by Jan Kopia
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“My name is Imara,” replied the voice.
“I can’t see you,” he said, squinting into the blinding sunlight.
Was it possible that he'd forgotten what real light felt like? Had Earth really lost so much light? He could feel movement, but it didn’t feel very human. It felt like the wind.
“Hello?”
“Do not worry, Patrick,” she said tenderly. “I am here.”
“I don’t want to sound rude,” Patrick said. “But… what are you?”
Was she smiling? Patrick thought he could feel her smile even if he couldn’t see it. “I am an ancient being,” she explained. “Born out of a sacred need.”
“A sacred need?” Patrick repeated. “What need is that?”
“The need to guard and protect,” Imara replied.
Feeling a breath of wind behind him, Patrick turned around.
She was standing before him, wearing a misty white sheath that sparkled with droplets of gold. She looked like a human, but Patrick knew she was anything but. Her features were soft, delicate and inhumanly beautiful. Her eyes were the color of molten gold and her head was a perfect sphere, free of hair. Patrick was glad of that; it would have only distracted from her great beauty.
He gasped suddenly as the light receded to reveal the huge white wings that sprung from her back. Her wings — light shone from them, as bright as the sun.
“You’re an angel,” Patrick whispered.
“One of them,” Imara confirmed.
“What are you doing here… in The Hades?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
Imara smiled. “For you,” she said simply.
Patrick felt his entire being shiver with relief. He wasn't insane. His theories, his beliefs, his chaotic stubbornness that had lost him a wife and a life partner… it hadn’t been for nothing. All those little choices and big mistakes had led him to this moment. And now, it would lead him to Tess.
“Can you help me find my daughter?” he asked.
“I can try,” she replied. “But you must help me in return.”
Patrick gazed at her incredible wings, and wondered what someone like him could possibly do for someone like her. “I don’t know if I have the power to help you,” he said.
Imara looked at him with sympathy. “You do,” she replied. “Or else you wouldn’t be here right now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ethan was making his way out of Initiative headquarters when he saw Midge coming up the pathway. She smiled when she saw him and raised her hand in greeting. “Ethan! On your way out?”
Ethan nodded. “I’ve been tasked with finding Antonia Lark.”
“Lark?” Midge replied. “Isn’t she—"
“The scientist who discovered ‘hell’,” Ethan nodded. “Yes, the Initiative board wants me to try and recruit her.”
“Recruit her?” Midge repeated. “Are they hoping she’ll have more information to share with us?”
“I think that’s the idea,” Ethan nodded. “When James Halsey made her research public, he made it clear that Doctor Lark wasn't going to release the information she'd found. The Initiative believes she might be sitting on more information, maybe something useful.”
Midge regarded Ethan for a moment. “You believe that too… don’t you?”
Ethan hesitated. “To be honest, I don’t know what I believe. But I follow orders. My orders are to try and recruit Antonia Lark. So that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“I thought the government shut down her laboratory.”
“Officially, they did,” Ethan admitted. “But they gave her permission to move her work to a different location. Apparently the Initiative has some important men and women: they just had to ask a few pointed questions to get the location of her new lab.”
“I see,” Midge said. “Well, maybe she can help us then.”
“We’ll see,” he sighed.
Midge gave him a sympathetic look. “How’s your mother?” she asked.
Ethan felt himself recoil at her question. He really didn’t want to talk about his mother today. “Fine,” he replied shortly. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to head out now.”
“Right. Of course,” Midge nodded. “Good luck.”
Ethan headed to his jeep and got into the driver’s seat. He sat there behind the wheel, trying to steady his breathing. He'd been visiting his mother the previous night, when she'd stumbled out of bed and started screaming. “Helios!” she screamed. “Please… Helios.”
He'd been at a loss as to how to handle her. Any time he tried to touch her or calm her down, she seemed to get more agitated. After hours of persistent coaxing, he'd convinced his mother to get back into bed. She'd fallen asleep at some point during the long night, and Ethan had stayed by her bedside the whole time.
There was nothing worse than the feeling of being helpless. Ethan hated not knowing what to do or say. In that way, war was simpler. You had an enemy and you fought against him until either they died or you died. It was simple and it was straightforward. Now, Ethan found himself almost wishing he were back on the ground in some foreign country. He knew what to do in those situations. He understood how to behave. He knew his purpose. He had a purpose.
Ethan hadn’t told Midge the exact truth when she'd asked about the Initiative’s orders to find and bring in Antonia Lark. The truth was, Ethan had heard talk about recruiting Lark. He'd gone to the Initiative board members and asked to be sent in to get Lark.
Ever since his mother’s strange affliction had changed his whole life, he'd been searching for an explanation. Who better than a scientist to find one? Secretly, Ethan hoped this Lark woman would be able to give him some hope. He hoped she did have information she was sitting on… information that could change the world.
Ethan started the engine of his jeep and pulled onto the road. The location he'd been given wasn't exactly around the corner. It would take him at least an hour to reach Lark’s new lab; with traffic, it might be even longer.
