Chapter 27: A Map of Scars

On the fifth day, Hitane calls a council. We sit in a circle on the rough, wooden floor of the shrine. The morning light filters through the cracks in the rotting walls, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.

We cannot stay here, she states. Her voice is firm, lacking any hesitation. We have rested. I am mobile. We need to move.

Where? Minaki asks, hugging her knees to her chest. You said nowhere is safe.

We need answers, Hitane replies. We need to know how they found us. And we need to know who is leading them.

She pulls a folded piece of paper from her pocket. It is a map of Japan, torn from a travel brochure she must have scavenged during our brief stay in the village. She has marked several spots with charcoal from our small fire. The black smudges look like bruises on the colorful paper.

I have been thinking, she says. About the Cleaners. About the tech. It is advanced. It is far beyond what should exist in this timeline.

What does that mean? I ask. I lean forward, trying to decipher the charcoal marks.

It means they are not just hunting anomalies, she says. They are anomalies. Or at least, their technology is. It is temporal tech. Stuff I have seen in futures that do not exist yet. It implies they are travelers, or they have access to a breach in the timeline that I cannot see.

She points to a mark in Tokyo. This is where the Cleaner headquarters is. Or at least, a major hub. I tracked some signal echoes there when I was searching for Juiro.

She moves her finger to another mark, deep in the mountains of Nagano. And this is a blind spot. A place where time gets fuzzy. I have never been able to look there.

A base? I ask.

Maybe. Or a prison. Or a vault.

So we go to Nagano? Minaki asks. Her voice trembles slightly. She is terrified of walking into a trap.

No, Hitane says. We go to the source. We go to the one person who might know what the Cleaners actually are.

She circles a spot on the coast, near Kyoto. It is a secluded area, far from the tourist traps we visited before.

Who is there? I ask.

A woman, Hitane says. She calls herself The Weaver. She is like us. Gifted. But she is old. Ancient. She has been hiding for fifty years. She contacted me once, in the space between. She told me to beware the Gray Men.

Why did you not go to her before?

Because she is dangerous, Hitane says seriously. She looks me dead in the eye. She is powerful. And she is unhinged. Living outside of time drives you mad eventually. But she knows the history. She knows why they hate us.

The Weaver, Minaki tests the name. It sounds like a fairy tale.

Our lives are a fairy tale, Hitane says dryly. Just the Grimm kind. The kind where the wolves eat the children.

She looks at us, gauging our reactions. It is a risk. But if we stay here, they will find us. The mist cannot hide us forever.

I look at the map. I look at the black circle near Kyoto. It feels like a destination. It feels like a purpose.

We go, I say. We find this Weaver. We get answers. And then we take the fight to them.

Hitane nods. She folds the map and tucks it back into her pocket.

Pack your things, she orders. We leave at dusk.

We gather our meager belongings. The water bottles. The few remaining berries Minaki foraged. My go-bag, which miraculously survived the jump. It is not much, but it is everything we have.

As we step out of the shrine, leaving our temporary sanctuary behind, I look back at the rotting wood. It kept us safe. It gave us time to heal. It gave me the space to learn how to tear the world apart.

But the time for healing is over. The time for hiding is ending.

We walk into the darkening forest, the Triad moving as one. We are battered. We are scarred. But we are moving forward. And the static in my head is quiet, replaced by the steady, rhythmic beat of my own heart, and the footsteps of the two women who hold it in their hands.