by Almney King
ALL LIGHT WILL FALL
Copyright © 2015 by Almney King
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sakura Publishing in 2015. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Sakura Publishing
PO BOX 1681
Hermitage, PA 16148
www.sakura-publishing.com
ORDERING INFORMATION
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Editing by Derek Vasconi | Cover Art by Rania Meng
First Edition
Print Edition ISBN-13: 978-0-692-33779-0
Print Edition ISBN-10: 0692337792
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank God for the persistence, the creativity, and the confidence to share this novel with others. I thank Him for blessing me with a powerful mind and giving me the strength to meet this challenge.
I would also like to thank my family for all of their encouragement and constructive criticism in the writing of this novel. They really helped me push through these past few years, encouraging me to create an original work that I can be proud to share as an author. Even though I strayed, lost my confidence, and felt completely burnt out, they pushed, and pushed, and pushed. Thank you for believing in my gifts, and thank you for being, as Celeste says in the novel, “the stars to my wandering.”
Lastly, I would like to thank my publisher, Derek Vasconi, for his guidance and for his patience. Through his criticism and faith in me as an author, I was able to create a novel completely my own that reflects who I am as an individual. While the editing process was long and challenging, I must admit that I have become a stronger and more developed writer than ever before. Thank you for all of your honesty and hard work.
I DEDICATE THIS NOVEL TO THE YOUTH. THERE IS NO VICTORY WITHOUT THE BATTLE. LIVE, LOVE, AND LEAVE A LEGACY.
Contents
Acknowledgments
NEW ERA
Prologue Heliotellus
Chapter One Ignoramus
Chapter Two Valor
Chapter Three Symbiosis
Chapter Four Hysteria
Chapter Five Distinction
Chapter Six Supremacy
Chapter Seven Conquest
Chapter Eight Intuition
Chapter Nine Departure
ORIGIN
Chapter Ten Niaysia
Chapter Eleven Aggression
Chapter Twelve Nemesis
Chapter Thirteen Haven
Chapter Fourteen Wilderness
Chapter Fifteen Lost
Chapter Sixteen Spirit
Chapter Seventeen Triumph
Chapter Eighteen Farewell
Chapter Nineteen Prominence
Chapter Twenty Destiny
Chapter Twenty-One Awakening
Chapter Twenty–Two Divinity
Chapter Twenty-Three Damnation
Chapter Twenty-Four Mercy
Chapter Twenty-Five Passage
LINEAGE
Chapter Twenty-Six Ambition
Chapter Twenty-Seven Regrets
Chapter Twenty-Eight Crisis
Chapter Twenty-Nine Sion
Chapter Thirty Remember
Chapter Thirty-One Salvation
Chapter Thirty-Two Promise
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
{ NEW ERA }
PROLOGUE
HELIOTELLUS
I live in a perfect world. There is no reason for fear. There is no need for rebellion. All troubles are absent. All evils are vanquished. This is my home. This is Earth. The world has been reborn. The citizens of old America have life anew. There is only the future. The old ways of tyranny and war have gone. No one speaks of those days, but no one can forget either. It will never leave us. It is a part of us.
It took years for peace to return, decades of sacrifice and violence, but humanity survived. After an era of pain and self-purification, all of our fear waned away.
The rebellions, the wars, and the killings became one endless and chaotic blur. No one knew how it began. Some claim that it started with a beam of light, a bright explosion that stretched across the earth. It was horrifying, and with that rolling red thunder, death took up the throne of our nation. Empathy was lost. Peace was forgotten. We were no longer human. We were tyrants, beasts of greed and pride.
The riots, executions, and civil injustice carried on. In 2052, the nations disbanded. Treaties were broken. Promises were neglected. Bitterness boiled between the border lines. It was hatred that led us there, to the hand of darkness. And we dwelled there for a long time, knowing nothing but despair. Our hearts were closed. Our minds were numb. We picked up our weapons. We launched our missiles.
War was inevitable. It was nature. We craved for war and welcomed it into our houses. We slept in bed beside it, dreamt of it, and whispered its name in our sleep. There was comfort in war. We knew of nothing else.
War was our way of life. It was our fathers who created it. We merely watched, and when we too, grew old with time, it became ours to bear.
History became tragedy. Tragedy became routine. Routine became instinct. We were animals—violent—corrupt. We were mindless and empty. We were lost.
Then he came. In the final hour of the darkest day, he came. The people called him the Nazar. He was our salvation, our new beginning.
The Trinity Wars left nothing to salvage. Our world was a tomb, a crater of clay and ash. But where the people saw ruin, the Nazar saw rebirth. Like a mighty titan, he took up the nation and through his love and strength, it bloomed.
The people who followed him became the Ardent. The people who did not became the Defiant. And the Defiant would not relent. They saw no freedom under the law of the Nazar. Many resisted, and those who rebelled were slaughtered or exiled to the outskirts of the country—to Sion.
