After Destiny

by Tanya Lisle

  “What happened the last time you saw Mac?” Ed asked instead. “I saw that you talked to him. You seemed to leave him stunned.”

  “He was very unpleasant, but he was marked. I was curious what his task was. When I learned it, I left.”

  “And how do you feel about Mac?”

  “I dislike him,” Snow said. She thought about it and her face cracked into a frown. “I’ve never disliked someone before. Having my own feelings is strange.”

  “You never really talked to people much, did you?”

  “I only spoke to those who came up on the mountain to seek my wisdom,” Snow said. “They left once they had their answers.”

  “And what do you mean when you say he was marked?”

  “When the Fates choose someone to perform a task, they leave a mark behind. Each of the three has a distinctive mark which fades when their purpose is completed, though there is always a shadow of it still. He was marked by Niyati and Kumari, and performed his task. While I know all actions taken in a life, I am always unsure of which parts are chosen for a particular reason.”

  Ed blinked at her and she had to fight not to stop walking as she processed what just came out of Snow’s mouth. “You lost me,” Ed said. “Can you repeat that in some way that sounds more like…”

  Ed struggled and failed to come up with wording that didn’t involve some variation of the word “crazy” in it.

  “I saw that Mac was marked,” Snow said, frowning as she and she concentrated on her words. “I wanted to know which of the Fates had done it and which event in his life was decided.”

  “And the Fates are… not the mythological ones, I hope.”

  “They are.”

  “You’re saying that the ancient Greek Fates are still around. Three old women are wandering around, deciding the fates of mankind and doling out destinies?”

  “That is not accurate,” Snow told her. “The Fates do not have physical forms. They select certain humans to perform specific tasks instead of granting them large destinies now. They gave themselves new rules after the last time. Things were much less interesting after most of this continent died.”

  “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “No.”

  Ed had a very hard time getting a read on her. One minute she opened locked doors with no tools and the next she was back to being clearly mentally damaged somehow. Nothing about her seemed remotely dangerous, and yet she wouldn’t stop doing things that proved otherwise. Ed considered locking her up and shipping her Downstairs to let them deal with her, but if she could open a locked door that easily, Ed doubted a cage would hold her any better.

  Not to mention she had already gone outside willingly before. She still had no idea how she got out, but the fact that she showed no signs of having been out in the haze was disconcerting on its own. Her skin was too fair and too soft to have survived out there without burns. Even staying close to the windows all day left some of their people with a dark, leathery skin.

  Still, Ed couldn’t believe there was anything dangerous about her. Despite ending up in strange places because locks apparently didn’t work on her, she had yet to go anywhere that would prove advantageous. She used the mysterious ability to go out into the wasteland, to leave Mac’s interrogation and to see her.

  “I want to know how you manage to get through doors, Snow,” Ed said. “If a door’s locked, you shouldn’t be able to open it.”

  “I will not open them any longer,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean I want to know how you open locked doors. And I don’t mean turning the handle or pushing them open or whatever it is you physically do. I want to know how you manage to make the lock unlock for that moment you open it and then lock again once it’s closed.”

  Snow thought about it a moment, confusion flittering across her features. It was strange to watch, but stranger in context. Like how she learned to be more comfortable with English in a day, she seemed to be going through a similar process with her emotions. Her face remained stoic and unmoving until today, where she let something shine through. It was like she was discovering herself and all the things she could do for the first time.

  You’re being too soft on her, Ed.

  “You’ll need a metaphor,” she said. “You will forget about it entirely by the time Mac has accepted me.”

  “And what are you doing in this hypothetical future situation?”

  “I am sitting in the orchard. Liah speaks to me before she comes to see you.”

  Ed nearly tripped at the name. “No kidding,” she said, trying to sound casual as she did so. She looked ahead to the mess hall at the end of the hallway. Almost there.

  Liah was a name very few people on this level of the complex were even familiar with. She ran Downstairs, home of their farms, the smartest of their people and any criminal they came across that was determined guilty. She was not a lenient woman when it came to dangerous people, so if she was letting Snow wander around freely…

  Except that she wasn’t. Snow had never been down there. She shouldn’t even know the name.

  “How do you know Liah?” Ed asked.

  “She exists, so I know of her.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “I haven’t met her yet. I will soon. I will go Downstairs after Brady speaks with me again.”

  They were finally at the mess hall. Finally. Ed went ahead, the doors sliding open and the sound pouring out. Around fifty people were inside, eating and chatting, many still in their Security uniforms. Snow still didn’t seem dangerous, but she was strange in a way that made Ed feel uneasy.

  Snow started to walk past her, but Ed stopped her. “Where are you going?”

  “You spot David Kimball and Clyde Owens and lead me in to sit with them. We talk while you get food and you return.”

  That was the last thing she wanted to do now that she brought it up, but Clyde was already waving them over. Ed led the way to the table in the middle of the room, drawing eyes as she walked. It wasn’t unusual for Ed to be in there, often stopping in when she had business or repairs in the area, but Snow was another matter entirely. Many of them had been on the lookout for her, and Mac had likely been warning them all about her already.

