Memory Weave, page 1
Memory Weave
Book 3 of the Lightless Prophecy
Kel E Fox
Outfoxed Media
Copyright © 2023 by Kel E Fox
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by the Australian Copyright Act 1968. Quotes may be extracted for review purposes.
This publication is a work of fiction. Names, places and events described in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales and events (except for satirical purposes) is entirely coincidental.
Outfoxed Media
Perth, Western Australia
Contents
Content Warning & Spelling Note
Previously in The Lightless Prophecy
1. A Quick, Clean Death
2. The Burning Path
3. Imprint
4. The Killing Light
5. Escaping Nowhere
6. Pamavianda
7. Space and Time
8. The Vi Magician
9. Dematerialising Shirts
10. A Thousand Years
11. Starflight
12. Come Fly With Me
13. Rescue Mission
14. Smash and Run
15. Personal Project
16. How Embarrassment
17. Ambush
18. You Don’t Remember
19. Still Need to Eat
20. Better with Time
21. Common Factor
22. Pancakes and Boyfriends
23. Head Game
24. Altered Reality
25. Weak
26. Confined Space
27. Fallout
28. A New Kind of Overwhelm
29. The Weight of Lifetimes
30. Harmonic House
31. Post-Trauma
32. Burning Love
33. Puzzles
34. The Black Files Kids
35. Hidden
36. Tough Bridges
37. Better Grins
38. Best Done Alone
39. A Natural Pilot
40. The Number to Beat
41. Welcome Home
42. Sia
43. Shards and Dust
44. Clever Tricks
45. Time and Days
46. Make a Fuss For Me
47. Remarkable Potential
48. Broken Bedrock
49. Ascension
50. The Horizon Fountain
51. Stripped
52. I Dare You
53. The Khomic Key
54. Overspin
55. Co-Location
56. Requisition
57. Cacophony
58. Holes in the Universe
59. Stale Peppermint
60. In the Broken Dark
61. Unstable Wreckage
62. Dust Falling Upwards
63. Teetering
64. Family
65. Blood Runs Clean
Thank you!
Acknowledgements
Also By
About the Author
Content Warning & Spelling Note
If this book was a film, it’d be rated something like M15 in Australia – recommended for mature audiences 15 years or older. PG-13 in America, maybe? All that’s presumptuous about age and relative maturity anyway and doesn’t take personal experience into account, so here it is: there’s some violence, mental health themes and infrequent coarse language. Please visit my website kelefox.com for full details if you are concerned. Wishing you safe and enjoyable reading!
A note on Aussies:
This story is set in Australia (mostly) and follows Aussie spelling, punctuation and grammar conventions. We say ‘maths’, mate, as opposed to ‘math,’ bro, sprinkle vowels around like ‘u’ in ‘flavour’ and use ‘s’ for ‘z’ in words you might recognise. Ya get the idea!
Pronunciation & Glossary:
Yes, yes, I’m one of those terrible authors who mashes up old Latin and other bits of deceased language to make new, unpronounceable words. Honestly, if you prefer to skim over such words, make up your own pronunciation, or replace ‘Husaeanism’ with ‘Humbug’ in your head, that’s fine by me. Reading is meant to be for your enjoyment, and you get to decide how that works! But if you’d like to know how I pronounce some of these things, I have a guide on my website. And a list of characters, in case that helps too!
Previously in The Lightless Prophecy
Memory Weave is book three in this saga, and it follows closely on from Darkhaven and Everfire. There will be a lot that doesn’t make sense if you haven’t read books one and two! If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend reading Darkhaven first, then Everfire (click here for Darkhaven or Everfire). If you’d like a refresher, here’s what went down:
DARKHAVEN
Gabby Whitehall is sitting on top of a kids’ playground, pondering her future after high school and not thinking about the strange boy she met earlier that day, when a thunderstorm rolls in. Not her best decision, but in her defence, she didn’t know she was magically attractive to lightning. The inevitable happens, and she comes to on the pavement to find a cat trying to get her attention and two suspicious men in suits from the Taskforce telling her to get in their car.
After an exciting car chase and rescue from the suits by a rogue group called Darkhaven, Gabby finds out her mother (Luci, dead for sixteen years) is a magical geneticist who subjected Gabby to the Praegressus program as an infant as part of the Taskforce operations, an obviously dodgy organisation. Gabby becomes superhuman: enhanced healing, strength, memory and special skills. Gabby trains at Darkhaven with Stephen (stern but well-meaning guy who can talk to animals), Liam (kind and encouraging clairvoyant who enjoys drinking tea) and Donovan (a mean bitch), and she discovers a talent for heightened intuition.
Meanwhile, she’s flirting with the strange boy, who turns out to be an alien god called Keraun Thephyeu, and he tells her magic is not only real – he uses it to control Earth’s weather – but that Earth humans should have magic too. And she’s trying to keep up with her schoolwork and her friendships with Cecelia and Zenna; Zenna’s having a tough time of her own.
