“Come on.”
She whispered, a plea to whatever god could banish the demon running circles in his brain. There was a movement in his arm, like a spring popping and his hand rolled outwards, the tendons in his neck receding.
She adjusted the sleeping bag over him again and caught sight of the rash on his side, now migrated to his chest. She leaned in closer, trying to match it with the photos of rashes she had obsessed over when the spots had briefly appeared on her skin, disappearing after a few weeks in Three Rocks.
Daniel sighed in his sleep and she let the cover fall, mentally retracing the path she had taken to get here, knowing she would never be able to get him out.
She returned to the lab bench and picked up the crystal lattice lying in the cleared section in the middle. He had tried so many variations, each of them honing in on the specific frequencies and structure.
She waded into the wasteland of failed experiments, nudging charred structures with her toe, flipping mostly intact lattices out of their cases. She carried one back to the bench, but it was too small and she returned to the graveyard. His theory was good. She understood what he wanted to do, except closing the channel wouldn’t be enough.
She returned to the stool and sat for a few moments. She was sticky and hot inside her suit and it chafed at her elbows. As she undid the zipper, she glanced at the gray sheer walls of the switchgear, trying to reconcile her instinctive fear with their blank, inert faces. She slipped the suit off her shoulders and felt the welcome release as it fell off her back, the cool air rushing into the damp creases of skin. The suit caught around her hips and she bent to tug it down, letting it fall to a crumpled pile around her feet. She dug beneath it to untie her laces, the thud of the boots landing echoing in the darkness. Goosebumps rose on her arms and back, yet she stood for a moment in her underwear, enjoying the touch of the air on her skin.
She ran her hands over thigh muscles she hadn’t had in the Yukon and the ridge of abdominal definition close to the surface of her concave stomach. She would have looked as changed to Daniel as he did to her.
She moved around to the side of the cot closest to the wall. Daniel didn’t stir. She lifted the bag and slipped into the pool of warmth, being careful not to touch the sores down his back.
Tucking the bag around her shoulder, she shifted closer, the same comforting smell of Daniel still there beneath the sickness. She rested her hand lightly on his hip, already feeling the warmth of their bodies combine.
THIRTY-TWO
Storm’s voice echoed off the concrete walls, the dim dampness making her feel like she was at the bottom of a deep well. The chill air seeped under the edges of the sleeping bag, and she shifted closer into the pool of heat between her and Daniel’s body.
“It needs to be in a firmware update or part of an upgrade.”
Daniel was whispering, his voice travelling no further than the space on the pillow between them.
“There’s no way you’d get close to it.”
Partly gray stubble roughened his cheeks and he reeked of sweat. Yet the raw stench of it didn’t affect the pleasure of being next to him.
“I thought maybe I could get Ari to do it.”
He paused, deep creases in his forehead beneath his smooth, pale scalp.
“I know he’s part of the corporation now but he has to see what’s happening.”
Storm rose up onto her elbow, the cold air rushing into their warmth.
“Ari’s dead.”
Daniel made a face, a quick flash of impatience.
“No. He’s there.”
“It was on the news. All three of them.”
Daniel continued to shake his head.
“One of their latest upgrades had Ari written all over it. He’s the one who made the expansions possible. I’m sure of it.”
There was a moment of vertigo, remembering the cold shock of hearing of their deaths. Could it have been a trick? To protect them? Or to make sure they stayed separated? She slipped out from beneath the cover and sat on the side of the cot.
“Wait.”
Daniel laid his hand on her forearm, pulling her back gently towards him. “It’s good to have someone next to me.”
“Someone?”
The full weight of his hand rested on her forearm.
“You. It feels good to have you next to me.”
He lifted the cover to invite her back in, exposing the rows of ribs and a pointed hip bone.
“I have food for you.”
She made a quick jog to the Tupperware through sticky, damp air, the concrete cold with broken and scaled pieces biting into the bottoms of her feet. She placed it on his chest, the fork angled out of it.
“In a minute. I want you beside me first.”
“You need to eat.”
“I will.”
He lifted the edge of the blanket again. Still wary of rats in the darkness, she laid the bowl aside and slipped back into the heat. His breath was laboured and his scalp gleamed with sweat.
“What can I get you?”
She looked down into his hollowed eye sockets.
“Nothing.”
He had closed his eyes and when she moved in close to him, his arm squeezed briefly around her shoulders.
“We need to get you out of here.”
He lay still, the only hint of life the low thrum of his heartbeat beneath her hand.
“And then what?”
“Build your strength up, get you better.”
The silence around them was solid, complete as if the world had ceased to exist. She found his hand, lacing her fingers in his.
“We can’t physically destroy all the Gatherers.”
“Daniel, we don’t have to—you need to rest.”
He turned his head enough to look at her.
“There’s too many of them.”
She moved closer so her body lay flush against his side, sores be damned. She laid her head carefully on his shoulder as he talked.
“If we shut down the channel, that would stop them.”
“It doesn’t stop them from making more.”
