The Gathering

by K. E. Ganshert

  “I guess she doesn’t care about purpling,” I say lamely.

  “You should go back to sleep.”

  His words are hollow. Empty. They have me coming closer instead of going away, until I’m taking a tentative seat on the edge of his mattress.

  “Tess.” His face is hard. “You’re not staying.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “And I’m not going to wake up screaming in your ear.”

  “I don’t care if you do.” I bring my shaky legs onto the mattress and slide beneath the covers, careful to stay on my side of the bed. It’s a big one, so there’s plenty of space between us. I lie down and rest my head on the pillow beside his, my heart crashing inside my chest. Because what if he kicks me out? What if he refuses to let me stay?

  He remains sitting, watching me while that muscle in his jaw tick-tick-ticks, as if he’s grinding his molars. Finally, he lays back and stares up at the ceiling. I’m not sure how long we stay like that, awake in the silence. I only know that it’s long enough for my heart to settle and my eyes to grow heavy.

  When Luka speaks, his voice is low and intimate. “I wish we could leave everything behind. Go somewhere safe.”

  I turn on my side and tuck my hands beneath the pillow. “Where would we go?”

  He turns his head to look at me. “Somewhere we could stay forever.”

  “Like our beach?”

  Luka smiles.

  It’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long, long time. And even though the thought is like heaven—leaving everything behind to be with him—I know it’s impossible. My grandmother is right. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, when you know what I know, you have no choice but to fight. As much as I want to hide, as much as I want to pretend that my father is right and evil doesn’t exist, I can’t. Not anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Symbol

  The next evening, we gather around the big screen in the great room to watch history unfold. Our president is about to address the nation in a speech predicted to garner more viewers than the last three super bowls combined. Egypt and Sudan have officially signed the ceasefire. For the first time in a long, long time, our soldiers are coming home. All of them.

  I imagine Pete and my mom and Leela watching in Thornsdale. My dad watching from prison. Cap and everyone else from the hub watching in Newport, with Non most likely muttering at the television. I imagine everybody across the country—across the world—celebrating peace while men dressed in scrubs toss catatonic patients into ditches and set them on fire. This peace is nothing more than a giant ploy, a huge distraction, a massive red herring. Darkness is a tricky, tricky thing. Especially when it masks itself in light.

  Beside me, my grandmother knits. The two large needles scrape and click in a rhythmic, soothing cadence that seems to still her shaking. Across the room, Link’s Rubik’s Cube is MIA. He sits with one arm draped over the back of the couch, tapping the leather with his index finger, the notebook with the list open in his lap. He’s been studying it all day, as if searching for the missing piece that might make the puzzle come together.

  Jillian sits beside him, her eyes glued to the television. Earlier today, I gave her back the gun I’d been hiding at the bottom of my bag. With the Rivards’ permission, she brought Luka, Link, and I outside for a little target practice. My grandmother joined us, but her shaking hands kept her from participating. She watched as Jillian patiently taught us how to load, unload, and shoot. Luka, of course, picked it up the fastest. Link eventually caught on. I couldn’t hit a target to save my life. But at least I know where the safety button is now. Jillian kept the gun and said we could practice some more tomorrow.

  On the television, the camera pans along Pennsylvania Avenue, all the way to Capitol Hill, where celebrators squish together to hear from our president. Flanked by two bodyguards, Cormack walks to the podium, waving proudly as the spectators cheer. She waits for the crowd to quiet, then begins her speech.

  Roughly halfway through, during a dramatic pause, one of the bodyguards sneezes. It’s a loud, attention-getting sneeze that has his face turning red.

  Without missing a beat, Cormack says, “Gesundheit,” and laughter ripples through the crowd. Smiling, Cormack brushes her hair over her shoulder, and as she does, I see something that has everything inside of me going very still. A small, black symbol. Unmistakably etched on Cormack’s neck.

  I stand and move closer to the television.

  Cormack’s hair falls back into place, hiding the mark from view.