Gabby discovers that Luci is very much alive and is continuing her unethical experiments on children with the Taskforce. Gabby joins Darkhaven in a plot to infiltrate the Taskforce, which her father, Jon, seems to have ties to as well. They fail, and Gabby makes an enemy of Sean, one of the Taskforce higher-ups. Sean tracks her back to Darkhaven, where he shoots and kills Stephen, has Liam injected with Viciretro (a magical reversal serum that is supposed to undo the Praegressus program) and sets the Darkhaven building on fire. Luci and Jon arrive, and the Darkhaven crew realise that Jon is not only connected to the Taskforce: he set it up twenty years earlier, working under the name Jan Whitehall.
Jan shoots Sean at the same moment Keraun strikes Sean with lightning. Sean dies. Jan and Luci flee. Keraun is arrested by the Uzrun, an intergalactic authority for ‘stage fives’ (advanced humans from older star systems). Meanwhile, Zenna has ended up in hospital and has been referred to a wellness retreat for mental health rehabilitation.
Gabby gets a puppy, a German Shepherd/Alaskan Malamute called Salt, and joins Darkhaven to hunt down Luci and find out more about this elusive magic business.
EVERFIRE
Gabby joined Darkhaven to learn magic and hunt down her mother, but so far, none of that is happening. Admittedly, she spent the first half of summer mooning over Keraun, who is still gone, and avoiding Hope, a new and annoying addition to the Darkhaven team. Liam is still sick from the Viciretro. Donovan is still a bitch.
Then a massive storm hits Perth, and everything changes. A new cohort of Eventers joins Darkhaven, including a boy from an even nastier experiment than usual called the Black Files. Jan won’t say what they’re for, but it’s something horrible because everything he’s involved with is.
Liam, Donovan and Catherine turn Darkhaven into a school to train the new Eventers. That would be super cool, almost like magic school, but Gabby is miffed that she’s put in the with the newbies as if she had her Event yesterday. Still, it’s not boring: she discovers she can read anyone’s DNA (which we later learn is actually their Khoma, a record of all their past lives) through skin contact, finds a macabre scene involving dead rabbits arranged in a strange circular pattern, and learns that the new cohort Eventers grew up on another planet.
Donovan gets a lead about the Taskforce. Gabby joins the team, but things go wrong. They blow up the Taskforce and barely escape with their lives. To save Donovan from capture, Gabby reads Donovan’s Khoma. It’s so awful, Gabby falls into a magical stasis that persists for three weeks.
Gabby finds Zenna at a circus (figures) full of Eventers (okay then) and learns that she’s also become tangled in the Netica Project (if we’re being brutally honest, it’s not the friend Gabby would have chosen to keep).
The team go on a mission to the Archive, the first Netica Project lab, following another lead on Luci and a possible cure for Liam. Success! Luci says she can save him … but they’re set up. Whoever Sebastien, the Black Files kid, was working for is after the contents of the Archive’s vault. The heist succeeds. Gabby kills Sebastien. With Zenna’s help, the Darkhaven team salvage Liam’s cure.
While Gabby and Donovan take a trip down Donovan’s memory lane, Keraun appears literally ou
Gabby and Keraun follow the ‘Moore’ lead and find Andrew Moore, the journalist, in California. He gives them a list of possible locations to look for Donovan, but before they can get away, his house explodes in everfire. Gabby and Keraun are caught in the flames.
I apologise for that terrible cliffhanger and promise the Memory Weave ending isn’t quite as traumatic.
Chapter 1
A Quick, Clean Death
The floor was awash with blood, and Donovan didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming. Nightmaring. There were moments she felt like she was three years old again, trapped, burning, utterly lost, convinced she must be in a dream because reality couldn’t be so …
It hadn’t been a dream then. She supposed that meant it wasn’t now. But there was so much blood. Even for her.
She could bleed forever. It was a cruel way to evolve. Keraun had said the Praegressus program would work, that it would advance humans beyond their current evolutionary stage in a sudden sprint. Donovan was grateful for the strength Praegressus gave her, and she supposed the program had given her other things too. A place where she was safe, one she’d helped build. People she loved. People she hadn’t loved enough.
But she’d lost those things, thrown them aside for a silly notion about reconnecting with her past. A past that was better left buried. She might have talked about it with Liam over a coffee, might have – maybe – sat with Gabby and let her bring up the memories with her magic. Instead, Donovan went running after ghosts long moved on and straight into Johann’s snare. She hadn’t known he couldn’t find her at Darkhaven, and she still didn’t know why. She’d believed he was dead all these years.
Donovan coughed. A dry, bitter sound to cover her need to cry. She didn’t have enough left in her to cry. A door banged down the hall, and she uncrumpled herself, pulling her body one limb at a time back onto the bed. She wouldn’t let Johann have the satisfaction, even if he wasn’t here.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Three sets: two guards’ heavy boots and a prisoner’s shuffling slippers. Muffled whimpers. Keys jangled, metal slid between pins and tumblers, bolts turned.
Donovan lay back, face blank, white – it was too soon, even for her – and stared at the plasterboard ceiling. It was the only thing in this room that wasn’t flecked or streaked or flooded with blood.
