A shadow fell across the camp. Téa looked around, but couldn't identify the source. The sky remained clear. Cold chills raced down Téa’s arms and spine. The hair at the nape of her neck stood on end.
A man stepped up behind Nigel. Téa had been so riveted on the group kneeling in the center of the camp, she didn't notice the man approaching, or which way he’d come from. It was as though he’d stepped straight out of the air.
The new man looked gray all over. It was his skin, and yet it wasn’t. Téa had been raised around people of all skin colors. This man looked different. He felt different. Like he’d painted his entire body—skin, hair, fingernails—with gray tar. More than that, he oozed darkness, as if he’d taken hold of a tangible fog and wrapped himself in it like cloak. Téa doubted it would feel like fog if she ran her fingers through it. The thought of doing so made her shudder. He didn’t have any eyes or mouth. Where they should have been, strange white X’s had been drawn, so lightly she barely made them out from where she lay atop the rise.
A voice reached Téa 's ears. At first, she thought it came from behind her. She whirled in alarm, but she and Benny still crouched alone on the rise. Then the voice seemed to come from in front of her, in the camp. It echoed in her ears, in her mind, as if disembodied. The Mastermind decrees it is your turn to come into the fold.
Nigel’s reply came so softly, Téa barely caught it. “Let us go. Let her go.” Anger, bordering on demand, laced his voice, along with a note of desperation. “I will come with you willingly if you let these others go free. Please, do not enslave them. Do not enslave my wife.” His voice broke.
Why would we do that? The voice came again.
Téa understood that, somehow, the voice came from the gray, Shadow Man.
We have you in our grasp. Relinquishing power is not in our nature. Steel yourself if you must, but it will do you no good.
Téa didn’t think she’d ever forget the look that came over Nigel's face: unspeakable terror, mingled with profound despair. His freedom was gone. Taken by monsters who identified themselves with eight-legged vermin.
Nigel’s head snapped back while he rose up on his knees, his torso straightening unnaturally.
Téa gasped, silently clapping a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming, sure his neck had broken. Yet it hadn't. Nigel settled back onto his knees, his body falling into a more natural, kneeling posture. Except now he didn't hold his wife. Or cry. Or see. His eyes became flat and dead, as Téa’s mother’s were.
Beside her, Benny sobbed quietly.
Téa’s mind whirled. What she’d just seen made no sense. Arachimen assimilated by touch, but no one had touched Nigel. How did they absorb him into the collective without touch? Fear clutched her chest. Breathing became harder.
One of the Arachnimen with his back to her turned, and Téa ducked behind the rise. Did they see her? Hear her gasp? More fear flooded into her. She lunged into action.
Crawling backward down the hill, she grabbed Benny’s hand and pulled him away. They moved carefully until they reached the tree line. Then Téa broke into a run.
Not everyone from her group knelt in the clearing, which meant two things. First, perhaps some got away and she could find them. Second, Arachnimen still searched the woods for the others. She’d have to be more cautious than she’d ever been in her life. Paranoid, like Papa used to be.
She hated to leave her mother behind. The thought brought tears to her eyes, so she pushed it away. Mother and the others were a part of the collective, now. No time for tears. Or grief. Or questions. She needed to get away. Get Benny to safety. To Interchron. Perhaps it truly was the last hope on earth.
They stumbled past trees and through shrubs, branches whipping at their faces. Téa did her best to keep from falling, while dragging a stumbling Benny along behind her.
She realized she’d headed for the river, which her group had been following toward Interchron. She’d gone instinctively in that direction when she ran, knowing the water would hide their tracks and perhaps their scents. If Téa kept to the river's course, she might have some chance of getting Benny to Interchron, whether she found anyone else from their group or not.
Téa burst out of the woods, still dragging Benny behind her by the hand, and skidded to a stop. They’d reached the river, but come out much farther upstream than where they’d gone to get the water this morning. Now they stood on a precipice of sorts, a steep dirt embankment slid thirty feet downward before meeting the churning water.
