Chapter 31: Things That Do Not Match
MARA VALE.
AGE: 14.
SIGN: GEMINI.
INITIAL REGISTRATION: RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT FOUR.
TRANSFER: WEST DISTRICT SECONDARY STABILIZATION FACILITY.
STATUS AT REGISTRATION: ALIVE. MINOR MANIFESTATION INSTABILITY.
CURRENT LOCATION: PENDING CONFIRMATION.
His mother’s record arrived during the next dark period.
AMARA VALE.
INITIAL REGISTRATION: LINDEN CENTRAL HOSPITAL.
STATUS AT REGISTRATION: ALIVE. LOW IMMEDIATE MANIFESTATION RISK.
LAST REPORTED MOVEMENT: DEPARTED WITH SOUTHWEST CIVILIAN GROUP.
CURRENT LOCATION: PENDING CONFIRMATION.
The only reassurance Marek had was that both of them had survived long enough to be registered. He knew more than he had known inside the transport. Unfortunately, he still did not know where either of them was now.
The West District school had transferred several Gemini bearers after a copied evacuation order caused two buses to arrive at the wrong facility. The records did not show which transport Mara had joined.
Their mother had apparently reached the apartment several hours after Mara left. Mrs. Dela Cruz confirmed that through a registration courier. Amara then continued searching for Mara but remained one step behind every transfer.
Meanwhile, Marek had been somewhere else entirely.
He submitted another location request.
REQUEST PENDING.
The words had remained there for almost two periods of darkness.
Marek placed the phone back inside his pocket. He had considered leaving the Exhibition Center. The thought would always return whenever the sky became dark.
Then another transport arrived with more occupied-center patients.
Medical personnel called for him. He examined the Marks. The interface confirmed what the machines could not. Then he remained for another shift.
He told himself he was staying because eighty-nine people had no one else inside the facility who could see what had happened to them.
That was true, although it did not make searching for his family any less important.
Two things could remain true at the same time. Somehow, Marek was beginning to dislike how often that happened.
Henry entered the ward carrying a box of printed forms. His Mark was hidden beneath his shirt. The occupied scale had stopped glowing continuously during the second period of darkness.
One of Marek’s occupied scales still became warm whenever another Ophiuchus carrying a related condition passed nearby.
The medical team had begun including his findings in their assessments. They trusted what he saw in the Ophiuchus Marks because the machines could not identify the occupied scales or explain what they contained.
Officially, Marek remained a registered civilian under observation.
Clara was at the opposite end of the ward, helping a nurse examine another occupied scale. Cooper remained near the medical tables under observation.
Henry placed the box on the nearest table. "You should sleep."
"I slept," Marek replied.
"When?"
Marek tried to remember. "During the previous dark period."
"For how long?"
"That was not what you asked."
"It is what I am asking now."
Marek pointed toward the box. "What are those?"
"The documents you requested." Henry rested one hand on the box. "I also checked whether any of them mentioned my son."
Marek paused. "You have a son?"
Henry stared at him. "Why do you sound surprised?"
"You never mentioned him."
"You never asked."
That was true.
"He is studying outside the country," Henry continued. "Another university. I have not received anything from him since Day 367."
"Is he Ophiuchus?"
"Yes."
Marek looked at the box again. "Then his record might not be in Linden City."
"I know."
Henry had probably known that before searching. It had not stopped him from checking anyway. Marek understood that better than he wanted to.
Unlike the other three, who could occasionally help the staff, Cooper remained classified as a patient.
Imaging confirmed a fracture near his shoulder and damage to the surrounding tissue. His temporary sling had been replaced with a proper immobilizer.
He complained about it less than Marek expected. That might have been because every complaint caused Clara to inspect one of the straps and tighten it.
Cooper remained near the medical tables under observation.
Thirteen empty scales still surrounded his black center. Nothing had entered them. His center also remained empty. The medical team checked him during every shift because of what happened to Devin and the others.
They found nothing each time.
Cooper had survived a week without his Mark taking anything. That should have been reassuring. Marek simply had no evidence that it was.
Henry removed the top document from the box and placed it on the table. The first page carried a security classification.
ROUTE EIGHT CONVOY INCIDENT.
Marek had requested the report during the second period of light. The Route Eight officer had finally sent it, probably because the investigation required Marek’s statement. Or perhaps because Marek had asked about it every time he saw someone from security.
"The officer included his own statement," Henry said.
Marek opened the report. It summarized several hours into five pages. The six detainees were still being sought, but none had been found.
The Aries detainee left the intersection before the second security group arrived. His last confirmed direction was south through the narrow street beside the pharmacy. The Taurus and Scorpius detainees used the same street after the Route Eight officer allowed them to leave. The incident summary described their movement as an unauthorized departure.
The officer’s attached statement described it as a discretionary release under unsafe containment conditions.
Both statements referred to the same event.
