by RMGilmour
I looked up at Lena, and she was also staring at the screens, but with longing in her eyes. I was sure if she’d let herself show a moment of weakness, more than one tear would escape her.
“I’ve known Jordan his whole life,” Mason continued. At this point he put his arm around me and pulled me to him. “I won’t let anything happen to him. I promise you, I’ll get him out.”
23
The Option
He kissed the top of my head and released me, then moved the screens aside, closing down the one that held my information. I sat on the edge of the bed still staring at Jordan’s screen. That was as close as I could get to him, until Mason removed that one as well.
I couldn’t stay, not in that room, not in that bed, I needed to get back to the Colony. I needed to be closer to him.
When my feet touched the floor, pins and needles sprung up through my bare soles. The floor though, was cold which helped desensitize my feet, reducing the feeling until it disappeared altogether.
“How long have I been here?” I asked Lena.
“Since this morning.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“We didn’t know what you would do when you woke up. You almost killed yourself running toward the city wall.”
“Where are my shoes?” I wasn’t going to ask for their permission to leave. They couldn’t hold me.
“I think it would be better if you stayed here,” Haize stated.
“Really? Because a few days ago you thought it would be best if I stayed in the Colony,” I hadn’t raised my voice in a very long time. Actually, not since therapy, years earlier. It worked then, and it sure as hell felt good now. But I didn’t want to look at them. Didn’t want to speak to them. They should have told me Grid was a ward. Jordan wouldn’t be where he was now if they had.
“Lydia, he’ll be ok,” Lena tried to reassure me, but she didn’t know that. Not even Mason knew that.
“Where are my shoes?” I yelled at them all.
“Under the bed,” Mason responded.
Thankfully, my socks had been stuffed inside, but as I pulled them on I realized I had no idea where in the Arena I was.
“Both of you had plenty of time to tell me who… what Grid was. Instead, you chose every day, to let me walk into that apartment, knowing full well I was risking hi…” I turned away from them, not because I didn’t want to show any further emotion in front of them, I no longer cared about that. But because it wasn’t their fault.
Opposite me was a doorway, and I ran through it not knowing where I was going, but was then confronted by a wide hallway. Left or right. I couldn’t breathe. I chose left, but only because it was longer and gave me more room to run, which made no sense, but neither did my life anymore. Part of me wished Dr. Riley had forced me into that hospital, and maybe he had and I was completely delusional. But just in case this was real, I kept my legs moving as fast as I could.
At the end of the hallway, the only place left to go was up a set of stairs, and I was relieved to find the training room at the top. I was sure I could find my way out from there. However, as I paused to get my bearings I felt a hand clasp mine and pull me along.
“Come on,” Mason glanced back at me, not even asking if I was ok with this. But without a thought, I ran through the room with him and into the entryway.
He pushed me into one of the cubicles and placed his hand against the panel. I shut my eyes a moment before being blinded, and in the brightness of the light I wiped the moisture from my cheeks. By the time I exited, he had already changed.
“You know how to use this thing?” he asked, indicating toward the outfit.
I nodded.
“You won’t need this,” he pulled the head piece off my head, then cast it back into the cubicle.
“What are we doing?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
“You’ll see.”
He reclaimed my hand, and pulled me through the dome wall to the walkway and the cliff beyond, but we didn’t climb it. Instead, he said we were going up. We pushed off from the ground at the same time, but I still felt like he was pulling me along behind him.
When we reached the cliff top he didn’t stop. He went up higher and higher, higher than the dome until I could look down and see the pure-white, warrior town of Tira-Mi, pristine and calm in its cliff-side setting beside an aqua-green ocean. In stark comparison and close-by, was the Arena, and the warriors training as they flew out and up, and then diving back in. Toward the west, wrapped more ocean around a forested land that extended north into the horizon, which then blended into a blue-grey mist that met the sky.
But we didn’t go that way. Instead, he pulled me up higher, almost touching the clouds, and then back across the desert toward the Colony. We passed over the hills, the trees, and I gasped to see the city below me. My city, still with the cluster of colorful houses near one edge, that had spread further in than I’d originally thought. His city that sprawled for miles, organized and uneventful white shapes, and somewhere amongst it all was Jordan.
He pulled me toward the Spire. The tip was a shiny silver that barely protruded through the city ceiling and it was upon this that we landed - a circular grate, perhaps ten feet across, capping off its gruesome contents. Standing there made my stomach want to release what little contents it may have contained, and I almost leapt off to leave him there. But he refused to release my hand, and pleaded with me to stay.
“I don’t want to be here,” I complained.
“Please, let me explain some things to you and then maybe you won’t feel so bad.”
There wasn’t anything he, or anyone else, could say that would change the disgust that rampaged through me, just being so close to the Central Unit. But upon reflection, I doubted that that was what he was referring to.
“This disc that we are standing on is the pinnacle of its power. This one small circle is how it sends its frequency around the globe, protecting us. And below us, kept safely inside the Spire… are people.”
