Requiem

by E L Strife

  He blinked again. Shuddering stars. Blink. Workers. Bennett reeled at the notion. Life-sparks were souls, and he could see them.

  Paramor was right.

  But this uncontrollable change was harmful and qualified Bennett, by UP Regulation, for immediate termination: bullet, blade, or a broken neck. Retirement was no longer a worry. He needed to end this.

  Bennett knew he was too hot to beg Atana and Azure to transfer his body to an airlock and kick him out of the bay. He would melt the dock before they reached the door. He had to stay in the open fields, leaving him one option.

  “Nakio,” he croaked out, wishing he had the strength of heart to tell her to run, get the others free, purge the container. Then evacuate Earth and Agutra. Forget about him and have lots of little warriors with Azure somewhere safe, on another planet, somewhere truly free. Free of Suanoa, free of Command, free to be something she never had been before—happy.

  He couldn’t. It was selfish. The panic in him was too strong. Bennett needed her to end this. It would be faster. Painless.

  “Eight-six.”

  Her hand tightened around his. “No.”

  Bennett memorized the innermost ring of her eyes: a thin sunburst of summer fighting back the brumal winter. He should’ve known. Independent shepherds and defiance were akin.

  His face, already contorted in pain, scrunched deeper in a silent plea. I’ve become what we fight. Bennett tried to pull her hand toward his neck. She squeezed his fingers and resisted.

  The long waves of her hair danced in the torrid winds around knitted brows. “I will not terminate you.”

  For them. For the Code.

  She bared her teeth and growled. Never. No shepherd left behind.

  Ribbons of teal light manifested in the air surrounding her body, expanding until the net hugged Bennett’s laid-out form. His golden fire swirled angrily inside her shield.

  If she knew how deep it cut him to see her struggling against his firestorm, she would’ve agreed to snap his neck.

  Bennett peered up at Azure through the mirage and opened his shaking fingers. Get to safety. Help the others.

  One of the warrior’s cheeks twitched. Concern grew in his gaze. “I’m not leaving her,” he boomed not letting go.

  Atana shifted closer to Bennett’s face. Her eyes were dim and sunken. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Heat surged through his spine like hot iron pokers. Bennett curled forward, howling and stumbling through the coals onto his knees, his hand tight around Azure’s again. His arms stretched, and he hung in the grasp of the Novas, lungs heaving, straining for air.

  Please let this be over soon. I can’t take much more.

  This callous existence meant nothing without purpose. Purpose was protecting what he couldn’t have. Yet he laid waste to hope, to life, to love like a demon.

  A demon doesn’t care, doesn’t fight for others, doesn’t love—

  Atana’s hand slid deeper into his.

  Using his last ounce of control, Bennett shoved back the swelling urge to burst. He traced from their hands up Atana’s bare arm to her scar-flecked face.

  She had shown him tenderness in a world of forced reticence, something he never had the guts to do for fear UP would retire him. He still wasn’t sure if that meant a bullet or not. Her body, encased in fire beside his, added a comforting element to the heat. Atana was an utter paradox, a castle of ice in his burning sky—elusive, volatile, unbreakable, and yet magnificent in the way she melted under his touch.

  Her eyes widened. “Don’t give in. You have to fight!”

  I don’t want to go. He quaked from the swelling pressure, his fever, the victor. Bennett’s head hung forward, unable to stave off the change any longer. Forgive me.

  The world tipped and faded into darkness.

  “Jameson!”

  Chapter 4

  AZURE KNEW THE FEAR in Atana’s eyes. He is only unconscious. It is normal for maturation of many species.

  Her face darkened with the forward roll of her shoulders.

  You did what you had to for him, at the order of the prospector. Azure swallowed back the detesting idea of Bennett needing her. But she wasn’t given a choice in his mind.

  If Atana had pulled out of Ether too early, Bennett would have unknowingly killed himself. Staying meant she was at risk, the same as him. The only way to stop it was to comfort Bennett in a manner she’d protested against before the prospector.