  “Can someone rewind?”

  Nobody responds.

  I turn around. The Rivards, Link, Jillian, Luka, my grandmother. All of them stare at me. “Please rewind it!”

  Marcus points the remote at the television. The feed backs up.

  “There!” I tap the screen. “Stop!”

  Marcus pushes pause.

  The picture on the screen freezes in place.

  A flood of adrenaline courses through my veins. My heart races. My mouth goes dry. The president of the United States has the mark on her neck. As plain as day. I press my finger against the spot on the screen. “It’s right there.”

  Jillian scrunches up her nose, like she’s trying to see what I’m seeing. “What is?”

  I snatch the notebook in Link’s lap and point to the symbol at the top of the page. “This.”

  All of us stare at one another. It’s like we’re standing on the precipice of a giant discovery. The missing puzzle piece.

  I hold up the journal. “I think we just found our king.”

  *

  The notebook sits on the table near the library entrance, opened to the list. I pace back and forth, wearing a path in the stone from the empty fireplace to Luka, sitting in one of the chairs. He rests his elbow on the table, fingers threaded through his hair, his only movement coming from the pen in his hand, which he uses to trace the same five words on a sheet of paper. Over and over and over again.

  King. Eye. Censor. Idol. Physician.

  Cressida and Jillian sit across from him, studying each word. Link leans against the wall behind them, one ankle crossed over the other while he spins his Rubik’s cube.

  “It can’t be a coincidence.” I pivot on my heel and pace back toward the stairs. “Cormack’s mark has to be related to the list, doesn’t it?”

  Cressida rubs her chin. “It definitely seems that way.”

  “How do you even get the symbol?” Jillian asks. “Has Cormack been hijacked or something?”

  Hijacked. When the enemy enters a person, it locks that person up inside a dream world and takes over their body and mind. Link taught me about it during training. I think about the people who’ve had the mark in the past. Wren, who barked at Mrs. Meecher in our Honors English class. Was she hijacked by the other side? What about the kid at the mall, who tried shooting innocent Christmas shoppers on Black Friday? Or Pete. Is that what Scarface had been about to do? If Luka and I hadn’t saved him, would my brother have been hijacked?

  “All we really know,” Link says, “is that Cormack’s being used by evil. Otherwise she wouldn’t have the mark.”

  Porcelain rattles behind me. My grandmother walks into the room carrying a tray of tea. I’m surprised Geoffrey handed it off to her. He seems to take his butler duties very seriously. She sets the tray on Cressida’s empty desk and begins pouring some for everyone. More tea ends up in the saucers than the cups, but she seems pleased to have something to do, so I leave her to it.

  “We know what the list is about then,” Jillian says. “Key people evil is using to carry out their plans. It’s all tied up with the prophecy.”

  My grandmother sets a cup in front of Luka and Cressida, then returns to the tray for another and offers it to me.

  I take it, but I don’t drink. I’m too overstimulated to put anything inside my stomach right now. “Which means that if we can figure out who each person is, then we could stop the other side from carrying those
plans out. We’d have a way to fight back.” We found exactly what Cap wanted us to find.

  “We know who the king is,” Link says.

  “How do we know Cormack isn’t the idol?” Luka traces the C on censor for the third time, then untangles his hand from his hair and curls his finger around the handle of his teacup. “Everybody worships her.”

  Jillian nods. “He’s right. Everybody does.”

  Cressida copies the list onto the first page of a new notebook in neat manuscript and jots Cormack’s name twice. Once beside king. Again beside idol. She ends both with a question mark. “What about the eye?”

  I resume my pacing. Eye. Spy. Cameras. Like the one we hid from at the rest stop outside of Greeley. I think about Dr. Roth and his filing system, and all these journals surrounding us. Not a single word has been entered into a computer. Doing so would be dangerous. “What if the eye has something to do with government surveillance?”

  Link twists a row of red on his cube. “Like the NSA?”

