“Yes?” He frowned and lifted a hand to his frames.

You can hear me?

His watch started beeping again as my pulse climbed back to panic range.

Quanta? Shock echoed through his mental voice. You’ve been hiding telepathy this strong?

I wish. My hand sweat where our skin touched. This isn’t coming from you?

No. I’m barely on the spectrum. Tair lifted our twined fingers, and then started to pull back.

Don’t. I couldn’t lose contact yet. I had a sinking feeling I’d pay for this quiet when we finally let go and right now, I’d rather figure out what the hell was going on with us than get bombarded. “I’m fine. Let’s walk.”

Tair helped me upright, his face a mask I couldn’t read. And thank the time deities, I couldn’t read his thoughts, either. At least, not yet.

I hoped that wasn’t where we were headed. What we already had was plenty disturbing because it shouldn’t be possible. If we were actually good at telepathy, then sure.

But we weren’t. It wasn’t tech. And it wasn’t my imagination, either.

Just walking, thousands of details I never should’ve noticed jumped out. A light flickered overhead, and I caught the high-frequency whine as equipment running elsewhere in the building drained the power. I usually wouldn’t hear the noise, let alone know what it meant.

It was like walking into a new world.

Tair’s world. And he was here with me.

We were together, almost like we were joined.

Or paired.

My breath caught. That shouldn’t be possible.

When we hit the next corridor, I tugged him right. Tair knew where we were headed, so I knew—and that meant the worst was true. We’re syncing on a level we shouldn’t be able to sync on.

Unless we were programmed to. His mental voice sounded forced through his teeth.

Eva. My breath shook as I exhaled. I’d lost so many of my own memories between shock treatments, experimental therapies, and trial drugs; I could glimpse back, but it was only glimpsing, and I almost never peeked when what I saw triggered throat-choking memories of the dark years. My childhood had more gaps than solid bits.

One thing I did remember?

Lady Eva’s plan to pair Reds with genetically compatible partners, taking their natural harmony and supercharging it through mods and science stuff that sounded like witchcraft. But Eva was a prodigy. She’d kept me alive as a baby and she could still do things to genes that no one—not even Nagi—could imagine.

I stopped walking so suddenly that one of the guards bumped me.

Tair’s timeghosts dogging me at every step? My fate suddenly tied to his? Only one explanation made sense and the truth made it hard to suck air into my lungs. She really paired us.