“They’re not,” I groaned.
“Yes, they are,” he insisted. “They’re not dead, they’re… waiting to be made whole again.”
“To be controlled by the Guardian, you mean.”
“No,” he shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to do that. It was designed to analyze danger, learn from it and respond. It was designed… only to keep us safe. Protect the Central Unit.”
“So you say.”
“So I know,” he chuckled. “What the Guardian is doing now was not its purpose. It’s acting like… a computer program out of control, as though it was infected by one of your viruses.”
Finally, words I could understand, having dealt with numerous computer issues over the years. But that still didn’t justify it.
“The Guardian needs to be destroyed, along with the Spire and every… thing in it.”
“You would destroy Gia?”
I gasped, thinking of Grid. I couldn’t do that to him. But if he was a ward, then he’d been reproduced, which meant he’d been in the Spire.
“Does Grid know she’s in there?”
“He does.”
“Why doesn’t he join her, go back to her?”
“He’s tried. Why do you think he became what he is in the first place? He has ended his life countless times, but the Guardian keeps bringing him back. It knows the Spire is where he wants to be, and it won’t release Gia to be with him.”
It kept them apart. In both life and death, but it wasn’t just Grid and Gia. It was all of them, us. Perhaps it would be better to live apart and alone, than lost to one another forever, at least we would be alive. But I couldn’t agree with that thought. To be alive is not to live, I’d been there and I knew the difference. I’d rather risk one more day with Jordan, than never be near him again.
“Why?” I whispered.
“It thinks it’s controlling the danger, and it’s refusing to accept any form of adjustment.”
I didn’t like the way Mason explained away the Guardian’s behavior, as though it was an intelligent, but petulant child. It had clearly lost its ability to tell the difference between friend and foe, and instead it considered everything not within its control as dangerous.
“How is this supposed to make me not feel so bad?” I asked him, remembering the reason he’d brought me to the Spire, and wished he would get to the point so we could leave. So far, all he’d accomplished was more heartache. Thinking of Grid, of all he’d done for me and all he ever really wanted, but couldn’t have. Though lately, it seemed he was giving up. I couldn’t let him do that.
“Jordan is down there,” Mason pointed toward the white, expansive, circular building directly below the blue glow of the Spire.
But knowing I could not break through the ceiling without Lena’s technology, to get to him did not help. I was so close, but I may as well have been lost upon the horizon on the other side of the world.
“The Guardian won’t kill him. The people in the city know he’s there. I made sure of that, and it can’t lose their favor. Collectively, the will of the city would be powerful enough to destroy it, and it’s already fighting the Central Unit just to keep him,” his tone softened then, as though he was losing his conviction to say what he needed to. “His will to be released is strong.”
“How do you know all of this?”
Considering his age and experience, I shouldn’t have needed to ask, but I did anyway. He seemed to be dancing around something, and I needed him to just say it, whatever it was.
He stared at me with such distaste as though my question had filled his mouth with bile, but I didn’t look away. He did though, inspecting his hands as he turned them one way and then another. I wasn’t sure if he was going to give me an answer, until he exhaled in a rumbling groan, filled with pain and frustration.
“It’s not because of you that he’s down there, and not because of Lena or Haize either. He’s down there because of me.”
“You?” I began. The rest of my question remained unspoken. I couldn’t bring myself to say the thoughts that grated through me. I didn’t want to accuse him of anything. He’d known Jordan for hundreds of years, no doubt felt like a brother toward him. I didn’t believe Mason would willingly hurt him.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered instead.
“I created it,” he whispered back. “The Guardian.”
His words though soft, rang clear through my brain. At first uncomprehending, but then reforming themselves into collated puzzle pieces that should never have been put together. The person responsible for all of this death, this pain, this heartache was standing before me, his hands spread wide, his eyes hopeful that I would refute his statement. But I could neither confirm nor deny his involvement with the Guardian, only the life it had forced us into.
However, I couldn’t berate him for his creation either. The technology of this place, or rather the little that I’d witnessed was beyond my comprehension. I’d just accepted it. I could not even begin to imagine what may lie in waiting beyond the planet’s atmosphere, should the protection around us be removed. From all I’d learned about Mason, I was positive that we would not want a repeat of whatever experience had motivated him to create the Guardian in the first place. But at the same time, we couldn’t live this way another day.
I shut down every ounce of feeling that wanted to lead me to any bad thoughts about him. It was Mason that brought Jordan to me. Without him, I would still be an empty shell losing both my sanity and the will to save myself. I’d lived more, felt more life within me in the short time that I’d been here, than I had for many years.
I reached across the disc and wrapped my arms about his waist. He gave me Jordan, he gave me life, and even if we died tomorrow, I would still be forever grateful.
He breathed a gentle thank you in my ear. And as I held him I felt more than gratitude toward him. Jordan was his friend, and I knew the anguish and self-reprehension that filled him.
