Claim the Void by Kate Sheeran Swed

Author:Kate Sheeran Swed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Sheeran Swed

CHAPTER 18

After spending the day with Champion Borona, during which Shannon had studied the water, the skies, the people, and even the food for any sign of the strangeness she’d noticed with the reflection in the canal, she went back to her room and settled on the floor with her back to the wall, where she spent the night paging through all the photos she’d taken on Pheon. The funeral parade, the council chambers, the guest room, the canals. The mountains. She zoomed in, examining every inch of every photo for another glitch, another sign that something was off in this world.

The mountains shouldn’t have reflected in the water like that. It felt wrong, like a reflection of a reflection.

Even if she could shake the feeling, convince herself that she’d imagined it, she couldn’t reconcile her experience with the people here. So many of them refused to exchange more than a hat tip or a bow. Nearly everyone she approached. Were they real, or were they part of some simulation—snippets of code working in the background? And if so, who had done this?

A good investigator didn’t try to prove her theory. A good investigator took note, collected details, and then put the pieces together. But Shannon couldn’t help feeling that everything here fit together too neatly. Too precisely.

When her pictures revealed nothing, she went through them again. By that time, night had blanketed the city in that eerie almost-darkness, and she rose to stand by the window, ignoring her sore muscles and searching for the source of the ghostly light. Another clue. But what did it mean?

One of the spheres cracked the window for her when she asked, allowing a breath of air to circulate into the room. It smelled like the canals, like the wet stone beside a waterfall. It smelled like sweet fruit and new-to-her spices.

When all else failed, she tried pinching herself. She didn’t wake up in a game console or a water tank, though she did rather feel like she’d stepped into a fantastical drama vid of some kind. For a moment, she almost laughed at herself. Here she was, on an alien planet, spending the day gondola-ing around with an impossibly handsome man and sampling delicacies—and she was half convinced it was all a fabrication.

Maybe it wasn’t a simulation at all. Maybe it was merely culture shock.

She let the thought wash over her. She acknowledged it. She filed it away.

And then she went out.

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