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The acceleration of the ship was nothing like Gavin had ever experienced. It made the unregulated Floater look like a carnival ride for children. They were all buckled in their seats as they made their escape, the Weaver sitting to his right and a bulkhead to his left.
“We aren’t out of the woods yet.” The voice came from a speaker on the ceiling, presumably the pilot’s. “It’s unlikely we’ll be pursued, but I’d still like to get as far from here as possible. Please remain in your seats until we reach speed and altitude.” Gavin rolled his eyes, feeling inertia pressing him into the seat. As if we could do anything else.
The fuselage of the craft resembled Pluto, but with Theran materials and aesthetics. The walls were white and smooth, free from rivets or any exposed frame. The cargo area directly behind the cockpit had been converted into more seating that ran four across and six deep. Even with these, the cabin felt spacious. Gavin wondered if it was actually larger than Pluto, or if it only seemed that way because it was free of Ambrose’s clutter.
Gavin closed his eyes. His friends were safe, he was safe. Neither of which could be contributed to any action on his part. Gavin, the great co-leader of Tapestry. The thought stung. Couldn’t even save his own father without someone stepping in and doing it for him.
And doing it right. Cyril had been correct. His decision to go in alone with a plan that was weak at best had been foolish and desperate.
“I’m too old for this.” His voice was low, meant more for himself than the others. But the Weaver put a hand on his knee.
“Oh, Gavin. You have no idea just how young you really are.”
Gavin lifted his head and frowned at his mentor.
The pilot’s voice resonated through the cabin once more. “We have reached altitude, please feel free to walk about the cabin.”
“Father, I... I’m glad you’re safe.”
The Weaver smiled warmly at him. “And I’m glad to see you up and about. That was quite a wound you sustained.” He paused, his silvery-white eyebrows knitting in concern. “I’m sorry that I was not there for you as you healed. I trusted that I was leaving you in good hands. There were things...that could not wait.”
Kestrel straddled the chair in front of Gavin, clutching the headrest and beaming at them both. “I’m so happy you found us! Quite a show, huh? But where’s Onyx?” Kestrel’s smile vanished. “Didn’t you reach her in time? Is she safe?”
Gavin gave her a pained, but reassuring, smile. “For the moment, she is. She made for the Evenmire. She’s going to warn Sanctuary of Nero’s plans.”
“I can’t believe he got away. We were this close to capturing him!” Kestrel held up her hand and squinted, her forefinger and thumb a hairsbreadth apart.
“But we are safe, and he no longer has the element of surprise,” said the Weaver. “Sanctuary will be forewarned of the danger, thanks to you, Gavin. You did well in sending Onyx. It was a wise choice.”
Gavin did not feel as though he had done well in anything, but he remained silent as the Weaver continued. “I fear it may not be enough to simply warn them. They are weak, and vulnerable. It is up to us.” He nodded to Kestrel. “Tell the pilot that when he feels we are no longer at risk of pursuit, he is to head toward the Evenmire. Three kilometers due west of it is a place where we can set down in safety.
Kestrel did as the Weaver asked, and then sat down next to Ollie, who eagerly recounted his part of their plan, causing Gavin to cringe. He did not wish to relive it, nor have the Weaver hear any part of it. He spoke loudly, addressing the ship at large, hoping to drown out Ollie’s tales.
“What became of Nero?”
“He fled,” Kestrel replied. “Fled like a coward right after the concussion grenades went off. We had to be careful with placement, to avoid any casualties. I don’t care what Nero says about the First Order. We still honor it.”
The slightest smile of pride from the Weaver. A deep throb of pain from Gavin’s heart.
“You did well,” he said, pushing his own pride aside. “I’m sorry. I should have looked for you when I reached Levandire.”
“Don’t sweat it. We knew you had your own stuff to deal with.”
Her comment, intended to comfort, had the opposite effect. The fact that they felt that rescuing the Weaver lay on their shoulders, that he couldn’t be counted on to help...it only increased his feelings of guilt. There had been a time when he would have been the obvious, the only, choice for such a mission. The Weaver was his father, after all. But that was long ago. Tapestry had continued, grown, without him.
