The Irreversible Reckoning

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  In the dark rooms that led out into the Arena, I sat, hyperventilating, thinking of my mother and father, and how within the hour, I would see them again. Rachel and Tom, Brynna and Adam, within an hour we would all be equally dead, and equally tumbling about in the Eternal Dark. Perhaps my first mother and father had already crossed over, but if my Dad was as they said, then he had not. I would see him soon in darkness, but I would not see my mother, for she was the embodiment of all they said was good. Except she was not. She was my biological mother’s best friend; she believed all that Brynna believed, and even if she had not, she still would have been damned. If you love a sinner, you are a sinner. Their words.

  “Grace.” Brynna’s voice said, “Come here.”

  My knees were pulled into my chest, and I was lying on my side, struggling for breath. Never before had I been so afraid. Never before had I felt so sick and sluggish, and yet so driven to action. I wanted to go to her, because maybe she would comfort me, or at the very least, maybe she would reveal some intricate plan that proved she had a handle on this chaos, even when everyone else believed that she did not. Brynna Olivier, my mother, the woman with the brain so large that every enemy feared her on the basis of that brain, alone. Her power was of the mind, and the mind was the most formidable opponent of all. Perhaps that formidable mind saw ahead, where we walked out of this alive. Perhaps that formidable mind, with its formidable power, had worked out a way to see us through.

  Penny came up behind me, and very gently embraced me. Her small body was not shaking, and her heart was calm. I did not see any marks of disassociation upon her mind or heart, so I knew that Brynna had not invoked a state of drugged contentment in her daughter, nor was Penny miming her mother’s heart and mind, the way she tended to mime her most of the time in everything. Penny was calm because Penny knew she had to be calm. Because she believed that we could survive, even when Brynna and I did not.

  “Come on, Gracie.” Penny told me, and she took my hand in hers, sat me up, wiped my tears away, and brought me over to Brynna who, without hesitation, reached down and took my hand. As my sobs slowed, but the hiccupping breaths continued, we stood, grasping hands, in the dim light.

  “You two must be open to my control. I will be fighting, and I will be keeping you two out of the way. Do not resist my control, and I might be able to do sufficient damage on him, enough to make him weak, which might make it possible, but still improbable, that you two will be able to finish him off. It is improbable, girls.” She told us, softly, and my hand squeezed hers, “This man has lived for centuries. He has fought in every battle, and he has won every battle by making hundreds upon hundreds of kills personally. He will destroy me, and I know that. But I am going to fight for as long as I can, and I am going to damage him in every way that I can, over the time it takes him to kill me. Because it will not be quick. His plan is to take you two out first, but if you allow me to control your minds, I can stop that from happening. You just have to hit him hard, with everything you have, once I have weakened him, because he will be standing over me when I am dead, reveling in it, and that is when you have to strike.”

  I cried harder. Penny remained calm, with dry eyes and a slowly beating heart. For a moment of insecurity, I told myself that though she was still a child in body and allegedly in mind, also, she had to have matured just a little bit, or at least built up a tiny tolerance to all the evil and horrors that she had seen. I was still in my literal age, sixteen in body and mind. Of course I was terrified. Of course I was unable to think without crying about this woman who was my mother dying brutally, sacrificing herself for us in the process. I did not like her in the slightest. But I loved her. Truly, I loved her.

  “That is very sweet, Grace.” She told me, and when our blue eyes met—the eyes that matched so obviously, I did not know how I had not seen it the first time our gazes joined together—she smiled, very slightly. “I…” She stopped. My heart surged. Suddenly, I wanted her to say it back, to concede, there in what were possibly our final moments together, that she loved me, too. That I was hers, as well as my first mother’s. I wanted to hear her say it.

  But instead, she just smiled for a second longer, and then the smile faded, but because our hands were all touching, Penny finished Brynna’s sentences with a stream of thoughts that were both her own and Brynna’s.

  Adam and Brynna, lying in bed, feeling her stomach, feeling me inside her, and Brynna giggling so happily, her blue eyes so alight with joy. Adam’s hands finding the light that was me and saying incredulously that soon he would have a daughter as well as a son. James kissing her right where the warm light of my life could be felt most strongly, right where I was sleeping within her womb, still so small and fragile, but there. I was there, and they loved me already. How she and Penny had laid in Penny’s bed, dreaming up names, laughing together, as Penny whispered to me inside Brynna’s belly, telling me that she would be the best big sister to me, that she would always protect me. I felt the grief in their hearts when the bullet dislodged me, when I became just a wisp of life that would soon be gone, how she had desperately searched for some way to save me, to give me life, even if it was not through her. How Rachel had cried and accepted me. How they had laid together afterwards, and she had made Rachel and Tom promise never to tell me that I was not theirs. Even though she had wanted me and loved me and grieved for me, she had known that the only way to keep me safe was to let me go. It was so selfless. So sacrificial. That barely does it justice. It caused her tremendous pain, both then, and for many, many years, and yet she let me go. She erased herself from my life, in every way she could, all so the world would not know that I was the foreseen child, the child of the prophecy, the one they coveted for purposes unknown, purposes which she knew would change me into something monstrous. That was why she treated me so terribly. That was why she was so cold. She feared that I had become, or was on my way to becoming, exactly what Tyre wanted me to become.

  Everything laid itself out before me, flowing at Penny’s command from our stubborn mother’s mind so easily. When the feed ended, my tears resumed, harder and with more sadness than they had been flowing with before.

  “Penelope.” She whispered, in a scold so unconvincing that Penny actually beamed up at her.

  “You would be so sad if she didn’t know it before you couldn’t tell her anymore, Mama.” Penny replied, “I don’t want you to be sad.”

  Brynna smiled and kneeled, pressing her forehead to Penny’s.

  “You are my girl.” She whispered, and truly, my heart leaped in surprise when I saw the tears begin to pour from her eyes, “Through and through, you are my girl. You remember what I said?”

  Penny nodded, her eyes still dry, but her hands grasping Brynna’s. She was so preternaturally serene, that child. So fiery when she needed to be, so brash and bold and intelligent that it was frightening, and yet she could also be the calm, stable center of our worlds.

  “I don’t want to.” Penny whispered, “I want to stay like this forever. I want to be your little girl forever.”

  “You will be, Penny. Always. No matter what your physical age may be, you will always be my little girl. You will not know it now, but I have prayed for your entire life that I would not push you away when you were of a more independent age. You have nothing to fear in growing up now, sweetheart. It’s time. After I am gone, it is time to move on. Promise me.”

  “Mommy…”

  “Promise me, Penny! Promise Grace. Promise her that after this is over, you will keep going. You will grow up. You will make Idan do the same.”

  “Mommy, I can’t…”

  “Penelope Sylvia…” Brynna grasped her face with both hands, “Promise me right now.”

  Penny’s hands came up to rest over Brynna’s, and now, tears did begin to leak from those huge blue eyes.

  “I promise.” She whispered, before looking up at me and saying, “I promise.”

  “And you.” Brynna s
aid, and she pulled my hand lightly so that I was kneeling with them, “You will make sure that she does.”

  “I will.” I agreed immediately, “Of course I will, Brynna.”

  “Good. You will care for her. You will see her into older age.”

  “I will.”

  “I ask this of you, because even though we are so different, Grace, we are very much the same. I hate to thrust this responsibility upon you, but I have no one else on this Orb or any other that I would trust to care for her, for all of them, more than I trust you. I trust myself, and therefore, I trust you. I know that you will be able to do what I have done all these years. Keep them together. Keep them strong, and let them do the same for you. Can you do that for me?”

  “I can. I will. I promise, Brynna, I promise.”

  “Alright. Then it is time.” She stood up, grasped my hand and Penny’s, and turned us to face the door. “Onward and upward, into the darkness we go.”

  The doors opened, and the roar of the crowd came barreling towards us up the dark corridor like a monstrous wave. With each step, we moved closer to the light at the end of the hall, each of us squinting a little more the closer we got until finally, we stepped from the near pitch darkness into the bright light.

  The Warden was there, dressed in his Commander’s uniform, and to my horror, I saw that all the weapons had been removed. Brynna had won every arena fight with knives. Now, she would be forced to fight with just her hands. The Warden was not very tall, nor was he particularly muscular, and still, I knew her chances were slim. Plus, when she fell, and he was standing over her as she said he would, how would Penny and I kill him? Surely, we would not be strong enough to twist his head from his neck.

