0 DAYS. 2 HOURS. 13 MINUTES.
My feet slapped across pebbled concrete, a shawl wrapped halfway around my shoulders, my corset only half done up as I couldn’t wait for Lapis to finish tying it off. My hand clutched the newspaper.
“I’m coming, Meena.”
My toolbelt had been hastily strapped to my waist, the vial tucked neatly inside. The ire at having to run all the way to the garage before sprinting to the elevator building burned through me; I should have kept the vials on me at all times. What had I been thinking?
It didn’t matter now.
The building loomed closer and people jumped out of my way while I rushed past them. They shouted things like my name and “hey, stop”. I barely took them in.
Once I got to the elevator building, I stopped, head bent over my knees, as I tried to catch my breath.
The desk was being manned by the usual steambot, who asked for my paperwork. But I didn’t have any.
Instead, I shoved the newspaper in front of his face. “She’s going to die, and I can save her. Please, let me pass.” I shook my head, knowing it wasn’t going to work but determined nonetheless. “I have to get to her.”
“Without the proper paperwork, you cannot go any farther. Please move aside.”
I lowered the newspaper and scrunched it into a ball in my clenched fist. “No.”
“If you do not move aside, I will have to enforce security measures. Please, ma’am, step aside.”
I grabbed a small mallet attached to my toolbelt and gripped it. “I can’t afford to abide by your rules right now. Doing so will kill her.” I launched myself over the countertop and hammered both eye sensors before he could press the button.
“Emergency. Emergency. Sight sensors are affected.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I also knew I was going to serve prison time regardless of what defense I tried to give. But it was worth it. I tugged at a steam line connecting his head to his body, and he went quiet. “Sorry about that.”
If everyone knew it was that easy to get past them, there would be anarchy, but I knew that was a key vein in their anatomy, and if I pulled hard enough, I could deactivate them. Usually, it just wasn’t worth the prison sentence.
I sprinted past the few admin steambots and janitors, not bothering to try to deactivate them all, and instead headed straight to the royal elevator. If logic served, it would be closer to the palace than any of the others.
A few wrong turns and curses, and I was there, the golden room shining in all its dusty glory. I guessed it didn’t need using as frequently as the other levels. Pulling the lever, I called the elevator down and waited for what felt like an eternity as the whirring and purring got louder.
Nearly here. “C’mon . . .”
Once down, the steambot manning the platform asked for my paperwork again, and I shoved him out of the way and pulled the lever myself.
“Ma’am, you are forbidden to use the elevator without a steambot’s permission. Please, step aside.”
His arms reached out to me, but I swung at him with my hammer as the elevator moved.
“Stop. Security has been informed.”
I hammered out one eye sensor before his hand clamped around my wrist and twisted. A snap echoed.
“Ahhh!” My wrist cradled in my hand, I leaned against the central pillar and focused on my breathing.
“Stand down,” he said three times, his eye flickering red. “Stand down.”
“No.” I swung the hammer with my left hand and took out the remaining eye sensor.
He spun on the spot, not sure where to look or what to do. “Emergency. Emergency. Sight sensors are affected.”
I shoved him with my good hand, and he rolled backward, freeing up the exit just as the elevator came to a stop. I sprinted, my bad wrist screaming as it trailed behind me. I barreled through a line of steambots at the end of an elegant corridor. “Out of my way.”
They tried to grab me, but I took the opportunity and continued running.
Multiple shouts rang out behind me, but not all of them were steambots; some were human law enforcers, who were, I hesitated, probably armed.
A few warning shots at my heel proved my point.
But the palace loomed outside the glass doors that now stood as a barrier between Meena and me. An invisible barricade lined with soldiers.
“Stop,” one of the soldiers in the center said. “You are under arrest.”
“Like hell I am!” I uncrumpled the newspaper and spread it out in front of me. “She’s dying, and I can save her. Let me through.” Standing my ground, I let no wavers enter my voice, no shake in my hands, and nothing but stern stubbornness in my presence. I would not yield to people who knew nothing of what was happening.
“No one can save the princess now. The king himself informed everyone here on floor twenty-one this morning.”
Crap. That made it harder. I wouldn’t be able to talk my way through. What did I do now?
“Let her through!” a familiar voice rang out. “She’s with me.”
“But Lord Zimeon, sir, she broke several laws, including permanently damaging two steambots.”
