Vector
Vaun Murphrey
This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Vaun M Murphrey
Cover illustration and jacket design by Nathalia Suellen.
Editing by Todd Barselow and Dr. Susan J. Nix
Formatting by Author’s HQ
Author photo by Sam Norman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author rights.
VECTOR, Weaver Series Book Three, Chapter Guide
Chapter One: Homecoming
Chapter Two: Interrogations and Reunions
Chapter Three: Shake and Bake
Chapter Four: Follow the Leader
Chapter Five: Romeo
Chapter Six: Extraction
Chapter Seven: Reckoning
Chapter Eight: Cry Uncle
Chapter Nine: Pants on Fire
Chapter Ten: Providence
Chapter Eleven: Hide and Sneak
Chapter Twelve: Tick Tock Boom
Chapter Thirteen: Holding the Cards
Chapter Fourteen: Memory Lane
Chapter Fifteen: Cleanup Crew
Chapter Sixteen: Love Quadrangle
Chapter Seventeen: End Game
Chapter Eighteen: Bloody Hell
Chapter Nineteen: Exodus
Chapter Twenty: New Beginnings
Epilogue: Aftermath
Series Short: Welcome to the Club Kid
Dedication
To my Wolf Man from his Bearded Lady.
Acknowledgments
Along the writing way I discovered a treasure trove of different but like-minded human beings to share in my crazy. I was able to make their acquaintance because I attended the Writers’ Academy at WTAMU in Canyon, Texas in June of 2013. A good dose of the reality of publishing got smashed like a boulder over my head but I learned and I mingled and, best of all, I came away with new friends. Having attended the same academy again in June of 2014, I met more talented, sharing writers and learned even more until my head felt like it might explode. (This is a good thing!)
Vaun Murphrey
www.vaunmurphrey.com
[email protected]
www.Facebook.com/VaunMurphreyAuthorPage
As this book was being edited my first editor and a dear friend passed away. Her name was DeWanna Pace and she was one of the most beautiful women I never met. If I hadn’t attended WTWA DeWanna and I wouldn’t have connected and my life would have been the sorrier for it. Cherish all of the good people around you – our time can be remarkably short.
The Weaver Series
** Spoiler alert! **
CHIMERA
(Book One Super Summary: Cassandra Rainbow is held captive by her parent’s murderers for eight years and is then liberated by an uncle she doesn’t know. Ultimately, she finds out she is a Weaver and has to learn to live with and navigate a vast world of minds, plus accept an unexpected twin while overcoming attempts on her life.)
CHANGELING
(Book Two Super Summary: Earth is not alone. Other sentient life across the universe have formed the Galactic Alliance of Sentient Planets. The Rainbows agree to live on Axsa with their Aniy guardian Kal for an unspecified period of time. Will they ever make it back to Earth?)
VECTOR
(Book Three Super Summary: Just read the book! At the end of this colorful tale you’ll get a surprise Weaver short as a reward!)
PHOENIX
(Book Four Super Summary: Hold your horses…its coming along.)
Chapter One: Homecoming
The moon was out but the tar shingles under my feet were still sticky from the heat of the day. No one knew we were home yet and I wanted to savor the feel of being back on planet Earth before Maggie or Gerome knew we’d arrived. Silver flexed the light she’d bent around our body, deeming it sufficient to hide us in plain sight. Were anyone to look up from ground level they would only see the night sky and all of its familiar constellations.
If I was really honest with myself I would admit this was a stalling tactic. I was afraid and unsure of our welcome. No one had put their life on hold for us while we’d been away—the planet had continued to rotate on its axis just fine in our absence.
Maggie and Gerome now had children of their own—the three-year old twins, Rebecca and Raymond. Tiny squeals of laughter pealed from inside the house as the children played. The open sky called to me keeping us from climbing down to make our appearance official.
Five years of living in the subterranean cave cities of Kal’s planet, Axsa, had given me a yearning and appreciation for wide open spaces. Our host planet had been slightly closer to its sun with a surface still highly habitable, but Kal’s people chose to leave the topside to nature with as little interference as possible in the normal ebb and flow of life on their planet. Transportation in the form of teleportation didn’t cause pollution and required no roads. Convenient.
Silver waxed nostalgic, “Do you remember when we were still wet behind the ears and Mez put our lounger in that wall niche a hundred feet over the Atrium? Damn that was forever ago!”
“It wasn’t that funny when we almost rolled off to our death, Silver. I distinctly remember cussing up a storm and telling Mez we were going to infect him with chicken pox when we suspected he was in on it.”
Silver made a chortling sound in our head. “Man, he was scared, not that he had any idea what chicken pox were. That was hilarious. I miss him. I’m pretty sure Mez would laugh his ass off at us for sitting on the roof for no good reason. What are we doing, Cassandra?”
