“Be quiet!” I hiss. But no one is. They’re shouting and yelling. Quinn and Siora are staring at each other. Siora has a cut under her left eye, and Quinn points to it, says something. Then I realize it, what Taras is saying. We’ve gone back in time? My head pounds, and I shake it. That’s not possible. Things like that don’t happen.
And Taras thinks I’ve done it.
“No. It’s not me.” My fingers crack as I flex them, and I look down at my feet. Both are bare, but my right one’s so much more injured—from the Dark Void. “This isn’t down to my powers.”
“But your body is… Child, your Seer powers? Are you still missing some? The ones that went to Raleigh? Is the hole in your powers still there?”
I check. It’s there. “Yes.”
“Then your body and soul have not reverted.” Taras frowns. “You have not gained back the powers Raleigh obtained from you. Marta’s stories say Seer power cannot just disappear: it has to exist. Raleigh must still have your powers, despite this time-manipulation you’ve orchestrated.”
“But I haven’t done it.” My voice is louder, seems to echo. I run a hand through my hair, gulp, then I tune into my powers, try to find it. Time-manipulation? But there’s nothing there. “I haven’t got a time-manipulation power. I—” My words snap off, and I stare at them. “What if it’s Raleigh? He’s got my powers. He’s done this…he has to have. He’s messing with us. Playing.” My breathing gets faster, and I stretch my hand out, summon the white light.
“In which case it may only be us who have been affected,” Taras says. “And Raleigh has not gone back in time…so he still has the ability to use your time-manipulation power. But the power is still yours, child, whoever uses it, and that is why your body, and your powers, remained the same as they were when this started.”
“Or it’s not Raleigh using Seven’s powers, or Sev herself, and it’s happened to everyone,” Corin suggests. “The Enhanced included. This world is unstable, you’ve said that enough times. What if that’s what’s causing it?”
Taras looks grave. “It is possible—if the timelines are collapsing, and the infrastructure’s gone, time-jumps like this may occur. But a jump on such a big scale, affecting everyone, would wreak havoc everywhere. I would expect more things to be wrong, damaged now, here.” His eyes narrow on me. “And Seven’s body would’ve reverted too—collapsing timelines would wield more power than even she has, and she wouldn’t be the center, be untouchable. And, if Raleigh and the Enhanced had gone back in time, Seven should have her powers back. And she hasn’t. No, this is localized to us, I’m sure. Child, you are the epicenter, whether you have used the power or not.”
My head pounds, and everyone’s looking at me. I stare back at them. Siora and Quinn take a quick step backward. “Well, however this has happened, we need to defend ourselves. Whether Raleigh’s playing with us or not, and whatever’s happened with the timelines—we’re in an Enhanced town.”
Acid burns my throat as my stomach expels it. No warning. I cough, choking as the contents of my stomach splatters on the smooth floor.
Splatter. Splatter. Splatter. A rhythm. Like the footsteps, the steps that are coming closer, closer, closer.
Footsteps.
Raleigh.
No.
But he’s approaching, I know he is. He’s not going to leave us time to come up with a plan.
“He’s coming!” I yell, scrabbling to the side. My hand touches the wall. The wall with the moss and damp.
It’s the same pattern as the slime. The Dark Void warning was about this? Of course, the warnings are about the Enhanced. The slime represented them?
The footsteps stop, right outside the door to this room.
“Raleigh’s here!” I yell. “Taras, Elf, your powers! Get them r—”
But I can’t finish my words—my body won’t let me. It cuts off my tongue, and I turn to the door, bracing myself, hands in front of me, white light ready.
The door swings open.
People. A mass of them. I blink fast, my eyes smarting. They’re dressed in furs and padded coats and hats. So many of them. More stand behind, but dressed differently. Pale cotton shirts, dark colored shorts, hiking boots, sunglasses on their heads.
Eyes, Untamed.
“Viktoriya! Dominika!” Taras rushes forward, and, before I can do anything, try and warn him, he’s in the doorway, reaching for those at the front of the crowd. But what would I warn him of? I don’t know…but this… “Marina! And Vasily and….”
