The Oracle's Prophecy

by Alex Leopold

  “I️ didn’t know what it was but, now that I’ve seen this, I️ think what I️ saw was our future. I️ saw where we’re going to be. I saw us here.”

  She purposefully left out Varick. It was partly out of embarrassment, and partly in response to the hostile nature by which her father had treated Ellis. If I️ tell him, he might make sure we never meet, she thought.

  “You just got your abilities”, her father quietly responded. “I️ don’t think you know what you saw.”

  “Then explain that?” She challenged him and pressed her finger down onto the sketch of the accumulator.

  “Did you invent that when you were with the Torchbearers, or here?”

  He didn’t respond but she didn’t need him to, she could see it in his eyes. He’d built it here.

  “How could Nakano draw something she didn't know existed unless she saw it in a vision?” She asked.

  “I know what you’re thinking but it's dangerous to follow this.” He whispered pointing to the book. “This has led to nothing but death.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” She agreed. “But is there another option?”

  35

  “Pack light.” Their father ordered. “Bring only what you can carry.”

  There’d be time to discuss the plan later. For now it was better to keep it a secret. Snoopers could be listening in, their father pointed out, and skin-readers had a way of making the walls talk.

  “Do you think this plan of yours is going to work?” Cooper asked Riley as they scrambled up the stairs to their bedroom.

  “I don’t know.” She replied with nervous honesty. “I hope so.”

  “Well, you’ve always been the brains of the two of us.” Cooper pointed out attempting to make her feel better.

  “I guess that makes me the muscle.” She flashed a care-free smile.

  There’d be no time to rest or bathe, there was barely enough time to put on fresh clothes and re-bandage wounds.

  As she changed by candle-light, Riley caught her reflection in her bedroom mirror and was shocked to see the extent of her injuries. Each deep bruise was a lingering reminder of the punishment she’d received over the last twenty-four hours, no more so than the two angry hand prints across her neck. She hid these beneath a scarf. Their father promised their powers would heal their bodies quicker than usual but she couldn't stand to look at them a moment longer.

  “Can you help me?” Cooper asked too stiff to dress herself.

  Riley helped slip a top over her head then helped her sister get into her boots.

  Almost forgetting her gloves, Cooper realized she couldn't twist her body enough to reach them on the chest of draws. A small yelp of surprise passed her lips when they simply slid along the counter into her outstretched hand.

  “I don’t know how I did that.” She remarked holding them up for Riley to see.

  “We haven't really had a chance to talk about it, have we?” Riley said.

  “I don't think I'm ready.” Cooper replied shaking her head and then letting out a nervous laugh. “I think if I was to stop and think about any of it right now my head might explode.”

  She looked at Riley earnestly. “If you say you have a plan to get us out of this mess then I’ll follow you. I’d just like to know how you can trust that book so easily when father does not.”

  Riley thought about it for a moment. “Do you think a person can see into the future?”

  “No.” Cooper replied definitively, then added with a shrug.

  “I guess I don't like the idea that someone can simply close their eyes and tell me what I'm going to do next when I barely know myself.”

  “Might make your life easier of course, you’ve never been one for planning.” Riley offered jokingly.

  “Good point.” Cooper agreed. “Only problem is, if someone told me what the universe wanted me to do next, I’d probably do the opposite.

  “Just to spite them.” She added provocatively. Then caught the look on her sister’s face.

  “But you believe, don't you? Why?”

  Riley didn't really know how to explain it. How could you describe having memories of someone you’d never met that were as vivid to you as any other?

  She could remember the smell of Varick’s warm skin, the comfort of lying in his lap, the way his voice soothed her. These memories could not be fabricated, they had to be real. Except they weren't memories of something that had happened in her past, they were of something to come.

  “When our powers were released, I️ saw a vision of the future.” Riley told Cooper. “And when I read Nakano’s book I saw she’d had the exact same vision.”

  “Really? What did you both see?” Cooper asked, her curiosity piqued.

  “Our escape.” Riley told her, and as she spoke she saw the vision again in her mind’s eye.

  “There’s more.” She continued. “But I need you to keep it a secret.”

  “Of course!”

  “Most especially from father.”

  “Absolutely!”

  Riley started carefully. “I️ saw a man, named Varick who’s going to help make sure we get away from the Directory.”

  Now Cooper’s eyes were aglow with fascination. “Who is he?”

  “I think he’s with the resistance.”

  “How does he know about us?”

  Riley blushed a little before she answered.

  “This is going to sound nuts, cause it sounds nuts to me. But I feel like, somehow he knows about me. That he’s known about me for sometime.”

  Cooper was speechless, her mouth open in astonishment.

  “Nuts, right?” Riley chuckled. “It gets crazier from there though, cause I think he’s in love with me. I’ve seen myself in another time and place with him, and I can feel myself in love with him, too.

  “Literally, feel it.” She added tapping her chest over her heart.

  “Wow, Lee.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s some special crazy.”

  Riley had no defense. “But what if it’s not crazy?”