The door swung open, the footsteps advanced, the door closed. There was no time to escape. She’d tried fleeing on the first day.
The whimpering increased. Slippered feet minced in the corner while the guards stood, resolute, in front of the door.
‘Maintenant!’ someone growled. Now. Donovan had figured they were in France on her second day. She’d lost track of time, but it had been summer at the Battle of Silence. Judging by the dropping temperatures, they were approaching winter. Or in it.
A man shuffled to Donovan’s bed, trying to suppress his cries. Infrequent barking sobs cracked the room apart like lightning, leaving a quivering shudder of thunder in the air. The ones who let their emotion out did better, but most of the outcomes were the same. This one wouldn’t make it.
The scalpel pressed against her throat. He probably thought hesitating was a kindness. Donovan flicked her eyes right and locked on to a familiar brown pair. Each face bore something similar to the last: eyes, chin, angle of cheekbones. All related. All male.
Just do it. Better that we both get this over with.
If he read the message in her gaze, he didn’t heed it. The blade trembled against Donovan’s skin, tickling her collarbone as his grip slipped.
‘Celui-là est fichu,’ a second voice said. This one’s gone. Such compassion. Donovan repressed the urge to reach out, seize the man’s wrist and plunge the scalpel in herself. But she’d tried that too.
Johann had cut off her hands. Well, the guards did the deed, but Donovan figured everything that happened here had but one name attached.
Donovan had repaired shattered bones, missing muscles, severed nerves; she’d even replaced half a lung when a shotgun blast had torn a pitted hole in her chest. It never took more than a day. Perhaps hands were more complicated, or maybe it was just that the idea was so abhorrent. It had taken them a month to regrow, and they were still weak.
The trembling man pushed on the scalpel. The blade scrabbled around, gouging into subcutaneous tissue, muddling Donovan’s skin as her body tried to reassert itself over the damage, until, with a wilting scream, he found an artery and twisted the blade into it.
She was slower to heal now. Doing this every day, sometimes many times a day, was too much. Warm blood tumbled across her neck, splashing to the floor. The man dropped the scalpel with a clatter and backed into the corner of the room, weeping.
Each time, the guards left her with her would-be murderers while the men begged her to kill them. Some took their own lives. Most just cried or wailed or shook until Donovan gritted her teeth, took up their knife and sliced their throats. She no longer believed in a quick, clean death, but it was the best she could do.
Every one was another mark on her soul.
The wound in her neck closed, feeble strength creeping back into her veins. For Keraun’s ilk, injury like this didn’t even happen, and Donovan wondered if he, or his kind at least, had gone through a period of similar horror, of being unkillable but not un-injurable, or if the Praegressus was a perversion of evolution. Of course, she wasn’t entirely unkillable; Johann could decapitate her or have the right bullet fired into her skull.
After a time, she pushed herself up to sit. Her head wobbled on her neck. Donovan took up the scalpel, her fingers slick with her blood, and, too dizzy to stand, crawled to the man hunched in the corner. She reached one hand to his chin, turning his face to meet her gaze. That familiar face, every time, variations on a theme. Donovan looked into his brown eyes and saw pleading. Permission. He glanced at the scalpel in her other hand, and, between sobs, he gave the tiniest of nods.
Donovan plunged the scalpel into his carotid. His eyes faded and his face paled, leaving a crude tattoo standing out on his cheek: TSD-1079. They were all tattooed, TSD and a number, ascending one at a time. Before 1079’s body had time to slump, the door opened again. Hands grabbed the corpse out of her arms, leaving Donovan crumpled on the floor, awash with her own blood.
Chapter 2
The Burning Path
Keraun had joked once that he would burn in everfire before he went dancing at the Vi Academy student ball. He and his best friend Seren had spent lunchtime in the library, hurrying to complete an assignment due in the next class.
‘Is it because it’s Ursa, and she’s a friend, so you want to let her down easy?’ Seren had asked, a wicked glint in his strawberry eyes. A natural colour for his home system in Zone Three; almost unheard of on Cyrea.
Keraun pouted. ‘It’s not because it’s Ursa.’
Seren leered, a cascade of flyaway red hair falling across his face. ‘What if I ask? You can wear black. I’ll go in cerise and cream. We’ll be the handsomest couple on the floor.’
‘I’m not going to the ball. Ever.’
‘Come on. It’s the biggest night of the year, and you’ve ducked out of the last two. Everyone says third year is the best. The three of us’ – he included Ursa – ‘can go together, and you won’t even have to dance, although you break my heart.’
‘No.’
‘Please? For me?’
‘No.’
‘Are you afraid of upsetting your Tarnen mistress?’
Stuff the assignment. Keraun scrawled a hasty conclusion and packed up his books, glowering. ‘You know, they’re right about Zone Threes being jerks.’
Seren whistled to himself, a smug expression on his face as if to prove Keraun’s point.
‘You make an empty threat. Everfire is a myth,’ Seren said as they walked to the lecture hall.
