Jayson ran toward her.
She lifted the shovel and slammed it down on his head.
The man fell in a heap, with a grunt.
“So glad you could make it,” Eddy quipped.
“Hey, Uncle Eddy!” She dropped the shovel and ran to give him a hug. “It looked like you could use the help.”
COLIN LOOKED up.
Nothing had changed. He was still trapped in a mirrored box.
This was starting to feel hopeless. There was nowhere for him to go. Nothing for him to do.
What would Aaron do?
He knelt, splaying out his hands on the white surface.
It was strange. The ground was neither warm nor cold. It wasn’t hard or soft either. In fact, his virtual senses didn’t register anything when he touched it. Only that it stopped his movements.
Now that he looked at it more closely, it wasn’t really silver either. Instead it was… it was hard to describe, is what it was. Like the film of a soap bubble, full of subtle colors that eluded cataloging by human senses.
Colin had always envied Aaron’s ability to dip beneath the surface of things, to connect the hidden with what was visible.
An idea struck him, as absurd as it was inspired.
He had Jackson’s memories, the essence of the man before he’d been absorbed into the world mind. Those were still left to him although the rest of the world mind was cut off.
Could he gift himself those same abilities, in vee space?
He sat down and closed his eyes, pulling up Jackson’s memories, searching for a key that might set him free.
Chapter Eight: Shapes, Dimly Seen
MARISSA KNELT next to her father to check his pulse. He was breathing shallowly, and his heart beat steadily. “He’s okay.” She smiled at Eddy. “I’m so glad to see you here.”
Eddy nodded. “Andy let us know you’d flown the coop.”
“The coop?”
“Old idiom. Never mind. Just a sec.” He tapped his loop, and his eyes went unfocused for a moment. When they focused again, he grimaced. “She had some… choice words for you three, but she’s happy you’re okay.”
“So the loops are still working?”
“The range is reduced, but yes.”
The farmer looked down at Jayson. “Is he dangerous?”
“He can be.” Eddy wondered where the man had been all this time. “I’m Eddy Tremaine, sheriff for this side of the mountains, and this is Santiago Ortiz, my deputy.”
“I’m Sven Olaf, and this is my wife, Sandra.”
“Nice to officially meet you.”
“I’m Marissa, and these are my schoolmates, Danny and Delancy.” Sven and Sandra shook their hands.
“Schoolmates?” Sandra looked back and forth from one to the other.
“Yes, we’re from the schoolhouse, up there in the mountains.”
“Ah.”
“Can we get this man secured somewhere?” Eddy asked, looking around the property.
“Matthew!” Sven called.
A young kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with dark hair and brown eyes, appeared from behind the barn. “Yeah?”
He was cute. And those muscles…. Marissa didn’t like to think that she cared about such things, but still….
“Matt here is staying with us on an internship, learning all about farming. Of course, we’re learning too.” Sven smiled. “Back on Earth, I was a professor of physics in Stockholm, and Sandra ran an NGO helping resettle displaced climate refugees.”
Marissa whistled and upped her opinion of the woman substantially.
“Matt, help me carry this man inside, and then grab some rope from the barn.”
They took the man into the house and soon had him lying comfortably on a bed in Matt’s room. Sven tied his arms and legs securely to the four posts. “These last few days, he’s been out in the barn.” Sven shook his head. “We had no idea he was dangerous. What did he do?”
Marissa and Eddy exchanged a glance.
“He hurt many people,” Eddy said after a moment.
Marissa nodded. No need for them to know all the gory details. “He wasn’t really himself.”
That earned her a sharp look from Eddy. “We can’t do much with him until he wakes up.”
“Why don’t you all join us for dinner?” Sandra offered. “You must be hungry after so much time on the road.”
Marissa grinned. “Yes, we’re hungry.” A little bit of normalcy would be really welcome now.
Danny and Delancy grinned. “Starving. Thanks.”
They stabled their horses in the barn, and Sandra led them inside the farmhouse. The Olafs had a small place, built by hand from one of the farmhouse kits out of Micavery, Sven told them proudly.
It was sparsely furnished, decorated with handmade crafts.
Their table was too small to accommodate all five of the new arrivals, so Eddy and Santiago stood while they ate. Dinner was simple—some cooked grains and vegetables, a hearty bread, and a small slice of meat.
“This is good.” Marissa savored the protein. “What is it?”
“It’s a new variety of chicken, bred for our unique circumstances here. They’re hardy and produce a lot of eggs.”
“We’re a little sick of eggs, honestly.” Sandra grinned. “So you kids are from the schoolhouse?”
Marissa looked back at Eddy, who nodded. “Yeah. We… decided to take a break from our classes.”
Sven nodded. “It’s important to see the real world too, not just be shut up in the classroom all day long.”
“Yeah.” They had no idea what things were really like in the valley.
“You seem like good kids. I don’t know why folks are so afraid of you.” Sven stared off into the distance, chewing on a bite of his bread. “I suppose people are always afraid of things that are new and different.”