No, he had moved on first. Tapestry had just chosen not to let that stop them. Why had he chosen to stay in Solara all those years, safe and comfortable, rather than assuming the mantle the Weaver had intended for him? To stay with Onyx? Just as he took the Floater in order to save one, and left Kestrel to save many on foot?
And when the Weaver had returned, still Gavin had scorned him. For Onyx. Had he really imagined that his old life would sit patiently by and wait on his pleasure while he pursued his own desires? Gavin sneered to himself. Folly.
Ollie had told him as much. When you cut down a great tree, little trees will grow up in its place.
The whole situation was a mess. Onyx was out there alone, making her way to the Evenmire. They might have flown right past her.
“Are we to join the fleet when they go to Earth?” Gavin said, guessing at the Weaver’s intent in a desperate attempt to get something right.
“Yes.” The Weaver nodded. “When I left Solara, I was hunting a closely guarded secret. There were only rumors to go on—our people within CEDAR were not high enough in the ranks to have access to the information.”
Thoughts of his own self-pity melted away as Gavin found himself drawn in to the Weaver’s explanation. “What information?”
“The key to stopping the clone army. I was able to slip in undetected, and Counilor Pike’s lab held the answers I had sought. But of that which the answers spoke, there was no sign.”
The plan seemed dangerous, with a slim chance of success. But if Gavin were to earn the trust of Tapestry, of his father, once more, he would need to start by trusting them. At least this time, he was not alone.
The ship landed without incident and they disembarked in silence, following the Weaver through a dense thicket to a hidden tunnel much like the one outside Imradia. They followed him, flashlights from the ship’s storage compartments lighting the way as they came to the ruins of old underground facility. A solid metal door lay on the ground, torn from its hinges and covered in a thick layer of dust, masking the rubble beneath like a heavy blanket. As they entered the ruins, the others spread out through the myriad corridors, examining the fragments of this ancient world, but Gavin stayed with the Weaver, who had stopped beside the empty hole where the door had once stood. Stooping, he picked up a large metal rectangle, brushing the dust away and revealing it to be an old sign. It was rusty and full of holes, but the embossed words were still legible. Ward 2 East, Cedar Grove Innovative Technologies.
The Weaver was staring at the sign with an unreadable expression on his face. “This is where it all began.”
Gavin felt a queer sense of unease.
“I think it’s time that you and I had a long overdue talk.” He looked around for the others. All of them were out of sight, and none seemed interested in Gavin and the Weaver. None except Ollie, who had noticed their absence and was heading back in their direction.
“I’m sorry,” the Weaver said as Ollie approached, “but I wish to speak to Gavin in private.”
“Oh,” Ollie said, looking crestfallen. “Oh, of course. I’m sorry, I just—”
“I’d like him to come,” Gavin said, making a decision.
The Weaver looked at him in surprise. “There are things I wish to tell you that are not for the young.”
Gavin caught himself smirking as he looked at Ollie, studying the young man. “You yourself just told me how young I am. Anything you want to say, he deserves to know, too. He is a wiser man than I.”
There was a long pause as Ollie shifted his weight from one foot to the other under the appraising stare of the Weaver, who nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Come.”
The three of them made their way further into the ruins. At last they came to a small room. Inside, several chairs, once white but now yellowed and brittle, lay on their sides around the remains of a long, collapsed table. Ollie moved forward to right one of them, but the metal leg crumbled away at his touch.
“This place has been forgotten for a very long time,” the Weaver said. “It’s surprising, really, to find anything left at all.”
Gavin sat down, a cloud of dust rising around him. “What is this place?”
Ollie plopped down on the floor beside him, raising a cloud of his own that caused him to cough and sputter.
The Weaver looked back and forth between Gavin and Ollie several times, and Gavin saw something in his face that he had not often seen there before; uncertainty. What could elicit such feelings from someone like the Weaver, Gavin could not imagine.
