Resurrection: Alien Invasion, #7

Chapter One

The hooded figure slipped out of the village before dawn, setting off from his dwelling before most of the others had risen for their daily chores. This was saying something because the village woke early. The sun was oppressive by midday, so people worked at first light then stayed in the shade to stay cool later — or bathed in the river, or slept in their small homes with the doors open on both ends to invite a breeze. 

When they did the latter, the villagers napped on cots high enough to keep the insects and snakes at bay. Superstition said that if you slept on the ground, minions from the underworld would take you for your laziness — for putting your back to the ground rather than toiling on upright legs. 

But that was all bunk to the cloaked man. The idea of never resting used to be called the Puritan Work Ethic and had, unfortunately, survived the Forgetting deep in the people’s minds. And as to snakes and spiders? They weren’t from the underworld. Near as the cloaked man could guess, the Astrals had somehow preserved them and the other creatures from the Old Earth on an unknown ark — or, for all he knew or cared, created them again once the land had dried.

He passed the Dempsey house — made of better stone and larger than the rest but still surprisingly modest. 

He passed the rectory, which had grown, where Mother Knight held her meddlesome meetings. 

And finally he passed the outer ring, where most of the Unforgotten made their homes. Beyond them were the wilds and the desert, and as the man walked west and the sun blushed in the sky behind him, he found it fitting that The Clearing had known just how to form itself. Like a flock of birds instinctually finding its array, so had the thousands instinctually settled into their ideal configuration. 

The Unforgotten — who’d taught The Clearing’s villagers so many things they didn’t question their knowledge of — didn’t usually need defense from the desert and the wilds. They knew when unwanted things were coming. 

But even windows of the Unforgotten weren’t lit with candlelight as he passed, leaving the quiet of night’s end unbroken.

He crested a rise then walked down its lee side. The bluing horizon vanished for a while, restoring his world to near darkness. And so he walked that way for a while, his eyes closed because the moon was new and the stars were hidden behind clouds and seeing simply didn’t matter. 

One foot in front of the other. 

No worries of stepping into something. Or on something. Or going the wrong direction.

Because the true guidance was within him, on the network, when its horizons managed to remain unobscured. 

After perhaps twenty minutes by an Old-World clock, he reached the monolith, less than a quarter day from the sea. It reared up before him like always: first a dark triangle above the farthest dune, then growing into something flatter and wider as he neared. By the time he was over the dune, the eastern sky had faded from dark blue to light, warming with the first hints of blood red where land met sky. 

He stood before the thing, looking up. He waited. He remembered the feeling of knowing so much more than he knew now, but that was when he’d had a global mind to guide him. Now their number was trimmed, and for a while, that had seemed to brighten the feeling. But despite all his shuffling, it had been dark for a while. Until the recent, new round of sparks. This time, he swore they were different. And Clara agreed.

But today as with every day before, the monolith offered nothing. 

He stayed for long enough to know he was wasting time, hoping in an all-too-human way that the solution would magically present itself. But it didn’t. There was magic, and he could make it. But the monolith was unchanging, and gave him as little as it gave the others, who believed it simply to be junk. 

Before leaving, he lowered his hood and pulled three small polished silver spheres from his pocket. He held them flat in his palm, trying to feel, knowing he’d sense nothing. The spheres had given him plenty in the past. But then again, he’d felt his origin more fully before. His power had departed like memory from the others. How had he once fed back into a Reptar and destroyed it with a thought? How had he created the duplicate that lived inside? He remembered doing it all, but his how was as lifeless as the spheres. They told him nothing, only showing him his own long, lined face — the same face he’d seen in mirrors when the forgotten floods had started. 

And that unchanged face told him: It feels like it’s been forever, yes. But it all might as well have happened yesterday.

He pocketed the spheres. There was still magic in them, for sure — just as there was still magic in the monolith. But he couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t access it. Like a memory he almost knew but couldn’t recall. A face he knew yet couldn’t place. 

He turned and headed back to The Clearing. 

He arrived at his shop to find a man waiting outside. He was very tall. Very broad. His arms were as big around as a normal man’s thighs. Everyone understood the man’s build because he labored as a blacksmith — another curiously no-questions-asked skill the Unforgotten had taught the village’s population ahead of the way things were probably supposed to happen. But his size was cause, not effect. He was able to blacksmith because he was big; he wasn’t big because he smithed. And there might be another reason he smithed, it seemed: because smiths made weapons as well as tools, and a warrior would one day need weapons with which to fight.