“Come on, Benny,” she tugged him upriver, away from the Arachnimen—she hoped—and the empty husks that used to be their friends. The embankment climbed higher and became steeper before it descended to the water’s level again. “Gotta keep going.”
“What about Mom?” Benny asked, scrubbing his eyes with the fist Téa didn't hold.
“Just…come on. Gotta keep moving.”
She hiked aggressively up the slope, dragging her brother behind her, forcing her brain to focus on her foot placement so they didn’t fall. Even so, questions churned through her mind. How would she hide them? Protect them? Stay ahead of the Arachnimen? Were they truly alone now?
What about food? She knew little of finding food out here, and Interchron must still be days away. It would certainly take Téa longer to find it than it would have the adults in her group. Could she and Benny go so long without food? Perhaps she—
She sucked in a breath as a dark figure stepped out in front of her. The gray Shadow Man that oozed darkness and had no features.
Benny wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and buried his face in her back. Téa couldn’t take her eyes from the man. No, this was no man. The Creature.
Up close, she realized what she'd thought were X’s drawn onto his face weren’t drawn at all. They looked raised from his skin. Could it be thread? Why would someone sew his eyes and lips shut?
His skin was the strangest thing she’d ever seen, and not only in terms of color. In terms of anything. So gray, so dark, she wondered if he truly stood in front of her. As though someone had punched him from the fabric of reality, the way one punches out a paper doll.
Did you think I didn’t know you crouched on the other side of the hill, Offspring? You, and the other of your blood you protect?
Téa gasped. The Shadow Man's lips hadn't moved, but she heard his whisper in her ear. Felt little puffs of air, as though his lips hovered directly above her lobe.
You will join us in the Fold.
Tears formed in Téa’s eyes. How would she prevent this? “Please,” she whispered, not sure what to do except beg. “Please don’t. My brother—”
Will be one with us, one with you, soon enough.
“Please,” she babbled. “We’re so close. Take me, if you must, but let my brother go to them.”
The Shadow Man turned his gaze on her, and all feeling drained from her body. She didn’t think she’d ever get warm again.
You seek the Separatists. Where are they? What is your destination?
Realizing she’d made a huge mistake, Téa’s mind whirled. “I…don’t know. My father knew.”
The Shadow Man turned as if to look toward where Téa’s mother probably still knelt. Too much foliage stood between him and the clearing for him to lay eyes on Téa 's group. Still, Téa felt certain he still sensed them in some way.
She shivered, then jumped when the raspy voice again fell into her ear.
Tell me. Is the Vanished One among them?
He turned to look at her and the cold in her core intensified.
“Th-the what?” she whispered.
It makes no difference. The Dark Matter stands ready for activation. If your progenitors know the location of the Separatists, we shall find out for ourselves now that we’ve brought them into the fold. In six days’ time, the entire world shall be ours.
Téa sensed something, then. A gathering of energy she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It felt red, angry. She'd sensed the same thing before her
father became the Darkness, as Benny put it.
She thought of Nigel’s body jerking.
She must save Benny.
Knowing she had precious little time, Téa made a decision. Her parents couldn’t protect them and so, for all of fifteen minutes, Téa thought her turn as protector had come. That, it seemed, would not be the way of things either.
Whirling toward Benny, she fell to one knee and wrapped her arms around him. “I love you, Benny. Mom and Dad loved you too. Don’t let them catch you. Go to Interchron. Don’t look back.”
Benny dug his fingers into her arms as he clung to her, burying his face in her shoulder. “No, Téa. Don’t. Don’t leave me. Don’t become the darkness.”
“Benny,” the red energy swirled and grew behind her. She pushed Benny back and peered into his face, talking faster. “I have an important mission for you. It’s the most important thing you’ve ever done in your life. You have to get to Interchron."
The Shadow Man's energy felt monstrous now, hovering them as they knelt on the bank of the river.