  The crowd was ravenous. When I looked up, I saw that their fangs were already out, and their eyes were already white. James, Adam, Janna, Tony, Idan, Rael, and Rohanna were seated behind the Warden’s chair, and I saw that each wore a chain around his or her ankles that were all interconnected, and that were all attached to the walls at the back. They had a front row seat, which I knew was intentional. The Warden wanted them to see, in all its glorious detail, the death of the woman they loved, and the deaths of her two children.

  “Count us down!” The Warden yelled to the crowd, and they started at ten, roaring out the count.

  Brynna turned us to her.

  “Stay open to my influence. Do not block me out. Just let me control you.”

  We nodded, and just before the crowd roared “GO!” she kissed Penny’s forehead, and then she kissed mine.

  The Warden charged towards us in a blur of superhuman speed unmatched by any other superhuman. Before any of us could blink or even breathe the slightest breath, he was upon us, but before his hands could even flinch as they began to rise, Brynna thrust her arms out to both sides, which sent Penny and I running at superhuman speed in opposite directions. The Warden turned, a slave to his brief moment of confusion, to his brain wondering where we had gone and how we had gone so quickly. Brynna seized upon that single second, and with both hands, she popped the Warden over his ears, disorienting him further. He stumbled to the ground, his eyes wide, betraying his shock only for a second to the crowd watching. In fact, despite what I am sure was world-twirling dizziness, he thrust himself back up onto his feet almost immediately.

  As he stumbled, Brynna rushed forward and socked him hard between the legs with her closed fist. He grunted in pain, but regained himself very quickly. With an almighty swipe sideways, his fist sent her hurtling through the air into one of the cinderblock walls. Something cracked, but she threw herself up, as invulnerable to her pain as he was to his. He was stalking towards Penny now, and Brynna reached out, grasped Penny’s mind so that Penny turned to face the wall, scurried up it impossibly fast, and flipped over his head. Once out of his path, Penny ran to stand beside me, and to keep us scattered, Brynna grasped my mind and sent me running to the other side of the arena and hurtling through the air. I leapt so high that I was able to grab the railing around the viewing area, and people cheered wildly as though I were up there merely as part of the show, and not to avoid the charging bull of a man that was trying to kill me. Once up there, though, I heard people shouting their bets, and to my rage, they were betting against her. Of course, it was the smart thing to do, because the Warden’s reputation was so formidable, but a week earlier, they had been wildly placing their bets upon her and Adam, even when the two confronted four vicious warriors and one Dark Giant. The lack of loyalty from the crowd was sickening to me, and with every inch of my heart, I wished that we would somehow end up on top, that they would find themselves to be disloyal, disgusting fools at the end of this when Brynna, Penny, and I walked out of the Arena and then off of the ship, but I knew that it simply would not be.

  Well, I did not know know. But I strongly suspected. All odds were so staunchly stacked against us.

  The Warden rounded on Brynna, and she actually grinned, because she knew that she had made him angry. He was not like his brother; Tyre’s infamous temper was not shared in the Warden. He became theatrical when he was mad, and crazed, but that theatricality and insanity did not make themselves known in the form of explosive fits of rage or in seemingly random bursts of violence. He just killed. Swiftly, but not mercilessly. Now, he was mad. His red eyes were blazing into her black and white ones. When he charged forward, she tried to dodge, but he was too quick, and I could hear her mind thinking that this was it. He would beat her into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp, and maybe he would rape her before he ripped out her throat, or maybe he would not.

  Her knee came up to nail him in the ribs, and from what I am sure was rather decent pain, he found the rage to strike her, and he did not do so lightly. His hand was closed into a fist when he hit her, not open in a slap.

  “Six dinner tokens on the Warden!” I heard one man yelling, frantically upping the ante.

  “Twenty cigarettes on the Warden!”

  “Outside tokens on the Warden!”

  Mary Bachum’s boys and girls walked through the crowd, gathering the items being used to bet. I hoped they would all be happy, all those who were betting on him. When we were dead, and they had their equal share of the winnings, I hoped that it would keep them warm at night, even as we grew colder by the hour. Penny was a child. I was a child. Brynna had been their queen. When we were dead, they should have mourned, not reaped their winnings and celebrated.

  But these were hardened, immoral criminals. I do not know why I was surprised.

  My eyes traveled by their own will over to where the rest of us were sitting. Rohanna was cowering in Rael’s shoulder, and Janna was cowering against James’s. No, she was not cowering, though she was crying, and grasping both of Idan’s hands in hers. She was whispering to James, and even from where I was, I could see his bottom lip beginning to tremble as he fought off tears. His eyes were searching all around, trying not to look down, because he was trying to convince himself that she would get the upper-hand, and when he looked down into the ring, he knew that she would not. Adam, on the other hand, was watching, his eyes still so red that they burned with their own light. As I watched him, I saw a recognition in his mind first, and then in his heart, that it was for this reason that he had pushed her away in the beginning, because he knew that she would die this terrible death. His mind was forcing his eyes to hold fast to her, even when the blood spewed from her mouth and nose, even when her jaw shattered, even when the Warden closed his hands around her neck, and began to squeeze. His heart was cringing at the sight, as her beautiful face became more and more unrecognizable, as the woman he loved with all his heart slipped away from him, but his mind continued to hold his gaze to her. He would watch her die, he would feel every second of it. He would do that, so that the next time the Warden was foolish enough to approach him, he would rip him apart, slowly, taking one appendage at a time—fingers, hands, arms, legs, eyes, tongue… So that he felt every moment of it.

  I would be dead soon. She
was fading. I could feel it. All the while, as he hit her, she fought. With everything. She clawed his face. She slashed her nails across his neck and drew a sufficient amount of blood that began to gush. She snapped six of his fingers, cracked three of his ribs, shattered three others. But he was an animal. He was beastly, brutal… He just kept hitting her. And I watched. I cried, and cried, and cried… But all I did was watch. She was holding us steadfastly to our places so he could not hurt us yet. But I could have fought. I didn’t.

  When the ship lurched to the left, and then immediately righted itself, only to be thrown to the right, I knew that it was her. In her final moments, she was having her last laugh. The Warden knew it, too, so he grasped her face in both hands, pulled her face close to his, and bellowed, “What are you doing?!” When I looked, Adam had stood up, because he knew, too, what she was about to do, and as every one of those revelers looked around, I watched the grin spread across his lips, and the maniacal laughter take him. And then it dawned on me. If she was to die, she would make sure that they died with her. Adam, James, and Janna would get us out, somehow, someway. But everyone else would perish. She would see to that. Her very own little cataclysm. Her last act of revenge.

  He hit her, demanding to know what she was doing. He stood up, brought his foot back, and delivered a particularly brutal blow to her midsection that left her curled up, gasping for air, grasping her broken ribs. He stomped on her legs, breaking one. He stomped on her pelvis, and shattered that, too. The man was famed for being as brutal a fighter as he was skilled. His victims were left looking like they had lost a fight with a freight train when he was done with them. Already, she was bleeding profusely, and she was swollen beyond recognition, to the point that I prayed soon she would run out of bones for him to snap, only so he would end her pain. He would have continued until she was gone, had Penny not dropped down from the top and begun to approach. She dropped down, behind Brynna’s head, and the Warden looked up at her, shocked. After a moment, he smiled, his fangs gleaming.

  “Would you like to hold Mummy’s hand while I rip out her throat? She needs a hand to squeeze in all her pain, and once she is gone, it is your turn.”

  For the moment, he had stopped hitting Brynna. When he had spoken, though, it had triggered a coughing fit, and I realized, from the raspy way that he was breathing, that one of his broken ribs had impaled one of his lungs. When he coughed, blood spewed out of his mouth onto her, and became lost with the rest of the blood on her face. Brynna’s hand was reaching back, clawing the air, trying to force Penny’s mind to send her body back up onto the wall, where she would be safe for a few more minutes, but Penny resisted, or maybe Brynna’s power was diminishing as her life diminished.

