When Ramses returned to the lab, he inspected it, but by then, Angela had
reviewed the cameras. When Erlendr teleported there in his body, he was
seemingly disoriented. He didn’t have some elaborate plan, and likely still
doesn’t; it was an act of desperation. He wants to be free, and he probably
felt like this was his only option. He stole the LIR Map for the same
reasons, because it happened to be the nearest object when he first
appeared. He might have even been only hoping for a stack of cash, or maybe
a change of clothes. He got lucky, really, but now they suspect he’s using
it to avoid detection. The map seems to show you what you need to achieve
your objectives, not necessarily what you consciously wish. All he wants now
is to stay out of sight, so it’s showing him CCTV blindspots, speed traps,
and the like. That’s just the guess, though. At least that was Leona’s
guess, once she returned home from rescuing her husband.
She and Ramses are sitting across from each other in his apartment. “I’m
sorry.”
“You bent over to plug something in, it’s fine.”
“I’m not sorry for that. I mean, I am—I feel like an idiot—but I’m
sorry that I’m trapped in this body.”
“Wait, are you apologizing to me because you look like me now?”
“I haven’t showered, I close my eyes when I go to the bathroom.”
“Do—do you want me to absolve you of some kind of sin? Do you want me to
give you my blessing to use that body however you need to?”
Ramses sighs. “I’m just apologizing. I would apologize to her, but
she’s not here. You’re the closest thing I got.”
“Rambo, you built me the body I’m using right now. You took a sample of my
DNA, and cloned me. You have seen me naked, and we’re all friends here. You
don’t have to be uncomfortable. This is just a substrate. It might have been
weird in the past, but with consciousness transference, it’s just not a big
deal anymore.”
“It still feels like a big deal. She wasn’t an empty clone, she was a real
person.”
Leona nods. “Did you ever meet Téa Stendahl?”
“She was before my time. You told me about her, though. She was your
brother.”
“That’s right. In one reality, she was my brother, and in the next, she
wasn’t. She was born Ed Bolton in the eighteenth century, and traveled
through time starting in the early nineteenth. He died, and was reincarnated
as Theo Delaney. Fastforward to when my husband went back in time to kill
Hitler, and created an entirely new reality, and suddenly I didn’t have a
brother anymore. I didn’t even know what he was to me until my brain was
blended later. When Arcadia was tormenting us on the island, we sometimes
had downtime, and we got to talking about it. I asked her why she identified
as a woman, even though she had more memories of a man. Was she transgender?
She said,
no. I’m just me. I’m not a man, or a woman; I’m not even salmon. I’m a
person. When I was a man, I felt like a man, and now I feel like a woman,
but if the powers that be see fit to reincarnate me as a praying
mantis...I suppose I’ll feel like a praying mantis.
There was a praying mantis sort of creature in the grass next to us while
she was explaining it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really,” Ramses admits.
“I guess I’m saying...relax. You’re fine, Reaver’s fine, I’m fine. It’s
gonna be fine.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Erlendr is still out there, somewhere.”
“We’ll catch him,” Leona says confidently. “He doesn’t have an identity
here, so he can’t even leave the country.”
“He has the teleporter, and he knows how to use it.”
She shakes her head. The teleporter will run out of juice, if it hasn’t
already, and he won’t know how to get more. Even if he did, he doesn’t
strike her as the type of person who knows enough about technology to modify
it to take him anywhere but right back to their lab. “He was only scary
because of all the power he wielded in the main sequence. It was power that
he was born with, and which is now gone. I bet he doesn’t even know how to
drive a car, because he’s never had to before. We will catch him, and we’ll
switch you back. Do you believe me?”
“I guess,” Ramses replies bashfully.
“I promise you, this is all going to work out. I just flew a helicopter in
and out of a portal that took me to another reality. We’re closer than ever
to figuring this all out. Now come on, let’s get back to studying that
timonite. Trina is still our first priority.”
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