Chapter 75 Mallory Plantation—Elliott #3
His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “The destruction felt distant. As if it belonged to another world.”
Silence settled for a moment before the next question came, quieter now.
“What did you observe?” she asked. “What did you perceive after drinking the water? What sounds did you hear?”
“Everything changed,” he said softly.
“The moment the water touched my tongue, the world sharpened and softened at the same time. Colors deepened—greens richer, blues brighter. I could hear things I hadn’t noticed before: the low hum of the earth beneath my feet, the whisper of wind threading through stone, birds calling to one another in voices that sounded almost like words.
It wasn’t loud. It was layered—like music built from breath, water, and time itself.
And underneath it all was a feeling—not joy, not fear—but belonging.
As if the land had opened its eyes and decided I was meant to be there. ”
“Did it feel like a jungle?”
He shook his head. “The vegetation was thick, but it wasn’t a thicket or a jungle. I could have walked anywhere.”
“Did the trees reach to the top of the cavern?” Sophia asked as she sketched tall trees.
Elliott glanced up as if he could see to the top of the cavern’s ceiling. “Almost.”
“Then what happened?”
“I kept walking until I reached a small amphitheater with a semicircle of standing stones.”
“Had you ever seen the stones before?” Sophia asked, drawing a sketch of an ancient amphitheater. “What did they look like?”
“The scene resembled half of Stonehenge, and a one-person bench cut out of the rock faced the stones. I sat and waited. After several minutes, or hours, or days, I couldn’t tell, a gong sounded, sending a wavelike succession of deep and earthy tones through the amphitheater.”
“Were you startled?”
“No. I was curious and waited patiently.”
“What happened next?” Sophia sketched Elliott sitting on a rock bench.
“Five-robed figures appeared and stood in front of the standing stones. I stood out of respect, not because I was told to rise. Vivica stood in the middle. The others had hoods covering their faces.”
“Could you tell if they were men or women?”
“No, but I assume they were women because of what I’d heard about the Elders. I tried to walk closer, but an invisible wall stopped me.”
“Was that to keep you from them, or to keep you in a safe environment?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the Elder’s backdrop match what was in your environment?”
Elliott squinted, looking through his memory bank for an answer. “It looked like they were in the same place.”
“Describe the five-robed apparitions. Were they tall, short, or did they have feet or hands? Did Vivica look the same or different?”
“She was a head taller and looked older than the last time I saw her.”
“What about the other four? Were there any distinguishing characteristics?”
Elliott closed his eyes, shutting out the room, the faces, chairs, and walls. He reached inward instead, toward the memory. When he spoke, his voice was quieter—less certain. “I’m not sure there was anyone inside the robes.”
A pause followed—brief but deliberate. “We’ll come back to that,” Sophia said gently. “What did you ask Vivica?”
Elliott exhaled, slow and controlled. “I asked for the return of James Cullen’s sperm—the samples they harvested.”
The reaction was immediate. A collective intake of breath rippled through the room. No one spoke. No one needed to.
“And what did she say?”
His jaw tightened. “Vivica said they couldn’t return it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we might fail.”
“At what?”
Elliott opened his eyes then. “The destruction I described earlier wasn’t part of my journey into the light,” he said slowly. “Or perhaps it was—and they erased it from my memory the moment I witnessed it.”
Silence deepened, heavy and expectant.
“Why would they do that?”
“Because Vivica’s culture,” Elliott continued, “is what survives in the aftermath. What remains after the world breaks.” His voice grew steadier, more certain with each word. “They are trying to preserve humanity—if not as we know it, then as something altered. Enduring.”
A shiver passed through the room.
“And what is our role in that?” Sophia asked. “Why us?”
Elliott didn’t hesitate. “To stop the catastrophic global event.”
The words landed like a tolling bell.
“And what is that?” Sophia pressed. “Or when does it happen?”
The weight of inevitability settled fully onto his shoulders now.
“She wouldn’t tell me when or if it’s from an environmental disaster, a nuclear holocaust, a pandemic, an artificial intelligence takeover, or even a Zombie apocalypse. She was silent on when and why.” He slowly rubbed his fingertips over his forehead again.
“She said she and Erik concocted the story that they were aliens, hoping that if we believed they were from another planet, we wouldn’t follow them. But if we knew they were from the future, we might go forward in time and possibly set off a chain of events we couldn’t control.”
