“I love you,” she said.
He smiled his beautiful smile. Then bent to kiss her softly. It was all he would do in front of the others—not that anyone was watching; they all had their own goodbyes to say—but it lingered on her lips and she found herself wishing for more.
“I love you too.” He pressed his cheek against hers and his lips whispered against her ear. “Come home to me.”
Maggie gasped. Memories of that phrase catapulted through her mind. She and Marcus used to say that to one another every time they had to separate for a mission. She hadn’t remembered it until now.
“I will. You do the same.”
He smiled at her. “Always do.”
Maggie hugged Karl, who gave her a wink, and Joan, who gave her a reassuring squeeze. Joan would actually be part of Maggie’s group, but that wasn’t a reason to keep from hugging her. None of them knew what would happen once they Traveled.
David stood on the far side of the group. He caught Maggie’s eye and gave her a nod. She smiled back, relieved that he had the good sense not to try and hug her in front of Marcus. Still, his nod was confident. Reassuring. She felt grateful for it.
Maggie observed some of the other goodbyes. Doc took Tristan’s hand, just the same as he had the rest of the group. He dropped his voice low, but Maggie stood at his shoulder and heard it.
“Keep my family safe, Tristan,” Doc said.
“I will,” Tristan said simply.
Maggie swept her eyes away, not sure how to feel.
Beside her, Kristee and Salla, who would be accompanying them, stood. They didn’t hug or even look at one another, but Maggie noticed they held hands.
“Courage, little sister,” Kristee said. Maggie couldn’t help but notice how nervous Salla looked. She didn’t answer her sister.
The entire group—Maggie, Marcus, Karl, Tenessa, Joan, Lila, Jonah, Tristan, Kristee, and Salla—all stood on the slope and looked back toward the entrance of Interchron.
Dozens of pairs of eyes peered out from the mouth of the cave, and Doc stood out in front of them. Maggie saw arms rise in farewell and she raised a hand to wave back. Then she, along with each of the others, took hold of Karl’s arm. The world went hazy.
*******
The familiar sensation of Traveling ceased, and Maggie landed with a thump on hard-packed dirt. Her head spun for a few seconds before she got her bearings and recognized the locale.
They’d returned to the Canyon. The one formed so recently with the aid of the white orb. Doc said he didn’t know why the collectives chose this place to set up for the assimilation. He suspected it had something to do with the orb and the fact that its energy formed the Canyon. He wasn’t sure exactly why, but it could hardly be a coincidence.
“Everything look okay?” Karl asked.
Maggie sent out her neurological feelers, and felt the others doing the same. Karl was only dropping off Maggie, Jonah, Lila, Joan, Tristan, and Kristee. Then he would take David and Salla to their spot, and then he, Marcus and Tenessa to theirs. Kristee and Salla could have Travelled the individual groups to where they needed to be, but their strength of Traveling remained much smaller than Karl’s. He wanted them to save their strength for any emergencies that might arise during the eclipse and insisted on Traveling everyone to their spots himself.
"What is that?" Marcus asked, gazing into the trees, toward something none of them could see.
Maggie felt it too. Neurological signatures that came from Offensive energy. Along with others she thought were associated with shields and defense. The different signatures all clashed and overlapped. Some kind of attack was taking place thirty feet out of their line of sight.
"We don't have time to investigate," Joan said, looking skyward. “We all need to get into position.
Maggie glanced upward. The sun sat high, washing out all the little tendrils of energy wriggling in the sky. The moon nearly touched the sun already. In a matter of minutes, the eclipse would begin.
Karl shook his head. “I'm not leaving you all here without knowing what that is. Someone's being attacked.”
Joan pressed her lips together, but gave a curt nod. Maggie agreed with Karl. They couldn’t ignore an attack going on so close to where Maggie and the others would be stationed. Not when the assimilation was imminent. She knew Joan was just worried. Everyone’s nerves were raw.
“Why don’t you all stay here,” Marcus said. “This is where you’ll need to be for the eclipse anyway. Karl and I will check it out. If we need to, we’ll come back and tell you what’s going on, but otherwise, we’ll just head to where we need to be.”
