18
THE JOURNEY HOME
DARWIN DIDN’T HEAR the lab door open. He sat on the QPS room floor, staring at his mother’s face, hoping for a sign that she was just waiting for the right time to turn on Rebecca. That her loathing for him was just a ruse.
It never came.
He remembered the knife in her hand, only yesterday, and how she’d slid it into his side, crying that she had no choice. Did she mean any of it? Watching her now, he knew he couldn’t believe her, but part of his brain refused to give up, refused to let her go.
“Mom?”
A red Thread shot toward him. Rebecca placed a hand on his mother’s arm and the Thread disappeared.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not yet.”
The look on his mother’s face changed, a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. He saw the anticipation and sagged lower on the floor.
He had missed her so much. He had spent every night for months crying into his pillow, trying to hide his grief from his dad. Trying to figure out why she had died in the crash and he hadn’t. He had made it through the pain then, both physical and emotional, but suddenly it all came crashing back, hitting him with the force of a physical blow, coupling with the guilt that had never left. He gasped for air, the walls crushing in on him, pressing the oxygen out of his lungs.
Rebecca looked up, out the door to the lab, and smirked. “Your girlfriend is here.”
Teresa was thrown into the room, landing in a heap between him and his mother. Her pants were still torn where the Threads had cut into her, and the wound below it throbbed red, the blood dried and crusted. They hadn’t healed her or let her heal herself. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a gag had been bound roughly over her mouth.
“Do you think we could turn her against him?” Rebecca asked. “Do you think she would willingly hurt him in order to save herself?”
His mother grinned. “Why don’t we see?” Threads formed above Teresa, turning pink and then red as they wove themselves into a mesh like the one outside the building.
Teresa turned her head, looking at him, the tears in her eyes drying as she watched him. He tried to send her all of his strength through their small contact. He reached for the Threads to help her, but Rebecca tore them away from him.
The mesh lowered, settling on Teresa like a blanket, sinking underneath her clothes. He barely registered the difference in how the Threads worked. He looked up as Teresa whimpered. Ugly red welts appeared on her exposed skin and she cried out. The Threads sank into her, and she tried to screamed through the gag. He could still See them, barely below the skin, wriggling and twitching, each movement wrenching a new cry from her.
He used the wall to push himself into a sitting position and forced out a strangled shout. “Stop it!”
His mother laughed, a strange, screeching, maniacal sound that made him feel like he was in an old cartoon.
His voice turned hard. “I said stop it.”
She shifted her focus from Teresa to Darwin, releasing her hold on the Threads. Teresa lay still on the cold concrete floor.
“You have some fight in you, Darwin, but nothing to back it up.” A Thread lashed out, barely missing Darwin as he redirected it into the wall beside him. The drywall split, covering him with a fine layer of white powder.
He coughed, clearing some of the dust from his throat. “It’s me you want, not her. Let her go.”
Rebecca responded. “Why? What do we gain by letting her go?”
“You get me!”
“We already have you.” Blue Threads formed in the air around him, tying his arms to his sides. She turned to Darwin’s mother. “Just kill her.”
Threads appeared around Teresa again, forming the same net created earlier. This time, the color shifted to deep red, and he could feel the animosity used to create them. It radiated from his mother in waves.
Fear and anger—not for himself, but for Teresa—enveloped Darwin, and he drew on the emotons, finally getting a grasp on the Threads he’d been denied. He pushed back.
Darwin’s blue Threads wrapped around Teresa, embedding into the floor to create a complete cocoon. She stirred and opened her eyes, trying to move. His Threads held her in place.
His mother’s Threads wrapped his, and he could feel them pushing against his shield. He pushed back again, tasting the pain harnessed in her red Threads. He slowly expanded the cocoon. Somewhere in the back of his head, he could feel a slow pulsing.
“Quit playing with her, we have a war to win.”
He felt more pressure, fighting against it. From the corner of his eye he saw a thin Thread form between his mother and the QPS, and with the feeling of a balloon popping, his Threads gave way. He wasn’t strong enough. His mother smiled, pushing her net slowly in toward Teresa.
“No . . .” The sound that came from him was more of a whimper than a word.
