by Terry Kitto
‘He wanted to achieve it first,’ the man said. ‘If he knew how it worked, he would’ve been able to deter them from discovering it.’
‘But he didn’t have to die,’ Sam said. ‘There must have been another way.’
‘Once he died it was written,’ Not-Dave retorted. The tunnel expanded once more. ‘To change that would tear reality apart.’
Not-Dave raised his hand to stop the convoy. Voices echoed up ahead. With their backs to the wall, the trio and the five dasfurvya tiptoed closer, concealed by the darkness. The frequency’s static fizzed warmly, a dry spring rain. Up ahead the shaft was lit. Vanessa and a handful of the board were stationed around James. The Network’s director knelt on the tunnel floor, a receptor latched to his head. A wire ran from the contraption to a machine mounted to the granite wall.
Vanessa crouched beside James.
‘It’s okay to be in pain,’ she said.
‘They might come back,’ he croaked. ‘My girls might be imprints.’
Sam whispered, ‘They’ve killed his girls.’
Trish gripped Rasha’s shoulders tightly.
‘Better yet,’ Vanessa continued up ahead. ‘They needn’t die at all. To hurt is to be human, but what does pain become when you’re superhuman? Transcend.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, drained.
‘Find them,’ Vanessa urged. ‘Home in on their voices.’
The machine on the wall was a generator, and it whirred louder. Girlish laughter rose from the shadows.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘I can’t . . . I can’t maintain the connection,’ James uttered.
‘You have everything,’ Vanessa growled.
‘It won’t be long,’ James said. ‘They know about transcendence. They’ll know what we’ve done. The dasfurvya are free.’
‘By then it’ll be too late.’
‘To hell it is!’ Sam yelled.
He raced toward Vanessa, and the five dasfurvya followed. Trish stayed back, arms wrapped around Rasha.
‘Get it off him!’ Sam yelled. ‘Stop it now. It’s over.’
Vanessa and company turned, barely surprised and even less concerned about Sam and the dasfurvya.
James’s eyes rolled, and his body slumped to the tunnel floor.
‘It’s too late,’ Vanessa informed them. ‘Take the receptor off him and his imprint will be lost forever.’
‘This is madness,’ Sam growled. ‘You can’t kill people to force them into your experiments. Experiments that will change reality.’
‘That is where you’re wrong,’ Vanessa declared proudly. She flexed her shoulders and stood to her full height. ‘The gywandras won’t change reality. It will fulfil it.’
Rasha stared at the back of the dasfurvya’s heads. She hoped they’d prove Vanessa wrong. Trish stepped forward.
‘The gywandras is written,’ she said.
Sam turned sideways and stared between Trish, Vanessa, and Not-Dave.
‘She’s right.’ Not-Dave sighed. ‘The gywandras has happened, so it must happen again.’
‘It only happened because of what you were doing! Will died because of you! Mum too!’
Sam hurled himself at the board members. He threw a right hook and broke an obese man’s nose. Two female board members tackled a dasfurvya to the ground. Trish stepped back and pulled Rasha with her.
Amidst the fight, Vanessa knelt beside James. She checked his pulse. Satisfied, she turned and spotted Rasha for the first time. She rose, a gruesome smile stretching over her face as if she’d forgotten about the carnage around her.
‘As it should be,’ she uttered.
‘Go!’ Trish yelled. She took Rasha by the hand, and they raced down the tunnel. Behind them, Vanessa’s footsteps slapped against the rock, her breath heavy but calculated.
‘You can’t deny the frequency!’ Vanessa cried after them. ‘It has happened and it will happen, it has happened and it will happen.’
Rasha stumbled, regained her balance, and raced on, Trish’s hand supporting the square of her back. The tunnel’s darkness swallowed them up. Rasha reached out and used the walls of the tunnel to guide her. She couldn’t fault Vanessa’s fanatical shouts. If time was as delicate as the dasfurvya said, then everyone who had died would. They couldn’t be saved.
Rasha and Trish reached the ladder and climbed two rungs at a time, clambered through the hatch, and raced through the pipe-lined hallway. All the while, a thought niggled away at Rasha. Vanessa had many bodies. A slew of dates were written in her journal. The plaque that greeted witnesses at the entrance to the Network with Edward Penrose’s death – 1837 – was also Vanessa’s passcode.
