Fade (13 page)

TEN

T
he girls were asleep again when he left. The moon was full and stars shone like bullet holes in the backcloth of night. The air was warm and thick. A patina of sweat covered him after a few minutes. His own pale shadow followed him through the woods. Everything about him was a dim, more mysterious version of itself. He made no sound, and almost floated through the woods. A sense of pride welled in him. He felt useful for the first time in a long time. Like the ghost he was trained to be. The Fade had not taken that.

After a few miles, he stopped at a gnarled tree, knelt, and dug up the plastic bag in which he had hidden the device Kah’en gave him. He thought more about what he would say to Kah’en. As he stood there, his thumb rubbing the small device, he thought about how desperate he was to even be considering an alliance with one of them. But he had to take the chance—it might be their last one.

If it were a trap, he would die. There was no question there. But the Ruger in his belt and the four explosive devices strapped to his body insured he would not go alone. But this was what he had to do (he told himself that over and over). It wasn’t the most ideal of situations, but there was nothing he and three untrained girls could do against even a small army of the Fade. Even without that damned powered armor, some of them were still almost as strong as Cynthia at her best.

An idea occurred to him, and he almost hated himself for thinking it. He promised the girls he’d do everything possible to keep them out of the fight. If he did what he was thinking, it would look to them like he had lied. He might lose any trust he’d managed to scrape together. In his mind, he would just be giving them what he had planned on giving them from the start—training. They might not see it that way. But that couldn’t be his biggest concern.

Going into the girl’s minds,
copying
knowledge into their heads—such a thing had always seemed unethical to him. Also—and he knew this was his self-doubt talking—the idea that he might make some elementary error because of his disabled brain loomed large. But he knew how to fight the Fade. He had spent years of his life learning their weaknesses. The girls knew nothing. He knew how to defend himself. They’d never had a reason to learn to fight. He could gift that to them. In the end, though, it had to be their choice. But first he had to survive this meeting. Jonas stopped, lifting the device Kah’en had given him, and pressed the silvery button on its end. It warmed in his hand as it began transmitting.

***

“I was not knowing if you would be contacting me,” Kah’en said in a rasp as low as the buzz of the distant locusts.

Jonas heard him approaching and was standing, watching for others. “Me, either.” Jonas shivered, but he was sure it was from the early morning air. “What do you want from us?”

“As I told you, we are having a same goal. Different end, yes. But a same goal. Aern will never be leading us home. We will be wandering until we die. After the defeat on your planet, many of us are no longer thinking our Queen will be found.”

Jonas nodded, staring at the ground. “How many of you are there?”

“There are being eighty-seven of us. But I am believing more than half of Aern’s force are being with me.”

Jonas pushed down any exhilaration that knowledge brought, for now. “What’s your plan?”

“Surprise. We have always been loyal to Aern. He will not be seeing this coming.”

“Everything in me is screaming to say no. Everything I know about your kind is telling me to shoot you in the head and walk away.”

“This is doing my pride no pleasure to be asking you,” Kah’en said.

Jonas stroked his chin, surprised at the smooth skin there. “When?”

“Soon. Ready your children to die for this if they are needing to.”

Jonas considered reaching down to the Ruger at his side and emptying it into this Kah’en for that remark. But he knew this, if genuine, was a chance to save him and the girls a long, and near hopeless battle.

Jonas said, “what about the gate?”

“You are asking how we followed you? You destroyed our technology, but our tinkerers found the way to track you. Aern was being convinced you went to protect the prison of the Queen, the fool. So, we waited long to find where you went.” He gestured to the world around him. “We were being surprised to find
this
.”

“You sent the Wraith to find us.”

“Yes. And they sent me to destroy you if it had been failing.” He almost smiled, but stifled it.

“And me. I was how you found us?” Jonas asked.

Kah’en opened his mouth, stared. Then he let that smile blossom. “You are not even knowing, human?” He let out a low bark of a laugh. “You humans were believing that we carved your brains to take your powers. There is truth there, but we were being much smarter. We used the technology of our…
what are you liking to call them?
Wraith? Yes, we used the Wraith technology to be hiding a tracker in your brains. It was interrupting your powers and leading us to your secrets too. You could not find it. But
we
could be finding
you
anywhere.”

