He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She laid her head against his chest, inhaling his warm scent.
He let go, then put an arm around her shoulder for balance as they started for the door. After a few steps, he gained his stability back and leaned on her less and less as they approached the hall.
“Aevitas fortis,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow and looked up, but his weary grin had disappeared. He shook his head.
Then she heard her own voice, elsewhere. “Aevitas fortis.”
Griffith’s face slackened. They turned around.
Back near the engine access doors, Griffith stood, his arms wrapped around her, warm eyes glistening as he smiled. Her hair was a mess, pulled up into a heap atop her head, and the bruise on her face had darkened to a sickly blue-green. She looked up at the much taller man, almost disappearing in his embrace as his thick arms pulled her closer.
Adequin stared at them, but it didn’t compute. She couldn’t process it. Her mind knew what it meant, but at the same time, it tried to protect her. So for a fraction of a second, she ignored her panic and enjoyed the sight.
They looked exhausted, but happy. Relieved that they’d found each other. And good, together. That Adequin looked at that Griffith like she couldn’t live without him. And that Griffith looked at that Adequin like she was the only person in the universe.
Then reality began to seep back in. It was something she’d never seen before, never heard of before. She didn’t think it was possible.
A time ripple the wrong way? A time ripple that told the past instead of the future? It wasn’t a thing. It didn’t happen.
The doppelg?ngers wavered and flickered, then disappeared. They stared at the empty space for a few heavy seconds.
“Quin…” She turned to meet Griffith’s humorless gaze, and the pain that furrowed his brow had deepened into concerned shock.
She opened her nexus. “Jack.” No response came. “Jackin? Warner, Erandus? You guys read me?” Only static in return.
She looked back through the open door into the corridor, where another Adequin supported the weight of another Griffith, helping him limp down the hall toward the stairs that led to the air lock. Moments later, she wavered and flashed away, but Griffith remained, leaning on nothing as if her doppelg?nger still held up his weight. Then he flickered until he no longer leaned, but cradled his ribcage and walked of his own accord.
“Shit,” the real Griffith grumbled. He scratched his beard and watched, mouth agape. “What’s going on?”
“Time ripples…”
He looked back at her with raised eyebrows, as if to say “no shit,” but instead he said, “Where are we?”
“We’re inward. Far enough inward…” She tried to conjure up the will to do the math, based on how fast it’d been contracting when they left the Argus hours ago, but she couldn’t get her mind to focus on it. “We’re about halfway between the first buoy and the Argus … or where the Argus was. But quite a ways inward.”
“Where it was?” he asked.
She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to catch Griffith up on the last twenty-four hours. Now was the time to get the hell off the Tempus.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cavalon flicked on the plasmic welding tool, and the end sparked to life in a white-hot blue flame.
This is what it had come to. After almost an hour of poking and prodding at the stupid gold pyramid, Cavalon had started to question if he’d ever really seen the holographic screens come out of it in the first place. Maybe it had just been a fancy paperweight, obscuring something else on the console that had projected the weird displays.