Taras’s voice drowns out. Raleigh’s not here? Not one of them is Enhanced?
These are Untamed—properly Untamed. My powers can feel it. No illusions.
My head pounds. Everything pounds, hurts as I stare at Viktoriya. She’s shorter than I remembered—a lot shorter—and her pink face peers out from under her fur hood. She looks at me uncertainly. Of course, she doesn’t know what I look like.
The people behind the reindeer herders step forward, one woman in the lead. She’s in her late fifties, has shoulder-length blond-gray hair, and a bison tattoo on her face. I stare at her, think of the Zharat, of their Seers’ tattoos. She’s a Seer? But she’s not Zharat, I can tell that.
“What is this?” she demands, her voice rough and gravelly. “What’s going on—”
“Melissa!” Yani shouts. He pushes past me, stares at the woman.
“Sev?” Corin reaches for me. “What the hell is going on?”
I grab hold of his hand, cling to him. I’m shaking. My body sags against his, and his arms go around me. This is… The reindeer herders are here? But they’re…they’re nowhere near us…wherever we are. And this other group—Melissa’s group? The one Bea and Yani were with—where the Seers died when the Dream Land was destroyed? But Melissa’s a Seer, she’s got the tattoo, and she’s here. These people are alive, Untamed.
I exhale slowly, start counting them all—thirty, forty—but I lose count. So easy to do because everyone’s moving, and I don’t recognize most of the herders, or Melissa and her people, and I’m sure I’m counting some twice.
“We woke up in a room over there,” Marina says. “What is going on? Taras, you just disappeared. We thought spirits had taken you. And I broke my wrist two days ago, but now it’s fine.”
“Disappeared?” the tattooed woman—Melissa—says. “People cannot just disappear.”
“But we did,” Yani says, and then Bea’s behind him, her eyes wide, her hands up by her face. “We suddenly found ourselves with Seven and—”
“We thought you two had run away.” Melissa’s gaze is hard, and she takes her sunglasses from her head, runs the arms of them through her fingers.
Taras’s face cracks into a grin. “We’re uniting. It’s working.” He looks at me, pure joy on his face. “You’re doing it, Seven. And back in time too, that’s interesting. But it’s working.”
“No,” I say, and I hold onto Corin tighter. “I’m not. We’ve got to get out of here. This isn’t safe.” Why haven’t they realized? Why is Taras smiling? “We’re in an Enhanced town. And they’re coming. Come on, we’ve got to move.” I think of what Quinn and Siora reported. “They’re coming for us, whether we’ve gone back in time or not, and they’re killing us now, not even attempting conversion.”
“I—I can’t.” Esther’s voice is strained, heavy. I turn and see she’s doubled over, her arms supporting her stomach. She swears, and Taras bristles.
Then I see the blood.
I wobble, hear Corin’s breathing quicken.
Marina and Dominika rush to her side, firing questions at her, and then a man from Melissa’s group joins them, says he’s a healer.
One of the reindeer women points at Elf. “Get towels. Be quick!”
Elf stares at them. “Where do I get towels from? We don’t know—”
“Gods, just someone do something,” Esther pants. She looks up at me, her eyes locking onto mine. “Do something—sort the time stuff out. I’m not giving birth again.”<
br />
Do something? But what? I haven’t done this. I look to Taras, but he’s talking to someone else, and Esther screams at me again.
“Get hot water too,” Marina says, shooing her hands at Quinn and Bea. “We’ll need hot water. Lots of it for a birthing room. We need a birthing room that’s blessed for—”
“We’re in an Enhanced town,” I yell, staring at them. I step away from Corin, throw my arms up. “This isn’t safe! It’s—”
“No!” Esther shrieks. “Sort the time out! Make this stop!”
“Give us space,” Dominika snaps. “All of you, out.”
My head buzzes, and I look at Esther, see the pain on her face. My chest tightens. Protect her. I have to. Okay. I look at Taras, Elf, Melissa.