  Ether memories couldn’t be altered.

  Atana’s hands were tied if she wanted to protect life, a concept Azure knew far too well. Every species understood the value of a prospector’s life, even if it had to be someone who threatened a sacred bond.

  We have all made difficult choices in the interest of those we guard, because we have the strength they do not, he offered.

  My body hasn’t been my own since I was five. Atana’s lips parted in attrition. “It will never be enough.”

  Before she was rescued, became a shepherd, and the Universal Protectors had renamed her Nakio Atana, she had been Azure’s closest companion and kept him alive throughout Suanoan testing. Her name was different then, but the same spark still burned within her.

  He felt it in the heat of her hand, saw it in her narrowed eyes, and knew it from the infuriated edge crisping her words.

  “Sahara, look at me.” When he’d summoned her attention, her pinpricks for pupils told him how worried she was.

  Her experience with alien types was formed in their years together in testing as emaciated child subjects and the last week of living in his home sector: the Hatoga fields. She wasn’t prepared for this, for her metamorphosis or Bennett’s.

  Azure couldn’t blame her. The three of them were being thrown into it without a chance to object. He offered her his free hand. Love is the strongest force in the universe. It controls even Elite kiatna like Chamarel and Paramor. Your love is the reason we are all here. It has already been enough.

  He’d never met a prospector before. Few ever saw one. It was an honor of the highest order. It didn’t surprise Azure that Atana was on this prospector’s list.

  Azure had only known one member of the three Origin Elite species—Paramor, an Orionate. He reserved knowledge of his title to four souls, no more. The La’kian had disappeared centuries ago. There was only ever one acting prospector. So far as anyone knew.

  Sliding her fingers into his, the surface of Atana’s skin brightened, her translucent shield strengthening around Bennett’s tornado. She winced and curled forward.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Bennett’s flares burned holes in her encasement, his temperature relentlessly climbing.

  A weight pressed against Azure’s chest paired with a flash of golden light. Embers lifted in the smoky gales, spilling out through the perforations into the crops. He staggered on bare feet, hot rocks in the dirt shooting pain up his legs.

  “Aye Diete.” Azure cursed. He hadn’t sacrificed his body for the land and the people to watch everything burn now. “Bennett!”

  The man didn’t budge except for his chest, releasing another wave of leveling destruction.

  Azure stumbled again. A flare ripped down from the ceiling. Above them, the gasses of the artificial atmosphere roiled like a mirage at sunset. Azure stared at it in dismay. Sector blow-outs were messy compared to choreographed purges. They left pieces.

  Atana, look up!

  Her shoulders visibly rose at the sight of the lurid hull. Jameson! She squeezed and shook his hand.

  Another detonation rocked Bennett’s flaccid body.

  The brittle threads of her brown, woven dress disintegrated from the blast. Atana swayed as her luminous barrier shuddered inward against Bennett’s heat. “Azure, I need your help with the shield.”

  Me? Azure looked around as if to find instructions in the ruins. He glimpsed sergeants from Atana and Bennett’s team scrambling to evacuate the injured perimeter guards and workers out into the hall. Cutter, whose eyes shone
like moons, carried the head of a makeshift stretcher. His younger co-shepherd, Tanner, hustled at the rear. Coordinating the lines through the bay doors were Panton and Josie. They were beat to hell, painted in dried blood of all colors, and didn’t pause for a single breath.

  Azure’s chest tightened. Electrons tingled in every fiber of muscle. This running and hiding has to stop. Inside, all he felt was chaos, the cells pulling in different directions. His body was a swarm of angry hornets the size of ants, biting and stinging, begging to be freed from their skin prison.

  Come on, he growled. Sahara can’t do this alone.

  His eyes trailed over her grayed, mocha skin and the navy stripes surfacing on her arms, stripes he’d given her. Visually caressing the familiar arcs of her face, ones he’d reminisced about for the last thirteen years, the prickles in his nerves softened, aligning into a collective hum. Atana, his Sahara, was beside him again, clinging to his hand.

