Dawnbreaker: Legends of the Duskwalker - Book 3 (33 page)

Wren resumed his partial crouch.

Discipline, my shield.

“See wide,” Foe repeated. “Expand your vision.”

“I still don’t know what you mean,” Wren said. He lunged for a nearby red petal, captured it, tucked it quickly into his left fist. A moment later, Foe shot his hand out from Wren’s left side, the fingers darting in towards his temple. Wren reflexively ducked his head away from the attack, and then looked at Foe, startled.

Foe didn’t say anything; he just looked back with his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he’d asked Wren a question and was waiting for a response. And then a moment later, “Missed one.”

It was Foe’s way never to explain anything directly, rather preferring to demonstrate his point in some roundabout way and then to leave Wren to figure out what he was supposed to be doing.

“I don’t mind if you just tell me what to do,” Wren said, as he resumed his search, “instead of making me try to guess all the time.”

“Telling is not teaching,” Foe said. And he extended his hand to push Wren off balance again. Wren didn’t have time to think about it, he just reacted; turn, sweep, step, check. His body executed the technique while his mind was busy elsewhere. Wren stopped, momentarily surprised by himself. Foe smiled.

“Missed one.”

Wren recovered himself.
See wide,
Foe had said.
Do not hunt.
The jab at his temple had drawn Wren’s attention to his peripheral vision.

Of course.

Now that he made the connection, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out sooner. He was trying too hard to focus on each petal as an individual, treating them all as equals when there were in fact only a few he cared about. His vision was too narrow, his effort spent trying to isolate each petal in turn amongst the drift. It wasn’t that he needed to focus
more
; he was focusing
too much
. He needed to take advantage of his peripheral vision, to
see wide,
as Foe had said. And as the lesson clicked into place in his mind, Wren felt a little burst of satisfaction at the achievement. One of Foe’s riddles solved.

Understanding it intellectually was different than knowing how to do it, though. But he gave it his best attempt. Wren let his eyes relax, lowered them slightly to a more distant point, seeing
through
the cloud that enveloped him rather than looking at it directly. To his amazement, the effect was immediate. Low left by his knee, high and further left above his shoulder. Two blotches of color that naturally drew his eye. He made a grab for the lowest one and managed to snag it, though when he looked back up for the one by his shoulder, he’d again disturbed the current and lost track of it. But that was a minor loss. He understood now.

The next few minutes became an exercise of learning how to transition his vision from a wide, relaxed observation to a targeted focus and back again, as the situation required. Foe continued to disrupt Wren occasionally, sometimes nudging him, sometimes merely reaching out as if to do so without actually making contact. Whenever Foe launched one of his mild attacks, Wren parried it aside the way Haiku had taught him, or at least attempted to do so. It wasn’t always effective but it seemed to be what Foe had in mind.

Once again Wren fell back into that effortless awareness that he’d briefly experienced before. This time, however, he realized that his mind had not disconnected from his body at all. The two had become so integrated that the separation between them was impossible to distinguish. His soreness and fatigue remained, but seemed somehow less important. Additional inputs.

“Good,” Foe said. It was the highest praise Wren had received from the old man; a mere
good
had come to mean that he’d managed to demonstrate something worthwhile. “You’re wasting far too much energy.” He raised a hand and Wren reacted, bringing his hands up in defense, even though Foe didn’t actually attempt to shove him. Foe looked at him, raised his eyebrows slightly. The subtle look he gave when he’d just provided a lesson, if only Wren would notice it. And Wren was beginning to notice. Wasting too much energy...

“Ten minutes,” Foe said, as he walked to the corner of the room where the broom was. “Then the Waiting Room.”

A ten minute break. It wasn’t much, but Wren had already learned to be grateful for any moment of rest he could find. He went and sat on the floor by the door, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Sleep rushed up from where he’d been fighting to keep it at bay; even though he could hear Foe walking across the room, already dreams were beginning to form.

“You may rest,” Foe said, “
after
.”

Wren wrestled his eyes open to find the old man standing over him, holding out the broom, the empty sack at his feet. For a moment Wren just looked at the old man and wondered what the punishment would be if he refused.

“Your every strength, submitted to those who call upon it,” Foe said, recalling the words of the oath Wren had sworn.
Service, my strength.
At the time, Wren had imagined that line to mean something more glorious; facing down evil, fighting battles on behalf of the oppressed. Not menial labor. “I’m disappointed I had to ask,” Foe added. And there again was a subtle note; a hint at some deeper meaning than Wren understood. He was too tired to care.