“Right. Four Seers. We can do this.” I squeeze my hands into tight fists, then look down at my bare feet. Shoes. I need shoes. I look around and—
“I ain’t a Seer,” Melissa says.
“What?” My heart thumps. “You’ve got the bison tattooed on your face.”
She grins. “A dare when I was fifteen. I ain’t a Seer. But what’s going on?”
My breath whooshes from me. “Okay. Three Seers. We need to guard the room, stop the Enhanced from getting in here. Esther, can I have your shoes?”
She doesn’t answer—her face is so screwed up with pain I don’t think she hears me, but Dominika pulls her boots off and slides them across the floor to me. They’re a little tight, but better than being bare foot.
I thank her, then tell everyone else we need to go. I head to the door, feel strange, like none of this is real. It can’t be happening.
“Is Raleigh here?” Darkness fills Corin’s eyes. He looks pale.
I shrug. What do I know? But he has to be, right? We’re in… Oh Gods. He’s been waiting for us to come to him. For me to come to him. And…and I have—whether it was him or the spirits who brought us here, I’m still here. He’s going to use me—if he still needs me. If I haven’t already given him everything he needs to win the war.
And the Untamed. Taras’s people. Melissa’s group. They’re here too. What if we’re the last? We may have united, but I didn’t do it. And now we’re here, and Raleigh will think this is my surrender. That we’re all going to convert—so Corin lives…
And the Enhanced win.
I swear under my breath.
We need to get out, need to leave. But one look at Esther tells me that’s not going to happen any time soon.
They all follow me, apart from Marina, Dominika, the healer man, and Esther, who’s still yelling and screaming. Bea’s at the back of our group, hovering a little, looking back at Esther, but Yani takes her hand, and she comes with us.
I shut the door, look around. A corridor, crammed with all of us. I start to count us again, but everyone’s moving, and my numbers are blurring.
“Hey, you!” Melissa points at me. “You seem to know the most, so you’d better start dishing out instructions.”
“Right. The Enhanced are going to come here,” I yell, trying to make my voice loud enough for everyone to hear—but not so loud the Enhanced here. “We need to be ready. They’re going to get here at any moment. We have to keep them out of that room.” I swallow hard. “They’re not converting all of us anymore.” I glance at Siora and Quinn. “Some of the Untamed are being murdered. They may try and kill some of us straight away. We’ve got to fight. Right, is it just three Seers, me included?”
It is.
I grit my teeth.
“What weapons have we got?” Corin’s voice is loud. Too loud. Makes me wince.
Yani holds up the Luger, and Bea’s got a knife.
“We ain’t got nothin’,” one of the reindeer herders says. “Except our hands.”
“Two knives.” A man in his early twenties, from Melissa’s group, holds them up.
“Okay, right. What about in there?” I point back at the door where Esther and the birthing team are. “Have they got anything?”
“Healer always has a knife,” a young boy behind Melissa says. He’s about eight and he’s holding an even smaller boy against him, arms protective.
“But the Enhanced have weapons,” Corin says. “We steal guns from them. We’re in one of their towns. There’ll be weapons here. We’ve just got to find them.”
“Yes, before they find us.” My skin crawls. Why haven’t they found us already?
Viktoriya’s eyes light up. “We can—”
A scream cuts her off. A man’s scream.
Everyone looks at me.
“Who was that?” a red-haired man with a flannel shirt asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Untamed?” Taras’s eyes flash.
“You think others are here as well?” Elf asks. “Not just us.”
“You used great power, child,” Taras says to me. “You pulled two groups here as well, you could’ve pulled others here too.”
“I didn’t do this though.” My chest feels like it’s going to crack. I haven’t done any of this, not the uniting of our groups, not the time-jump. None of it.
“We were in a separate room to you,” one of the herders says.
“We were too,” Melissa says. “There are probably others in other rooms. You could’ve scattered us throughout the town.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not doing this. I wouldn’t bring us to an Enhanced town.”
“But you are,” Taras says, and he points at me.
I look down, and the air changes, shimmers, and I see many gold threads wrapped around my body. I recoil, move my arm, see the gold threads moving. I follow one of them, see it connecting to one of the reindeer herders.
