I stare at the spirits, feel everything slacken. Why aren’t they killing them? I blast more power into them, more commands, and I think they get through, because the energy leaves me, and I feel them take it.
But the spirits don’t do anything.
“Your power ruined them. It was only that which was keeping them stable,” Raleigh yells, and he yells it with glee as another spirit explodes, a fracturing mess of orange and purple. And then more are…more and more and….
Their pain, I feel their pain.
Corin yells, then he’s stumbling back, a bloody gash on his face—a gash from the spirit, the spirit chasing him. I try to turn after him, to help him, but icy fingers grab me, yank me with them.
Save us!
The New World!
You Promised!
We’re dying!
Get us there now!
But I—I don’t know how, and I try to tell them that and—
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Corin trying to fend two spirits off. He’s on his back, blood everywhere and—
Panic fills me.
She lied! a spirit snarls.
And—and they all turn on me. The ones left, the ones exploding, sharp glass digging into me.
Blood. Everywhere.
Liar. Liar. Liar.
She used us!
I turn, heart pounding.
The Enhanced Ones are all around us, so many—rising, standing, because they’re free of attack, and there are still plenty alive, and the spirits are—
Raleigh grabs me. His hands latch onto my head. The power-transference channel flares, bright lights in my eyes and—
My powers are everywhere, the anchors aren’t tight. They rip free and move as Raleigh calls to them, as he calls to them using my own powers—the ones he already has.
My powers move like a swarm, twisting, falling, and—
They’re going to him.
To Raleigh.
I scream, jolt, breathing hard. My fingers go for his face—but my powers, they don’t stop. He’s pulling them, and darkness replaces them.
He seizes another power, and his hands burn into my skull, feel like it’s compacting the bone, leaving impressions and—
He uses it.
I feel it.
I see it, see what he sees as he—
A crack down the spirit wall.
The crack grows, bigger and bigger.
The spirit wall breaks.
Enhanced pour in.
Spirits hiss.
Esther runs, Toivo in her arms. Viktoriya shrieks.
Taras and the other herders scream, jolt into action and—
Hands grab them. Mirrors glisten. Augmenters flash and—
I jolt, pull back from Raleigh—stare at him. He’s still, concentrating, power flaring from him.
Pain rages through my head—but the channel, the channel’s inactive now. Stopped. No more transference. I’ve still got some of my powers—less than I had, but some and—
Stop him! Attack him!
But the Enhanced—they’re already there! Inside! He’s used my powers. Broken into my settlement, to let his men in to convert my people.
I jolt.
Conversion.
He’s converting them. Converting or killing.
Only me and Corin left.
Two Untamed.
Unless one of my people at the settlement kills an Enhanced One.
Then it’s just me.
It’s over.
“No!” I scream. And all the Sarrs inside scream with me.
Energy surges, cuts across the sky. I find them, and they’re my map, they ground me and—
I pull their threads, I bring them here. All the Untamed.
My Untamed. My people, everywhere. They hold guns, each other, whatever they were holding when the Enhanced Ones struck.
Esther cradles Toivo to her chest, her eyes are wide, pulsing. Bea’s right behind her, with Viktoriya and two Zharat women.
Raleigh takes a step back. He looks at them. He looks at me.
I look around.
New Kimearo’s Enhanced are all around us. The spirits are weak flashes, the ones who haven’t exploded, and—
I’ve brought my people out of one attack into another—because that’s all it can be, can’t it? I stare at my people, all of us, silent. It’s stopped raining.
No one moves.
I see Siora and Quinn—see how much they look like Corin. My head spins. They have to look like Corin. Raleigh has to be lying.
Two men and two women step forward, Untamed eyes wide.
“We surrender,” the woman with the dark hair cries. “We don’t want to—”
A flash of black hair shoots past me. A glimpse of a pale arm and a gun.
Elf, running. Running at an Enhanced man with tattooed biceps who stands to Raleigh’s right.
“You,” Elf growls, his voice lower than I’ve ever heard him. “You killed Keelie, and you lived.” He lifts his gun up.
“No!” I shriek, diving forward and—
Elf pulls the trigger.
The bullet enters the Enhanced man’s chest.
A second passes, and I watch him fall. See the blood.
No.
No.
No.
The air shimmers.
Raleigh laughs.
I look at the Untamed around me. No one’s moved.
Not even the spirits. Everyone’s still.
No one’s fallen? No Untamed are dead?
I turn to Corin. He stares back at me, starts to mouth something.
I turn slowly. Look at all the Untamed. All still standing, hearts still beating.
It—it wasn’t true? It was made up? Raleigh’s curse wasn’t even true?
Then Corin makes a choking sound.
And all the Untamed drop down, dead.
I am screaming, screaming so much. Screaming words over and over and over. Words that have no meaning, that are nothing, that are not words. How can words exist in this?
No.
No.
No.
“Well,” Raleigh says. “We have a clear winner. The question is, Shania, are you going to die now to end the war or do you want to be saved? Do you want to let your daughters live?”
He holds his arms out, and Siora and Quinn are by his side. So suddenly, as if they were already there.