Getting up off the floor was a harder task than any the old man had set him to yet. Wren had let himself relax just for a moment, had allowed himself to believe that it was safe to rest, and now he had to force himself into action again. But Wren won the battle over himself. Clambered to his feet. Took the broom.

“Ten minutes,” Foe said. “Then the Waiting Room.”

And with that, the old man left. Wren looked at the broom in his hand. The severest of schools. And not for the first time, he feared the gulf between his shining oath and the dim reality might be too vast for him to cross.

“
Y
ou ready to uh
...” Mouse said to Cass, and he nodded at Swoop, “give this a shot?”

Cass didn’t feel ready, but she knew it was time regardless of how she felt. She’d insisted on keeping watch the entire night while the others slept. Her penance for having let the strange Weir escape.

“Sure,” she answered.

Mouse and Able had already gone out to scout around. The sun was up and from their report, they hadn’t seen any sign that their hiding place had been discovered in the night. Everyone was awake now, except Sky, who was still under the influence of whatever Mouse had dosed him with to help him sleep. Even Wick, pale and weak as he was, seemed much improved after a night hooked up to the meds Mouse had recovered at so dear a price.

“I don’t want to do it in here,” Mouse said. “Might be fine if it goes well, but if not...” He paused, shook his head. “Well. I reckon it’d be better to move him outside.”

“Yeah,” Cass said.

Able nodded and he and Mouse went to work unstrapping Swoop from the litter. Once Swoop was free, Finn and Able went up the ladder, and Mouse rolled Swoop over and up into a fireman’s carry. It took a couple of minutes, but between the three of them, they got Swoop up top.

Mouse secured Swoop back on the litter in case things went bad, and then rose and joined the others in a half-circle around their fallen friend. All eyes went to Cass.

“I think it might be a little easier if I don’t have an audience,” Cass said.

“We’re as small as we’re gonna get,” Mouse said. Cass didn’t care for the added anxiety of trying this under scrutiny. Mouse responded to her expression. “Finn’s gotta help you,” he said. “Able’s here for security. And if we have to put Swoop down... well, that falls on me.”

Cass still didn’t like it, but she couldn’t argue with it.

“OK,” she said. “I guess we should get started then.” She looked over at Finn, who nodded.

“So, the way this is going to work,” Finn said. “I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but once you connect, if you can feed me the signal, I’ll see what I can do about boosting it. Once we get that going, maybe I’ll be able to keep you connected, so you can just worry about doing uh... you know. Whatever you’re going to do.”

“It might take me a couple of minutes to find it again,” Cass said.

“Sure,” Finn said. “Take your time. No pressure.”

Right. Just a friend’s life hanging in the balance. No pressure.

“Ready?” Finn asked. Cass nodded. For a moment she just stood there, looking down at Swoop still asleep at her feet. She didn’t know why, but she felt strangely embarrassed having anyone watch her while she made the attempt. But this was for Swoop. Not for her. A deep breath. She knelt beside Swoop and placed her hand on his forehead, like she’d done the night before.

Relax
, she told herself.
Breathe.

Cass directed her thoughts to the experience she’d had the night before. Remembered the sensation, the impressions of personality. Hoped she hadn’t just imagined them. The minutes ticked by. And she was painfully aware of the minutes now, far more so than she’d been the first time around. One of the men shifted his stance. Restless, or getting impatient. Losing faith.

After ten minutes, Cass was no closer to finding Swoop again than she’d been when she started. And with each minute that passed, her confidence drained further and further away. Whatever she’d experienced the night before was gone. She’d lost him.

Cass opened her eyes and looked at Swoop. He was gone. And the wave of emotion that rolled over her was the same as if he’d died for the first time. No tears, no cries of anguish. Just a cold numbness. Her mind’s initial refusal to accept the reality.

Mouse crouched down on the other side of Swoop, placed his hand on his fallen friend’s shoulder.

“It’s OK, Cass,” he said. He kept his eyes on Swoop. “We all knew it was a long shot.”

Memories broke open, spilled over with no coherence: the first time Cass had met Swoop, when she’d been intimidated by his rough look; the startled expression on his face when he’d accidentally walked in on her changing, and how he’d tripped over himself in his hurry to get back out; his grim determination at the gate of Morningside, with poison in his blood.

