7
SALEM
The morning ride was quiet. Neither Darwin or Teresa spoke, each lost in their own thoughts once again. For Darwin, it was the kindness of the town they had just left that consumed his mind.
He had spent the majority of his life avoiding people, wanting to be left alone. It had gotten to the point when even being in a room with a lot of people had made him so uncomfortable that he felt sick. Things were different now. It had taken years for him to build the wall around himself that had kept everyone away. He’d been here less than two, and everything he had built was gone. How could he keep the walls up when there were people like George around?
One thing this new world had taught him was that while he could survive being alone, he could never truly be happy. He had made more friends here than he had ever had. Having friends meant there was pain as well. He could still feel the betrayal of Bill, though that had faded so far into the background that he never consciously thought about it. He only remembered the friendship and mentoring that Bill had offered. The loss of Baila, and her final sacrifice, were never far from his mind, but when her memories came up, he remembered her dance the first time he had seen her. He remembered the troupe that followed her, laughing around a campfire late at night, or the singing as the wagon train moved from town to town.
There were a lot of people who had died because of him, but that was a responsibility he shouldered as best he could. There were enough times in the past when he’d wallowed in self-pity, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it after the fact. The only thing he could do was move forward and be mindful that his actions had a wider consequence than just to himself.
What had happened to Paul, to George and the rest of the town, were good examples. He’d been trying to save Teresa and himself, but when the Source flickered to life inside of him, Ada had Seen him. That had directly affected the town, and no doubt other towns along the path they took.
Darwin got a sudden smell of burning houses, and his head snapped up from looking at his front tire as it wove around the broken concrete. They were in the middle of nowhere. The wind had shifted and he’d picked up the smell from Teresa’s backpack.
“Your backpack really stinks.”
“I know.”
“We should wash it out or something. Every time I get a whiff of it, I think we’re close to another town that has been burned down to the ground.”
“I said I know.”
Darwin slowed his bike and Teresa followed suit.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Sometimes it just catches up with me, you know?”
“I do.”
She searched his face, reaching out with her hand to touch the burned and sagging skin. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? For being human? For caring? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Do you think George is right? Are we heading into another war?”
Darwin paused before answering, repeating the words he had spoken only a moment before. “I do. My sister isn’t going to stop until she has control of the Source, or until she and all of Salem are destroyed. You don’t understand the pull of the damn machine. When my dad put my mom’s DNA into it, it created a connection that I can’t describe. It’s . . . it’s like the machine is part of me. I can feel my mom in it, feel her touch, smell her hair. I imagine it’s the same for Ada.”
“But you’re not trying to take over, you’re not creating Skends and destroying towns. What makes it so different for her?”
“My mom died a long time ago. Hers died a little over a year ago. At the same time she lost her mom, she lost her ability to Thread along with everyone else. She was there when the QPS was turned back on, and in one sudden rush, she could See again. Couple that with feeling her mother in the machine and the Threads it created, and that’s a powerful drug when you’re still mourning.”
“You’re not mourning anymore?”
“Every time I think about her, but I’ve also accepted it. There’s nothing I can do to bring her back. For a while, I thought maybe my dad was on the right path. But that disappeared as well. This world’s version of my mother tried to kill me. Tried to kill you just because I cared for you. That’s more than enough to break the illusion that the machine can bring her back. Ada is still living in that illusion, and she has a physical thing she can blame her loss on. Me. Like I said, she’s not going to stop until she’s dead or she has the Source under her control, and I’m not sure she cares which one it is.”
Another waft of wind brought the smell of burning houses to Darwin again and he wrinkled his nose.
“We really need to clean the supplies they gave us.”
Teresa laughed, the tension visibly draining from her body. “Oh my god, do we ever. I’ve been riding with this stench for hours. They meant well.”
They pushed on the pedals and rode forward, the ocean to their right, looking for a place they could turn off toward the water. A salt-encrusted backpack was better than the smell.
The bikes rounded a corner and a group of people appeared on the road ahead of them.
Darwin and Teresa jumped off their bikes, dragging them to the inside corner of the curve in the road. With some luck, the group below hadn’t seen them. There weren’t any shouts or sudden movements and that was a good sign.