I pulled away and waited for him to raise his face to mine.
“You need to fix this. Destroy the Guardian,” I told him, when he finally looked at me. “Or reprogram it, whatever it takes.”
“I’ve tried,” he began. “It rejects every command not of its own making. I can’t even analyze its ongoing processes. I can’t see what it’s doing until it’s done.”
“Try harder,” I urged him. It was my turn to look away. I gazed down at the circular building beneath our feet, and then closed my eyes against the pain. I trusted that Mason knew the Guardian well enough to know that it wouldn’t hurt Jordan.
When I looked back up at him, his gaze caught me off guard. There was more he wasn’t saying. And before I could question him he volunteered the details, one slow word at a time, as though he wasn’t even sure he should speak them.
“There is one way,” he started, almost growling as he exhaled, and I knew the expression that overcame his face; he was seeking the courage to go on.
“How?” I asked, as I recalled his words. If anything happened to Jordan, the Guardian would lose favor with the city, and collectively their will could destroy it… If anything happened to him…
“I didn’t expect him to make any kind of connection, but when he did, we decided to let it happen. You were both in so much pain, and you made each other happy. I couldn’t even begin to describe the difference in him, even after that first day,” he explained. “And… you were from Earth. We let him bring you here.”
“We…”
“Aleric,” he whispered, then continued as though I was missing the point.
“You are the last person from Earth, not yet inserted. The rest were all…” he trailed off. I hadn’t expected him to continue with me though, and Grid hadn’t informed me that Rebecca and Hammond were no longer human, or what I passed as human anyway.
“How much do you know of that process?” he asked.
“Too much,” I responded, recalling the vivid detail Grid had shared.
“And how much do you know about the insertion process for people from your plane?”
My initial thought was that there was no difference, but then Grid’s words fell upon me one by one - too much of us was defective, too much was stripped away. I gasped, understanding where Mason was leading me - it wasn’t Jordan’s life he was willing to end.
“You… your plan all along was to bring me here and ins…”
“No,” he cut me off. “All we needed was some blood, a little tissue, which Haize supplied after Lena had her way with you…”
“Wait, Haize and Lena were in on this as well?”
“Haize, not Lena, at first. She was just doing what she does best.”
As much as I appreciated his attempt to lighten the situation, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the people I’d come to love and trust had seen me only as a means to an end.
“Does Jordan know about any of this?”
“Of course not,” he exhaled. “Do you think I’d be standing here if he did?”
He attempted to take my hands in his, but I pulled away from him. I wasn’t yet sure how to process all he’d told me.
“Don’t be mad at them,” he pleaded with me. “Your coming here gave us one more chance to stop the Guardian.”
“Then why haven’t you stopped it? You said yourself you have my blood.”
“It needs to be inserted directly into the Central Unit, before any,” he paused, in an attempt to not offend me. I nodded minutely, he didn’t need to continue.
I wanted to ask again why he hadn’t already done so. He’d had pieces of me for weeks now, but my words remained inside of me as I struggled to understand where he was going. He clearly wasn’t done with me.
“It wasn’t enough. During the analysis, the insertion technician detected fatal elements in your system…”
I didn’t need to ask. I knew what he meant. It ran in my family. Though I coul
dn’t help but notice his use of the word elements, plural, and I decided I didn’t want to know. Jordan was more important. And when I didn’t say anything he continued.
“The technician advised me the Guardian eliminated the material before it could even mix with the spire fluid…”
“And you trust him?” I asked in disbelief, surprised he hadn’t taken care of it himself.
“I’ve known him for over two thousand years. We worked side by side for many of those years. It was his suggestion. And I can no longer get near it, the Guardian knows what I’m up to.”
But he stopped talking then, no doubt seeing the color run from my face, as the realization of all he wasn’t saying hammered through me.
“You want me to…” but I couldn’t finish the sentence. My initial assessment of why I was brought over to this planet was correct.
At first, he didn’t respond, he only stared back at me, his hands out as though ready to catch me. Though falling would have been preferable to standing before him, in earshot of his response.
“If you were inserted before any defects could be removed…” he groaned.
“It would infect the Central Unit, everything?” I barely voiced.
“Including the Guardian,” he finished.
My heart raced at the idea. Panic edged my feet away from him until I almost did fall off the disc. His idea was for me to die, to be inserted, to undo what he had done. My lungs stopped working, I was sure they’d forgotten how. The need to run shrieked through every pore, and I wished I could have gouged his words from my brain as they sank me. I dropped to my knees. My fingers grasped at the grate, holding me to it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, kneeling before me. “I had to give you the option. But we won’t speak of it again. I’ll find another way.”
However, the only other way that had been presented so far was Jordan’s life, inciting the city. I couldn’t let that happen. And maybe Mason was right about them. Perhaps all it took was putting them back together and they were people again. After all, people back on Earth died in surgery all the time, they were pulled apart, pieces replaced, their hearts restarted. It was kind of the same, just more extreme.