Weaver

by John Abramowitz

  Chapter 6

  Friday, 9:03 a.m.

  The young man and woman that had accosted Alex Cronlord led her to an old house perhaps a half hour’s walk across town. It looked somewhat derelict, with a porch with several broken wooden planks and one window with cracked glass. It was a two-story house, and they led her inside and up the stairs to a small, cluttered room with a single window in the wall to her left. There was an unmade bed against the wall to her right, and an empty bookshelf between the bed and the window. “This will be your room,” the young man told her.

  Alex smirked. “I notice you skipped right past the part where I actually agree to stay with you. Answers first. Who are you?”

  “I’m Zach,” he told her.

  “And you said you’re like me?”

  “Well, sort of,” Zach corrected. “I’m an Igniter. From how you didn’t burn me up back in front of your house, I’m guessing you’re a Weaver?”

  Alex was startled at the word – she remembered her mother using it just before she was abducted. “It’s what you were born for, after all,” her mother had said. “I … I think so … but how do you …”

  “I’ll show you,” he told her eagerly. “See that, over there? The crumpled up newspaper?”

  He pointed a finger, and Alex’s eyes went immediately to a large piece of paper lying crumpled in a ball near one corner of the room. From this angle, it looked to be the front page of The Dallas Morning News. “Yeah, I see it. Why?”

  “Watch.” His eyes flashed to the ball of paper, lingered on it for but a moment – and then it burst into flames. Alex shrieked, her mind racing as the flames danced in the opposite corner.

  “How… ?” Alex asked, stopping her desperate thrashing as the fire went out, panic overtaken by surprise.

  “Like I said, Igniter,” he answered. “I went through it just like you did – the tests, the shots, the doctors, the freaky things happening I didn’t understand. My mom telling me that it’s what I was born for, that it was more important than anything I’d ever – “ He stopped, appearing to choke back a lump in his throat. “Sound familiar?”

  “Yeah,” Alex answered quietly, her surprise only deepening.

  “All right, I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours,” Zach insisted.

  “My … ability?” she asked, confused. “I can’t exactly turn mine on and off at will. It just sort of … comes and goes.”

  Zach laughed. “No no, your name.”

  “Oh,” Alex answered, laughing in turn. “I’m Alex. Alex Cronlord.”

  Zach stuck out his hand for Alex to shake. “Well, Alex, always happy to meet a fellow victim of the Wells Society.”

  “The what?” Alex asked, confused again.

  “The Wells Society,” he repeated. “That’s what we’re fighting against – that’s what’s hunting us.”

  “What’s a Wells Society?” Alex asked, truly confused now.

  “The reason you can see the future and I can light things on fire with my mind,” Zach told her. “The group both our mothers belonged to. And hers,” he pointed at the young woman with the scarred face, “and everyone else’s here.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow, wondering if those were the “associates” Ainsling had referred to. “So this is some sort of … what? Safe house for escaped children of the Wells Society.”

  Zach smirked. “Something like that.”

  Alex let this sink in, then her eyes drifted from Zach to the girl beyond him, the one with the scarred face. Alex realized that the girl hadn’t spoken at all. Pointing to her, Alex asked, “Does she talk?”

  Zach shook his head. “Can’t.”

  Alex winced, suddenly feeling very embarrassed at having asked the question. Way to stick your foot in your mouth. “Oh … “ She was curious about why this was the case, but did not want to commit a further faux pas by asking.

  But Zach apparently sensed her curiosity. “One of the side effects of what the Wells Society did to her. The part of her brain that sends the ‘speak’ command to her vocal chords doesn’t work quite right. Or something like that.”

  Alex looked at the scarred girl sadly. “Oh … I’m so sorry.”

  The girl smiled at Alex and shrugged. Zach continued: “Her name’s Danielle, but we call her ‘Cloak.’”

  “Cloak?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah. Because of what she can do. She can make people invisible.”

  Alex jolted upward physically at hearing this. “She can what??”

  “Make people invisible. Well, not really. What she does is that she taps into the brains of people near to her and tells them that they don’t see people that she doesn’t want them to see … I think?” Zach finished weakly, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not a doctor. Anyway, that’s why you didn’t see me coming.”

  Alex nodded, processing all of this new information. “Is the – are the Wells Society … are they trying to make people who can do that?”

  Zach shook his head. “Cloak was supposed to be like you – a Weaver. But things didn’t work out quite right as her powers developed. She’s what they call a ‘Reject’.” His face twisted in visible scorn at the term, and Cloak’s own eyes fell to the floor.

  A fresh wave of anger at her mother surged through Alex. Would Ainsling have done this to her? Would she have let this happen to her own daughter – the loss of voice, the facial scarring? She had to work hard to bite back a very nasty comment.

  Zach smirked. “As you can imagine, it wasn’t hard to convince Cloak that she’d rather be here than with her parents.”

  “No kidding,” Alex snorted.

  “Yeah. Anyway, when you want to get started, just let me know,” Zach told her.

  “Started?” Alex asked curiously. “Started with what?”

