Strands of Fate

by R F Hurteau

  Onyx groaned as she burst out of the kitchen, pushing past Gavin and the rather startled looking Ollie.

  “Not my Foxglove,” she whimpered piteously. “I told you to steer clear of the herbs and flowers, Ollie! How many times did I beg you?”

  He stepped aside as she stomped past, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “Huh,” Ollie concluded. “You know, she’s scary quiet. It’s almost like she’s hiding sometimes.”

  “For a man who worked on the CEDAR project,” Gavin observed, “you aren’t very smart, are you?”

  “I’m a biologist, not a botanist.” Ollie gave a defensive shrug, missing the point entirely.

  Gavin let out a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a grunt.

  “I wasn’t talking about the plants,” he clarified.

  Moving to the window, he could see Onyx in the garden kneeling over a flattened plant and uttering a long string of incoherent curses.

  “Just...stay out of the garden, okay? For your own safety.”

  “All right,” Ollie said, his shoulders hunching as he sat down beside his basket of produce. “But just look at these tomatoes, though!”

  He held one up, eyes gleaming with pride, and Gavin noted with dismay the long stem that was still attached to the fruit’s crown.

  The whole situation seemed surreal. Ollie was the unwitting target of Onyx’s misplaced rage. The Weaver’s capture, Nero’s fleet, CEDAR, the imminent invasion of Earth...she had assumed personal responsibility for everything that was happening. But the only recourse she had was to lash out over tomatoes and hornworms.

  “Talk to me, Ollie.”

  Gavin sat down opposite the man who was now happily emptying his basket into neat piles on the table. He eyed the teacup. Gavin didn’t like tea, but Onyx never asked. She just handed it to him and he drank it. To him it just tasted like hot water with a faint hint of grass to it.

  He did like the smell, though. The smell always made him think, maybe the next sip will taste better.

  It never did.

  Ollie looked up. “About what?”

  “What else can you tell me about where they might be holding the Weaver?”

  Ollie’s face fell. “I’ve told you everything I know, Gavin. They were keeping us in the CEDAR facilities. I’d assume that he’s there, too, but there’s no way to tell for certain without getting inside. Especially since he’s such a high value target. Nero might be keeping him close. Just in case.”

  “So maybe the Council complex, then?” Gavin suggested.

  Shrugging, Ollie grimaced. “Maybe. Probably not, though. CEDAR is more secure.”

  “If I can just make it into the city,” Gavin said in annoyance, more to himself than to Ollie, “I’m certain I can make it into the facility after that.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Gavin,” Ollie warned. “It’s easier to guard a building than a whole city, after all, and so far they’re managing both pretty well. Plus, you know they’ll have plenty of Envicti surrounding the Weaver. If you could just waltz in and grab him, he wouldn’t have been caught in the first place.”

  Gavin knew Ollie was right, but he still didn’t want to believe it.

  “What about a timeline on Nero’s fleet?”

  Disbelief fell like a shadow over Ollie’s face. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “The only reason I even know about the fleet is because of what the Weaver told me before he was captured. I wasn’t privy to any information about it at all. And everything he told me, I told you. Which wasn’t much, by the way. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, Gavin. I can’t give you something I don’t have.”

  Each of Gavin’s Imradian contacts had proven similarly unhelpful. It seemed that Nero was doing a fine job keeping a tight lid on his plans...and his prisoners.

  Gavin could feel the press of time weighing down on him. The same pervasive thoughts consumed him every waking moment.

  Find the Weaver. Stop Nero. Find the Weaver. Stop Nero.

  If he had the full force of Tapestry behind him, Gavin believed they might have had a fighting chance at putting an end to Nero’s plans, but Tapestry didn’t answer to Gavin. Only the Weaver kept them together. Without their leader, Tapestry would once again falter as it had over a century ago. Especially with so many young recruits filling the holes in the ranks where old members had stepped aside, unwilling to return to a life that promised little more than persecution.

