Free Exile (The Oneness Cycle) by Rachel Starr Thomson Page A

don’t.”
    April considered this. “Why are you here?” she asked.
    “For companionship,” Teresa said. “I do not think you are going to die. But you will—you are already—experiencing a little of dying. At such times, it is good not to be alone.”
     
    * * *
     
    Reese followed the cliff paths for hours that night, not sleeping. The lack of sun made her still-damp clothes grow colder and clammier, and by the time the sun rose, she was sore, shivering, and bruised from stumbling and tripping through the dark. Somehow her feet remembered the way. She caught sight of the blacktop highway in the early morning light and gladly dragged herself out to the side of the road, raising a thumb and finding that she was too tired to care about how stupid it was to hitchhike alone.
    So alone.
    There was little traffic on the road. Those cars that did pass ignored her. Too tired to hold memories or thoughts at bay, she swam in the misery of the last week and all it had meant—drowned in the pain of alienation. The scenes played themselves out over and over again. The words spoken, the growing gulf between her heart and those of her companions, her actions that she couldn’t take back, their actions that she couldn’t forget. Stab after stab after boot after weight dragging her, pulling her down.
    It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Oneness was never, ever supposed to turn on itself.
    A battered Ford station wagon passed, slower than some of the other vehicles, and Reese leaned forward, making herself more visible, hoping to inspire compassion. The car kept going.
    When it had first started happening, she had told herself they were all just tired, weary from a mission that was frustratingly hard. She just had to forgive it, and she needed them to forgive her.
    She dashed tears away with the back of her eyes. No one was going to pick her up if she stood there crying like a fool.
    They’d said it was her fault. If she hadn’t held so doggedly to her course, if she’d listened to them, if she had been willing to be wrong. They were right. They had to be right—otherwise the Spirit would not have allowed this. And yet, looking back, she did not know what other course she could have taken. She’d followed the voice she believed was the voice of Oneness, the voice of the Spirit, believing she was the one with ears to hear and the others should follow, as they had always followed, as they had always acted as one even when some could not see, or hear, or understand. She’d believed they would act in trust. In faith. As Oneness always did.
    There had been twelve of them, all from the city cell in Lincoln where Reese had been trained and spent most of her life. They had been sent out together on a mission to break up a hive, a grouping wherein the demonic had become centralized and taken control of human beings in a mocking facsimile of unity. But the hive was bigger and more dangerous than they’d realized going in, and they were fighting in the dark on so many levels. Then finally Reese had heard. She was a thousand times sure she had heard: she knew what to do, how to attack to break the hive’s power. Where to find the demonic core that powered it. She had told the others, but many hesitated. They thought she was wrong. She asked them for trust. They started going out together, making small forays, attacking according to Reese’s lead. It didn’t seem to have any effect, but she was sure this was the right way to go. The results would come if they were just faithful.
    One night she took two of the others, and they went out and made an attack that became a bloody, vicious battle. An ambush. One of the three crossed over. Reese knelt by his side, clutching his hand, saying the words of crossing as his soul left his body. She swore fealty and revenge while their third companion still fought. Then Reese took up her sword and together, the two vanquished their foe. They believed they had broken the power of the hive in