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A figure appears in front of me.
My heart stutters. "Sarah? How—"
"Don't worry about how. I'm not sure if I have much time, since I can feel the Echo fighting me. It wants me gone."
"Are you really here? Or am I hallucinating?"
She lays a hand on my cheek. "I'm real, Gabriel."
The feel of her palm on my skin makes me almost lightheaded, as relief floods through me. She's here. She's real. I want to touch her, but I can't, so I'll settle for sucking in a big breath to inhale the scent of her. She smells like grass and earth, but I don't care.She's here.
"Have you been rolling around on the ground?" I ask. Then I realize what a stupid thing that was to say.
She smiles sweetly. "I tripped and fell down on the grass. Before you panic, I'm fine."
"But I see dirt and grass stains on your clothes. There's something you aren't telling me."
"I was getting there. But I need to do this first."
She rises onto her tiptoes, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me. I relax even more, because the feel of her soft lips and her breaths tickling my skin proves to me that she is real. When she pulls away, she rubs her nose against mine. "I love you, Gabriel."
"I love you too." Maybe I shouldn't, not yet, but life in the Echo taught me the importance of seizing the moment. I should've told Sarah how I feel before the machine took me. I knew it even then. "You shouldn't be here, Sarah. Sefton might come back any second."
"Sefton?"
"Well, not literally him. It's more like a quantum ghost of Sefton Stainthorpe, left behind after the man himself was killed. The being I've met is the entangled Echo of Sefton, and he's somehow infused with the machine."
"That would make sense. I went back to Sanctuary and talked to the others about what's going on. We also wondered if there might be some remnant of Sefton left behind."
"I can confirm that. I've seen him and talked to him."
Sarah still has her hands on my cheeks, as if she can't bear to let go. "I want to try to free you from the machine."
"No, don't do it. Not yet."
"What? Who knows how that machine is affecting you. We need to get you out of there."
"No. Just leave, Sarah. It's too dangerous to try to free me."
She bites her lip and hugs herself. "Gabriel, things aren't going well on the Earth side of things. Something's happening, and I don't think it's good. I have grass and dirt on me because I fell down during an earthquake. Tents were knocked down, and small trees fell too. Then there was the noise in the sky. It reminds me of the sound the machine made when it first activated."
My skin goes cold, and the deep freeze penetrates beneath the surface to chill me to the core. "You heard the machine on Earth?"
"Yes."
"Shit. You need to go home and find out what's going on."
"No. I need to be here with you."
I open my mouth, but I don't get a chance to speak. Someone else does.
"You can't stop what's coming next," Sefton announces as he reappears beside Sarah. "The new alchemy of worlds will begin soon, now that I have you to serve as the power cell. The alchemy of souls won't be far behind."
"You're nothing but a ghost in the machine."
Sefton chuckles. "Don't tax your small mind trying to understand the grandness of my scheme. You don't need to think at all. You are nothing more than a power cell."
"Bullshit. You need me, or you wouldn't be spending so much time trying to convince you're a genius."
