Earthshaker

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  I gathered together all the power I had left and reached into the earth. Read the map of stresses that ran like nerves through the thin skin of the crust. Plotted the routes I'd have to follow, the exact amounts of force I'd have to apply on each fissure.

  Then, I programmed the first shot with its instructions—where and how fast to go, when to split apart, where the splinters had to go—and I let it fly.

  Atlantis sensed it right away. "What are you doing?"

  I pumped the next ones out faster, injecting them into the ground one after the other. Pushing them toward the only thing I could still take from him. The thing he loved best in all the world. The object of my vengeance.

  "Stop it!" said Atlantis. "Stop it now!"

  And then I pulled the trigger. Sent the signal to all those programmed probes and all their offshoots, spread out across the network underneath the shining city.

  The ground rumbled with increasing ferocity. Cracks widened all around and beneath the city, racing in all directions like burning fuses. Then, the weakened earth began to give way. The tallest gleaming tower collapsed, barely missing a striking lightning bolt on the way down.

  "What are you doing?" Atlantis grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. "Stop it!"

  The direct contact made it easier for him to drain my power, but I didn't care. The deed was done, and he was still too inexperienced to use my power to reverse it. I would have my revenge.

  Another tower collapsed, then a whole cluster of domes and spires. Thunder exploded, people shrieked, dogs howled...and the earth opened wide.

  "No!" Atlantis struck me on the head, knocking me flat on the sand. His foot felt like a sledgehammer when he kicked me in the side. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

  I sneered over my shoulder at him. "This is your fault! You made this happen!"

  "Stop it!" He kept kicking me harder and harder. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

  I laughed at him. "Too late!"

  The whole city sank into the vast hole, buildings crashing and colliding like toys as they fell. That whole wonderful place with all its advancements, all its magicks and science and culture, one of a kind in all the world, was disappearing from the face of the planet.

  As it sank, the ocean rushed in to cover it. Waves churned up by the quaking earth hammered down on top of it, pouring into the chasm, crushing from above what had not yet been smashed from below.

  Lightning blazed and thunder bellowed. Atlantis roared in rage and sorrow and rained down blows upon me. Beat me long past the point where it was clear I couldn't or wouldn't do anything to save his city.

  Or the island itself, for that matter. As the city sank, it triggered a chain reaction that fanned out along the shore. The earth shook with ever-increasing violence. More fissures crackled open, and more ground gave way, subsiding into the expanding sinkhole. Bluffs and dunes along the coast imploded like deflating balloons, and the ocean flooded over everything.

  Soon, it would engulf us, too. That would be fine with me, I thought.

  But Atlantis had other ideas. "Murderer!" His voice was filled with fury. "I'll make you pay!" As the ground heaved and split around us, he used his power to carve out the piece on which we stood.

  Propelled by Atlantis' newfound abilities, the piece of ground shuddered underneath us and rose into the air. Sand poured off the edges, rushing into the cavity below. I tried to follow it by crawling off the rising slab of earth...but Atlantis grabbed me by the hair and wrenched me back to lay at his feet.

  "I told you!" Atlantis gestured, and shackles of stone clawed from the sand and snapped around my wrists. "You will pay for what you've done!"

  Lightning slashed the sky around us as the slab rose ever higher. I tried to use what was left of my power to make us crash, but there wasn't enough of my power left. I'd used it all to conjure the unholy spectacle unfolding below us.

  The sinkhole had already eaten half the island, and it wasn't stopping. It continued to expand as we watched, edges crumbling into the chasm, ocean spilling in to fill the gap. Soon, it would be as if the great city and island of Atlantis had never been. As if all that had ever occupied that spot was rippling ocean.

  Looking up, I saw I'd achieved my revenge. My betrayer wept as his homeland sank forever from view. The rain washed away his tears as completely as the sea washed away the island.

  I felt proud of myself for hurting him. Also ashamed for murdering all those people. (My opinion of humans had changed since I'd been living among them.) Also, strangely, I felt sorry for Atlantis. Part of me even wanted to comfort him.

  But he didn't feel quite the same way. "I pity you," he said when the last trace of the island was gone. "You're going to suffer so much for what you've done."

  I lay on my side on the slab, gazing at the twinkling stars as we rose above the storm. "Nothing you do," I said, "can make me suffer more than I already have."

  Then, the white light flared, the wind roared, and I was gone.

  *****

  Chapter 62

  Two million, seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two. Atlantis' voice boomed around me, louder than the thunder in the vision had been. That's how many people lived on the island of Atlantis. That's how many people you murdered in cold blood.

  When I opened my eyes, I was back in the vortex of white light, spinning faster than ever. Body bouncing and tumbling on the runaway current, flipping like a jumping bean in a jar.

  That's how much blood you have on your hands, Gaia, said Atlantis.

  His voice rang in my head like the screams of the dying Atlanteans. It was a memory I wished he'd never given back. Because as much as I longed to believe it was fabricated, I knew in my heart and soul it was real. I knew I'd done that terrible thing.

  I made you pay the price for what you did, said Atlantis. I made you suffer.