  “Then I guess I’d wonder how he knows where we are?” Cooper asked, then corrected herself. “Or where we’ll be, I guess?”

  Riley thought about that.

  “Father said something about it in the barn. When you close your eyes and really focus on the vision, you feel it pulling you to it.” She answered dreamily as she felt her body being pulled east. “It’s like a second gravity. I could follow it in the dark.”

  “And this Varick is following it to find us?” Cooper asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Well, let’s hope he’s bringing help with him. Cause it sounds like we’re going to need all the help we can get to get us out of this mess.”

  36

  Control was enveloped by fire and it calmed him.

  Standing in the middle of the collapsed warehouse he enjoyed watching the flames as they coiled around his gloved fingers like a snake. It would be so easy for him to lose concentration and let the protection he’d created around his body slip. Less than a half-second would be all it would take for the flames to overwhelm him. He could almost sense it daring him.

  “What do you feel?” His skin-reader asked him from the fire’s edge.

  “The remnants of the force that tore this building apart. The Archon was right, this was the work of two powerful anomalies.”

  The skin-reader, who’d been named The Drill, nodded then held up something in his ungloved hand. “We’ve found something that might interest you.”

  Control let the fire whip one last white-hot tentacle around his body, then he choked the blaze down until it was nothing more than loose smoke rising from a field of ash.

  “What is it?” He asked stepping from the rubble. Both men had removed their masks and Control could see the excitement in his skin-reader’s face.

  “Information.” Drill responded and held up a gold necklace looped around a signet ring.

  Control faced it to the li
ght of the moon and saw it was stamped with the emblem of the Torchbearers. That caught his attention, it had been some time since he’d seen one of these outside a Directory vault.

  “The houndsman found it in the debris of the building.” Drill added when Control handed it back.

  Laying it in the palm of his barehand he began gently rubbing it with his index finger. His eye-lids fluttered like bat’s wings as he once again extracted the information from the ring’s surface.

  “This ring is owned by a girl named, Riley. Riley is barely an adult, no older than seventeen. She is an outlaw, on the run with her sister and father, the mother dead long ago. When Riley is anxious she likes to run her fingers around this ring for comfort.”

  “What of Nakano, or the anomalies that destroyed this warehouse? What can it tell me about them?” Control asked his voice curt and impatient.

  The skin reader’s eyes fluttered. “Nothing on Nakano. However, there is more on the girl that will interest you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Riley is a twin, her sister’s name is Cooper. I️ believe these are the two female anomalies we are looking for. And there is more.

  “The ring tells us who Riley’s father is.” The skin-reader said excitedly. “These days he only goes by the name Quill, but once he was known as the Great Inventor.”

  “The Archon’s was right.” Control nodded to himself as he quickly collected his thoughts. “This is where he’s been hiding all this time.”

  “He must’ve been biding his time.” The skin-reader said. “Waiting for his daughters’ abilities to gain their full strength before returning.”

  “Does the ring tell you anything else?”

  The skin-reader gave a proud smile. “I️ know where they live.”

  This news rocked Control and he had to take a moment to process it.

  “There’s an image of a house, I️ was able to track it.” Drill added.

  Control’s head nodded slowly but his mind was racing.

  “Can you be sure this is authentic?” He asked as he tried to quiet the adrenaline now surging through his body.

  It couldn’t be this easy to find the Great Inventor, not after all these years, his mind warned him. A more reasonable explanation was that the necklace was some kind of trap. Planted to trick the Myrmidoms and help the Great Inventor and Nakano escape.

  Drill did not hide his offense.

  “I’m capable of seeing through such parlor tricks, Senior.” He held the ring out for Control. “If you don’t believe me read the ring yourself. The information is imprinted deeply into the metal; years of memories and emotions. That sort of thing is difficult to fake.”

  Control was no skin-reader, but he had some experience with reading metals so he removed his gloves and placed the ring between the tips of his fingers.

  It was as his skin-reader had promised. The girl had openly shared her secrets with the ring and the metal was filled with her memories and emotions. It was all there, including the memory of a farm.

  Then, as his fingers traced the ring’s surface he saw the girl’s face.

  It was her. The girl from his dreams. The one he thought he’d seen in the Old Yard at Harvardtown.

  “Promise me, Varick.” He heard her whisper to him as a memory of her jumped into his mind. “Promise me you’ll find me in the darkness.”

  Then she was gone.

  “Are you alright, Senior?” Drill asked looking at him with open curiosity.

  “I saw you …. Shake.” He added as he steadied Control with one hand while the other reached to take back the necklace.

  “You saw nothing!” Control grunted pushing him away and placing the necklace in his pocket. After what had just happened he had no intention of handing it back to the one person who had the ability to read it.

  “Where’s the house?” He demanded, trying to compose himself.

  “To the east.”

  “Find Khnum, get him to confirm the direction. Then inform the men we’re leaving.” He ordered. Then, even though he knew he shouldn’t, he disappeared into a switch.

