Chapter 92: The Endless Loop
Marek looked toward the Botanical Institute but did not move. There was still one basic thing nobody had bothered to tell him.
"What’s your name?" he asked.
The silver-white-haired woman looked at him. "Venielle Zilis."
Marek committed the name to memory before glancing back toward the institute. "You just said Sareth would try to use me to reach Mara."
"He will."
"Then walking straight to her seems like a bad idea."
Venielle remained calm. "I would not have told you she was here if I had not accounted for that."
Marek studied her for a moment. "If he tries to follow me?"
"I’ll know before he reaches her."
"And you can stop him?"
Venielle’s eyes remained clear as she replied, "Yes."
She answered with enough certainty that Marek stopped pressing the question, although he still did not move toward the institute.
For more than a week, he had followed records, witness accounts, transport lists, handwritten notes, and directions that only seemed to lead him from one clue to the next. Mara had been there, someone had seen her, and by the time Marek arrived, she had already moved on. It was like an endless loop.
Now, someone was telling him she was only a short distance away.
That should have sent him inside, yet Marek remained near the entrance for several seconds. Rafe had already identified the usable routes around the institute and had made sure the way to the courtyard remained open during the confrontation with Laureen and Sareth. There was nothing left for Marek to check. After more than a week of arriving just after Mara had moved on, he simply found it difficult to believe that this time... she might actually be waiting on the other side.
Rhovan remained several meters behind with the others. Dried blood still marked the corner of his mouth, and although his usual expression had mostly returned, Marek had not forgotten his caution around the silver-white-clad woman.
Nearby, Nadia and Rafe remained with Laureen, who had regained consciousness but was still affected by Black Errancy.
"If anything happens, don’t come inside unless I call you," Marek said.
Rhovan crossed his arms. "You wound me. I am perfectly capable of respecting another person’s request."
Marek stared at him until Rhovan softly sighed. "Occasionally."
"That’s what I thought." Marek entered before the conversation became any more useless.
The faint pressure behind his right ear returned inside the passage.
"You’re here," he murmured.
"Yes," Celeste answered.
"Is Mara really inside?"
As expected, Celeste did not answer. Marek didn’t mind and just continued forward.
The inner passage looked ordinary until Marek reached the courtyard. Several reflective panels along the walls had been covered, while the exposed ones caught the children moving nearby. Occasionally, the same movement appeared across two different panels at once, perfectly synchronized despite the difference in angle.
Marek slowed. The correspondence was enough for him to recognize the familiar touch of Gemini.
After what had happened with Laureen, he kept his hands away from the glass and continued forward.
A young Gemini Astrant near the entrance approached him. "Are you Marek Vale?"
"Yes. Where’s Mara?"
The boy pointed across the courtyard. "She said a young man would come in here, and that he’d probably hesitate before stepping any farther."
Marek’s attention sharpened. "The silver-white-haired woman?"
"Yes. The beautiful lady who brought us here."
"Where’s Mara?" Marek repeated.
"She’ll come out," the boy replied. "She told me to tell you to wait."
Somehow, the boy’s answer did not sit well with him.
He had spent days waiting beside registration desks while volunteers searched lists, waiting for messages from Amara to move between stations, and waiting for witnesses to remember whether Mara had passed through their shelters. Every time he reached another place, someone seemed ready to tell him he had missed her again.
"I’ve done enough waiting," he muttered before walking farther into the courtyard.
Several younger Gemini Astrants were nearby. Marek recognized some of them from descriptions collected along Mara’s route, but Mara was not among them. Despite everything he had been told, the unease that had followed him through Linden began returning.
Then a doorway on the opposite wall opened, and a blonde girl stepped through holding a bowl while arguing with someone behind her.
"I said it tastes like metal because it does. You people keep acting like I’m imagining the pipes again, and—"
Mara stopped in the doorway, and everything Marek had wanted to ask her suddenly seemed unimportant.
Her hair had been tied badly enough that several blonde strands hung loose around her face, and dust marked one side of her jacket. The Gemini patterns on her hands glowed brightly against her skin, but Marek’s attention had already shifted to everything else he could check from where he stood.
She was upright, her breathing looked steady, and no blood or obvious injury was affecting the way she stood.
Marek had already known she was alive. His mother had written it. Witnesses had described Mara complaining about metallic-tasting water and asking for noodles, and everything he had learned along her trail suggested she had remained well enough to keep moving through Linden.
However, none of that prepared him for seeing her with his own eyes.
The bowl slipped from Mara’s hands, but another child behind her caught it before it hit the floor and quickly set it aside. Mara did not seem to notice. Her lips trembled as tears filled her eyes, and for barely a second she remained frozen before running toward him.
Marek barely managed to move his backpack aside before she collided with his chest. Her arms locked around him hard enough to push him back a step. He caught her with his own embrace, one hand against the back of her jacket while the other went around her shoulders.
For several seconds, neither of them said anything.
Marek had spent the past week forcing himself to keep moving so he would not have time to dwell on what might have happened to Mara. If one lead failed, he found another. If a road disappeared, he changed direction. He had been injured, dragged into Black Errancy, and forced to kill someone for the first time, yet there had always been another place to reach or another person to question, leaving him little time to think about everything that had happened.
Now, there was nothing left between him and the person he had been searching for.
His hands began trembling against Mara’s back as his knees weakened slightly. All the fear he had pushed aside while following one lead after another finally caught up to him now that he had found her and no longer had to keep moving just to avoid thinking about what might have happened.
"You took forever," Mara muttered against his chest, her voice shaking despite the complaint. "Every time we had to move somewhere else, I kept thinking you’d arrive right after we’d left."
Marek’s arms tightened around her. "I did. More than once, I reached the center or station you had just left."
Mara made a sound that might have been a laugh if she had not been crying and hugged him harder. Marek rested his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes, allowing himself to stay there without thinking about where to go next.