Page 101 of Love, Nemesis
Lethe stopped at the door, looking back at them both. Emma smiled at him, clearly weak, clearly tired.
She’s just a memory,Lethe reminded himself.
He faced forward again, opening the door.
Next, they were on the streets of the Strike’s empire.
A golden-eyed Strike was delivering a speech in the distance. Lethe stood like the devil in an ocean of worshippers. Their hands reached like the waves, grabbing up toward the air only to be pulled down again. They were a hungry, boiling mass of shoulders and heads, waiting for their noon meal to come down from the sky. The Strike had eaten everything out of them, their fears, their minds, their memories until hunger was the truest desire that remained. Reduced to children, the mob could only clamor to have their simplest needs met.
They didn’t notice him.
They were grown men and women with their mouths agape and eyes wide like nursing children. They spoke in inarticulate groans, wails and crying.
They didn’t notice the oil running through the gutters of their perfectly measured cottages or along their perfectly cobbled streets.
Lethe removed the cigarette from his lips, turning before nodding to another Rider in the crowd. He started walking away, reaching his horse. He reached for his saddle, stopping when fingers landed on his arm.
He looked through his helmet to see a boy standing near him, a boy he hadn’t seen before.
The boy was wearing clothes that at first he didn’t recognize.
“Lethe,” the young man said, and there was a familiarity to it.
All at once, Lethe remembered, backing away from his horse and scanning the area.
“You’re Cal,” he reminded himself, eyes centering back on the boy. He removed his helmet.
“Lethe,” Cal said. “Snap out of it.”
Lethe looked past Cal to see Emma Shepherd standing near the horse in his jacket.
He shook his head, looking down at his clothes and the helmet he’d just been wearing. “That’s not good.”
“Did you forget about us?” Cal said. “Where did you get that helmet from?”
Lethe cursed. “Let’s finish this up fast before my memories get the best of me. I have a hard enough time grappling with reality as it is.”
Cal looked back at Emma, who glanced between them both, concerned. “If you forget you’re in them, someone else has to break you out,” Emma said.
“Lethe,” someone said his name.
He turned when one of the Riders came up to him. “The gutters are ready, gates are blocked. Everyone is in position.”
“Send the signal,” Lethe replied as if by reflex and then jolted when Cal grabbed him again.
“Lethe!” Cal said. “I’m not getting stuck at the Burning of the Strike! This wasn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to be a part of history.”
They looked toward the town center, the Bleeding Grin peeking over the houses in the distance.
“It’s all so close,” Lethe said, glancing up at the clouded skies. The drought would end soon. He could only hope the rain would hold off a bit longer—it had.
The rain had.
This was the past.
The city had burned. The gutters of oil, the stockpiles of hay and wood, brought in over several weeks’ time, had all burned. They’d turned the entire city into kinder and it had burned fast.
Lethe cursed, shaking his head as if it might center him back into the facts of what had already happened.