Joan looked mollified by that.
“I’m coming with you,” Maggie said quickly.
Joan immediately opened her mouth, protest written across her features.
“It’s not far, Joan,” Maggie said soothingly. “I just want to see what it is. I’ll be right back. Promise.”
Jonah had raised an eyebrow when Maggie said she wanted to go. Now she shook her head at him. “I’ll be fine. Five minutes. Stay with Lila and Joan.”
Jonah hesitated, but nodded. Tristan didn’t volunteer to go with Maggie, but that was fine with her. The man’s very presence annoyed her.
She, Marcus, Karl, and Tenessa moved cautiously toward the neurological signatures. They pushed through some foliage and made their way carefully around some house-sized boulders. On the other side, a group of three men and one woman fought two Trepids. Probably scouts.
Just as when they'd tried for the orb and failed, Tenessa said there would be scouts moving through the woods and foliage at the sides and top of the Canyon. They’d be on the hunt for individuals who might interfere with the collectives’ plans and would neutralize anyone they found.
It seemed the Trepids had stumbled upon this group of individuals.
Maggie saw Marcus and Karl exchange glances. They wouldn’t want to use their abilities and alert the collectives to the team’s location yet. The two men moved silently into the foliage behind the two Trepids. The two enormous men with faces tattooed black, overlaid with white, tattooed spider’s webs and jewels in the junctures, hurled red-barbed Offensive energy at the group of individuals, doing their best to overpower them.
The small group of individuals fought desperately, barely keeping the Trepids at bay. Despite having greater numbers, the Trepids were huge and never seemed to tire. In another few minutes, these individuals would lose the fight.
Maggie wondered why the Trepids didn't simply assimilate the group. Maybe it didn't matter. The entire world was about to be assimilated anyway. Or at least the collectives thought so.
Maggie and Tenessa crouched behind a thin screen of foliage, watching. Karl and Marcus moved stealthily through the trees, until they came up directly behind the Trepids. If the collective goons had simply turned to look, they would have seen them too, but the monstrous men were too focused on their prey.
Karl and Marcus launched themselves from the brush as one, each landing on a Trepid’s back. The two Trepids grunted, obviously taken by surprise. The tattooed goons flailed around, trying to get control of the men on their backs. Their surprise increased greatly when Marcus and Karl each put a knife through their Trepid’s backs. The two scouts fell dead in the dirt.
Karl and Marcus rolled off them and stood to face the small group of individuals. Maggie and the others emerged from their hiding place in foliage.
"Who are you?" One of the four individuals asked. A lean man with curly hair hanging to the nape of his neck, he had bald spot on the apex.
“We’re from a place called Interchron," Marcus said. "Have you heard of it?"
The question hardly needed to be asked. Upon hearing Marcus mention Interchron, the man's eyes widened. "We’ve been searching for it. We knew it to be in this area somewhere, but we’ve been unable to find it." He glanced upward. "What’s happening up there?"
Marcus opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. "We don't have ti
me to explain. You're in the thick of something big. You shouldn't be here. You're likely to get caught in the crossfire."
The man raised an eyebrow at Marcus. "You saved us. Please, put us to work. We want to help."
Karl instantly shook his head. “Thank you for the offer, but this is extremely complicated and dangerous. The best way to help us would be to stay out of the way. You’d only be a liability.”
The woman in their group gasped. Maggie glanced over to find the woman staring at her with eyes the size of saucers. A second man in the group. who wore his hair long and stringy, below the shoulder, put a gentle hand on the woman's arm. "What is it, Matilda?"
The woman called Matilda stared at Maggie for another ten seconds before remembering to close her mouth. She swallowed before whispering, "It’s you."
Something in the woman’s voice made Maggie’s heart beat faster. She took three steps toward Matilda, practically salivating with curiosity. "What’s me?"
The man who'd spoken to Marcus crossed to stand beside Matilda, three feet in front of Maggie. It occurred to her for the first time that this man and the woman, Matilda, looked eerily similar. They had to be siblings.