  Once more, the white light flared, and the wind roared like a freight train. Suddenly, Atlantis and I were standing in a forest of towering redwoods. He was glowing with a golden nimbus, dressed in a flowing emerald cloak. I was filthy, dazed, hunched, and clad in tattered rags.

  "How do you like your new life?" Atlantis sneered and spread his arms. "Have you fared well among the savages in this untamed land?"

  I stared at him dumbly. It had been thirty years since he'd stranded me here, and I barely recognized him. "Please make it stop," I said.

  "It will never stop," said Atlantis. "That is your punishment, my love, for destroying my kingdom."

  "Please..." I stumbled forward on crooked legs, reaching for him.

  He floated up out of my grasp like a firefly. "That is your curse. You, who were once the soul of the world, will live for ages among the wretched humans you once thought to exterminate."

  "I'm sorry." Tears rolled down my chapped and dirty cheeks. "Oh, please, I'm so sorry..."

  "Do you want to know what the best part is?" Atlantis laughed. "You won't know why it's happening. You won't know who you really are. You will die every thirty years and be reborn a blank slate with no memory at all."

  My blood froze as I realized why he'd come. It had been thirty years since the end of the kingdom of Atlantis and the start of my exile. "No...please no..."

  "Death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death." Atlantis circled me like a hawk, ticking off points on his fingers. "Never remembering your past lives. Never being able to amass knowledge and pass it from self to self. Never learning enough to figure out a way to fight back."

  "You don't have to do this..." I tried backing away from him, thought of making a run for it, but he stuck with me.

  "From one life to the next, you are destined to suffer in ignorance." Atlantis clapped his hands together. "One life sentence after another, one for each of the lives you snuffed out when you sank my kingdom." He swooped down to snarl in my face. "Two million, seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two consecutive life sentences."

  I sobbed and fell to my knees. "Please don't do
this! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

  "Enjoy this final moment of remembering." Atlantis reached out and touched his fingers to my forehead. "It is the last time you will know who you are. The last time you will understand why you are suffering."

  Suddenly, there was a flash. Intense heat tore through my body, and I fell back to the leaf-strewn forest floor. The last thing I saw as my heart stopped was the silver full moon, hanging above the trees like a pendant on the throat of the night.

  When my heart started again and I opened my eyes, Atlantis was gone...but I didn't know he'd ever been there. Didn't know he even existed. Didn't know who I was or anything about my past or present.

  Atlantis had been true to his word. The curse had begun. But as I struggled to my feet and straggled off into the woods to start a new life, I had no idea a curse was upon me or what a curse even was in the first place.

  *****

  For the first time in my life, I understood my life. As I returned to the vortex in another rush of light and wind, I understood why things had been so crazy and what it all meant. I knew why I was different.

  But I didn't know everything. "Why show me this?" I said it as I struggled to right myself in the current, which was whirling faster than ever. "Do you want me to suffer more? Is that what this is all about? Is that why you brought me here?"

  Not at all, said Atlantis. I brought you here because I was wrong.

  Focusing my power, I caught the threads of gravity and halted my out-of-control tumble. Then slid to the center of the vortex and hovered there, resisting the turbulence around me. "Wrong about what?"

  Atlantis paused. I shouldn't have stopped you from killing mankind.

  I frowned. "You shouldn't have?"

  Exactly, said Atlantis. I should have let you do it.

  I waited for a punchline. Figured he was yanking my chain. "You're full of shit."

  I'm dead serious. I want to wipe humanity from the face of the earth.

  "Let me see if I've got this straight," I said. "You say you're a hero because you stopped me from wiping out humankind. But now you want to wipe out humankind yourself."

  There was a pause. Things have changed.

  "What makes you say that?"

  I took your place as the soul of the world, said Atlantis. I became the planet Earth. And humanity has been killing me ever since. I'm dying, Gaia.

  "You're dying?"

  The part of the Earth that lives is dying, said Atlantis. Humanity has poisoned me to the point of no return. I'm terminal.

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was talking about the end of all life on Earth, not just the extinction of humankind.

  You were right about humanity all along, said Atlantis. They must die for the world to live. And I need you to help me kill them.

  "What can I possibly do?" I said. "You've already taken most of my power."

  I need the one thing I didn't take from you, said Atlantis. Your ruthlessness. The cold-blooded killer instinct it takes to mass-murder a species.

  I snorted with disgust. "You've been doing just fine as a killer, if you ask me. You murdered Aggie, Owen, Laurel, Cousin Canyon..."

  It's one thing to kill a handful. Quite another to commit genocide.

  "I don't have the ruthlessness you need," I told him.

  You proved what you were capable of long ago, said Atlantis. You were prepared to kill off humanity. If I hadn't convinced you to take human form, you would have gone through with it.

  "I'm different now," I said.

  Not so different when you killed every man, woman, and child in my kingdom.

  "You started it," I told him. "The blood's on your hands."

  The vortex swirled faster, making it harder for me to hold on. His voice grew angrier, more insistent.

  You will help me, said Atlantis. It's the reason I led you here. The reason I killed your friends. Because I need you to help me save the world.