  Not enough Therans believed that things were so bad. Too many of them would turn a blind eye to the fate of Earth, so long as their own comfortable way of living was protected.

  This was the calm before the storm, the time during which Nero was too busy to renew a hunt for the underground rebels.

  But what would happen when the storm hit? The youth, the dreamers—their zeal would fade, their courage melting under the heat of Nero’s pursuit.

  The Weaver held the strands together. If Gavin did not find a way to free him, there would be nothing they could do to stop Nero from conquering Earth.

  And when he was done there, who could say what plans he had in store for Thera?

  “Gavin?”

  Ollie was looking at him expectantly, and Gavin realized he hadn’t been listening.

  “Sorry. I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t assist any more with your rescue plans, but I am a great listener. Want to just talk about it? Might help you sort some stuff out?” Ollie asked, his face full of such genuine compassion that Gavin’s knee-jerk response almost made him feel bad.

  “No.”

  Almost.

  “Oh,” said Ollie, nodding. He was quiet for a moment before asking, “What else is on your mind?”

  Gavin wondered if the boy would follow him if he, too, went out to help Onyx in the garden.

  “I know you’ll find a way to get to him,” Ollie said, taking his best shot at comforting Gavin’s unspoken concerns. “Hey! You have contacts in the city, right? Have you tried reaching out to them?”

  Gavin gave Ollie a sidelong glance that suggested he did not appreciate being taken for an idiot, but Ollie did not appear skilled at understanding subtle hints. He sat back in his chair looking expectant again, waiting for Gavin’s reaction to such a brilliant suggestion.

  Sighing, Gavin nodded. “Yes, Ollie. I’ve already reached out to all of my contacts. Citizens of Imradia are free to come and go, at least for now. Unfortunately, they’re still subjected to searches and identification checkpoints, so none of them can get me inside.”

  “And none of them were able to tell you anything more useful than that? No, of course they couldn’t.” Ollie chuckled, as if pleased with his brilliant powers of deduction. “If they’d been helpful, you wouldn’t be back here asking me all the same questions again.”

  Gavin’s jaw twitched. He understood now why Onyx had such a hard time getting along with Ollie. All he wanted to do, it seemed, was chat.

  “I was thinking about painting the door,” Ollie said, sitting up straighter and grinning. “I wanted to do something nice for Onyx, you know, to thank her for helping me. Her door is in pretty rough shape. I was thinking of painting it. Do you think she’d like the same green, or is there another color she’d like better?”

  This elicited a blank stare from Gavin, who could not comprehend what he was hearing.

  “You were thinking...of painting...”

  He stood up from the table and looked Ollie in the eye, searching for some hint of what made the boy tick. No, not a boy. Gavin saw him that way, but Ollie was old enough to be considered a man. Gavin had certainly been one, at his age.

  But then, Gavin had lived through things Ollie had only read about. Seen things Ollie could not imagine in his darkest nightmares.

  It didn’t matter how old Ollie was. He was still little more than a child in terms of experience.

  “Ollie, do you understand what’s going on right now? I mean, really understand?”

  Ollie flas
hed him a curious look. “You’re trying to find a way to free the Weaver, and I’m hiding here with Onyx in case you need my help.”

  Gavin nodded. “And do you understand how dire the situation is?”

  At this, Ollie frowned, his eyes dropping to the table. He reached out with one hand to fiddle with the wilting leaf that drooped from the long tomato stem.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you must realize that I have more important things going on than worrying about something as trivial as the color of a door.”

  Gavin heard his own voice rising, which surprised him. He generally kept a cooler head.

  “I can tell you’re angry, you know,” Ollie didn’t look up at Gavin as he spoke. “But it’s okay. I know you’re not angry at me. You’re angry at yourself.”

  The young man leaned forward, pulling the tomato toward him and holding it with both hands.

