Eddy glanced sideways at his deputy. Santi was a reasonable man. If he felt this way…. “I get that you’re uneasy about them. But trust me, these are good kids.”
“What if some of them aren’t? Or if their children aren’t?”
Eddy knew those kids. Not one of them would use their abilities to harm another human being. But Santi had a point. How could they know that someone else, at some point, wouldn’t?
Eddy and Aaron were pretty certain that Jayson was the one who had destroyed Transfer Station and that he’d helped Davian enslave a whole village of people. Sure, maybe Jayson had been used, but even that would prove Santi’s point. Eddy frowned. “So what, would you have them all executed? And Andy and Aaron and Sean too?” Aaron’s youngest had just turned nine. Eddy was like an uncle to him, and the thought of someone doing him harm made Eddy’s hair catch on fire.
Now Santi looked troubled. “No. I mean, of course not.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe find a way to neuter them.”
“Their abilities, or for procreation?”
“Both.”
Eddy growled. “Now you’re sounding like those folks on Old Earth who wanted to keep the ‘lesser races’ from breeding. Did you know that people like me used to be sterilized in some countries in Europe and the Middle East?”
“That’s insane. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“My point exactly.”
They rode on after that in silence.
ANA SAT on the ground staring at the reflective prison walls. They shimmered like the wall she and Lex had observed in vee space. She didn’t dare touch them. Not yet. Not until she had exhausted all her other options.
Something or someone had invaded the world mind.
She had a pretty good idea who, but at the moment, that didn’t really matter.
What did matter, to her at least, was that she’d been cut off from everything but the files that defined her core self. She had no way of reaching the others, let alone the outside world. For all she knew, there was no outside world anymore. Forever might be nothing but little bits of space debris.
Except… that would likely mean the world mind would be dying too, or already dead. It didn’t feel like that was the case.
This felt too clean, too antiseptic to be the result of a catastrophic act of destruction.
One moment she’d been with Colin, and the next she’d been here.
So. Best to start with what she knew and with what she had.
She closed her eyes and ran a self-diagnostic. In this virtual world, she had access to herself in ways she’d never dreamed of when she’d had a corporeal form. Data flipped by, absorbed by her consciousness far more efficiently than her old human mind would have managed.
Files flagged in red represented Jackson’s memories, gifted to her and Lex when Jackson had passed on, and then shared with Colin.
In her mind, she stood on a wide white field, and she panned out the files in batches across the sky. She might be trapped, but she could still create her own little world.
Ana’s memories and thoughts were in blue on one side, and Jackson’s memories in red on the other side.
And in the middle, everything else. Bits of research she’d done over the years, system files, projects she’d worked on with the other Immortals or with Keera and her crew.
There was a sizable chunk of files she’d shared with Lex as they’d grown closer over the years. While their conscious minds were still separate things, they had a lot of overlap, to the point which they would sometimes share thoughts or emotions. She marked those green.
That connection had been severed too.
Think, Ana, think. There had to be a way to get out of this box.
The shared files.
Excited, she cleared away the rest of her archive and concentrated on the green files.
If she really was cut off from Lex, why did she still have these files?
Maybe the entity that had done this to them wasn’t aware of the connection they shared. Was there a way to use that against it?
She started searching through the files.
She set aside those that were older than a year. If they had had no activity in such a long time, they probably would be of no use to her.
Then she shuffled away any that were pure work-product. Files they had both linked to for things they were working on together.
Next, she sorted the remaining files by date, newest to oldest.
Something caught her eye. One of the files, and only one of them, had been updated in the last fifteen minutes.
She opened it excitedly.
It was an emotion expression… the shared moment when Jackson had taken his leave of them for the last time.
Why would that file have been updated?
As she parsed it, the wave of sadness passed over her again. She missed Jackson. He’d been a steadying influence, much more connected to the two of them than Colin was now.
She was missing something.
She ran through the file again, and it hit her.
It was a code.
Someone—Lex?—was using the emotion file to send her a message.
She pulled up Jackson’s memories and searched for the one from that last moment. She found it.
Jackson turned to Aaron. “It’s time.” His hands were shaking.
Aaron nodded, looking brave.
Jackson was so proud of him. He hugged Aaron from one side and Glory from the other.
They held him tight. “Love you, Scout,” Jackson whispered.
“Love you too.”
She layered the emotion file over the memory, and as the two were joined, a message scrolled in the air in front of Ana.
I knew you would figure it out.
Ana wanted to dance, to sing, to shout to the sky above. Instead, she muttered softly to herself, “Lex, you’re a fucking genius.”
Then she set about figuring out how Lex had composed the message and how to write one of her own.
Ana was out of the box.
Chapter Seven: On the Verge
MARISSA WAS numb.
It was one thing to know she shouldn’t try to dip, shouldn’t connect to the world mind. It was quite another to know she couldn’t.