"What do you sense, Matilda?" the balding man asked.
"It's her," the woman whispered. “It was her I felt that day. I'm sure of it. The signature is faint, but it remains."
Maggie’s heart did a little flip-flop. She didn’t even know why. Having a strange woman say such bizarre things ought to scare her, but she felt a strange sense of hopefulness. This woman knew her. Or something about her.
"What’s she talking about?" Karl demanded, glancing nervously heavenward again. The moon now appeared to touch the sun. The eclipse had begun.
The man who'd already spoken with Marcus sighed. "My sister senses neurochemical signatures. About a year ago, she sensed something strange, something she's never been able to explain. We were traveling along the coast, and she sensed some kind of wormhole. She followed her sense of the wormhole to a particular stretch of land on the ocean’s shore, but it was empty. Nothing there. She always felt sure it was significant."
The man turned to Maggie. "Do you know how to create wormholes?"
Maggie gaped at the man. She didn’t know creating wormholes was a neurochemical ability. The stretch of coast he’d mentioned certainly sounded familiar, though. Ignoring his question, she asked one of her own. “The stretch of shore you mentioned? Was there a sandbar?”
Matilda and the three men raised eyebrows at Maggie in complete unison. “How…did you know?” Matilda asked.
Maggie gazed at Marcus. “The lighthouse. It would have still been Concealed. They couldn’t have seen or sensed it.”
Above them, the sky darkened, as though someone drew a dark, sheer curtain across the sun.
As one, the two groups peered skyward.
"We don't have time to discuss this right now," Joan said. “We have to get into position."
"Agreed," Marcus said. He turned to Karl. "Travel these people back to Interchron and leave them with Doc. We'll talk to them when this is done. Then come back and get me and Tenessa and the others."
Karl frowned. “Better if I take you all to where you need to be first. Then I’ll take them to Interchron and come right back.”
Marcus nodded. They returned to where they’d left the others with the four extra individuals in tow and explained quickly what they’d be doing.
Marcus turned to Maggie, and they shared one last look before he grasped Karl’s arm. The four individuals didn't show any hesitation. They followed Marcus and Tenessa’s example and grasped Karl’s arms. The entire group winked out of existence.
Chapter 35: The Gathering Storm
Maggie paced beside Joan in a small meadow, miles from where the action would take place. That was by design. They stood nearly three miles from where the Council of Six would be placed, and where the Cimerian guarded the orb. As far as the team knew, the collectives didn’t currently have any Travelers. Truth be told, they had no idea either way—assuming they didn’t was a gamble—but they hadn’t received any reports. Of course, the Arachnimen could physically move to Maggie’s location, but especially if they didn’t have an neurological help, being far from them would give Maggie more time to figure out how to interrupt the assimilation before having to deal with physical attacks.
The meadow they’d chosen rolled in gentle rises and falls, disappearing half a mile away where it sloped downhill, toward the canyon.
Jonah and Lila paced twenty feet out ahead of Maggie, Concealing them, and ready to fight any adversaries that did appear. Joan stood nearly back to back with Maggie, ready to Protect her against neurological attacks. Tristan, present so Maggie could communicate with Doc, stood a few feet away on his own, studying the sky.
Maggie had observed how Tristan and Doc communicated before they’d left Interchron. Tristan went into a strange kind of trance, his yes glazing over and a strange, green energy appearing around him. Maggie understood the need for Tristan’s talents, but she worried that, while in the trance, he became vulnerable to attack. He never paid any attention to what happened around him while communicating telepathically with Doc. Oh well. Maggie couldn’t worry about Tristan right now.
The moon now sat perfectly in front of the sun, outlined in a fiery halo. Anyone inside a hundred miles would feel the energy in the heavens, even if they couldn’t identify it. The collectives had begun. They’d shaped the tiny, wriggling energies in the sky into a single column of energy, which they would, no doubt, soon fuse so it couldn’t be separated again.