Ethan put on some of the old country tunes his mother listened to when she had a bad day. Ethan had never really liked this kind of music, but now it reminded him of his mother, back when she was young and vibrant.
When Ethan reached the neglected building Lark had been offered, he parked his jeep outside the gates and walked in. There was no security, and no way to stop him entering. Apparently, the government felt shutting down Lark’s facility had thrown everyone off her scent.
Ethan walked towards the building, across the wide parking lot, empty but for a single car. He felt a strange nagging in his chest. Was it nerves? Ethan found that odd. Why would he be nervous? The atmosphere around him felt heavy, and it only seemed to get heavier as he moved towards the building.
It certainly looked abandoned. Ethan pushed open the main entrance door and peered inside. The room was bare except for a small table and a few chairs that were strewn about. He was carrying a sidearm, but somehow he didn’t feel any safer with it.
He moved into the next room and found a narrow corridor that gave way to four different doors. Someone was still here; Ethan had seen the car parked out front. So where were they?
The first room he checked had an old printer and a bunch of small machines that looked like scanners. Ethan moved to the second room, which was completely empty. The third room was the same; he began to wonder if he had right building. Then he heard the sound of a creaking chair that seemed to come from just over his head.
Finding a flight of stairs, Ethan climbed them two at a time and found himself in long room was cluttered with machines, file cabinets, and a small fridge in the corner. He could hear the gentle thrum of the fridge that told him that it was currently in use. He was definitely in the right building; all the science equipment around him proved that.
So why did Ethan feel so strongly like he shouldn’t be here?
***
Rebecca and Caleb h
ad left the lab a few hours ago, but Antonia couldn’t bring herself to do the same. She felt a responsibility to stay in the lab, trying to make a breakthrough, trying to find something that would help humanity. She wanted to find something other than hell.
She was exhausted. Her eyes drooped and her body ached, but she kept herself going because she could not, would not accept defeat. At least Victoria was with her. Antonia hated being alone in the lab. It made her feel unimaginably lonely.
“Why don’t you lie down for an hour?” Victoria suggested. “You look exhausted.”
“I can’t sleep,” Antonia replied. “I have nightmares.”
“You and most of the world,” sighed Victoria.
“Do you?” Antonia asked.
“I have one recurring dream,” said Victoria. “I see myself on a throne, surrounded by dead people.”
“That sounds terrible,” Antonia said.
Victoria shrugged. “Our dreams are just reflections of our greatest dreams, hopes and fears. I tend not to dwell on mine.”
“I should do the same,” Antonia said helplessly. “My nightmares have a habit of sticking with me even after I wake up. Maybe I deserve them.”
Victoria frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve devoted my life to science,” Antonia said softly. “I’ve searched to uncover the mysteries of the universe. And the one time I stumble across a discovery, it leads to mass suicides.”
Antonia could hear those terrible screams, raised in agony. She could hear them every time she closed her eyes.
“Antonia—"
“I didn’t want that information out there,” she said, feeling her blood boiling just thinking about James. “It was premature. With everything happening in the world right now, it’s like adding fuel to the flames. All those people…”
Antonia choked on her words and couldn’t continue. Seventeen suicides had been reported in the last three days alone. All connected with the hellish sounds that Antonia and her team had found. Apparently, people wanted to see what was on the other side. Try as she might, Antonia simply couldn't understand the logic.
Victoria placed a hand on Antonia's shoulder. “You know those suicides aren't your fault, right?”
“I try to tell myself that,” Antonia nodded. “But somehow—"
“You weren't the one that released those files to the public,” Victoria said firmly. “If anyone should feel guilty, it’s him. You were trying to protect the world; James was trying to profit off of the next big story.”
“Still—”
“There will be plenty of times in the future when you'll have reason to feel guilty,” Victoria said. “Don’t waste time feeling guilty about someone else's mistakes.”
Antonia smiled. “Thank you,” she said gratefully, but her heart didn’t feel much lighter.
“Have you heard from your friend?” Victoria asked.
“Patrick?” Antonia said. “Not a word. Not for weeks.”
Victoria sat down next to her. “You were very close to him?”
“We were inseparable at one point,” Antonia admitted. “I thought we would end up married.”
Victoria nodded. “Then life got in the way?”
“No,” Antonia replied. “Our egos got in the way.”
“What happened?”
Antonia looked out through the windows towards the sky. It was sunset, and the sky should have been painted with all the familiar pastels of the fading sun, but she could only see greys. Shadows were everywhere.
“Patrick was always obsessed with quantum mysticism,” Antonia explained. “Whereas I favored a more logical approach. We wrote papers together, we argued on theories and we backed different physics heroes. It didn’t really matter at first. But one day an argument went too far. I don’t even remember what we had been arguing about. I told him he was an egotistical dreamer who would never amount to anything, and he told me I was a cold-hearted pragmatist who'd never understand the world because I was too narrow-minded.”