There were no easy places to hide here. The ocean, now on their left, offered no immediate cover, just tall grass behind a fallen fence that led to a drop-off and the water. The hills to the right were barren and too steep to climb fast enough and not be seen. They jumped back on their bikes, pedaling as fast as they could back the way they had come, swerving around crumbled chunks of highway.
An overgrown driveway led into the hill. Darwin swerved into it, barely in control. Teresa wasn’t as lucky. She crashed through rusted barbed wire hidden in the tall grass, her bike stopping short as she flew over the handlebars. Darwin jumped off his bike and ran back to her.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
The grass had sliced into her hands, leaving ribbons of cuts that seeped blood. Teresa reached for her bike as voices drifted in from the road.
“Leave it,” Darwin breathed into her ear. He grabbed her arm and pulled her away. The other side of the driveway was layered in thick bramble. Darwin dropped to his knees and crawled in, the sound of breaking branches sharp in his ears. Teresa crawled in after him, pulling and pushing the branches behind her to hide their path. They stopped, holding their breath as the voices got closer.
“Why the hell do we have to walk?”
“I told you already, I can’t hole today, and if you complain one more time, I’ll slit your throat while you’re sleeping.”
“I don’t get why we’re out here anyway. So someone did something weird with the Threads. The world is full of Threaders trying new things. If it was anything important, we would find out soon enough.”
“Enough with the questions, already.” The voices stopped moving just before the driveway. “You’ve been complaining all day. What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.”
“Let’s just keep walking, okay? That town that we hit yesterday can’t be that far. We get there, ask some more questions, and go back home.”
“Nope. When I dropped off the Skends, we got new orders. We hole further down the road and walk backward again.”
“We already covered that territory.” The whine that crept into the voice made Darwin’s skin crawl. “Why do we have to do it again?”
“Because we were told to. Whoever Ada is looking for, she wants them pretty bad. Now come on, let’s keep going.”
They started to move again. Stopping only a few more feet down the road.
“What no—”
“Shh.”
Darwin heard feet on gravel and peered through the bramble back at the driveway. He couldn’t see a thing. The voices had lowered to a harsh whisper.
“These tire tracks look new, and look, the grass is all bent over by that bike. Someone’s here.”
“I can see a house at the end of the driveway.”
“Scan the house, see if there’s anyone in there.”
Silence descended once again, and Darwin knew they were using Threads to search the house. Teresa grabbed his hand and squeezed tight. He looked into her eyes and saw fear, knowing it was echoed in his own.
“It looks empty.”
“It could be that they’re Threaders and hiding themselves from us.”
“Shit. I’m pretty much useless after holing yesterday. I might be able to back you up a bit, but it won’t be much. I told them we needed more than three per group.”
The sound of crunching gravel receded as the three men moved further up the driveway.
“We can’t stay here,” Teresa whispered in his ear.
Darwin nodded in agreement, but where else could they go? Trying to get to their bikes was a bad idea. There was no way they’d be able to untangle Teresa’s from the barbed wire and get away before they were noticed. Unless there was someone in the house hiding, there was no way the Salem group would be gone long enough. The road back was too exposed, and if they went forward, once they rounded the curve, the road was straight for miles.
“Where else can we go?”
Teresa shrugged and they stayed where they were, branches poking into them.
The three men came back five minutes later.
“The owners of these bikes couldn’t have gotten too far.”
“Come on, it hasn’t rained here in a week. Those tracks could have been made days ago.”
“Maybe, but who would leave their bikes behind? It doesn’t make sense. Scan that house, maybe they ran next door.”
“That’s at least a hundred yards away. You figure if they could run that far, they would have time to pick up the bikes.”
The man in charge sighed. “Just do it. Why does everything have to be a fight with you? When I ask you to do something, do it. No questions.”
“Yes, boss.”
Even Darwin could hear the sarcasm in the voice. If the men decided to use the Threads to scan the area instead of the houses, there was nothing that would hide them from them. They were sitting ducks.
“Empty.”
