“Eli, are you all right?” Lenora asks, frantic.
“I’m fine.” I scramble to my feet and ignore her protests as I sprint to the corner. I dart a quick look around it. The girl is running with near-ascender speed toward the transport ships at the edge of the camp.
“Eli! Get back!”
I don’t respond, just shift to the fugue state and peer through the canvas wall to get a good look at the girl. I can’t help sucking in air between my teeth—her fugue-state form is clad in metal armor.
“It’s her,” I whisper, amazed. A spike of fear quickly chases away the surprise. Armor-girl wasn’t in the vision of my death, but she’s already made her hatred for me clear—her showing up in camp is bad news. The level of bad that involves death, destruction, and possibly the end of the world. Or at least the end of me. Tension tightens my stomach into a rock.
Lenora appears at my side, groans her frustration, and peers around the corner. “I can take out one human, even an augment, but I don’t want to leave you unprotected.”
I shake my head. “We need to stop her before she escapes.”
Lenora frowns, but there’s no time to explain.
Suddenly, a tight formation of two militia breaks from the cover of one of the barracks and heads toward us. Tristan leads the way, wearing standard issue camouflage with a black combat helmet and a blaster in his hand. Right behind him is Nathaniel, his bulky frame also in camouflage—he has two blasters, one in each hand, and he’s covering their backs. Tristan sprints across the open space to our refuge beside the pod. He yanks me back hard from the corner.
“Eli, what are you doing out in the open?” He’s angry, which surprises me.
Before I can answer, Nathaniel grunts out, “A savior does not die in a firefight.” He takes up a position with his back to us, both blasters ready to shoot anyone who shows their face. Nathaniel’s the cult member who helped us defeat the Mind and nearly paid for it with his life. With Tristan’s fervent retelling of me bringing Kamali back from the dead, Nathaniel seems to have mapped his radical beliefs onto me, as if I’m the prophet he’s been waiting for.
I’m not exactly glad to see either of them.
“We need to get Eli to safety,” Tristan says to Lenora.
“The ships are safest,” she agrees, “but one of the attackers just headed that way. An augment.”
“Forget about me!” I spit the words at all three of them. “You guys need to head to the barracks next to the med pod. Kamali and the other civilians are there. I’ll go after the girl.”
All three look at me like I’m insane.
But I’m already losing precious seconds.
I turn to Lenora. “Watch over my body,” I tell her, then shift completely to the fugue state. I step back, and my body sags against her. She catches me before I fall.
Then I turn my attention to the fleeing girl in armor—she’s already taken out two militia who were guarding the ships, and she’s engaged in an all-out fight with the other four, a whirl of guns firing and hand-to-hand combat. I stare for a moment, quickly convinced she’s going to win. It’s bizarre, watching her jump around so nimbly—I know she has augments, but in the fugue state, her metal-clad body makes her look like a medieval ninja warrior. I shake myself out of my awe. It takes no effort at all to flit to her side. In the fugue state, the only limit on where I can be or how fast I can get there is my imagination… and I don’t need much of that to picture her stealing one of the Resistance’s ships and escaping my grasp. She’s already inside one and heading for the cockpit.
I don’t know who this girl is, but I’m going to find out. Just as she’s reaching for the controls, I plunge my hand into her fugue-state form. I expect to be inundated with her entire life’s worth of memories, plus her thoughts about what she’s doing here and why she’s stealing one of the Resistance’s ships. Instead, I barely snatch her name before she whips her head toward me as if she can see me, and suddenly, I’m blown back outside the ship.
The world has gone gray around the edges, the void crowding in on me, but I can still hear the sounds of the fight and see the rough grass all around where I’ve been thrown. My vision is fuzzy and grayed out, but I focus on staying in this plane of reality, and the battlefield snaps back into a crisper view.
What in the world just happened?
Her name is Miriam Levine. She’s part of a group called the Makers.
That’s about all I got before she flung me out of her mind. I shake my head, confused, then a whoosh of wind ripples across the grass. I look up to see the transport whisking away. I watch, dumbfounded, as two more ships lift off in a wave of prairie grass. The militia members who were guarding the ships are all sprawled out on the ground. They must simply be unconscious because I can still see their fugue forms vibrant against the dullness of the grass.
The grayness of the void threatens the edges of my vision again, and I have to work to stay present. Whatever this Miriam person did when I made contact with her, I’m still reeling from it.
Three figures scurry toward the remaining ships. Nathaniel and Tristan are keeping cover as Lenora carries my limp body toward one, apparently intent on saving me from the attack.
Except the most dangerous person has already left.
I’m tempted to go after Miriam, but she’s not just an augment. And not just a human. Either of those would’ve been no barrier at all in the fugue.
She’s something different. A void-worthy chill runs through my fugue-state form.
A glance back to the firefight by the command center shows Miriam’s fellow fighters, all members of this group she calls the Makers, have signaled a retreat. I picture myself in the thick of the fight, and I’m instantly transported there. The Resistance militia are chasing after the Makers as they pull back, but many of the attackers have augments, and they’re quickly outrunning the militia. The Makers have a ship—a small one—awaiting them just outside the dome. It was designed to protect against attacks by ascender technology, but it appears the Makers broke in the low-tech way, by simply walking through the energy barrier. How they knew it was there is a whole different matter—and a question I intend to get answered.
