The Gatherer Series, Book 1

by Colleen Winter

  Megan leaned forward to collect a piece of broken concrete, the tip of her wing rubbing against Storm’s hand. Tiny copper wires were woven through the wings, a child’s attempt to keep back the fields.

  “Maybe you should check on your mom.”

  It was an attempt to get rid of Megan, Romero not appreciating her contribution. Megan didn’t flinch.

  “She’s resting.”

  She wondered what else she might learn with Megan’s help.

  “Like who?”

  Storm addressed Megan and a tiny muscle at Romero’s temple twitched.

  Megan lifted her chin to where the crowd had been.

  “People like them. Or some who are afraid.”

  Her curls bounced.

  Romero had stood, unconsciously or not, positioning himself between her and the door.

  “The tunnels are dangerous. Some of the lines are live, and the gangs of teenagers hunt down there as well.”

  Bev had appeared behind him, arms crossed, her glare filled with enough anger to raise the hairs on Storm’s arms. Megan watched with her wand half raised, stopped in the midst of casting a spell.

  “How do I get to the tunnels?”

  She focused on the possibility of being able to move beneath the city. The opportunities that could deliver. She might be able to find Daniel or learn where he was.

  “If you’re like the others, the fields will kill you.”

  “I’m not like the others.”

  Hadn’t that always been her problem? So determined not to be like everyone else. Instead, she had made them all exactly like her.

  “So you have a cure?”

  She felt the closeness of this place, the navel gazing of the sick. The same navel gazing that had trapped her in the Yukon.

  “No.”

  Romero stepped forward suddenly and she got the impression that he had been waiting for this, for whatever had just happened.

  “We could find one. If you stayed. Your knowledge of the Gatherer. My success with the webs. We could do it. Save people from this.”

  She saw the excitement in him, the desire to be the one who found the cure. It wouldn’t be about the cure or helping these people. It would be about his brilliance, and hers. How they had brought this to the world. The back of her legs bumped the table behind her. Glasses rattled and a stack of papers fell to the floor.

  “It wouldn’t turn out how you expect.”

  If they ever even found one.

  He paused. She had momentarily distracted him from his excitement. It returned quickly, not easily dissuaded from how he saw this playing out.

  “But we would have the cure. It would save people.”

  He was an earlier version of herself. Blinded to anything that didn’t fit with her vision.

  “And if the wrong people got it?”

  “We would have control of it. Distribute it through our own network.”

  His certainty angered her. You couldn’t predict how anything would turn out.

  “We don’t need a cure. We need to stop the Gatherer.”

  That was the only certainty.

  “So you’re going to leave without helping?”

  His idealism saddened her. He believed a cure was going to solve this. She had known the moment she walked around the corner in Three Rocks the Gatherer had to be stopped. It had just taken a while to realize it had to be her.

  “I’ll take you to the tunnels.”

  Megan had slipped her hand into Storm’s—warm, small, her grip firm.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  Megan held Storm’s hand tighter.

  The city drew closer, its churning presence a living, breathing threat.

  “I know my way around.”

  Storm would never be able to outrun it. It followed her wherever she went.

  “It’s dangerous here too. If the area turned on. You’d all be incapacitated or worse.”

  “They won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Megan had lifted her face to the ceiling, seeing the light beyond the opaque windows. A bird flew high in the rafters, making tight manic circles as it sought a way out.

  “We could find a cure.”

  “It won’t stop the Gatherer.”

  “Neither will you if you go out there. You’ll be turned back before you reach the downtown.”

  A squeeze from Megan. Was he lying? Or did Megan know another way?

  “Then you take me. Show me how to get through.”

  The bird circled towards the back of the warehouse as Romero threw out his hand in a gesture of frustration.

  “I’m not getting myself killed. I am needed here.”

  The accusation was obvious. That she was needed there too and that risking her life was irresponsible.

  “Then let Megan take me.”

  “She is a child!”

  His exasperation and disappointment were complete. Whatever admiration she might have had lay dead on the floor between them.

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “No. The great Storm Freeman would not bother herself with the mess.”

  The sudden calmness of his fury frightened her. His distaste for the person he believed her to be turned to loathing in an instant.

  She let go of Megan’s hand as he strode forward, bracing for whatever attack would come. Instead he brushed past her and snatched a map from beneath a pile of papers. He sketched quickly and concisely, the tunnel’s darker route emerging over the grid of city streets. He put in labels and junction points, all of it on the perimeter, none of it coming close to the university or the compound. Megan’s face was close to the drawing as she watched.

  “These are the other dark areas.”

  He pointed to a section to the south, close to the water, and a slightly more central area below Bell Park. She and Daniel had been to a concert in the park, on a rare summer’s night when they had been out of the lab. Its lush greenness had been a welcome contrast to the sterility of the lab.

  Romero handed her the paper, letting go even before she had taken hold.

  “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  It could have been a warning or a threat.