The background pulsing turned into a steady beat, and he finally recognized what it was. It was the same pulse he had felt through his fingers when he had touched the QPS. It was a soft voice, calling out to him, reaching into his brain and caressing him. With it came the familiar touch he had lost twice—once when the accident happened and again just today.
Pain shot through his head, forming behind his right eye and temple, and the pulsing got stronger.
He opened his eyes and stared at Teresa and the red net. It lowered itself, creeping up to her, as though the world had suddenly slowed. The pulsing threatened to split the back of his skull open, and he groaned, falling sideways onto the floor. With Rebecca’s Threads binding his arms, his head hit the concrete and stars swam in front of his eyes. He found himself lifting his head and lowering it again, banging it against the floor in time with the pulsing.
His mother’s red Threads lowered some more.
Darwin lay his head on the floor, letting it rest, and opened himself to the pulsing completely, giving in to the siren’s call of the QPS. The room filled with Threads, wrapping themselves around the people and equipment, spilling through the boundaries of the walls and expanding outward to the rest of the world. He let them flow through and around him, becoming part of who he was, before following them back to the QPS.
His head exploded in pain until he couldn’t take anymore, but he couldn’t pull back. His heart beat in sync with the QPS, each push of blood creating new Threads, new possibilities. New probabilities. His eyes closed, but the room remained in sharp focus, then the building, then the grounds around it, spreading himself thinner and thinner. He forced himself back into the QPS room, struggling to remember who he was and why he was here.
His mother’s Threads had sunk into Teresa’s clothes, hovering just above her skin. He could already see small tears appear on her arms as the Threads moved closer.
He whisked them away without a thought, replacing them again with the navy blue of protection, a shield so solid it barely let air through. Inside the blue, he worked with the soft white, and Teresa’s wounds began to disappear. It barely occurred to him that he hadn’t been taught how to do that.
Rebecca’s face slowly changed from a look of determination to one of surprise or horror and then an anger so deeply rooted, it showed her as she truly was.
Thick bundles of crimson Threads formed around the disciples and Rebecca, moving toward where he lay. He glanced at them. They were moving as though they were underwater, slowly forming and slithering nearer. He ignored them as he healed Teresa.
When he was done, the Threads had moved only a few feet closer. He nudged them aside, turning them into ordinary Threads of gray with barely a thought.
As one, the disciples reached for the QPS. Rebecca, standing further away, lunged for it, leaving his mother alone beside Teresa. His mother moved in the opposite direction, jumping closer to where he lay. The room threatened to split into multiple possibilities. He focused on only one, sharpening the image until all the others disappeared.
He laughed.
The disciple’s fingers touched the QPS, and he felt a sudden drain. The pounding in his head weakened, and without thinking, he reached out for more. A thick trunk of Threads arced out of the QPS and into his brain. The world shattered into thousands of pieces.
From a distance, he heard Teresa scream, yet he knew she was still safe in the protective net he had thrown around her. Threads formed from the disciples and moved toward him. He couldn’t See their color. Color no longer mattered. He tasted the hostility behind them, saw the death they contained, and pushed them from the room.
Rebecca’s hand touched the QPS.
He halted the new Threads she created, holding them in place, feeling the anger and hate in them. And something else. Fear. He doubled her Threads’ strength, then doubled it again. He did it one more time for good measure, felt them trembling against his hold.
And let them go.
The room filled with a chaotic mass of Threads whipping through the walls and equipment, through the people who stood around the machine, and he knew the destruction those Threads carried. A single thick fiber split the air, weaving toward the QPS. In it, he heard his mother’s laugh, felt her hand on his arm, smelled the apple blossom and vanilla in her hair. The fiber touched the surface of the QPS and a complete sense of family and belonging soaked through his skin and into his bones.
The DNA his dad had planted into the source code of the machine, which had yanked Darwin from his world, strengthened. For a brief moment, he felt Ada’s presence as if she were standing beside him. He could sense her shock, and the realization of what had just happened and who had done it. In return, he knew without a doubt where she was . . . in Salem. The connection broke.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the fiber split into hundreds of strands and leaped into the air, disappearing into tiny holes that led to other worlds. Each running QPS was linked, and each demanded a piece of the others.