My brain ran through all of its excuses. There was no room for us to stay in the little two bedroom house. We would be disrupting Maggie and Gerome’s routine with the kids and we were technically an adult now, so, did we really want to spend our first night back on Earth sleeping on a relative’s couch, regardless of how welcome we might be? It just didn’t feel right to assume we could insert ourselves back into a life here as if we’d never left. The last thing I wanted was Gerome barking orders at us as though we were the same as when we left. We would be disinclined to follow orders in front of the children. Reb and Ray were handfuls enough without adding our example of disobedience for emulation.
Maggie and I had kept in touch almost nightly in the Web and I felt a closeness to my aunt that lessened the ache of my own mother’s absence. I needed a more neutral place to start, and the first person who nudged his way to the front of our consciousness was Malcolm.
The tall black man had once been the most impressive physical specimen of maleness that I had ever thought to meet until we spent time with Kal and his people. If I wanted an example of large, muscular and physically imposing I only had to think of the Bender and his clan. The average height of fully mature Axsian males was around eight feet tall and the women weren’t far behind, if at all. It was highly amusing to me that Malcolm and his sister Melody would be considered ‘petite’ by my foster family, and Silver chuckled in agreement.
“So we head to the training facility with our light field engaged and see if he’s working out this late, or do you want to trace him in the Web and ‘port?”
I mulled it over. “Let’s trace him in the Web and teleport to his location if it isn’t his house. I don’t think I’m ready for naked Malcolm in the shower.”
Silver teased, �
�I don’t know…it could be interesting.”
“Dude, would you quit it! Now you’re thinking about him naked and that’s just wrong, he could be our dad!”
At the mention of a father our mind immediately sobered as I recalled my decision to wade through the memories of our own father, Declan’s past against the advisement of my twin. I still loved our dad and loved reminiscing about the brief time we’d had together until his untimely death at the hands of a Warp hit squad, probably headed up by his own family. I didn’t think I had it in me to forgive him for some of the horrors he left behind for me to see.
Silver asserted stubbornly, “I mean it, Sister, if you can’t handle the truth about Declan I can just wipe it away again—you’d never have to know I did it.”
I sighed and thought back, “That’s the coward’s way out, Silver, and you know it. I have to face that our mother loved a man who’d done terrible things and somehow changed his life so much that he tried to leave it all behind. I’ll figure it out. So are you going to do the heavy lifting or am I? Never mind, I’ll do it so we don’t ‘port into a shower with him.”
“Would I do that?”
“Yes, yes you would.”
The night sky blurred around us as I pulled my concentration into the Web and sought out the presence of my former, would-be instructor. It wasn’t possible for me to find just anyone this way but we had healed the big man on the same day that Silver and I left unexpectedly for Axsa—unknowingly forming a permanent pathway to his presence in the Web.
We’d learned more about our gifts under Axsian tutelage, mainly through our friend Sil, a brilliant scientist who ran many tests, and our knack for finding trouble—with the ultimate outcome of causing us to use those gifts less casually.
Silver and I now wore gloves on our hands to avoid casual touch. It was explained to us that as a Vector we could do quite a bit to others through touch alone. There were, of course, people that had been touched before Kal and Sil had figured out what direction our ‘condition’ would take, including Kal himself. Vector’s popped up on all developing Weaver planets to shape the evolution of their planet’s skills. Axsian’s had other terms for our condition. Sometimes we were called a Singularity, as well, but our favorite term was Vector.
Axsa, for example, had solidified into a planet of Benders who could bend space, light and time. Other planets had developed their own talents and all of them seemed to serve as the key to furthering the civilization or survival of their particular world.
Our touch, since our talents as a Vector had matured, could do any number of things. If we touched Weavers skin to skin, we had instant access to every part of them—mind, body and soul. My sister and I could pass on skills we possessed or even absorb a talent we didn’t have. Silver had jokingly compared us to a walking virus.
After much debate and discussion, Kal, Sil, Silver and I had gone through each talent we manifested and a short list of all the individuals who had come into contact with us skin to skin.
When the Soul Eater, aka ‘Laser Eyes,’ tried to force an attachment on us the last day of our incarceration, he had inadvertently given us access to his ability to restore balance to the mind, body and soul. Our body had only just matured physically at the time of our torture and its capabilities as a Vector hadn’t yet fully solidified, so the absorption had been unknowing and accidental. Thing One and Two, my guards during my involuntary eight year stay with the Warp Faction, had touched us as well, but they hadn’t affected a change that we could tell. Who knew if we’d passed something on to them or not since we weren’t exactly keeping in touch?
