7
WHEN ALL GOES FLAT
DARWIN ENDED UP getting an extra pair of jeans from Wally, and after they had argued for a while, a plain black t-shirt from Carlos. He was as happy about giving it up as Wally had been about the jeans, though when he handed it over he gave Darwin a wink.
The pants were too long and Darwin had to roll them up, making a donut-shaped cuff at his ankles. He looked like a dork, but it was way better than walking around in torn pants and a bed sheet.
The rain outside had stopped and turned into a fine mist that hovered in the air. Darwin fought against wearing the garbage bag raincoat, but Carlos and Wally both insisted.
“The mist will soak you through to the bone in no time flat,” Wally had said with a straight face, “and we’ll be walking a bit, to keep some separation between where we sleep and where we hole. We don’t want it to be easy to detect where we stay.”
He finally caved. His mom had always told him to pick his battles. If you tried to fight all of them, you were bound to lose the important ones. His hand automatically moved to where he kept his phone, and he patted the empty pocket. He missed his music, and the connection it gave him to his memories.
They almost fell on the floor laughing when he put the garbage bag on.
Externally, Darwin ignored them as best he could. Inside, he collapsed into a tiny ball, his stomach churning. It was his fault he was here with them. He was the one who wasn’t paying attention when he came out of the store. He tried to convince himself that he didn’t know them, he didn’t like them, and what they did or said didn’t matter. He threw up the barriers he’d perfected after the accident to keep everyone as far away from him as possible, locking himself in his safe place. It had never really worked.
Despite trying to push everything away, his mind continued to churn through what had happened, reviewing his actions and what he could have done differently to avoid the situation. By the time they moved outside, he’d managed to convince himself that this was different. It was as though the three of them were part of the joke, instead of him being the brunt of it.
Wally had been right, though—the mist soaked through his exposed pant legs immediately. But it was the icy cold rivulets that ran from his hair and down his back that bothered him the most. He thought he would have almost been better off without the damn bag. At least then he might not feel the cold stream running between his shoulder blades.
Once they walked a few blocks from the house, picking their way through the backyard and the collapsed garage to the back lane choked with stunted trees and prickly bushes, Wally sat under a tree while Carlos stood close by with his back to them, watching the nearby houses. Darwin didn’t need to See the Threads himself to know Carlos was looking with more than just his eyes. He was more interested in what Wally was doing anyway. He let the Threads enter his vision.
The patterns being woven by Wally looked similar to those created by Michael the other day. Darwin watched as the Threads pulled together and a short tunnel began to take shape. When it was fully formed, with a thick Thread reaching toward the distance, Wally stood and gestured for Darwin to enter it. This time he didn’t hesitate. Stinging cold bit through his wet clothes and hair as soon as he entered the tunnel, and his breath was sucked from his body in a sudden rush. When he emerged out of the other side a split second later, he fell to the ground, shaking fragments of ice from his hair and pant legs.
Wally stepped through, almost tripping over him. “Geez, dude. At least move out of the way.”
Darwin rolled from the tunnel’s exit, looking around. “Where are we?”
“East of Sunnen Lake, Missouri.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d asked, since the information didn’t really help him.
The trees here were thick enough to choke out any undergrowth that had tried to take root, and were still changing color. A few had dropped their leaves, creating a carpet of soft reds, oranges, and yellows on the forest floor, and the earthy scent of fall was in the air.
It took a couple of minutes for Carlos to come through, and to Darwin’s untrained eyes, the tunnel was beginning to look like it was deteriorating. Threads were peeling off and fading away.
“You keep waiting much longer and you’re not going to make it out one day,” said Wally.
Carlos grinned. “If you did a better job, I wouldn’t have to stay so long to clean up.”
“Yeah, right. You’re just trying to make sure I feel guilty when it does happen.”
“What happens if he steps through late?” asked Darwin, interrupting their banter.
“As the hole deteriorates, your particles lose entanglement and get spread across the galaxy. Whatever makes it to the other side is what you’re left with, and there’s always some of you on the originating side as well. It’s not pretty, and a horrible way to die,” said Carlos.