“People are afraid of us?” Marissa had heard that before, but it had always seemed like something distant and irrelevant, far from their lives at the schoolhouse.
“Don’t worry about it.” Sandra put a hand on hers reassuringly. “You’re safe here with us.”
Marissa nodded, but she suddenly felt a whole lot less safe in general. The less time they spent out here, away from Andy and Shandra and their friends, the better.
“Are we all ready for dessert?” Sven stood, picking up his plate.
“That sounds nice.” Marissa looked toward the hallway, which led to the room where Jayson was being held.
“I made a red berry pie earlier. I’m happy to share it with you.” Sven picked up her plate and those of the others who were finished with their meals.
“I’d love a piece.” She needed to see him. “Excuse me. Where’s your bathroom?”
“Down the hall to the right.” Sandra pointed the way.
“Thanks. Be right back.” She smiled reassuringly at Eddy, then turned down the hallway. A single luthiel lamp provided a golden pool of light.
When she was sure no one had followed her, she turned to the left and pushed open the door.
Jayson lay there on a cot, bound to the corners hand and foot. His eyes were closed.
He looked so sad, his long hair lying flat against his scalp, his face pale and slack. Very different from Andy, and from Aaron, his brother.
She pulled up a stool and sat next to him. So this was the monster. The rapist. The man who had made her.
She reached up to his forehead. Her hand touched his cool skin, and her world exploded.
It was like Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole that Andy had simmed for them once in vee—spinning and spinning as flickers of someone else’s life passed her by.
She screamed, but no sound came out, only a thin stream of something that looked like smoke. She shut her mouth and tried to close her eyes, but she couldn’t not see the swirl of images that surrounded her.
Then as abruptly as it had started, the manic slide show ended, and she slammed into a dark place.
She lay there for a
while, wondering what had happened to her.
She couldn’t remember. She’d been in a dimly lit room with… someone. She had reached out to touch them, and the rest was a blur.
Dazed, she pushed herself up to her knees.
It was dark. Really dark.
Her heart raced. Not again.
It had been dark… before. With Danny and Delancy.
They had been on their way to find Jayson. Their father. The memories flooded back.
It wasn’t pitch-black here. She could make out dim shapes in the darkness, though it was hard to determine what they were or even how far away they were.
She got up on wobbly knees. The ground at her feet, if she could call it that, was soft and uneven, like sand.
She closed her eyes and tried dipping.
Nothing.
“Hello?” Her voice was strangely muffled by the darkness.
She’d been at dinner with her friends. With Eddy and Santiago and the Olafs.
Then she’d gone in to see Jayson on her own, like an idiot. She was paying for that mistake now.
She sighed.
There was nothing to do but explore the strange place in which she found herself.
She picked one of the dim undefined objects and set off to find out what it was.
“SHE’S IN here!” Eddy called to the others.
Marissa was slumped over Jayson’s body, her hand laid across his forehead.
Eddy knelt and lifted her up, hoping she would wake when he broke her contact with Jayson. She was so light, so small in his arms. “Marissa,” he said softly, shaking her gently.
“Is she okay?” Danny and Delancy crowded into the small room.
“I don’t know. She was lying on top of Jayson. I think she tried to reach into him.” He brushed past the two worried kids to the hallway. “I need somewhere to lay her down.”
“Bring her to our bedroom.” Sandra led the way to the back of the house, where a larger room boasted a chest of drawers, a rocking chair, and a big bed. “You can lay her down here. What else do you need?” Her brow was furrowed, and Eddy could hear the worry in her voice as he lay the girl down on top of the Olafs’ homespun comforter.
He touched Marissa’s forehead. “A cloth with some cool water? She’s burning up.”
Sandra nodded.
Delancy and Danny had followed them into the room, along with Santi. “Has she ever done anything like this? Tried to reach into someone else, mind to mind? Someone human?”
Danny looked away.
“Look, you’re not going to get in trouble, but we need to know what we’re dealing with here.” Eddy signaled for Santi to check the girl out. He had some medical training.
“I… some of us, we’ve tried it. Andy told us once about how she freed us in Agartha.”
Eddy frowned. “I was there. It was a terrible place. So you tried it… how?”
“We would sit in front of one another and reach out our hands on the other’s head, with our thumbs on their temples like this.” He demonstrated on Delancy. “We could sense each other’s thoughts, at least the surface ones. We never tried anything too dangerous.”
Santi touched her forehead. “She’s warm, you’re right. Her breathing is really shallow, especially for someone who is unconscious, and her heart is racing. And look at her eyes.”
Eddy turned to look at the girl. If anything happened to her, Andy would kill him. These were her kids, well, hers and Shandra’s, as much as they were anyone’s. Marissa’s eyes were moving behind her eyelids, and her eyelashes were fluttering. “She looks like she’s in REM sleep.”
“Did you guys ever experience anything like this?” Santi asked.
Delancy shook her head. “No. Nothing like that at all.”