  “Nowhere else is going to be safe but here.”

  She had the sudden memory of waking up on a good morning in the Yukon, feeling the protection of the landscape, the certainty of being safe.

  “I still have to go.”

  “Wait until tonight, so that no one sees you enter the tunnels.”

  He turned, dismissing her, and disappeared back into the warehouse and the intricate web he had created. He charged through it, immune to whatever calming smoothness its threads created.

  The rough route showed a potential path that could get her to the next blackout area, closer to the headquarters and maybe closer to Daniel. She turned her head, listening to the thrumming city she could not hear. His pulse could have been part of that larger churning, or she could have failed to notice when it stopped.

  Megan’s face was close to the page.

  “I can show you the way.”

  “I thought it was dangerous.”

  She shrugged. Her brow pinched as she traced Romero’s route on the page. She stopped at one of the junction points.

  “Not if you know which way to go.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was the easy chatter of women’s voices, disturbances in the air as people passed close to Maria, and an absence of pain below her knee. She squinted against the light, its brilliance aggravating the parched, hungover ache of her head. The faceted lens of a fluorescent light shone over her, one in a row that extended end to end down a long corridor. She saw white walls with an opening to an adjacent corridor just beyond her feet, a white sheet over her legs.

 
She heard a sharp intake of breath above her head and creaking rustling as someone shifted on their gurney. Further up, someone delivered a muttering monologue. She was part of a long row of stretchers that, like the lights, extended down a long corridor. There had been rain and fever and a cold that shook her every bone. She struggled to sit. Where was Storm? A nurse in a brightly coloured uniform came out of the adjacent corridor and walked away from her. An arrow on the wall pointed towards Radiology. Keys clicked on a keyboard, and a telephone rang.

  Maria collapsed back into the pillow, light-headed. She let her heart slow and her breathing rest light and shallow. She felt the snug light pressure of a bandage over her calf, the clear tube of an IV running into the back of her hand. Her mouth so dry she couldn’t swallow.

  They had been in a boat approaching Rima. She arched her neck to look for her chart. Her name would be on an admittance list. The military protocol told her to wait for help and that someone would come for her. But there was no one that would care enough to come for her, other than the military or the police. Even if Havernal weren’t sick he wouldn’t be dropping everything to seek her out. He had a wife and family. If he was even alive.

  She lifted herself onto her elbow, waiting while the vertigo settled. A sharp scent of rancid alcohol wafted from the direction of the moan. Had this been Storm’s plan to get rid of her? Dumped at the hospital so the military would find her?

  “Hey sleeping beauty!”

  Her gurney shook.

  Maria turned her head as far as she could. The boot that had kicked her gurney was worn away at the toe, the sole detached from the tip. It was attached to a pair of grimy tights that had once been red and the folds of a stained and torn skirt. The woman wore enough layers of coats and sweaters to form a solid genderless lump. She watched Maria from a sagging weathered face surrounded by a mane of crusty, clumped curls.

  “They’ve been talking about you.”

  The voice was sing-songy, threatening, like a kindergarten teacher in need of a sick leave.

  “Who’s they?”

  The words were rough, misshapen by the dryness of her mouth.

  The woman tilted her head back and forth, her smile on the darker side of creepy.

  “People.”

  Shouts came from down the adjoining hall and were silenced quickly like a candle being snuffed out. Beyond the woman the corridor ended in a set of swinging doors with a circular red sign that read RESTRICTED. Maria was cold again, traces of her fever still active in her veins. She swung her legs over the side and sat up, nearly keeling over from the pounding pressure in her leg. She lay back down, fists clenched at her sides as she waited for the pain to subside.

  “Clipped your wings. Clipped your wings.”

  The old woman tittered.

  A nurse strode down the corridor, her steps quick and efficient. Maria forced herself to relax and feign sleep. The military wasn’t here yet or there would be someone posted at her bedside and she wouldn’t be stuck in a corridor. She jerked at a gentle touch on her arm. A young nurse stood over her, fresh-faced, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail with a tinge of pink in her bangs.

  “Welcome back.”

  * * * *

  The stretcher wheels rolled over the hospital’s tiled floor, the squares of fluorescent lights between ceiling tiles rolling past like the telephone poles outside a car window. The hushed murmuring of the emergency ward had been left behind and they passed countless doors and arrows pointing back to the Emergency Room and Diagnostic Imaging, until the signs stopped. The nurse continued to roll past doors marked only with numbers, the labyrinth of brightly lighted corridors seemingly endless so that Maria lost track of the twists and turns, unable to keep the map in her head.

  It felt as if she were speeding through a silent subway line, the lights on the ceiling the brief flashes of the stations as they hurtled past. She shook her head, though it was more of a lolling from side to side, the drugs used to take the pain away having clogged up the synapses in her brain so her thoughts wouldn’t connect together. She had a brief thought that this would be how Storm felt during an attack, before the thought was whisked away and it was the lights again, sliding past in that endless rhythm, counting the beats to the end.