“And she will be dealt with accordingly,” he said, his white cloak billowing in the breeze he’d let in by opening the doors. “For now, she is needed.”
Begrudgingly, and with no hiding the furious scowl on his face, the soldier signaled his men to stand down and allow me to pass through a small gap in his defense line.
Zimeon grabbed my good arm and led us away. “Come on. She’s nearly gone. Can you really save her?”
“Yes.”
That wasn’t the right question. The right question was: What would saving her cost? But suddenly I didn’t care. I didn’t care about how many days I had left to live, what the knowledge of time transference would do to the world, or how the king would react to someone from floor zero being irrevocably in love with his daughter. All I cared about was saving her. I wanted to know that, even if it wasn’t me, someone would get to spend the rest of their life seeing her smile. The world was a better place with her happiness in it.
We sprinted up the steps to the palace two at a time, ignoring the worried and puzzled looks on many servants’ faces. Zimeon, still clutching my arm, whizzed down a few corridors and up a few more flights of stairs until we stood face-to-face with a familiar ornate door.
I looked behind me, back toward the elevator building that I could just see out of the window on my left. There was no turning back now.
“If you can save her, please.” The look on his face was something I didn’t think I’d see there. Something akin to grief and pain for the inevitable loss of his sister. Apparently, even if you knew a loved one’s demise was coming, it didn’t erase the pain of the emptiness left behind. “She deserves to live. The world deserves her rule.”
He was right about that. Floor zero deserved her as queen, and I would give it to them.
The corridor was silent, and every sort of nothing echoed in my eardrums loud enough I could hear my blood rush. I expected servants to be bustling about or shouts to be heard, but it was as though everyone had accepted that she was leaving, and there was nothing to be done.
She lay on the very bed we had laid on together only a few nights ago, but she wasn’t glowing under the moonlight anymore. She paled in the sunlight that used to radiate off her skin like she held the secret to life itself. She had fallen very ill in such a short space of time. Her eyes fell on me, and where I thought a frown or a tear would appear, a smile graced her lips.
“El,” she rasped. “You came back.”
I fell to my knees at her bedside, tears sliding down my face. “Of course I came back. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let fear rip me from you.”
She frowned at her father, who sat in a chair beside us. “Wasn’t...your fault.”
“I should have been brave, like you. And I should have trusted you. Us.” I grabbed her arm and took a look at her lifeclock, which was down to the last thirty minutes. If I wanted to save her, I needed to do it now. “You know why I’m here, and you can’t stop me.”
The glass vial of slightly glowing green liquid rested in my hand, and her eyes widened. “No, El...”
“Shhh.” I wiped a gentle thumb over her sweaty forehead. “It’s my choice to make. We know when we’re going to die, we know what levels we can live on, and we know the quality of life we will have, but we get full freedom over how we choose to spend that time.” I kissed her lips, a soft brush of love across a vast ocean of uncertainty. “And I choose to spend it with you.”
I turned to the king and asked, “Your Majesty, if you could please turn around and look the other way.”
He frowned at me and went to say something no doubt annoying and kingly, but Zimeon interrupted. “Turn around, Father. It’s for the best. Trust me.” His voice hid something that persuaded his father to turn his chair around with a huff and a complaint about intelligent children thinking they know best.
When the single maid in the corner of the room had left, I turned back to Meena and opened her lifeclock for the final time. Once both the faces of our clocks had been lifted and I’d unwound the right lines, I poured the herbilore tincture into the lifeclock and then connected our times.
“I’m sure Lady Lorelai would know exactly what to say in this moment, but I’m not as well-read as she and I don’t pretend to be good with words, but Meena, I will give you a life, even if I have to give half of mine to make it happen.”
The cogs spun faster than I could count, and when my clockface counted some eleven thousand days, I unconnected the lines and put everything back into place—until finally her lifeclock read 11,115 days.
She looked at it in wonder as tears streamed down her face. “I’ve never seen the number that high.”
I’d never seen my number so low. But it was worth it to see the look on her face, the color return to her skin, and the light in her eyes shine beyond happiness. I wrapped my fingers through hers, and she yanked me to her.
“Never leave me again,” she whispered, a stern edge to her gentle voice.
“You’re linked to me now, Princess. Forever and always.” I looked at our time and asked, “Think thirty years is enough time to make the changes you want?”
“It’ll do.” She grinned at me, then turned to her father and said, “I’m ready.”