Stillness cascaded around him, settling like a blanket over the room. The QPS continued to pulse in his head, and the thick bundle connecting him to it strobed in sync. Darwin didn’t know how much time had passed before a soft whimpering pushed through and he opened his eyes.
Teresa lay on the floor where she had been thrown. She stared at Darwin, fear plain in her eyes, unable to move under his protective shield. Beside her lay the body of his mother. He struggled to his knees and crawled over to it.
What was left was almost unrecognizable. The soft features of his mother’s face had been cut deeply by the Threads he had released. The rest of her body hadn’t fared any better. He looked inside her for a pulse, a trace of life, and found nothing. He realized, without knowing how, that the QPS had taken her essence—the silver strand, her DNA—into itself, doubling its potential link to him. Making it more of what she had been than before.
Moving a strand of hair back behind her ear, something she had always done, he let out a soft moan.
“Darwin?”
He stirred from his memories.
“Darwin, she wasn’t your mother.”
He looked at Teresa. Some of the fear in her eyes had left, replaced by concern.
“Your mom died in a car accident. Remember, Darwin? This . . . this woman just looked like her. Would your mom have done what this woman did? Would she have tried to kill you? Would she have joined Rebecca and her hatred?”
He pushed himself to his feet. His slightest movement changed the pattern of the Threads. He shoved them away, trying to ignore them. It was impossible.
“I don’t know.”
“You do, Darwin. You know. Your mom loved you, Darwin. She cared for you. She would never have done any of . . .” She paused, looking around the room as best she could. “Any of this.”
“I did this.”
“You were defending yourself. You were protecting me.”
The Threads pressed in on Darwin, pulsing with sound and light and pressure and taste and smell—the sense of his mother. He shook his head, trying to clear them away. A single thought took shape, his sister . . . this world’s . . . He pushed the thought away. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t sensed her in the room. She, at least, had been spared from his insanity.
“Darwin. Darwin!”
He focused back on Teresa.
“Darwin, let me go.” She pushed against the blue mesh. It disappeared with less than a thought and she stood, staying a few paces away from him. “Let me help, Darwin.”
He shook his head. “You can’t. I’ve—I’ve Seen so much.” He waved his hand around the room. “I’ve done so much.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. The pulsing continued to push into his head. His tears fell on his mother’s tortured body. He had killed her again.
“Please, Darwin, let me help.”
“I don’t think you can.” He held his hands up to his ears, squeezing the sound, the pounding, from his head. He felt Teresa’s warm touch.
“I’m here, Darwin. We’re okay. Let’s just go home.”
Light exploded behind his eyes, and the QPS gave an audible hum.
“Darwin, let’s go now.”
He let his hands drop and took a step back from Teresa. “I can’t. The QPS . . . it . . . it’s calling me. It wants me for something. I—” The bundle of Threads thickened and he lurched closer to the QPS. He took two more steps and lay his hand on the cold machine.
Threads flooded into him. His body twitched, but his feet remained rooted to the floor. Threads, instead of leaving the room, rushed in from outside, weaving into his body with the rest. He went down to his knees, laying his forehead against the blue QL logo.
Somewhere in the Pacific, off the coast of Hawaii, a fisherman fell off his boat into the shark-infested waters.
In what was left of Russia, a gang hid behind a burnt-out shell of a building, waiting.
In Berlin, an old lady stepped onto the cracked concrete, carrying a bag of stale bread.
Thunder rolled down the mountains in New Zealand, loosening the mud and scree on their slopes.
A baby took its first breath, still covered in its mother’s blood.
More images rushed in. Copies of what he had Seen, all with different outcomes. The worlds pushed themselves into Darwin’s too-small frame. He vibrated with the energy and the knowledge.
A small Thread from the QPS found its way in. The heart of the machine, beating in time with Darwin’s. Pounding out a steady staccato. He followed it back, watching as Threads formed in the beast’s heart. This was the way to turn it off. With a sudden certainty, he knew why he was here. And yet, in that pulsing heart, he found his mother again.
This was how it wanted it all to end.
“Darwin!” Teresa screamed, piercing through the layers of Threads wrapping him.