Jonas stilled, the implications of that revelation overwhelming.

“How were you hiding it, Jonas? If you were not even knowing? We scanned for years.”

Jonas stared hard into his enemy’s eyes, wondering if, somehow, being on this alternate Earth had
confused
the signal from the tracker like it had scrambled his brain. And whatever had brought his mind back into focus had gotten the tracker going again as well. “Tomorrow. I’ll use
this
,” he raised the device Kah’en had given him, “when I’m ready.”

“I stopped the transmitting of your brain. Over…
loaded
it.” Jonas stopped, gazing over his shoulder. “The tracker in your brain. Aern is thinking you blocked it yourself again.”

Jonas studied his face as best he could in the shadow of night. “If you didn’t, I will. And don’t think your Wraith can find us either. The area we’re in makes our bio-signatures invisible to them. I’ve got tech too.”

Kah’en began to reach into a satchel at his side. He paused, watching Jonas for approval. He pulled out a thin, round scanner. It was actually Earth med-tech that Jonas recognized. He held it in the direction of Jonas’ head for a few seconds and then faced the screen his way, offering it to him. Jonas took it, curious.

He saw a three-dimensional scan of his brain like he’d seen a hundred times since the Fade dug around inside. Except this time he was staring at the scan of an intact brain. His eyes rolled up to Kah’en.

“I am certain you are being familiar with this scanner?”

Jonas looked at the scan of his brain again. Every doctor he saw told him to the centimeter what part of his brain the Fade had excised. But there it was. He also saw the small dot in its center. The Fade had hidden the tracker in plain sight, just like Kah’en said. The same way the Wraith existed just outside of real space, the Fade had caused a small portion of his brain and a tracker to do the same.

“Maybe your brain will be healing.” Kah’en shrugged like they were talking about the question of whether it might rain.

Jonas touched the screen again and again until he had magnified the tiny object in his head to a viewable size. He looked at it from every angle, redid the scan until he decided that Kah’en was telling him the truth. The idea to thank him popped into his head, but he dismissed it.

As he walked back to the shelter, a question continued pricking at the corners of his mind—a horrible question, and one to which he wasn’t sure he could handle the answer. What if the attack on the children hadn’t been random or an inside job? What if their blocks against the Wraith’s detection hadn’t somehow failed or been compromised? If Kah’en was right, and the Fade were capable of finding people like him anywhere... Perhaps all of those people, promised new lives on a new world, had died because of him.

***

“Where have you been?” Lucy sat on the couch, eyes puffed from crying, knees at her chest.

“Lucy?” Jonas said, surprised.

“Where were you? I thought you left us,” she said.

“I wouldn’t. I had to go check on something.”

She stood and ran to him, embracing him. “Don’t do that. Don’t leave. I’m scared.”

“I know you are.” He held her, then took her face. “Are the other girls up?” She sniffed and wagged her head. “Wake them. We all need to talk.” She nodded, but didn’t move. He reassured her, “I’m not going anywhere, Lucy.” Her teeth on her lower lip, she turned to get the other girls.

They slogged into the living room where Jonas was still standing, fidgeting. None of them looked like they’d gotten much rest.

“Can we go home now? Please tell me we can go home now. My mother sounded unconvinced of my cover story.” Angela dropped herself onto the couch and a small puff of dust and rotting fabric erupted. “Ew.” She pinched her nose, sealing her lips at the cloud, and stood taking a few steps away.

“I hope that’s the case soon, Angela. But right now I have something serious for you to consider.”

“What is it?” Lucy asked. The other girls stared at him, half-awake.

“Whether we like it or not, we are at war. As much as each of you wants to go home, those creatures out there would track you down and take everything away from you. They see us as the last thing standing between them and this world. This Kah’en guy has given us a bit of hope in evening out the odds.” His lips flattened and he took a deep breath. “I don’t want you involved, but I want you to be able to protect yourselves if it comes to that. You girls are not ready. You will die out there
if
it comes to that.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Cynthia was a pastel version of herself, her voice flat.