  For a moment, Penny just stood there. Then, she turned her gaze from him to me, and when my eyes met my sister’s, I knew, so clearly and resolutely that I did not know how I had not known it before, what I had to do. I fought back, hard, against Brynna’s influence over my mind. When I dropped to the ground, Penny and I charged, with every ounce of our strength, into the Warden, and we were able to tackle him backwards. He threw us both off, and as I soared through the air to hit the wall, I watched as Brynna, wheezing, spitting up blood, eyes rolling back, turned onto her side and began to pull her way across the floor towards him, still wanting to fight, even with mere minutes left. Still trying to protect us. Penny had righted herself in mid-air to land on her hands and feet, and just like a quick and clever cat, she scurried across the floor, threw herself over Brynna’s chest, and grasped her face. The Warden tried to charge her, because he knew what she was about do, though I did not know, and to stop him, I rammed my body into his only to be thrust easily aside by him. But I did not give in. I jumped up, threw myself onto his back, and with the fangs I had only just discovered a few weeks earlier, I ripped into his throat.

  The euphoria of it. God, the glory. By the heavens, and by the One God, it soothed every fear I had, to sink my teeth into his skin, to feel the thumping of his pulse against my teeth, lips, and tongue. I licked the throbbing artery, felt it licking me back, and then, my jaws clamped harder. It startled him. It terrified him, to know that I had delivered what could possibly be a killing blow. He was a legendary fighter. He was the Lord of War. He would not be killed by the strange bastard child of the First King and First Queen. He would not allow something like a severed artery to stop him. And I did sever it. Deliberately, I cut one fang through it until his blood began to spray. Then I dropped off of him and rushed to Brynna’s side, feeling the ship give another terrifying lurch to the left. The torches flickered and went out, but suddenly, they roared to life, all at once, and in the newer, brighter light, I saw that Brynna was standing up, covered in blood, but healed. Whole. New again. Penny was beside her, beaming proudly, but her eyes were red as she looked upon the Warden.

  “Grace?” She asked, “We need your help.”

  “How?”

  “We are changing the tides.” Penny said excitedly.

  Somehow, I understood, and when I walked to them and grasped their hands, the ship turned so far onto its left that people flew into the walls and into the domed ceiling, each flung body cracking the glass a little more. Everyone stumbled except for us. Somehow, we were fixed to the ground. Because this was our doing, we were fixed points.

  “There is a particularly monstrous rock formation up ahead.” Brynna informed me, and when I closed my eyes, I could see it, “How would you like to riddle this ship with holes?”

  I beamed, feeling the warmth of one million summers upon my cheeks, the joy of one thousand children within my heart.

  “I would love to, Brynna.”

  And we did. Together, we changed the tides. We pulled the ocean to one side so that our ship careened itself towards the rocks unnaturally. As the water moved, I grasped the hand of the man holding the ship’s wheel with my mind and told him to spin, which sent the ship into what can only be described as a tailspin. I could smell the smoke and fire in the engine rooms as the engines gave out. I could hear the screams, and I drank them in like they were water from the Fountain of Youth. I pictured my mother’s face. My father’s smile. I felt the warmth of Brynna’s hand in my hand, and the warmth of Penny’s hand. And together, we used our truly epic and utterly awesome power to defy nature, to change what had once been sure, in every way that we could change it. Our power determined what was possible, and we were writing the code of logical possibility that day.

  The rip of the rocks through the bottom of the ship was so deafening, it drowned out the screams. I opened my eyes, giggling as the ship rocked and rattled and jerked and tilted, and my giggling intensified when I began to smell the water come rushing into the hull. In my mind, I saw the Hollow, hidden behind its false wall, as it flooded, and I was glad. Though our greatest nights onboard the ship had been spent there, I was happy to see it go. Nostalgia flooded me just like the water flooded our second home onboard, but I was happy that it was gone.

  “Girls,” Brynna said, “My loves,” She said, “Go free everyone from their chains, and I will see you in a minute.”

  I turned to begin my quick hurtle up the wall, but Penny remained behind.

  “Mama?” She asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Can I take his hands?”

  “Try again.”

  “May I take his hands?”

  Brynna leaned down and kissed Penny’s forehead.

  “Of course, baby.”

  Penny literally skipped forward, to where the Warden was on his knees, holding his throat, turning paler by the minute. In a flash, Penny reached out, pulled his arm forward, cracked his wrist, and bit into the flesh between his broken hand and the rest of his arm-bone. She did the same to the other wrist, and without much gusto, she dropped both of his severed hands to the floor as he finally began to cry out. As she walked past Brynna, she said, “So, why did they call him the Lord of War again?” and even as he screamed, I watched his face contort into
a look of rage, and he shouted after her, but she grasped my hand and took me over to the wall. As we scaled it in two large jumps, and hurtled ourselves over, I watched as Brynna dropped to her knees in front of the Warden. He was bleeding out, shrieking in rage, in pain, thrashing his stubs at her, wanting to hit her, to choke her, to hurt her, but she simply kneeled, and watched.

  Penny freed Idan first, and they grasped hands, ran forward, and stood at the balcony, watching her.

  “Penelope!” James snapped, “Do you mind, sweetheart?!”

  “Oh. Sorry, Daddy.” She threw the keys to him, and he began to unlock his chains. I simply watched, and listened as the Warden’s screams became the only ones in the room, as the guards ran after the prisoners, trying to keep order as they scrambled outwards in all directions, realizing that they would soon be resting uncomfortably in watery graves. The Warden fell to his side, pale, almost unresponsive, almost gone forever.

  Her hand jerked out, and from the side, I watched her features morph in a millisecond from a look of calm to a look of the purest, most terrifying rage I had ever seen. Truly, it chilled me to the bone, that look in her eyes. It was the darkest evil, and yet it was born and bred from a place of love, for us, for herself, maybe even for him, a little, but I doubted the last part. Once her hand was on his face, his color returned, however slightly, and hers diminished. She was pumping some of her life force inside of him in order to keep him conscious, and feeling the agony, for just a little while longer.

  When Adam’s feet were free, he hurtled himself with ease over the railing and dropped the twenty feet or so into the ring. The Warden was slipping away again, but her hand was still grasping his chin, pumping her health and vitality back into him. She wanted to push him to the brink of death, bring him back, watch him feel the pain we had inflicted upon him, and then push him back to the brink. Rinse, repeat. But Adam came up behind her, threw his arms around her upper body, and pulled her away.

  “NO!” She shrieked, fighting him wildly, and James hurled himself over into the ring, too.

  “Watch the children.” Janna told me, and she threw herself over, as well.

  Brynna was not screaming. They were not words, at least. It was merely indecipherable sounds, animal roars, and screeches. Her fangs were dripping; she was salivating as she watched him die. James wrapped his arms around her from behind, too, and together, he and Adam held her back. Janna took the softer approach, by dropping down in front of her, grasping her face, and kissing her gently.

  “Come now, my love. Let him go. It is over. It is all over now, my dearest love.” Janna whispered as she kissed her, and in the same way that I had seen Brynna calm James and Adam by whispering gently and kissing them, I watched as Janna did the same to Brynna.

  When her senses returned, it seemed to startle her that Janna was sitting right in front of her. Her mind, before it had switched over to the predatory survival mode, had been so convinced that she and everyone she loved would die that it was a shock to see Janna alive and well in front of her. Her shaking hands came up to brush Janna’s hair away from her face and behind her ear, and her forehead came forward to rest against Janna’s. As her thumbs stroked Janna’s cheeks, she kissed her softly, gently, and Janna cried, and kissed her back.

  “I love you.” Janna whispered, “I love you so much.”

  “I love you.” Brynna kissed Janna’s cheek, her forehead, her other cheek, and her lips, “I love you.” She turned back to James and Adam and attacked each in turn with her mouth, kissing them wherever she could find, and kissing them hard. As she kissed them, Janna held her from behind, with her arms around Brynna’s middle and her cheek rested against the top of her back, between her shoulder-blades. After a minute, Brynna collapsed against James’s chest, but reached out and pulled Adam so he was embracing her, too.

  “We are so strange.” She whispered, and her voice broke as she said, “We are the strangest collection of people it has ever been my greatest privilege to know. Oh, my raven-haired goddess, my handsome devil, and my beautiful king… We are a strange and wonderful bunch, aren’t we?”

  And it was then that I saw the four adults I would call my family from then on cry together, and hold each other, and promise that everything would soon be alright. After a few minutes, Idan, Penny, and I jumped down to join their embrace. I ended up wedged against Adam’s torso, but my face was against Brynna’s chest, and in case you haven’t heard, her chest is legendary for being perfect to cry against, which I did. Illa, Rael, and Tony came down to join the hug, and together, we all laughed and cried, because God, we looked ridiculous, but God, it felt good to be alive and whole and together, when we had been sure that we would not be for much longer.