  Occasionally a face floated by, looking down at her with blank curiosity. They would know who she was, all of them part of a conspiracy to whisk her out of sight, deliver her back into the hands of the military.

  She grabbed at the gleaming silver railing when they turned a corner but she missed the mark, her hand falling uselessly beside the gurney. The nurse tucked Maria’s arm back under the sheet, tightening it around her shoulder without slowing. They never got close enough for Maria to reach again.

  “Where are we going?”

  The words were thick, hard to form. She lifted herself onto her elbow, nauseous from the motion of the stretcher. The nurse pushed her back down, humming a nameless, repetitive tune.

  “This will be a better place for you.”

  “I liked the old place.”

  The girl laughed, a young tinkling laugh as if no one ever liked the bustle and chaos of the emergency room. At least there had been people, witnesses.

  She must have dozed off. Had there been an elevator? The corridors were colder, less bright, the doors functional and unmarked like a morgue. She was being wheeled to a slot in the wall where she would slowly die before anyone found her. She struggled, but couldn’t move, straps tight across her hips and chest.

  “Help!”

  It was an unformed moan that echoed inside her head and went no further. The woman patted her shoulder to say she was okay and in good hands. She squirmed. She wasn’t in good hands, didn’t want to be in anyone’s hands.

  She heard the thud and clang of an emergency door opening, a rush of cold air, and the sudden exposure to the dark sky. She didn’t want to be out here, needed to return to where the people were.

  She saw more faces above her, no longer the polished cleanliness of the hospital staff. A bearded man looked familiar. She sensed the exchange of words, a handshake, something transferred, then a sudden lift, vertigo, the push of metal across a dirty floor, and the inside of a truck that smelled of cattle. She could hardly move against the restraints, called for help without effect.

  Where was the nurse? Her tuneless humming echoed inside Maria’s head.

  Doors slammed. The bearded face floated over her in a harsh overhead light. Not military.

  An engine roared, she smelled diesel and the world shook.

  The sudden prick of a needle jabbed into her thigh. She twisted, flailed uselessly. A warmth rushed into her toes and up her thigh like water overflowing a bathtub. It spread through her abdomen and she lifted her chin as if she would be able to keep her head above water. She felt threads of dizziness, the first trickle, and then the deep flush of oblivion as it flooded over her.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Storm stood in the darkness at the canal’s edge, her gaze lifted to the glowing horizon of the city with the same unease as when she had approached Three Rocks. She stood within the shelter of the darkness, trace currents whisking and pulling across her cheeks.

  The electrification started benignly enough, a few decorative lanterns along the water’s edge and the glint of cars in the distance beneath higher, brighter lights. Beyond that monstrous digital signs flashed incessantly and an electric train streamed by, its windows a chain of glowing squares. At the center, the sparkling ring of the Ferris wheel spun lazily.

  “My mom never comes here anymore.”

  Megan had skipped easily along the river, skirting around featureless stacks piled on the banks, pulling Storm into a cramped alley when a group of teenagers had sauntered past.

  “We used to come and watch the lucky ones.”

  Storm’s respiration was too shallow, her attempts at breathing slowl
y doing nothing against the taste of fear and the certainty that if she went in, she would not come out. She focused on each breath, imagining her heart beating slowly—all the techniques that were useless against this kind of fear.

  “You can go back now.”

  It had been a game for Megan when they had hidden from the teenagers, more a bout of hide and seek than the possibility of violence, even though Marty and Trevor had warned them repeatedly to avoid the groups.

  The river flowed black and silky beside them, its faint rotting stench smelling more of chemicals than plants.

  “I have the map.”

  Storm patted the stiff rectangle on her chest where the map of the subway network was tucked inside her suit.

  A police car, blue and red sirens flashing, skimmed across an overpass.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “You saw Romero draw it.”

  The city pulsed and shimmered, a sparkling mirage that dominated her vision.

  “He didn’t draw the safe ones.”

  Storm pulled her gaze from the shining distance to the shadows where Megan stood beside her. Megan looked back behind them, away from the brilliance of the city.

  “On purpose?”

  Megan’s shoulders lifted, the back of her matted hair lighted by the glow of the city.

  “He says we can’t trust you.”

  Storm’s gaze returned to the shimmering city. She tasted the fear, the bitter acid of a seizure.

  “He’s probably right.”

  Megan started walking, closing the distance to where the world turned on.

  “My mom is sick.”

  Storm didn’t follow, wary of the vibrating fields that would reach their tendrils towards her. Bev wasn’t only sick, she was angry, her bitterness eating her alive as much as her disease.

  “Did she tell you to do this?”

  The girl disappeared between two crates, and Storm heard scraping and sweeping sounds until she emerged carrying a long metal bar. A slender reed in the dim light, she strode to a metal door at the back of a newer commercial warehouse and inserted the end of the bar between the door and its frame.

  “She told me to help you.”