“Hole? I thought it kinda looked like a tunnel.”
“The way the Threads get pulled together, it can look that way,” said Wally. “Some people even create them as if that’s what they are. Really, it’s more like a door. You step through it and you’re somewhere else. The door closes when you’re halfway through, and—”
“The reality is something else,” interrupted Carlos. “It’s quantum physics and quantum teleportation on a huge scale. Kinda scary if you think about it too much, so I don’t.”
“So . . . so you can go anywhere you want?”
“Nah, it’s not that easy. We’d have people on the moon if we could do that, or at the very least be able to trade with other countries. You need to have been to the place you’re holing to at least once, sometimes more. Having been there makes the process easier for everyone. And the range is based on the individual’s strength with the Threads as well. Holing is a pretty advanced skill. Not many can do it. It takes a lot out of you.”
Darwin had seen that firsthand when Michael had failed to create a hole the day after he’d been taken—rescued—from the Qabal. Hadn’t Michael also said he had no real clue where they were? How was that possible if you had to have been to a place you were holing to? He was probably lying to scare Darwin into not leaving. Michael had obviously not realized how strong the urge to go it alone was in him.
“It’s a lot easier to disrupt a hole than it is to create one,” Wally said. “That’s why we make such an effort to clean up after ourselves, especially in Qabal territory. One low-level guy could kill anyone going through. Without even trying. Even just observing a weak hole can destroy it.”
“Quit your yakking,” said Carlos. “We’re here till tomorrow, so set up camp. I won’t be happy until we’re someplace warmer. My Mexican blood is too damn thin for this cold. Keep an eye on question boy while I get our stuff.” He walked a short way before turning back. “And even though he looks mighty manly in that garbage bag, have him take it off. In case you didn’t notice, it’s all blue sky up there.”
Darwin sat with his back to a tree, the plastic bag under his butt, while Wally and Carlos rummaged through the underbrush and pulled out tents and tarps. He’d trampled down whatever had managed to grow below the thick canopy, and settled in for the long haul. Weatherproofed sleeping bags came down from one of the trees, and some food from another. He guessed since you had to have been somewhere before you could hole to it, you may as well have stuff ready for when you got there.
By the time the camp was set up, the sun shone directly overhead and the day had warmed up considerably. Even Carlos had removed a layer, though he was still bundled up more than Darwin. The dappled sunlight on the forest floor was mesmerizing, lulling Darwin into a dream-like state. He fell asleep leaning against the tree, his chin hitting his chest with a soft thump, far from the cold and wet of Philadelphia.
Carlos woke him from a sleep so deep, it took him what felt like minutes to focus his eyes and let his surroundings in. A small fire flickered a few feet away and a pot simmered in hot embers.
Wally scooped steaming brown beans onto a plate and threw on a handful of canned carrots before holding it out. “Come on. Get some food in your stomach before you fall asleep again. Tomorrow will be an easier day, but you’ll still need your strength.”
He’d barely gotten the plate in his hands before Carlos sidled closer.
“So, what can you tell me about your dad?”
Darwin lowered his spoon full of beans. “What?”
“Your dad. He’s the one that started all of this, you know. I was his military contact for the QPS project. Since this” he waved his hands through the air “happened, I’ve been studying him. I’ve been to Princeton and found a copy of his old yearbook . . . I didn’t think they’d need it anymore. You look a lot like him, you know. I’ve even been to your home, that two-story in New Jersey, before the Qabal got so strong. I was hoping to get some of your dad’s papers, but someone else got there ahead of me. Left the place in a mess. I straightened it up before I left, though. It didn’t feel right to leave it that way, you know.”
Darwin stared at him, beans and sauce dripping from his spoon onto the edge of his plate. He snapped his mouth shut and waited. Carlos leaned forward, closing the gap between them even more, looking ready to ask more questions.
“It’s been a long day, Carlos. Give the guy a break,” Wally said.
