’ve looked up as much information about the me on 175 as I can stand. I know her name is Nelline, and I know she never left Ash. That’s how I knew she was the one to die when Dell asked. I don’t know how she died for the same reason I couldn’t turn around to see where Nik Nik was standing at my family’s ceremony: I am too afraid to look. I can’t yet process information about, or photos of, Nik Nik. Six years of emotional healing cracks right along old seams when he gets too close. If I open Nelline’s last file and find a cause of death linked to him, it will take me back to every time it was me laid out in the dirt looking up. Every time a silver-tipped boot was the last thing I saw for hours.

    The section for Nelline’s “known associates” was always blank, but I’m sure she was attached to the emperor. She never had the too-thin look of the struggling, which means she had a little security, and there are few enough ways to get it out in the wastelands. I know what I would do if I were her. What I did when I was her. The House tried its best by me, but I failed as a sex provider. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it doesn’t take skill, because it does, and I didn’t have it. Maybe the me on 175 was different. Maybe she had something I was missing and could make a real go of it.

But Jean is, as always, right. I need to stop hiding from Nelline’s final report. I don’t have 175’s full world data like I do for Earths I’ve pulled from, but I’ve used Jean’s credentials to ensure I always have a recent copy of the files from my other selves. It’s either a small enough data transfer that he’s never noticed, or he just understands and lets me have this. Using my cuff, I bring up the most recent information I got with Jean’s login. But the file is nearly empty. No autopsy has been loaded, no pictures of a body, but they must have a body or I wouldn’t have gotten the file.

There’s only a brief death notice listing her age and naming the cause of death: exsanguination. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me to picture it.

It won’t be a large wound, nothing messy. It’s always a small slit across a vein. It would be easy to get help before you die, but the man who kills like this wears a cartridge ring on each middle finger. The one on his left hand thins the blood to water, the one on his right paralyzes extremities but leaves the organs pumping frantically. He inherited the rings from his father, and kills just like Nik Senior did, except he doesn’t leave you in a sewage heap or a ditch. He chooses a place where you can see something you love.

    The rumor is Nik Nik learned to kill by watching his father, which is why the method is the same, but that the first kill he saw was his beloved older brother Adranik, which is why the location is always kind. Every time I doubt that Nik Nik can truly feel anything at all I remember the way his eyes glazed whenever his brother was mentioned. If nothing else, I know he loved the brother his father killed. Which means he knows what it feels like when a powerful man takes the person you care about most in the world away…and still he does it.

The file is incomplete, so I don’t know where she was found. But the tox screen and wound description in the notes are familiar enough. There’s no mention of it, but I’m sure the small cut is jagged and full of saliva. A perfect match to an obsidian fang.

The first time he used those teeth on me was early in our relationship, our first fight. He’d cut my neck from behind, more a slice with his tooth than a bite. It was a small cut, not even into the artery, but I didn’t know that and I’d heard enough stories to believe I was going to die. Especially once he put his fist in my mouth, my teeth stretched to aching against his second and third knuckle. No one my age has ever seen a real gun, but my mother told me my grandfather killed himself with one. In that moment I thought of him, teeth stretched around a metal barrel, and wondered if this death was in my blood.

I waited for the telling spray, the taste they say is bitter and signals that you’ll never stop bleeding and you’ll never feel again. He left his hand there until my jaw cramped, until the waiting was worse than the ending and I thought about probing the ring for a trigger with my tongue myself, just to have control. Then he pulled his hand away.

“Learn your lesson,” he said before walking away.

I didn’t. And judging by her cause of death, Earth 175 me hadn’t either. Nelline. Her name was Nelline.

    Good for you, Nelline.