“You must understand,” the Weaver said slowly, “that what I am about to tell you is my burden, and mine alone. To reveal it to you—both of you—is selfish, and yet I fear that I can no longer bear its weight. We are heading toward a conflict between two worlds, and I do not want this knowledge to die with me if I should perish in the collision.”
The Weaver paused, and Gavin considered his words. His mentor paced before him. He felt himself leaning forward, the anticipation of what he was about to hear causing his body to move without thought.
“Tell us,” he said, thinking again of his conversation with Ollie. “I think you’ve carried this burden alone for long enough.”
The Weaver seemed to weigh every word with careful consideration. “To understand what I’m about to share, you must understand the larger picture. Thera and Earth are not separate worlds. They are two versions of what might have been out of infinite possibilities. Two strands of the same Tapestry, if you will. Somewhere in our long history, however, the paths we took diverged. At this critical juncture, the Humans of Thera and the Humans of Earth began the slow, steady march toward their separate fates. Thera’s technology advanced at breakneck speed, outstripping their Earthling counterparts by millennia and devastating the planet at an unprecedented pace. But each advancement only made us hunger for more. And that hunger became an insatiable need to excel that would be the downfall of an entire civilization.”
The Weaver’s words were pained, but they felt rehearsed somehow. As if he had been waiting a long time to tell this story, but had been too afraid. Gavin wasn’t certain what the Weaver had to be afraid of, but whatever it was, he knew that anything that scared the Weaver had the potential to rock Gavin to his core.
“Over one thousand years ago” the Weaver continued, “Our ancestors decided that they’d had enough of their piddling lifespans. All of their technology, and still they rarely survived a century. What good was their vast knowledge, when their opportunity to enjoy it was such an insignificant heartbeat, a blink in the eye of the universe? They set their focus not only on extending their lives, but on a way in which they might never suffer the sting of death again.”
“Immortality?” breathed Ollie. “That’s quite a lofty goal.”
The Weaver nodded.
“And one, I fear, that they were not ready to pursue. They began their trials, designing pod-like devices with which they could manipulate a person’s DNA. They tinkered, experimenting on themselves. So many lives were wasted in those days. So many innocents devoured by greed. When volunteers became scarce, they began using prisoners. When prisoners became scarce, they began using the poor...” The Weaver gave an involuntary shudder before continuing. “They hit setback after setback before finally creating something that seemed to have potential. Something that resembled the Human from which it had been born, but far stronger. Faster, with an incredible ability to heal. All signs pointed to this being the next step, an evolutionary leap that would press Humanity forward toward their ultimate goal.”
“Wait,” Ollie said, holding up a hand to stop him. His face was incredulous, and Gavin felt a twinge of irritation at the young man’s inability to sit and listen without interrupting. “You’re telling us that we, the Therans of today...we were created by Humans? Our ancestors were Human?”
“Yes. Though it might seem difficult to believe, it is the truth all the same. Their strength and longevity made them a source of both desire and of fear. When the technology was perfected, it became available to all, and many chose to undergo the process, despite the risks it entailed. Yet many considered it a defilement, and believed these enhanced beings were no longer Human, nor entitled to the rights thereof. They became known as Elves.” The Weaver let out a humorless chuckle. “Ironic, that the Humans of Earth should also unknowingly adapt the same nickname. One of the small equalities that our two worlds share despite the differences of our past.”
He gazed beyond his rapt audience, and Gavin could tell that he was looking far beyond the walls of the small room in which they sat. It was a moment before the Weaver began to speak again.
“Despite the growing prejudice, these Elves lived in peace for many years. Not all hated our kind. We even intermarried and had children. But as our numbers grew, so did their fear of us. The peace did not last. They slandered us in the media and law enforcement brutalized us. There were several attacks, and then a bombing in a well-known Elven meeting place. Laws were created for everyone’s protection. At least, that was what they said. All non-humans were to be registered, and chipped. All transformation facilities were shuttered to prevent the creation of any more of our kind.