He pulled his sight from the machine, just in time to See a red Thread shoot over the top of the QPS. It hit him dead center, cutting through the Threads swirling around him. He felt his skin split where it touched him and closed the wound, pulling the Thread deeper into his body, powerless and impotent. He raised himself to his feet, facing Teresa to make sure she was okay. He couldn’t see her. Instead, his view was made up of the Threads. Through them, he saw what she was truly made of. She emanated empathy and love and concern. Concern for him, for what he was becoming, for what the machine had made of him. Love for him as well.
Though his Sight filled the room and beyond, he still knew that Rebecca stood behind him, on the far side of the QPS. He turned and faced her. The Threads where she stood were black and red, writhing in the air like an angry beast. As he watched, he could feel the QPS responding to her requests for more. More power, more control. More.
It responded the only way a machine could. It supplied what was requested. Deep inside it, he could feel a sense of revulsion. It echoed in and through him.
A mass of black and red separated from Rebecca and flew toward him. He watched as it approached, let it touch him, absorbed it into what the machine had made of him. All living creatures were good and bad. Some tipped the scales so far in one direction it was almost impossible to see anything else.
Rebecca had tipped the scales until there was no going back.
She threw more Threads his way, and he found himself laughing again, absorbing everything she gave him, balancing it back to his normal with what the world had to offer.
Her connection to the QPS faltered as she threw everything she had at him. He noticed and decided to give her what she wanted.
He grabbed hold of her connection and increased it. Her eyes flew open wide, revealing the whites around her irises. Her pupils dilated to pinpoints as her pipe to the QPS surged in size.
He allowed himself to follow her bundle of Threads. Entering her mind was as easy as reading a book. All he saw was anger and pain. He drove past her recent memories, drove past when the QPS came online. Drove past her defenses and saw who she had been.
A physicist with a master’s degree at a mid-sized company, lonely and alone. Hoping that the work environment of a smaller firm would be less toxic than at the bigger places she’d interned. Someplace where her opinion mattered, where her contributions weren’t just tossed aside as a fluke or the credit given to a male member of the team. Someone she had most likely had to handhold through the process just so they could meet the tight deadlines and heavy workload. Years of being treated as less intelligent, less capable, just because of her gender had built into an anger so deep it had become part of who she was.
And then the QPS came and changed her world.
Suddenly, instead of being one of the ignored working women of the world, she became one of the powerful. She’d tried to help, tried to ease those who couldn’t See into the new world. And for a while, she believed she was succeeding. Believed she was making the world a better place.
Then it all crashed down.
Others came and tried to take her power, and when that failed, tried to take her life or to make her their property. To not give her her due. She wasn’t going to take it anymore. She’d gained the strength and the knowledge to not only protect herself, but to fight back. To destroy those who tried to hurt her, to subjugate those who tried to control her.
And she’d enjoyed it.
Darwin began to withdraw. Embarrassment at the violation he had just been a part of raced through him, followed by disgust at what he had done. He hadn’t meant to . . . he didn’t know . . .
No person, no woman or man or child, deserved to be treated the way she had been. His intrusion without permission was her last straw. He watched as the Threads overpowered her mind, as insanity crept in from the edges, crushing what was left of her. He tried to help her fight it, tried to stop the collapse of who she was, but he didn’t know how.
Her last action before she was gone, before he had left her mind, was to forgive him for what he had done, and to ask for forgiveness in return.
He gave her what she wanted without a moment’s hesitation. The last part of Rebecca, the single Thread left of her before she disappeared, thanked him and felt remorse.
Darwin, fully back in his own mind, watched as Rebecca crumpled to the floor, drool running from her open mouth, her eyes glazed over in a madman’s glare.
And he felt truly sorry. Society had helped make her, and she had forced that society to pay. Neither action was right, but he understood. In the end.
Darwin saw the hole before it began to form, following the beginning Threads back to the source. Mellisa. He could hear her spirit in the Threads.
She was back at the house, trying to get through the maelstrom of Threads created by the QPS. By him. He breathed, letting the Threads tell him what was there, trying to push the noise of the world farther into the background. He succeeded, slightly. Carlos stood near her, watching her push herself to the limits trying to get the hole open.
He helped her, reaching out to her and strengthening the Threads. He felt her react, backing off from the creation, letting her mind rest. The hole appeared in the QPS room, and Carlos stepped through first.