She slid her hand down to the side of his face. So serious. Even asleep, his brow was slightly furrowed, his jaw clenched, as if he was watching something intently or mildly annoyed. He’d never been much of one for smiling. Even less for laughing. It made the few times she’d seen either all the more precious. An image came back to her of the last time she’d heard him laugh. Something Wick had said at Mouse’s expense. She couldn’t even remember what it was now, or why it was so funny at the time. But Swoop had laughed, and the unrestrained fullness of it had surprised her. She smiled in spite of herself, in spite of the moment, remembering that uninhibited burst of laughter from so serious a man.

And in that instant, she found him again. The connection rushed upon her almost too forcefully for her to control, and there in the midst of the churning datastream, some part of Swoop’s personality swirled. Reflexively, she reached out to him through the ether. And just as before, as she strove to reach Swoop, the connection began to recede.

“Finn,” she said, “Finn, I need you.”

Finn came alive, dropped to a knee.

“Yeah, send it,” Finn said.

He’d told her to feed him the signal, but in that moment of intensity, Cass wasn’t sure exactly what to send. And the connection was thinning rapidly.

“I’m losing it!” she said.

“Gimme something,” Finn said. “Anything!”

Cass issued a basic connection request to Finn. The datastream wasn’t any less turbulent, but it seemed to be growing smaller in her mind, more distant. Taking Swoop as it went.

And then it came speeding back towards her, solidified.

“Got it,” Finn said. “I got it, Cass. I’ll keep it stable.”

Without the pressure of trying to maintain her connection, Cass felt a release; a sense of calm descended. Patience. A chance to observe. And what she saw in her mind’s eye enthralled her. It was as if she’d made an incision in the skin of the world, peeled back a layer of reality, to see its hidden workings; an electromagnetic bloodflow. To her surprise, it wasn’t as alien as it should have been. Though she experienced it only in her mind, the essence was familiar. Of a kind with something she’d perceived with the eyes the Weir had given her. Not
seen,
exactly. Cass still didn’t have a way to describe the sensation. But whenever a human accessed the digital, she detected it in a way that felt like seeing. And whatever it was that she could “see” with her modified eyes was a mere shadow of what she now beheld, with Finn’s help. Raw, pure connection. This was the secret world that Wren knew so well.

The datastream ran wild, a roiling torrent of information, and there, out there in it, like a drowning man fighting to keep his head above water in the raging current, was Swoop. She started to make another grab for him, but an instinct checked her. Once Swoop was out, she didn’t know when she’d get another chance to experience so strong and secure a connection. Cass gave herself a moment to investigate whatever else she could find. And under her careful observation, other details started to emerge. Flickers of emotion. Fear. Anger. Lust. Hunger. Others, like Swoop, trapped and enslaved in the datastream. The Weir. All connected. And Swoop among them.

Underneath it all, was some sense of Finn. She couldn’t explain it even to herself, but somehow in all of it, and yet separate, floated some essence of the other man. As she bent her mind towards him, a solution unfolded itself to her, an understanding of the digital that had escaped her before. She perceived in her mind how he worked to stabilize the signal, how he supported the connection she had created. At the same time, she saw how faint his...
Finn
-ness was in that realm of existence; shimmering, refracted, indistinct. As if she were submerged in a swiftly moving river, and he stood on its bank.

That was enough for her, almost more than she could handle. Cass turned her focus back to Swoop, concentrated on that impression of him. Stretched herself out to him. Thought his name.

Though there was no representation of their physical bodies, Cass experienced the moment exactly as if Swoop had reached out and grabbed her hand. Sudden contact, a wrenching sensation that threatened to pull her off balance, to drag her forward to him, instead of him out to her. She strained against the force. And then, a release. Swoop came free.

And with him, something else. A wave of force that dissipated on impact and scattered frost across her nerves; like getting hit in the face with a snowball thrown with murderous intent.

The sensation was so tangible she actually fell backwards, physically, and sat down hard on the concrete. And behind that initial force, something immense rose up. The current of the datastream swirled around itself, bubbled up, began to take shape; a digital leviathan rising from the deep. Pale tendrils stretched as it rushed towards her. And then–

–the incision in reality sealed itself, the connection vanished. Finn and Mouse both snapped their attention to her.

“Cass!” Mouse called. “Are you OK?”

