Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “That’s quite a stretch, Spins.”

  “—then we have to assume the Vant’therax will know, and there’s still three of them out there, aren’t there!? We’re right back where we started, only now they’re going to be desperate. If they come for us here, and they want to take us, then there’s nothing we can do to—”

  Her mother stood. “For God’s sake, get a hold of yourself!”

  She jumped, eyes drawn to her mother’s stern face.

  For a moment, May was silent. After a long moment of buzzing tension, her expression softened. “Don’t do this to me, Spins. This is hard enough without you getting hysterical on me.” She lowered herself back into her seat and took a deep breath. “You’re jumping to conclusions too hastily. Think about this rationally for a sec, alright? Let’s say word does get out. If we assume that people start looking for us, then there’s still nothing to connect us to Grantwood now.” Her voice was resigned, as though recalling what they’d left behind was just another dagger in her heart. “Don’t forget. We spent two weeks at Kyle’s before we even came here. The timing won’t be tipping anyone off. And it’s not like anybody knows we’re really from California, right?”

  “Oh, crap,” Arthr muttered from the other side of the room.

  May’s eyes bulged. “What? You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

  He gave his head a shake. “No, but . . . I think I’ve been saying hella in class.”

  May groaned. “Oh, God, Arthr . . . !”

  “That’s a California thing?” Kara asked. It felt like an automatic response spat out by an unfeeling machine.

  Spinneretta nodded a little, her stomach crawling. “This one annoying girl at school keeps trying to guess my accent. If she was suddenly looking for someone from California, then . . . ”

  “Nobody’s going to be looking for anyone!” May shrieked. “There’s nothing to worry about, alright?” There was nothing reassuring about her desperate tone. It sounded like she was pleading with the devil himself. “Everything’s fine, okay?”

  “Listen,” Spinneretta said, trying to keep her voice calm, “even if we assume that nobody would come looking for us, there’s a trail now. There’s . . . The Vant’therax will be looking for us, and if people have even a suspicion about where we are, about who we are, then we’re going to be in trouble.”

  “I don’t see what people are going to be so suspicious about,” Arthr said. “I mean, yeah, the timing could be weird, but I don’t think . . . ”

  “Really, Arthr?” she snapped. “You don’t see the problem with three kids whose ages match the narrative of the Fifth Project showing up and wearing these fucking jackets all the time? It’s a miracle that those doctors’ notes held up to any scrutiny at all, but if that scrutiny turns serious then these jackets aren’t going to do a bit of good!” She expelled a shaky breath. “And as soon as they figure out who we are, the Vant’therax will swoop down on us. And then it’ll all be over. You’ve seen how far they’ll go to get what they want. And that was when all the chips were in their favor. Now their backs are against the wall, and I’m afraid of what it’ll look like if they get another chance to take us.”

  Arthr’s mouth hung open for a moment longer. Even May had no response. The only sound that dared trespass into their bubble of silence was paper sliding against paper as Ralph turned the pages of the book. Arthr looked at him, as though expecting him to unravel the tension with a swift denial. “Well? Anything?”

  Ralph shook his head. “This reads like ancient Egyptian to me. On the Miraculous Genetic Catalyst, Rosetta Stone in Blood, Cracking the Code of FOP, Project Zero . . . The hell does any of it have to do with us?”

  “Keep looking,” Spinneretta said weakly. “The first half talks about the whole damn thing. The back half is all research and science. Somewhere in there are the images of Isabella.”

  “Isabella?” May said.

  Spinneretta shrugged in dismissal. She’d never told anyone else about Isabella, and Kara’s lips were sealed.

  Ralph turned the pages a few more times and stopped. “Experiments in Memory Synthesis?”

  Spinneretta looked over at him again. “Huh?”

  He shook his head. “Right here, one of these sections. Memory synthesis. A bit out of place, isn’t it?”

  “Wait, as in, artificial memories?” At once Spinneretta’s attention was rapt. She felt a chill crawl over her. Memory synthesis? In the spider projects? Her heart fluttered. Could that explain the bizarre déjà vu she felt about nearly everything written in the Repton Scriptures, and everything she’d seen in the Web?