  “Now we just have to figure out…” Brynna whispered through her tears, “How the hell we are going to get off of this ship.”

  “Oh, my beauty.” Adam replied, “If we can survive him, we can survive anything.”

  And we laughed softly, because it was so true.

  Brynna

  I will not discuss in detail what happened to me. I will not grant him that power, not even now. I will not lament the irony (and is that even the right word?) of me being assaulted in that way yet again. I will not lament being a statistic, being one of those women who is assaulted once, and then again, and again, and again. It does not make any sense to me, how it could happen to me so many times. Should I not have learned to avoid it? Should I not have foreseen it? Is it an example, in a variation, of course, of “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?” Did I deserve to be shamed?

  No. The night after it happened, once we were nestled in our Hollow, I laid against Adam, my chest pressed to his chest, my chin angled up so I could look into his eyes in the darkness. My hand was absentmindedly stroking his face, and he was kissing my lips very gently every few minutes. I was so locked into him, the way that only he, James, and Janna could make my mind melt into theirs, how they could always bond us together in body, mind, and spirit in such a way that I forgot all else, and yet I was crying. The tears were falling, but I did not make a sound. I was too proud to sob, but the tears were able to supersede my pride and escape my eyes, totally against my will.

  Every ounce of strength inside of me had long since fled, and every time I opened my mouth to speak, I felt as though something were lodged in the back of my throat, choking me, cutting off the words. I did not want to speak. I just did not. But I whispered to him, “Why? And how?” and he knew, in that way my perfect husband always did, exactly what I was asking, and he knew exactly how to answer.

  “Because they were evil. Michael, your father, the Warden. They are evil, and that is all. You did nothing to provoke it. You deserve no shame. The only questions that matter are ‘Am I strong? Can I survive?’ And we know that you are strong. We know that you are a survivor through and through, my love. That is all you need to know. That is the only reality that matters: that you did nothing to provoke these men, and that you are strong enough to survive them. I know this about you, Brynna, and you know it, as well.”

  I nodded, because I did know. I was in pain. I was sick from all he had done. I was sick with fear at the knowledge that I and my family would suffer at his hands for my betrayal. But Adam would not allow me to shoulder the blame. He would ensure that I knew that I had done nothing, that the violence inflicted upon me was the result of a man’s evil, not weakness on my part or stupidity or whatever “flaw” inside of me would result in it happening not just once, but three times.

  If it has happened to you once, or if it has happened to you more than once, please know that it was not your fault. I remember how that felt, thinking that if it could happen more than once, then clearly, it was a flaw inside of me, or it was God trying to tell me I deserved it, for whatever reason. But it was not my fault, and it was not yours, either. If you suffered this, whether you are man or woman, it was not your fault. You are strong, and you will survive. It is something we know that other
s do not know; we know we can survive violence, even when it weighs upon us every day, until the day it weighs on us a little less. We know that we can carry the burden for our entire lives. We are strong, and we will survive.

  I never believed, despite ample evidence, more in my ability to survive than when I faced the Warden in the Arena that night. My main concern was ensuring my daughters’ safety, and I was fully prepared to sacrifice myself for them. But Penny and Grace are fighters like me, and they stepped up and fought, and we won. Not only did we win, but we finally did what I had not been strong enough to do on my own. It took the power of three Athenes, standing side by side, grasping hands, to steer the ship into the rocks. More than anything, I had wanted to sink that ship, once it become obvious that we would not simply be sailing away from it in our escape attempt.

  “Alright.” I barked as the roar of the sirens on the wall practically deafened us. We were strolling, me ahead of the pack, and I was ignoring the pain that was still resonating in various points throughout my body despite how Penny had almost completely healed me. We were headed towards where we knew the life rafts were, on the eastern side of the ship, the place that, unfortunately, was turned up towards the sky now that the ship was rolled onto its western side. It was going to be hard, to climb to the top of the ship and deploy the rafts, but we were on fire that night. All of us were pumped up on shared adrenaline, and on our love for each other, and on our relief that we had survived the Warden’s wrath, and on our exhilaration at the idea that soon, we might be free. I say “might” because we did not know if we would survive. Each of us could smell the salt water rising, and knew that with each step, we got closer to where the water was rushing in.

  “This way is blocked off with water already,” I said, “So we’re going to have to climb, and the floor is getting more inverted the closer we get, so prepare your quadriceps, and assess your upper body strength, because we’re going to be pulling ourselves up the walls right about… now.”

  We rounded a corner, and it was once we had escaped the dark corridor we were in that we saw how the ship had tilted. It looked like one of those funhouses in which the spinning tunnels churned round and round, disorienting all those who traversed them. We could have tried to walk up the corridor, our feet stepping over the torch fixtures that were still burning, and we would have, had we not heard the door buckling up ahead.

  “Grab a torch!” Adam bellowed and each of us jumped up and grabbed onto separate light fixtures. James and Grace were on the same one, and when the water buckled the door completely and came rushing up the hallway, James locked his legs around her and held on tightly, and thank God or the Gods that he did: The water rushed with such force that she almost immediately lost her grip on the light fixture, and if it were not for him, she would have gone rushing up the hallway.

  “Can you swim?!” James asked her over the roar of the water, and she shook her head, trembling terribly as she held onto him, and in her mind, I could see her imagining the smothering of her lungs that she would feel if she were to be submerged in water. “Alright.” He said, “Onto my back, kiddo.”

  Adam was holding Janna, who was holding Idan, and I had Penny latched to my back already but Tony, who was holding onto the light fixture with me, was keeping one arm around us both. Rael, Tony, and Rohanna were behind us, all holding the same fixture.

  “You got her, baby?” James asked me, and I nodded. “I can take them both. You want me to take her?”

  “No, though I know that you absolutely could take them both, you bull of a man.”

  “Hey, if anyone is a bull here it’s you, woman.”

  “In stature I am a bull?”

  “No. In both strength and stubbornness.”

  “Stop before you make me throw myself onto your light fixture so I may kiss you very passionately.”

  He laughed and threw himself forward so he could grab the next light fixture. I followed suit, throwing myself forward as the water continued to rush by. Penny’s weight made me sink in the water and lose my grip. I went hurtling backwards into Adam, Janna, and Idan.

  “No!” Idan exclaimed as he reached out and grabbed me. Somehow, even though he was just a small boy, he was able to hold me to Adam.

  “Buckling!” Adam said, “It’s buckling!”

  “Alright. Penny. Come around in front of me.”

  I maneuvered her around so she was latched to the front of my chest and brought my knees up so I could hold her between them.

  “Hold on tight, baby.”

  She did, and I was able to float my body out and extend my legs so that she could reach the next light fixture.

  “Hold on tight, baby.”

  “Mommy, what if I go in?”

  “You won’t, sweetie.”

  “Look at me, baby.” James said, “Come to me, baby. You can do it.”

  “I’m going to go in. I don’t want to go in. I don’t want to go in, Daddy.”

  “You won’t, sweetheart. If you fall in, we will catch you.” Janna told her, “I promise, we will catch you.”

  “Hang on, baby.” James told Grace, and he began to rappel his way back to get Penny. “Remember what I taught you? In the lake? If you go into the water, look up, find the light, and kick towards it as hard as you can, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” Penny nodded, “Please hurry, Daddy, I’m slipping.”

  “I’m coming, baby. If you go in, just kick as hard as you can, and once you’re above water, if you get tired, turn onto your back, and you’ll float, right?”

  She nodded, and James reached her just as her fingers slipped. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she cried against his neck as he held her with one arm tightly, breathing a sigh of relief, telling her over and over again, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

  He got her to the other end of the hallway, and put her onto the fixture with Grace. The water was slightly shallower there, and beside the door, it was somehow less forceful.

  “Alright, Mama, you next.” James told me, and I frowned at him jokingly even as I reached as far as my arm could reach to grab the next fixture. “I know, I know, you hate me calling you that, but I will not stop. Ever.”

  “Good, because it is actually beginning to grow on me.” I told him.

  “I am going to stop calling you that at once.”

  I giggled, and when he reached out to me, took my hand, and pulled me the rest of the way to him, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and my legs around his torso. We looked at each other, and I found myself beaming despite the terribly perilous situation in which we found ourselves.