‘I think I know who Vanessa is,’ Rasha panted. ‘She has a journal full of dates, like the ones at Kasey’s house. She used to be Edward Penrose.’
Trish didn’t slow but took Rasha by the hand, eyes fearful; she didn’t doubt it. They bounded into the yard and froze at the scene before them. The yard was littered with the lifeless bodies of the dasfurvya – eighty, ninety, too many for Rasha to count.
‘My god!’ Trish exclaimed.
‘They’ve left their bodies.’
Rasha recognised a couple members of the board, both lifeless, who had chased her through the school earlier that evening. Ahead of them, the gates were opened.
‘They must have fulfilled their purpose,’ Trish said. She looked to the Reliant. The passenger door was open, the back seat empty. ‘They’ve taken the receptor.’
There were footsteps, and arms wrapped around Rasha from behind.
‘Trish!’ she exclaimed.
Rasha was thrust to the ground. She kicked and screamed, but to no avail. Above her, Vanessa leered. Another of her board members – the burly man with a black eye – raced over and thrust a cold object over her head: Trish’s receptor. Its generator buzzed. Frequency energy scalded her skin. A switch was flipped. The lighthouse’s yard and Trish’s terrified face were snatched from sight.
There was only the black void of the ombrederi.
Rasha fell, and the fall was forever.
It is the thirty-sixth thousandth day since Abidemi died and assumed her name.
She wakes before dawn and exits the workman’s cottage to the left of Pendeen Lighthouse. The sun – yolk orange and warm – leaks across the crisp teal sky. Flowers bloom along Pendeen’s hilltops, and the waves chorus from the shore. A morning in the ombrederi eases the heartache of being dead.
Between folds of leaves, nooks of rock, and thrashing tides come glimpses of those spaces in other times.
Vehicles mill through concrete towns.
A future ravaged by an abomination: the gywandras.
The council of the dasfurvya stalk across the lighthouse yard to meet her: sweet Kyauta, Nika, and Will. They have all existed long enough in the ombrederi for the frequency energy to nourish their imprints, their forms no longer scarred by their physical deaths.
‘In defence of the ombrederi,’ the four say in greeting.
‘We were displaced,’ Nika informs Abidemi. ‘I became dasfurvya in a place and a time only vaguely connected to the three.’
‘And I was too early in the sequence,’ Will states. ‘Days before Sam is incarcerated.’
‘Time is running out,’ Kyauta says. ‘Abi, we’ve exhausted most intersections between here and the physical world. There aren’t many options left.’
Abidemi looks out at the sea. The ombrederi chose her as the origin to lead the revolt against the gywandras. After her death, she woke with the ombrederi’s voice in her mind, as though it had conjoined with her very imprint, and it nurtured her until she became the leader of the defence party. She was thrust from a perilous childhood in the physical into a permanent adulthood in the ombrederi, only to be burdened with a war led by fanatics who tried to defy nature itself.
‘If we’re the first to create the gywandras, then they have won,’ Abidemi says. ‘We’ve played straight into their hands. We mad
e the abomination.’
Ky steps forward and takes her hands in his.
‘It’s not about creating the gywandras,’ Ky says, voice gentle. ‘That is already out of our control. It existed in Will’s timeline, and so it will, and it must happen.’
‘It’s our intentions that matter,’ Will chimes in. ‘If it brings peace back to the ombrederi, with little damage to the physical-ombrederi balance, then that is good.’
Abidemi turns back to the cliffside. The rebels’ experiments with the gywandras damaged the ombrederi. Intersections – portals between the two worlds – opened where they shouldn’t, and excess frequency energy flows through them, causing the cliffs to crumble and wildlife to wilt.
The gywandras’s very existence will kill all life in time if they don’t act. The irony, Abidemi thinks bitterly, for the enemy we’re fighting is the very weapon we need.
‘Then we must begin the flaying,’ Abidemi commands. ‘Will, Nika, we’ll have to send you back to an earlier intersection. You must integrate with bodies that aren’t your own. It will be hard. It will defy everything the council believes in. But we have to guide the three to the right moment, and you can only do that as the dasfurvya.’