  “Your training.”

  --

  10:10 a.m.

  “Hey, partner. You must be feeling pretty good.”

  In reality, Moira was feeling anything but good, and hearing Andy’s greeting as she opened the door to the office they shared only served to make matters worse. She had slept only sparsely the previous night, and was arriving at her office a full two hours later than normal after having made an emergency appointment for herself with one of the in-house psychologists. Reflexively, Moira pasted a smile to her face and responded as cheerily as she could. “Good about what?”

  “Being right about the Wells Society,” Andy replied, the smile on his face turning to a frown as his eyes assessed Moira’s own features. “And why do I get the feeling that that’s not true?”

  For a moment, Moira thought about lying and saying that it was, but part of her brain objected. If he can handle me sobbing on his shoulder in the car, he can handle this. “Because it’s not,” she admitted frankly.

  Andy raised an eyebrow. “Moira? What’s wrong?”

  Moira hesitated for a moment, then sighed and turned to close the door behind her. Turning back to face her partner, she spoke in a tone just above a whisper. “I’ve been … I’ve been thinking about taking some time off. After we get Alex back, I mean – I’m not ditching you in the middle of that.”

  She sounded unsure as to whether he believed that, and apparently he picked up on it. He held up a hand. “Never imagined you were. But what occasions this? I don’t think you’ve taken a day off in … well … ever,” he finished, after giving the subject a moment’s thought.

  Again Moira hesitated. “You … you know I care about you, right?” she asked, the words tumbling out before she’d really thought about them much.

  This stopped Andy cold in his tracks. “Moira … “ he started, blushing slightly.

  An answering flush rose in her own cheeks as she realized how he had taken her question. “No no, I didn’t mean like that, I just – never mind,” she cut herself off as she realized she was starting to stammer.

  But comprehension dawned on Andy as she spoke. “Is this about last night?” he asked her, giving her a knowing look. “What that woman sai
d to you?”

  Moira nodded slowly, unsure what to say and feeling too embarrassed to say anything, besides.

  “Moira, that’s bunk,” Andy told her confidently. “It’s just bunk. She was trying to rattle you, that’s all. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Isn’t there?” she asked, feeling her composure threatened. “I thought about it last night – probably thought about it way too much last night,” she admitted, “trying to think who I’d been close to since my brother died. And, honestly … I can’t think of anyone, Andy. No one. And then I saw that woman last night with her sham marriage, and I just couldn’t stop thinking, ‘Is that gonna be me someday?,’ I –“ She stopped herself there, re-directing her energy to fight the moisture welling up in her eyes.

  Andy stood up, leaving his suit coat on his chair. He walked over to Moira and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said, voice just above a whisper as he spoke. “There’s a long way between not trusting many people and experimenting on little kids.”

  She looked up at him, her grey eyes open. There was something between a question and a plea in them. “I don’t wanna be like that,” she whispered, voice ragged with the emotion she was just barely holding at bay. “I don’t wanna end up like that.”

  “You won’t. Know how I know?”

  Her expression begged him to continue.

  “Because you’re talking to me right now,” he whispered, voice full of reassurance.

  That made her feel better, somehow, and when she dried her eyes she found that no further moisture welled in them. “I still wanna take her down,” she told him, a quiet steel in her voice. “Her and that whole Society. You really think I can do that without becoming her?”

  Impulsively, Andy walked toward her, reached over, and took her hand. “I think we can,” he told her.

  Later, Moira would remember that as the first time since Ian had died that she’d felt safe.

  --

  10:30 a.m.

  Zach took Alex to the back yard of the abandoned house their group occupied, each of them carrying a wooden sword in hand. The grass was overgrown, and in some places it came as high as their knees. Alex brushed a fly away from her face as she pushed a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “So … um … why are we doing this?” she asked, feeling awkward holding the wooden weapon.

  “Because you’re gonna need to know how to defend yourself,” he told her.

  “Against what?” she asked.

  Zach raised an eyebrow at Alex. “You think just because your mother can’t find you now that she won’t keep trying? If only. The Wells Society doesn’t just let you go, Alex – especially not if you’re an actual Weaver.”

  This made Alex nervous. “And you think she’ll come for me with a sword in hand?”

  “Or a gun. Or an Igniter.”

  Alex swallowed hard. “She wouldn’t kill me.”

  “You sure about that?” Zach asked. As he did, the memory of Tyler lying dead in their street flashed once again into Alex’s mind, making her not at all sure about what her mother would or wouldn’t do. Zach saw the uncertainty in her face, and nodded. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

  Alex nodded in turn. “All right … so, what do you want me to do?”

  “Simple,” he answered, flashing her a grim smile. “Defend yourself!”

  With that, Zach charged her, raising his sword and bringing it downward in a swift slashing motion. Alex yelped and leapt backward, a wave of cool air buffeting her as his sword missed her by mere centimeters. Without hesitation, he raised his weapon again and brought it downward, on a diagonal arc this time. Once again Alex jerked backward, raising her own sword and catching his mid-way. A loud THWAP echoed around the yard as the wooden weapons met.

