“I’ve told you it’s not by choice. I hope some day to find a woman to share my life. I can’t help it if I’ve never found one. Fewer and fewer remain in the world, thanks to the collective.”
Her eyes snapped up, a fierce energy emanating from them. “The Separatist chooses to be alone, rather than with the Protector’s daughter, though she is a perfectly viable option and does not share his DNA.”
Karl opened his mouth, then closed it again. An interesting point, if he was honest. He didn’t hope to make her understand the emotional side of things, but she wasn’t wrong about him choosing. This woman pushed him to philosophies he’d never considered before.
“Fine. Let’s chalk it up to this: certain emotional barriers prevent me from having a physical relationship with Lila. Because you’ve never lived with normal emotions, you can’t hope to understand them. Just know they exist. Given these barriers, being alone is not my choice. It is merely the circumstances I find myself in. No one chooses to be alone.”
“We exist in the Unions without mates. We do choose it.”
“Yes, but you aren’t truly alone either. You still have the minds and voices of hundred—thousands—of others. To be truly alone would be to live…in utter silence.”
Tenessa’s frown looked downright disturbed this time.
“Besides,” Karl muttered, mostly to himself now. “Without a mate, you don’t get to do much, erm, kissing.”
He glanced up to find a guarded expression on her face.
“Do you know what kissing is, Tenessa?”
“We understand the concept,” she said dryly.
“But you’ve never kissed anyone. Or been kissed.”
Her lips twisted. In annoyance, he thought. “It’s an outdated expression of affection, used only by Separatists.”
Karl snorted. “That’s a no.” An idea struck him, and Karl leaned forward with a grin. He really shouldn’t push her. “Would you like to be kissed, Tenessa?”
Her eyes widened in abject horror. “It is…forbidden.”
Karl laughed, leaning back again. “Well, there’s the ultimate sign a civilization has become twisted: they outlaw kissing.”
“It is the Separatist’s turn to ask,” Tenessa said coldly.
Fine. Let her change the subject. Karl thought he’d made enough of point. Besides, he needed information about the Council of Six. He took his time, framing his question carefully.
“We’re heading into an eclipse. How will the Council of Six use the eclipse to their advantage?”
A flash of surprise materialized in her face, then vanished as swiftly.
“The aligning of the celestial spheres creates a powerful energy unequaled anywhere on earth. It will lend them enough power to create unbreakable bonds. They will use it to lend strength to their…task.”
Karl leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “And what is the nature of their task?”
Tenessa looked away. He could see gears turning in her head as she thought about what to tell him. She wouldn’t want to risk her position with the collectives.
“The Council is trying to merge the remaining Unions.”
Disappointment nearly overwhelmed him. He’d been sure she would reveal something big.
“So…what?” he said with a sigh. “The energy from the eclipse will make the bonds between collective drones iron clad?”
Tenessa shook her head. “The strength of the Union’s bond is as powerful as we can make it. It cannot be increased.”
Karl frowned. “Then what’s the energy of the eclipse for?”
Again, the hesitation. Her shoulders relaxed and she met his gaze. “It will allow them to reach out, find, and touch every individual mind on the planet, the instant the final two Unions merge.”
Karl froze, then slowly got to his feet, the full horror of the pronouncement settling on his chest. “Every mind? Everyone who is not currently a member of the collective will be vulnerable to them when they merge?”
She didn’t answer, yet her silence felt like acknowledgment.
“The merging happens at the height of the eclipse?” he asked. He knew it did, but needed absolute confirmation from her.
She gave the barest nod of her head.
“That’s only four days away.”
“Yes.” She met his eyes with a firm gaze. “In four days, you will all be assimilated. With a single thought.”
Chapter 8: Dark Prophecy
The energy in the heavens looked magnificent. Terrifying, yes. Yet also beautiful.
After sitting on the slopes of Interchron, staring up at the sky for more than an hour, Maggie had some ideas about what she saw, but couldn’t be certain. She needed to run her observations past Doc. He’d promised to come find her when he finished talking with Tristan. So she waited, and gazed upward.
As she watched, she noticed patterns in the weave, as Doc said she might, but she couldn’t yet predict when the patterns would surface. She saw certain things—a swirl of Constructive energy here, an eddy of Traveling energy there—that acted the exact same way every time it appeared. Their timing seemed completely random. Thousands of weaves wiggled across the sky. The pattern might be hundreds of weaves long. She had little chance of figuring it out without help.
What if it turned out to be worse than that? What if the collectives wove each mind in a different way, depending on the mind? If no viable pattern existed, would she be able to unravel the weave?
Telling herself to be more positive, she rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, hoping to stave of the headache she felt lurking behind her eyes.
“You’re thinking too hard.”
She jumped at the sound of David’s voice.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he sat beside her.
“It’s okay. And yes, I am.”
“Don’t let it overwhelm you, Maggie.”
“Trying,” she said, shooting him a half smile. He clutched a thick sheath of papers in his hands. “What’s that?”
“I meant to give it to you at the meeting. Too many distractions.” He handed it to her.
