The Fifth Healer

47.

I gasp as I skim the remainder of the letter.

Please believe us: this is not an arbitrary order. We aim to protect you. The Chronarchy itself prohibits such dalliances, but the rules of this guild are particularly severe; the punishment is retromancy for both partners. Non-consensual retromancy is a barbaric punishment, a temporal magic that reverts a person's very experience of time, essentially wiping their memory.

Is this what happened to me? Was I caught in a relationship...last week? Is there someone else out there?

Retromancy, in other contexts, can be a useful tool. For example, any initiate who departs or fails the trials will be retromanced. A necessary action to protect the secrets of the order-or so the Chronarchy believes, though our personal feelings are more nuanced. They won't tell recruits about the retromancy, of course. If a recruit knew they were going to lose the knowledge they'd learned of our magic, they might attempt to record the secrets in a media that would survive the memory wipe-written on a page, for example. Or on their skin.

The letter goes on with more admonishments to avoid "romantic entanglements," but I've pretty much stopped paying attention by the time the words evaporate, blinking out like a light.

Just like that, everything changes.

I fold the paper and stuff it into my pants, staring blankly up at the shower head. Feeling suddenly weak in the knees, I let my back slide down the frosted glass until I am sitting on the floor, where I crumple into the fetal position.

Just when I'd discovered Ainsley had feelings for me, wham, I'm pummeled in the gut with this prohibition against those very feelings. If we are found out (could they already know?), we'll both have our memories wiped. I was lucky when I woke up in the hospital because I had the letter. But this punishment would be different. If you wake up without any memories and no letter with magic disappearing ink to explain things, that's a bit like death, isn't it? A body isn't what makes you you. Having your mental history erased, being left as a mere sack of meat and bones, is to lose, well, everything,

Thinking about Ainsley on the other side of the glass, I feel suddenly nauseous. How can I explain that the perfect kiss which almost just happened can never be permitted to happen again? And how to tell her without shouldering her with knowledge that would put her in danger?

I step out of the bathroom stall. Ainsley is sitting on the bed, her knees pulled to her chest. She looks up at me, her green eyes reflecting light from the reflecting pool. Her eyes also reflect hurt, the hurt from me walking out and leaving her alone on the bed. But that's nothing compared to the hurt I'll have to deal her next.

I grope for words, closing my eyes and lowering my head.

"So..." she says. "We gonna talk about what just happened?"

I nod, opening my eyes and looking up at her. Her round face and button nose are like a magnet pulling on my lips. There's a sharp hook through my heart, tied to a taut line being reeled in, tugging me toward her.

But I can't. For her sake, I must rip out all the hooks.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"For what?"

For what I'm about to do.

I shake my head.

"Nikolai, for what?" She sits up, dropping her feet to the floor. "What's going on?"

I bite my lower lip. This is to protect her memories, including those of us together. Not that she'll remember me positively after this.

"This is-sorry, this was a mistake," I say.

Frustration rises in her voice. "What was? Let's talk this through. Please. Nikolai."

I feel like I might cry, knowing the pain I have to cause her. "I'm afraid...I'm afraid I just don't have the same feelings for you that you do for me."

Hurt is written across her face, as surely as if she'd been slapped. I have to avert my gaze. It's too painful for me to look.

"Really, I'm sorry," I say, turning to the door and walking out.

Reaching the library, I take a deep breath. I find Niles by himself, wearing a backpack.

"You coming with Dr. Khan?" he asks when I get to the bottom of the stairs.

Couldn't Ainsley and I just leave now instead, and be together? No-she'd still have cancer. The best thing for her is to stay and heal herself, and the only way she can do that safely is if she and I aren't together. I swallow, thinking of how painful it will be to be around Ainsley from here on out. How much I'll long for her, but how deeply I'll have the bury that longing.

"Yes, I'm coming," I say.

Niles grins. "Oh, that's great."

"You're going, too, I take it?"

"Well, if you are, definitely!"

I blink. "Why do I factor into your decision?" I ask. I mean, I barely know this fellow.

"I have never had a group of friends like you guys," says Niles. "I don't want us to split up."

I nod, unsure how to respond.

"Do you know if Wally and Ainsley are coming?"

The mention of her name is like a needle in my chest. I need to get it together if I'm going to keep my cool around her.

"Ainsley, I think so," I say, forcing myself to hide my emotions. No one can know how I feel about her. "I haven't talked to Wally, but I have a feeling being told he was a Fifth was confirmation of what he had always suspected about himself. So I'm guessing yes."

Wally arrives a few seconds later with a gym bag over his shoulder, but at 12:12, no Ainsley. A bolt of panic hits me, a vial of injected adrenaline. Has she changed her mind? Did my abrupt end to our moment in the cell scare her off?

Dr. Khan and Sloan emerge from the tunnel. Come on, Ainsley. This is your chance to get healed. Even if you want to go home right after that, you must at least give yourself that gift of health.

What if she passed out? Could she be lying on the floor back in the cell? I look up at Dr. Khan. She doesn't seem the sort to wait for stragglers.