Carlos leaned back and grabbed an empty plate, his gaze breaking contact with Darwin as if he was suddenly embarrassed by his outburst. “Sorry,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Eat and get some sleep. The tent on the left is yours. We’ll clean up and get things ready for tomorrow.”
Darwin finished his plate as fast as he could and stepped behind a tree to relieve himself before almost running to his tent when he was done. He’d spent more than enough time with other people over the last few days, and to top it off, Carlos definitely knew how to make someone feel uncomfortable. He considered himself lucky that one of them hadn’t followed him when he took a leak. Then again, where the hell would he run to? He had no real idea of where they were.
The next three days were a repeat, though the type of forest changed from deciduous to coniferous. Carlos and Wally alternated who did the holing—Darwin surprised himself with how easily he’d picked up the terminology—and who did the cleaning, though they weren’t as careful about that as they had been in the house. Occasionally, Carlos would ask a question about Darwin’s dad—how was it growing up with him, was his OCD worse at home than it was at work—but it didn’t reach the level of intensity he’d felt the first night.
They never stopped in a city, or even close to one, from what Darwin could tell. When he asked why, Carlos had simply replied, “Scavengers.” Darwin thought part of the reason might have been because they knew he was a city boy, and he wouldn’t know how to survive alone in the wild.
Despite that, he’d thought of trying to get away. He was always the first one they sent through a hole, and in the few moments it took for one of the others to follow, he probably could have hidden somewhere, or even destroyed the hole.
The last thought actually scared him. Could he destroy it knowing someone was coming through? Knowing that they would most likely end up dead? Even though he was essentially their prisoner, it wasn’t something he really wanted to consider.
They had ended up in the mountains today. Dry brown peaks spread out to the horizon until they faded from view. Darwin heard Carlos and Wally talking, and caught the phrase “almost home.”
Even though they had swapped the holing task every day, he could see they were getting more exhausted as the trip went on. By the time they reached the mountains both men had dark circles under their eyes and it took longer to make camp. Darwin helped as much as he could, but he always felt in the way as the two men worked. He was the third wheel in a team that had obviously been together for a long time. Yet, even though it had only been four days, he felt comfortable around them.
They were pushing hard to get home and he guessed he was the reason why.
Carlos’s head poked into Darwin’s tent, pulling him from nightmares of being ripped apart by dogs that threw pieces of his body through holes that disintegrated even before they had fully formed. He swam through the final remnants of sleep and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the faint steel-blue Threads still wrapping the outside of his tent. Carlos and Wally continued to put them around Darwin every night, as if he would be able to survive in the middle of nowhere. Seeing the Threads around him had become second nature. The next thing he saw was Carlos’s silhouette outlined against the blue.
“Get up. Quiet. Fast. Now!” Carlos’s voice was a fierce whisper.
“Wha—”
“Quiet. Now.”
Carlos’s head disappeared, and the blue Threads parted gently as Darwin crawled out, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He considered expanding his Sight to scope out the area around them, but Carlos was waiting for him, grabbing his arm as soon as he was free of the tent. He was dragged, none too gently, to a small gully just behind where they’d set up their camp. Wally was already there, sitting quietly at the bottom. His forehead shone in the waning moonlight with a glaze of sweat.
Carlos pushed Darwin low to the ground and leaned in close.
“You touch a Thread, and we all die,” he whispered.
The words sliced into Darwin’s still sleepy brain. It stirred more excitement than fear. He almost asked if he could look, but Carlos had already turned his back and sat down beside Wally.
So he did it without asking. After all, looking wasn’t touching.
He rode the Threads in the gully for a few minutes—making sure to listen to Carlos’s warning about touching them—trying to decipher what Wally was doing without being caught. One Thread grabbed his attention and he focused on it more. He felt the Threads dim, and a soft outside force dampened them even more.
Darwin opened his eyes to find Carlos studying him.
“How long have you been watching?” Carlos whispered.
“Since you dragged me in here.”
“Geez. You don’t listen very well, do you? What part of we’re all dead didn’t you understand?”