Sir? said the big man. 

Yes?

They call you Stranger, don’t they? 

They call me many things. Especially behind my back. 

The big man cracked a smile. Small wrinkles formed at the corners of his mouth. A tentative smile, but there. 

My name is—

Carl Nairobi, Stranger finished. 

"Carl Smith," Carl corrected. 

Stranger shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Then he opened his shop’s door and let Carl inside, where he indicated two handmade chairs for each to sit. 

Why is your name Smith? Stranger asked. 

Because I am a blacksmith. 

Were you always a blacksmith? Is that why it’s your surname? 

Carl started to speak, but Stranger cut him off before he could.

Five years ago, were you a blacksmith? 

Yes, sir. 

Ten years ago, were you a blacksmith? 

Yes. 

"Was your father a blacksmith? Is that how you learned the trade?" 

Carl’s mouth opened, and his whole face formed another yes, but then he stopped. 

Do you remember your father, Carl? 

Yes? 

You do or you don’t? 

Yes. Of course I do. 

What was his name? 

There was a pause. Into it, Stranger said, "If a man’s surname were Nairobi, what might that say about him? What might it say about his origins?" 

Sir? 

You’re so polite these days, Carl. When I first met you, you tried to beat me to death. Hit me once, in fact. I remember it well. 

Carl’s face scrunched. Have we met, sir? 

Yes. When you went by a different name. In a different place. Look inside, Carl. Do you seriously not remember me? 

Carl focused. He watched Stranger for a very long time. It was such a tiny thing, Stranger thought as he watched Carl back, but a telling one. People used to have such a weakened attention span, but these days, stories spun for hours. People walked without hurry. And when one man studied another, it could take a minute or more, feeling no need to fill the silence with distractions. 

When do you believe we met? 

Twenty years ago, Carl. Then he shifted to the village vernacular, knowing years was a concept they never quite agreed on. Twenty summers and winters. 

I’d have been a young man then. 

Stranger looked him over. Carl still looked like a young man even at his current age of fortysomething. They had all visibly matured, but by the old standards it sure didn’t look like a full twenty years of aging to Stranger. The Astrals must have done something to them when erasing their memories, and it made sense. Most of humanity had perished. If the species was meant to restart from the small seed populations left around the globe, they’d have to be hearty stock — the best of the best, a bit younger than their years. 

You were. Twenty-five at the most. But no bigger or stronger than you are now, I’d wager. 

"But you," Carl said, still studying. "You’d have been a child." 

Stranger stood. There was a silvered glass on the far wall that he used when people came to him for advice. His face was long and lined, but not with age. He didn’t consider it much, but he understood what Carl meant. Most who didn’t know him well thought he was thirtyish, and were forgetful in exactly the way people around here were. Those closer to Stranger knew he looked the same today as he had for every subsequent yesterday. Twenty years gone in this strange new world, and he hadn’t aged a day. 

Why are you here, Carl? Stranger asked, leaving Carl to wonder. He’d been watching the node representing Carl just as Clara had suggested, and now he was starting to believe she was right. The walls were breaching, and Carl was one of those in whom the change might have already begun. 

I was sent. By a man who frequents my shop, named Logan. 

Why did Logan send you to the town mystic? 

Because of my dreams, sir.

Stranger had been facing the mirror. He turned, pleased. It really had begun to fall. His own dreams — not nearly as prescient as they once were, now that he’d become so much more human — might have been telling him the truth after all. 

What about your dreams? 

Carl shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Stranger hadn’t seen the man, other than in passing, in what felt like forever. The village had grown closer to a town in two decades, but it was still small. The town mystic scared many of its occupants just as they were frightened by Governor Dempsey’s twin. Even after a global reset, the human brain recoiled from the unknown. 

But still it was hard not to imagine Carl as he’d been when they’d first come to this place, when the floodwaters had receded and returned land to the Earth. He’d been angrier then, the way Kindred still was. And his speech patterns had belonged to the old world: attitude, slang, and a South African accent. Today he might be from the pages of a history book if such things still existed. 

The monolith. Do you know it? 

I know it well. 

I’ve been there just once, Carl said. Just once, because it frightened me so badly. It’s like a thing from the underworld.

Stranger nodded for the man to continue. 