I flit my fugue form to the Makers’ ship, where one of the attackers is hustling the last of his compatriots on board. I plunge my hand into his mind—this one is human, and human memories are the kind of thing I can handle.
Everything he is washes through me. All humans have the same architecture of the mind, the same meat inside their heads—it’s the experiences that reform the meat into something different, something unique. Individual thoughts and behaviors are just patterns that get reinforced, creating models of the world and who we think we are. Each experience weights the patterns differently, burning them in or creating new ones. It’s those patterns, those memories and thoughts and models, that wash through me. I assimilate them into my own, integrating them into the patchwork that is my mind these days. The information isn’t like a file I store, more like my own memories are reshaped to properly sort and integrate the new ones. By the time this man’s memories have washed through me, data-dumping into the reservoir of my mind, he’s heading into the ship with the rest of his crew.
It will take me a while to file and sort and catalog it all, but I can capture the essence of what they’re doing right away. Their mission was a success—they got what they came for. Weapons. Transports. They weren’t trying to kill us; they were after our technology. I will myself back into my body and wake up in Lenora’s arms. We’re on board the ship, and they’re getting ready to take off, but the Makers are already gone.
I thrash against Lenora and insist that she put me down. “Stop the ship,” I say, sucking in the breaths I wasn’t breathing while away from my body. “The attack is over.”
They give me that uncertain look again, like they’re not sure if I’m crazy or not.
But I know exactly who these people are now… and how dangerous they are.
The t
ension in the command center is insanely high.
No one was killed in the attack, but I’m not surprised. The memories I absorbed from the Maker named Zachary show they intentionally used non-lethal weapons. Still, there were casualties and a lot of stolen tech, including the two lost transports. Commander Astoria is still going over damage reports on tablets with Grayson and Tristan. More militia are stationed at the screens, including Kamali hovering by one panel with Delphina. Cyrus and Basha are standing nearby, having a tense, nearly silent conversation with pinched looks and shaken heads. Lenora holds a position by the door. She’s the only non-disabled ascender—her damaged arm has already been replaced—so she’s protecting the command center. Only I know she’s really protecting me. Nathaniel is standing next to her, and they’re eyeing each other uneasily. Nathaniel has assigned himself as my protector, and now Lenora seems to think that’s her singular and holy purpose, too. Between the two of them, I’ve got personal bodyguards from both the human and ascender worlds.
And I might need them.
This augment/armor-girl/Maker named Miriam is bad news. For me, probably for the Resistance, and possibly even more. I have a weird mix of images of her tangled in my head—both the armor-clad Miriam from my visions and another, softer version from Zachary’s memories. He thinks of her as a little sister, even though she’s grown into something… more. It’s that more that seems critical to everything. Plus the fact that Miriam is real and not some vague metaphor or message from the fugue. My visions of her were always so… personal. I just didn’t take them seriously. You are not the truth! she screamed at me, stabbing the earth with her broad-bladed sword. She decried me being any prophet worth the name.
It wasn’t like I disagreed.
But now that she’s staged this attack, combined with the looming vision of my death, I’m certain she and the Makers are part of something bigger. I’m not sure what exactly, but the Makers’ plans include a lot more than just a raid of the Resistance.
And Commander Astoria needs to know about them.
The thing is, I don’t know where the Resistance stands with this. Apparently, the Makers have attacked the Resistance before, but no one bothered to mention it. Which just reminds me of the still-present holes in my knowledge of the world outside Seattle’s legacy-city confines. I could have used the fugue state to dip into the commander’s mind at some point, but spying on her hasn’t been at the top of my priority list. Plus I figured if I needed to know something, they would tell me. Now I’m wondering what else they haven’t bothered to mention.
The commander finishes a hushed discussion with Grayson about the latest statistics, so now’s my chance.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the Makers before now?” I ask before she can go on to the next tablet of reports.
She turns her electric blue gaze on me, sharp and sudden.
I immediately wish I’d phrased the question differently.
She examines me for a long moment. “I could ask you the same question.” Her Parisian accent is stronger when she’s angry… and she sounds very French right now.
I frown. “I’m sorry?”
“You should be,” she says. “You could have warned us.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. I could have warned them?
Kamali comes to my defense before I can form words “Eli didn’t know anything about this.” But she’s looking to me for confirmation.
“I didn’t,” I sputter in her direction. Delphina measures me with a stare almost as icy as her mother’s. I address my words to the commander. “I had no idea they were going to attack.” I can’t believe this is even a question.
“That is unfortunate,” she says, then retrieves another tablet from the planning table, as if that’s all she has to say on the subject. An awkward silence falls over the room. Cyrus looks wound tight. Basha’s tiny hand holds him back, out of the discussion. Nathaniel breaks from the door to provide a hulking presence next to me as if the uncomfortable looks are about to morph into actual attacks. Lenora stays by the door, but she’s on high alert.