Sandra returned. “Here’s a cool cloth.” She handed it over, looking at the girl with an expression of deep concern. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” Eddy sat next to Marissa and wiped her head with the cloth. She was so young. With her eyes closed like this, she looked no more than ten.
Sandra sat next to him and took Marissa’s hand in hers. “What’s going on? First the stranger—”
“Jayson.”
“Jayson. Then the blackout, and now this. They’re all connected, aren’t they?”
Eddy frowned. “I think so.” He was afraid to panic them, but one glance at the farm holders showed him they were already well on their way to abject fear. “We should talk. Someone needs to stay here with Marissa, though, to keep an eye on her.”
“I will.” Delancy nodded.
“Sorry, we need you and Danny with us.”
“I’ll do it.” The farmhand, Matt, edged into the room. “I can watch her.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“What do I have to do?” The boy was young, but he seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.
“Just wipe her forehead down with this and keep an eye on her. If anything else happens, come get us.”
“Okay.” Matt took Santi’s place on the far side of the bed, pulling up a wooden chair. He took Marissa’s hand tenderly and reached up to wipe her forehead gently.
Eddy reached across the bed and squeezed his shoulder in encouragement.
The rest of them filed out of the room to the small living room at the front of the house.
Sandra brought a few chairs in from the dining table and sank down on one of them. It was dark outside, but a couple of luthiel lamps lit the room. “So tell us.”
Eddy sat on one of the living room chairs. “We think there’s something wrong with the world mind.” He was afraid that news would cause additional alarm.
Instead, Sandra looked at Sven and nodded. “We’d figured that much. It’s not taking our requests.”
“There’s more.” They listened calmly as he recited the incidents he was aware of, starting with the dead stand of alifir trees, the attack on Andy in vee space, the big storm, and what everyone had taken to calling the “blackout.”
When he was done, Sandra glanced back at the hallway. “Who is he?” Her voice trembled but only a little.
Eddy gave her a lot of credit for that. “He’s Aaron Hammond’s brother, Jayson. We think he was responsible for the destruction of Terminal Station.”
“Holy shit.” Santi was staring at him, his mouth open.
“Yeah, I guess we left that part out of the briefings.” Too late to worry about it now. “He’s also the father of these three kids, and the others at the schoolhouse.”
“So he’s—”
“The reason they can do what they do. It’s a family trait—stronger in some than others, but it seems to be dominant.” Eddy closed his eyes, remembering for a moment that dark night in Agartha ten years before. Has it really been a decade?
“So you think he’s behind all of this?” Now Sandra did look pale, having realized the potential danger she’d let into her house.
Eddy sighed. “We don’t know. I don’t think so, at least not directly. In Agartha, the place under the mountain where these kids were born, there was another man, the one who ran things there. They called him the Preacher. I knew him as Davian.”
“Where is he now?”
Eddy shook his head. “No one knows. But Jayson might.”
ANA OPENED the latest message, excited. They had found a way to communicate, despite whatever was going on outside that had locked them in these prisons.
With each message that passed through the barrier, their connection grew stronger.
This one, however, startled her.
We need to merge.
She stared at it, considering the implications of such a suggestion. Though they had become closer over the years, emotionally and in the overlapping of their bits and bites, Ana had always maintained her own unique awareness, her self. She was still the little girl who had witnessed the falling of a satellite into the river in the Caucasus Mountains. She was still the young woman who had survived her father’s death at the hands of
terrorists, and who later had continued his work to create the seedling and ultimately this world.
And she was still the flawed, prideful bitch who had framed Jackson Hammond, and whose poor decisions had created a cascade of events that had led to that poor man’s death.
Maybe she really wasn’t worthy of saving.
She sent a simple reply.
Why?
The response was almost instant.
We are stronger together.
Lex too had her own life, her own story and history of events, good and bad.
Ana had come to admire her, to look upon her as every bit as real and amazing and flawed as any human being. One who fought to protect those in her care, even if she wasn’t always blameless in the course of events.
On the balance, it was a match that could only improve her own questionable character.
She’d already lived a long life, longer than she’d hoped for.
And if things went wrong, then who was to say Jackson wasn’t right? Maybe there was something better waiting.
At worst, the sweet oblivion of death would cradle her in its arms, and she would need worry no more.
It was enough.
How do we do it?
Chapter Nine: Storm Clouds
MARISSA STOOD before the first of the dim shapes she’d seen in the distance, down in the depths of Jayson’s mind. It was a towering thing, though what sort of thing was not readily apparent. It resembled a storm—a tightly contained storm—full of billowing clouds made of something gray that seemed thicker and more coherent than water vapor but less so than a solid surface.
It emanated pain.
Andy had told them all, more than once, about the storms that had clouded their minds in Agartha. How she had drained them like pus from a wound, freeing up the minds of those entrapped by the poison from Jayson’s mind.
This was one of the sources of that poison; she was sure of it.
She was strong, maybe the strongest of her generation. Certainly of the three of them who had come to the farm together.
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