Siora and Quinn.
They’re not dead? Not included in the curse.
But Corin—he’s… They shouldn’t be here. They can’t be born.
Siora’s words flash through me: We’d disappear at the point at which we’re no longer viable—not before.
They’re still viable? My blood runs cold.
No. No. No.
Siora stares forward glassily. Quinn looks anywhere but at me.
Raleigh. His children. Not Corin’s, not—
Siora’s vision was the lie. My heart pounds.
“I never cursed them,” Raleigh says, and he hands them each something: an augmenter. Quinn grabs hers and swallows it before I even register what she’s doing. Mirrors slide over her eyes. Raleigh smiles. “I wouldn’t do that to the people I love.”
The people he loves. His daughters? No….
No, it’s because they’re from the future. That’s all. He couldn’t include them in his curse. That’s all it means.
It has to mean that. Nothing else. Because they’re Corin’s….
But Corin’s dead—I try not to look at his body, but I can’t help it. They can’t be born in the future. They shouldn’t still be alive…
No.
Rage fills me. It’s his poison, his evil. Because it’s him, and he—all of them—is what is wrong. They’re all that are left. Because I’m the last. The last Untamed alive.
They just have to kill me, and the war’s over.
Raleigh steps nearer. “A life with me? With your family?” His voice is like a slug that leaves a slimy trail over my skin. “I’ll give you a future—l
imited, of course, for I don’t want you suffering for too long and the war does need to end—but I’ll give you your daughters. Just like I’ve seen. Because this isn’t going to be a war now. Not with only you left… See, Shania, I still want to save you. Even after everything, I want to help you to be happy before you die.”
He continues talking, but I can’t hear his words. They rise up and over me, miss me, drip their slime elsewhere. Slime… I frown. There’s something about the slime that’s….
I blink.
There’s a gun in front of me. Corin’s gun. It’s on the ground, half in a puddle, next to his body.
I look at Raleigh.
He’s going to die.
All the Enhanced are.
The war’s not over yet. I’m still alive. And I choose humanity’s memory over the Enhanced.
My powers try to guide me, but I push them back.
My body buzzes as I pick up Corin’s gun, as I shake the water off it.
Raleigh tilts his head to one side as I point it at him. He’s still talking, but then he stops. His mirrors widen, and I see myself. See the fire inside me, the Sarrs.
Raleigh laughs. “You are not a killer.”
“You don’t know what I am.”
The bullet enters his stomach. He didn’t even try to stop it. Too shocked?
Quinn and Siora scream, and Siora drops her augmenter. She hasn’t taken it.
I fire again and again at Raleigh, then the Sarrs inside me take over, directing power through me—power that springs back to me, the powers Raleigh took, the transference channel working in my favor—and energy rips out of me, just like it did for the Stone Seers. There has to be death. There’s so much power, power I’ve still got, and the energy doesn’t run out. It keeps going and going and going.
“He’s dead!” Siora yells, and she’s yelling at me, her eyes still Untamed, but her voice is strange, and I can’t work her out. Or Quinn. They’re still here? Corin and Raleigh are both dead. But my head pounds, and I can’t think. There’s just too much and—
Quinn’s saying something to me, and I stare at her, watch her lips move and her mirror eyes flash. Mirrors. She chose them. Chose him?
No. It’s the addiction.
Who’s their father?
“That’s her! Kill her.”
My head jerks up.
Two section leaders come for me. I see them, their figures silhouetted in bright light. All that remains of the Enhanced Ones’ world leadership.
My powers turn on them; golden threads unravel. The whole Section, dead.
Bullets enter me, but they do nothing, mean nothing, and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m too strong, my powers too big.
Shrieks and screams fill the world, fill everything.
Save me! a spirit, so suddenly in front of me. You promised you’d save us!
“I can’t,” I whisper, and it’s true. There’s nothing left. Not of me. Not of my being.
I fall next to Corin’s body, the air gone from mine. His eyes are open. But he’s not here.
He’s gone.
Gone….
I gulp. The Spirit Releasing Words. They need to be said. They have to be said. The New World, he has to get there.
I force myself to sit up, to say the words—a whisper that gouges holes deep inside me—as I make the gestures over his body. What about the others?
I turn and look—look at all the dead Untamed.
So many and….
I can’t… They’ll understand, won’t they?
I reach out. Corin’s hand. I just need to touch him one last time.
I hear a voice.
How did you do it? Taras asks.
Viktoriya—her face, in front of me, blooming from Taras’s question. But there’s something else too, something pushing its way into my mind….
Pressure against my head, my body—my throat, it’s being squashed, and pain, pain around my jaw, my neck, my chest. Dominika’s body is heavy—we’re sinking… And—and I can’t feel her, she’s not moving.
Her heart is….
Take full control!
Something buckles through me and—
I can’t breathe, taste something sour. I thrash my arms and legs, but they’re hers, and she’s heavy. Short limbs, and—
And then her heart is my heart, and it’s beating, and her lungs are burning, and I fight against the water, turn my head, look up. Pain nuzzles down my spine and back—lots of backache and—
The memory is like teeth, teeth cutting into me. I gasp, and I—
I’ve got to get out. Got to get her out. And I know I shouldn’t still be alive—that Dominika shouldn’t be…not in this icy water…but Seer powers, it has to be.