  “The NSA. CIA. FBI.” The thrill of excitement that comes on the cusp of discovery builds inside of me. “Think about it for a second. Six of the ten Most Wanted in America are part of The Gifting. What if the eye’s the director of the FBI?”

  I look at Luka. He’s chewing on his thumbnail.

  “Actually,” Jillian says, “the director of the FBI isn’t the final authority on the Most Wanted list anymore. After what happened to Newport, the Department of Security and Defense was formed. The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, even immigration and border control came under its authority. According to my dad, a few months after the bombings, it came out that each agency had important information, and if they’d been sharing that information with each other, Newport never would have happened.”

  “Who’s the head of Security and Defense?” I ask.

  Cressida pulls out her phone and Google searches, the tip of her tongue sticking out in that way it does when she’s focusing. A few seconds later, she scrawls the name Secretary Young with another question mark beside the eye. “Any ideas for the censor?”

  Luka sets his teacup on the table. “The media’s censored like crazy.”

  I glance at my grandmother. She sits at Cressida’s desk, rubbing the straps around her wrists. The public has no clue what’s happening to people like her in rehab facilities. They also have no clue that ninety-five percent of the pregnancy screenings are inaccurate; that perfectly healthy babies are being killed. They don’t know because the news doesn’t cover it.

  Jillian is practically wiggling in her seat. “The Chief of Press.”

  Cressida does some more Googling, then writes down Chief Fredrick beside censor with another question mark.

  I stare at the list, an incongruity niggling its way into my thoughts. “The Gifting live all over the world.”

  The prophecy was made in Rome, for crying out loud. Thousands of years before the United States was even on the map. The people on this list might be able to eradicate The Gifting in our country, but the prophecy talked about extinction. Complete annihilation.

  Link pushes off the wall and leans over the back of Jillian’s chair. “Every person on our list is an American leader.”

  Exactly. Which means we have to be missing something.

  “What is that?” The question comes from my grandmother. She’s pointing to my waist.

  The red light on my dream phone has come on. “Cap.”

  “Who’s Cap?” she asks.

  “He’s the one who sent us on this mission.” I pull the dream phone off my belt loop. “Link made this so we could communicate.”

  “How does it work?”

  I show her.

  My grandmother is tickled, like a little kid amazed over a card trick.

  “There are two inputs,” I say. “We can both go if you want to see the dream dojo.”

  “I’d love that.”

  I hit the button, turning the light from red to green.

  Luka stands from his chair, his face going pale. Like he’s going to faint, or get sick all over the floor.

  My brow furrows. “Are you okay?”

  He cups his hand over his forehead. “Yeah. Just tired.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fine. I promise. I just need some sleep. It’s been hard to come by lately.” He gives me a weak smile and wraps me in a hug. “Tell Cap I say hello. You two have a lot to catch up on.”

  Luka is right.

  When we arrive, Cap is waiting. And my grandmother’s hands are as steady as a rock.

  *

  Our mission is complete. We found exactly what we needed to find to fight the enemy. Cap wants us to get to Newport as soon as possible. Marcus Rivard called Hezekiah and arranged for him to drive the four of us north tomorrow.

  It’s time for Link and I to check in with Agent Bledsoe.

  This time, there are no dancing teenagers. No stage. No hip-hop music. We find Agent Bledsoe sitting at an empty bus stop with a briefcase by his foot, staring at his watch, which ticks backward instead of forward.

  Link clears his throat.

  Bledsoe looks up. He doesn’t stand quickly or fumble inside his pocket for his phone. His arms go slack. His face lengthens. His eyes widen. And there, mixed with the shock, is a glimmer of relief. Like he’s been hoping we might appear. “You’re back.” He takes in his surroundings. There’s nothing but the empty street and the bench he sits on and the bus stop sign growing up from the curb. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

  Link nods. “Did you do what we asked? Did you look into things?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you agree that something isn’t right?”