From his pocket, Ky produces two slips of parchment with intersection coordinates written on them. He passes one each to Will and Nika.
The four descend the steep footpath to the rock pools below. Will and Nika race ahead toward separate rock pools. They dive beneath the water. The surfaces bubble and glow, and then they still, and Will and Nika have gone.
Abidemi and Ky walk on until they are surrounded by moss-laden pools.
‘Will there be pain?’ Abidemi asks Ky. The ombrederi, as per its name, reflects the physical and at times can be just as cruel. The flaying will certainly live up to its name.
‘The pennsers say it’ll be quick,’ Kyauta reassures her. The architects of this world, the pennsers had an abundance of wisdom and were never wrong about the ombrederi.
They reach the centre of the rock pools. A flurry of birds – storm petrels, gulls, shags, and cormorants – erupt from the sky. They dart at Abidemi, plant their talons into her skin, and gnaw at the flesh on her back. There is pain, but not one of torture, like being unshackled from heavy chains. Yes, unshackled. The birds gouge at the flesh around her spine. With the bones of her skeleton clamped in their beaks, they kick with their wings and pull her bent vertebrae from her body. They plunge into her eye sockets and mouth. They rip away her eyes and all the death they have seen. They dismantle her tongue and all the words she has used to calm and support. They flap to the pond and drop the organs in the water. Trish breaks the surface with a splash.
The emerged water pools at Abidemi’s feet and courses across her body and into her bloody mouth. It swashes, cool and tender, over her mutilated tongue and fills up her lungs. She experiences a heavy drowning sensation, the very same feeling when she learnt of her father’s death, or when she saw the Britons destroying the village: alone and displaced. Abidemi regurgitates the water, and it slithers to the pool. Rasha floats to the surface, her hand in Trish’s.
A rumble of upturned earth. Roots burrow and leap from the tree line. They puncture her skin and crawl into her veins, her arteries, her nerves. They course up through her gut and wrap around her heart, and they take all of her inadequacy and indifference, her inability to trust. They writhe to the pond and drop her organs into the pond; she is purified. Sam’s body erupts to the surface.
The three, all of which are bound to the gywandras, are collected. It will be up to them to fight, there in the ombrederi, and out in the physical world.
‘It begins,’ Kyauta says.
An arm splashes from the pond, followed by a head of ever-changing hair. Trish is awake and ambles through the pool water. The ombrederi reaches into Abidemi once more.
Oh, she thinks, what a task indeed.
Trish pinned Vanessa to the concrete and punched at the woman’s face. She wouldn’t let the board take someone else from her. Vanessa took the punches as though she couldn’t feel them at all. After so many bodies, perhaps the imprint had learnt to disassociate itself with pain.
‘Was it worth it?’ Trish cried. ‘All this death? Is transcendence worth it?’
‘Transcendence is everything,’ Vanessa spluttered.
Trish punched and slapped. Her knuckles became bloodied, Vanessa’s face no longer recognisable. Beyond them, Paul slung Rasha’s limp body up over his shoulder and stumbled back into the lighthouse. There was nothing she could do for Rasha now; the teenager was lost in the ombrederi.
‘It’s for the dead,’ Trish cried. ‘Bodies are for the living, and transcendence is for the dead.’
‘Do you think that’s true for Rasha?’
‘You’re forcing her to transcend.’
‘No. Her occupation wasn’t ordinary. It was a gywandras that occupied her.’
‘So James made her.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’
Vanessa cackled. Trish shook her shoulders.
‘What don’t I know, what don’t I know?’ she screamed.
‘A gywandras creates itself. They are the ultimate paradox. An imprint shouldn’t come into contact with itself. It goes against nature – against the frequency. So when it does, it becomes a different kind of imprint entirely – a gywandras.’
Trish climbed from Vanessa onto the cold hard ground. Rasha had first presumed it was her sister, Milana, and later Rasha wondered whether it could be a manifestation of her own imprint. The teenager had every right to find the gywandras familiar.
‘A gywandras, as a paradox, isn’t bound to chronological time,’ Vanessa hollered, too enthusiastic – fanatic – for Trish’s liking. ‘Don’t you understand? No matter what you do, it’s always going to happen.’