My powers….
Remember, my mother says.
But she’s gone. They all have.
He has.
Corin.
He’s gone.
Everyone is….
My powers swell as I scream. A sphere of light inside me, so hard and beautiful. My powers—my powers, nearly whole now, becoming so much more together. I feel them, the powers Raleigh used—but so many that he didn’t, that he couldn’t, that he didn’t understand. A strand pushes itself forward into the outer shell of the sphere. Time-manipulation. I recognize it, I know it. No. Vala knows it. She’s inside me. It’s hers. Her power. How I saw her before, when I died…though she’d been dead for so long.
And Raleigh had that? He said he used that power to bring Siora and Quinn here, but it’s untouched by him. Vala guarded it well, and the power wants to bloom.
Let it, Vala whispers.
The silver thread intumesces, pushes against my powers, until the walls dissolve, and the core—my core—is exposed. Her power wraps around my essence, my being, molding to me, anchoring, like it’s finally home. Like it’s mine.
The outer shell of the sphere vibrates faster, brighter. Energy inside thrashes to get free, to reach out.
It breaks.
Fractures, everywhere. An explosion of my soul, and every star inside me shatters until there’s nothing and everything left.
I am floating in a void with a thousand voices, a world without a world, as I look down on the Enhanced. On them living.
Darkness fills me, overthrows me, climbs inside me, and I can’t see. Panic rises in me, and I don’t understand… Those words, the shape inside me—the world—bursting out, a wholesome shape that stretches around everything.
Death. This has to be death.
I am dead.
There’s nothing here.
But what about hope?
“Yes,” a voice says. An Untamed voice, so loud.
My mother.
I am next to her, I am back among the remains of New Kimearo, and then I am crying more and more, my arms around her. Because she’s here. No longer gone. Here.
She sniffs, and she’s crying, and I’m crying.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, pulling back a little. She pushes my hair away from my face, uses her thumbs to wipe my tears away. “Baby, it’s okay.”
Her words are an ocean that takes me, and time seems to stop as I stare at her, and I can’t stop staring, can’t—
She turns, eyes widening. The air snaps around us. Something bangs and echoes around us and—and they’re moving. Rising up. The dead. Hordes of writhing bodies just rising. The actual bodies.
“What is…” My words get lost as I stare. They’re everywhere, power radiating off each one. All Untamed. And the Lost Souls. All of us.
What the—
I feel them. Like they’re me. Like I am them. The same lives and hopes and dreams and secrets and loss, each one cradled around me and my beating heart.
I jolt—my body jolts. I have a body. A heart beating, strong, firm.
My powers are a thousand smashed stars, all around me, spinning out until the people are here—the people I saw.
Everywhere.
“Resurrection,” my mother says, and her voice twists aro
und me, takes me back, pushes me back to where I was, anchors the powers back inside me, and I keep her strong.
I blink. I am sitting on wet earth, slick with blood. I stare at it, and—
Corin sits up.
I scream, jolt back, stare at him, inhale too sharply, pain in my lungs, in everything.
But my hand— my hand is painful, the skin broken—the hand I touched him with.
My eyes widen.
I… I touched his hand.
“Sev… what is…” He looks around, then his eyes harden.
I follow his gaze.
Raleigh’s body.
But more than that.
Hundreds of us. Untamed. Men and women, most I don’t recognize. They’re here. All of them, from all lines, all times. Those who were Lost Souls before and—
“Enhanced!” a voice cries, and I hear gunshots—as if my hearing has been turned back on, thanks to the shout. That one word, designed to ingrain fear in every single one of us.
Every single one.
I look around, look with my powers.
The number’s still growing. It’s me. Resurrection. I’m still resurrecting them. My powers, it’s all I’m doing—because I’ve got those powers back from Raleigh, and they’re slotting together, speaking in a way they can only speak inside me. Speaking to others, to life and death, and the transference channel’s fallen in with the effort of the resurrection—but it’s okay, because I have enough power now, don’t I? I keep resurrecting.
More and more Untamed materialize here, from nowhere, and I’m not even trying to do it. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but my powers flow out in thousands of broken shards, and they find the Untamed who were here in the war, and they bring them back. And the pieces of my powers come back to me.
They’re everywhere.
I’m the whole world, with them.
The Untamed are fighting. They’re killing the Enhanced. It’s not me killing. It’s them. I saved them.
The savior.
“Where’s the gun?” Corin’s voice.
I turn, jump as I see how close he is, and I don’t know how I’d forgotten he was there. But I… I don’t know where the gun is. I rub my head.
A hand grasps mine.
“Taras?” I stare at him.
They’re back…they’re all back.
“Don’t let go of the connections or your powers,” Taras whispers. “You’re still resurrecting, repopulating the world with Untamed. Bring us all back, and your powers will save us. If you can bring everyone back, we will outnumber the remaining Enhanced and win this war.”
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