Page 118 of Love, Nemesis
Right now, he was glad he’d come.
He could see people in the distance, standing completely still like statues. Lethe peered through the pounding sun, inspecting the details around him as they moved closer to the scene.
“This isn’t Ares,” Cal whispered. “This looks like…Chronos.” They got closer, stopping on another bridge before what looked like a gray overlay, cast over the city in a sphere. “It’s like it’s been activated. But this is bad. Chronos is never supposed to be activated like this over the entire city.”
Lethe peered curiously through the haze, trying to see if any people’s reactions within the haze could give an indication of what had happened. He dismounted and started walking forward.
“Hey, hey!” Cal said. “You want to be frozen in time?”
“I need to get closer,” he said, looking around as he inspected the gray.
“We shouldn’t stay here,” Cal said, clutching his Atlas to his chest. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Who would have done this?” Lethe said, his voice barely above a whisper as his thoughts carried him elsewhere. He looked up at a sun grayed out by the distortion.
“No one would do this,” Cal whispered. “Maybe Ares? No one on our side would do this.”
“Stay here,” Lethe said.
“For how long? You know if you’re gone for ten years, I’m not staying—”
Lethe waved back at him before walking forward.
Cal said something back, but the deeper Lethe walked into the gray area, the farther Cal’s voice echoed. Soon the world around him was silent.
The air was stagnant with trauma, choking any deep expansion of the lungs. Gray shock painted the world in the shades of an apocalypse. Every human and every creature was frozen: birds and leaves stuck in mid-air; a baby reaching after a toy; a man whose finger was extended with an incomplete gesture of his hand.
Give me your time.
He heard The Eating Ocean whisper.
A drop rained from the sky, landing on his cheek. He wiped his face, seeing the black water stain his hands.
He looked up to see dark clouds above.
“All right,” he whispered with a smile, waving his hand across the ground before him.
He felt suddenly light, the time no longer slowing him down. He could feel his pulse through his fingertips, focusing the Madness in his blood toward resisting the strain of Chronos’s time.
He kept walking.
He explored, his arm starting to throb as he used it to wade through the pressure of time around him, resisting its ability to lock him in. The last of the Snake Bite in his system was fighting hard and the sudden inpouring of Madness.
Lethe walked through the gates of the capital and its buildings before exploring the hallways, noticing a soldier frozen mid-run. He walked past him, turning into a wide corridor.
Ana sat there in the middle of the hall, ankles crossed, knees drawn up toward her face where she buried her head. Her arms were locked over her head, hands gripping her hair.
Around her, soldiers lay in motion, some reaching, some falling, some shouting from the blast.
Lethe walked through the hallway, his feet soundless against the ground. The air seemed to thicken as he neared her, like the core of some nuclear collapse of time. His arm throbbed as he compelled the forces of time away from him with black sentience, the pain spreading deeply through his chest as his pulse quickened.
The sensation moved down his spine as he knelt in front of her. He lifted a hand to her knees, fingers moving through her hair.Her hands collapsed loosely away from him. For a moment, he thought that she was dead. With quick precision, he imagined how these events had unfolded.
His hand found her chin, and he prompted it up. He met the vacancy in her eyes, his other hand rising to push the hair from her face.
He could see the blackened fingertips on his hands, the pain spreading as the virus explored his bones.
Lethe met Ana’s gaze, calling out to some deeply buried light in her eyes. He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes softening, “It’s time to go.”