He moved to the side, an automatic action after holing, and stood stock-still. Darwin could See him probe the room, could See him balk at the number of Threads coursing through it. He stopped at Darwin, gaping open-mouthed at the connection to the QPS.
Mellisa followed, and he let the hole collapse behind her. She became a mirror of Carlos, standing open-mouthed at the sight before her.
Carlos took a step toward him, and Darwin threw up a wall of steel blue. The wall stopped Carlos short, and stopped half the Threads from entering that part of the room. Carlos backed off and grabbed Mellisa’s hand.
Darwin felt Teresa move behind him, reading the eddies in the Threads as though he was born with the ability. The QPS continued to hammer at him, feeding more Threads down the conduit that joined them. Information poured into him, past any defenses he could throw in its way, and he crumpled to his knees.
In a place called Winnipeg, a farmer fell from his horse.
In Beijing, a small child slipped and tumbled into a rice paddy.
In Accra, a young man kissed the girl he loved for the first time.
Darwin clamped down on the Threads again. He could feel—could See—his brain fighting—and losing—to maintain control. Soon, he would be just like Rebecca. Soon.
A warm hand touched his arm, soft white Threads wrapping them in a snug blanket.
“Let me help.”
Darwin struggled to speak. “You can’t help. I can’t stop it.”
“You—we have to try.”
“I can’t!” Tears pushed through his defenses as he felt himself losing control. “I. Can’t. Control. It.” He panted as he struggled. His heart picked up its pace, pushing the QPS to stay in sync.
The fisherman grabbed at a rope trailing over the edge of his boat and pulled himself back on board.
An old lady carrying groceries went home with fresh vegetables and meat.
Two teens hunting in the mountains ran to safety, narrowly missed by rocks and mud.
A mother held her newborn daughter to her chest, crying with the pain of pure love.
He helped it all happen.
He turned to Carlos, his voice barely above a whisper in the quiet room. “Get her out.”
Carlos nodded.
“I’m not leaving you.”
Darwin stood, leaning against the QPS for support, and turned back to her. There were tears in her eyes, running down her cheeks. He wanted to take her pain away, wanted to erase himself from her memories. But he couldn’t enter another person’s mind again. Not without permission. Not Teresa. Not anyone.
A skittering horse kicked a rock with its hoof, just before the man’s head landed in the same spot.
A passerby rescued a small child from near drowning.
A kiss was returned.
Hands grabbed at his shirt, pulling him roughly away from the QPS. “You can’t let this happen.”
“I can’t stop it.” He wasn’t sure if he had said it, or just thought it.
“Fight it, damn you. I’m not going to lose you. Not again.” Her voice had risen to a scream.
“Teresa?”
“I’m here, Darwin. I’m here. Come back to me.”
“I . . . I . . .”
The bundle of Threads connecting him to the QPS collapsed, and with it, Darwin.
The Threads. They surrounded him, embraced him, held him with the strength of a mother’s grip, squeezed him with the force of the entire universe, caressed him with the touch of a lover, then let him go. Darwin opened his eyes and looked into Teresa’s. Had he ever noticed how the deep brown was flecked with gold? He reached up a hand and wiped away her tears. It only made her cry more.
She helped him back to his feet, and he rested his hand on the QPS. It pulsed under his fingers, still beating in time with his heart, but it wasn’t pounding into his brain like before. Through the contact, he smelled apple blossom and vanilla. He pushed himself upright, opening his Sight. The room filled with Threads, more than he had ever Seen. But they were simply . . . there. He could follow them, he could manipulate them, but they didn’t pull at him like they had before.
The Threads had tried to turn his brain into mush, tried to conquer him with too much power, and then stopped.
His heart beat once.
He pushed his Sight farther, expanding to the building, the perimeter, past the collapsing mesh, farther out to the house, to the city limits. He observed but wasn’t bombarded with each Thread calling out to him. He had control.
His heart beat again.
He dropped the wall holding back Carlos and Mellisa at the same time he destroyed what was left of the perimeter mesh. Two forces clashed outside and he clamped down on their Threads, leaving them to fight it out with their fists. He found the memories of the Skends in the group, followed the Threads that created them and reversed the process.
Another beat.