“Why do you think Vivica allowed you to see the destruction and then blocked it from your memory?”
“If I had seen it, I’m not sure I would have listened to anything she had to say. But now I know the assignment. I know what can happen if we don’t put plans in place to stop that global event.”
“But we don’t know what or when?” Sophia sketched a picture of calmness, with a fireball in the background.
Elliott sat back and clasped his hands, and his thumb massaged his palm, round and round. “Isn’t it enough to know it will happen? Isn’t it enough to know we have a job to do? We have accumulated a war chest. Now we must figure out how to use it.”
Sophia sketched a picture of a golden path leading to the sun, with a cutoff that led to destruction. “What else did she tell you?”
“Several things,” he said, his voice fraying at the edges, worn thin by exhaustion, “but they’ll have to wait. This old man is exhausted, and so are our invalids. We can pick this up later.”
The words should have settled the room. They didn’t.
Skye reached for a notepad. The pen scratched across the page—loud, insistent, each stroke echoing in the hush. She tore the slip free and slid it to Sophia.
“Skye wants to know,” Sophia said, glancing down at the note that had been passed across the table, “whether you mentioned her mother to Vivica—and if you asked whether they’d been friends.”
Elliott didn’t think, didn’t measure the words against the hurt they might cause. They burst from him raw, unchecked. “Sheena was Vivica’s sister,” he said. “Just like Verdandi.”
The room froze.
Skye’s gasp broke the air wide open—a sound too piercing for its size. She shoved back from the table. Chair legs screeched against the carpet. Her chair toppled to the floor as she stood. All heads turned.
For a heartbeat, she just stood there, shaking.
Her breath came quick, uneven, the color draining from her face before rushing back in a hot flush.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the table, knuckles white.
“Violet and my mother were sisters?” Her voice stumbled through disbelief. “How is that even possible?”
Sophia’s eyes darted to Elliott. Her tone softened, but her grip on the pencil stayed steady. “Elliott,” she said quietly, “how many sisters do you believe Vivica had?”
The question struck with a strange physical weight, low in his chest. Heat crawled up his neck. He could feel everyone waiting—the tension in the air almost humming. His pulse thudded like a slow warning drum. “Four,” he said at last, too fast, the word cracking the silence.
Sophia only nodded, her expression unreadable, and angled toward her sketchpad again. “Sheena and Verdandi,” she said while her hand moved in sweeping arcs. “Who were the other two?”
The faint scratch of graphite against paper filled the pause. Elliott watched her draw, the movement of her wrist hypnotic. “I don’t know,” he admitted. His eyes burned from holding back exhaustion, emotion—the cynical need to know clashing with the boyish panic of not knowing enough.
Sophia kept working, lines taking form under her hand. After a few minutes, she turned the paper toward him. Five women stared up from the page, their expressions hauntingly calm, their eyes unfinished. “Who are the sisters?” she asked.
Elliott hesitated, fingertips tracing the edge of the drawing as if touching it might burn him. His throat tightened. He swallowed once before answering. “Vivica,” he began quietly, “Sheena, Verdandi, my mother Aileen, and—” He broke off, the name catching somewhere between breath and revelation.
Sophia’s pencil stilled. “The last one?” she said softly, coaxing.
Elliott’s hand trembled as he slid the paper across to Meredith.
Meredith studied it for a long moment. Her gaze lifted slowly, finding his. Her expression changed—shock fading into realization, then into something gentler, almost reverent. “Jamilyn MacKlenna McCabe,” she said, voice hushed but full of wonder. “Kit’s mother—my six-times-great-grandmother.”
The words lingered in the air like a drawn breath, the truth finally settling between them—fragile, vast, and undeniable.
The room swayed a fraction. “Our ancestors were Elders, Mere, and they chose to live among us. That’s why it looked like the robes were empty.”
Meredith gasped. “Vivica is the only surviving Elder.”
“How did ye know who they were, Sophia?” Elliott asked.
“You knew. I only saw the faces through your eyes.” Sophia reclaimed the sketch of the five women and added color. “Elliott, what color were the eyes of the woman in the barn that day?”
He took a deep breath. “Deep, bluish-purple—violet.” Then, before anyone could stop him, he turned, shoulders bowed, and left the room, tears streaming down his face like the ten-year-old boy in the barn.