Page 1 of Love, Nemesis
Chapter 1: Tea
TIME DID NOT exist. It ruled the world, counted every heartbeat in her chest, but here, right now, it did not exist.
The early morning was miraculous in that way.
Ana watched the dawn fog. It drifted off the face of the pond, summoned by the fingers of the sunrise as they reached through the trees. A hedge of elegant pines was painted in the light and circled her cabin. They stood high and wide like golden gates, blocking out the rest of the world.
She shrugged a green knit blanket over her bare shoulders, fabric huddling against her neck as her black hair billowed out in loose, chaotic loops. She took in the forest air—air that tasted like it had never been breathed before, and her soul was at peace.
When the world woke up, Ana would surrender again to the clutches of time. She’d submit to the schedule she’d set for the day, for schedules, to any real Statesman, were comparable to an act of daily worship. In the State, the religion of time was ultimate, its edicts immovable and its rule unquestionable.
Ever since the world was first plagued by strange anomalies, or mutations, as they were now called, nothing but time seemed to work with any comforting predictability.
It ran at different rates in every country, but people didn’t panic—no, because time could still be measured. No one really cared that ten years in En Sanctus had been a century here in the State. No, because they’d broken it down to a formula. Every secondthat passed in En Sanctus was 9.96 seconds here, and ten times as much in the Mystics.
She had observed that to most Statesmen, measuring something felt somehow like controlling it, and few things contested that comfort.
As a soldier of the State, she respected that.
Unless it was morning.
In the morning, she’d sit outside on her porch like a statue, a stone carved through a lifetime of friction, now abandoned in the middle of the woods to become just a stone again. She yearned to become just a stone again.
But the moment was finite like everything was, and all at once, the world awoke.
Squirrels rummaged.
Birds chirped.
Ana reached past her blanket, tilting her finger against one of the red tulips nestled at the edge of her porch. A drop of dew slid off a weighted petal onto her fingertip, and she rolled it over her finger as she brought it to her face. She lifted it to the light, watching the sun through it before drawing it to her lips and kissing it off her knuckle in an act of gratitude. Hoisting herself to her feet, she felt the ache of past injuries and the resistant joints of her metallic, prosthetic arm.
She turned into the house, scarred hand grazing the iron handle of her teapot before removing it from the coals of her fireplace. Aspider web flickered on the windowsill. She poured the hot water into a clay mug on the nightstand she’d made into her kitchen table.
Her mind lingered on that spiderweb and then on the subtlest creak from the porch.
Rolling the blanket off her shoulder, she slipped it through the back of the chair before glancing at the knife lying on the kitchen counter.
She adjusted her watch, her metallic fingers clicking against the watch’s surface as she turned it around her wrist.
Tick.
The porch creaked again, louder.
Tick.
Her grip tightened on the teapot.
Tick.
Ana swung her arm sideways, directing the pot toward her would-be intruder before stepping toward the kitchen. She adjusted the swing in just enough time as she recognized the face standing at the threshold. The pot sailed through the air and collided against the doorframe before rolling off the counter through a river of hot water. The streams of water dribbled off the counter and kissed the boots waiting at the threshold.
John Hailey lifted a finger up to the edge of his black uniform, rubbing a spot of hot water that had landed over the clockstitched into the breast, the symbol of the State military. Such a casual, relaxed motion betrayed his nature.
To every man, woman, and child in the State, John Hailey was the grim reaper.
The hot water steamed in the ensuing silence as it rolled over the floorboards. Ana couldn’t resist the symbolism in it, because in that moment, she felt like that iron teapot. It had the strength to withstand the coals and yet there it lay, opened up and spilled out at the base of Hailey’s boots.
Her deepest fears shouted that they knew why he’d arrived.