They were giving the horses a rest. Truth be told, she was having second thoughts about seeing Jayson. What would she say to the man who was, biologically at least, her father?
They were finally approaching the Olaf farmstead. She could see it a little way ahead, around the curve of the world. Like many of the newer structures on Forever, it was built in a style that would have been familiar to her forbearers two hundred years before—a white single-story house with two gables and a raised wooden porch that ran along the front of the house.
Next door was a bright red barn with white trim.
Beside her, Danny and Delancy rode in silence, seemingly lost in their own thoughts.
“That’s it, I think.” Marissa pointed at the farmhouse. It looked to be new, with only a small tilled field next to the main house so far and a smaller garden patch. Most people farmed their own vegetables to eat or to trade.
Danny looked up. “So, what are we going to do when we get there?”
“I don’t know.” The trip had been an impulse thing, an if I don’t do it now plan that was seeming more and more foolish with each passing hour. “I was hoping….” She sighed. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“What?” Delancy’s face was drawn. They were all tired, and whatever was blocking them from vee space and the world mind was demoralizing as well.
“He’s Andy’s uncle. He’s our father… all of us. I wanted to see if there was any of him—the original Jayson—left in there.”
“That’s not stupid at all.” Danny rubbed his chin, something he did whenever he wanted them to think he was giving something deep consideration. “I think about him a lot too.”
“Do you ever hear from y
our mother?” Delancy’s face was still pale.
Marissa shook her head. “Not really. I think she wanted to be rid of me. I reminded her of him.”
“I heard from mine a few times. Sometimes she sends me letters.” Danny’s handsome face was solemn.
“Letters? Like real on-paper letters?” Marissa had seen them—Andy sometimes got them when they had visitors from Micavery. But she’d never gotten one herself.
He nodded. “Andy gives them to me in private. So the other kids don’t feel jealous or sad about it, I guess.”
“What do they say?” Marissa had long since given up hope of any contact from her own mother.
“She tells me about her family sometimes. She’s married now and has a little daughter named Ivy. They live in Darlith.”
Marissa tried to imagine it. A real family. “We have to be our own family.”
Danny raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re saying that Jayson’s family too?”
“Right.” The whole idea was crazy, to go to speak to the man who had raped all their mothers. But Marissa had to know if he could be what she needed him to be. “Come on. The horses should be rested enough. I want to get this over with.” She shook the reins and dug in her heels, and Mirabelle took off down the dirt track toward the distant farmhouse, kicking up dust.
Danny and Delancy weren’t far behind.
THE REST of the trip passed without incident.
Santi rode behind Eddy, his strong arms wrapped around Eddy’s waist. His crossbow hung off the saddle.
Eddy kept his eyes straight ahead and tried not to think about Santi’s proximity. Santi had no interest in being with him or with anyone.
He’d made that clear.
Eddy was still unable to reach the world mind. He checked in with both Andy and Aaron periodically—both reported that they were still disconnected from Lex and the world mind too.
Eddy tried to imagine what it would be like to be so in touch with the world around him one moment, then to lose that contact entirely the next.
“I’m sorry.” Santi’s voice startled him. They’d fallen into an antagonistic silence after their earlier argument about the Liminals.
“Sorry for what?”
“I know you’re close with a lot of those kids.”
Eddy nodded. “I’ve known them since we rescued them from Agartha. They really are good kids.”
“Maybe.”
“You need to meet them. You’ll see.”
Santi grunted. “Maybe that’s part of the problem. You keep them all locked up in that schoolhouse of theirs. No one sees them. The unknown is always a hell of a lot more frightening than the things we can see.”
“They’re not things.”
“Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. But maybe if more people knew what they were really like and what they could do….”
“I get what you’re saying.” Eddy rubbed his chin. “Maybe we’ve been too careful.”
They rode on for a few moments in a silence that was much more companionable than before.
The dirt road was mostly empty this far out into the Verge. They’d passed the most densely inhabited part—out here, there were only a handful of households. They were an interesting mix of traditional and modern and reflected the diverse array of cultures that had been thrown into Forever’s melting pot.
They’d passed a couple more clusters of dead trees, though it was hard to tell if they had been burned by lightning or whatever had killed the alifirs.
He called Brad Evers.
Hey, boss.
Any update on those dead alifirs?
Yeah. It’s weird. The lab checked it out, and it looks like they were killed by some kind of toxin.
Someone sprayed something on them?
No… they think it came from the inside out.
Gotcha. Thanks, Brad.
You guys doing okay out there?
Yeah. We should be at the Olaf farmstead shortly. Thanks, Brad.
No problem, boss.
“Brad says some kind of toxin killed those alifirs.”
“No shit?”
Eddy nodded. “Came from inside, they think.”
Santi’s arms tightened around his waist.
“Um….”
