Read Online Dissonance: An Echo Trilogy Novella (Echo Trilogy, #2.5) by Lindsey Fairleigh - Free Book Online Page A

it is
depleted. The watch was simply created and, I’m assuming, given to Dr. Ramirez
with the intention of him passing it on to you, my Alexandra. It was sheer luck
that he handled it, anchoring it to the reflection of himself in the At , and that you have such a close tie to an echo containing
him. It was your first, and as such, you felt it deep in your ba the moment it was altered—or in this case, the moment
the echo reappeared in the At . My point is, without
that particular string of events, we wouldn’t have gone into this meeting on
high alert, and the worst could have happened.” He stared at me intently. “Any
of uscould have touched the watch. You could have .  . .”
    I blanched, then looked at Kat. Her face was so washed out I
thought she might be seconds away from fainting. I reached for her hand under
the table and gave her fingers a squeeze. “You didn’t touch it,” I said, aiming
for reassuring but certain I’d fallen short. “You’re okay.”
    Kat nodded, looking like she was about to throw up.
    “So,” Dominic started, and we all looked at him. “I’m assuming
this—this thing didn’t simply burst into existence on its own.”
    He’d voiced what I’d been too afraid to say aloud, and now I felt
like I was about to throw up. “So who could’ve made it?”
    Crickets.
    A sickening thought struck me, and I licked my lips, but my mouth
was so dry that it did no good. Reaching for my coffee cup, I took a drink of
tepid latte. “There’s no way that this could be like the Hathor statuette,
could it? There’s not some unexpected trip to the past scheduled in the near
future, where I go back and create this thing with the sole purpose of
destroying Nejerets—specifically myself —is
there?” My voice rose in pitch as I spoke, and a slight tremble started in my
hands. I let go of the coffee cup and pressed my palms against my thighs in an
attempt to control the shaking.
    Re-Nik took such a long time to respond that my stomach twisted
into a nauseating tangle. “No, my Alexandra, the scenario as you’ve suggested
it is impossible. Only if you had complete access to Apep’s sheut would you be able to create something like this
watch,” he said, tapping the box’s shiny lid once more. “And Apep’s sheut is only compatible
with humanoids carrying the Y chromosome.”
    Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind, I realized he’d just
told me one of my children would be a boy by necessity of the sheut that would be bound through every particle of his
being.
    “So, either the future carrier of Apep’s sheut is responsible for this,” Re-Nik said, “or Nik,
here, is not the only Nejeret to have been born with his own sheut .”
    “But I thought you kept that from happening,” I said, panic and
disbelief battling for control in my chest. “You policed the timeline yourself
to make sure no other kids were born of two Nejeret parents.”
    Re-Nik stared at me for several seconds, and then he shrugged. He shrugged. His only response to the
possibility that he might’ve failed in one of his self-proclaimed most important
tasks and allowed the birth of a Nejeret with the ability to destroy our kind
absolutely was a damn shrug.
    I was at a complete and utter loss for words.
    “ So .  . . maybe this is a long
shot,” Kat said, breaking the tense silence, “but isn’t it possible that this
is just a coincidence?” Her focus skipped around to each of us. “Like, couldn’t
someone have made this—I don’t know—two hundred years ago or whatever and Dr.
Ramirez just stumbled across it and assumed it was for you because of your name
and everything, but maybe it was really for someone else with the same name?”
She deflated visibly, slouching back in her chair. “And now that I’ve said that
out loud, I’ve heard how stupid it sounds.”
    “Not stupid,” I said, giving her knee a squeeze under the table.
“Just optimistic. It’s good to be able to see all the possible