The Gatherer Series, Book 1

by Colleen Winter

  He moved between her and the door so that she had to turn away.

  Romero stood behind them and she wondered how long he had been there.

  “Come. I have a place for you.”

  TWENTY TWO

  Daylight penetrated through the opaque walls of the upper warehouse, flooding the expansive room with a soft, bright light. The space was bigger than it had appeared in the darkness, the ceiling three stories high and the cots and partitions extending the length of a football field before a brighter light outlined an open bay door.

  For a moment Storm couldn’t place where she was, the brightness and the peace of the place pulling her back into the days before the Gatherer had been created. The lab filled with morning light. The silence filled with possibilities. She would have loved to travel back to that point in time, to not make the error in the lattice that would lead her to discover the principle behind the Gatherer. To have that moment float by, maybe as part of someone else’s life, and to allow her to continue scraping by, the fame and the impact of the Gatherer never touching her or this world. She had tried many times to imagine what that life would have been like, but it never took shape, that reality not one she was ever destined to see.

  She rubbed her face, trying to clear the fog from her thoughts. Excited voices sounded from the far end of the warehouse where she had first come in. An agitated group had gathered, shifting and jostling for position as they tried to see into the centre of the crowd.

  Storm stood and braced on a metal column. She wove her way through an extensive layout of cots and low barriers. Halfway to the entrance she paused. She stood along the exact centre of the building, the beds and barriers laid out symmetrically on either side of the mid-line. What had once appeared as a random cluster arranged itself into smooth curves arching outward. The partitions acted as neat dividers, segregating the curves into smaller sections, like the careful structure of a beehive, every branch designed for a specific purpose.

  The grand structure enveloped her and the rows of cots. In her daze, she had wandered to the centre of it, her muscles lying smooth and close against her bone and the fog gone from her head.

  “What do you think?”

  Romero stood behind her.

  She opened her arms, lifting them out from her sides, waiting for the fatigue to return, the sense of well-being to leave. She felt as she would after a long illness, drained and weak, yet out of the danger zone.

  “How does it work?”

  Romero lifted his face to the ceiling, to the glow of the natural light. There was pride there and also a resistance to share.

  “It’s strongest when all the cots are full.”

  The cots were maybe half filled with people, the soft light permeating the barren room as if the morning sun were rising at the far end of the warehouse. She had tried to make her own shield to protect herself from the currents of the Northern Lights but had been too blind to see the power of taking it a step further. By connecting the fields of many humans into a larger network, Romero had created something greater than the whole. She wanted to rest forever at the centre of this unseen thing, let go as it held her gently in its subtle power. There was a joy to it, low and fragile, with the potential to grow into something more.

  “Does it cure people?”

  Romero gazed around the room, following the lines of the web he had created, as real as any column or pole.

  “Maybe. After a few years. If people could stay here long enough to be rebalanced.”

  Two empty spaces broke the symmetry of one line of cots, and another single space interrupted a row further out.

  “Is that where people—”

  She didn’t say the word out loud, for fear of disturbing this fragile joy, but Romero understood.

  “Not at all. The empty spaces make the web stronger. Give it space to adjust to the larger structure.”

  The noise grew from the end of the room and the web tightened around her. Was he baiting her? Telling her what he had discovered?

  He pointed to a thin copper wire that ran up one of the poles. Each column had a similar wire, and the walls had wires running a foot apart. He wasn’t looking to her for a response, merely basking in the pleasure of what he had created. Had he stumbled on the need for the imperfections on his own?

  “Was it you?”

  He spoke low enough so that only she would hear. She looked at him, not understanding, frightened of his sudden intensity and the familiarity of it. She felt the joy slide away. Other scientists had been some of her biggest detractors, spending hours discrediting her online, espousing on how the Gatherer couldn’t possibly work, even when it had.

  “The headquarters. It’s on the news.”

  She tried to hide her confusion but he had seen it. His focus shifted along with something in his understanding.

  There were catcalls and cheering as the crowd closed the space. Romero searched her face, his expression wary as he looked to see if she was lying and she tried to understand what was happening. The crowd paraded towards them, more animated than they had been since she’d arrived. Bev led the pack, beaming, a changed person from the previous night.

  They crowded around her and Romero, eight to ten deep, the peace of the web broken by their manic energy. Trevor stood next to Bev, not shaking. Their faces were bright, as hopeful as the small impoverished communities where they had delivered some of the first Gatherers. The crowd clapped and grinned, some of the younger men thrusting their fists in the air in victory, their exuberance strangely threatening. She flinched as a few slapped her back too hard.

  “Three cheers for Freeman!”

  Storm flushed, hating the attention and confusion. She had only ever seen photos of the new headquarters, glimpses of its glass and steel façade on videos of press conferences, her mother poised and in charge in front of the microphones.

  “Can you show me?”