Eventually, the violence got so bad that the Elves were segregated from the rest of the population. They lived in modest, crowded homes behind barbed wire fences. A great sickness broke out in the camps, and many perished. But the Humans brought a cure, a vaccine that stopped the spread of the disease.”
“I don’t understand,” Ollie said, “if they were afraid of the Elves, why didn’t they just leave them to die?”
“They were not yet so fearful as to resort to mass murder. And yet, their help came with a price. The vaccine was tainted. All who received it were rendered sterile.”
He paused, letting his words sink in. Neither Gavin or Ollie spoke.
“Both revered and despised, our people were forced into a life of quiet desolation. They lived under constant surveillance, segregated from the people they once called brothers and sisters. Eventually they had had enough. Not content to die behind a fence, they broke free from their bonds and sought revenge for the injustices, the humiliations that they had been forced to endure. They sought to fix what humanity had broken in them. They infiltrated this facility, took hostages and tried to force the scientists to treat them, but the damage was irreversible.”
“But Therans aren’t sterile,” Ollie protested, “we just have high infertility rates.”
“True,” the Weaver nodded, “but that is more due to the scientists underestimating their creation’s ability to heal. Over the years those Therans whose ability to procreate had been stolen from them began to regain it, though it was never the same. Even now, after all this time, we still suffer the lingering effects of that defilement. But that is a story for another time.”
“Their transformation may have strengthened their bodies, but their persecution strengthened their hearts. They had become more than a collection of misfits with common traits, they had become a people, a new race, and they did not want that race to die out.
“When their first plan failed, they did not give up. Their longevity gave them the luxury of patience. They went back to the facility, this time with a new plan. Their goal was to create their own offspring using some of the very technologies that had created them. But they did not use Humans against their will. Their own subjection was too fresh in their minds. They made clones. And they made thousands.”
“The specimens they created looked something like us. But they weren’t like us. Devoid of conscience, these new specimens were soulless killing machines, twisted in body and mind. When they emerged from the pods they killed everything in their path. They overwhelmed Humanity with very little effort. They seemed unstoppable.”
Gavin had been silent up until this point, unable to bring himself to interrupt this tale. He was intrigued, and yet it seemed surreal. But these unstoppable killing machines, those were something with which he was very familiar. The Forlorn. They had been the enemy conquered during the long centuries now remembered as the Great War. He had been born into the conflict, had lost his parents to it, and had nearly given his own life to the cause. For most of his life, death and loss had been his greatest teacher. He had never had the inclination to stop and consider the origins of the Forlorn, any more than he had had the inclination to consider the origins of his own kind. They had simply always been, or so he’d assumed.
“And so the Humans, in their ignorance, brought about their own destruction, and we very nearly followed in their footsteps. The Great War raged for a thousand years, until our history was buried beneath the bloodstained ground. It was an apocalypse, a cataclysmic event that forever changed the face of Thera. Humanity was wiped out, and our own numbers devastated. We succeeded, of course, but at great cost. Much was lost.”
Gavin could hold his peace no longer. “How do you know all of this?” he demanded, feeling anger welling up in his chest. “And why is it that you’ve never shared it with me?”
It felt like the deepest of betrayals. The man that had been a father figure to Gavin for so long had kept so many secrets from him. But why?
The Weaver turned sad eyes on Gavin. “I have trusted one man with this knowledge, and it was a mistake that I fear we will all live to regret for a long time to come. He calls himself Nero, and the truth of what I shared with him created the vengeful monster that he has now become. He hates Humanity with a deep passion for what they did to our people. He wants to finish what the Forlorn started, wiping them out wherever they are found. And it is my responsibility to stop him, because it is my fault. I should have seen the darkness in his heart; should have kept from him the burden of that which I shared in ignorance.”
The room was silent as a grave. Gavin’s fists were clenched, and his heart was heavy. “You could have trusted me. I dedicated my life to Tapestry and your cause. I deserved to know the truth of why we were doing it. I’m not like Nero. I could never be like him.”