In my dream — and it’s the same every night — I’m standing outside the monolith. On the low side, where its edge has dipped nearer to the sand. There’s a door above. Between me and the door there’s a ladder. The whole thing is made of smithed metal. But not in any way I’ve ever seen or known or can understand. 

I know its construction. Go on. 

It’s very clear that I’ve just stepped out of the thing. And there are others with me. They’re watching me, waiting. And it’s … It’s …

What is it? 

It’s as if I brought the thing to us. As if it’s my fault it’s there. 

A haunted look crossed his features. 

Is there more? 

He nodded. Five people come from the horizon. From across the dune. Six who have come to join me and one who has come to take something away. Six friends. One enemy. And then the people who were with me when I … when I somehow brought the monolith forth … are gone, and there are only eight of us. Friends and enemy together. But no fighting or arguing. Only expectation. They look at me and say, ‘We need it, Carl. We need it, or nothing can change.’ 

Then what? 

That’s how it ends, Carl said. But I don’t understand it. I don’t know what they want from me or who they are. I can’t see their faces. I have no idea what I’m expected to give them. But it’s clear that they expect me to know — as if I’ve been sent to a far village on an errand and they’ve been waiting for me to return.

Why does it trouble you? It’s just a dream. 

Carl shook his head. It’s every night now. Every night I have the exact same dream. Every night I see a few more visions. 

"Like what? What kind of new visions?" Stranger repressed his emotions but couldn’t help the burning curiosity. There’d been a day when he’d been able to look out on the grid inside his mind and see details as well as Clara could — as well as she used to, anyway. These days it was all lights and shadows. He’d helped build that grid of minds, in a way, but twenty years was a long time to hold a memory that the very air around them pressed him to forget. 

"Me inside the monolith. Me on the sea, in this vast thing of heavy metal, somehow above the water rather than sinking beneath it. Me holding a small silver ball, in another place, finding the monolith in a new, odd land I don’t recognize and cannot understand. The ball seems to speak to me. To take me away from something and toward something else. I follow it, and people follow me. And when I reach the part of the dream where the others arrive, I’m more and more convinced that their expectant stares are right — that I truly am to blame for bringing the thing to its resting place in the sand. But I’ve never done those things, sir. I’ve—"

"Stranger, Carl. You used to call me Stranger." 

Carl’s brow furrowed. But I don’t remember you. We’ve never spoken. 

We have, Stranger said, reaching into his robe and producing a small silver ball. He held it up and watched Carl’s face change. You spoke to me once, when I gave you something like this. 

When? Where? 

When we were younger. In a land you once knew but can no longer recall. He paused, then added, But that you one day will again. 

He handed the ball to Carl, who seemed perhaps overly willing to take something that filled him with fear. But then Carl’s large mahogany hand closed on the thing, and Stranger felt the resonance. He could close his eyes and see Carl’s node in the network brighten. See the breach in the walls, where the demons kept fighting, finally fail. 

They can’t fight us forever, Stranger, said a female voice inside his head. 

Carl looked up. Stranger raised his eyes to meet him.

The gods, he said. The black ship in the sky from long ago that people whisper about. It was real, wasn’t it? 

"Yes, Carl, said Stranger, leaning in, excitement building in an all-too-human cavalcade of emotion. And do you remember why it came back? Why it appeared after the water was gone, after you moored the giant ship on the old shores to rust? Do you remember why the ship blackened our skies for a full season after we thought they were done with us, after their Forgetting had already started, after we were sure they’d left for good?"

Carl’s mouth opened. 

The monolith. 

The freighter. 

Carl. 

The Seven, or the Eight. 

And the network. Puzzle pieces that spawned a new dimension, immune to the Astrals’ best attempts to fight back. 

Because … because they …

But before Carl could finish, Stranger’s door banged open with a pop like a wood knot in a fire. 

Stranger, said the woman at his threshold, her cadence rushed. It’s Clara. She’s collapsed.

Chapter Two

Piper’s eyes opened. There was no threshold between sleep and wakefulness. She’d been in one place but was now in another, eyelids not at all heavy as they usually were when slumber departed, looking up at the roof of the small stone house that Meyer and his brother had built with their bare hands. Or at least that’s what Piper seemed to remember them doing, though for some reason now, on this particular morning, she had her doubts. Beams overhead were large and thick — denuded trees made more or less round. But she didn’t remember Meyer and Kindred felling the trees, just like she didn’t remember how two men had lifted something so heavy over their heads. 