"Tell them what happened, Benny. Tell them Dad became the Darkness." She gripped Benny's forearms tightly. "Tell them Mom is gone.” Her voice broke and tears coursed down her cheeks. “Tell them the Shadow Man is coming. Tell them to fight darkness with darkness. I love you, Benny.”
The energy coiled, ready to strike. Téa felt it. She forced Benny onto the ground and shoved him, sobbing, over the precipice. Benny didn't fight. Téa registered Benny's resigned, tear-streaked face as he rolled away from her. The embankment sloped steeply. He would probably get hurt on the way down, but she had to give him the chance to remain an individual. She prayed he wasn’t too young to understand, and take it.
Do you think your actions will keep him from us? the Shadow Man's voice whispered in her ear.
Téa didn’t bother to answer, or try to stem the tide of her tears. In truth, she didn’t know. She hoped—what hope remained now?—that somehow, some way, Benny would find safety. And freedom. Peace felt too impossible to wish for. Anything but slavery. Anything but the mediocrity of the emotionless collectives.
She knelt at the precipice, her back still to the Shadow Man. The looming predator of energy hovered above her, coiled tight like a spring. She knelt at its focal point. These men, the Shadow Man with his Trepid and Arachniman goons, had seen and sensed Benny. They knew the feel of his energy and would track him. Just as they got a taste of her family’s energy the day her father died.
Closing her eyes, and feeling a certain faraway pride to be following in her father’s footsteps, Téa reached out with her mind and gathered all the constructive energy she could muster. Working as quickly as she could—she wasn’t as strong as her father and the Shadow Man might cut her off at any moment—she tamped the energy into a tight, heavy ball, as her father did that day. She wrestled more and more energy into the ball, forcing it to get heavier without getting bigger.
The cyclone formed faster than Téa would have thought possible. In seconds, the ball of energy became too heavy to be sustained by the surrounding ether. It bent out of sight, sucking more and more matter into it, the heavier it became. She wrapped her own energy particles around the cloud of angry power the dark man had conjured. He’d meant for it to take away her freedom and force her unwillingly into the collective. She snatched it, pulled it into herself and embraced it. She fed it, with everything else close by, into the vortex of the black hole she’d created.
On the periphery, she felt the Shadow Man retreat. He relinquished the angry, red, enslaving energy and fled.
It registered with Téa. Barely. Already her life force flowed into the blackness as well.
Now, kneeling in the same place her father knelt, except hundreds of miles farther west, she understood why Benny called it ‘becoming the darkness.’ Not all darkness was bad. Darkness absorbed light. Energy was light. That’s why this worked. Téa understood instinctively. Better to give her light to protect her brother and die free than allow the collectives to win.
Her tears dried, her fear fled. Somehow, Benny would be okay. She believed that. Her senses went next. Sound, smell, touch, all gone. For an instant, she saw her father’s face. White light enveloped her.
Then it retreated, replaced by darkness. Her father’s face disappeared, replaced by a black face marred by white thread. If Téa could have screamed, she would have. Darkness clawed at her soul now, not light, and she had no way to stop it. Greyness and silence drowned her in oblivion.
The girl Téa was no more.
Chapter 1: Questions of Polarity
With a growl that sounded downright feral, Tenessa threw up her hands, turned, and stalked toward the other side of her sitting room.
Karl did his best not to smile at her retreating figure. He didn’t succeed. She reached the other side of the chamber and whirled toward him again.
“The Separatist is utterly…maddening.”
“Yes, well,” Karl crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned casually against the wall. “We individuals can be maddening sometimes. That’s the fun of living.”
“We don’t believe in individualism!” Tenessa growled. She’d said it three times today, her voice shriller with each repetition. Karl had visited her several times since returning from the Canyon, and she'd told him the same each time.
“That’s okay,” Karl answered cheerfully. “It believes in you.” He chuckled at his own joke. She stared at him like he'd gone mad, which made him laugh harder.