  It’s still Ether. We’re just more connected to it now, like Mirramor. He closed his eyes and envisioned what he wanted to create, praying he didn’t make the situation worse.

  His own sapphire orb burst outward, stretching and fusing with hers on impact. A blizzard of lucent ropes encased their arms. With the capsule complete, Bennett’s storm no longer had an escape sending temperatures soaring inside.

  Atana’s gaze swiped back and forth across the flash-burning fields. “Why hasn’t anyone switched on the hydro-pumps?”

  “Everyone has evacuated,” Azure said over the winds. “You’d have to let go.”

  “I can’t hold it without you. You have to stay!”

  “What other ideas do you have?” he asked with a shake of his head. “We don’t know how long he’ll be this way.”

  The apprehensive dart of her eyes to Bennett above bared teeth made Azure cringe at the thought. She must descend into Ether again. It was the single way to find drifting minds and darkening sparks.

  If Bennett wasn’t preordained for prospectorship, Azure would’ve gladly choked the man out.

  Azure squeezed her hand instead. “It’s not safe for you. You are still tired, still—” He almost missed her bold, mahogany hair, a vibrant warning of the fire inside. Xahu’ré gray replaced her human colors more with every passing moment. “Changing.”

  A gust knocked hard against them, stretching their arms. The ropes binding them stretched to their max. Atana screeched.

  They spread their feet and squinted at one another through the roaring flames. She took a bracing step closer to Bennett. I’m strong enough. That’s all I have to be, and we’re running out of time.

  Azure knew when she set her mind on something it was better to concede than fight a battle he’d lose. It was wasted energy. To anyone on an Agutra, energy was hope, life, and a gift to not be thrown impulsively away. He wished she’d save hers for herself, just once.

  Taking a deep, shaky breath, she tightened her grip. “Don’t let go.”

  Azure’s sapphire shield deepened a shade. Not in thirteen years. Not now. Not ever.

  Chapter 5

  ATANA CRINGED, hunkering against another wave of Bennett’s fire. It tore through their last bits of worn fabric leaving the three of them bare against the flames.

  Veins bulged in Bennett’s neck and arms from the strain. His radiant irises drifted to hers through the thin skin of his eyelids.

  He had been the first to awaken a piece of her after years of amnesia. Her heart fluttering to life, she’d fallen for the injured little Xahu’ré, Kios, relighting a spark she’d forgotten until Azure opened the window of Ether. Memories and emotions tangled in a knot of crossed wires. Once she’d stepped inside the gates of Ether, the memories flooding back in, she understood what humans meant when they said ignorance is bliss.

  Tears welled, evaporating before they could crest her lashes. Feeling helpless and out of control, only the prospector’s words remained clear in the haze: Bennett needed her attention the most.

  Tiny, blue orbs, mixed with flecks of gold, manifested in the space between their bodies. Untouched by the winds, they hung in their own dimension. Time slowed until she could see the individual shapes of the cinders suspended in front of her. Atana closed her eyes, and the walls inside her mind darkened. Hang on, Jameson. I’m coming.

  She thought of him.

  The air swirled against her skin like cold fog. Her Ether. One step and she felt the rush of falling—her stomach crushing her lungs, gusts ripping around her body. Setting her jaw, Atana pushed through, staggering forth into stifling heat.

  “Jameson?” she called out across the infinite void. Warm clouds curled around her ankles, her toes sweeping through soft ash. His name echoed back—her only signal through the black there was a structure to this Etherscape.

  A gold flake drifted by. Tapping it with a finger, she sent the speck twirling weightlessly away. Beyond it, she caught sight of another and picked up the trail. Where are you?

  Before she could hesitate or change course, the forming rope of specks widened and spread, exposing a doorway on fire. Thrust into a blindingly hot hallway, Atana shied back. “Jameson?”