  Ignorant of the malaise brewing within her head, her dad gave a weak nod. He began to read halfway down the page. “The program was developed in accordance with the goals and regulations of what was referred to as the Human-Araneae Hybridization Directive. The research was headed by renowned neuropsychologist and neurophysicist Jonas Gainsborough. While I was not privy to the details of the research, I was fortunate enough to read a high-level synopsis of the mechanics. The project relied upon certain programmable protein and amino acid chains forming connections, and thus memories, within the brain of a still-developing fetus. Constructing the neural bridges at this stage should, according to the hypothesis, create structures forming a fundamental and permanent fixture of the subject’s brain, approximating the result of thousands of years of evolutionary instinct.”

  “Instinct?” Spinneretta could hardly breathe. Even Kara was paying close attention now.

  Ralph continued reading. “Though the project had been listed among the goals for the HAHD for years before, the memory synthesis program was only given financial freedom and an uncompromising go-ahead following the birth of the firstborn of the Fifth Project. It was speculated by some that releasing human-araneae hybrids into civilization could prove dangerous to the organization’s ambitions if those children had no knowledge of their origins or greater purpose. Owing to the groundwork laid with Projects Zero and Three, in addition to the infinite funding and miraculous technology provided the team, the program was testable upon lab rats after only three years, and considered completed after five—just in time to be integrated into the gene sequence of the third child of the Fifth Project, who would be the last of the Fifth’s offspring.”

  Kara’s eyes went wide. “Wha . . . What?”

  “I believe it was a desire to instill an inborn sense of identity and purpose to the products of the directive that led to memory synthesis becoming a focus of development. All data points to successful implantation of the designated pseudo-instinctual knowledge in Subject P5-2-3, codename Nexara. My later experience with the Eleventh Project leads me to believe the synthesis was, dreadfully, working as intended.” He looked blankly ahead as he finished. “Well that’s just . . . That doesn’t make any sense at all. If all of this shit up to now has been accurate, wouldn’t that make Kara the so-called third of the Fifth? That’s ridiculous.”

  Kara’s mouth drifted open. Her face was pale. “Memories? My memories are . . . ?”

  “Huh?” Arthr said. “Your memories? What are you talking about?”

  Spinneretta watched as Kara’s expression grew worried, and then hopeless.

  “Now that you mention it,” May said in a low tone, “that sort of does make sense.” A hollow laugh followed. “Kara’s always seemed at peace with being a half-spider. Like it was natural. Maybe we have science to thank for that.”

  Kara was shaking. “But I don’t . . . No, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Wait,” Spinneretta said. “If they could make artificial memories, then doesn’t that explain how you knew about the Yellow King? And his sigil?”

  Kara’s expression was blank, with cracks of horror beginning to show. “I . . . I don’t . . . ”

  A grim certainty came upon Spinneretta. “And why it didn’t surprise you when I told you about our purpose?” Memories of Kara’s face that first night in Lake Cormorant weighed upon her. She’d been noncha
lant, even disinterested, when Spinneretta had divulged the grotesque intention of the Fifth project, and of the Coronation of the unborn prince. Spinneretta had thought it innocence at the time. Was that mere naivety?

  Kara had become expressionless. She just shook her head, muttering incoherently to herself.

  “Purpose?” Ralph said. “Wait, what purpose?”

  Spinneretta froze. Oh, fuck. “I don’t know,” she said abruptly. “It’s probably nothing.”

  Arthr twisted in his seat. “But you just said something about it. Yeah, you just asked Kara if—”

  Ralph interrupted. “When you say purpose, you’re talking about why they . . . I mean, why the Corporation wanted hybrids, aren’t you? The whole reason for all of this.”

  “Kara,” said May, “do you know something you haven’t been telling us?”

  “What purpose is this?” Arthr asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell any of us?” Ralph asked.