  “What?” He asked me softly, and I shook my head.

  “You are just such a handsome devil. Especially now, when you are being so heroic.”

  “You’re heroic. What are you talking about? If anyone is heroic here, it is you, my love.” He leaned in and kissed me, so softly and gently it warmed me despite the arctic chill of the water. “My love,” He whispered and kissed me again, “My love,” His kiss deepened, “My l—”

  “Excuse me!” Rohanna shouted, “Could the lovers keep moving, please? My arm is giving out!”

  “You interrupted my thing!” James exclaimed, “Our thing! The thing I always say to her! Goddamn it!”

  “I got the message, though.” I told him, “Put me over that way with your sexy leg muscles, and I will get the girls through the door.”

  “It’s coming in really fast there, baby.”

  “It’s alright. I can hold on.”

  “I should go first.”

  “How are you going to get there?” I asked, “Am I going to put you on my legs and send you over?”

  “Baby, I just don’t know if you’re going to be strong enough to…”

  “James. I could bench you if I wanted to. Now, stop questioning me and put me over there.”

  He sighed heavily and brought his legs up to hold me.

  “You are so mean.” He said, “I love it. Are you ready? Go
d, this is never going to work.”

  “Just hold me with your legs and push outwards. I am going to swim against the current. It is slowing down now that the water is rising.”

  “Don’t talk about the water rising.” Janna begged softly.

  “We’re almost there, baby.” I told her, as James pushed me with his feet towards the door. Though I did go under the water, and I heard him exclaim in horror, I resurfaced, holding to the door frame.

  “Oh, thank God! We can get up the stairs!” I told them, “Granted, we will be climbing them sideways, but they are practically dry!”

  “Hooray!” James exclaimed, “Let’s get everyone onto them.”

  “Oh, shut up, James!”

  Grace was extending Penny to me, and very carefully, I pulled her, passed her under the doorway, and held her over my head so I could push her onto the railing that was turned sideways.

  “Keep climbing until you’re out of the water, baby.” I told her, “But be careful.”

  She began to monkey her way up until she was out of my sight, and once Grace had passed through, she followed in Penny’s footsteps. As Grace reached the top railing, Penny pulled her over with strength so beyond her small body.

  “Get Idan up here!” James called, and slowly, carefully, calculatedly, they passed Idan up to me, and I watched as he scurried up. “Janna. You next, baby.”

  Adam brought Janna up, because she could not swim, either, and not only that, but I knew how terrified she was of water.

  “I can do it.” She whispered to him, but her hands would not release his neck, so he pulled them across with her latched to his front.

  “Here we are, sweetheart.” He told her, as he passed her to James.

  “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.” James told her as he passed her to me. I reached out, took her desperately reaching hands, and pulled her to me. She latched onto me and I kissed her forehead, feeling her trembling terribly.

  “You did it, baby.”

  “Is the water higher?”

  “It’s alright. Go on. Can you pull yourself up with your shoulder?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m less afraid of the pain than I am of the water.”

  She had some trouble scurrying up, but she managed it.

  “Did you plan to strike above the water-bottom, baby?” James asked me, and I looked at him quizzically, “It’s the fail-safe put into the bottom of a ship to stop it from flooding… Forget it. Engineering talk.”

  “I most certainly will not ‘forget it.’ I love it when you talk engineering to me.”

  “Well, I’ll have to remember that later.”

  “You should.”

  “Illa!” James called, “Come on, sweetie.”

  Adam pulled Illa forward, handed her off to James, who handed her off to me, and I put her onto the railing. At the top, Janna pulled her over. By then, the water was almost over my head, but the current was slowing the higher the water rose. James threw himself over to the doorframe and I wrapped my legs around him quickly, in a panic, thinking he was going to get pushed down the corridor by the current, but he had actually grabbed the doorframe in time.

  “Alright. Go on, woman.” Under the water, he patted me twice on the butt, the way he always did when he wanted me to go ahead of him.

  “Adam?” I asked.

  “I am right behind you, my love. Go on.”

  Seeing how close he, Rael, Tony, and Rohanna were allowed me to relinquish my post to James. I reached as far as I could, and still, James had to push me gently the rest of the way. I pulled myself up, my arms shaking from the effort of holding myself up, and I watched as Rohanna had to duck under the water to get through the doorway, and I began to panic.

  “Faster, James!” I told him, as though he did not know that the water was now over their heads. Rael passed under, and my heart pounded rapidly as I waited for Adam and James to pass under the door. The water was rising quickly, and it would soon fill up the sideways stairwell.

  “Adam!” I called, “James!”

  Just as I had resolved to throw myself back into the water so I could search for them, they ducked under the doorway and threw themselves onto the railing beside me.

  “Where the hell were you two?!” I exclaimed, whacking both of them hard in the shoulders.

  “Ow! I just hung by my arms for half an hour, woman!” James exclaimed.

  “You scared me to death, man!” I gasped out, “Both of you!”

  “My light fixture broke, that is all.” Adam told me, “I am sorry, Brynna.”

  “I am not talking to either of you for two minutes.” I replied as I began to climb up.

  “Well, that is alright. We have the best view down here, anyway.” James said, and I knew that he was watching my ass as I climbed up the railings. I would have scolded him, but I was fighting gravity as I climbed. My back was parallel to the rising water, and on each stair landing, I had to pull myself up and over and then reach up immediately to keep climbing. We were trying to reach the middle floor, to put enough space between us and the water but so as not to exhaust ourselves completely by climbing to the top.

  “You got it, Brynn?” James asked.

  “Don’t gloat right now. Don’t bring up how I said I could bench you. Just… don’t.”

  “Never, sweetheart.” James replied, “Rael!”

  “I’m coming down to get her.” Rael said, and he came over the railing and carefully began to climb down.

  “No, no! It’s going to be twenty times harder coming down than going up, Ray. I will be fine. I will make it.”

  “Just stay right where you are.” Adam called up to him, “Can you reach him, Brynna?”

  “I can.” I answered, but I was so exhausted. My arms were shaking, feeling loose like spaghetti noodles. My breaths were rasping slightly still, because though I had been healed, my lungs were taking longer to catch up to my body. But I forced myself to focus on Rael, to focus on Janna, Grace, Penny, and Idan, who were two floors up from him, as they encouraged me to keep going.

  My head began to turn backwards to see how high up I had come, because for a moment, I believed that I could not make it.

  “No, no!” Rael said, “Do not look back, Brynna. Look at me. Keep climbing.”

  “How close is the water?”

  “You are far ahead. Just keep coming to me.”

  “Oh, my Gosh, I am so scared right now.” I whispered, more to myself than to him.

  “You are hiding it well. Your heart is hidden from me, even now.” Rael told him, “You are doing beautifully, Brynna Elohimson.”

  “Oh, God, Rael, I am scared.” I told him, as I continued to climb, “My arms are giving out. They’re going to give out. I’m going to fall into the water.”

  “No. Tony, James, Adam, and Rohanna are behind you, and they will catch you if you fall, and I am here, ready to pull you the rest of the way. You can do this. You have come so far. You have survived too much this night to lose your precious life now. Keep coming to me. Reach up to me.”

  I was not close enough yet to reach up to him, but I pulled myself onto the next landing, somehow, even though it hurt, even though once I was lying flat against the landing, I began to actually feel the tears coming down my face. They mixed in with the water that was covering me from when I had been pushing people through the doorway. I could not help thinking how very tragic it would be if I could not make it to the top, if I had survived the Warden and saved my family but could not save myself. But I refused. Far off in the distance, when I cast my eye forward, I could see us all, safe, warm, and happy, and finally free. The possibility of it was distant, but it was there, and it was beautiful. A sob escaped me as I saw it, and then I pushed myself up with my shaking arms, grasped the next railing and began to pull.

  “That’s it, Brynn.” James told me, and he was much closer to me now, “Keep pushing, baby. You’ve got this.”

  I did. I could do it. Every time I wanted to drop d
own, I pushed just a little harder and finally, I reached up, and Rael’s strong hands grasped me, pulled me the rest of the way, and then lifted me up to Janna, Illa, and Grace who pulled me over. They laid me onto the landing, and Janna dropped down beside me and grasped my hand.

  “Rest.” She told me softly, “For just a few minutes, you must rest.”

  “So tired,” I whispered, so only she could hear, “I am so tired, Janna.”