  “I never knew my father. He was part of the old guard, you know? The original Tapestry, I guess you’d call it. He was taken during the last raids. It’s funny, isn’t it? It was almost a century ago that the Elder Council rounded up the members of Tapestry and imprisoned them or sent them away to where they couldn’t cause any more trouble. My father managed to evade them. My family lived in peace for a long time, thinking that the past was behind them. Who could have guessed that they’d come for him fifty years later? I wasn’t even born yet when they dragged him away. I don’t even know where he ended up. I’d like to think it was someplace nice, like Solara.”

  Ollie paused, and Gavin wasn’t sure if he expected him to speak. “I’m sorry, Ollie,” he began, but the younger man was not finished.

  “You see, Gavin, Tapestry didn’t ever really disappear. It faded, maybe, but it was still there. The Elder Council knew it. That’s why they never gave up hunting for its members. That’s why, fifty years ago, they came for my father. They never stopped fearing the threat to their power. But the thing they didn’t understand is that Tapestry has always been more of an idea than an organization. And an idea can’t be killed. They may have cut down a great tree, but all that does is let the light through for little trees to grow up in its place.”

  He looked down at the tomato in his hands, picking it up and turning it over and over between the tips of his fingers, staring at it.

  “Thera has a long history of pain. Deep wounds that may have healed, but the scars still remain. We all live under the shadow of that history. I know you worry that us young people aren’t willing to do what needs to be done. I’ve heard you talking to Onyx about it. And yes, maybe I’m thinking about painting a door when terrible things are happening in the world.” He sighed. “But the truth is that terrible things are always happening. And that pressure, to always stay ahead of the next threat, that builds up on a person. It’s been building up on you for a lifetime.”

  Ollie clenched the tomato between his palms now, cupping his fingers around it.

  “And if all you have to live for is that pressure—if there are no doors to be painted, no gardens to be weeded, well...that’s not really living, is it? The pressure gets to be too much. And then...”

  His fists closed around the ripe fruit, and pulp and seeds appeared between the lengths of his fingers as he crushed it before tilting his head up to Gavin with a meaningful look.

  “Your own strength can only get you as far as it gets you, you know? There are burdens we pass by, because we can’t carry them alone. But if you share the load with others, far more becomes possible.” Ollie’s voice was quiet. “Don’t be the tomato.”

  The two stared at each other. The door creaked as it opened behind them and Onyx came in.

  “I don’t think it’s a lost cause, but it’s not pretty—Sweet Evenmire, what on Thera have you done to my tomato?”

  Seven

  Hide and Seek

  BLOOD pounded in Eli’s ears as he ran with Mabel and Shane down Wagner Avenue. They would never be able to outrun the recruits, who were howling in excitement behind them, elated by the chase.

  Eli didn’t know where they were heading but knew instinctively that their only hope was the blind trust he had placed in Shane. Even if the odds were against them, it seemed logical that their best bet for escape lay with him.

  A row of parked transports came into view at the end of the road. Shane bypassed the first few before hopping in the third.

  “Quick, get in!”

  The siblings just managed to scramble into the vehicle as Shane floored it, but it was too late. Miles and his gang had caught up, one of the recruits leaping up onto the back bumper and grabbing hold of the tailgate.

  His expression was a mix of wild exhilaration and rage as he reached toward Mabel.

  “Eli!”

  Eli was already moving. He put himself between his sister and the recruit and held tight to her chair for balance as he raised his leg, kicking hard. His foot connected with the young man’s fingers and, cursing, the recruit tumbled onto the asphalt, rolling and shrinking rapidly behind them.

  “We are in so much trouble,” Eli moaned. He squeezed past his sister, who was now seated on the floorboards with her head between her knees.

  Shane shot Eli a look as he took a seat beside him.

  His mouth was set in a hard line, his eyes calculating, proof that his training was at work.

  It was the subtle twitch of his lip that betrayed his worry.

