Echoworld

"I mean, I can understand jobless, but actually digging-through-a-trashcan-feeding-the-birds-talking-to-myself homeless? Are you sure that's me?"

Shaun put his hands on her shoulder and looked into her beautiful navy blue eyes. "Wren, calm down. I'm not sure, but it's almost certain to be you. Eric doesn't make mistakes like that. And you two look very similar."

Wren shook herself out of his grasp. He had a strong but gentle grip; she liked that. "Okay. That's two useless lives down, one left." She sighed. "How can it be possible that I'm the only one with a promising job?" she asked, then added bitterly, "A promising ex-job."

"What was your line of work," Shaun inquired, trying not to show too much curiosity. Although he didn't like the idea, he might need to use her.

"I worked at a place called Tritech as an atomic physicist."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "How did you manage that? You're just barely out of school."

"Oh, am I? Please enlighten me, O Mighty One, when did I graduate?" she asked acerbically as they began walking across the parking lot.

Shaun kept silent. The streets were mostly empty. Here and there, they saw people wandering down the street, looking lost. Many of them had open, suppurating sores on their faces and arms. An old newspaper fluttered in front of them, propelled by a breeze that brought an odd, acrid scent with it. Shaun stomped on the paper and picked it up.

As he read, his eyes widened. He quickly checked the comtra. He sighed, relieved, but not by much. Wren watched him patiently. When it became clear that he wasn't going to explain, she blurted, "Well? How much radiation are we talking about? Are we going to die right here?"

Shaun looked at her sharply. "How did you know-?"

Wren appeared uncomfortable. "I don't know. I just...it was on your face. I read the expressions on your face." She didn't like lying to him, but the truth was even worse, and much stranger: she'd accidentally gone into his mind and heard his thoughts. She didn't like doing it; she felt it was an invasion of privacy. Although she didn't understand t, she did her best to control it. Her control slipped this time. Not again, she swore to herself.

Shaun gave her an appraising look and nodded. "We can't leave for awhile yet; Eric won't have the transporter set for another hour at least."

"We were able to leave Epsilon pretty quickly," Wren pointed out.

"Yeah. The transporter can easily do two travels to two different worlds. A third - it takes awhile to get the machine ready, that's all." He despised having to deceive her, but he needed to learn as much as he could from her, before he had to kill her. A thought occurred to him that he was lying in order to be near her, be around her more. He ignored it. He was focused solely on the business at hand: the destruction of Lady Wren Azrael Black.

Wren shrugged. "That's fine. But how much radiation are we talking about?" she asked, a worried frown marring her features.

Shaun shook his head. "Not enough to worry about. The bomb was dropped a little more than a year ago." He motioned around to the nearly empty city. "The strongest, the last people in this city. The wounds on their faces and arms are from constant exposure to high levels of radiation. My turn."

"Your turn?"

"Yeah. You've been asking me all these questions and now it's my turn."

"Oh."

He led them to a vacant front porch and they sat down on the wooden steps leading to the front door.