  “I know.” Her lips pressed softly to the backs of my fingers, “I know, my love.”

  “Papa, you must carry her.” Idan told Adam when he came up onto the landing and immediately dropped to his knees beside me. “Or James must.”

  “No.” I whispered, and I reached out and gently touched his face. “I can keep going. I have to keep going.”

  “No, sweetheart.” Adam said, and he gently stroked my hair, “Let me carry you for a while. Just until we reach the starboard side, where the boats are.”

  “No.” I shook my head emphatically, “I have to do this, Adam. I have to. I can’t explain why, but I have to.”

  He wanted to argue, but by then, he knew better. He and Janna pulled me onto my feet, and James steadied me when I swayed slightly. My body felt so heavy that I wondered if I was feverish. My lungs were beginning to clear, but still, my breaths hurt. All I wanted was to sleep. I wanted to let James or Adam carry me, but as I had said, I had to walk out of there on my own two feet. And besides, I wanted them to carry Penny and Idan, which they did.

  People were frantically running through the cell-block, though how they were able to move so quickly, when they were walking on the slowly cracking windows and on the closed barred doors, I did not know. The people who had not moved quickly enough to the side of the cellblock that had become the floor were dangling from the railings above us, and I thanked my mind that always thought of all the logistics that I had chosen that particular floor to get off the stairwell, otherwise, we would have ended up higher and looped around so that we were up in the air. The ship had already turned completely onto its side, and soon, the housing department would be flooded once the windows shattered. The sea would storm through, so our group pushed forward quickly, as the morons around us fought and killed each other over stupid possessions in other people’s cells. As we passed mine, Janna, Grace, and Illa’s cell, I watched as two men carted off the box that had once contained the bracelet my mother had gotten me. Clearly, they hadn’t opened it to find it empty, or else they would not have taken it. The bracelet was around my wrist, and my wedding ring was around my neck. I had all the personal possessions I needed. They could pilfer everything else.

  “Is something cracking?” Illa asked, “Do you all hear that?”

  We all looked back, and there, at the end of the row, closest to the door through which we had just come strolling, was a particularly violent crack spreading across the glass. As the ship tilted further, going belly up, the pressure on the supposedly indestructible windows increased, and soon, they would all shatter, and flood the housing compartment. Even one window shattering…

  “Time to run.” James told us, “Once one goes, they all go.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Engineer, baby.” He said, grasping my elbow, “Let’s go.”

  As people continued to fight over what they were finding in the cells, and as some just turned back at the sound of the cracking to see what was causing the sound, we and a few other groups ran for the doors. Illa was pushed sideways by two men getting into a particularly nasty row over what looked like a diamond necklace, and Janna, reacting instantly, grasped Illa’s arm, pulled her from the fray, and smashed one man’s head against the metal siding, all in the space of one second. Then, she grasped Illa’s hand and ran with her, helping her dodge and jump, which was needed, especially once we heard the rushing water shattering those windows one by one.

  Adam and Tony were the first to reach the door, but they hung back, waving us through and counting to make sure that all nine of us made it through before they followed in behind us. I stood in the doorway, watching as they came through, as it took the combination of both of their strengths to pull the iron door shut and bolt it. Before they did, though, I saw that water. Even more intimidating than what we had seen in the hallway (and that had been pretty damn intimidating), was the roaring, crashing, raging monster that was rushing through the housing compartment. That space was the biggest, spanning five stories, with about two hundred cells per story, and yet the water consumed half of that space before I could even blink. It seems obvious, that the ocean water would rush in quickly and consume the place, but to see it there before my eyes, to see the raw power of it, the mercilessness of it, the awesome, terrifying rage of it, took my breath away. A word came back to me: “sublime.” It means what most think it means; it does mean so beautiful and amazing that it inspires awe. But, at least in the philosophical sense, something that is sublime is beautiful, but also terrifying. It inspires awe, but it also inspires fear, and in that mixture, it breeds an attraction, a desire of the eye to look despite the fear. God, nothing I had seen so far had fit that description more aptly than that rush of water.

  But Adam and Rael closed the door, blocking my eyes, at least temporarily, from that onslaught.

  “Are you alright, my beauty?” Adam asked, stopping for a moment to grasp my face.

  I nodded.

  “We are racing time here, Adam, and we are not far ahead.” I informed him, “It is not just the water, or the ship turning, but there are others headed for the boats. We have to get there before they do.”

  “I know.” He kissed my forehead, “I know, sweetheart. Come on.”

  His fingers entwined with mine, and we continued up the hallway, hand in hand, which was good, because now, as we walked on the walls that had become the floor, overstepping the light fixtures, I could feel the sea rocking beneath us, and all of us began to stumble as we went. The ship gave a particularly nasty rumble that made me think we had scraped more rock, and Adam stumbled into me. Just like I had all those years ago in Shadow Forest, I steeled my body, fortifying it to support his weight, and caught him before he fell. Immediately, he righted himself, and we continued charging forward, trying to reach the guard’s quarters.

  “James!” I called, “Are we getting close?”

  “Yeah, we’re almost there. The hard part is going to be climbing up.”

  “Climbing up?”

  “We’re going to have to climb onto the side of the ship where the lifeboats were. That side is the side that’s up.”

  “How the hell are we going to do that?” Rohanna asked.

  “Well,” James said, “With a little luck, some divine intervention, and more than likely by making a human pyramid.”

  “How much longer until the ship flips completely over, do you think, sweetheart?” Janna asked.

  “I’d say about a half hour.” James replied, “If that. The water compartments are filling up, and hopefully that will keep us righted for a little while longer. Once the ship goes belly up, though…”

  “Yeah. The lifeboats flip over into the water, and we are out of luck, correct?” I asked.

  “Yeah, at that point, we’ll be swimming.”

  “Swimming where?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “A bridge would solve the whole problem.” Illa said huffily, and Grace, despite the rather gloomily perilous situation, chuckled softly to herself at Illa’s sarcasm.

  “Here it comes!” Adam said, because up the hallway, we heard the door buckle and give in.

  “In here!” James reached up and pulled himself into one of the guard’s rooms. Janna handed Penny and Idan to him, and then boosted Grace and Illa up next.

  “Look at you go, Queen Janna.” I said to her admiringly.

  “Shut up, and put your foot in my hand.”

  “You just want to lift me so you can grab my ass.”

  “O
f course, darling.” As she lifted me into James’s arms, she did pinch one side of my butt, which caused me to yelp in surprise and nearly twitch out of James’s grasp, but he managed to hold me and pull me up. When Adam lifted her up to us, she was still giggling. Rohanna was next, and then Adam, Tony, and Rael came up. The water came rushing by, but it was not yet high enough to rise up through the doorway just yet.

  “Shit!” James exclaimed, and we all looked back at him, wide-eyed, because if he was afraid, then surely, he had good reason, because he had been so in control before.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Windowless room. Some of the lower ranking guards had windowless rooms. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

  “You didn’t glance inside to check if the room had a window first, Maxwell?” Adam asked snippily.

  “No. I heard you shouting that the water was coming, and I jumped into the closest room. Sorry I didn’t scout it out first, but you made it sound like there was an emergency.”

  “Obviously, it was an emergency. Would you like to look down? The water is beginning to come into the room. Soon it will fill up this space, and we will be floating within it, because you chose a room with no windows.”

  “Will you shut up?! Just let me think.”

  “Oh, now you decide to think.”

  “Would you like to scout out the mission next time? Would you like to lead the charge, Adam?”

  “Well, Maxwell, it is looking increasingly less likely that there will be a next time, doesn’t it?”

  I watched them go back and forth, my head turning between them as they jockeyed their insults and accusations back and forth. Finally, I walked over, looked down into the hallway from where we had just come. I was standing with my feet on either side of the doorframe, staring down into the rushing green water that was so black it looked bottomless. The sight scared me; I remembered the dreams I used to have as a child where I was walking out to sea (for no discernible reason, mind you), and would suddenly slip off of the sandbank into the dark and treacherous waters beyond, and I could feel a dark presence ahead of me—perhaps it was a shark or a particularly nasty squid, or perhaps it was the fanged squid serpents we had been so unfortunate to encounter in the river our first year on Pangaea. As I stared down into the dark abyss, I could not know what was down there. For all I knew, there was some dark creature awaiting me.