“What is going on?” Corin asks.
“You’re drawing us together,” Taras says, and then I blink, and the threads fade out of existence. But only for a moment, because I know they’re still there. I can feel them, now I know they’re there.
My mouth dries. I’m doing this?
The scream sounds again.
Untamed.
I know he is.
I’ve brought us into the heart of the enemy’s den? I blink, see Raleigh and his white light. Whoever it is, is being killed.
Siora whimpers.
“Stay here.” I point at Taras, then Yani, Bea, and several of the newcomers who’ve positioned themselves by the door. “Protect the door. Make a defense, whatever, however you can. If any Enhanced come here before I’m back, kill them.”
“Where are we going?” Elf asks. “To find towels and hot water?”
I stare at him. “No. To find the other Untamed. We’ve got more of a chance of finding them if we split up. Uh, two groups—a Seer in each?”
“We don’t need a Seer, we’ve got knives,” Melissa says. “We can split into more groups than two. Easier to find the Untamed out there.”
“But not easier to fight if there’s trouble,” Corin says. “Safety’s in numbers.”
I wince as the scream sounds again. If what Taras says is right, if the gold threads hold true, then I’ve done this, I’ve made it easier for Raleigh to kill us all…brought us together, to him, when the spirits were transporting our group here…but the time-jump? How does that fit in?
My head pounds, I can’t think now, can’t—
From behind the closed door, I hear Esther whimpering.
I look at the rest of the reindeer herders, then at Melissa and her group. “Okay. Divide into groups. At least six or seven in each.” And then we’re doing it.
Three groups. I lead one. Elf and Melissa, the others.
“We’re going to have to kill any Enhanced we see. But quietly, if we can. We get the other Untamed, we bring them here. We all meet back here—as soon as we can.”
“And then what?” Elf’s face is pale.
I click my knuckles. “Then we get out. All of us. We escape.”
I do not like walking through the buildings of an Enhanced town. Even more so when it’s quiet. Too quiet. Save for t
he screams. A man, I think it’s a man. Maybe a teenage boy? But only one person screaming.
So just one Untamed out here? Or are there others, brought to the town as well? By me….
My group treads lightly as we follow the screams. The corridor turns to the left, and I brace myself as we near the corner, sure we’re going to face the Enhanced, any second now.
But we don’t.
I don’t like it. Not one bit.
“It’s too empty.” I take a deep breath. “Where are they?”
Corin touches my shoulder gently.
We keep walking. Apart from Corin, Siora, and Quinn, our group is made up of the reindeer herders. They’re not as big as Corin, but I still feel safer with them around us.
We pass a window, and I look out, see a spirit on the other side, looking in, the storm a backdrop behind. I shudder and divert my gaze.
The man screams again, louder this time. We speed up, shoes slapping the smooth floor and—
The building shakes.
I freeze, my blood ice. Corin grabs my hand, pulls me close to him. We all stop. Stare at each other as the building shakes again. The whole structure moves.
Outside, the wind howls and cries.
My heart thrums in my ears as I stare into the corridor ahead. Something creaks—a horrible sound that grates on my ears—and then there’s a crash. Sounds distant, but a torrent of dust plunges from the ceiling, fills the air in front of me.
“Get back!” I hiss.
We skitter backward.
“Slowly!”
The building’s tremors increase, and my head pounds. How high up are we?
Then I’m back by the window where the spirit was. It’s not there now, and I peer out through the now semi-frosted glass. Outside is in ruins. Wooden planks and blocks of stone are strewn across the ground, far below. Three or four floors below. Trees and shrubs are moving, stretching, battered by the wind. The light is strange, too heavy, dark, but yellow too.
The air thickens with dust, and a flash of light illuminates a huge pile of rubble to the right, near a building. A dozen small tiles rain down, and, even in here, I hear their sounds as they land and break—somehow manage to distinguish them from the roar of the wind. A telegraph pole shakes, its broken wires streaking out like tendrils searching for a new host.
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