The Moore siblings, Malcolm and Melody, hadn’t passed any new abilities our way but we, on the other hand, had gifted each of them with more than one. Based on the conversations Gerome and I had had in the Web during our stay off planet, Malcolm and Melody were developing the talent to move in short bursts of speed and concentrate force in a blow. Malcolm, who was a trained martial arts competitor and ex-soldier, had even gone so far as to develop a new style that incorporated this Weaver gift, calling it ‘Prana,’ a Sanskrit word which loosely translated to ‘force.’ My former would-be teacher and his sister had developed quite a following in their training classes with this new discipline. Any student they touched ‘skin to skin’ developed the talent forthwith.
The familiar sweat smell of the gym hit my senses before the inside of the training facility fully manifested in our vision. I had teleported us into a corner of the raised boxing ring, thinking this late at night no one would be having a go at anyone else.
Silver snapped at me in our head, “Move!” right before a fist overshot its opponent and came hurtling toward our face. I ‘ported us immediately to the opposite side of the ring and watched for a moment as Malcolm, in an incredible burst of speed, lunged forward to plant a kick right at James’ midsection.
I froze and Silver nudged me out of the way with finesse to teleport us up into the metal rafters and then released our body back to my control. The aerial view gave me a moment to get my mind straight and I was glad my twin had made it her mission to drill switching guidance of our body into our psyche, making it a seamless process.
Silver thought snarkily at me, “We trained relentlessly on piloting because we didn’t want anyone to get the upper hand on us the way Calvin Harris did and end up with another screwdriver in our chest, not because you’re a love struck idiot.”
Nothing, however, could distract me from watching James move around the ring like a graceful, but dangerous predator. I had intentionally been trying not to think about James Lee or his sister Kara because there wasn’t anything neutral or uncomplicated about my feelings for the siblings.
James was no longer caught in the awkward pubescent limbo of not being a man or a boy. His chest had widened along with his shoulders, finally matching the muscular and skeletal development to his height. I watched mesmerized as one of his long sinewy arms swept Malcolm’s kick aside with deceptive ease then, turning the defensive move into an offensive one, he used the larger man’s momentum against him with a quick tug on his heel. If anything James was even faster than the last time we’d seen him practice in a class.
The two men blurred occasionally, like a recording that kept skipping seconds ahead only to revert to normal speed every few minutes. This ‘Prana’ style Malcolm had developed looked extremely effective considering James was holding his own against the bigger more experienced fighter, at least for the present. There were a few stragglers ringside watching the show but there didn’t seem to be a class about to start any time soon.
My sister quipped, “Who’s thinking of someone naked now?”
I tried to gather my thoughts back into something less hormonal and more cohesive. James had been in contact with me in the Web consistently during our five year hiatus from Earth.
Silver interjected with mirth, “I do believe they call it ‘sexting’ on cell phones…I’ll have to come up with a new term for what you guys were doing in the Web.”
I thought back, “You were supposed to be ‘ignoring’ us. I gave you privacy when you needed it with Mez—it’s not nice to spy.” I was just being a grump because seeing James when I wasn’t expecting it had made me feel raw and out of sorts. My sister and I overlapped so much that it was almost impossible to stay out of each other’s business, although we did try out of consideration.
Bringing up my Web contact with James made me think of the complete lack of communication with Kara. In the short time we’d had together, less than twenty-four hours now that I thought about it, I’d begun to feel a close burgeoning friendship develop, but her total lack of effort to stay in touch had stung.
Silver sent reassurance my way to bolster my fluctuating emotions. “We’ll set things right with Kara, Sister. I just hope it isn’t something I did wrong since I was flying blind back then.”
It was my turn to reassure Silver, who felt a responsibility for Kara that bordered on sisterly but sometimes swung a littl
e toward the proprietary and always made me wonder if Silver herself knew how she felt about Kara. “You can fix anything that might be wrong, Silver. That I don’t doubt, but she may not want our help and you need to be prepared for that.”
James had made some comments about his sister having a fear of entering the Web, which I’m sure had to do with her almost dying in it before Silver saved her by restoring balance to her mind, body and soul. I’d tried to push further on the subject but James claimed he had it under control and that it violated our ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy.
We’d come up with an agreement in the beginning—since I couldn’t share much about my time on Axsa and we were both living separate lives on separate planets, we would continue to compartmentalize so we could enjoy our time together in the Web without regrets. I was back and now this would change things between us if there even was a physical ‘us’ on Earth. Being emotionally uncertain wasn’t a comfortable state of being for me, and all my angst was making Silver want to bite my head off with impatience.
I gave myself a mental shake and determined what our next step would be; all of this lurking and observing was making me feel even more of an outsider. Throwing my plan to reveal ourselves out to my twin’s mind to catch, I waited for her endorsement before I began to teleport. All I got back was a playful sense of amusement so I knew she approved. There were times when I reconsidered my sister’s moniker and wondered why I hadn’t named her Puck or Loki instead.
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