Free A Child Of Our Time (The Veil Book 2) by William Bowden Page A

off of it. She runs back to the footstool, clambers back on and holds the cube up high. Lucius sees that it is no longer completed—the sides have been scrambled.
    “Ready?” she asks.
    “Ready.”
    To Lucius’s immediate alarm Lucy’s face blanks, her eyes glazing over. The Cube drops from her grasp. In the blink of an eye the flowers around them are gone, replaced by thousands of Rubik’s Cubes, arranged in lines radiating outward, some much longer than others, some much shorter. Lucius can see that each Cube has a different arrangement of sides, with cubes being in a more complete state the further they are along the line; at the end of each line is a completed cube. He finds Lucy beaming a smile at him.
    “See?” she says.
    “See what?”
    Lucy points to the shortest line of cubes. “That one. That’s what to do.”
    She giggles at the confused look on Lucius’s face.
    “The smallest number of steps, silly,” she says. “To solve the puzzle.”
    “You imagine all the possible solutions, and pick the simplest?”
    “The outside-me imagines,” she says coyly, “and I pick.”
    “The outside-you? Was it the same when you fixed Macy’s medicine?”
    “That was much harder. I really did have to use my advantages for that. Otherwise it would have taken ages and ages .”
    “Where did you get these advantages?”
    “They were given me.”
    “By whom?”
    “I don’t know. They didn’t say.”
    A wave of pain engulfs Lucius and he cannot hide it.
    “Lucius!” wails Lucy. She is off her footstool and at his side in an instant.
    “I have to…I have to…” Lucius manages to compose himself and stands. “I have to go.”
    Lucy grabs his hand, “Don’t go. Stay a little longer.”
    The touch astonishes him. The little extra squeeze she gives cuts through the pain, to tug at his heart with a strength almost impossible to resist. She looks up at him forlornly, Lucius’s eyes glistening at the sight.
    “I must.”
    And he gone. Lucy’s empty hand flops to her side, her eyes wet with the beginnings of tears.
    * * *
    Lucius exits from the Tap, the life all but drained from him, an anxious Landelle already at the bedside.
    “What happened? What did you see?” she asks.
    The nurse angrily brushes the question aside, “Do that again and it’ll kill you.”
    Lucius hears neither of them. He is weeping, overwhelmed by angst and indecision.

DOUBT
    A torrent of projected shapes rages around Lucy’s MBI unit in the third-generation chamber, each shape a page of information. Boyce and Moule look on with deepening concern.
    “We need to find out what she’s up to,” Boyce says.
    From the Common Room, JoJo and Eleanor have an altogether different perspective. Lucy’s door is unlocked and they are able to peer in. Now there are many doors in her room, leading to all sorts of places—libraries, universities, corporations, and the like—the style of each door reflecting its source. All the doors are open, a torrent of pages, books, and journals pouring out of each to join a vortex swirling around at some considerable speed. At the center of it all is Lucy, sitting in a trance on her footstool, eyes glazed over.
    In the lab Boyce and Moule have set up a life-sized projection of Lucius in his bed, four projector rods, each with a bright diamond sparkling light at its tip arranged about it. Garr is desperately unhappy about it, but they have no choice.
    “She’s in the Library of Congress,” Boyce says.
    “Doing what?” Lucius asks.
    “Reading. Everything,” says Moule. “We think she’s looking for a way to fix you.”
    “Well, she won’t find it there,” Lucius manages.
    “I’m concerned about her state of mind, Lucius,” says Garr. “She isn’t attending to her duties. She won’t respond to anyone. Not even Dr. Bebbington.”
    “Lucy has seized upon an idea,” he says. “Until she works it through there is nothing we can do. She is fixated by it.”
    Landelle doesn’t like the