Time for Maggie to disrupt the flow of energy. Doing so would saw through the tide of emotions being used to fuse the collectives together. The two halves would snap back on the collectives like rubber bands. It would disorient them, momentarily disintegrating their Concealments and neurological Protections. In that instant, David would attack the Council of Six. He only needed to kill one to stop the assimilation. Meanwhile, Karl and Marcus would attempt to steal the orb.
"Are you ready, Maggie?" Jonah called back to her from where he and Lila stood, ten feet out in front of Maggie and Joan. They stared in the direction of the Canyon, where Maggie knew the collective armies were gathered.
"As ready as I’m going to be," Maggie answered. She pushed down the foreboding in her stomach and tried to replace it with determination.
"Strange," Lila said.
"What is?" Maggie frowned. There were plenty of obviously strange things happening around them, but she doubted Lila meant any of them.
"There are a lot of drones here," Lila said. "Plenty of Arachnimen and Trepids, but also a group of—I don't know?—a few hundred drones. Why would they bring drones to this?”
“They’re the ones handling the Protections and Concealments for the Council of Six,” Joan said.
“Yes,” Lila answered. “But they could have done that from anywhere. Why bring them to the Canyon?"
"I don't know," Joan said, looking worried.
Maggie didn't blame her. Any unexplained circumstance couldn’t be good for the team.
A cold wind picked up, ruffling the grasses, quaking leaves, and blowing Maggie's hair back off her shoulders.
Then she felt it. A change. Maggie looked upward. Where before, thousands of tendrils all wriggled around side-by-side, now they moved together, as one.
Maggie had only been able to think of one thing to do, and she didn’t know if it would be effective, or what the side effects might be. Clay said she had everything she needed, and according to Tenessa and David, she should be able to match the Cimerian’s dark matter abilities. If he used dark matter against her, then the only way to defeat him would be…
Closing her eyes, Maggie sent her mind out, hunting. She searched for the Dark Lands, for the Cimerian’s home. She searched the globe, not by geographical location or any other logical way. Rather, she searched for the dark vortex she’d felt in the vision.
Seconds later, she z
eroed in on it, somewhere far to the southeast. Probably hundreds of miles. She attempted to manipulate the dark energy. To will it toward her.
It didn't work. The energy slipped through her fingers like water, refusing to do her bidding. Constructive, offensive, and light energies always came when she willed them to. Why wouldn’t this?
Maggie opened her eyes, feeling frustrated. She must figure this out, or they were all doomed. The air around her felt charged with the energy the collectives manipulated. A gargantuan pool of energy. How could she ever hope to take it on? Yet, she had to. There might only be minutes until all of them became slaves.
*******
Doc paced on the slopes of Interchron. After the team left, he’d expected most of its residents to go back inside. They hadn’t. In fact, more had come out onto the mountainside to watch the eclipse and stare up at the sky. Doc couldn’t blame them. The day had turned blustery once the moon covered the sun, and the wind felt unpleasantly cold, yet the people of Interchron weren’t stupid. Or oblivious. They understood this was a historic day. That the eclipse held their freedom within its grasp.
Doc couldn’t have gone back inside, anyway. When the team Traveled back, they would land at this spot, outside the Southeast entrance. Doc intended to be waiting for them.
Anything yet, Tristan?
He sent the thought telepathically. He’d sent the same one ten times in the past ten minutes. He could tell by the tone of the thoughts Tristan sent back, that the man was growing annoyed with him. Doc couldn’t help it. He felt to nervous to worry about being patient.
Not yet. Calm down, Doctor. Your nervousness is making me nervous. Maggie’s obviously trying, but hasn’t achieved anything yet. No surprise. The instant something happens, you’ll know too.
Doc continued pacing. He felt too nervous to even be angry with Tristan over his dig at Maggie.
The four individuals Karl had happened upon and Traveled back to Interchron stood ten feet away, casting alternate gazes between Doc and the sky. Tristan had forwarded the details of the conversation they had with Maggie even before Karl brought them. Doc knew he ought to welcome them to Interchron. Ought to question them about who they were and what they knew about Maggie. (What did worm holes have to do with anything?) But he couldn’t. That would have to wait until this day had ended. One way or the other.
Dark Matter (Interchron Book 3) Page 44