“Well, then, where could they have gone?” The man’s voice got closer. “You figure if they would have tried to hide, they’d have left some telltale marks in the grass, or maybe even broken some branches if they tried to hide in this shit.” The voice stopped. “In fact, it might be better for them if they just came out on their own.”
Darwin’s skin turned suddenly cold and clammy. He saw Teresa squint her eyes shut. The voices got quiet and Teresa let out a soft moan. He couldn’t See the Threads that found their hiding spot, but she could. He reached out a hand and placed it in hers. She grabbed so tight that her fingernails bit into his skin.
The first touch felt like a mosquito had bitten him, and Teresa whimpered again. Her head started shaking slowly back and forth and tears rolled down her cheeks. He knew it wasn’t from the light touch of Threads used by the three on the driveway, but the sight of them coupled with her memories of what had happened at the Qabal headquarters over a year ago. His mother had encased her body in a net of red and sunk the net below Teresa’s skin, all in an effort to punish Darwin for simply being alive when her real son wasn’t.
“You’re coming out one way or another, ’cause we are not coming in to get you. Why don’t you save yourself some pain?”
A horde of mosquitoes settled on Darwin’s skin. Clothing didn’t matter to the Threads, and even the parts of his body that were covered felt the thousands of tiny pricks. The small pricks became red spots on his skin and ruptured all at once. Teresa screamed, struggling to turn around and crawl back the way she had come. The continuous pain of the Threads stopped, but the open wounds continued to hurt.
Darwin slowly crawled after her, his mind reeling. How could he be so useless? He looked inside himself, believing for a moment that he had seen a flicker of life from the impotent Source inside of him. It stayed dead and cold. There was nothing he could do against three Threaders, and desperation coupled with anger filled his body. He moved faster, bumping into Teresa. The second he was free of the scrub, he would attack. If he got lucky, at least one of them would fall before they knew what he was doing.
Sunlight assaulted his eyes as Teresa left the bramble. He blinked, trying to get them to focus and adjust before he exited. It didn’t work. As soon as he was free, he launched for one of the blurry forms standing in front of him.
Teresa shouted as they both fell to the ground. Three male voices laughed as he struggled to untangle his arms and legs from hers and stand.
“You want to try that aga—”
“Hey, it’s them. They’re the ones she wants.”
Teresa stood closer to the men, and one of them grabbed her, twisting her head to get a better look.
“This looks like her, all right, and there can’t be too many girls willing to walk around with an ugly chump like that.”
She bit down on his hand, sinking her teeth in down to the bone. He screamed and pushed her away, blood gushing from the wound.
“Bitch! The boss doesn’t want you. She just wants him. So now you’ve made this even more fun for us.” He raised a foot and kicked her in the stomach.
Darwin’s mind went blank. His skin drained of all color and cold settled on his shoulders like a cape. His emotions pulled inward, becoming a raging ball of anger and fear, before exploding outward in a single wave.
The Source inside his chest woke and the wave became a ring of solid red that pulsed away from him in a single push. Images flashed through his mind. Images that had nothing to do with where he was, or who he was. Thousands of them layered on top of each other, screaming for his attention, wanting him to See them, to feel them. To be them. Behind them all was Ada. Heat rushed through his body, pouring into his scarred skin, and the Source died again. His world went black, and he collapsed beside Teresa.
When he came to, he felt warm, as if he was cocooned in pillows that generated heat. He floated in them, filled with peace, never wanting to leave. Something prodded at his arm and he shoved it away. How dare they interrupt his comfort? His arm was pushed again, harder this time, and he rolled away. The warmth disappeared as if it had never existed.
“Welcome back.”
He knew that voice, and in the knowing of it, it replaced the warm softness that had left him with something similar, but this feeling was generated from within. He smiled.
“Come on, we need to move. It’s not safe here.”
Safe? What couldn’t be safe? That didn’t make any sense.
“Darwin, try to sit up. We need to move, we don’t know if they were supposed to check in on a regular basis.”
They. Such an amorphous word. Who was they?