  And yet, Ed still felt better about bringing her here than going anywhere else for the moment. Ed could handle Security if it came down to it.

  “Hey, you found the princess,” Clyde said, smiling at Snow as she took a seat. “Hey Snow. I don’t know if you remember us. We were the ones who found you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You took me off the mountain and gave me my name.”

  “You could have chosen a different name if you didn’t like it,” David said between bites of bite sized black food covered in a red sauce. “Do you even know the Snow White story?”

  “It’s a little weird, but it kind of fit,” Clyde started, leaning in before Snow had a chance to say anything. “There’s a couple different versions of it, but there’s this one that’s a classic from the old days, this Disney version that they based pretty much every other Snow White story on that came after it.”

  Ed quietly slipped away to the line for food. She tapped her watch against the panel on the wall. Several dishes appeared on the screen and Ed selected a few items for herself. The watch she and everyone else in the complex wore kept track of the number of calories burned so that they would eat only as much as they were required to keep their food demand from growing too high. With that in mind, the chefs would be able to prepare meals specific to each person.

  Satisfied, she hit the small icon at the top left corner of the screen for the override. Glancing back at Snow, she knew she had no idea how much she would need. “Iris, second plate, 1800 calories,” she said, hoping it wasn’t too much. If it was, she was certain Clyde would finish it, at least.

  When she came back carrying two plates with specs of purple, blue and white over black, Clyde laughed as David, grinning, smacked him upside the head. “It�
��s okay,” David said as Ed set the plates down and took a seat next to Snow. “Clyde’s not trying anything funny while we’re keeping an eye on him.”

  “He won’t.”

  David laughed clapping Clyde lightly on the back and leaving his hand there. Clyde shook his head, still grinning and waving his fork at Snow like he was going to say something before filling his mouth with his food. He barely swallowed before he looked at Ed. “So you’re showing Snow around? I’m guessing you didn’t tell Mac?”

  “What’s he been telling everyone?” Ed asked. She could feel the eyes glancing at their table.

  “Apparently she’s got some ulterior motive and she’s going to let in raiders as soon as we take our eyes off of her. Can’t be trusted, you know how it goes. Just like everyone else that comes in.”

  Ed wasn’t surprised. “Where’s Kitty?” she asked, glancing at Snow. Snow picked up the fork, looking from it to David to see what he was doing before imitating it. She managed to get the food in her mouth with little incident, though she held the utensil strangely.

  “Mac needed her for something,” Clyde said. “I don’t know how long she’ll be.”

  “We could ask Snow,” Ed suggested. “She’s been doing this neat little party trick all day. Snow, how long before Kitty comes back here?”

  Snow swallowed her food and spoke, not bothering to wipe away the sauce dripping down her chin. “Kitty will return in sixteen minutes.”

  “We can stick around that long. I need to ask her something.”

  “You won’t talk to her again until tomorrow.”

  “Is she actually right about that?” Clyde asked.

  “Wait sixteen minutes,” David told him. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “So what’s she doing right now?” Clyde took out his phone, the camera peering over the edge of the table to record her.

  “Mac is trying to convince her to start running a perimeter check around the outside of the Janus Complex on an hourly schedule so that you won’t be surprised by any potential threats. Kitty is arguing that it isn’t worth the health of the members of the excursion teams. Mac wants to train more people on perimeter and believes that there are too many precautions taken when leaving the complex anyway as most people survive with even a month’s exposure. He reminds her that Snow has been out there and been fine, so the people she might bring with her will likely have the same freaky immunity, but-”

  “That’s enough, Snow,” Ed said, handing her a napkin. Ed wiped her own chin, maintaining eye contact with Snow until Snow repeated the action for herself.

  “I’m double checking this one against Kitty, because if that’s right, that was amazing.”

  “So she thinks she knows everything?”

  “I used to know everything,” Snow said. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  “I can see why Mac’s worried about you,” David muttered. “It’s like you’ve got something on him with the way he’s going on about keeping an eye on you.”

  Ed put down her fork and turned to look at Snow, eyes narrowed. “What did you say to him?” Ed asked.

  “I said many things to him,” Snow said. “You’re referring to a particular portion of the conversation. You want to know about when I told him which of the Fates had chosen him and what his task was. When I start telling you, you’ll realize other people are listening and tell me to stop.”

  Ed glanced around at the people very carefully trying not to look like they were eavesdropping on them, though she could tell that the room was significantly quieter. Snow being right about things needed to stop. It threw her off.

  “Fates?” David asked. “What do you mean Fates?”

  “She says that mountain you pulled her off of was the home of the Fates,” Ed told him, going back to her food. “Like the Greek ones. Apparently if they want you to do something, you get a nice mark that she can see and she can figure out what they wanted you to do.”

