The Nexus by Vered Ehsani

Author:Vered Ehsani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone

CHAPTER 25

“Followed?” Zawadi repeated, the word hollow in her ears.

Nyuki’s grim expression told her she’d heard perfectly. Zawadi remained seated. Her head started swimming as an unnamable fear crept up her spine and then clenched around her muscles to freeze her in place.

Choma yawned. “Really? You learned that from makin’ mud?”

“Is it those two with the guns?” Pinga asked. “It is, isn’t it? I knew they were trouble. Probably working for Medicor. Told you they were evil, Choma! Joshua’s definitely with them.”

“We don’t know that …” Zawadi focused on her breathing, forcing the panic out of her limbs. She had to get up. Move. Escape whatever was coming for them.

Choma finally stood, pushing himself against a tree. “Yeah. We kinda do. Suspicious white dude. He shows up. They show up. Him and them, they’re together. It’s called logic.”

“It’s called prejudice,” Zawadi argued, even as she wondered why she felt the need. Maybe Choma and Pinga were right. What did she know about Joshua, anyway?

“Quiet,” Nyuki snapped, and she didn’t sound crazy anymore. She sounded like a general issuing a command, fully expecting total obedience. “Zawadi, help me.”

“What can I—”

“Focus,” Nyuki said, looming over her. “Focus on the Kuvu.”

Choma caught Zawadi’s gaze and made the universal sign for crazy person.

“Hey!” Zawadi said when Nyuki leaned over, grabbed her hand and pushed it into the soil. The frozen spell ended.

“Ask the Kuvu to cover our tracks,” Nyuki ordered, her voice hard, uncompromising, impatient.

“What? How—”

Nyuki tapped the club end of the rungu against Zawadi’s pendant. “Step outside your brain’s barriers. Feel the energy. The connections. They’re everywhere. You are part of it. We all are.”

“Is this like a Star Wars thing?” Pinga asked. “It definitely has a feel-the-Force vibe.”

“Nah.” Choma shook his head. “She’s eaten too many of her own mushrooms.”

Zawadi’s gaze skipped to Sidonka. What she saw frightened her even more than the thought of the two gunslingers following them. He looked asleep but his eyelids fluttered as if staying awake was a struggle. His skin was gray and waxen. He looked small and frail. So unlike the man who’d raised her. She always thought of him as a confident ranger moving through the forests with the same ease he would move about his house.

Nyuki crouched again, digging her fingers into the soil and letting sticky grains trickle out of her grip. “The Forgetful don’t see the connections. But we do.”

“By we,” Choma asked, “she means—”

“No idea,” Zawadi said, eyes tearing up at the quaver in her voice.

A flash of lightning startled her. Except it wasn’t coming from the sky. It was coming out of Nyuki’s hand, leaking out with the moist, rich soil.

“There it is again,” Zawadi whispered.

Nyuki almost smiled. More of the lightning-like Kuvu zipped across her skin, shooting along her arm.

“What’s there?” Pinga asked.

Zawadi crouched, her gaze following the Kuvu as it skittered across the earth.

“That.” Zawadi pointed to the network zapping across the forest floor. “Right there. Same as in her house. Can’t you see it? Like lightning or …” She glanced at Sidonka.

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