Mellisa rushed around the QPS, giving it a wide distance. She pulled Teresa and Darwin farther away, back to the empty window frame, and looked at them.
He could see the concern in her eyes. With barely a thought, he probed the Threads around her and read the hope and despair. He stopped before going further. He would never do that again.
“Are you okay?” Mellisa asked. Darwin simply nodded, still not sure if he wanted to speak. There was so much to say.
Instead, he looked at Carlos. The words came to him then. “I’m sorry.” It ended up being all he had.
Carlos moved closer and pulled him into a tight hug. “You scared the hell out of us.”
I still might, Darwin thought.
Teresa grabbed his hand in hers, squeezing tightly, refusing to let go when he pulled back. He smiled and tugged again, slipping from her grip with gentle help from the Threads. No one seemed to notice. He looked past the QPS, at the empty area behind it, and started to create two holes at the same time. The one on the right was different. He’d Seen it only once before, a crisp lemony yellow that was almost blinding to look at, not knowing what it was. Not remembering . . . until now.
Carlos whistled and muttered to Mellisa. “Wow.”
When he was done, he turned back to his friends. “The one on the left will take you back to the house. The one on the right goes back to my home.”
“I can’t even See what you did,” said Carlos. “The complexity of maintaining two holes, one of them stretching across the universes. I . . .”
Darwin moved to the left hole and waited for Carlos and Mellisa. He stopped them before they stepped through. “I have one more thing.” He closed his eyes and reached for the QPS. Carlos gasped and grabbed his shoulder. Darwin shrugged him off.
The QPS pulsed out Threads, still in time with Darwin’s heartbeat. He reached in, following the Threads to their source. The heart of the machine. He pulled Threads with him, enclosing the heart in a tight blue mesh. He weaved Threads through the mesh, pushing them inside the heart. Then he turned them black, granting the machine its wish. Giving it what it could not give itself.
A final Thread pulsed out of the QPS. Pure gold in color, bright beyond imagination. The Thread entered Darwin and he felt his mother’s touch. The QPS had given him a gift. Its final breath. He didn’t know what it was.
When Darwin pulled out of the machine, he saw the room had dimmed. The continuous blue light from the QL logo was out, and the system lay quiet in the darkened room. Threads still moved around, the holes he had created still held their form, but the QPS was dead. No more power would come from it.
Carlos had his arm around Mellisa, pulling her tightly to him. “Is that it, then?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The Threads may have needed the QPS running to stay, to give us the ability to See them. Or maybe we’ll always have the ability, the QPS just won’t be pumping any new Threads out. I wish I could say.”
“Is this what Enton wanted?” Carlos asked.
He shrugged again. “It’s what the QPS wanted. Go home. Wait, watch. Live. Things may change, or they may stay the same. All I know is without the QPS, there will never be another Qabal.”
Mellisa pulled away from Carlos and gave Darwin a quick hug. She grabbed Carlos’s hand and stepped into the hole.
He heard footsteps behind him. Teresa’s arms wrapped around his waist and she pressed herself into his back. He hugged her arms and whispered, “I could stay. Or . . . or you could come with me.”
“I want to, so much. To have you stay, or to join you. But I don’t think that’s possible.”
He twisted in her grip, facing her. “Everything is possible. I can See that, now. I love you, Teresa. I can’t leave you.”
Teresa pulled from his hug and held his face in her hands, examining it. “What about your dad? The whole time we’ve been together, that has been your goal. It’s what kept you going, through the good times and the bad.”
“I know, but that was before I knew . . . before I understood how I felt about you.”
She stood on the tips of her toes and leaned forward.
Her lips were warm. Her mouth opened and her tongue caressed his lips. Heat rushed through his body, and he followed her example.
“I love you too, Darwin Lloyd.”
He could see the tears forming in her eyes.
“But you need to go home,” she whispered. “You need to shut down your QPS. My place—my family—is here, and yours is there.” She stepped back, her hands on his chest. She pushed as hard as she could, the tears tumbling down her cheeks.
Darwin tripped, falling over his own feet. Before he could regain his balance, he slipped into the hole. His last view was of Teresa, her back turned to him, shoulders shaking.
The cold gripped his insides, freezing his eyelids, slowing the blood in his veins. He popped out the other side and watched the hole disappear.