Darwin just shrugged in response.
Carlos stared at him for a moment longer before his eyes closed and he sighed. “You’ll try again as soon as I let go, won’t you?”
He didn’t even respond this time.
“Since I got you out of your tent, eh?” He sighed again, obviously coming to a decision. “Okay. If I can’t stop you, at least I can make sure you’re not detected. Start again, but gently, and not as directly as before. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“Don’t focus on the Threads. Know that they are there, but don’t try to follow or monitor them. Watching a Thread changes its state, and chances are, these guys are good enough to See it. Wally’s busy obscuring—hiding us from their view—so I’ll watch you, and cover you up when you make a mistake. Just work slowly. No sudden actions. This is not where I planned on dying.”
“What guys?”
“Your friends,” he said. “Qabal. About twenty-five hundred feet north, near the scrub line.”
Darwin decided to let the comment pass. He hadn’t had any friends in a long time, despite what Bill and Rebecca had tried to do to him. He had trusted them both. The key word being had. His confusion about the Qabal and what they represented had started to change with the wrench he felt going through the mesh, and had become clearer as the days passed. Confusion had turned into dislike, and dislike to anger and distrust. They’d brainwashed him. They were no friends of his. No one was. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
He pulled himself out of his thoughts and focused back on the problem. Half a mile seemed a long way away to worry about a bunch of guys, even if they were Qabal. Darwin closed his eyes and let the Threads in, careful not to touch any of them. He’d never tried to See a Thread that wasn’t in direct line of his sight before. Hell, he didn’t even know it could be done. He slowed his breath and watched.
The Threads in the gully appeared first. His Sight immediately wanted to focus on Wally, to See what he was doing, but a gentle nudge from Carlos stopped him. The three sat in an odd bubble of Threads that had no pattern, a pale green interwoven with muted turquoise. As he extended his Sight beyond the bubble he could feel Carlos tense. He pushed through anyway and looked back. The only thing he saw was more of the scrub and dirt that they had built their campsite on. He couldn’t distinguish where they were hiding from the surrounding area. Even the gully was partially obscured.
He opened his Sight more and a single image flooded into his head before he felt Carlos clamp down on him again.
What had appeared to be random Threads from below now looked like the rest of the landscape. A bug crawled on the ground, and changed direction to bypass them.
He drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before releasing it slowly through his mouth. As he let his Sight unfocus even further, more Threads came into view. He took another breath and relaxed, looking into the middle distance. His peripheral vision took over.
Threads popped into existence and disappeared again, constantly weaving through the area. He could see their tents set on the level ground not far away, distinct from the Threads of their surroundings. And the number of Threads! He’d never Seen so many before. His mind balked at the massive expanse of . . . of everything around him. He felt on the edge of control. An abyss yawned before him, threatening to swallow him whole. A steady hand touched his knee, and he forced his breathing back under control. He could feel Carlos pulling him back, controlling—even a little—of what he saw. As the discipline Bill taught him came back, he sensed Carlos letting go again.
He pushed his Sight further out, past the gully, concentrating on the tents, and drew in a sharp breath. Both tents still had people in them. Carlos and Wally’s had two, while his, still wrapped in the blue mesh, had one. At least that’s what the Threads told him. This was different than predicting the Thread or image that would create the reality, this was the Threads changing reality. Creating the perception of something that wasn’t there.
He was tempted to find out if the images would show him the same thing, but Carlos hadn’t liked it last time he’d done that. Out here, near the tents, he knew the risk of exposure had to be even greater than in the gully where they were protected by Wally.
Movement in the distance caught his attention, and he shifted his Sight to look at it, making sure to not focus directly on what he was Seeing. From the distant scrub line, a crimson Thread moved, weaving slowly along the ground. His impression was of a small animal, foraging for its meal, but it seemed to have more purpose than that. Yet, if he focused somewhere else, the Thread almost disappeared into the background noise. He stayed near the tents, suddenly too scared to venture closer to where the Qabal hid.
