by E. J. Mellow
He laughs coldly. “Oh, I died a very long time ago. This will be my resurrection.”
My heart pounds violently against my rib cage as I listen to each of his insane words, my adrenaline swirling my internal energy to near bursting as I search around for all the possible ways out of this.
“Twenty minutes,” Tim whispers by my knees. “I can try and get a shot.”
I hold my hand out, telling him no. I don’t want to risk it just yet.
“But I’ve decided to give you a gift,” Aaron goes on. “I’m giving you a way out of this.”
I wait for his next game.
“I’m going to leave the fate of all of this with you, our dear Dreamer. For isn’t that your destiny?” With a flourish he pulls out a remote, the remote, and holds down a button. Dev begins to slowly lower, drawing nearer and nearer to the Source. My heart stops.
“You can save your love, get out with enough time for you both to live, or stop this whole place from blowing.”
My hands grip the balcony’s railing for support as I watch Dev, the world teetering off kilter. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve placed a deactivator under one of the desks in the outer monitoring ring,” he says. “If you leave now, you can find it and stop these from going off, but unfortunately you won’t make it back in time to save him. But stay and save Dev, you’ll only have time to get as far away as you can before the bombs go off. Just say the word, and I’ll stop lowering him.” Aaron’s mouth curves to the side, the devil standing in checkmate. “The choice is yours, Molly. Dev or Terra, but you better choose quickly, for time is running out.”
With a push, Aveline makes a run to the door behind us while shooting at Aaron, but Aaron merely ducks behind the balcony’s wall, and suddenly Dev’s ascent quickens.
“Aveline, stop!” I yell, and she skids to a halt. Dev’s movement returns to its previous pace. Her eyes are wide, terror stricken, and panicked as she glances to her partner.
“No more of that,” Aaron says while hesitantly standing. “This is Molly’s choice, and hers alone. If any more of you move, you’ll only force her to make her decision quicker.”
I want to cry, scream, lay to waste every ounce of the man in front of me as my mind races for a solution, the energy inside me shooting like fireworks with my indecision, and I can almost see it coming off me in heat waves. If I don’t leave now, I will destroy a world trying to save Dev, but if I go for the detonator… I hold back a scream of frustration. My soul can’t take that option. I glance to Dev, watch as his gaze scans the Source below him as it gets forever closer, his body trying to pull against the binds, lift himself away. And then in a weird pausing of time, he looks up to me and stops struggling, his body going limp. With tears pooling in his eyes, he nods, understanding and forgiveness swimming in the blue depths. Yes, he says silently, save our world.
And I break apart.
I can’t…I can’t do it.
“This isn’t a choice!” I yell at Aaron, and as I look up, I see a small movement near the far wall behind him, where Hector and Dev entered. A lanky white-haired man is inching forward on his stomach, gagged with his hands tied behind his back and a small trickle of blood dripping down his forehead.
Hector.
Oh God. Hector is here, alive. I try to control my breathing, to keep the madman’s attentions on me.
“It’s more of a choice than I ever had,” Aaron sneers. “You should be thanking me!”
I swallow, chance a glance to my watch. Fourteen minutes.
Barely enough time for anything.
Only enough time for one.
Hector has wobbled his way to standing, and I barely hear the gasp from Aveline, which she quickly muffles.
“And how can I believe you’ll stop lowering Dev?” I’m trying for a quick distraction so Hector can carry out whatever he can do bound and gagged.
“Your little faith wounds me,” Aaron says with faux hurt, throwing a hand over his heart. “I’m a man of honor. When have I ever backed out of my promises?”
Hector is a few feet away now, and my palms are slick against the rail, knuckles white. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Hector looks to the remote in Aaron’s grip, over the balcony to Dev still lowering, then to the Source, the light channeling up and illuminating his face from below. Hector struggles to loosen his hands, but even I know it’s impossible. His choices are few, just like mine are. With him also wearing a Dreamer repellent band I can’t touch him with my powers, not even to free him.