I finally put it together when I see Tristan shaking his head and staring at his boots. They expected me to warn them about the attack. The strange kid with the visions of doom and the ability to bring a girl back from the dead… I was supposed to have seen this coming. In a way, I did—I had visions of Miriam—I just didn’t know the exact time and place she would show up. I can’t reveal that now. It will only confirm all the suspicions running through their heads.
Cyrus’s intense stare and a small shake of his head say I’m in the exact position he warned about—a prophet who isn’t delivering.
The silence is becoming thick with unspoken accusations.
I straighten my shoulders and clear my throat. “I may not have seen the Makers coming, but I know what they’re planning next.”
Commander Astoria slowly puts down her tablet. “And how do you know what they are planning, Monsieur Brighton?” The accusation still hangs in the air. That somehow I should have foreseen this. And if I didn’t warn the Resistance, maybe it’s because I didn’t want to. That I’m on the Makers’ side. Which is so plainly ridiculous, I just ignore it.
Besides, we don’t have time to mess around with suspicions and unspoken accusations. “I know what they’re planning because I interfaced with one of the minds of the Makers and acquired all his memories as well as details of the attack they’re planning next week.”
The room comes to a complete and utter halt.
Commander Astoria’s eyes practically pierce my skull. I think she’s trying to decide if I’m joking or if I’ve lost my mind. “His memories?”
“Yes,” I say, slowly meeting the stares of every person in the room, one by one. I can feel their disbelief like a hot wind, and I bristle under it, but it’s not until I reach Kamali’s warm, encouraging eyes that I feel like I should explain. “It’s part of the fugue. I can access the memories of the humans I encounter.”
“Human memories?” Commander Astoria is all over this in a heartbeat. “But not ascender.” She flicks a look to Lenora.
“I have limited access to ascenders,” I say, tightly. “Their minds are too powerful for me to keep in contact for long. Which brings me to a girl named Miriam, the Maker who stole one of our transports.”
Commander Astoria is nodding now, accepting this faster than anyone else in the room. Kamali and Cyrus know most of the details about how the fugue works, and the entire Resistance knows what went down when we defeated the Mind, but most people only have bits and pieces of the truth. I’m already off the weirdness Richter scale—I didn’t feel the need to spill all the details. The truth is, the last two weeks, I’ve been focused on keeping my grip on reality… which made it easy to hide in my barracks and avoiding the stares and whispers around the camp. But if they’re expecting me to see into the future, it’s better to get straight what I can and cannot do. I’d rather have Commander Astoria sending me off to spy on the Makers than eyeing me with suspicion that I might be working with them.
“The girl was an augment,” the commander says. “The militia who were guarding the transports say she is unusually skilled as a fighter.”
“She’s unusual in more ways than that,” I say darkly. “There’s something different about her mind.”
Commander Astoria narrows her eyes. “Is this like the Mind that Augustus was developing? I have heard rumors that the Makers are striving to build a new pathway to ascendance for their people. Have they succeeded?”
I grimace. That makes this attack even more alarming, given Miriam basically threw me out of her mind. “No, she’s not at the level of an ascender. At least… not yet.” The commander’s prompting brings Zachary’s memories welling to the surface. The arguments with Miriam. Her plans to tinker with her own mind, more than she already has. His fear that she wouldn’t survive. “She’s looking at designing another ascendance procedure that will retain her human brain, only… enhanced
. Biologically speaking, not using nanites or other mechanical prostheses. Apparently, she’s the only one who has survived the procedure so far. But that’s not the most important part.”
Delphina steps away from her panel. “And what is most important?”
“The Makers are planning an attack on the ascenders.” I look to Lenora, who frowns. “That’s why they were after our tech.”
Commander Astoria merely shrugs. “They are scavengers. They will try to pillage the ascenders as well. This is none of our concern.”
What? Before I can respond to that, Grayson eases up to the Commander and speaks. “If the Makers are successful in an assault,” he says, voice steady, “they might provoke a response. That could spill over to the Resistance or at least weaken our recruitment efforts within Orion. The Makers have no love for the ascenders, rebel or not—driving a wedge between us might be a secondary intent of the attack.”
Commander Astoria dismisses his concern with a wave of her hand. “They will not succeed. They are no threat to the ascenders, even with a few stolen transports. The Makers are proud of their small accomplishments, but they are inconsequential next to us. Our threat to the ascenders lies in weakening them from within. That will bring its own reprisals, but it also ensures our continued protection.”
Grayson tips his head in agreement, but I still don’t get it. I sift through Zachary’s memories, searching for why they’re attacking the Resistance. His thoughts are drenched in concern for Miriam and filled with a fervent belief in the mission of the Makers to reclaim the earth for humanity, but teasing out all the nuances of why is more difficult—as if it were just taken for granted.
“Why would the Makers want to bring down the Resistance?” I ask the commander. “They obviously attacked us for our tech, but we’re all humans, all fighting against the oppression of the ascenders. I mean, why not just ask?”
The Illusory Prophet Page 6