sands of fate keep shifting (part XXVI)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part XXV.)

The time travel module in the fringe lab weirded her out. No matter how much she tried, no matter how cavalier Emilly and Hiro seemed about it, the ramifications of time travel left her with a deep sense of foreboding and unease.

But here she was. She'd had a portion of the clone's brain tissue sent her for resonance testing. The testing protocol was built around the literature references Emilly had unearthed in the Gearhaven library. References to a leopard god, myths and legends that should not have been there, had not been there before, according to the Duchess.

To that she'd added the information Lina had managed to glean from the ship logs on the mysteriously returned Grey Area and the useful data from the chip extracted from dead Hiro's brain. Not dead Hiro. Dead clone. Remember. Hiro is still out there.

Double checking her numbers, she completed the connections and began the test. She gasped, reaching to steady herself as the binding runes on her back grew hot.

"What...?"

The air crackled around her, the scent of ozone rising. Justine went down to one knee, gorge rising before the sensations fell away as quickly as they'd appeared. She rose shakily to her feet to look at the results surrounding her on the holoscreens. It took a while for everything to come into focus, her vision swimming.

What just happened?

(Continued in part XXVII.)