Glancing up, he finds my gaze and holds it. What I see in his green depths raises goose bumps across my skin and shreds my heart. For I understand in that moment what he’s going to do, and while I want to shout No! There has to be another way, I know there isn’t.
Not without more time.
So I stand silently, unmoving, and soak in the love that Hector now, after so many months, allows me to see. Love for me, for my grandfather, for Terra, and, with his eyes staring behind me, to the girl who watches on.
It all happens quickly, and at the same time is the slowest thing in the world. Aaron begins to turn, curious to what my attention has gone to, and that’s when Hector charges forward. He lets out a muffled groan as Aaron gets out a shot, nicking Hector’s shoulder, but it’s not enough to stop him as he knocks into Aaron’s side. They smack up against the balcony’s ledge with a grunt, hanging suspended in what feels like eternity right before they go barreling over, straight into the Source below.
Aveline screams, Tim screams, yet I stand still in a moment of disbelief as their bodies hit the Navitas, disintegrating into the power in which they came. It’s only when an energy surges into the room that I blink into action, feeling its intentions like a smack in the face.
“Run!” I yell to Aveline and Tim as I jump into flight, zipping to Dev, whose descent has thankfully paused. But still he screams against his gag, most likely telling me to get out too, but I don’t move as the Navitas flames lick toward our feet, the heat unbearably close. Instead, I shut him out, block everything as I switch to the plane of sight, the room erupting with light, time creeping as I use the power in my vest to form a shield around Dev and myself. Though I can’t touch him directly, I can still create a cocoon of safety, and I push away the acute pain from my mind cooling to an arctic degree, while the rest of my energy gathers in my gut.
Time has run out, but by the stars, this is not the end.
With my intention filling my thoughts, one that will either kill us or save us all, the Source thumps out in a barrage of power, a giant’s foot crashing on waves, and my head tilts back on a silent scream as it all channels into me. My soul is ripped away, my body now emptied as it fills with all the lives of my collected predecessors, of all the Nocturna and Vigil yet to be created below, all their innocence, heartbeats, and incubated breaths as my arms fling out, shooting two thick cords of Navitas to suction around the soon-to-detonate bombs along the wall. I’m nothing and everything as I soak in the self-sacrifice of Hector that fills me from the Source. His selfless love drowning out Aaron’s sickness of hate, consuming it like the ocean to a sinking ship, it more powerful than anything I’ve ever felt. It gives and gives and gives, burning my skin from the inside out, thickening the shell around me as I sense the timers ticking down and the cells cracking open with their explosion. And this is when I scream, we all scream, the sound so piercing it would shatter glass as I force my arms straight, keeping the shell wrapped around Dev while holding on to the two cords suctioning the bombs. The walls shake, rumble in the threat to give way, but I only pull more of Hector’s purity into me. It wipes the darkness blind, turns it to light as it feeds me its strength, making me strong enough to hold everything together as I crack apart. Wetness seeps out of my ears and down my nose as my atoms turn to fire, sucking in the flames of Navitas bursting from the bombs. I’m nothing but a vessel for all of the energy, a gateway for it to travel through and turn gentle as it links to the Source below. I hang ther
e, a suspended bridge, gritting my teeth against my muscles yelling that they can’t take it anymore, that I must let go, but I can’t, not yet. I need longer, we need longer, and this is when I feel a gentle touch to one of my hands. I blink to see Riki with me in this space of in between, Vibius, and slowly my grandfather. They float around me, linking hand to hand to all our pasts, lending me their power, their support. And right before the last two Dreamers connect, a burst of lightning cracks out from below, and Hector steps through. His eyes glow white, like the rest of theirs, his white hair floating around his face in a gentle wind, and his scar is now gone, his features peaceful. They no longer bear the heavy brow of the past that haunted him. He didn’t run away. He faced the enemy, and in doing so saved a world, two worlds. My eyes water with his brilliance, tears unshed, and as his hands complete the circle, a jolt runs the length of me, and my mind switches to a timeless being, all of us now one.
