Limited Wish (Impossible Times Book 2) by Mark Lawrence

Author:Mark Lawrence [Lawrence, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2019-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

‘The universe is trying to kill you.’ The girl stepped fully into view. ‘And we need to get out of here.’

‘Who are you?’ I picked up the book she had left for me and held it to my chest as if it were some kind of shield.

‘Eva,’ she said. She watched me with bright eyes and an unsettling intensity.

I wasn’t sure how I had mistaken her for Helen. Close up they were quite different. Both brunette, brown eyed, pretty, but hardly twins. ‘I know your name.’ I had to raise my voice above the multitude of buzzers. ‘I want to know who you are . . . Why . . . all this?’ I gestured around at the scene we couldn’t see because of the curtains. ‘And why this?’ I held up the Lewis Carroll book. ‘The book that bites!’

Eva took a seat. Her hands trembled. I cancelled the call button while she gathered herself. All along the ward nurses clattered about, running hither and thither to silence the alarms.

‘Well?’ I raised my voice over the excited chatter of patients and their visitors.

The confidence the girl had worn when she came through the curtain seemed to have deserted her. She looked too pale, as if she were the one who should be lying in a hospital bed. ‘A paradox builds up vast amounts of energy,’ she said. ‘Titanic, world-shattering amounts of energy.’

‘As much as I didn’t like being thrown across the room . . . twice . . . I’d hardly call it world shattering.’ I frowned even as I joked. Why was she so familiar?

‘The spare energy reduces exponentially the closer you are to the paradox event in time. And if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s even smaller.’ She shook her head as if this were all incidental. ‘Look, we need to leave.’

‘I . . .’ I had cancer again. The resurgent memory of Dr Pritchard’s pronouncement closed my throat on the words. Suddenly none of this mattered. The mystery girl, the weird effects, Guilder and his paid goon, Charlie Rust. None of it. ‘I don’t care. You should talk to Demus about it. He’s the one that knows all this stuff. He’s running the show. I just do the sums.’

‘Demus?’ She frowned.

‘Future me. He’s around somewhere . . . Wait, you are from the future, right? Otherwise this has been the anaesthetic talking and you should ignore everything I said.’

‘I’m from a future.’ She stressed the ‘a’. ‘Anyway, I told you, we need to get you out of here.’

‘That would be nice,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m hardly dressed for it.’ I glanced down at my hospital gown, suddenly aware that I’d been undressed while I was unconscious. ‘Also I can barely sit. I’ve got twenty-something stitches in my side.’

‘I stole a wheelchair. It’s just outside the curtain.’

I shook my head. ‘If the universe is trying to kill me then surely a hospital is a good place to be. I’m not leaving this bed without an explanation of why I should.

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