Tenessa turned away, her silky dark hair falling off her shoulder as she did. “The Separatist takes pleasure in coming here, unwelcome, every day, and tormenting us.”
The grin slid off Karl's face. “I come, and you never object,” he said firmly. He straightened and crossed the room to where she stood. She watched him come toward her without twitching a muscle. Something in her stance reminded him of a trapped animal, though she didn’t show fear. Only ferocity. “I’m not forcing anything on you,” Karl said, more calmly than he felt. “If you want me to leave, just say so.”
She studied the floor and said nothing. He knew it wasn’t because she wanted him there. Rather, she didn’t want to show weakness by being the one to ask for space. He stepped closer and grinned. “I think you secretly adore my company.”
Jaw hardening, she balled her fist and swung at him, a blow he easily evaded, stepping back and laughing. “You know, for someone who believes in passive, watered-down emotions, you certainly are a hothead.”
Tenessa squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Emotions aren’t regulated outside the Union. It’s difficult for us to control them.”
Karl shook his head. How did he make her understand how preferable emotions were to collective living? Especially when she’d lived in a collective her entire life, only emerging days ago, and against her will?
She'd been a thorn in his belly since he and Marcus found her on a battlefield, left for dead by the collectives. Marcus Healed her, saving her life. She'd repaid them with anger and bitterness.
“What?” She glared at him with her milky green eyes, and he realized he’d been studying her.
He heaved a deep breath. “At least you’re hitting on universal truths, now. I wish you understood how profound they are.”
Tenessa snorted and Karl raised an eyebrow. “As usual, the Separatist says strange things which make no sense.”
Karl smiled again, letting his eyes roam around the cavern, while deciding how to answer. Tenessa had been given accommodations equal to what any new resident of Interchron would be. Two large adjoining rooms were more than comfortable. One held a bed, wash stand, and closet, and facilities branched off it. The other, in which the two of them now stood, held mismatched furniture, including a table and two chairs.
Karl sat on the nearest piece of furniture—a cloth-covered stool with a short, laddered back that only reached to six inches above Karl’s posterior—and folded his arms. “Perhaps on the day you can follow my
logic, you’ll finally understand why individualism is preferable to collectivism. The connections are there, Tenessa. You just have to be willing to see them.”
“We do not wish—” She snapped her mouth shut abruptly.
“To see them,” Karl finished for her.
“That’s not what we were going to say." Her eyes blazed at him.
Karl allowed himself another small smile. He had entirely too much fun teasing her. He enjoyed it almost as much as he did teasing Maggie. Tenessa responded more and more readily to the name they’d given her—she became more of an individual every day, whether she liked it or not—but he’d still never heard her say ‘I’ rather than ‘we.’
“Then what were you going to say?” he asked patiently.
“The Union is preferable to individualism. Not the other way around.” She jutted her chin out stubbornly.
Karl’s lips twitched again. Tenessa was a beautiful woman, though having grown up in the collective, chances were she didn’t know it. The collectives didn’t prize or acknowledge beauty. On the contrary, they did everything possible to stifle it.
Tenessa’s strange eyes paired with her olive skin made her look downright exotic. Yet, when she jutted out her chin like that, she took on the mien of a petulant child. Karl found it amusing.
He got to his feet and walked slowly across the room toward her, taking his time and never breaking eye contact. It seemed to put her slightly off-balance, which was exactly why he did it. When he stood directly over her, he leaned forward.
Though she stiffened her knees, too stubborn to move back, she did lean away from him. He’d have missed such a subtle movement if he hadn’t been looking. When he spoke, he kept his voice quiet and steely.
“If collectivism is preferable to individualism, then why did you save my life? I didn't ask you to do that. You must have known it meant never returning to the collective. If you’d killed me instead, they’d have welcomed you back with open arms.”
Dark Matter (Interchron Book 3) Page 2