  “Why don’t you say that a little louder?” James was saying, “Get the kids all riled up? Why don’t you tell them that you think this is it?”

  “Well, why don’t you tell them? Oh, wait. You just did!”

  “Janna?” I asked, “Sweetheart?”

  “What, honey?”

  “Hand me that glowstick-looking thing right there.”

  “Alright. Why? Are you going to blast them over their heads with it? While I can very easily lift you, I do not think that I will be able to carry either my husband or your husband on my back should you knock them both unconscious.”

  I cracked the light-stick, grinned at her, and then dropped down into the water without another word. Far above me, even through the rushing torrent, I heard her scream.

  The water was not rushing as strongly as it appeared to be rushing while I watched it from the inverted doorway. My mind was more than likely making it appear worse than it was. My anxiety was allowing me to see it as monstrous when really, it was just dark water strolling along like a slightly risen stream. My heart pounded in my ears as I swam, and my teeth clenched hard around the light-stick so that it lit my way. When I saw the bodies floating around me, converging on me from the sides of the hallway, or drifting across my path, I exclaimed in horror and would dodge, trying to hold my breath for as long as I could but feeling my chest begin to tighten unbearably every time I stifled a scream.

  One of the corpse’s hands tangled into my hair, and my scream garbled out in bubbles and a sound contorted by the water. The light-stick dropped from my mouth, and as my lungs gave their final screeches for air, their final pleas, I could not stop to pick it up again, so I began to kick with the remnants of my strength, and to pull myself forward, my fingers clawing the water, pulling me forward until finally, above me, I saw darkness that could only be another room, and when I thrust myself up into that darkness, I found myself in a guard’s quarters, and not only that, but it was a guard’s quarters with a window. It was not the room I was looking for, though, so once I caught my breath, I ducked back down under the water and kicked and clawed through the torrent again, swimming under bodies contorted into grotesque, contortionist poses by the force of the waves, dodging reaching arms and twisted legs, until I resurfaced in yet another room. This one had a window, and when I looked at the door that was floating against the wall, I saw the words that made my heart surge: “Fire Marshall.”

  “Yes!” I gasped out as I pulled myself up onto the wall beside the door. The water was halfway up the side of the room now, and I knew that we were running out of time. Where they were, the water was more than likely a little bit lower because it was further away from where the water was flowing in, but still, I had to be quick; my power told me that all but two of the lifeboats were gone, and if we did not hurry, we would find ourselves up a river of excrement without a propelling device, or, a more fitting metaphor, aboard a sinking ship without a life-saving flotation vessel. Panting and wheezing, I ran into the closet until I found the glass case that held the fire axe. Feeling like Rose from Titanic, I ran at the wall and swung hard. My superhuman strength had never been more useful. Despite my physical exhaustion, I was still able to hack a particularly large hole into the shiny mahogany walls.

  “Come on.” I urged myself breathlessly, “Come on!” I swung, and my arms shuddered and shook, begging to give in, but I swung again. I swung and swung and swung, until finally, I could push through the small space into the next room, the one that was right next to where the rest of them were. My lungs were screaming, my arms were shaking so badly that I feared I would accidentally hack myself with the damn axe, and my legs were numb from being submerged in the frigid water. But I kept swinging and hitting, until I disconnected my mind from my body, and saw myself in a side-view. I was soaked to the bone, my hair was dripping, my lips were beginning to turn blue, but God or Gods, I was a beast with that axe. As the electrical circuits in the room began to pop, and sparks began to fly behind me, I watched as I somehow found the strength to hit even harder. Perhaps it was the fear of electrocution, or perhaps it was because the water was up to my waist now, or perhaps it was because I had, totally by my instinct and without consciously acknowledging it, kicked my leg backwards into the heavy wooden desk six times to keep it from sliding into me and pushing me over, but the strength that welled up in me made me feel more alive than I had felt in a long time, or perhaps ever.

  It also made me slightly delirious, so when the hole that I had hacked into the wall became big enough, and I saw the ten of them standing there, looking utterly shocked—mouths totally agape, eyes opened to their farthest reaches—I dropped the axe to my side, and began to laugh so hard that I had to hold my stomach.

  “Oh, my stars…” I gasped out, as the tears leaked from my eyes, mixing with the water dripping from me. “I looked so very cool a moment ago. Like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider-cool. Like Ripley from Alien-cool. Now look at me! I am Jack Nicholson, The Shining-crazy. Hacking down walls and laughing…”

  Penny was the first one who came pushing through the space, and she threw her arms around my middle.

  “Up, baby.” I told her, and she scurried up my torso until she was latched to my chest and could burrow her face in my neck.

  “Brynna…” Adam began to say, but he could not muster even the slightest hint of scolding in his voice, though he knew that he should scold me for endangering my life so blithely. Gently, he took the axe from my hand as James came up, put both of his hands on my face, and kissed me.

  “God, you are so rash and impulsive and terrible and… you fucking gave me a heart att
ack.”

  “James!” I exclaimed, before gesturing with my eyes to Penny.

  “Don’t say that word, Penny.”

  “I won’t. Potty-mouth.”

  James kissed her head and then mine.

  “Well, it was either listen to you boys bicker until the moment of our death, or take matters into my own hands.”

  “Damn.” Tony said as he started to push through the wall, “Damn, you psycho. You hacked through two fucking walls, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did, best friend.” I replied, “I had to do something, didn’t I?”

  “God, you’re fucking scary.” He told me, “I love it.”

  “Tony! Language!”

  “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Hey, James! The water rising is actually good for us!” He called to James across the room, “I can get through the window with a few more inches.”

  “Do you gotta break it, man?” He asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Look out.” Adam said, and he swam forward, raised the axe, and began to push it up into the glass. “Come here.” He handed the axe to James, lifted me easily over his head, and placed me on his shoulders. James handed the axe up to me, and I began to whack at the glass on the window.

  “Moving, sweetheart.” Adam told me, and I grasped the top of his head with one hand as he moved sideways a few steps and hopped up onto one of the desks that had come floating by. Once we were up higher, Adam was not in danger of becoming submerged with me on his shoulders, and I had better leverage against the window. Finally, the glass shattered, and the window crashed out of its frame. Adam pulled us out of the way by jumping off the desk and into the water.

  The window was large, but not large enough that if we all just stood under it, the water would raise us up and push us all through. Inevitably, some of us would be on the sides of the window, and once the water had risen that high, and we were stuck, there was no accounting for whether we’d be able to keep our wits about us and claw our way through the window.

  “Brynn!” Tony shouted, and when I looked, I saw him swimming out of the guard’s bedroom, a long string of sheets ripped up and tied together around his neck.

  “Are we going to hang ourselves?! Tony, we have made it so far!” I told him, and he splashed me. “Don’t!”

  “Oh, you’re not wet already? My apologies. Adam, can you get her through there?”

  “If I throw her like a football, then yes.”

  “Even if I stand on your shoulders, I’m not going to be able to reach, Adam. So yes, you’ll have to throw me like a football. Throw me. Then throw Penny, Idan, Illa, and Grace.”

  Grace and Penny were clinging to James, who was holding them off to the side, where the three of them were standing on an overturned dresser.

  “You got it, Captain!” James told me, and as Adam lifted me into his arms, cradling me first. I found myself smiling.

  “For what is that smile?” He asked me quizzically, with a small smile of his own.

  “Delirium, more than likely.” I replied, “The possibility of freedom. How sexy you look when you are soaking wet.”

  Very quickly, because the others were distracted, he kissed me. Though the touch of our lips was quick, the feeling that surged through me was not. Long after his lips had left my lips, I still felt it. Even as he threw me upwards, and I grabbed the frame around the window, I could still feel the warmth of his kiss, and at first, that comforted me, until I began to feel the dark Knowing approaching me. My hand had sunk through a broken piece of glass, but I felt no pain, and I tried to tell myself that I was mostly delirious from all that had happened that night, but I knew that the reason why I was feeling that way was because my love for him—for all of them, actually—and my fear for our lives had led me to ask if we would survive, and because I had shouted the question, God or the Gods had begun to answer. Cryptically, he or she or they or it answered, but even cryptically, the outlook was dark.

  Finally, the prophecy came full circle.

  The one you have loved the longest will die.

  The one you have loved most dangerously will flee.

  It is simple, and it is written.

  The last two lines were very new, and very unpleasant.