  “We need to get you someplace safe to wait this out,” he said. “Maybe I can talk to Miles, smooth things over.”

  Eli only nodded in agreement. He could not think of a decent reply.

  Strategically, the streets of Gables were a horrible place to be the object of a pursuit by skilled military personnel. They wove together in neat lines, wide and clean and curving out of view far in the distance.

  Still, Shane seemed to have a sense of where he was heading. He kept his cool as Eli continued to stare at the road behind them, waiting for Miles’ inevitable appearance.

  “Do you think they gave up?” Eli asked, attempting to keep his voice from shaking.

  Shane chewed on his lower lip, risking a quick glance at Mabel in the back seat.

  “I can’t be certain,” he said after a moment. “They might just report the incident, because they know there’s nowhere to hide. But Miles—”

  The sound of screeching tires finished Shane’s thought for him. Eli’s head whipped around again, and he spotted two transports turning out of an intersection and speeding in their direction. They were still a way off, but gaining fast. Mabel gasped, spotting their pursuers.

  “It’s them!” she cried.

  Shane didn’t miss a beat.

  He yanked the steering wheel hard, pulling the transport to the right, leaving a black rainbow of rubber in their wake. They accelerated down the empty side street, the wind making Eli squint as he felt inertia dragging him across his seat.

  Shane made a quick left. They were headed toward the Maglev Station.

  “You can’t be serious!” yelled Eli. “Even if they let us on the train, we’ll be sitting ducks!”

  Shane’s face was set, grim and pale.

  “We aren’t getting on the train.”

  They shot past the entrance and continued on, entering a service road.

  If there was one thing Eli knew about service roads, it was that they were dead ends, not throughways.

  “Shane—”

  “Hold on!”

  The end of the road was approaching quickly, little more than a dirt ramp in front of them leading up onto the raised Maglev tracks.

  “Are you crazy?” Eli asked, eyes darting back and forth between the tracks and Shane as he realized what was happening. “Shane! This is a bad idea.”

  “They won’t follow us,” Shane replied through clenched teeth.

  “Of course they won’t follow us,” Eli snapped, “this is suicide, they won’t need to!”

  Shane slowed just long enough to position them on the tracks, which were just bar
ely wider than the transport, before hitting the accelerator again.

  The ground around them disappeared as they picked up speed and the station shrank behind them. There was no guardrail, only a steep drop on either side. Eli tore his gaze away from the horrible death that waited to swallow them and focused instead on the lunatic driver.

  “You’re going to get us all killed,” he said in a low growl.

  “Maybe,” Shane admitted, risking a glance down at the dashboard clock. “Three twenty. That gives us forty minutes until the next train departs, and I don’t think there’s any way off these tracks before the next station.”

  Eli swallowed hard, peering out the open window. The air bit at his face as he looked down. Between the edge of the tracks and the transport’s tire, a scant six inches of space existed. His eyes trailed outward. The ground below was a blur as they raced on, thirty feet or so down.

  He wondered how long it would take to fall thirty feet, and if they’d feel any pain at the moment of death.

  “Mabel,” he said, wondering if his thunderous heartbeat might drown out the words, “if we don’t make it out of this, I just want you to know that you are the best sister in the world and that...I’m sorry.”

  He looked back at her. She was pale, but she gave him a confident smile.

  “We’re going to make it,” she assured him. “We’ll be okay.”

  Eli wasn’t sure how long he stared, unable to rip his gaze from the shifting landscape. It might have been hours, or only minutes.

  The transport veered ever so slightly to the left, causing Eli’s heart to leap into his throat and jerking him back to the present.

  “Sorry!” Shane yelled. “Got distracted.”

  Eli turned to him in amazement. Shane’s face had gone rigid.

  “Distracted? How could you possibly be distracted when you’re six inches from death driving at...sweet heavens! A hundred and thirty kilometers per hour? Shane, you’ve got to slow down. You said it yourself, they aren’t going to follow us up here.”