Cass blinked at the stars of pain and ice-stung synapses. She knew Mouse had said something to her, but she couldn’t make any sense of the words. He came up out of his crouch and started towards her.

“Cass?” he said. She held up a hand, signaled she was fine.

“I’m all right,” she mumbled, though the words came out wrong. She looked at Swoop, expecting to see him, with his eyes open and straining against his bindings. Instead, he was laying there perfectly still, just like he’d been when she’d started the process. That didn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t he be back?

“Did you... did
you
do that?” Finn asked.

Cass nodded. The initial daze seemed to be wearing off. Words made sense again. “Swoop. I got him.”

Mouse and Finn looked at Swoop, then at each other.

“Didn’t you see it, Finn?” she asked. “Or feel it?”

“Something happened, yeah,” he answered. “But, uh... I don’t think it was Swoop.”

“What are you talking about?” Cass asked.

“I mean, maybe you got Swoop too, I don’t know,” Finn said. “But there was something else. Something came up the connection.” He shook his head. “Bad package. And something after. I had to kill the signal before it hit.”

Cass’s brain still tingled, and when she turned her head she found she was mildly dizzy. Why did her neck hurt?

“I think maybe it hit anyway,” she said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Could be,” Finn said. “There were two things. A quick pulse, came out of nowhere. And then after that something big. Something
real
big. It was moving pretty fast.”

“What was the big thing?” Mouse asked.

“No idea,” Finn said. “Nothing good. Didn’t want to wait around to see.”

“Cass?” Mouse looked to her.

“It came up with Swoop,” Cass said. She massaged her temples; the external pressure soothed some of the internal freeze. “When I brought him out. Like it was, I don’t know, tied to him or something. Or like...”

Her subconscious made the connection and spat it out fully formed.

“A trap.”

“A trap?” Mouse echoed. “What kind of trap?” He looked first to Cass, then to Finn, then back to Cass again.

Cass shook her head. It made the ground tilt under her.

“I don’t know.”

“Something for Wren, I think,” Finn said. Cass looked over at him, saw his eyes had the soft, unfocused look of someone running internal accesses.

“What do you mean ‘for Wren’?” Cass asked. Even in her fog, she could feel her mind working in the background. “What does it do?”

“Hard to say exactly,” he continued, “just got a couple of fragments I grabbed. But it’s a custom payload for sure. I don’t think you got hit with the whole thing. Even if you did, though, I’m not sure it would’ve done whatever it was supposed to.”

Cass’s brain worked on its own, started putting all the pieces together for her. She remembered the apprehension she’d felt the night before, the instinctive warnings she’d ignored. That Asher had selected Swoop for a purpose.

“Back at Morningside,” Finn said. “That night, when I was helping Wren keep a connection so he could work with that machine. This thing had the same kinda feel to it. Same signature.”

“Same author,” Cass said.

“You’re all right now?” Mouse asked.

Cass nodded. “Yeah.” Her mind seemed to be thawing, even though her equilibrium was off.

If it had indeed been a trap for Wren, maybe that wasn’t an entirely bad sign. If nothing else, it meant Asher didn’t know where her son was. Her
other
son. And his trap must have been a shot in the dark. A fallback scenario, just in case. There was no way Asher could have known that they’d come back for Swoop. Unless he’d thought that Wren was capable of Awakening Weir without being near them. As far as Cass knew, she was the only one Wren had ever woken without direct, physical contact, and even then they’d been only a few feet from each other.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Asher had converted Swoop as bait, thinking Wren would try to Awaken him from some distant location. And here Cass had taken the hit instead, absorbing whatever damage her older son had intended for her youngest. The important question now was what effect did the payload have on her?

At least part of the answer was obvious. The... thing... that had risen up after the initial impact. Asher himself, or rather, his consciousness. The trap had almost certainly alerted Asher to the fact that she was alive, and maybe had even given up her location. Alive and still close to Morningside. There may have been more to it than that, but it was highly unlikely there was less. She’d still been thinking she’d go off on her own anyway; now she was resolute.

“All right... well,” Mouse said. “You’ve done what you can for Swoop?”

“What?” Cass said, distracted. She looked at Mouse, then down at Swoop, who still looked for all the world like he was sleeping peacefully. She’d been so certain. Surely she hadn’t just imagined it all. And yet there he lay, with no apparent change whatsoever.