“I thought I’d never see you again,” he says. “You just vanished.”
He kisses my eyes and then wipes my tears with his sleeve. “We’re winning,” he says. “We’re receiving message after message from all the plantations. The Sliman troops just started surrendering about an hour ago.”
“When I killed her,” I say.
Astonishment takes over his face. “You killed the Empress?”
“Eric deserves the credit,” is all I say before Kroll finds us. There’s a line of Ghost Legion warriors behind him that he has chained together.
I see emotion on Kroll’s face. It could be that he’s happy to see me. Or that I look so miserable he can’t help but feel sad for me.
“How many have we lost?” he asks Damian.
“It’s hard to tell,” Damian says. “We won’t know for a while until all the numbers are reported from the plantations and villages.”
Kroll nods thoughtfully as he yanks the chain that binds his prisoners.
Damian scans the plantation grounds. “Where’s Finn?” he says.
I don’t want to answer that question. I press my face harder against his chest pretending I’m in the dark.
“It’s Eric,” Kroll says pointing at a tall figure running in the distance. “He’s carrying something. Or someone.”
The rhythmic bouncing of his approach throws me into a new state of curiosity. I wait for Eric holding my breath. At the last second, my courage fails me and I look away. A cold wind enters my skin and holds onto my bones.
“Is that Finn?” Damian’s voice hits my ears. “Is he alive?”
Eric’s voice is hoarse and urgent. “I set off the explosive sequence,” he says. “We have two minutes to vacate.”
Damian drags me along until he realizes I’m in no condition to run. He picks me up gently and lunges forward while Kroll is calling to his Dark Legion warriors to vacate the plantation.
A few seconds after we exit, the chain of explosions begins to rock the foundations of the plantation system. We feel the impact as the underground network is blown to pieces leaving nothing but stories of horror behind.
27
Someone pushes me back as I try to cut through the crowd to get to where Finn is lying. The medics have attached electrodes to the sides of his chest to direct a high voltage shock to his heart.
I want to be the first face he sees when he wakes up. Yet, I can’t bear to watch. I walk away but stay close enough to hear if someone calls me. There are people everywhere. Fighters and warriors arrive from plantations and villages to give their report. Damian and Eric have been talking since we’ve arrived. I imagine Eric is catching Damian up on what took place with the Empress underground.
I hear the words from afar as in a dream. Stable. My lungs expand to take in some much needed air. Stable. It’s good. It’s not everything but it’s a start. A good start. If anything’s wrong with him, I will fix it. As long as he’s alive.
My touchpad lights up with an incoming call. It’s hard to keep my hands calm enough to key in the reply code. It’s Doctor Armand calling from Exodus. Communications have been reopened now that the alien surveillance systems are down. I get behind a tree to receive his message.
“With all that’s been going on, I forgot all about our test,” he says. “But now I have the results.”
“Our test?” There’s only confusion in my head.
“Daphne, the tests are complete. DNA almost ninety-eight percent identical. But that remaining two percent is critically different not just in quality but also in placement. There has been an attempt to create a perfect match for the clone.”
“Doctor Armand, spare me the details, please. I’ve been through hell and all its gates. What’s the verdict?”
“Not the same person, Freya,” he says. “The girl that’s with you right now is not Daphne.”
I stare at the touchpad in my hand after I shut it down. I take no comfort in the fact that I was right to doubt the gift that fell from the sky. I could do without one more disappointment.
I return the touchpad to my pocket when I feel a sharp pain in my right side that takes my breath away. I look down to a blood stain on my shirt that grows larger as I watch it.
“I’m sorry about this,” Daphne says pulling her knife out of my side, “but I really need to fit in with your people now that there’s nothing else left in the world. I wish you hadn’t stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”
I clutch onto the wound trying to stop the blood from flowing. She raises her knife again to finish me off. The grin on her face turns into a red frown as blood trickles from her lips.
She looks back curiously to see Damian holding a knife. The one he has just driven through her upper back and into her chest. She didn’t realize I sent him a message right before I turned off the touchpad.
The clone falls forward and grabs onto him. Damian takes her in his arms. He kisses her forehead and covers her eyes with his hand. He gently puts her body on the wet bed of leaves.
“I killed her again,” he says quietly.
I try to tell him that it wasn’t her but I feel the world around me spin out of control. My eyes go black and my knees collapse under my weight.
Damian rushes to my side and kneels down. He puts his arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” he says with tears running freely down his cheeks. He takes off his shirt and puts it over the wound applying pressure.
The pain blinds me again. Damian takes out his touchpad to call for help.
I stretch out my hand to touch his face. “It’s not your fault,” I whisper. “None of it ever was.”
Eric comes running with a medic in tow. He places his hand under my head. “Don’t worry, Freya,” he says. “You know I’m not going to let you go.”
I grab his hand. “Kill the little devils, too.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
As Eric turns the receptor on, I see Daphne’s blood turning brown on her perfect face. I wonder if I will see the real Daphne again in the next life.