“I can fix this,” Jonas said.

“How exactly?” Angela asked. “I don’t really like that look.” She hugged her waist.

“Lucy. I want to start off by saying that I don’t think this is how we should use our powers.”

Lucy frowned. “Mm-kay.” She sat down.

“I also want you all to know that you can turn me down,” Jonas said.

“Scared more now,” Angela said, pulling at her arm.

“No. Don’t be scared. I hope you at least realize that I would never do anything that I thought might hurt you. There are maybe three people I would trust to do something like this, and—not to be boastful—but I am one of them.” He could hear his own doubts laughing at him.

“Just tell us. The preparation speech anxiety is becoming worse than anything you want to tell us,” Cynthia said.

“Right. Well… I want your permission to imprint something into your brains.” He looked at each of them, hoping it wasn’t too large of a request for their already fragile state of minds.

“Wow. I was so wrong about the anxiety being worse,” Cynthia said, sliding down the wall to the floor, grabbing her knees.

“What does that mean?” Angela asked.

“It means that I would,
carefully
, give you knowledge you didn’t have, but that you would know as if you had learned it.”

“Aaand, what’s this knowledge?” Cynthia asked.

“To fight. More specific: advanced hand-to-hand combat and weapons skills. Also, what I know about how to use each of your power sets better.”

“That sounds bad-ass!” Lucy sat up straight, wide-eyed now. The others looked at her, dubious, fearful.

“The
reason
I am pointing out how seriously I take this, Lucy, is that it is no small thing to do
anything
to another living being’s brains, especially without years of training.”

“Oh! Can you give me that, too?”

Jonas frowned.

Lucy folded. “No, I get it. I get that it’s dangerous. I get that I shouldn’t do that. I was just sayin’.”

“Fine. The next thing that you need to understand if you do this is that learning anything takes time spent physically doing it. While you will have the same… essentially…
memories
of learning that I do, your body won’t be actually trained to perform the acts themselves.”

“Explain?” Cynthia asked.

“Similar to how things are in my own body right now. In my mind, I saw you girls a few days ago. I was in my twenties and at peak physical condition. I’ve spent the last several years living on the streets from what you said. I haven’t lost any of the actual knowledge of how to execute a round-house kick, but I would probably hurt myself doing so. Because my body isn’t where my mind is. It will just take some time. But you have youth on your side.”

“When will this be over, Jonas?” Angela asked, looking ragged and at the end of herself—always at the edge of tears, Jonas thought. “I think this is starting to drive me crazy. It’s too much.”

“A few days ago you were living normal lives. Now I’m talking about psychically imprinting fighting skills in your brains so you can beat up aliens. That’s weird as hell. I do get that. And I sympathize with the pressure you must be under.”

“I mean, if you get this Ka— what
ever
guy’s army on your side you won’t need me, right? Do I have to even learn this stuff?” Red lines stood out in Angela’s eyes like bolts of hell’s lightning.

“This is the thing. If Aern is allowed to roam free, it’s not just your parents and friends who are in danger. The whole world is in danger. You three girls have gifts that can stop them in ways that the people here just cannot. That’s
not
fair, and you actually having to fight is a last resort as far as I’m concerned, but there’s a small chance it could come to that. But, if there is any other way, you should know I’ll take it.”

“I am
so
in,” Lucy said.

Cynthia wagged her head. “Just do it, man.” She rubbed her face and cursed, looking so tired.

Angela was quiet at first, but nodded, staring at the floor. “What choice do I have?” she asked.

Jonas sighed. “We’ll start then.”

ELEVEN

T
he soft light of morning wafted down through the open door of the shelter. Angela sat with her back to the door at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed. She was the first thing Cynthia saw when she opened her eyes again. Jonas took in a long gulp of air, and Cynthia turned her head to see him. He looked worn thin. Lucy was sitting on the floor beside him, asleep against the wall.