In this moment our collected soul is everything, every living being born and yet to be made on Earth and in Terra. We’re ideas, creation, and every emotion. We’re the wind, a petal floating away from a flower, flame lashing out from a fire. We have no body, only energy, atoms of existence that break apart destruction to make solar systems and stars. Out of a death comes a life, and we empty it all back into where it came, back into the Source, the sun of this world. And after a time that can only be quantified as forever, the room that was about to erupt in chaos calms, and my soul reconnects with my body, my ancestors disappearing in the fading light, and my arms lower, move on their own accord to wrap around a glowing body floating in front of me. They stay there, tightly hanging on with no intention of ever letting go.
In this space is when I sigh, my first breath from my new self, and close my eyes, welcoming the darkness that no longer brings me fear.
— 45 —
When this is over,
because surely such evil can’t last forever,
what shall we do first?
—Part of a letter from Molly to Dev
The windows were open, the drapes pulled to the side, letting in the glow of the passing stars and the fresh summer night’s breeze, just as she preferred. Molly lay sleeping beside him, the gray sheets twisting in her legs and across her body. Her bare shoulder peeked out as alluringly as her midnight hair, with its one streak of white, fanned across his pillow. Her hands curled by her chin, and with lips parted, her steady breathing squeaked out in small mewls. Dev had yet to tell her she snored. He adored it, thought it was so human, so vulnerable, that he feared she would somehow stop if she knew. Her life was so public now, so part of everyone’s in Terra that he liked to keep things like this for himself, bits of her that only he knew.
With one hand propping his head up, he used the other to brush a gentle finger across her cheek. It was soft and warm against his callouses. She stirred, but her eyes remained closed.
It had been a month since the Nursery incident, which is what the elders were calling it now. An incident, not attack or near catastrophe, just a blip in security that was tidily swept clean. It was better for the citizens to believe this, Elena had explained, than how close they actually had come to living in a dystopia. It allowed Terra to hope after such loss, for while the woman who slept so peacefully beside him held together the Source, the outer ring of the compound still suffered its fair share of blows. They lost half their guards that day to the Metus who broke through, and a sickening number of students before enough backup arrived to help fight back the beasts. Of course, they could have lost everything, a whole generation and more, if Molly hadn’t retained the blast, if Hector hadn’t sacrificed himself to aid her.
Dev frowned, his mind drifting back to right it all collided. Looking up at Molly as he had dangled bound and gagged, had felt his soul screaming in desperation for her not to be harmed, his skin blistering against the tightly wound rope as gravity tried to pull him down, Aaron controlling him. He had believed in that moment that he would die, that Molly had no other choice but to find the device hidden so close in the other room and deactivate the bombs, save her along with everyone else. That was what all of it had been for, right? But yet she didn’t move, and while Dev wanted to yell at her to snap out of it, to run and get far, far away, if he was to be honest, to be selfish, he was relieved that she didn’t. He didn’t want to die, not like that, not by the hands of Aaron. And especially not because of the death of a woman they both had loved. Anabel’s life shouldn’t be remembered in such a way.
So as he watched Molly’s face lift from his, her gaze on something that changed the crinkle in her brow ever so slightly, he thought maybe, just maybe there was another way out.
Which he saw as the two men flew past him into the Source.
If anyone had asked Dev two months ago who in that room would have been the one to sacrifice himself to help them all, Hector would have been the last one named. The Hector he had known was selfish, vexing in his subtle cruelty, and would have rather slummed it with the abandoners in the black market than stand with anyone of honor.
Or so Dev had thought.
In the weeks leading up to his final moments, the Vigil had shown cracks of a different self, or rather, someone always there but hiding. Hector was honorable, brave, caring, and loyal—he just did a great job of covering it up. As soon as Dev saw past his own dislike for the man to what really floated below the surface, he felt like such a fool. For hadn’t he hid under similar airs, maybe not as snobbish and cruel, but a facade of unfeeling? They were more alike than he wanted to admit. Both feared what they might relive if they followed the same paths as before. What tests would they have to relive to redeem their pasts, to change them? The only thing that probably saved Dev from becoming as bitter as Hector was Molly.