The Weaver sighed. “You forget that we both trusted Nero, once, too. I would never have believed what he was capable of. His push to resurrect CEDAR, his obsession with the pods, his insatiable desire to destroy Humanity...all could have been prevented if I had only kept it to myself. He wants to complete the work that the Humans began, bring our race back to the glorious vision that he believes it was always intended to be.”
“But you still haven’t told us how you know all of this,” Ollie pressed in a subdued voice. “If the knowledge were truly lost in the Great War, how is it that you came to across it?”
There was a long pause. Gavin sat stiffly, waiting for an explanation that would stop him from feeling the horrible feelings now churning in his gut.
“The Great War stole generations from us,” the Weaver said at last. “The Originals were lost, their children forced to deal with the consequences of their actions, and their children after them. But one thing remained. You see, the project was shuttered before the Human scientists could discover that they had not failed in their original mission. At least one of their experiments was a success. A perfect Theran, invulnerable to natural death. One who had been born a Human, but had had the cruel fate of eternity thrust upon him.”
As the Weaver turned back to him, Gavin could read the truth in his eyes. He did not need to hear any more. He finally understood. The Weaver pulled up his right sleeve, revealing a very faint black mark. Gavin wouldn’t have thought much of it under normal circumstances, but now he peered closely, and could just make out the fact that it was a string of numbers and letters.
“I was born Human,” the Weaver said in a deadpan, exhausted voice. “And I became the first Theran. The first Elf. I no longer felt I had any right to my birth name, and took a moniker derived from the serial number that my tormentors had branded me with. W3V3-12. I spent a lot of time laying in my bed, staring at that number. The mark has faded, but the memory has not. This is the place in which I was cursed with immortality, cursed with endless years in which to view the cost of our ambitions.”
Gavin did not remember standing up. He did not remember walking from the room, nor the calls of Ollie at his back. He did not remember leaving the ruins, walking into the trees. The trees, the beautiful trees, who took no notice of him.
Gavin slowly became aware of his surroundings, finding himself alone. No one had followed him, perhaps thinking it best to leave him to work this out on his own. A cold breeze washed over him and he closed his eyes, the telltale signs of the arrival of autumn carrying with them a deep sense of foreboding.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but when the Weaver appeared beside him the light had begun to fade. They stood, side by side, as night fell around them.
“We are all inevitably affected by the great river of time,” the Weaver said, his words heavy with regret. “Whether we sit by and let the waters flow over us, passively being shaped into who we will become, or whether we drink deeply from the endless reserves of knowledge as they flow past, is up to us.”
Gavin gave a half-chuckle, part amusement and part disdain. “That’s easy for you to say. The reserves are only endless for you; you’re immortal.”
The Weaver offered a little smile, just visible in the gathering darkness. “Immortality does not make one wise. If we sit by the shore, admiring our own reflections on the surface of the water for all eternity, we learn nothing except our own vanity. But to dive in, to immerse ourselves in the past, that will allow us to understand what has been, and what will yet be.”
Gavin shook his head. “If that’s true, then you should have shared this with everyone. You say you started Tapestry to preserve truth, to spread it. Yet all the while, you have concealed so much; the very origins of who we are. The people deserve to know.”
The Weaver seemed to ponder his words for a moment before turning to face Gavin. “For so long I feared that, as once Nero used the knowledge of history for his own twisted ambitions, so too would others. If the true origins of our species came to light, I believed that it would lead to the quick and utter destruction of the last vestiges of Humanity. But I have seen people do deeds of great evil even in great ignorance. My own ignorance is what kept me from sharing all of this with you long ago. I don’t ask your forgiveness, but I do ask that you not give up on Tapestry. The idea is strong, even if the leader is flawed. Despite my many imperfections, destiny came for me, Gavin. Destiny comes for us all. Whether or not you want it, it will come for you, too.”
Gavin did not answer for a long time. Then he whispered, “I will not abandon Tapestry, father.”
He turned and began walking back toward the ruins of Cedar Grove Innovative Technologies, back toward whatever destiny awaited him in the battle to come.
The Weaver’s voice called after him. “Where are you going?”
Gavin replied without hesitation. His path was clear. “To save Humanity.”