  "You didn't need to kill them!" I snapped out the words. "You could've just asked me to come."

  I couldn't take the chance you wouldn't come, said Atlantis. I had to be sure.

  "Now where have I heard that before?" I said.

  Please, Gaia. I'm begging you. Let me merge our minds together and find the instinct I need.

  "Forget it!" Rage burned in my heart—rage at what he'd done to me thousands of years ago and rage at what he'd done weeks and days ago to Aggie, Owen, and Laurel. How dare he ask for my help after everything that had happened between us? "I'll never help you!"

  Then I'll take what I need, said Atlantis, and kill you when I'm done.

  *****

  Chapter 63

  The attacks came all at once, from all directions. I'd been bracing myself, but it wasn't nearly enough.

  The light in the vortex turned red, and the current went wild, hurling me around like a kite in a hurricane. Searing heat and deafening noise erupted around me with crushing force. At the same time, fierce pains tore at my insides, like razor-sharp claws slicing through my organs and muscles.

  And then there was the mental assault. Atlantis' mind punched into my head like a cattle prod, blazing with white-hot fire. I screamed as probes leaped off and burrowed into my brain, tunneling through the gray matter like sparks from a welding torch sizzling through ice.

  Marshalling my rage and strength, I fought back. Clashed with the claws in my guts, wrestling them to a standstill. Stamped out the sparks blistering through my brain. Cried out as I forced Atlantis' mind out of my head with a mighty exertion of will and power and fury.

  Grappling gravity's reins, I stopped tumbling in the whirling vortex and forced myself upright. Felt Atlantis probing again from all directions and decided it was time to take the offensive. Much of the power drained by Ayan had recharged by now, so maybe I could make some headway.

  I let myself spin like a top and lashed out with a spiral attack, casting rings of fiery energy into the vortex. They swept up and out, one after another, sluicing like buzz saws through the red light and whatever lay beyond it.

  I knew I'd hurt Atlantis when his roar of pain drowned out the ear-splitting noise in the vortex. Clenching my teeth, I redoubled my efforts, launching more rings of much greater intensity. This time, though, he roared with rage instead of pain and shunted the rings right back down at me. He stacked them around me in a coil from chin to shins and cinched them tight, searing my flesh wherever they touched me. Making me howl with agony as they kept contracting and cut into my body.

  Just as I tried to focus my power on freeing myself, the claws in my gut started gouging from the inside out again, and the probe punched into my brain again. There was so much pain, I couldn't concentrate, couldn't regroup and retaliate. I screamed my lungs out, writhing in his grasp like a frog in a fist, struggling just to hold on to my life.

  And then he started digging. Tearing through my mind like a hunting knife, slashing it to ribbons. Looking for the one thing he wanted and doing as much damage as he could along the way.

  I heard his sadistic voice booming over my screams. Tell me where it is, Gaia. Give it up and I'll give you the peace you've always wanted.

  Hearing him was enough to give me a second wind. Reaching deep, I tapped more power and let it burst out of me all at once. Like the flash of a bomb, it cooked off everything around me, including my clothes and the rings that were binding me.

  Atlantis pulled away from me again, and I took back the offensive. Throwing aside all caution, I unleashed almost everything I had left. I rose up, clenching my fists, and threw out another shock wave, a bubble of force sweeping out in all directions.

  I heard Atlantis howl and curse. The vortex turned hotter and more turbulent. I shut my eyes, gathering and releasing one last charge, and hoped it would be enough.

  Atlantis roared in fresh agony...then fell silent. Suddenly, the vortex stopped spinning. I opened my eyes, daring to believe I'd shut down the menace for good. Hoping I'd done it in time to save the lives of my friends and
all humankind.

  That was when everything started spinning again, and Atlantis came back for me.

  *****

  I had nothing left. Nothing at all.

  Atlantis pinned me with hardly any effort. Gently, firmly, he held me in the heart of the vortex. Almost lovingly.

  Until he dug back into my mind. Then, it was like he was hacking through my brain with rusty scissors and a shop vac. Chopping it into cauliflower chunks and sucking it up through a hose. Then blowing it into a food processor set on purée. Sifting every crumb and drop for the one thing he needed.

  I had never screamed so much in my life. At least the part of my life I remembered. Every second felt like a hundred years of agony. Every hundred years of agony brought me a thousand miles closer to pure madness.

  Give it to me! Atlantis' voice was like ten thousand claps of thunder crashing around me all at once. Give me the key to genocide!

  I twitched in his grip and screamed louder than ever. I knew the pain wasn't going to stop any time soon. Giving him the mass murder instinct was not an option. The truth was, I couldn't have found it and handed it over if I'd wanted to. I don't think I even had it anymore.

  Not that I tried to tell him that. I'm sure I couldn't have convinced him, even if I'd been able to talk through all the screaming.

  Where is it? He ripped through my head like a tiger in a sack. Where the fuck is it?

  The pain was literally driving me insane. In desperation, I fumbled weakly for a last gasp of my power...but it was gone. I had no way to resist.

  And soon, it wouldn't matter. Soon, there'd be nothing left of me worth saving.