Something was wrong. It had nothing to do with the beams. It was something more. Something worse. And yet, in its own way, better. 

Meyer. 

He was already as awake as she was, as if he’d been lying beside her all night with open eyes, watching stars the roof kept them from seeing. 

I know. 

There was a knock. The door wasn’t latched, and swung inward as the visitor tapped it, pivoting on forged metal secured to the frame, pinned together with a small rod. Clara had told them how to make the doors swing, and as far as Piper remembered they hadn’t had a clue before. She’d done it as a girl, a long time ago.

Mom. 

Come in, Piper said. 

The door swung the rest of the way. Lila entered. She seemed out of sorts, a bit manic — exactly the way Piper’s insides were starting to feel. Exactly the way Meyer, now that Piper glanced over, appeared.

I couldn’t sleep, Lila said.

But there’s something else. What is it, Lila? 

Piper was looking over at Meyer. When she’d said his name, he’d muttered two words as if awaiting her prompt. His response had made sense in the moment, but now she was already forgetting what that meant. 

I don’t know. I had a dream. With Clara. She was a little girl again. But … 

But what, Lila? 

She was asking about her father.

It was just a dream. 

Still, Piper felt a chill. She’d been dreaming of Lila, back when Lila was a child. And Lila hadn’t been asking about her father, but she had been asking about her mother. About Piper. But Piper couldn’t remember having ever given birth. She remembered Lila growing up, but didn’t remember being pregnant. The dream felt weary. Just thinking about it made her tired again, but it wasn’t the usual phenomenon of a fading dream. She was detouring around a blind spot, pretending it wasn’t there. 

She didn’t used to have these thoughts. But lately, spots in Piper’s memories had plagued her. She’d look at Clara and wonder. She’d look at Meyer and wonder. She’d look at herself in the mirror, and she’d wonder. There was a recurring image of Lila, still in her teens, standing beside a boy with severe black eyebrows. Not Clara’s father, whom nobody spoke of (and pretended they didn’t talk about for reasons of decency, not because nobody, including Lila, knew who he was), but someone else. A hole in the family that was supposed to be here. On waking, Piper wanted to prowl the village, looking for that young boy who’d gone missing, who wasn’t ever actually there.

And her grandfather, Lila added.

Piper looked over at Meyer. He was almost seventy. Piper, at fifty-six, was courting the reaper. Meyer’s age flat-out thumbed its nose at him. But Meyer never got sick, same as his brother. Sometimes it seemed like the governor was blessed by the gods and might live forever. Or by someone else — a bargain made, to keep his spirit young. 

Meyer looked back at Piper, his eyes still as vibrant as they’d been when she’d met him. Which had happened when … 

But that box in her mind was also empty. 

Meyer stood. He pulled on loose pants and a shirt, then opened the rear door. She knew where he was going, and the knowledge took some of the air from her lungs. Every day, he visited Kindred in the small hut on their small plot, nearest the governor’s house but still separated by a sparse, ratty lawn. It was more like feeding a wild animal than paying a visit. 

Meyer, she said. 

I’ll be right back. 

Meyer! 

He turned fully, waiting. 

Something’s happening, isn’t it? 

He turned back and left without a word. 

Lila came forward. She sat on the bed’s edge, watching her father leave and close the door. She swept her housedress up beneath her and perched half-on, half-off. A flash of something nostalgic invaded Piper’s mind — 

(She and Lila in a dark place, made of stone, underground, quiet, the darkness lit not by candles but like some bit of leftover magic that today they’d have run straight to Stranger’s Church.)

— and then she was Lila again, her own daughter now seen through a recent veil of unreality, sitting on the bed, making Piper feel like an imposter. As if Lila had come to her for something that Piper wasn’t qualified to dispense. 

She was asking me again, Mom, Lila said, and again Piper felt a strange reaction to the word, wishing for once that Lila, now an adult, would call Piper by her name. Clara was. And not just in the dream, I mean. In wakefulness.

Asking what? 

Asking me about her father. About you. About my mom. 

Piper didn’t like the sound of that. Lila had listed three items, not two. And from experience, Piper knew exactly how Clara asked those questions: not like she wanted to know but like she knew fine — and wanted to see if you did, too.

When? 

Yesterday.