As the years passed, the Nazar built us a nation. Helio Tellus, he called it. It was a nation of power, of perfection. It was the one and only stronghold; built on the western shores of old America.
The people pledged their allegiance, and in my innocence and pride, so did I.
CHAPTER ONE
IGNORAMUS
“Stop! Stop that delinquent!”
“Stop her! Someone stop that citizen!”
I couldn’t breathe. The city air was heavy with chemical, stirring fire in my chest.
“Don’t lose sight of her!”
Three other civil order officers joined the chase, cutting off my escape route on the right. “To the left! Move it!” the officer shouted. I had to hurry. The shuttle home wasn’t far off, but Alta Zeda would leave soon.
“She’s getting away!”
It seemed like the world was breaking; heaven and Earth blending into one. I raced down a crowded street. People were pushed and thrown aside. I glanced back. The officers were closing in. The black shine of their helmets bobbed through the crowd.
I stopped suddenly in the street intersection, letting the people close in around me. When it was clear, I shoved my way onto the crosswalk that led towards Alta Zeda. I moved slowly, cautious of the t
wo officers standing watch overhead. Two others were below me, another making his way onto the crosswalk.
I wondered where Ellis had gone. We were separated back in the Z-Zone where the authorities had caught us sneaking to the gate of Norris Tower. This was forbidden. After the Trinity Wars, the Ardent built an energy field around Helix City. They said it was for our protection, to shelter us from the impurities of Sion. But Ellis wasn’t convinced. Ever since his brother had turned and became a Defiant, his beliefs began to change.
Ellis and I had been friends for years. He was like a brother to me. We had the same ideals, the same tenacity, and the same passionate will. I knew all that he was. At least, I thought I had. As the years slowed, he began to see things. He began to wonder of the true nature of the world, and in that curiosity, he began to question it. He became someone else. He became like his brother, stubborn and rebellious. He was always in trouble with the law, and I was always right alongside him. I would follow him anywhere, without truth, without question. I trusted him, but I was also scared for him.
Ellis worried me sometimes with the way he spoke. He would get so frustrated that his face would darken and his body would shake. He criticized the Nazar often and cursed the system. His opinions were borderline treason.
Whatever we were told, Ellis denied it. He believed the energy field was an excuse for segregation; the Ardent on one side, the Defiant on the other. Ellis said it was the Nazar’s way of maintaining power. He said it was the Nazar’s way of concealing the truth. The truth was his to control, and whoever controlled the truth, controlled everything.
“I see her! There!”
I was running out of time. I had to move faster. I stopped at the intersection on Zerr Street. The shuttle was just across the bridge, but it was too late. The authorities had me trapped. “Don’t you move!” The officer held me at gun point. I searched for a way through, but I was surrounded. It was over.
The officers pushed through the crowd. They were close. There was nothing I could do. I held my breath, and then it happened. The ground shook and a burst of fire rocked the bridge. Smoke filled the air. I couldn’t see. There was only screaming.
The officers turned from the intersection and raced towards the explosion. I pushed forward through the crowd. It was a vicious wave, the way people crashed and trampled over each other. The smoke thickened. The screams grew louder and louder.
Away from the attack, the crowd had thinned, and I was able to reach Alta Zeda just before the doors closed. The shuttle was crowded as usual. I had expected chaos. It happened often, the attacks. It was the Defiant. They were born of violence. All of the Ardent feared them, and soon the whispers would follow, the quiet speculation, and the terror.
As I stood there, pressed firmly against the glass, I was sure the panic would arise. But I was wrong. All was quiet, except for the hum of the shuttle’s engine. It was like that after the Trinity Wars. People seldom spoke to each other. They hardly looked at one another. I suppose we had run out of things to say and reasons to care.
I worried over Ellis the entire ride home. Did he get arrested? Was he caught in the explosion? My mind was spinning, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. I was shocked at myself. When the explosion happened, I wasn’t even afraid. Being that close to death, wasn’t that something to fear?
I left the train when the metro reached Marx Avenue. I wasn’t far from Darway Centra. Several more blocks and I would be there. I had lived on Darway Centra all my life. It was an assigned residency. We could live nowhere else. The Nazar made it clear: there was a place for everyone and everyone was in their place. Adventuring beyond your place called for punishment.
By the time I reached Marx Avenue, it was past curfew. The streets were empty, ghostly almost. Fog filled the air. I heard footsteps in the silence. A figure appeared, the tall shadow wavering back and forth.
“Corrine, is that you?” a voice called. I sighed in relief. It was Ellis.
“Ellis, it’s me,” I whispered.
I went to meet him. The cold air whipped around me. I was wild as the wind as I ran, with the fog in my breath and the sound of freedom in my steps.
