When All is Null and Void

Chapter Twelve

Titus spent twenty minutes in agonizing dread at the thought of sliding a shirt over his shoulders. When he had done it, grunting and cursing the whole way, he hobbled out of his bedroom and into the hallway. His wrist Holo said it was nearly noon, which meant he'd missed breakfast with his mom. He hadn't been paying attention when he'd Hopped home the night before. He had a gap of nearly a day to account for, and she didn't appreciate when he missed their breakfasts. But he needed to make sure Peggy wouldn't out him before he could deal with anything else.

Which is how he found himself sneaking into the lab in the basement, at a time when his mom easily could have been there. The door swung open for him, and he nodded tersely at a few lab technicians who gave him half waves. He'd bribed them early on to say nothing to his mother. She didn't need to know when he visited Natalee.

Peggy was fixated over a microscope and Titus didn't hear Titus walk up. When she did notice his looming shadow, her shoulders jerked and the glass slide fell to the floor with a crash. "Titus!" she hissed. Her hand twitched on the metal table at her hip. "You scared me."

"Whose blood was that?" Titus asked, noting the bit of brick red substance on slivers of the broken slide.

"Caleb's," she said stiffly. "Rhea—your mom—and I haven't been able to figure out how he isn't susceptible to Void sickness. He's not a child of Timewalkers. We know this. And it isn't in his DNA."

"Typical chosen one," Titus mumbled. Peggy nodded at him, brow furrowed when she suddenly glanced up. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to thank you..." he trailed off as a lab tech walked by and smacked him on the shoulder by way of greeting. Titus barely contained a whimper, and his knees wobbled.

"You don't need to thank me," Peggy said. She walked away from Titus, but he followed on her heels.

"That wasn't the only reason I came to find you," Titus said.

Peggy halted so suddenly Titus bumped into her solid back hard enough to send a dart of pain down his own. He winced, biting his lip.

"You can't tell my mom," he whispered, placing a hand on her forearm. "You can't."

She yanked her arm away. "I'm not going to tell your mother." She leaned in to look at his face. "We need to get rid of those bruises. Follow me."

Titus stood for a moment, dumbfounded. When Peggy turned her head to look at him, her eyes flashed with warning. He followed her to a back room where she was already pulling a salve from a metal drawer on the wall when he walked in. When she started to dab it on his cheeks, Titus said, "Why?"

Peggy clucked her tongue impatiently. "You and I both know that Rhea would take your ring in an instant if she knew how much danger you were in. If she even had an inkling of what you looked like last night."

She was quiet long enough Titus was about to ask why she even cared. She shushed him.

"If you weren't a Timewalker, that would mean your mom would be worrying about the Void leaks all by herself. That's too much pressure. She can't do it alone."

Titus nodded. "I understand," he said. "Thanks." He had walked halfway across the lab before Peggy touched his elbow.

"Be more careful," she said. "We may have Caleb now, but you're still her son and that means more than you think."

She let him walk out without a word of reply. The stiffness in his back and legs was painfully obvious as he walked up the stairs to the first floor. Woozy with discomfort Titus made his way back to his room. He'd thought about going to get food, but the very thought of taking anything tossed his stomach. As he slowly made his way up the grand staircase to the second floor, he pleaded silently for his mom not to come storming into the foyer. He knew if he could last twelve more hours, he would be fine. The healing process from the stitches worked faster than they had a hundred years ago.

But providence didn't seem to be in his favor.

"Titus?" came his mom's voice from the front door.

He turned, quickly blinking pain induced tears from his eyes. He smiled, but quickly dropped it when pain pounded against his neck.

"Are you all right?" Her eyes probed Titus as he stood, refusing to budge, beads of sweat dribbling down his face. She always knew when something was up. It was her very nature to pick up on those things. Titus cursed it.

"I'm not feeling very well," he replied weakly. "I was going to go back to bed."

She walked up the stairs to meet him, and Titus praised whoever had orchestrated this moment for keeping him from moving too much. Rhea felt his forehead, slick with sweat. "You don't feel hot." She frowned.

"I think it's just closing the Void leak," he said, his knees starting to shake the longer he stood. "I just need to rest, I think."

It was a moment before she nodded. A slow, terse inclination of her chin that said she wasn't at all sure she believed him. "Take a shower," she said. "The steam should help." She touched his cheek with her cool, smooth hand and swept up the stairs. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Wait, mom," Titus said, even though he knew he should let her go. "How'd it go with Caleb?" he held onto the banister for extra support.

She smiled at the top of the steps. "Very good."

Titus nodded, and then he waited for her to disappear from sight before beginning the trek up the stairs again. He was slow, and when he finally made it to his room, he gently eased onto his bed stomach first. Titus closed his eyes and tried to think of anything else besides the throbbing in his back muscles and the itchiness of the ointment Peggy had applied to his face.