*
FINN OPENS HIS EYES for a second and then he closes them again. The sweet smells of Spring Town enter through the half-open window of the recovery room in the medical facilities.
“Hey,” he says as he opens his eyes again.
“Hey you,” I say. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I came back from the dead,” he says with a weak smile on his face.
“I know the feeling,” I say. “Your head took a pretty good blow from an iron support beam when you fell down that gap. Then your heart stopped shortly after Eric found you half-dead. Lucky for you, he had already deactivated a power grid that powered the fire chambers before you went down or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Finn considers the information. “How did he know that was going to happen to me?”
“He didn’t. He just wanted to stop all combustible functions so there wouldn’t be any unforeseen explosions.”
“And he knew to do that?”
“You don’t know half of it yet,” I say shaking my head.
“Talk about luck,” he says licking his dry lips.
“Are you thirsty?”
He takes my hand and squeezes it hard. “I’m so sorry, Tick,” he says.
“What for, you silly head?”
“Everything. I’ve put you through so much grief. I should have respected your wishes more. Your freedom, your choices, they are yours to make.”
I stroke his forehead trying to allay the doubts and pain that go on in his head. He breathes out loudly before he takes my hand again.
“Finn, we’re too happy for apologies. Happiness makes people selfish. You should try it for a change. It feels good.”
He smiles in a condescending manner that makes him even cuter.
“Besides, we have our whole lives ahead of us to make up for all the things we did wrong,” I go on. “Let’s go easy on ourselves.”
Zoe comes through the door holdin
g a small bouquet of daisies and poppies. “It’s a brilliant day,” she says arranging the flowers in a small yellow vase. “We should all get out of here.”
“Actually, I have to go and spend time with my son,” I say.
“It must be nice knowing you’ll never have to leave him again,” Zoe says.
“Yeah,” I say. “We got everything we wanted and more.”
I lean over Finn and kiss his cheek. “You couldn’t do better than Zoe,” I whisper in his ear and enjoy the look of shock on his face.
Zoe’s right. This must be the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen. Even the weather is celebrating today with beautiful blue skies and soft breezes.
I take a deep breath in. I’m ready to let go. I got my miracle when Eric freed me and Finn was returned to me from the shadows. I have my closure. I can let him move on.
*
PIP BRUSHES OUR MOTHER’S hair and then pulls it back in a ponytail. “Do you still like your hair like this?” she asks her.
Our mother nods. Her eyes are on us constantly as she’s trying to understand why we pay so much attention to her.
She laces her fingers together nervously. She doesn’t know what to do with our constant affection. Her hands, ravaged from years of relentless work, are her only refuge.
I put my hand on the top of her hair and gently try to locate her energy pathways. Without a concrete plan in my head, simply following an impulse, I generate a wave of white light and let it cross my mother’s nerve endings and reach the neurons inside her brain.
She trembles as if she were being electrocuted.
“Freya,” Pip scolds me. “Stop it, you’re hurting her!”
My hand feels how my energy is fighting off alterations and blockages inside my mother’s brain. I stop when the heat increases to the point it becomes quite uncomfortable.
Pip grabs my hand.
“Calm down,” I tell her. “She’s fine.”
Pip examines my face. “Do you think you cured her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late.”
My mother raises her hazy eyes to look at us again. Slowly but unmistakably her eyes brighten up. Her fingers get unlaced while her shoulders relax.
“Where am I?” she says. “Who are you?”
“She doesn’t recognize us,” Pip says sadly.
“I know, Pip.”
“We are your daughters,” Pip tells her.
“My daughters?” My mother seems to be honestly perplexed. “That’s not possible. I’m only a young girl myself.”
My eyes well up. My mother has returned to the days before she was stolen of her own self. The time when she was a young woman, having no idea what the future held for her.
I look at her and for the first time I am able to see that young woman she once was, innocent and scared and looking for answers.
I kiss her forehead tenderly. Pip is crying silently next to me.
“I don’t know why you’re both crying,” my mother says.
Both Pip and I kiss her again and again. “You don’t have to know,” I say. “Just know that we love you and your life is just beginning.”
“You know what this means?” I tell Pip.
“What?”
“It’s time to get Rabbit and Scout back. They’ve only missed a couple months of their lives. They will be fine.”
*
“ERIC THINKS, IN TIME, we will be able to bring everyone back to being themselves,” I tell Damian when I join him on the riverside. The sun is about to set bringing along evening’s brilliant shades and colors.
“You can’t burden yourself too much,” he says throwing a pebble into the river.
“That’s why I said it will take time.”
“It’s a miracle what you did for Rabbit and Scout,” he says thankfully.
“May the miracles never cease,” I say softly into his chest.
Damian hasn’t been able to find any members of his family among the village populations. At times he thinks he might have imagined having a life before the plantations.
I kick the water with my bare feet to create ripples along my legs. “We will rebuild the world,” I say. “It will be a slow process but Eric is convinced the life we will make for everyone will be better than before the invasion.”