That’s probably why you had your dream. Piper’s eyes went to the still-open door. She’d accepted this early intrusion without question and so had Meyer, but Lila hadn’t really explained. It was only a dream. But Piper’s own dream was still clinging to her insides like a drowning man fighting the tide. It was true: Something was happening. The idea of Lila bursting in to tell them something so mundane made sense, and that in itself was a bother. 

Maybe. Lila sighed. Probably.

The rear door opened. Meyer was already back, this time with Kindred. They’d once been identical, but Piper now found herself drawn to their change in diverging directions. Meyer’s clothing was sold by the tradesmen, but Kindred wore mostly loose shirts that had gone threadbare at the elbows. Kindred spent more time in the sun — he’d burned, tanned, then wrinkled. Meyer’s skin was comparatively smooth. Kindred’s hair had grown long, while Meyer kept his short.

Something’s happened with Clara, Meyer said. 

Piper answered, reaching for Lila’s wrist. What is it? 

Word came from the Mullah in the hills, Kindred said. Through a courier. 

Is she with them? With the Mullah? Lila said it like an accusation, but just because Kindred and Meyer supported Clara’s bizarre practices didn’t mean they were to blame. Clara was twenty-seven years old and far beyond needing her mother’s permission or approval. Piper, however, could hear the edge in Lila’s tone. 

You two got her into this, and now look what’s happened. 

Between the lines, Piper got a distinct, obvious flash of knowledge that had no business being in her head, and she knew what Meyer had been keeping from her. They’d had their bond from the start, and Piper had always felt excluded. Now she was trying the Mullah’s brew — and Meyer, Piper knew without a doubt, had been drinking it alongside her. 

(It’s not true.) 

But no, it very much was. Piper knew, because she’d always known more than she should … or at least, that’s the impression she was now beginning to get, more and more with every passing moment. 

I think so. Yes. 

Piper raised her eyes. Looked into Kindred’s and saw more than the darkness seen by the others. Now Piper saw something else. Something so familiar and so near, she could almost touch it. She almost flinched, wanting to avert her eyes, because in that moment it was as if she and Kindred shared an intimate history: as if before she’d been with Meyer, she’d been with him. 

(In an enormous stone house with many levels. In a city that fell to ashes. Before the New World. When Lila was … 

When Lila was …)

Piper put her hand over her mouth and uttered a noise like a squeak. All heads turned to her, and Piper could only look back, pulse heavy, chest wanting to heave in a parody of panic. 

Lila wasn’t her daughter.

Clara wasn’t her granddaughter. 

In all their lives, how had none of them known? 

Piper? said Meyer. 

Meyer and Kindred weren’t brothers. 

And there had been another man in her past. A man named … named … 

Clara will be okay, Piper. Meyer put his strong arm around her, keeping legs made of jelly from letting her fall. But we need to go to the Mullah. Now. 

Piper took two long, deep breaths, then nodded to indicate that she was okay. 

But she wasn’t. 

Because something had changed. 

It wasn’t the drink, the drug, or the practice Meyer and Sadeem the Wise simply called meditation that had caused whatever was wrong with Clara now. 

It was something else. Creeping and distant, crawling back into Piper’s awareness with black claws and purring throats.

A wall had fallen.

Whatever Clara and the Mullah had been trying to do in those far-off caves, they’d either catastrophically failed or catastrophically triumphed.

Chapter Three

Come. Hurry.

Sadeem waved a frantic hand at Peers. He scuttled over, ducking low to avoid the outcropping. Watching him approach, Sadeem wasn’t sure whether to envy the younger man’s agility or give thanks for his own increasingly stooped posture. When he’d first come here — in his midfifties, about the age Peers was now — he’d hit his head on that stupid outcropping three times out of every four. Now he missed it because he’d aged into clearance. 

Yes, Sage. 

Bring her water. 

Can she drink it? Peers looked down at the young woman who, if they all didn’t know better, might appear to be sleeping with her head in Sadeem’s lap.

She’s not actually unconscious. Just … below consciousness. 

Is there a difference?

Yes, Peers. She is still here. Just kept from us, as if she’s been taken behind a curtain.

Was she taking … He trailed off. 

Sadeem shook his head. Clara doesn’t need the medicine to talk to the others. In truth, he was thinking of discouraging the medicine’s use for the whole clan instead of just keeping Clara off it. Only Governor Dempsey seemed to benefit from the drug, but even that felt to Sadeem like playing with fire. Not only did they need to tiptoe around Dempsey as a need-to-know visitor (even he didn’t realize which portals into the collective the medicine opened; he simply knew it felt familiar, as if from a forgotten life), but Sadeem wasn’t convinced the Astrals didn’t see through Meyer’s eyes whenever he took it. If they kept giving Dempsey the drug, they might be turning him into a spy against them. That’s how the Astrals had originally seen much of the world and selected their viceroys, after all.