The Thread moved closer to his tent, slowly meandering around its base. Though the Thread never changed, he began to get the impression of weight. It still looked and acted like a small predator, but it felt like a small car, then a truck, and finally like a jumbo jet.
Without warning, the Thread shot hundreds of feet into the air and came back down directly over the top of Darwin’s tent. It had lost all pretense of being an animal as it thickened and picked up speed. A single column of air sped in front of it, pushed downward toward his tent with a force Darwin could scarcely believe. The impact of the Thread against his blue-encased prison was completely silent, and his tent flattened to the ground, a thin nylon smear on the brown turf.
If he had still been in there . . .
Beside him, Wally let out a soft sigh, and the impression of someone in the tent went out as fast as the column of air had crushed it.
Carlos clamped down on his Sight just as he felt himself lose control, yanking him back to the gully as fast as he could. The shock of the tent, flattened like a bug, washed through him.
If Carlos hadn’t gotten him out, he’d be dead.
Darwin wasn’t sure how long he sat in the bottom of the gully. He was vaguely aware of Wally still working the Threads beside him, but time seemed to have simultaneously stretched and compressed. It could have been seconds or hours later before Wally groaned and stood up, stretching his back and legs, announcing, most likely for Darwin’s benefit, that the Qabal had moved off. All Darwin felt was numb.
Carlos helped him to his feet and walked him out of the gully. Darwin blinked in the glare of the sun just beginning to peek over the mountains. The tents remained where they had set them up. Carlos and Wally’s stood as pristine as when they had left it. Darwin looked down at his; the nylon material followed the contours of the ground it had been set up on like it had been painted there. There wasn’t even a lump from the sleeping bag.
“It looks like if the Qabal can’t have you, they don’t want anyone else to, either. They want you dead,” said Wally.
“How did they know I was here?” Darwin’s voice came out squeaky and he swallowed to cover up the fear that threatened to take over.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Striking this close to SafeHaven takes guts. Something I didn’t think they had. They threw a fair amount of manpower here last night.”
“But I—”
“But nothing,” Wally snapped, his natural, easy humor gone in an instant. “It’s time for you to wake up. You’re not supposed to be here. They want to know how you did it, how you came across. They trained you so they could use you. That’s it. Get the information on how to cross between worlds out of your head and throw what’s left of you away like a broken toy.”
“I . . . I didn’t know,” said Darwin. “I trusted them. Trusted Bill.” He blurted out the last words without thinking, the pain of Bill’s deception hurting more than Rebecca’s. More than it should have. Bill had never professed his love for the Qabal. He’d done the opposite. So why did it hurt so much? Maybe because he’d let—hell, helped—the Qabal’s plan go forward.
He turned away from Carlos and Wally, rubbing the unexpected tears with a furtive wipe of his hand, and looked at his flattened tent. He had been willing to help them, the Qabal and Rebecca, considered them family. What an idiot he had been.
A gentle hand fell on his shoulder. “They were brainwashing you with drugs and Threads. If Bill knew that, he wouldn’t have let it continue. He would have stopped it and gotten you out sooner. You have to believe that.”
Wally’s voice was soft and caring, and the last thing Darwin wanted. More people trying to be his friend. He twisted out from Wally’s hand just as Carlos spoke.
“Come on, we have got to get going.” There was no tenderness in his voice, just an urgent need to move.
When Darwin turned around, he saw Carlos had their tent all the way down. He bent over to pick up a corner of his flattened mess.
“Leave it. We would if you were in it.” Wally’s voice was subdued, as if he could read Darwin’s mind. He stared at Darwin’s feet. “I hope those running shoes of yours are comfortable. We’ve got miles to walk today, and it won’t be easy travel. I’m exhausted from this morning, and Carlos is still resting from holing yesterday. We need to find a new hole point. The Qabal obviously know about this one. I never liked it much anyway. Too exposed. We’ll stop to eat after we get a couple of miles behind us.”
Darwin watched until they were done, staying as far away from his own tent as he could. He followed them back into the gully, his mind a complete blank.