“Must I hear of Finn and Eric forever?” Damian says.
“Yes,” I say, trying hard to hide a smile.
“I thought so,” he says. “As long as it’s my arms you run to.”
“That one’s also forever,” I whisper before I kiss his cheek.
His face turns dark and harsh like the days after Plantation-15 when he no longer wished to love me. “We need to talk,” he says.
“I’m here.”
He clears his throat. “When I lost you in the underground network, when you were grabbed away from me right in front of my eyes, I didn’t know what had happened. I tried to find you and I just couldn’t. All clues leading to you were erased. You were nowhere. I thought I’d lost you forever. I never want to feel like that again.”
My heart melts in my ribcage. What if he knows how empty I feel?
“Damian,” I say, “I need to tell you something. You might hate me for it but I need to get it off my chest and you should know.”
He turns his gaze on me. I cannot hold that gaze. I lower my eyes. I imagine him slipping away from me again when I tell him, our connection dripping back into a vast loneliness.
“Don’t tell me,” he says. “I don’t need to know.”
I am shaking now, knowing I will never rest unless I’m truthful. I open my mouth but he covers it with his hand.
“Let go of your guilt, Freya,” he says. “Just let go.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. The past was a different life. We’re in the here and now. The world begins today. Didn’t they tell you?”
My eyes burn hungering tears. If I let them come, I might drown in them.
“It’s time we are fresh and young,” he says. “There will be no blame today. It’s time we started living. You and I and little Tobi.”
His arms encircle me, his mouth breathes my name into my ear. He patiently removes layer upon layer of my guilt, my fears, my tiredness. Like an onion he peels away my doubts and my worries until there’s nothing left separating us.
“I love you,” I say and for the first time I hold nothing back.
28
Everyone is here. The celebrations might last forever unless we run out of food which starts to look like a distinct possibility.
The people of Exodus are still crushed by the news of Commander Eldritch’s death. I don’t know if Lainey knew who he really was. I also don’t see how he could have kept it a secret from her. I will never find out. Eric and I have decided not to let anyone know of the revelations we were privy to on the day of his death.
Eric has brought his people along with his son and Marisa. They’re here to participate in this day of joy with the Saviors, the Dark Legion, the citizens of Exodus and all the children that are no longer slaves. Even Zolkon and Ava are here. Nobody knows how much time Ava has, but for now she is stable and lucid. As for Zolkon, it’s impossible to read that old Sliman’s mind but he has decided to stay on this planet and I’ve given him my permission.
My family is here. My son resting in his stroller. My life. The world’s hope.
Spring Town will be the first free town in the new world. Eric will be our new leader as was decided through unanimous voting.
Rabbit comes back from a long run in the fields. He grabs the water bottle I’m about to open and gulps it down.
“I reached the south end and just kept going,” he says with amazement in his eyes. “There’s a whole world out there.”
“You were expecting different?” Biscuit asks. “We know about the world from the books of Lost Town.”
“I’m talking about the real world,” Rabbit says. “The one where you can put your feet down on the ground and
run. Books don’t do it justice.”
“Put that on my list then,” Biscuit says. “Places to go with Rabbit.”
Rabbit grins. “And it wasn’t my first time beyond the south end or any end for that matter. It was just the first time I didn’t have to hide it.”
“Rabbit!” Scout scolds him. “How many times have you lied to me?”
“Judging from the look on his face, a lot,” Nya says.
Theo puts his arm around Nya. “Let’s not rush into judgment,” he says. “The dark days are behind us. We can be true to our nature now.”
“What’s my nature?” Tilly asks.
“It’s yours to discover, Tilly,” Theo says.
Zoe has been silent too long for my liking. I watch her as she stretches her arms and turns her face to the sky.
“Hey,” Finn whispers pinching my arm.
“Ouch, that was unnecessary,” I protest.
“The thing you said yesterday about Zoe,” he says in a low voice. “What did you mean by that?”
I sigh. “Don’t be an idiot. If you can’t see what’s under your nose, I can’t help you, Finn.”
The fields are green brimming with new life and the fruits of a new day. I catch sight of Eric and leave Finn to go to him.
“I have a question for you,” I tell him grabbing his arm.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says following me obediently away from the crowd.
“What took you so long?” I say as soon as I have him sit on a bench under the shade of a willow tree.
“Excuse me?” he says, trying to understand my meaning.
“If you knew you were so powerful, what were you doing hiding up on mountains? Why didn’t you just save the Earth?”
He considers my words. “You want my past, don’t you? Sometimes you are as greedy as the Empress.”
I punch his arm and hurt my hand in the process.
“Just spill it, already. I’m not good at waiting.”
“It’s not a pretty story, Freya,” he starts. “I killed the first family that took me in when I was released from the plantation by my father’s guard. Not intentionally, you see. No. I had no idea what to do with my growing powers. Once I started using them, I was not able to stop. I killed a woman I loved trying to save her. I was a menace to all around me.”
rise of the saviors Page 20