Meyer and even Kindred — though Sadeem had his doubts about the latter — were part of this. But letting Meyer participate in the ceremonies was simply playing their part as the keepers of the Astral portal so that they could do the rest without being watched. If he knew too much about what Clara and the other Lightborn were doing, he wouldn’t understand. 

At least not until he and everyone else truly understood. 

Peers nodded assent, then ran off to fetch the water. 

A tall man, in his thirties, entered the chamber. Sadeem smiled, then nodded toward the attendant near the chamber’s entrance. He drew a curtain, and Sadeem saw his silhouette move before it. 

Did you have trouble finding us? Sadeem asked.

Logan shook his head of long sandy blond hair.

Not at all. 

Did you see the path? 

Do you mean literally? 

Sadeem cocked his head. It was a tiny test, just to see. 

There’s no path in the sand. But I could see one with my eyes half-closed. To me it looked like an orange line that branched but always came back together. One line in the many was clearly brightest, and easy to follow. 

Sadeem nodded. The bright path is Clara’s. As I understand it. 

You still can’t see into it. Into the network. 

I’ve never been able to. 

I thought maybe now … Logan looked down at Clara, uncomfortable as if they were deliberately excluding her inert presence. Now that you’ve broken in … 

When a dam breaks, Sadeem said, some water always flows both ways. 

Logan shrugged. 

Sadeem’s stoic face broke, and he almost laughed, despite it all. 

I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be a sage. I’m the elder here. If I don’t speak in koans half the time, I risk my position. 

Would they really—? 

It was a joke, Logan. Do you remember jokes? Has that particular human tradition been lost as well? 

Logan extended a hand, as if pointing at Sadeem. 

Hey, Sage, Logan said. Pull my finger. 

And the jokes have stayed so highbrow. It does my old heart good to see it. He shifted, better settling Clara’s head. No, they wouldn’t kick me out. Among the Mullah, I’m the only one who knows what happened before the Forgetting. 

What about Peers? Logan ticked his head toward the portal. 

"Peers is a curious one. Clara says he’s forgotten, and that what he knows today is the same as any of the others: things I’ve taught them, and that they believe. She says that Peers doesn’t remember as we do. But she also says that it’s like he almost knows. When she tunes into his consciousness within the larger network, she sees a nugget buried deep inside his mind — a secret he’s keeping from everyone, yet has probably forgotten he’s keeping." 

Could it be something dangerous? 

I don’t know. Sadeem shrugged. Why don’t you ask her?

Logan looked down then up at Sadeem, knowledge dawning. 

Is that why I’m here, Sage? To try and talk to her? 

Allah knows I can’t. Sadeem ran a hand over her hair, softly, slowly. But she’s still here, Logan. I’m not like you. I can’t see the minds. I have to trust Clara when she talks about things taking shape beneath the surface. 

Then how are you able to work with her to …? He stopped, unsure what it was that Clara and the Mullah had been doing — on and on and on, since the Astrals had left the second time.

Most of it is on faith, Sadeem answered. Clara tells me that the network is still alive, even through the Forgetting. She talks as though it’s a puzzle where pieces fit far too well for coincidence. You and the other Lightborn saw how you could turn on the minds of the other, non-Lightborn children, and Clara tells me that even today, now that those children are grown, their altered minds still fit the grid in ways they shouldn’t. And there’s more: linchpin mental abilities that optimize the network. Giving it more branches, like a shot of vitamins for the collective. But you know much of this. What matters more is that I need you now, Logan. And so does she. 

Logan looked down at Clara. Conflict crossed his face. 

You always had a connection, Sadeem said. 

Logan shook his head. That was a long time ago. 

And, what? You’ve shut off your memory? Doesn’t it persist for you and the others? 

You know it does, Logan said, sounding slightly irritated. 

And? 

"And what, Sage? he said, his patience breaking. You have your memory, but you ran off to live in a cave with a cult of followers. You didn’t stay in the village like we did. Do you think anyone believes we are simply eccentric? The new religions are as bad as some of the old ones. They tolerate us because we teach them how