Lucy felt suddenly sick. She could not believe what she was hearing. At first she denied it, and again tried to take Timmy’s hand in her own. “Don’t be so silly, Timmy,” she said slowly, “you’re not from here. You have a family, with two brothers and a sister. I was your teacher. Stop playing games and come home with me.”
“Stop!” Timmy shouted. He pushed Lucy away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re mad! I have no family! Pangaea is my only family, the only family I’ve ever known! Get away from me!”
~
“Clara, Clara,” Geoffrey sobbed. He hugged her lifeless body, but felt no heartbeat against his own. “For God’s sake, wake up! Wake up! It’s not your time!”
Morris felt his eyes swell with tears.
~
It was the greatest sense of freedom Clara had felt in a long time.
The doors were finally opened, and she had stumbled down along the stairwell for a very long time, weak from her severe blood loss. Just as she reached the exit door, a fresh strength suddenly came over her: an incredibly strong surge of energy, like nothing she had felt before. She had leaped up from the floor and dashed forward along the grass. But when she glanced at down at her feet, she realized something was wrong. Her feet were bare. And her uniform had disappeared too, and its place was a plain grey dress.
She glanced behind, back towards the building, and nearly fell over in shock.
In the grass lay Geoffrey, sobbing wildly as he cradled a body in his arms.
Her body.
She darted over to Geoffrey, and shook his shoulder. “Geoffrey, it’s me!” Clara cried. “I’m right over here! I’m not dead!”
Geoffrey did not respond. He did not even seem to hear Clara’s cries, or the tug on his shoulder. “Clara, wake up!” Geoffrey begged. “Wake up, please wake up…”
Clara glanced at the body. Her own features stared back at her, pale and blue with death. The Benefactors had killed her, Clara knew. They had decided her fate, as they had done for so many other Pangaeans; they had murdered her in cold blood.
But if I’m dead, why am I still here? Clara wondered. I thought when you die, that’s it. That’s the end. But I’m still here! That doesn’t make sense!
Unless…unless I’m supposed to stay here. I’m not supposed to die yet. Imagine if she did stay—if she went back into her body, and woke up again…how horrified the Benefactors would be. How powerless they would feel. They had wanted her to die, and they believed that only they had the power to decide if she lived.
But if she proved them wrong—
If she came back to life—
~
“Timmy, please!” Lucy begged. “You’ve got to remember! Remember how things used to be: your family, your life!”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Timmy cried, covering his ears. He crouched on the floor, sobbing like a small child. “None of that’s real! If it were real, I would see it! I would know it! I can see the past, the future—visions of the infinite. Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know the Truth!”
Lucy did not understand what Timmy was saying. It sounded like the ramblings of a madman. “I don’t know what you mean by that, Timmy, but I will say this: only One Being is meant to glimpse the infinite. You’re not meant to see those things, Timmy…it’s too great a burden for our mind to bear. It’s too much. Let it go. Leave that burden to God, Timmy. Set yourself free.”
~
Morris had never prayed in his life. If God was real, Morris decided, then how could He allow such suffering and pain to happen to such innocent people? God must not be real. And if He was real, He was very cruel and heartless, and Morris wanted nothing to do with Him.
But now the bitterness had left Morris’s heart; as he stared at Clara’s lifeless body, a sense of desperation had overcome him. He felt as powerless as he had that day when he had nearly thrown himself on the train tracks, ready to kill himself, ready to end his time in this horrible, cruel world. But someone had rescued him, cast him back from the brink of death.
Who would save Clara?
Without thinking, Morris’s hand folded atop his other.
Only One could save her now.
If He was even real…
Should Morris even try to ask?
~
Timmy’s tears continued to flow, his chest heaving with sobs. What did this strange lady want from him? He had never seen her before in his life, and here she was begging him to leave with her, telling him that everything he knew was a lie…that all those visions he had seen were a possibility, but not fixed reality. The fate was not his to decide, much less see, the lady said, and the mind was simply not designed to stare into infinity.
She was right.
The visions were beginning to drive Timmy mad.
Every night he had terrible dreams of falling into an endless black pit, and even when he woke, the dread would haunt him throughout the day. The terror did not just affect him, though; he had also seen it happening to some of his older friends here, in their late teen years. At first they would begin mumbling to themselves for several weeks, and then they would begin awakening in the night, screaming hysterically for help. Soon after, they would disappear from the center. And Timmy knew it was just a matter of time before the visions overtook his own sanity—unless he could find some way to remove the atomic reading ability.
But how?
And why should he trust this strange woman to help him?
~
“You don’t have to face this alone, Timmy,” Lucy pleaded. “Give the burden over to God! He is the only One meant to see the infinite! He can save you…if you only call to Him…”
~
“Lord!” Morris cried. “Bring Clara back! It’s not her time! It can’t be her time! Please bring her back! I beg of You!”
~
Timmy gave a cry, as though in sudden deep pain, and lifted his hands above his head. “Take it!” he shouted. “Take it! I don’t want to be a slave anymore! If You’re real, if You’re there, set me free from this pain, from this madness! I beg of You, set me free!” And as Lucy reached for his hand, he did not pull away this time.
~
Clara gave a sudden gasp, and began to cough.
As she drew several more breaths, the grey cheeks grew more pink. Where the new life was coming from, Geoffrey did not know; and he did not even care.
She was alive.
Epilogue.
It had been a difficult day for Dr. Gilac, and he would be more than happy to see the sun set on these stresses. Maybe tomorrow he would ask the old man about sending Clara to work in one of the factories, instead of forcing her to continue atomic readings. He slowly began to build the argument in his mind: The ability faded with age, and Clara was getting older now, but she had done so much to help the Benefactors, the least they could do was to give her a decent life…
Suddenly his car jerked to a halt in front of the research center. The doors of the buildings had all been opened, and people were wandering about confusedly. Dr. Gilac flung open his car door and ran towards a girl seated on the front steps of the main building. He recognized her as that girl Bertie, from Clara’s group. “What happened here?” he demanded.
Bertie looked up at him. “You haven’t heard? A power outage came—no one knows how. Two people escaped: Clara, and a boy named Timmy. They left with some other people. No one knows who they were. And they forgot me.” She laughed bitterly, and shook her head. “They always forget. Always.”
Dr. Gilac shook his head disappointedly. Wherever Clara had gone to, he hoped it was somewhere happier—somewhere safer than here. Goodness knew, he had thought many times of leaving this place, and going somewhere else; he had dreamed about it more times than he could count. But he had grown so accustomed to these four walls, he could hardly think of living anywhere else. As far back as he could recall, he had always been here, safe in the arms of Pangaea, raised in the protective shadow of the Benefactors.
A paper crumpled beneath his shoe, and Dr. Gilac glanced downward. It was folded, so that he could not read most of it, but he could read the title MISSING PERSON. Someone must have dropped it in the confusion of the Escape. But this poster was yellowed and crinkled with age, likely at least several decades old. I wonder how such an old poster came to be here, Dr. Gilac wondered, reaching for the paper. He unfolded it, and read the name in full.
Brian Gilac.
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