THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

And male ego, being what it was, meant he’d never admit to not knowing.
    Instead he frowned even more and reached for a basket on the floor. He pulled two puce-looking dried flowers out, tossed those in his bowl then continued crushing that with the leaves. He eyed her again, trying to decide something. When he finally made up his mind, he said, “I’m from the healing house. But I’m not called whatever you are calling me.”
    “Why not?”
    He paused in thought. “There are many names for what I do, but I have not studied them all.”
    Odd answer. Who were these people? But no matter how much effort it took, she had to keep the conversation going, hoping to find out something useful. “I was born in China. Hong Kong, but we moved around a lot.”
    Digesting that for a moment, he asked, “ Your home?”
    “No.”  Her neck muscles ached, getting tight like her arms, but she didn’t want to stop the tentative truce. That much she’d learned from her dad. The number of real discussions with him could be measured on the fingers of one hand, but if she did get him to talk, she made darn sure she kept him talking.
    Jaxxson pondered a few seconds then asked, “If you’re not tek-nah-tee, where are you from?”
    Her heart did a double bounce at the word “if.”  Here was a chance to convince him she wasn’t tek-nah-tee and open the door for his friends to consider that Tony and Rayen might not be either.
    She carefully explained, “I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico for now, but my dad consults all over the world so I’ve lived everywhere–Berlin, Dubai, Singapore. What about you?”
    The silence that met her words raised hairs along her neck. The intensity of his stillness sent her pulse skyrocketing and with each hard pump of her heart she could swear she felt the infection spread.
    She started breathing in shorter, rougher gasps.
    Jaxxson grabbed a handful of his mixture again, sandwiching it between his palms. He shook his head as if grappling with something he couldn’t comprehend. “I live in City Four.”
    She shook her head. A city called by a number? “Four?”
    As if reading her mind again he explained, “Yes, YEG/4.”
    What was he talking about? Had she heard him right? Her eyes blurred then cleared. She wheezed a breath in and out.
    He squatted down in front of her, real concern showing on his face for the first time. “I have to rub this on your wrists at the infection origin. Right now.”
    That meant touching her. She swallowed past her dry lips, and her fear. “No. Give me the bowl. I’ll do it.”
    “How will you do that with fingers that refuse to work?”
    She didn’t have an answer for him. Her head was splitting and it was getting harder and harder to swallow.
    “This will not work without my touch,” he added.
    “Why?” 
    “You’re serious? Were you born of this millennium?”
    Pain blazed through her. She snapped at him. “Of course not, I was born in...” Her chest wouldn’t expand. She forced out, “1997.”
    His eyes widened as he whispered, “Not possible.”
    “Oh, really? When were you born...uhggg...”  She flailed her arms at her neck, unable to reach her throat.
    Jaxxson reached for her, his face ripped with anxiety and anger. “ You lie. Who are you? Don’t close your eyes! ”
    His fingers latched tight onto one of her wrists. 
    She tried to protest, but couldn’t. Words snagged in her closing throat. Her vision blurred. Pain raged through her wrist, her whole body. She jerked her arm, but couldn’t pull away and started falling back, back, back into a bottomless void.
    Jaxxson’s bewildered thoughts burst into her mind.
    She lies.
    1997 is impossible.
    I was born in 2162.
     

CHAPTER 19
     
    I stalked behind Zilya who followed Etoi as Callan led all of us through another tunnel in the green fog that protected the village. The air seemed to have thickened, clawing at my skin and making each breath labored, even though we were not yet in the jungle.
    Zilya had traded her queenly robes for a leaner, two-piece look similar to Etoi’s. The tops covered their breasts and tied at the necks. The bottom parts stopped mid-thigh. Pants...no, I’d heard them called shorts.
    Where? At the school? Or somewhere else? 
    The material hugged their bodies like soft deerskin.
    But deerskin was tan colored. Not spotted like a leopard.
    Leopards have spots. If that was correct, more fragmented memories and knowledge were sifting through the black hole in