“Sorry. Just a gut reaction.” Santi loosened his grip.
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m not handling this whole ace thing all that well, am I?” Eddy remembered all the awkward questions he used to get about being trans. People felt like they had a right to his private life, to all his deepest secrets. Whether he still had girl parts. How he had sex.
“It’s all right. You’re trying. That means a lot.” He squeezed Eddy gently in reassurance.
Eddy squirmed in the saddle, trying not to show the effect that touch had on him.
“I knew I liked guys a long time ago. When I was five, I think—I loved that old Buck Rogers serial on the tri dee. But not because of the whole spaceman thing. More the spaceman thing.”
“Yeah, me too.” Eddy laughed. “I miss tri dee.” Settling in with a guy on the couch to catch an episode of Fargo Law. Cheering for the contestants on NAU Talent.
“Tell me about it.”
“So…?”
“When I was in high school, there was this other gay kid who was the captain of the soccer team. His name was Aasim Nour, and he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. One night, after a game, I waited for him outside the locker room.”
“Damn, that’s hot.”
“Yeah. You’d think so, right? He invited me to his place. We drank a few beers—I was a real lightweight back then—and we screwed.” He was quiet for a long moment.
“Was it… did you like it?”
“Not really. I mean, it wasn’t horrible or anything. It just… there was no emotion. No connection. It was like… like watching tri dee without the color.”
“If that’s what it was like, you might have been doing it wrong.” Eddy’s joke fell flat, and he knew it.
“That’s what everyone tells me.” Santi’s voice was tight.
Eddy flushed. “That’s not… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Go on.”
“I had a couple boyfriends in college, but I was always just going through the motions with them sexually.” He sighed. “Neither one stayed with me long once they realized I didn’t enjoy having sex with them.”
“Did you ever try to get help?” Eddy could have kicked himself as soon as the words came out of his mouth.
“Get help for what? I don’t have a problem.”
Fuck. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to talk about this.” What was he supposed to say?
Santi laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “No one does. I thought maybe you were different.”
Eddy cringed. “Look, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m a huge ass.” He tried to imagine a life without sex and failed. “It’s just hard for me to wrap my head around it.”
Santi laughed again, and this time it was more rueful. “You are an ass. But at least you’re trying. You asked when I realized? It was more of a gradual sort of thing. I’ve just learned that sex isn’t something I want or need in a relationship. You can imagine how popular that makes me.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Something stirred inside Eddy, elicited by the wide-open honesty with which Santi had just shared his thoughts. “So… do you ever date?”
“I haven’t for a few years. I’ve been waiting for the right guy to come along.”
Eddy didn’t respond to that, not right away. He liked Santi. He did. But the whole ace thing was something he had to give some thought to.
A gentle squeeze told him Santi understood.
A few moments later, they arrived at the Olaf homestead. A new wooden fence led up the driveway to the barn and farmhouse.
A blonde woman was waiting for them in front of the barn. “Sheriff Tremaine?” She was trembling.
Eddy and Santi dismounted. “Yes, and this is my deputy, Santiago Ortiz.” He shook her han
d.
“I’m Sandra Olaf.”
“Nice to meet you. Is everything okay? You look worried.”
She shook her head. “Ever since the blackout—whatever that was—our visitor has been… disturbed.”
A loud wail arose from the barn.
“My husband Sven is with him. Come on. You can tie up your horse there.” She pointed to a wooden post along the side of the barn.
“Go. I’ll take care of it.” Santi led Cassiopeia to the post.
Sandra took Eddy inside. It was a beautiful barn, probably built by hand with one of the kids from Micavery. Spindle light shone through cutouts just under the roof.
A tall blond man knelt next to a figure curled up against the wall, his bare feet covered with dust. It was Jayson Hammond, all right.
The blond looked up at him. “He’s been like this for a couple hours.” He stood and stepped away from Jayson. “This started after the world went dark. Any idea what the hell that was about?”
Eddy frowned. “No, sorry. We’re working on it. Will he talk to me?”
“I don’t know. All he does is rock back and forth and moan.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can do.” He knelt next to the man and put a hand on his shoulder. “Jayson, can you hear me?”
The man continued to mumble and rock on the balls of his feet.
Eddy touched his cheek. Maybe he’d respond to his other name, the one Davian had used with him. “Gunner—”
The man looked up, his eyes darting wildly back and forth. Then they focused on Eddy, and he let out a heart-wrenching moan as his eyes lit up in recognition.
He pushed Eddy away as if he were made of paper, sending Eddy sprawling on the ground.
Eddy jumped up, but the man was out of the barn before he could catch him. Cursing, he ran after Jayson, praying the man wouldn’t do any damage or escape before they could calm him down and talk to him.
He emerged into the light. Three other horses waited in the courtyard.
Marissa had dismounted from her horse and held a shovel.
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