  “So you know when someone’s been chosen for some grand destiny and you can tell what it is?” Clyde asked, his interest only growing as she talked. “What’s mine?”

  Snow looked him over slowly. “You have not been marked,” she said.

  “What about-”

  “No,” David said. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Fine. What about Ed?”

  Mouth full of food, Ed didn’t bother even looking up from her plate. She could feel Snow’s eyes scrutinizing her, looking carefully over her frame. From the corner of her eye, Ed could see the crease of a frown starting across Snow’s face.

  “You try to cover your marks,” Snow said, reaching over and touching her lightly on the shoulder. “Niyati and Kumari marked you here. She is the reason you left your room that night and broke into the surveillance to see the cameras. You looked at the cameras for an hour before you saw something moving outside. You alerted the complex of a survivor and brought Taylor Mackenzie into the base.”

  “Is that what actually happened?” Clyde asked.

  Ed forced herself to swallow and tried to keep a calm look on her face as she nodded, shoving more food into her mouth. Very few people actually knew what happened that night and there was no way for Snow to have found out about it.

  Snow looked around and touched a spot on Ed’s back. “Niyati and Kumari marked you a second time here. Another was also marked. Katima Grace beat you and she was accepted as the apprentice into the excursion team and you continued your apprenticeship in electrical repairs.”

  “Okay, I know that one’s true,” Clyde said. “This is getting a little weird.”

  Ed put her fork down and swallowed what she had in her mouth. Her appetite was gone, replaced instead with a desperate need to know just how Snow knew any of this and a loud, fearful beating in her chest that Snow knew even more than she let on. The explanation of her being raised by the Fates on some magic mountain was becoming more plausible than it had any right to be.

  Ed turned to her, jaw set and resolve solid. “Snow, that’s en-”

  “There is one more,” Snow said, brushing over the fringe of Ed’s bangs and raising them up to see her clouded eye. Snow peered into it and Ed suddenly knew exactly what Mac was trying to warn her about.

  Ed looked Snow in the eyes for only a moment and she felt like she stared deep into the universe. Nothing existed in that universe, not really. There was only the abyss where time may pass, but it hardly mattered. She would float there for all eternity, while events happened to people she didn’t know and in places too far away for her to affect anything.

  “Ed?” David asked. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Tavorian.” Snow said, looking more closely at Ed’s eye. “She has not set your task in motion yet. You are marked and waiting for her to use you when she decides. She discovers…”

  Snow’s brow furrowed, a frown appearing on her face. She moved her finger up to Ed’s eyebrow. “No,” she said, flicking her finger downward.

  Ed collapsed, followed by the sound of several people rising to their feet with weapons drawn on a spot that was now vacant of Snow White.

  Chapter 7

  For the first time, Snow had no idea what was happening and she was terrified. All her life, she knew exactly what was going to happen and when. The Fates spoke through her and she did as she was told. She watched humanity, longing to see what it was really like and quietly conspiring for the day when she would be able to see for herself.

  It was only supposed to be a short trip with the Fates discovering her gone and bringing her right back. The humans took her away and the mountain was gone shortly after. The mountain would return and the Fates would retrieve her. She saw the attack coming on the complex long ago that would kill many of the people inside and knew that the Fates sent them. She thought it was to bring her back.

  Ed was meant to kill her in the raid. Once she was gone, the Fates would find another child to replace her.

  She never thought about her own life before. She was meant to hold the lives of
all of humanity. She so rarely remembered that she was among them and her fate was woven in with the rest. She should have known. At least, she should have thought to look.

  Should. That was a new word for her. Should was supposed to be for people who didn’t know what was coming. It was for people who had to look back on their actions and who regretted taking them.

  Regret was another new word she didn’t much like.

  She looked more closely at the raid now as she wandered the empty portions of the Janus Complex. The raiders would come and kill all the same people, taking few if any supplies from their stores. The food did not look like the food they knew, so they did not know what they saw. The Medical Wing would shut down so tightly that no one could get in. Many people are caught unaware of what’s going on and are caught in the crossfire.

  Those who lived and died were the same regardless, but Snow’s fate hung in the balance. As the Fates often did, they put many pieces in place to see whose future would win. There were some who would injure her and take her away with them when she was unconscious. Some raiders were meant to kill her with the others. One was coming to kill her specifically and take the next child directly from the Medical Wing for the Fates.

  Ed was meant to shoot her by accident.

  Ed would no longer do that. She changed Tavorian’s marking on her eye, removing her control over Ed’s future. The back of her throat still tasted like blood from doing that and her insides churned in punishment for her defiance.

  It was not for her to decide what would come. That was the domain of the Fates. She was merely the tapestry in which they weaved the future. She was the mouth through which they spoke to the other humans. She was not to think or act or want of her own accord.

  But she didn’t want to die. She wasn’t supposed to be like the others. She knew one day she would wear out and be replaced, though it never occurred to her that she would die when that happened. She never thought that this small defiance would make that day come so much sooner.