She stared at it for ten seconds before understanding. “Oh, the prophecy!” She took the sheath of papers reverently in both hands and laid it on her lap. It felt like a novel, fresh off the printer, except the papers weren’t uniform in size, and of course were hand-written. “Thank you for this, David. I can’t wait to read it.” She hunched over, trying to make out his writing in the moonlight.
“I wouldn’t be so eager. Most of it is ominous. It will leave you with more questions than answers.”
“I don’t care,” she said, nose two inches from the page. “They wrote this—hundreds of years ago? More?—and it talks about how we will bring down the collectives. Even if it’s vague and nonspecific, I think we should all be pouring over it.”
David didn’t answer.
“Didn’t you say before, you thought you’d found passages that might help us?” Maggie asked, looking up at him.
His body faced the same direction as hers—into the night—but he turned his head toward her, resting his chin on his shoulder, watching her. “More you than the team, but yes.”
She offered him the sheath back. “Will you show me?”
He took it and flipped to a page. After scanning it briefly, he handed the two halves of the sheath back to her, pointing to a particular passage. “There. I think that refers to the eclipse.”
Maggie peered down at where he pointed and put her nose close to the page once again.
Dark moon shines close in the sky
Tides of thoughts becoming dull.
Dark prophecy decrees the Executioner will die,
Dark matter fulfills the Remembrance in full.
Maggie swallowed. “This passage decrees my death.”
“No.” David said simply.
Maggie glanced up at him. He gazed back steadily. “Um, explain?”
“It says the dark prophecy, the one the co
llectives live by, decrees you will die. It doesn’t say you actually will.”
Maggie re-read the passage, feeling only slightly better. How could they to know which prophecy— light or dark—would come true? “The first line I get. Like you said, it sounds like a reference to the eclipse, and the moon being so close to us.”
“Yes.”
“This last line is bothersome.”
“Why?”
“Dark matter. The way it’s used sounds like what Benny said the Cimerian said. Putting Dark Matter into play. And we don’t know what it means.”
“No.”
“What about this ‘Remembrance’ part? Why is the word capitalized?”
David shrugged. “It held great importance in the prophecy. I think it would have been considered a proper noun.”
“It sounds a lot like what the woman at the lighthouse called herself. Could it have been ‘Remembrancer’?”
David considered the colorful sky. “Possibly,” he finally answered. “The prophecy is written in organic chemical equations. All I can do is figure out what the equations stand for and write the word in English. This equation stands for the chemical reaction in a human mind when a memory is being made. Remembrance is the word I came up with. It was a proper noun, so perhaps it did refer to a person. The person who embodies remembrance. She did name herself a keeper of memories. Your memories, Maggie.” He turned his head to gaze at her again. “And the line prior to it refers to you as well.”
Maggie sighed, feeling a headache coming on.
“I told you,” David smiled. “More questions than answers.”
Maggie nodded. “Any other lines in here that stand out to you?”
David hesitated, then leaned forward to flip to another page. He pointed to a particular passage. “I don’t know about it standing out, but I had trouble translating this part.”
Accept the dark night of the soul;
the Executioner’s dark-tinged goal.
A brother’s (or sister’s?) turn, betrayal at its worst.
The Executioner’s heart…shall burst.
Maggie swallowed. “Sounds grim,” she muttered. “Dark night, dark goals, betrayal, hearts bursting. All these suggest my death, David.”
When David answered, his voice sounded sad. “There’s more than one way for a heart to burst, Maggie. It doesn’t have to be literal.”
Maggie looked up at him, wishing she knew what to say. “Why,” she cleared her throat. “Why the word ‘sister’ with the question mark?”
“That’s the part I had a hard time translating. I’m sure the word they’re going for in that line is brother, but there is also a feminine aspect to it. I thought perhaps they meant to write sister, but got it wrong.”
Maggie frowned. “The Prophecy is written in chemical equations, right? Is it possible to make that kind of mistake without messing up the rest of it?”
David shrugged. “I’m not sure. That’s why it stumped me. The equation there is for a male genome. XY chromosomes. So I’m sure it’s ‘brother.’ Yet there’s a feminine element hovering around it as well, and I’m not sure what the exact translation would be. No such thing as a female brother, right?”
“Yeah,” Maggie murmured. It suddenly occurred to her that Marcus should not read this passage. A mention of a brother’s betrayal in the Prophecy would have him instantly breathing down David’s neck.
“Um,” Maggie glanced sideways at David. “Who do you think this is about?” She didn’t think she needed to specifically mention the word ‘betrayal.’ David would know what she was asking.
“Me,” he said simply.
Maggie gasped. She hadn’t expected so direct an answer.
David looked over at her calmly. “The passage just before it,” he pointed, “is clearly about the Healer. That’s Marcus.” He shrugged. “I’m the only brother Marcus has. And I’m not a woman.”
The final sentence held a note of annoyance that made the corners of Maggie’s mouth turn upward, though she didn’t think David was making a joke.
Her mirth faded quickly, though. His reasoning for why the passage was about him made sense, but it also implied he would betray them, just as Marcus feared. That same fear crept stealthily into Maggie’s stomach. She looked up to find David watching her.