She was his heart, and she clung to him. And he to her.
After the Source settled below him, after Molly had shed her skin to shine brighter than any star or goddess he had ever seen, she wrapped her arms around him and wouldn’t let go. And Dev was fine with that.
Even after Aveline and Tim had pulled them out from dangling over the potent energy, they’d had to wait until reinforcement showed up with the proper equipment to loosen the rope around him and then her. But still, when pried free she hadn’t awoken, merely slipped into a deep sleep for three Earth cycles.
Three Earth cycles where he had sat beside her in the hospital, hugging Aveline to his side. He had seen Molly like this too often, and each time it took a piece of him to see her through it. He could only hope this would be the last for a very long while.
Elena and Tim visited frequently, and even Cato came to check on the Dreamer, but it was Aveline who stayed with him the whole time, mending her own wound that wasn’t visible but just as devastating as a knife to the heart.
“I’m sorry, Ave,” he had said as they watched over her, the gentle beeping of the monitoring equipment accompanying their silence.
Aveline just tightened her hold around him as she ignored the tears that slipped down her cheek. “You know,” she eventually said, her voice breaking, “he always told me he wasn’t a good person, that he didn’t deserve my…friendship.” She paused, letting the word settle. “Many times he tried to antagonize me to leave him. See reason, he would say.” Aveline let out a small laugh. “He liked to talk like that, like those old Hollywood actors he was so fond of watching when he had lived on Earth. It always made us laugh when he would catch himself doing it.”
Silence.
“But I knew what he was capable of, what he thought I couldn’t see.” She glanced up at Dev, her hazel eyes bright and wide. “Like you saw with me.”
Dev swallowed against the tightness in his throat as his partner continued to share her heart.
“He left this world doing the one thing he thought he didn’t possess. He died bravely, Dev. And I think…I think, wherever it is we go after, he’s in peace now.” She glanced back at Molly, to the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. “It hurts,” she whisper
ed. “It hurts, but…but I’m proud of him.”
He looked down at her, waited for her eyes to come back to his, and took in how much she had changed since the young cadet he had chosen as his partner all those years ago. She was strong now, inside and out, passionate and every bit the Nocturna guard he believed she would become. They had been through countless battles, the deaths of many friends, heartbreak, and survival of a war. And though they had a bit more to go, to fight, this war was at an end. He could feel it in the air. Since Aaron’s death, the sickness and hate that shadowed Terra was losing its potency, and it was only a matter of time before the world regained its balance.
Since that moment with Aveline in the hospital, as they had waited for Molly to wake up, Dev’s prediction was right. In the weeks that followed, it was like the Metus knew they had lost. No longer made strong by the vengeful generosity of a man feeding them power, no longer able to hide out in the many twisted caverns below ground near Terra, all now found and destroyed, they slunk back to their tar pits of nightmares. And though it frightened him a little to think about it, when Molly eventually awoke, she awoke stronger than anything the elders had ever known possible. There was no way the Metus couldn’t feel the shift in power then, in light from dark. It was like the sacrifice Hector gave that day had permanently settled in Molly’s heart, lending a layer no Dreamer before her had worn or had access too. The whites of her eyes held a constant gentle glow now, like her connection to her energy, as well as all that surrounded her, no longer needed to be separate, something to switch in and out of. She was fluid, water over rocks, a breeze through the tall grass. And when she had entered the battlefield quickly thereafter, she eradicated the Metus in swift blows, barely tiring, her vest used more for protection than powering up.
She was exquisite.
And while Cato was both mesmerized and slightly disgruntled, for she barely listened to the elder now, Elena was a vision of excitement and pride. Though the blonde elder wasn’t previously a favorite of Dev’s, just like Hector, he now saw the way she cared for Molly, maybe in her own strange way, but cared nonetheless.