  That was it. That was all I heard and felt. It rattled through me, and even as I pulled myself up onto the side of the boat, even when I breathed in the frigid, fresh, cleansing sea air, I still felt utterly ill over the sight of it, over hearing those words rattling in my mind. Once up there, I stared out at the infinite expanse. At the moonlight glowing on the water, at the thin pitch-black line that stretched, perfectly straight, marking the farthest point I could see. The darkest evil has not yet even broken the horizon, He had told me. I looked back into the hole, to where they were all looking up at me, the water up to the chests of the two tallest people—Adam and Tony—in the room.

  “Throw it.” I said, but my voice was quieter, and when my eyes met Adam’s, he knew that I had seen something terrible. I shook my head very slightly as I caught the tied-together sheets. I wrapped the end I was holding in my hands around my back and dropped the other end down to them. Like a champ, Tony had perfectly calculated just how long the rope needed to be.

  “Alright, Idan coming up!” Illa shouted to me, because she was standing on the desk where the rope had fallen. She lifted Idan easily onto the rope, but Idan, being so small, could not climb up; he would not have that kind of upper body strength until he had aged at least a few more years. So I unlooped the rope from around me and began to pull him up.

  “Hold on tight, baby.” I told him, and just as I had swung that axe despite the unbearable pain in my arms, I pulled Idan to me. Once he was up with me, he threw his arms around my neck and clung to me. His little body was shivering terribly, and I kissed his forehead and his cheek, telling him we were almost there. We were so close. It was only going to be a little while longer.

  “Hold onto me, baby.” I told him as I threw the rope back down.

  “How are you doing up there, sweetheart?” James shouted to me.

  “Just keep sending them.”

  Penny clung to the rope, I pulled her to me, biting my lip to suppress the moan of pain I could feel brimming in the back of my throat. Idan unlatched himself from me, turned, and grabbed the rope. Even the slight help of his small arms was enough to take some of the edge off of my pain. I laughed, somewhat hysterically, because the relief that flooded through me felt so good. When Penny reached the top, she saw Idan helping, and she immediately grabbed the rope to help us pull Grace up. Grace placed her hands on the rope, and together, the four of us pulled Janna up.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…” She was saying when we brought her up, because though she had not climbed, and though she was using her leg muscles to hold onto the rope, she had been abusing her injured shoulder quite a bit that night, and even holding onto the rope as we brought her up put significant strain onto it.

  “I’ll give you a massage later.” I told her as she stood beside me and helped me loop the rope around us and Grace.

  “No, ma’am.” She replied, “I will be giving you a massage later.”

  “Perhaps we should just order the boys to give us both massages.”

  “Yes. Is that not why we have them both?”

  I chuckled.

  “Indeed. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The three of us huddled together and wrapped the ropes around our backs, because the rest of them could surely climb.

  “Alright, we’re sending Illa!”

  “What?!” She asked, “No, I am working the rope.”

  “No, you’re going, kiddo.” James said, “Go.”

  “Illa!” I shouted, “Don’t argue. Let’s go!”

  “God!” Illa growled as she grasped the rope and began to climb, “My one chance not to be a bitch, to be heroic… Stolen.”

  Beside me, Grace giggled rather hysterically, and I looked at her, brows furrowed. Despite how mean Ill
a was to her (Illa was unpleasant to anyone who was not Tony, Janna, or me), Grace always found the humor in her. Whenever Illa made even the slightest cutting remark, or if she ever said anything in that dry sarcastic tone of hers, Grace would laugh. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she…

  No. No way.

  “You got the next one.” James told Illa as we began to pull her up.

  “Yeah, right.” Illa called down to him, “The next one, you will say the ‘next one.’”

  The water was rising fast, but together, we were faster, and together, we pulled everyone through the window onto the side of the ship.

  “Well, she hasn’t gone belly up yet.” I told James.

  “Yeah, looks like she’s going down sideways. Thank God. Someone did at least one thing right in designing this bitch.”

  The lifeboat we found (because there was only one left) had flipped over, and was dangling from only one or two wires. Adam, Rael, Tony, and James were able to flip it back over easily and unfasten it, and then, just like that, our freedom became not just some abstract concept but an actual, foreseeable, highly likely reality.

  The lifeboats were not the open canoe-like vessels that had been used back in the day on Earth. They were not fancy, but they were covered, and under the covering, it was actually quite spacious, as it was designed to transport at least ten more people than we had. At the bow of the boat, it was open, and that was where the steering wheel was located, and in the back of the ship, there was a motor and the propeller.

  “Oh, great. Now all we need is for it to be out of gas.” James said.

  “Don’t even joke like that.” Grace said as I helped her step onboard.

  “I do not think he is joking.”

  James and Adam moved to the front of the ship and waited for Rael and Tony to push us off of the Lapsarian’s side into the water.

  “Everyone hold on!” They said, because the drop was rather significant, and because it was significant, it was quite unpleasant. Tony and Rael pushed with all their might, and then just before we went over, they hopped into the boat and rode the drop down with us. Penny and Idan screamed, and I could not decipher at first if it was scared screaming, or if it was exhilarated screaming, but when they clapped afterwards, and I saw their beaming smiles and listened as they laughed hysterically, I could not help but look at Janna and shake my head incredulously, but we both could not help but laugh with them, as well.

  “At least two of us are having fun.’ She said.

  “Is this not fun?” I asked, “I happen to be having a ball, Janna Maxwell.”

  “Oh, are you?” She asked, “Well, I am glad. I feel quite nauseous after that terrible descent.”

  “Put your head between your knees.”

  “That’s for dizziness!” Illa told me with a slight laugh.

  “Thank you, child of Dr. Miletus, with your inherited medical knowledge.” I replied, “James! Adam! Is it working?”

  They were trying to get the engine to turn over, and my apprehension grew more sickening as the moments of listening to the engine sputter terribly continued.

  “Come on, you son of a bitch!” James exclaimed, and I heard him pounding his fist against the steering wheel.

  “Yes, why don’t you hit it? That will surely solve the problem. In engineering school, did they teach you that machinery responds to tempestuous tantrums, physical violence, and swearing?”

  “Adam!” I scolded him, “James! Don’t make me come up there!”

  Believe it or not, that was all it took. They did not speak, but they continued trying to get the boat working. Finally, when the engine roared to life, I threw aside the plastic covering keeping us separated from the outside, and said, “See how well things go when you two work together? I am so proud of both of you!”

  “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” James asked me, half-seriously, half-jokingly. I jumped up, pushed my way through the plastic, and wrapped my arms around his middle from behind him. Standing on my tiptoes, I kissed the back of his neck, and then smiled when I felt one of his hands begin to rub my arm that was around his abdomen.

  “Did they find spare clothes in there? They are supposed to be a lot of spare clothes. And blankets.” He said, “You need to go get changed.”

  “I will. I just want to watch it go.”

  “Watch what go?”

  “The ship. The Lapsarian. I have spent twenty-five years of my life here, James. I think I am entitled to watch it disappear beneath the waters it has traveled for all of these years.”

  “I absolutely think you have earned that right.” Adam agreed, “I think we all have.”

  James looked between the two of us, and then turned the steering wheel so that the front end of the boat was facing the sinking ship, and then he put the boat into Reverse.

  “Agreed.” He said.

  And so the three of us stood, me standing in between them with my arms linked around their middles, and them standing with their arms draped over my shoulders, as we watched the ship we had called home sink deep below the water. The night was dark and gray, and at one end of the ship, we could see tiny men shooting flares up into the night sky. We watched as the flying red light exploded into a million stars, and as we watched, the ship finally succumbed, taking those little toy men with it.

  A weight lifted inside of me. I felt so light after that ship had sunk that I almost expected to see some physical embodiment of that weight hovering above me in the air. A sigh escaped me, and my shoulders relaxed, and I pictured the Warden’s body, floating among the bodies of the imprisoned and the guards, both lowly and noble. I pictured the bodies of the Old Spirits, the Red Anarchy, and the Unallied, all dead and floating in the black expanse of the sea, no one more noble or moral or evil or good than the man or woman beside him. All the shells of the children of the One God, or the Gods, intermixing in death. We were alive, we had survived. Against all odds, against every belief of every enemy we had, we were alive. The Warden who had ruled us all had perished, and we had lived; the inmates who had wished us harm each day had perished, and we had lived, and God or Gods, it felt better than even I could have imagined it.