“Hmm,” Victoria said softly. “Looks like those words stuck with you.”
“I haven’t thought about that fight in a long time.”
“And yet you remember it so vividly,” Victoria pointed out gently.
Victoria was right. She'd worked so hard to forget Patrick in the months that followed their breakup that she'd only ever succeeded in suppressing her emotions as opposed to really feeling them.
Antonia smiled sadly. “Fair point.”
“You never made up?” Victoria asked. “After the fight?”
“We never really got the chance,” Antonia admitted. “I walked in on him with another girl.”
Victoria raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
“He told me it was a mistake,” Antonia said, remembering that moment so vividly that she felt as though she were reliving it. “He begged for my forgiveness. He told me he just wanted to be with someone who believed in him…”
She sighed. “I was so angry, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I'd always believed in him. Disagreeing with his theories had nothing to do with my belief in him. We were too young and too hurt, and after that last conversation we didn’t see each other for years.”
“Until recently?” Victoria asked.
“Until recently,” Antonia nodded.
“And what was it like? Seeing him again after so long?”
“It was strange at first,” Antonia admitted. “He looked exactly the same to me. I mean, he had changed, but when I looked into his eyes I saw that he was still the same old Patrick: a dreamer at heart.”
“It sounds like you’re still in love with him.”
Antonia shook her head. “I just never had closure with that relationship,” she tried to explain. “Patrick and I are no longer the same people we once were.”
“I can understand that…”
“You know, I spent so many years blaming him for ending our relationship,” Antonia said. “But he was right about one thing: I was never there for him, not the way he needed me to be. Maybe that’s why he went back to Diane without telling me.”
“Diane?” Victoria asked, with raised eyebrows.
Antonia looked up self-consciously. She hadn’t meant to talk about Patrick so much. “She’s the shaman who told Patrick and me about… well, you know.”
Victoria nodded. “Right.”
“He had this crazy notion about crossing over to The Hades,” Antonia continued.
“He’s brave,” Victoria said. She stood up and went over to the row of filing cabinets that held Antonia’s old research
“Patrick's always been brave,” Antonia sighed. “And he’s always been a dreamer. He used to chase after these crazy theories, hoping they were true.”
“Have you ever considered the fact that you might be the crazy one?” Victoria asked. “And Patrick might actually be on to something?”
Victoria’s back was to her, so Antonia couldn’t make out her expression. Was she just teasing, or was she being serious?
“You think The Hades actually exists?” Antonia asked incredulously.
“Oh… I know it does,” Victoria said.
Antonia frowned and concentrated on Victoria’s back. She had taken something out of one of the cabinets.
“Victoria… what are you saying, exactly?” Antonia tried to remain calm. Her heart was jumping around in her chest, and she couldn’t put her finger on why.
“Victoria?” Antonia said again, when she got no response.
“Thank you for the conversation we just shared, Antonia,” Victoria said. “It was useful to know how much you care for Patrick. It was the confirmation I needed.”
Victoria turned around slowly. There was a shiny black gun in her hand, and she was wearing an expression of detached amusement. She looked like a completely different person.
“What are you doing with that thing?” Antonia demanded.
“I’ve spent the last few millennia researching so
uls," said Victoria, "trying to discover their many secrets. I’ve learnt a lot about them.”
“Millennia?” Antonia repeated. “I… what are you talking about?”
“I have lived a very long time,” Victoria said. “I have waited an eternity for this moment.”
“Victoria? You’re scaring me,” Antonia said, feeling a heavy weight settle over her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Foolish girl,” said Victoria, sounding irritated. “You have seen so much. The truth has been staring you in the face this whole time, and still you refuse to see. The Hades is real, Antonia. The history you think is nonsense, is real. Patrick was right. You're too narrow-minded to see the truth.”
Victoria had gone insane… she had to be. How had Antonia not seen it before? What did she want?
Antonia jerked her head as she heard a sound: a vehicle pulling up outside. Antonia felt relief flood her.
“Looks like we have a visitor,” Victoria said, with a smile that made Antonia's hair stand on end. “I could stop him, but why bother? I don’t mind an audience.”
“An audience? For what?”
“Killing you,” Victoria said pleasantly.
Antonia felt nausea at the back of her throat. “You’re insane.”
“Oh, Antonia,” Victoria said, shaking her head. “You disappoint me.”
Victoria raised her hand and aimed the gun at Antonia’s head.
“Please,” Antonia said, glancing towards the door. “Someone is here… if you kill me—"
“I will be punished?” Victoria laughed. “No, I think not. Don’t be scared, Antonia. Death is not the end. Your body will die, but your soul will continue on. And I will be able to ride your soul into The Hades. I can finally finish what I started.”
Antonia could hear fast approaching footsteps. "Help!" she screamed as loud as she could. "Please, help me!"
Victoria didn’t move. She looked calm, even a little bored. “Shall we wait for him?”