  The crowd parted as they moved through. She wanted to pull away from where they touched her, but there were too many, and whatever had happened at the headquarters had wiped away their distrust.

  A rough steel cage encased the computer screen, a marked radius of open space on the floor preventing anyone from getting too close. Trevor and Bev stood next to her as Romero brought the news clip up on the screen. The restless crowd closed in around them.

  Smoke billowed from the front of the Gatherer’s headquarters as people in office clothes milled around. Lights from fire crews and police cars flashed erratically over the scene, as fully clothed firefighters directed the frightened flock of workers away from the entrance. Storm searched for her mother in the crowd before a young female reporter with flawless makeup blocked the screen. Her mother stood beside her.

  “Thanks for speaking with us Ms. Freeman. This must have been quite a shock for you.”

  Her mother’s hair was styled, clothes neat.

  “I wanted to let everyone know that Gatherer Inc. is fully operational and that this blatant terrorist attack will not stop the good that we are bringing to the world.”

  Several workers wandered across the screen behind her, looking off into the distance.

  “Was anyone hurt in the explosion?”

  “At this stage it looks like there are very few injuries. We have some of the best security in the world and I don’t suspect this to slow down our production.”

  Her mother’s reassuring smile was out of place.

  “Do you know who is responsible for the attack?”

  The camera zoomed in and her mother’s face filled the screen. The slick, professional veneer vanished and the iron will Storm recognized slid into place. It was as if she were in the same room with her, sensing the anger before it broke.

  “No one has claimed responsibility.”

  Her lipstick was bright red, and the eyeshadow she had never worn when Storm was young looked prof
essionally done. A renovated version of her mother. Storm wondered whether any of the original structure remained.

  “There are rumours that your daughter, Storm Freeman, the inventor of The Gatherer, has attacked and destroyed a Gatherer. Could this attack have come from her?”

  Storm felt as if she stood in the path of a tornado, the first edges of the cyclone about to pull her in.

  “It’s too early to say who is responsible. I’ll let the police and fire crews do their job.”

  The quiet thickened in the warehouse, a solid stillness surrounding her.

  “Have you been in touch with your daughter? Is it possible she is responsible for this?”

  Her mother’s expression didn’t change, her face frozen in that odd smile. Storm could feel her mother asking the same question.

  “My daughter brought a great gift to the world with the Gatherer. I don’t believe she would intentionally destroy what she created.”

  Was that meant for Storm? Did her mother assume she would be watching? She had to know Storm had left the Yukon, whoever was in that jet giving her regular updates on their failure to find her.

  “But you aren’t sure.”

  Her mother’s gaze flicked off screen before she was pulled beyond the camera’s vision. Black smoke rose out of the entrance as jets of water from thick hoses dosed the blackened crater where the door had been.

  The image changed to an early evening view of the central square in Three Rocks with Storm’s silver-clad figure making its erratic path towards the Gatherer. It had felt like her skin was being peeled back, the draw of the Gatherer leaving her depleted, a sense of doom lying so close to her she hadn’t thought she would make it out the other side.

  The view changed, showing her hacking away at the side of the Gatherer with a crowbar. In between strikes she looked up towards the camera and the sight of her own face shocked her. It looked gaunt, the skin stretched tight over bone—but it was her mindless purpose that most frightened her, a beast determined to stop whatever was causing it pain. She barely remembered those minutes, the entire journey through the square a haze of pain encased in the certainty of death. No wonder her mother had been so cagey. Anyone seeing this would believe Storm had lost her mind.

  Romero turned off the screen, powering down the entire console.

  The quiet was thick enough to suffocate her. She stared at the blank, washed-out display waiting for her mother’s image to return and answer the question.

  “Is that how Kowalski got hurt?”

  Romero sat next to the screen as if it and the computer were as inanimate as a chair. No one else went close. The crowd had made a space around her, forming into a loose semi-circle.

  “You said there was an explosion.”

  Their explosion to get them out of the cellar had been small and personal compared to the magnitude of the one at the headquarters. The hole in the cellar roof had been designed to get them out. The explosion at the headquarters was something else. A line had been crossed. The shine finally falling off the Gatherer, that gaping hole giving credence to the rumours and feeding the panic that people would have been trying to keep at bay. The situation was far beyond what she had imagined, the great work of the Gatherer hemorrhaging at the seams.

  “There was.”

  She would never be able to make them believe she hadn’t been responsible.

  “And you didn’t take her to the hospital.”

  She tasted fury at their accusations. A deep, humming annoyance that they believed they had the right to judge her.

  “It’s no secret Maria and I have been accused of terrorism. A hospital isn’t a safe place for her.”

  “That’s where they’ve taken her.”

  It was a young man, the same age as Trevor, though skinny, with a patchy beard.

  “How do you know?”

  The boy looked to Romero.

