“What are you going to do with it?” asked Elliot.
“That remains to be seen,” I replied. “Please, can you contact Li Qin and request she return? I need to discuss the favor she asked of me today. It may have certain ramifications she did not initially consider.”
Like the resurrection of her wife . . . or the admission that we could do no such thing, because we had destroyed her body. Because she was lost to us.
“All right, April,” said Elliot reluctantly. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“You know what Li Qin asked of me,” I said. “Do you really want to know what may have complicated her request? Or will you be happier to remain ignorant until such time as we are able to move forward with the project?”
Elliot took a short, sharp breath, and held it for a count of five before he unsteadily said, “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on around here.”
“I know,” I said. “But in this specific case, I believe knowledge would have a negative impact on your mental and emotional health. Can you please trust me, and allow me to continue as I am until such time as we are able to tell you more?”
“I can, if you’ll answer one question.”
“What?” If he had figured out what I was doing, if he had guessed that January’s resurrection might be possible—
“Are you going to let her try?”
There was an aching, burning need in his voice, one which I understood better than I understood most emotional response, for I had felt it myself. He needed Yui returned to him. He needed his family back.
“Yes,” I said, after a long pause, and watched the need washed away by relief. I cocked my head to the side. “Elliot?”
“Yes?”
“If you had to choose between restoring Yui and restoring all the others currently waiting to be brought back on-line, what would you do?”
Elliot took a breath. Then, wryly, he smiled. “I don’t think I could say this to anyone else, but I know you won’t judge,” he said. “I know you can’t. I’d bring back Yui. I would tell all the others I was sorry, tell them they deserved better than to have me be the one making the choices, and I’d bring back Yui. And I’d never be able to tell her, because she wouldn’t forgive me for choosing her over our friends, and that would kill me eventually, and I wouldn’t care. I would have Yui back, for however long it lasted, and that would be enough.”
“It would . . . kill you?” I asked uncertainly.
“There are some choices people shouldn’t have to make.”
My mother was the only one without a body to call her own. October’s blood magic was powerful, to be sure, and she might agree to a decade of sleep as a consequence of restoring our sleepers. She had done more for less. But what would it take to bring my mother back to life? We had no ritual for that. We would be in uncertain territory. I would be asking Li Qin to choose.
I had already killed one mother. I was unwilling to kill another.
“Call Li Qin,” I said. “Tell her I am willing to proceed with her plan, and that she should contact October. I have changed my mind; she does not need to come here now. I will be in the workshop.”
Then I vanished, leaving him no time to reply. The code flashed around me, every color and no color at all, and I was back in my mother’s office, where the upload device waited, unmoving, unchanging, as it had waited since the day it had been left here. It was only a tool. It was not to blame. But within it, frozen and unaware, my mother was held captive, needing to be freed.
“I will save you,” I whispered, picking up the device and cradling it against my chest. It was cool to the touch. I unplugged the USB cable. “I will find a way, and I will save you.”
The device did not reply. I had to fight to keep myself from dipping my fingers into the dying sphere of its battery, tasting the flicker of power that was my mother’s frozen world. I needed that battery to last until I could replace it. What would happen to the data if the memory died? Most machines could keep their data secure and uncorrupted even after losing power, but not all, and this one had never been intended for long-term storage. I had been involved in a race against entropy for years; I simply hadn’t known it. Now, the finish line was nearing, and I had little time to decide whether I would win or lose.
My mother was not alone in there. Terrie, Alex’s sister, was also trapped, uploaded without transfer to the server for storage. What could save my mother would further restore Alex to a complete life, rather than prisoning him in the daylight hours. And I did not care. In this moment, in this place, only my mother mattered.
My hands were still flickering between sizes, my grip changing in strength and dimension to match them. I willed myself to settle, and was grimly unsurprised when I froze in my preteen dimensions, short and slight and looking to be led. I held the device tighter and ran for the door, unwilling to carry it with me through the code. Small items could survive the transit, but it, like me, was known to drain power sources. I needed this battery to last.
I ran.
I ran down the deserted halls of the company my mother built, the County she built for me, the dream that had never recovered from her death. There were people who had been willing, even eager, to serve under the daughter of a noble bloodline pushing into the modern world. Those same people—the ones who had survived our first great disaster—were less inclined to serve under her adopted child. Yes, I was noble, daughter of January, niece to the line of Torquill, but their blood had never touched my veins, and all Faerie had to say about the Dryads was that we were flighty, shallow, unsuited to rule. I was the first Dryad of any kind to hold a title, and there were many who would have been happy to take it from me, finding me unfit on the basis of my blood.
Not that I had any blood, or ever would. Even when my heart had been wood instead of glass, my body had been more of an idea than an actuality.
The upload device was heavy in my hands, wanting to drop through them to the floor below. It would have been so easy to turn intangible, to let it go. No one knew about this but me. It wasn’t a failure yet. Until I told someone else that I was trying to bring my mother back, I couldn’t let anyone down. I could only bear the burden alone.
I thundered down a flight of stairs, each impact unfamiliar in the bones of my feet, the length of my legs. I would normally have skipped them, vanishing at one end and reappearing at the other. Instead, I ran, and prayed I wouldn’t fall. A hard knock against the floor might be enough to kill the faltering battery for good.