  He scratches his crooked nose. He looks unsure. Noncommittal. “I want to believe you. But how can I? This is a dream.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not real.” As soon as I speak, an odd tingling sensation circles my wrists. I rub the spot and the tingling stops. I shake out my hands.

  Link grabs Bledsoe’s shoulders and gives them a rattle. “We’re not criminals. We’re not dangerous. We are innocent. You are being lied to.”

  The doubt on Bledsoe’s face remains.

  And an idea comes. “If we gave you proof that this is real, would you believe us then?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then we’ll leave you a note in a secure location. Tomorrow night, we’ll visit you and tell you where to find it.” Something sharp bites at the skin on my neck. I slap at the spot. “Ouch!”

  Link lets go of Bledsoe’s shoulders. “What happened?”

  I pull my hand away and look at my fingers, expecting a dead mosquito or a horsefly. There’s nothing. “I-I’m not sure.”

  Link turns back to Bledsoe. “If we can get you a note, will that be enough proof?”

  The agent nods, and the bite returns, sharper this time.

  I slap at my skin again. “Ow!”

  Concern dances across Link’s face. But before I can hear whatever he’s going to say, I wake up in bed with the barrel of a gun pressed against my neck.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gagged and Bound

  My heart slams into my throat. My head rears back against the pillow. My brain scrambles to process what’s happening.

  There’s a gun against my neck. And the person holding it isn’t Jillian. It’s my grandmother. She looms over me, moonlight shining in through the window, bathing her face in a glow of white.

  “What are you doing?” I try to scratch the inside of my wrist, but I can’t scratch anything. My hands are bound, pressed tightly together by a cord of rope.

  She presses the barrel deeper into my flesh.

  My heart races. This has to be a dream. I woke up and yet I’m still sleeping. My attention slides toward the door, desperate for something—anything—to make sense. What I see turns my racing heart to ice.

  Luka, gagged and tied to a chair, his head lolling forward.

  A scream claws its way up my chest, but my grandmothe
r jabs the gun harder and lifts her finger to her lips.

  “What did you do to him?” I choke.

  “Slipped a heavy sedative into his tea.”

  My mind spins, but nothing makes sense. My grandmother must be having some sort of episode. A symptom of PTSD. She’s not right in the head. She’s not thinking clearly. And she has a gun.

  “If you don’t cooperate, I will kill him.”

  “W-why? Why are you doing this?” My eyes water. I can’t breathe. My attention keeps zipping from the gun at my neck … to Luka … to the door. She has a gun and my bedroom door is closed. Most likely locked. Please someone wake up. Surely, Link will know something weird is going on. I cried out in pain when we were in the middle of our business with Bledsoe, and then I disappeared.

  Please Link. Please, please, please wake up!

  My grandmother pulls the gun away from my throat. She walks to the door and presses her ear to the wood, as though listening for any rumblings outside.

  Should I scream? I’m terrified she’ll press that gun against Luka’s temple and pull the trigger if I do. I twist my wrists, trying to loosen the rope. It cuts and burns against my skin, which means I am very, very much awake.

  She points the gun at a second chair. “Sit here.”

  When I hesitate, she shoves the barrel against the back of Luka’s skull.

  I stand quickly, my knees like Jell-O. As soon as I drop into the chair, she moves behind me and uses more rope to tie my ankles to the chair legs. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to. I wouldn’t do this if there was another choice.”

  The room begins to spin. I squeeze my eyes shut and take deep breaths. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be. I consider overpowering her—because she’s weak—but I can’t see her or the gun and Luka is one finger pull away from death.

  “The night you were born, I had a vision. A visitor came and told me how important you would be. And I knew. I knew you were the key.”

  “The key to what?”

  “He will never stop. He will torment me forever. For eternity. After I gave him that scar, he promised me there would be no escaping him. Not even death will keep him away.” Her hands shake as she pulls the rope tighter. “Then I had the vision. And I knew if I could hand you over to him, he would leave me alone. I would finally have peace. I would finally be free.”