  “We haven’t cut ourselves off from the city around us. We simply filter what gets through.”

  “Have they arrested her?”

  Romero paused before he answered.

  “Not the police.”

  Storm felt a sudden break in the connection to Maria, the rope that had connected them coming undone and slipping away, all their efforts disintegrating as soon as they were apart. She tried to picture Maria being held, but in her imagination Maria broke free, kept moving forward.

  She would need to move forward on her own, despite the distraction of the attack and the worsening situation. Those were symptoms. She needed to keep her focus on the solution and the connection she had with the Gatherer.

  “What are you going to do?”

  The crowd had moved back but she was aware of them listening, faces turned only partially away, conversations truncated or not existing.

  Her path was strangely clear, the explosion and her mother’s distorted interview bringing it back to what had only ever mattered, her and the Gatherer and that connection. There was only one other person who understood it as well as she did. He had disappeared even before she left, retreating to the lab he had set up. He hadn’t wanted it soiled by the fame that followed her. It hadn’t mattered. The strain of the release had already pushed them apart. His accusation of self-importance and irresponsibility still showing up in her dreams.

  “I need to find someone.”

  Romero sat next to the inert monitor. His health shone from beneath his old clothes, no amount of disguise able to camouflage his strength.

  “Do you know if he’s alive?”

  She paused, for he spoke as if he knew it was Daniel. She felt the insidiousness of fame again, of people knowing so much about her life and so little.

  She shook her head, wondering who he was with his intricate web and how much she could trust him. He was running tests on his patients. Benevolent tests but tests, nonetheless, and she wondered how much they knew.

  “Are there other blackout areas?”

  “Three. None of them as large or as sophisticated as this.”

  He waved his hand to indicate the layout of the beds, the children’s play area.

  “Do you know the people there?”

  “Some but not all. Their setups are less structures. People come and go.”

  He didn’t need to say that they died. It was understood.

  “Does everyone come here by choice?”

  She felt the recoiling, the wound she had touched still raw. The smell of burned wax hung in the air, a charred underlayer to the light flooding in the high windows.

  Romero answered.

  “In the beginning people came on their own. Later, as soon as they started showing symptoms, they were dropped off.”

  Like a modern day leper colony.

  “So if someone was ill they would be in one of the areas.”

  Daniel had shown only the smallest signs of fatigue, and a habit of forgetting things. She had attributed it to stress but he could have been sick, like the others.

  “Not necessarily.”

  Trevor’s voice was rough, carrying the same anger she had heard from Bev.

  “Some families keep them at home, believing that the doctors will cure them. They become prisoners, trapped by the fields, often so deteriorated that to escape to us would be fatal.”

  Storm had been a coward. She had known what was wrong and had let her mother convince her she was the only one.

  “And staying where they are is fatal as well.”

  An open space surrounded her as if she emanated a lethal field.

  “Can you show me where the other areas are?”

  A shift of bodies and Megan emerged from the crowd wearing tattered fairy wings and carrying a magic wand, ready to grant wishes.

  “Only Romero goes to the other areas.”

  She sat cross-legged on the floor next to Storm, a few curls spr
outed above her matted hair, having not yet been consumed by the dirt and oil.

  “Trevor goes too.”

  “Megan!”

  Everyone looked to Trevor, his anger confirming Megan’s words. At the edge of the group where only Storm could see, Romero glared at the girl, his malevolence gone so quickly she might not have seen it at all. Maria would have seen it, if it was there.

  Trevor ran a trembling hand over his face.

  “It’s how I got here.”

  Storm waited. Megan lifted her smooth, young face to Trevor’s.

  “It’s not a surprise to anyone here. What they don’t know is that it almost killed me. I thought the tunnels would be free of fields but they weren’t.”

  He looked down at Megan though he didn’t see her, reliving whatever suffering had got him here. His broad shoulders were more wasted than the previous night, the illusion of breadth gone in the daylight.

  “Let’s give Trevor a moment everyone.”

  Marty appeared and drew Trevor away. He didn’t resist. His departure seemed to take the air out of the rest, his weakness too much a reminder of their own. There was no one here with enough energy to fight for even the briefest of time.

  “The best way to beat this is to stay healthy.”

  Romero had raised his voice, addressing the receding backs—a bedraggled, worn group once the excitement from the attack on the headquarters was gone and she had not been the saviour they had hoped for. Megan drew invisible stars on the concrete with the end of her wand.

  “I’ve been down there.”

  Megan’s small mouth was set in a determined line, her wand filling the cracked concrete with dozens of stars.

  Romero closed his eyes and Storm understood that Megan was using her as protection.

  “Down where?”

  Romero looked like he wanted to swat Megan.

  “The old subway lines.”

  “Aren’t they electrified?”

  “The city shut them down last year, once everyone migrated to the electric rail above ground.”

  “So they’re empty?”

  “People live down there.”