  This couldn’t be happening he thought racing deeper into the woods. It couldn’t be true that the girl he’d dreamt about as a young boy was real and was this girl, Riley – the daughter of the Great Inventor.

  During some of the darkest days of his childhood he’d sort refuge in the dreams of her and though he knew she didn’t exist, he’d been in love with her. She’d given him the strength to go on, to keep on living. Then he’d joined the Directory and had purposefully forced his emotions to become as cold and as deadly as the steel he wielded. As part of that process, he’d forced himself to stop dreaming of her till she was gone altogether. Till she was dead.

  “Promise me, Varick.” He heard her voice again and in the vision he could feel her wrapping her arms around him tightly. “Promise me you’ll find me in the darkness.”

  It’s not real, she’s not real, he told himself over and again as he collapsed against a tree and slid to the ground. It was a trick,

  Nakano and the Great Inventor were manipulating him. How they were doing it he could not say, but somehow they’d found a way to get into his head and were using an old memory to pit him against himself.

  He refused to let that happen, refused to let them take his focus off his mission.

  Rising to his feet he forced his mind to think of her only as a target that he was hunting down.

  “Promise me, Varick. Promise me you’ll find me in the darkness.” She begged him, but he made himself not listen. To her or to what he whispered back.

  “I promise. Whatever it takes, I’ll find you.” He swore as he held onto her with a desperation he could barely quantify. “And I will bring you back to me.”

  37

  With little more than the weapons they could carry and the clothes on their backs, they left the ranch as the sun began to rise and by late morning, they were following a trail heading east. Old rusted signposts and mile markers covered in thick vines flanked them on either side, evidence of a major highway buried beneath their feet. Except, instead of automobiles, now only wild beasts used the road to travel back and forth between their grazing lands.

  They moved quickly on horses conditioned for riding long distances, following a route their father seemed to know but kept to himself. He wanted to be far clear of their homestead before he said anything of their plan, the danger of snoopers listening in was now a constant threat to their survival.

  The morning had brought a frost and Riley felt the cold Fall air numb her face and fingertips. If she was home she’d be curled up like a dog on the thick sheepskin rug that lay in front of the fireplace, so close she’d be able to feel the heat blissfully stinging her skin.

  It wasn’t just the cold that made the ride taxing that morning. Her body was still a mess of cuts and bruises and each throbbed in almost rhythmic unison with the steady gait of her horse. It was so bad that when she was forced to make her horse jump over an obstruction, she would suck in her breath from the pain.

  If Riley had even an ounce of energy to spare she might’ve smiled at the irony of how different this ride was from how she’d once imagined it might be.

  In her dreams, these adventures never began under the threat of immediate capture. Nor had they required her to clench her teeth and bite down when spasms of pain burned along her stiffened muscles.

  The ride would get easier their father had promised. Their abilities were healing their battered bodies at an accelerated rate and soon they’d be strong enough to use their powers again. Riley could already feel it happening, she could see it too. Sometimes when her horse passed just out of reach of a tree, she’d hold out her hand and watch as the leaves bowed toward her.

  As tired and sore as she felt, Riley reminded herself that her discomfort was nothing compared to what the new addition to their company was going through.

  Nakano looked like hell. Her complexion was a ghostly-white, her skin clammy. She wa
s too disoriented to guide her horse, so Riley’s father had it roped to his pummel, and she was so heavily slumped in her mount they had to tie her into it to stop her from falling out.

  She’d begun the ride giving them a detailed look into the Directory, unloading everything she’d learnt about them over the last fifteen years. Yet, as the ride drew on she continued to falter until her mind seemed trapped in a vagary of wake and dream.

  Mid-sentence she’d start talking gibberish before drifting away into some kind of awake sleep. It might last for seconds, other times it could be for as long as a quarter hour.

  Then she’d jolt awake and write down what she'd seen. There were visions that made a certain amount of sense…

  || The prisoner knows the location of the village on top of the rock. He will lead the Pathfinder to the High Temple, and to the secret hidden there ||

  … as well as those that did not …

  || A world of ice. Drones attack a steel door. Level 8 ||

  “Try and rest.” Their father would repeat to her every time she returned from one of her trances. “You’ll need your strength.”

  “I’ll be okay once we get to the resistance.” She’d mutter in response, but it was clear that whatever what was happening to her was now beyond her control.

  Acadia and Redtail were at the front of the column scouting the trail. The ursinian, now dressed in his leather fighting vest engraved with a gold fighting bear, sat tall in his saddle dwarfing his houndsman companion.

  Usually, the role of scout would've been Mayat's but under their father’s orders the Sekhem had remained behind at the ranch and had held onto Goose as well. Like everything else, there hadn’t been time for explanations. In fact, there’d barely been enough time to say goodbye.

  “Will we see you again?” Cooper had asked and though the felisian had often voiced her dislike of physical intimacy, she’d wrapped Mayat in a fierce embrace anyway. She was, after all, the only thing the twins had known for a woman’s presence in their lives.