  Alex felt proud of this accomplishment, but Zach regarded her with scorn. “What’s with you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she returned.

  “Running away from everything.”

  The answer irritated Alex a bit. “Well, it’s not every day somebody charges me with a sword,” she answered, her tone laced with sarcasm.

  Zach put his hands on his hips, giving her a disbelieving look.

  “What?” she asked.

  In response, he dropped the sword to the ground. As it clattered against the dirt and grass, he charged her, reaching out his hands to tackle her. Alex’s answer was another frightened shriek and she leapt backward, but he kept rushing towards her at full speed and before she could move out of the way, their bodies had collided and he had tackled her to the ground. He got up quickly, offering her a hand to help her up, though the look on his face was still stern.

  “It’s not just the sword,” he told her. “It’s you. Did your mother take the aggression out of you to compensate for the clairvoyance?”

  “No,” Alex responded grumpily. “I’m just not that good in a fight, okay? I didn’t take karate or anything growing up.”

  “It’s not about technique. I can teach you that. It’s about instinct,” Zach told her with a smirk. “And as far as I can tell? You don’t have it.”

  His tone irritated Alex. It reminded her of Ainsling, who had constantly assumed that Alex should be able to do anything necessary without any training or preparation. The condescending assumption that she should, in essence, be perfect, set off a burning sensation in Alex’s gut, as if someone had dropped several hot coals into her stomach. “I stuck a knife in a kid’s chest last week,” she responded tartly.

  “Did you?” he asked, seeming amused. “Slip out of your hand while you were cutting bread?”

  “No!” she answered, face flushing in frustration. She went quiet for a moment as she squelched her anger. “He was trying to kill me.”

  That seemed to wipe the smirk off of his face. “Really? What happened?”

  “There was this guy at school that I … sort of liked? I guess?” she told him, not entirely sure how to explain her reactions to Lucian. In any event, Alex still felt deeply ashamed of herself for saying ‘yes’ to him despite her instincts, and given that Zach had hardly been the soul of sympathy so far, she felt no desire to delve into that topic with him. So she pressed forward. “He asked me out. I said yes. He didn’t mention that the date would include trying to kill me.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Zach told her, looking penitent. “So you killed him?”

  “Well … kinda,” she answered feebly. “He didn’t exactly die, and I … I sorta ran away first, and then my friend Tyler tossed me a pocket knife, and he was coming at me, so I reached up and … and I stabbed him with it.”

  “So basically you ran away until a good friend and last-second survival instincts kicked in,” Zach retorted, the compassion gone from his voice.

  “I –“ Alex started, “well … yeah,” she admitted, cheeks flushing.

  “My point stands,” he told her, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re gonna hafta do better than that when the Wells Society comes knocking.”

  “Well, if they come knocking anytime soon, I’m dead, okay?” Alex retorted angrily.

  “With that attitude, you sure are.”

  His smugness did not get less infuriating with time. “What do you want from me?” she huffed.

  “Simple,” he replied, casually tossing a punch toward her that she once again backed away from. It missed her face by centimeters. “When I try to hit you, I want your first response to be to hit back. Not cower in the corner like some scared little –“ he stopped himself there, though he had obviously been about to say “girl.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not easy when you have a mother who –“

  “Who what?” Zach asked.

  “I dunno,” Alex answered. “She … expected me to do really well in anything I did. I guess a lot of times I got the sense that she’d rather I didn’t try something than try it and fail at it. I guess that doesn’t exactly make you inclined to be aggressive.”

  “Why?” he probed, as if what she’d said made no
sense.

  “Because – would you want to go for a walk if the ground beneath you was a high wire and any misstep could send you plunging to your death?” Alex shot back.

  “That’s awfully dramatic,” he answered.

  “You’ve never met my mother. When she decides she’s ashamed of you, she lets you know it.”

  “So you’d rather run away all the time than be aggressive and risk whatever the consequences are that she dishes out?”

  “I … yeah, I guess so,” she nodded.

  “All right,” Zach nodded. “Then I’ll take you home.”

  “Wait, what?” Alex asked, caught off guard by the answer. “Why?”

  “Because,” he told her, starting to head back toward the house. “No point in getting you away from her if you’re just gonna keep living in her shadow.”

  “But I –“ Alex started to protest, but Zach cut her off.

  “You’re a liability, Alex,” he answered, without looking back at her. “And I don’t have time for those.”

  Fury overflowed in Alex, and she charged at Zach, sword raised. As she closed in, she brought it down to hit him over the head. He turned, dancing out of the way at the last second, a surprised look in his eyes, and dove for his sword as she turned to hit him again. He got it, brought it upward just in time to meet her second swing with a loud CLANK! Then he went on the counterattack, striking once, twice, three times – and each swing was met with a parry from Alex, who held her ground unflinchingly.

  “Don’t ever call me a liability again,” she hissed at him.

  “I don’t have to,” he grinned widely. “You’re not anymore.”