  Kara shivered. Her spider legs wrapped around her, trembling, their tips protruding from beneath her pastel jacket. Her wide eyes were vacant. Everyone was talking at once, but she just stood there, muttering. Spinneretta thought she caught the words synthetic and instinct on her sister’s breath.

  The clamoring questions fell in volume as Arthr and their parents realized Kara wasn’t answering them. And after a moment of unsustainable quiet, May leaned forward. “Kara, sweetie?”

  Kara looked up toward her mother, lips quaking.

  “Can you please help us understand what’s going on?” May asked in a gentle voice. “Can you answer my question?”

  Kara just shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  May stood up. “Kara, listen to me. I don’t understand any of this myself. God knows I’m the last one to judge any of you. But if you know something, I want to be a part of this. I feel like I’ve totally lost all control of my life—all our lives. And if there’s something you can tell me about why this happened, about what—”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it.” Kara turned and started for the front door. Heavy breaths shook her frame, and her steps grew uneven as she stormed away from them.

  Now Ralph stood, the cryptic book falling from his lap to the carpet. “Kara! Don’t just storm off in the middle of a discussion. Get back here right now, young lady!”

  Shocked at his tone, Spinneretta stared at her father. “Dad, now’s not the time for—”

  “Stay out of this, Spins. If she knows something about what’s going on, then—”

  “Ralph, lower your voice!” May yelled.

  As the conversation approached the boiling point, Kara’s entire body snapped into a rigid posture and began to shake. “Shut up!”

  The room fell silent at her shriek.

  Kara turned over her shoulder. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Just shut up! All of you! I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t want to talk about any of it! Purpose, memories, fake memories, I don’t know and I don’t care! I don’t care about any of that! So just shut up and leave me the fuck alone!”

  She wheeled about and threw the front door open. She stomped out onto the patio and slammed the door behind her, rattling the walls and leaving a dull ringing over the living room. Spinneretta and Arthr looked at each other, mouths agape. May and Ralph, too, were speechless.

  With a shallow breath, May fell back onto the couch. “Jesus Christ.” She buried her head in her hands and sniffed.

  Spinneretta gazed at the front door. “Shit. That was pretty thoughtless of me. I shouldn’t have put her on the spot like that.”

  Her dad looked over at Arthr, a sheepish look on his face. “Arthr.”

  Still stunned by the scene, he gave a confused nod. “Huh?”

  “Would you do us all a favor and go after her? Make sure she doesn’t do something stupid?”

  “Yeah. No problem.” He got up and went to the door, snatching his jacket from the coat rack on the way out. The door opened and then closed again, and the room was grimmer for it. Ralph lowered himself back onto the couch and sighed. May was sobbing. Spinneretta could think of nothing to say or do to dispel the shadow, and she didn’t have the will to try.

  The handmade banner reading Happy 11th Kara still hung over the hallway. Nobody had the heart to take it down.

  Arthr eventually brought Kara back. Half an hour of smoldering had tempered her explosive fury, leaving a shell of silence and apathy. Nobody admonished Kara for her outburst; nobody could blame her for it. All they could do was watch and worry.

  They sat down to dinner not long thereafter. Nobody spoke. Nervous reticence reigned over their meal, and all attempts by May to begin conversation were met with cold indifference by Kara and Spinneretta. They were both too distracted by the gnawing thoughts instilled by their earlier discourse to care what their mother thought of the weather. When the meal ended, May informed Kara of the wrapped gifts from the family, but she was too numb to pay them any mind. Like the banner and the cake, they were ignored. Not long thereafter, Kara retired to her room. Spinneretta followed suit, a daze cast over her mind.

  The more Spinneretta thought, the more she worried. Anxiety eroded the walls of her stomach. She had homework to do, but lacked the focus to spend on it. The future distracted her, and thoughts of the book’s aftershocks dominated her mind. She couldn’t even bring herself to call Mark, for she knew that would only dig her despair deeper by forcing her to regurgitate her fears.