A sharp slap on the side of his face pulled him back into the real world and he sat up in a jolt, rubbing his cheek, squinting at the sun hanging in the sky. He held a hand up as a shield and scanned the area. Only when he saw the first body—or what was left of it—did the world fall back into place. He leaned over, his stomach heaving into the flattened and dry grass that had been his warm pillows.
Teresa didn’t bring up what had happened as they rode their bikes along the coast. Darwin didn’t either, but it was the only thing he could think of. He had thought he would be happy when he could See and use Threads again, but this time, the brief window of time given to him had been filled with . . . He couldn’t put a word to it. Didn’t want to. He knew he had to. This time was different than anything that had ever happened before. Even when he didn’t know what Threads were, when his dad was testing the QPS in his own world, it had never been like this.
There were images then, but they were grounded in place if not in time. His location in the world never changed, never moved. It was the world around him that did that. Even the experiments and training with Bill had been that way. The images had all been about the stick and its movements. The only time it had been different was when Enton had asked him to follow the Threads of the dandelion outside of SafeHaven. He had seen Enton’s death then, and that had come true hundreds of miles away.
This had been different than even that.
The closest he had ever come to something similar was when he was close to the QPS, connected to it. When the power of it coursed through his blood and his mind. When his brain was close to insanity. Close to snapping.
“Are you okay?”
Teresa’s voice cut through the turmoil in his head.
“No.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not yet.”
She stayed silent for a moment before responding. “Okay.”
They had just passed a rusted sign for Molera State Park when they left the main road. The sun had dipped below the trees that hugged the highway, making it impossible to ride without hitting the potholes and jagged sections. They stopped far enough from the road that they wouldn’t be seen, and Teresa started a small fire with dead wood. They both knew it was a risk, but the comfort of the flames was something they both needed. She waited until the flames had died down before nestling a can into the embers.
Darwin brought her a jacket from her pack. The nights felt cool after the beating sun of the day. He sat and lost himself in the glowing coals and occasional flame before taking a deep breath.
“About today . . .”
Teresa didn’t answer.
“I’m scared. It’s never been like this before. Almost never.” When Teresa stayed silent, he continued on. “The Source came back, but I didn’t have any control. It was like Hoover Dam and the Qabal headquarters all over again. I . . . if it turns on again, I don’t know if I can escape it.”
Teresa pulled him into a hug and held him, whispering in his ear. “You done it before. You can do it again if you have to. But you already know what to expect. You can get away before it goes too far.”
Darwin shook his head into her shoulder. “I don’t know. It came so fast and so . . . so heavy. The only thing that saved me at Hoover Dam was Baila, and she gave her life for it. I . . . I felt the burning again today. It was as if she was saving me again.”
He pulled away from her and stared at the embers again.
“I think we need to prepare for if this happens again, and I don’t make it back.”
“Hush.”
“I’m serious.” He grabbed her hand, still staring into the dying fire. “It was close this time. Too close.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Teresa pulled her hand away and used two sticks to pull the can from the coals. Wrapping it in some of the grass, she punctured the lid with her knife and cut it away before sticking two spoons into the steaming liquid.
They were halfway through the can when a woman’s voice called out from the dark.
“Hello. I’m a healer looking for a place to stay tonight. I’m sorry for scaring you, but I hadn’t expected to find more travelers.”
Darwin and Teresa scrambled away from the fire. Though it wasn’t giving much light, it still pointed to their location. They separated, and Darwin called out.
“How many of you?”
“Just one. I see your fire’s almost out. I have some dry wood and tea if you could make some hot water. Can I come closer?”
A stick stirred the embers of their fire, and something was thrown on, bursting into bright flames and illuminating Teresa. She had moved back to the fire without making a sound.
“You’re welcome to join us,” she said.
Darwin stayed in the dark as the stranger approached. As she bent low to place more wood on the dying flames, he recognized her. She had been a prisoner at Hoover Dam, a participant in the war against Salem, and a Darwin worshipper. Now she was the healer Teresa had replaced in San Francisco.
“Estra,” he said.
The healer stood up straight, peering into the darkness. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” She stepped back as Darwin entered the small circle of light.