They had added new processes and safeguards to the lab after she left, the production facility operating day and night.
“What about Callan and Jana? Are they there?”
A slight shake of his head, as if it didn’t matter.
“So they did die.”
Her arrival at the clearing in the Yukon had felt like a physical opening, a recognition that this might be a place she would heal. She hadn’t thought of anyone else. That they might have needed a place like it as much as she did.
“Do you think it’s the channel that’s the problem?”
Storm nodded, distracted by an idea that had barely taken shape, afraid that if she so much as moved it would vanish before it was fully formed.
“The energy we draw off upsets the balance, which destabilizes everything around it.”
The sores on his chest were wet against her forearm. She lifted her head off the sharp bone of his shoulder.
“What if instead of shutting it down, we open it up?”
Daniel cocked his head to one side, like he used to when she had caught his attention.
“Explain.”
“You’ve been trying to limit the channel until it doesn’t exist. What if we opened it right up?”
“It would destabilize everything.”
He was staring into her shoulder, not seeing it, his mind following the stages as the Gatherer drew more and more energy.
“Including itself.”
She didn’t move, following the cascading failure of the Gatherer’s structure. The simplicity of it fed her certainty, the violence of the destruction and the satisfaction of having it disappear into an implosion of its own creation. Her energy rallied a
t the possibility, a part of her still willing to fight.
“Do you think it’s possible?”
His fingers on her shoulder had loosened, his second hand resting lightly on her wrist. A rush of hope ran like a current through her and into him, a perfect circuit that would heal their depleted cells. She imagined the agitation of the crystals as the power into the lattice increased. It would spread, fork at each node and ripple out into the delicate structure. It would be like a rumbling, the first tremors of an earthquake as the energy poured in. She rode with the power of it until she could feel it undermining the natural order of the field as it drew the energy of everything around it into itself.
He nodded slowly.
“There would be damage.”
She pulled back, not letting herself get too excited. They would be careful this time. Do it right.
She looked for holes in the theory. Daniel might have been doing the same, or he might have been sleeping.
He suddenly lifted his head.
“What is that?”
Storm strained to hear through the silence, distracted by the potential of this solution to destroy. With a clench of fear in her bowels, she heard the sound of footsteps.
THIRTY-THREE
Maria woke to the smell of exhaust, the revving of engines, and voices arguing. Her head ached and her lower leg once again felt three times larger than it should.
She squinted at the bright expanse of blue sky shining through a set of open bay doors. She stopped breathing for a long moment before a rush of adrenaline ripped through her. A military transport vehicle was parked inside the doors, the source of the revving engine. She tried to sit, struggling against the straps that held her down at the hips and shoulders, every muscle primed for flight.
The shadow of a body moved in front of her, blocking her view of the truck. It was the nurse from the house, Dorian. The flap of straps and the pressure on her shoulders released, but not her hips. Dorian put her hand between Maria’s shoulder blades and helped her sit. She was dizzy, her leg throbbing.
A group of civilians stood beside the truck in coveralls and work boots, dirty hands being wiped on oily rags. She strained to see who had come for her. The vehicle was older and had civilian plates. The canvas flaps at the back of the box were missing. More civilians hung near the open door, some wearing the camouflage of the wannabe, but no one had the disciplined posture of a soldier.
Dorian thrust a bottle of water at her and Maria wrapped her hands around it. She took a long drink as she found ‘John’, the farmer, in a smaller group off the back corner of the truck. His head was lowered to an emaciated young man gesturing wildly. If the military were here, this wasn’t them.
She took a longer gulp of water and she shifted her hips back to ease the pressure off the straps.
High rows of shelves stacked with wooden crates extended into the back of the warehouse. Two idle forklifts were parked at the end of the nearest row, the whining rise and fall of a third audible from the dim reaches at the end of the aisle. The air smelled of earth and rotting onions, and there were stray cabbage leaves and broccoli pieces crushed on the floor. The bay doors looked onto a small airfield with a mountain range in the distance.
A television was mounted in one corner showing images of smoke spilling from the entrance of a large office building with firefighters herding office workers down the wide steps. She had almost placed the building, just needing a wider camera view to confirm, when Dorian spun the stretcher around, facing her away from the screen.
Maria squirmed further up on the stretcher. With a quick jerk, Dorian tightened the strap harder at the top of her thighs and a spike of pain ran into her calf. Maria made a show of collapsing back onto the stretcher, taking the opportunity to ease again out of the strap.
Dorian faced the open door, her attention on the group of civilians where John stood talking. Maria craned her neck, watching the small group from a sideways angle.
Judging from John’s shaking head and set shoulders, there was some kind of disagreement. The young man repeatedly gestured towards her, the truck, and the distant mountains. Maria let her gaze slide to Dorian. There was a stillness around Dorian’s eyes and mouth where there should have been life. A purpose that seemed devoid of thought.