“I’ll never betray you, Maggie,” he said quietly. “Or Marcus. Or the team. Ever.” He turned his head to looked back up into the sky. “But maybe it’s talking about what happened before.”
Maggie frowned. “You betrayed the team before?”
“No.” He looked at her again. “But I betrayed Marcus. When I went into the collectives.”
“Oh.” Maggie looked back down at the sheaf of papers. “Is there something in here that suggests this passage refers to something that happened…before now? That it’s from when you and Marcus were young?”
David shook his head. “Not specifically, no. But the chronology of the Prophecy is infinitely difficult to work out. Those who prophecy don’t see the future in a straight line. They wrap themselves in the time line like a blanket, and can only see bits and pieces at a time.”
Maggie nodded. “I remember Doc explaining it to me that way before.”
“So the prophecy isn’t necessarily chronological. It jumps all over the place.” He sighed, looked tired. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. The passage is about me. I betrayed Marcus once before. I won’t do it again.”
Maggie believed David utterly. She knew Marcus didn’t, but David struck her as sincere, determined, and heartbroken at what he’d done back then. She put the pages back together, closing them like a book on her lap. “I need to talk to Doc. Not only about this,” she motioned toward the prophecy, “but also…” she waved her hands toward the heavens. “I guess he must still be with Tristan.”
“What do you make of him?” David asked.
“Who Tristan?”
He nodded.
She shrugged. “I don’t think I make anything of him yet. I don’t really know him. If he can fulfill Clay’s role in the prophecy, we’ll need him to bring down the collectives. That would be a relief. One problem solved.”
David nodded non-committally and craned his neck upward again.
“Why?” Maggie asked. “What do you make of him?”
David met her eyes calmly. “I don’t like him.”
Maggie cocked her head to one side. “Why?”
“He thinks he’s better than everyone here.”
Maggie thought a moment before nodding. “You’re right. He did come off kind of arrogant, didn’t he? Doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy, though. He said he hadn’t lived with other people for a while. He’s probably forgotten his social skills. He’ll adapt.”
David shook his head. “It’s more than that. He has a dark energy around him. I can’t identify it, but I don’t like him.”
“What do you mean, dark energy? What kind of dark energy?”
“I don’t know. He’s…negative.”
Maggie suppressed a smile. “Being negative doesn’t make him evil. I suppose it is a dark energy of sorts, though. If there’s anything to worry about, Doc will pick it up.”
David nodded, looking unconvinced. Silence fell between them again.
Maggie stared at the writhing energy in the sky above her. When she’d first walked out onto the slopes of Interchron and seen it, she’d thought the many, colorful energies bent around the dark parts. The more she watched, though, the dark bits seemed almost like tiny black holes, sucking the energy in. She wondered if they were dark matter.
“Can I ask you something, Maggie?”
She turned to look at him. “Of course.”
He pulled his knees into his chest and frowned down at them. “When we met several months ago, the day B—Bartholomew—first invaded Lila’s mind, and Nat brought me to Interchron, I instantly felt drawn to you.”
“David, can we please not start this again? We’ve been over and over it.”
�
�Please, listen. I…I’m wondering if we’d ever met before that day.” He didn’t look at her until after the words left his mouth.
“We, as in you and I?”
He nodded.
“Not to my recollection.” As soon as she said it, she rolled her eyes, realizing how absurd a comment it was. “Not that my recollection is particularly reliable these days. I can’t imagine we ever did. Why?”
He shrugged. “I dreamed something strange last night. You were there.”
Maggie’s face instantly heated. “You dreamed about me? Do me a favor and never tell Marcus.”
He frowned in confusion. “Why?”
Maggie chuckled. David proved so childlike at times. “I guess it’s a cultural thing, David. Dreaming about someone sometimes has a specific…connotation to it.”
He still looked confused. “What kind of connotation?”
“Sexual?”
His mouth dropped open. “It wasn’t that kind of dream.”
Maggie laughed out loud. “With that expression, I believe you. Okay, I’m sorry I brought it up. What did you dream about?”
“It might have been a memory. Maybe. Except you were there. You seemed…larger than me.”
“Larger than you?” Maggie tried not to be offended.
“Yes. I looked up to speak to you. Maybe I was a child.”
“David,” Maggie said gently. “We’re roughly the same age, give or take a few years. When you were a child, so was I.”
“When I was a child, you were two hundred years or more dead.”
“True,” Maggie grinned. “Which means I’m older and wiser than you. You should listen to me.”
He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes.
“What else did you see in the dream, David?”
“I felt fear. Then you appeared, coming toward through the woods. You looked like you did when you came from the future. In the canyon. The white streak in your hair.”
All the mirth drained out of Maggie. “Oh. Well, it’s been on everyone’ mind. Maybe you dreamed a memory, but superimposed me into it. You said you felt fear. Of what?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Dying maybe, but I don’t know why. I think I was a little kid. That makes sense to me now. It would have happened before I entered the collectives. In fact,” he rubbed his eyes wearily. “You said something about Marcus and my father being nearby, in the woods. So I was a child and still traveling with them.”
Dark Matter (Interchron Book 3) Page 12