Trish didn’t want to admit that Vanessa was right. A paradox. Rasha would become a gywandras. The teenager would occupy herself, sixteen days ago in her mother’s caravan, and in doing so give her the abilities of a coercer. She’d predicted Will’s death and envisioned Michael killing Shauna. She was the gywandras, that stormy evening in caravan forty-five.
A gywandras. Rasha wasn’t alone. It was more than one person – James had transcended. A gywandras appeared when terrible things happened but also made itself known when the trio discovered new information. Trish rose to her feet.
‘Even when James and Rasha transcend, they’re helping us,’ Trish cried. ‘They’ve guided us to what we know now. Your project has gone rogue.’
Vanessa roared and tackled Trish to the ground. Vanessa punched her cheekbone, her nose. Warm blood trickled across her face. Pain spasmed across her body. The frequency energy swelled. She became too weak to retaliate –
‘Edward!’
Vanessa — or rather, Edward — froze.
‘Answer me this,’ Trish spat. ‘Before you lost track of all your bodies, was the Network meant for good, or had it always been about the gywandras?’
Vanessa-Edward opened her mouth as if to speak, then looked up to the lighthouse door.
‘Get off her, you crazy cunt!’ Sam yelled.
A metal rod smacked Vanessa-Edward. They slumped sideways onto the gravel. Sam lowered the rod and limped to Trish. His face was bruised, eyes bloodshot, but he was alive. Thank the ombrederi.
‘Rasha’s under,’ Sam said and helped Trish to her feet. ‘She’s in the ombrederi.’
‘I know.’
‘We need to perform an extraction,’ Sam said.
‘We haven’t got the technology,’ Trish said. ‘No EMPs. They took the receptor from my car, used it on Rasha.’
Not-Dave appeared by Sam’s side.
‘To reach her, you’ll have to be detached from your body,’ Not-Dave said. ‘To become a gywandras too.’
Sam rounded on him.
‘So you do something,’ Sam said. ‘You died once. Die again.’
‘There’s more to this than just saving Rasha,’ Trish inte
rrupted. ‘A series of events has to unfold. Will still has to die.’
Sam turned to her, his fists in balls.
‘What do you mean? He’s already dead?’
‘Time, Sam,’ she said. ‘Will joked, but I think he knew. Before he died he was plagued by someone familiar.’
‘Abidemi,’ Sam said.
‘No,’ Trish said. ‘No, it wasn’t. It was the shadow imprint. A gywandras.’
‘So James, then. Rasha.’
‘Anyone can take its form,’ Trish and Not-Dave said together.
‘So if it isn’t James?’ Sam asked.
Trish stepped toward the Reliant. Tears burned her eyes. Rasha had plunged into the ombrederi’s depths alone. Trish had abandoned Shauna in her time of need, and she wouldn’t repeat that same mistake with Rasha.
‘Trish?’ Sam asked.
‘I can’t let her be alone, Sam,’ she uttered. ‘Rasha will be lost, and she’ll be scared. She won’t . . .’ Trish faltered. ‘She won’t be able to do what needs to be done by herself.’
‘What needs to be done?’ Sam questioned.
‘There has to be a reason I have foresight. The gywandras was there the night Shauna died.’
Trish turned and raced to the beaten Reliant.
‘What? No, no, Trish!’ Sam yelled.
Trish jumped into the Reliant. Not-Dave – still eerily familiar – restrained Sam.
Trish sped onto the road, throwing chippings and dust into the air. The lighthouse’s heavy beam shrunk to a blip in the mirrors. The Reliant’s steering wheel juddered under her grip. The jagged tree line crept closer. She couldn’t stop the tears. She wasn’t a murderer. Not yet, her mind whispered. But it is written.
Frequency energy surged around her. Trish didn’t dare entertain her fears over a physical death. The tears on her face chilled, and her hands on the cold leather steering wheel numbed; her imprint began to withdraw. The Reliant pulled to the right.
She takes you where you need to go.
So Trish let it.
I’ll never breathe again.
The car veered from the road, slammed into a tree trunk, spun onto its side, and tumbled down the hill.