  Later, when she had time to contemplate the implications of the memory synthesis project, she would feel an even greater unease owing to more than just her sister’s apparently constructed knowledge. Why had she herself been so enthralled as soon as her father uttered the words memory synthesis? Perhaps she’d thought it possible that the queer sense of recognition she’d felt so many times before was another result of NIDUS’s black research. The night sky in Zigmhen, the stories of the Yellow King, the sigil that opened the path to the Web. Unless Harold Wiser had made a factual error in his rush to publication, then it looked like those answers would continue to elude her.

  And yet she was not totally without answers; if The NIDUS Report was accurate, then Kara’s precocious knowledge of anything and everything spider made far more sense. The way she’d known to open the gate to the Web, the fact that she seemed to know about their intended purpose, the way her personality seemed to favor her spider aspect. It was unnerving, but it made sense.

  But if the synthesis program hadn’t begun until after Spinneretta had been born, and if Kara was the only one to be affected by it, then where did her own memories come from? Why did she get those flashes of horrible familiarity from the Web and from the legends and artifacts of the spider kingdom? And what did any of that have to do with the Instinct, not to mention the voice in her head masquerading as her own thoughts?

  When I emerge from the mists, I find myself in a barren wasteland, untouched by man’s treachery. And when I first look upon the black sky bending overhead, I fall to my knees in awe of the vast cosmic strands. I immediately understand that the great one who birthed me once lurked here, stalking this unfathomable web. And I know, too, that I have come home.

  And I can feel her speaking to me, whispering from beyond the horizon, calling me to her bosom. When I at last force myself to stand again, I begin my pilgrimage and set off toward the beating heart of this world, toward the cosmic mother’s resting place.

  Chapter 8

  When it Rains

  Spinneretta spent the next week in a paranoid daze. Sleep evaded her, and her appetite withered. When she did manage to sleep, exceptionally vivid dreams assailed her. They were the same sigil-dreams she’d been having since that cackling other voice awakened, only the prevailing atmosphere had grown darker, more malevolent. She’d only rarely had lucid dreams before that night, but now that was all she had. But despite that crystal-clear lucidity, she never remembered any details save for vague impressions: fields aflame, the feeling of bone crunching
underfoot, a glimpse of something inhuman out of her peripheral vision, eyes that bled liquid light. Every time she awoke, she expected the swimming shadows on the walls to come alive and grab her. They hadn’t yet, but the thought of the lurking Vant’therax and The NIDUS Report still consumed her thoughts.

  The Thursday after Kara’s birthday, Spinneretta was working at the library. Her task of cleaning up the sixteen computers out front was automatic enough that she’d restored thirteen of them to near-factory functionality despite her persistent distraction. While the computers were ostensibly for educational purposes only, any given machine’s search history consisted of at least forty percent pornography. Fixing the sexually-transmitted malware was easy if tedious, though she’d have died a little happier had tight squirting teenage twats been the worst of the search terms she encountered while scraping away the filth.

  It was just past six o’clock when she finished lucky number fourteen, and that made it her designated break time. She made her way to the break room down the hall from the rest of the staff area. It was no larger than her ill-ventilated office, but at least the air-conditioning worked. A single circular table sat with four old folding chairs arranged around it. The walls were crowded with posters of local events, some as old as she was. As usual, she was alone, save for the persistent clattering of the television and the hum of the vending machine. Peering through the glass of the vending machine, thoughts empty, she considered her options for refreshment. Her preferred beverages were sold out, owing to the blatantly insufficient one-month restocking time, and so she settled for Highborn, a discount energy drink marketed toward Dungeons and Dragons fanatics.

  As she settled into her chair, she pulled out her phone on the off chance Mark had messaged her. No such luck. She began to type a message to him, if only to keep her thoughts from venturing back toward the skulking shadows. A trained sweep of her fingers sent the message into the ether as she took an exploratory sip of her Highborn. The sharp taste of acai and ginger filled her mouth and sinuses. The half-elf sorcerer on the can seemed to be mocking her for her choice of drink. +2 to Save vs. Thirst! the can boasted. Were she not so thirsty she’d have hurled it into the trash.