  Pictures of Bennett beside a younger boy, a woman smiling above their shoulders, lay shattered on the melting carpet. The static silhouettes singed, the edges of the yellowed paper whisking away into the torrid winds.

  She lingered long enough to memorize the round, youthful face of her first successful co-shepherd. Guilt invaded like silent soldiers in the night. So many UP members had died trying to keep up. Bennett had survived a battle at her side only to find himself subjected to an alternate version of hell.

  Her and agony, they were old friends. She marched two steps ahead of death’s scythe. Where she went, it followed with a vengeance. No matter how hard she pushed back, it sank blade into bone in her wake.

  It’s why she never let herself bond with others. A reason she didn’t need serum. So why was she standing here, in a burning hallway, searching for Bennett, really?

  She’d broken her own rule.

  Cries of a woman and a child pierced through the collapsing structure, breaking her from thought. Atana ducked below a splintered joist, coughing from the acrid, billowing smoke.

  Bennett’s shout erupted from the end of the hall. “Jack! Mom!”

  “Jameson?” Her path blocked by a pile of debris, Atana circled through a room littered with deflated soccer balls, charred posters, and mismatched tennis shoes. Climbing over crumbled sheetrock, she peered out into the hallway. The Agutra container was low on time if the red hull had been any indicator. She needed to pull Bennett out fast.

  He popped out of a room, leaping across and into another, his hands freeing fallen beams and broken furniture as he searched.

  Atana bolted out after him. “Jameson, slow down!”

  “I have to save them!”

  She reached out and took his arm. “This isn’t real. These are memories from your past.”

  He tore away from her, the blaze growing at his defiance.

  Atana paused over another scorching photo in the hallway. Every one she’d seen him in showed him near the age Azure was when she’d first met him in testing. “How old were you, seven?”

  His steps faltered, and he stopped, shoulders rising with a breath. He wilted, running a hand down his face. Bennett slammed his eyes shut and leaned against a collapsed beam.

  “Eight.” Sliding to sit back against the post, he bellowed out a cry. “The one night I didn’t listen, stayed late to play soccer in the dust.” Tucking his knees up, he hid between his arms. “If I’d been home, I could’ve—”

  Pitch popped from the wood as it bled out from the flames licking the bare studs and joists around them.

  “Don’t blame yourself for something you can’t know for sure.” Atana knelt beside him, softening her voice. “You must control your emotions in memory-visions, or the past will run rampant and take over your mind.”

  Dipping her head, she summoned his gaze. “It i
s the past.”

  Regret and helplessness stitched his brows together. His honeyed cheeks were drenched with hot tears. Fire reflected in his irises, backlit by the one within. “Everything’s blurred.”

  She took his hands, giving them a gentle squeeze like Sensei used to do with her. “Find a fixed point, a reference of where you are physically in the universe, and keep it in the back of your mind.”

  His trembling fingers interlaced with hers. “Like you? You’re always calm, always in control.”

  She glanced at a broken picture frame. “I don’t know if I’m the best option.”

  “My only option.” He tilted in front of her, eyes flitting back and forth between hers. “After this.”

  The two of them were naked and alone. Still, his gaze never fell from hers, never devoured her body quite like Azure’s. Maybe the prospector was right, and she had love and lust mislabeled.

  Sitting there with him, in the heart of the blaze, her skin undamaged, his repairing, she realized why the prospector had picked her to help with Bennett’s transition: she could take the heat, literally. When everyone ran, she stayed because she could.

  The fire dwindled. Bennett shifted in the debris, sending piles of charcoal tumbling and ash whirling into the air. A mix of relief and intrigue filled the aureate eyes he’d focused on her.

  Hoping rain might be of comfort to Bennett, and knowing the fields were still burning, Atana made a decision. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

  Panic ghosted across Bennett’s face. “Promise?”

  When she grazed his jaw with her fingers, he leaned into her. It was still unusual to be so needed by one person, to know she was the reason for how they felt from one moment to the next. “Promise.” Closing her eyes, she slipped back into the twilight between consciousness and Ether.