All of a sudden, something lashed out from the dark. I crashed, head first, into it. “Corrine!” The quiet was no longer quiet, and that sound of freedom fled as I hit the ground.
“Corrine! Hey, let go of me!”
Ellis was in trouble. I had to get up. I had to move. I rolled over on the concrete, my head spinning. Heat swelled in my right eye, and I found myself unable to see for a moment.
“Look what we have here.”
I shivered at the stranger’s voice. It was disturbingly smooth. He must be a civil order officer, I thought. He flashed a light in my eyes, and I looked up at him. I couldn’t see his face. He was but a phantom in the fog, and so were the other dark shadows standing behind him.
“Get her up, gentlemen,” the man ordered.
The officers yanked me to my feet. I stood hostage between them, listening to Ellis struggle from afar. “It seems we finally caught the dynamic duo. Beauty,” he flashed the light on Ellis, “and the Defiant.”
“He is not a Defiant,” I uttered. The officer drew the light from my face. I could see him clearly now. He was handsome by my standards, and perhaps too young looking for one so cold.
The man took a step forward and leaned into me. “Do you honestly believe we don’t know what’s said behind closed doors? Don’t be foolish. We know all your truths, so save yourself the trouble of the lie... Corrine.”
My heart stopped. They knew me already, and as I thought about it, they probably knew me long before I even knew myself.
The officer smirked. “Ah, now you understand. Then I don’t have to explain the severity of the crime you two have just committed.” He waved his hand, and the officers holding Ellis drug him forward.
“I wonder what the punishment should be?” the officer taunted. He reached out and caressed my face.
“Get your filthy hands off her, you bastard!” Ellis snapped. The officer smiled. He turned and used his flashlight to strike Ellis in the face. I struggled against the officers.
“Ellis!” I gasped.
“There now,” the officer said, “I hit her, so it was only fair to make things even.”
Ellis glared at the man. He spit the blood in his mouth near the officer’s boot and grinned. “You hit like a little bitch,” he growled.
The officer raised his flashlight again, but instead of aiming for Ellis, he raised the weapon towards me. I flinched and closed my eyes. The pain never came. “Enough of this, sergeant,” a voice demanded.
I opened my eyes, the hilt of the flashlight inches from my face. One of the officers had halted the attack, holding the sergeant by his arm. “We are a civilized people. There is no need for this kind of violence.”
“I beg to differ, captain. We caught them trespassing in the Z-Zone. That’s a Class A crime punishable by death. Not only that, they’re suspects in that terrorist attack near Alta Zeda.”
The captain raised his hand and silenced him. “The first offense is always let off with a warning. And as far as I know, those terrorist could be anyone. If we need them for questioning, we know just where to find them.” He looked at me. “There will be no mercy if you defy the law again.” He glanced at Ellis next. “Do you understand?”
Ellis nodded. “Good,” the captain said. “Escort them home, sergeant.”
“Sir, if the higher-ups find out about this we’ll be…”
The captain snatched the man by his collar. “I said, escort them home,” he hissed.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. He waved his hand, ordering the officers to release us.
Mother was horrified when I came home under guard. The officers scanned my id marker, then shoved me into the apartment. I really hated those damn things. At birth, every Helio Tellus citizen had them surgically implanted on the right side of the neck. They tracked you everywhere. If you boarde
d a shuttle, it was tracked. If you entered a building, it was tracked. If you left your residency, it was tracked. With one simple scan, it could tell a civil order officer all they needed to know; biological background, blood type, heart rate—anything. This was life in 2100, this was life in our era of promise. Everything was monitored in Helio Tellus, everything but the ruins of Sion.
“You will be fined under trespassing charges,” the officer said. There will be no more warnings. If we catch you again, the consequences will be dire.”
The door slammed shut moments later. Mother chastised me long after they left. She sat me at the kitchen table and placed a healing pad over my eye.
“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of trouble!” she scolded. “Do you know what will happen if people start getting suspicious?”
As she rambled on, I couldn’t think of a single excuse. What was I to say, that Ellis had talked me into it? Of course not, she would forbid me to see him. My mother loved Ellis dearly, but not enough to allow me to suffer capital punishment on his behalf. That’s why I wouldn’t tell her about the explosion. She would never know I was there.
“You need to stop this, Corrine,” Mother begged. “If they take you away, if I lose you... what will I do?” She buried her face in her hands and sighed. I hated that I caused her so much grief, but it couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t obedient and sheltered like my mother. I was curious of that hidden truth Ellis often spoke of. I was curious of everything.
Fern suddenly emerged from the back of the apartment. “What’s going on?” she said quietly. We had to be careful that our voices didn’t echo against the walls. All of Helix City was steel and glass. It served as a way to keep the residents quiet. Domestic quarrels and other disturbances were punishable by law.