The Libra detainee remained near the damaged convoy until shortly before backup reached the intersection. No one saw exactly when he left.
One officer reported movement between two abandoned vehicles. Another insisted the same figure had gone behind a residential building. Neither could prove it had been him.
The Gemini detainee disappeared behind the pharmacy.
Responders later recovered a stolen radio near the rear service entrance. The casing carried several fingerprints, but most could not be matched because the detention facility’s identification records had been damaged.
No voice recording could prove who transmitted the false instructions.
That was obvious now. A recording proved only which voice had been used. Not who had spoken.
The shooter escaped farther along Route Eight.
The partial Mark seen along his arm had been classified as probable Sagittarius. Spent ammunition remained inside the pharmacy and along the road beyond it. Blood was found near a broken rear window.
No body had been recovered. The blood had not yet been identified. The first section called all six escaped detainees. A later memorandum called four of them persons of interest. Another section stated that the legal basis for their original detention remained under review.
Marek read the report twice.
"Did they find anything?" Henry asked.
"No."
"Nothing?"
"They don’t know where any of them are. They also don’t know what to call them."
Henry glanced at the pages. "That sounds familiar."
It did.
The government had classifications for people it did not understand and reports for events it could not confirm.
Marek returned the document to the table.
Beneath it was a thin notebook.
The cover had once carried the name of an insurance company. Someone had distributed several boxes after the Exhibition Center ran out of proper stationery.
Marek opened it.
The first page contained four words.
THINGS THAT DO NOT MATCH.
He had written them during the third dark period.
The list beneath those words had grown longer.
Day 367 remained the first problem.
A single clock could display the wrong date. Every monitor, phone, clock, and Meridian-connected machine displaying the same impossible date was different.
The laboratory monitors stated that the world had awakened. The Veil had reached zero percent integrity.
Earth had also been designated as a Newborn World.
Marek understood the words separately.
He did not know what they meant together.
What was the Veil?
What did Zero Percent Integrity mean?
What had awakened?
The people?
The planet?
Or something surrounding both?
Then there was the Prime Continuum.
The machines had welcomed Earth to it as though humanity had entered a place everyone else already knew.
Had Earth been moved?
Marek had crossed out the question once before writing it again.
The university had remained where it was while a forest, coastline, and unfamiliar terrain appeared beyond familiar streets. Parts of Linden City still connected normally. Others ended somewhere they should not.
If the city had not moved, then everything around it had.
Unless both had moved and nobody could measure the difference.
No trace of the Sun or Moon had been found, but the periods of light and darkness continued. Earth’s celestial position remained unresolved.
Nobody could confirm whether the planet still rotated, nor could anyone say it still orbited anything.
The clocks continued moving, but that only proved that the clocks continued moving. Then there were the Thirteen Signs. The same thirteen appeared above countries in both hemispheres. That should not have been possible if they were ordinary constellations.
The sky recognized Thirteen Signs.
The government’s first classification system recognized twelve.
Why?
Ophiuchus had not been an unknown symbol.
Government systems reacted to it. Detention personnel circulated warnings about Ophiuchus before ordinary responders understood what the Mark represented.
Someone had known enough to create instructions.
They had either excluded Ophiuchus deliberately or built the entire classification system using incomplete information.
Marek wrote both possibilities beneath the question.
Deliberate Exclusion.
Incomplete System.
Neither was reassuring.
That led to Dr. Elias Mercer.
Mercer knew about the Marks before midnight. He provided governments with instructions for Taurus, Gemini, Aries, Aquarius, and the other recognized Signs.
He had also warned them not to provoke Ophiuchus.
That much had become public through the government’s reports. Perhaps officials believed identifying the source of their information would reduce accusations that they had concealed the warning.
The reports, however, did not explain why Dr. Mercer knew.
Marek turned to the next page.
Why did Dr. Mercer know?
How long had he known?
Where did the information come from?
Henry moved closer to the table. "You think those are connected?"
Marek did not answer immediately.
Project Meridian had been hidden inside Earth’s environmental systems before Day 367. His father disappeared inside one of its underground facilities eleven years earlier.
Dr. Mercer knew what would happen before the world changed.
The government prepared for twelve Signs.
While the sky revealed thirteen.
Marek examined the questions again.
"I think they might be," he said.
Henry waited for him to continue.
Marek placed the tip of his pen beneath the final question.
The separate mysteries had continued appearing in different places. Meridian inside the laboratory equipment. His father, Tomas Vale, inside an underground facility. Dr. Mercer inside a secured government room. Ophiuchus outside the official classification system.
They had been treated as separate problems because nobody had found the connection between them. That did not mean the connection was not there.
Marek wrote one final line.
What connected Dr. Mercer, Meridian, and Ophiuchus?
The pen remained above the page.
He still did not have an answer.
At least the question was finally correct.
Marek was about to close the notebook when a voice spoke inside his mind.
He froze.
"How inconvenient. I was prepared to be bored."