Moving slowly, Maria turned her head so she had a tilted view of the screen. The smoking office building had gone, replaced by an announcer talking earnestly beside a photo of a young, top of the world Storm. She was so different than the woman Maria had last seen driving the speed boat that it was like watching another person, Storm’s suffering absent from the photo.
She rolled further onto her side as her own photo replaced Storm’s. One from her early twenties when she had just signed up. She looked young, angry, and fierce.
The words ‘dishonourable discharge’ appeared stamped across her photo and cold flushed through her, worse than the chill of a fever. Her world shrunk to that single photo, her throat tight and her mouth dry. She tried to read the lips of the announcer, to catch a word of meaning, but the shape of his mouth could have formed any number of words.
Her instinct was to shout, protest, and explain. Yet as people paused in front of the screen and leered at her out of the corner of their eyes, she knew that there was no one who would listen. Was Havernal alive, watching the same broadcast? It would be so much worse if he had been the one to order this.
She undid the strap, the pain in her leg renewing as her feet touched the floor. Dorian was too engrossed in watching John to notice and she took a step towards the screen as the announcer’s lips stopped moving and a photo of Havernal appeared. She felt a sudden, jarring recognition of how far she had deviated from their original plan. Her flight with Storm hadn’t been discussed, nor her complete absence of communication. She leaned heavily on a stack of crates, the wood rough and cold. Sunlight glared off the tarmac, the mountains obscured by a murky haze. It had felt like she was on track, that this was what he would have wanted her to do. But from where he sat, he might hardly have recognized her.
The newscaster moved on to another story, an awards ceremony, people shaking hands. Dorian was suddenly at her shoulder, her face set in grim satisfaction.
The news cycle repeated and every time her photo appeared with ‘dishonourable discharge’ stamped across it, people stopped, each of them inevitably glancing her way. Some smirked, others nodded as if what they had suspected had been confirmed or she had gotten what she deserved.
The image on the screen changed to a video of a Gatherer, one side blown off, thick, black smoke billowing out the top. At first Maria thought they were rebroadcasting Storm’s attack on the Three Rocks Gatherer, but the trees in the background looked tropical and some of the spectators being held back by police were wearing shorts.
She tried again to read the announcer’s lips and could make out nothing of the story. Another video of a damaged Gatherer, this one with the top ripped off, its delicate inside chamber exposed. Behind the torn Gatherer civilians were clashing with police. A woman whose hair obscured her face had been pinned to the pavement by a knee in her back. There were several photos of people she didn’t recognize, and then the Prime Minister speaking with all the solemnity of a declaration of war.
The news story ended with a repeat of Storm’s photo. Young, brilliant Storm Freeman who would save the world. Except the image looked darker, as if the smoke from the billowing Gatherers had stayed on the screen, stripping away the sheen of her radiant health.
Maria imagined she saw the announcer say ‘whereabouts unknown.’ Or at least she hoped she had.
People started gathering at the open bay door at the same time that Dorian walked towards it and stopped halfway, not quite leaving her post. Voices were rising, faces flushed, and people bumped against each other as they gravitated closer to the door, their necks stretched to catch a view of whatever was arriving. The distan
t sound of an engine and what was now a crowd of almost twenty pushed further out the door into the breeze of the tarmac. The emaciated young man strode a half dozen strides away from the building, waving his arms over his head.
The floor vibrated and the sound of the engine deepened, matching the sound of the one the men had been working on earlier. The crowd parted, fanning out as a truck coasted to a stop, people slapping its fenders and the Agri-foods emblem on the door to welcome it.
Dorian stood at the back of the crowd, barely aware Maria was there. She could have run for it, slipped around a corner into the depths of the aisle, but the power of whatever was in that truck drew her to it, as captivated as the rest.
The right-hand door at the back of the truck swung open and a man dressed in the camouflage of a hunter waved away the crowd. As he unlocked the second door, the angle of the sun prevented Maria from seeing into the interior and it wasn’t until he stepped aside that she fully understood her new situation.
Storm was supported between two more men dressed in hunting gear, her shoulders rounded, her body curled in on itself. She stepped erratically, unsure where the ground lay. As they brought her into the light, she turned her head from the brightness, keeping her head down like a convict under arrest. She had gotten thinner in the few days since Maria had seen her, all trace of health gone from her face.
Maria felt sick as they led Storm through the crowd and people cheered, realizing as they helped Storm to the ground that the silver suit was gone. Maria started forward, stopped by Dorian’s sudden grip on her elbow. She tried to tug it free but the woman held firm, pulling her back and opening the space between her and Storm. She could have neutralized the woman in a second, been at Storm’s side in two, but a voice inside her head told her to wait. Not Havernal this time, but her own measured, calmer self who recognized that antagonizing this crowd would only put Storm in more danger.
Maria called Storm’s name but she didn’t respond, Maria’s voice just another one in the crowd. Confused murmurings came from the group as a second person was unloaded. Carried in the arms of a young man, the second captive’s shaved head lolled against the man’s chest, the hand that hung limply at his side distorted by its thinness.
The Gatherer Series, Book 1 Page 26