Cristo wasn't ready to think straight yet.

When he stepped out of the link from the library into the dark solarium, the solarium was mysteriously empty. He should link somewhere far away, but his head was foggy. Somehow the guardia stayed on his heels whether he ran or linked to safety. He stopped thinking and kept running.

Everywhere he ran to, someone ran after him.

It was storming outside; above and around the solarium's dome, the cascades of turbulent snowflakes spiraled and pelted the glass like bullets before melting, distracting Cristo for a second, and as he looked up, the sky was illuminated by one lightning strike after another.

The thunder cracks came more and more quickly, and he stood watching the world end feeling responsible, though it was such a smaller sin than murder.

The snowflakes turned to ice and shot at the dome, slightly terrifying in the dark under panes of breakable glass. For purposes of self-preservation he turned to leave. Cristo turned back to the doors through which he had come, and a guardia in uniform came in with his gun drawn.

Following his instincts to flee, not the logic to use his gnomon to teleport, Cristo didn't get a chance to turn around and run; the thought of flight only just occurred to him before someone — an unseen guardia, some other shooter — fired into his back.

From behind the bullet of starlight punctured his jacket, shirt, skin, entered flesh, the momentum spun him off, punching through muscle, grazing possibly vital organs, and erupted through the front of his body, where blood began to blossom, glinting shiny on his black jacket and dark on his white collared shirt, and he threw himself forward in a lunge to keep from falling, hand inside his jacket pocket, left leg holding him up as he continued to careen forward and had to take another step with his right.

He looked forward, leaned forward, faced Laio Cytheria seeing her holding the fired gun aloft. Cytheria, he saw, was the shooter. More shots rang off, and the woman in black dress ran toward him, shooting, in long rapid strides, angry vindication twisting her old stoic face into an apathetic mask, and Cristo's hands snapped together, the gnomon clasped in his left, unable to move either as if they were tied to the wrist, and then his legs snapped together by the ankles, he started to fall backwards and finally he linked while falling over and when he finally hit the ground, landing on his back, it was on the floor of Stephen's living room, where Aurelian Stephen Potestas stood over him.

I couldn't believe it. It felt as if the stars had brought me a present, even though I had never seen flawless experimental evidence to support scientifically the existence of that kind of divine intervention or destination.

Cristo lay at my feet, Nova's murderer, allegedly, tied up and already bleeding to death on my floor.

I didn't mind that he was bleeding all over the carpet. It was too perfect.

I didn't need experimental evidence to see that the past was rejecting the time traveler, and to see that I was only the stars' agent in achieving that end — but it wasn't the stars that had put a hole in Nova's skull, allegedly, it was Cristo, the stranger from the future.

Cristo wriggled on the floor, spilling some more drops of blood, and called to me for help. He held a long shiny wand in his hand that I could only guess was what allowed him to teleport here without getting his bleeding body through a portal, and the binds on his hands and feet would come apart on their own in a second or two, and I hadn't thought about what I was going to do, not that I had any choice.

A confession would be nice, however. I wanted a confession.

I took a deep breath and let him unbind his hands with the gnomon he was holding. He staggered and he stood up. He pointed the gnomon at his side and the bleeding stopped; under the red-stained shirt, sinews would knit back together, new tissue, muscle fibers and skin cells would grow in a second; his flesh would regenerate better than new. Cristo grimaced while he regrew part of his body.

He said something, but I didn't hear the words.

A confession was what I wanted, but I couldn't speak, just like I couldn't think, whether because of the shock pain fury I didn't feel but should have felt but instead I was numb, or because the stars willed me not to talk to him, and I couldn't work my voice to tell Cristo that Guardia Captain Valda was behind him.

Cristo wondered briefly why Stephen was just staring at him, but the wound drew his attention back quickly.

The healing process hurt. The wound itched and cramped and felt full to bursting and overwhelming, with heat, and something that wasn't heat but there wasn't much better to compare it to. Pressure, maybe. Like volcanic pressure. No, that was being dramatic, it wasn't that bad, but he grimaced anyway.

Stephen still hadn't replied, which wasn't a good sign, he couldn't decide if he was safe here.

"It's like they're all converging on me," he continued. "Suddenly everyone's willing to kill me: the guardia, Roman Valda, Calo Gloriam, Laio Cytheria. They don't have good enough motivation to resort to murder. It's all to keep me from interfering with history. Something's trying to stop me and it's gathering strength.

"We have to get all of these pawns off my back or I won't be able to change a thing."

Stephen's voice began to work. "I thought you said we couldn't stop Marius becoming president of Constellation."

"We may not be able to stop him from winning the election, but we can stop him from taking immortality — life itself — from his opposition a hundred years from now. I haven't done enough. I think I can get Milana back, but then will Diana stand up to President Marius? I'm so close to persuading Claudia Solace he's an evil mastermind, but Laio Cytheria needs to be persuaded too." He looked down toward the fresh young skin covering the hole in his body. "Yes, she's trying to kill me, but her motivation's weak. There's more I can do . . . if they're going to kill me I need to finish—"

"Weak motivations?" said Stephen. "Like that you murdered someone she cares about?"

Cristo gave him a sad, dry smile. Stephen gave himself away. He just couldn't help himself. He had also glanced behind Cristo, which was all the warning Cristo needed that someone was there.

From behind, Captain Valda knocked Cristo's hand with the gnomon the half instant before Cristo linked from the penthouse apartment; the gnomon left his fingers a half instant later and the ground it shot onto was covered a foot deep in a heap of thick, heavy, perfectly unbroken fresh snow; the gnomon broke the perfect snow and left a cracked open crevice when it came to land.

Cristo fell into the same thick snow on hands and knees, and when he went after it crawling, a  blade, however unlikely, turned up in his face.

He blinked a couple of times at the freezing cold metal of the blade of an archaic weapon he'd only seen in books or behind glass cases in museums.

Without turning around, he said, "Am I about to die in a sword fight?"

Thank you for choosing Stars Rise as your reading entertainment. Have a lovely day or night, wherever you are!⭐️