Chapter 80: Chapter 25: Know you are

> “‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked them, holding up the red rock. The girl nodded. ‘It is a Philosopher’s Stone.’”

“Pull,” a man shouted gruffly behind me and a few seconds later, a gray pigeon flew into view about 10 yards ahead and above me. I raised my gun, sited the target, and fired. The poor bird fell to the earth, a puff of dust erupting in its wake.

“Pull,” the man said again, and this time, it was two birds. I made short work of them once again and the batch after that and the one after that, too. I was handed a different rifle at some point, and we repeated the exercise. Then a third. Then a fourth. I felt like that upstart Annie Oakley must have when she bested her future husband after 25 shots. Before I could get too proud of myself, I felt a wet cloth being wrapped over my eyes and tied around my head.

“What in the…” I began to say in a mixture of my voice and someone else’s, but the man suddenly spun me in a circle and then knocked my legs out from under me. The gun dropped from my hands as I fell, and I tasted blood in my mouth a moment after my face hit the dirt. The whole world was black, and I was reminded of the blindfold that had stolen my sight on my first walk to Guild headquarters. I wanted to scream, to escape from the nightmare, but my body had other ideas.

My hands reached out for the gun, and finding it, I pushed myself back to my feet. I waited for the call signaling the final round of birds, but all I heard was a deafening silence. After a few minutes, though, everything changed, and the symphony of the meadow started singing in my ears. It took a little bit to separate out the sound I was looking for, but I found it soon enough, and with my newly honed senses guiding my limbs, I aimed and fired.

The first bird met an untimely end and then the next and then the next. I would have continued on all day had the man not grabbed my shoulder and then unwrapped the dampening cloth from my eyes.

“Well done, Erica, well done,” said the man, who had a worn face, a voluminous salt and pepper beard, and a pile of firearms sprawled around his feet.

“Thank you, Hector,” I said, again with that combined voice. I desperately wanted to ask for a mirror to see whose body I was inhabiting, but found that I was only a passive visitor in whatever fantasy I had stumbled into.

“Now be a good lass and help me carry this arsenal back to the ‘stead. Your husband already thinks it strange for you to be learning the skill from me. Let’s not give him any other ideas.”

“Certainly,” I said, bending down to pick up one of the smaller rifles. Before I could make any further progress, the man called Hector, who was now visibly shaking, signaled for me to crouch down behind the bramble, and I complied. I closed my eyes, and again the auditory world revealed itself to me. The footsteps of the interloper were far away, but grew closer to our hiding spot as we huddled in silence. I waited patiently for the signal and when Hector tapped me on the shoulder three times, I rose from the ground in one smooth motion, opened my eyes, and fired.

I walked over to the man I had shot in the middle of the chest, the smell of powder wafting around my curly hair. He was clutching the dripping red wound close to his heart with one hand and I saw that in his other was a very large dagger. I stepped on his sternum with my left boot, and he screamed, the blade falling free from his fingers. Its handle was still warm when I picked it up and as I plunged it into his abdomen, I …

… was sopping wet in the Guild library, my body involuntarily shivering. I looked over at Ty, who was holding a metal bucket and grinning with that stupid trademark teenage smile.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“What. The. Actual. F-”

“Keep your voice down, Jen,” she said. “We’re in a library.”

She handed me a blanket that had appeared from somewhere and it was like being curled up in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s day. I was half-expecting a piping hot mug of cocoa, but the only thing Ty offered me was another silver bead.

“No, thank you,” I said. “Not until you tell me what the hell just happened!”

“Congratulations!” she said. “You are now a proficient marksman … err, woman.”

“What are you talking about? I swallowed that stupid bead you forced into my mouth, and the next thing I remember is you dumping that water on me.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Can you just, for once, be straight with me? What did you do to me?”

Ty shook her head.

“Seeing is believing,” she said. “I know a good range in Flatiron. Let’s go.”

----------------------------------------

I stared at the paper target, whose bullseye was now full of holes. My hands ached and my shoulder would probably be black-and-blue in the morning from the recoil. But the biggest pain was the cognitive dissonance in my head at my newly acquired shooting skills.

“See,” said Ty as I exited the booth. “You’re a natural.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’ve never fired a gun before. And yet…”

“And yet, the electrum did its job.”

“How?”

“You sure you want to know? What if I told that you by swallowing a jar of electrum that you could gain an immense assortment of skills without the tens of thousands of hours of practice? Wouldn’t that be enough?”

I thought about how I felt a few moments ago in the booth. I had picked up the gun in a certain way, sited the target for a certain number of seconds, and pressed the trigger in with a certain cadence. All of these things I had never done before. But someone had.

“Whose memory was it?”

Ty cocked an eyebrow at my question and I knew I had the right of it.

“You never cease to surprise me, Ms. Jacobs. A woman named Erica, if I’m not mistaken. She went on to kill dozens in the Spanish-American War as the top member of the Lady Sharpshooters, an all-female brigade of … well, sharpshooters, that officially never existed.”

“But, I don’t remember anything,” I said.

“Your muscles do, though. Such is the marvel that is electrum.”

I closed my eyes and tried to think about my knowledge of sharpshooting, of how to properly clean a rifle, of how to stab someone in the precise way such that they bled out the quickest, of how …

“Stop,” said Ty. “Trying to remember what you forgot will lead to all sorts of headache. Electrum is different from nemosyne in several ways. First, the memories can be replicated over and over again. That bead you swallowed earlier? If I wanted to, I could make another copy and relive the same five years of Erica’s life.”

“Five years! You’re telling me I was trapped in that memory for five years?”

“Yes, and look how proficient a killer you’ve become! But thankfully, the actual memories fade away upon reawakening. Which is why your brain hasn’t turned to mush and why you don’t want to wear a ridiculously long skirt right now.”

Even though she told me not to, my mind started scrambling, trying to recall the details of this woman whose life I had lived. But it was like grasping at straws dipped in grease and then dunked in oil. Any sliver of detail that floated to the surface of my consciousness immediately slipped away into the ether.

“So I just have five years’ worth of random skills from the woman now? And I’m going to find out I know kung fu the next time someone tries to attack me in a dark alleyway?

“No, of course not. That would be quite stupid and inefficient. And sorry, you don’t know kung fu. Yet. But each electrum bead comes with this handy-dandy card of the skills contained inside.”

“Show me,” I said.

Ty handed me an index card with Courier text printed on the front.

“Bead 5136:

Riflery.

Dagger and knife combat.

Crocheting.

Length: 1912 days.

Time: 37 minutes.

Time period: 1882-87.”

I flipped over the card, expecting a longer explanation, but there was nothing else.

“Is this a joke?” I asked, slipping the card into my back pocket. “‘Knife combat’? That’s super helpful. How the heck am I supposed to fight with a knife if I can’t remember a minute of my 1912 days spent reliving this Erica’s person’s life?”

“When the situation arises, you’ll know,” said Ty. “Also, if you feel like making me a scarf by next winter, I wouldn’t say no.”