by Gow, Kailin
All I can do for the moment though is run, moving from cover to cover within the compound, trying to make sure that my family aren’t out in the open for long enough for the Others to shoot at them. Whenever shots come close, I fire back, not trying to hit anything so much as simply persuade the person firing to duck back into cover long enough for us to move.
Jack is much more precise, and several times I see his shots hit. Lionel fights efficiently, calmly, marshaling the Faders around us even as he continues to target the elite of the Others. One of those men rushes at him, and Lionel ducks low, sending him sprawling over him.
We make it to the section of fence we’ve taken out, but there’s a problem. The power is back on now, so anyone going through it will have to be careful. So careful that they will make a perfect target for the Others as they fire back at us. Yet we need to get through it, because that’s the only way back to the cars.
Jack, Lionel, and those Faders who aren’t injured, turn back towards the Others, forming a wall of shooters. I realize that their plan is to counterattack and draw fire while people escape. It seems suicidal. That close together, they’re a natural target. There has to be another way. Only I can’t see what that other way might be.
Grayson is the first through the fence, making sure that there are no surprises on that side of it, while Sebastian follows him. My family are next, moving through the electrified fence one by one, all looking terrified as they do it. Grayson guides them up the slope towards the waiting cars.
“You’re next, Celes,” Jack calls back, firing a burst at the Others to keep them occupied. In that moment, I’m terrified. Not of the fence, though I guess I should be scared about the prospect of thousands of volts running through me if I so much as slip. No, I’m scared because this seems far too similar to the way I left Location Six, abandoning Jack to take the helicopter, leaving him to his fate.
“No,” I say, “I’m not going anywhere until you do.”
“Celes,” Jack yells back, “there isn’t time to argue. You’re far too important to risk losing.”
“And you aren’t?” I demand. I fire back at the Others, moving up alongside Jack. At that point though, Lionel falls back, clutching his leg. I realize he’s been shot. It doesn’t so much as slow him down, though. All it means is that he has to roll onto his belly to keep shooting. He’s an extremely tough old man.
“Get her out of here, Jack,” he orders, and Jack nods. He takes me by the arm, pulling me back to the fence.
“Looks like you’re coming with me after all,” I say.
He kisses me, so briefly that the brush of lips is barely there. “Only as far as the car. Then I’m coming back to give Lionel and the rest covering fire from the top of the slope.”
I want to argue, to tell him that it’s too dangerous, but I know that there isn’t time to spend arguing, at least until we get to the cars. Jack and I run up the slope, making it to the top with that strange speed we both have.
It’s then that a trio of Others jump out at us.
Jack is already turning as they attack, bringing his gun to bear, but for once, I’m faster. I reach out for one of them, and the power within me leaps up, arcing out into him to incinerate him as I touch him. It’s quick; even quicker than it was the last time I did this to someone. One moment he’s there, the next, there isn’t even a body, the power within me has burned so hot. It’s like the force I had before, only multiplied tenfold.
The second of them starts to raise a gun, and I laugh. I don’t know why I laugh, except that it seems ludicrous that this human should try something so obviously useless. I grab the gun, and he screams as it melts in his hand. I grab his arm and the moment when his body vaporizes is almost peaceful. After all, it’s not like there’s time for his mind to register the pain of it before there’s nothing left of him.
Jack deals with the third one, grabbing him and throwing him down the slope to crash into the fence. There’s a flash as the electricity does its job, but it’s almost disappointing that Jack didn’t give him to me. Didn’t let me flow through him in his final instants.
Jack looks different to these eyes, glowing with power. More… just more, as though there are whole dimensions to him that I don’t normally get to see. I reach out to him, even as some part of me inside screams at me not to touch him. I ignore it. What does it know? I take Jack in my arms, and I kiss him, sharing the power of what I am, running it through him, letting him feel it. I have to be careful; after all, there is still far too much human about him, but I do it. I do it until he glows like me.
“Do you understand yet?” I ask as I pull back from him.
“I… Celes…”
As it has done before, the name pulls me back to myself, and I’m left standing there as both Jack and I cease to glow.
“Jack, what…”
“It’s all right, Celes. It’s fine.”
I shake my head. “It’s getting stronger. I can feel it.”
Jack shushes me, holding me close. “We need to get you into the car now, Celes.”
“What about Lionel?”
I look back, and a few more Faders are coming up the hill, having made it through the fence. There’s still plenty more back in the compound though.
Jack touches his ear piece. “Lionel, Celes and I have made it to the top of the hill. I’m in position to give you covering fire while you get out.”
There’s no answer. Below, Lionel is busily firing at anything that comes out into the open.
“Major,” Jack says, “can you read me?”
An irritated noise comes over the radio. “I’m reading you loud and clear. Which I shouldn’t be. What are you still doing here, boy?”
“Like I said, I’m in position to give covering fire while…”
“Yes, yes. Only it doesn’t work like that, Jack. You know it. I’ve been shot through the leg. How do you propose I get through that fence of yours? Hold on a moment.” Below, Lionel’s rifle fires, and one of the Others drops some distance away. “Got you.”
“So we’re just meant to abandon you?” Jack demands. “Isn’t that just swapping one lot of hostages for another?”
“Oh, I don’t imagine they’ll take the likes of me hostage.”
That isn’t exactly an improvement, to my ears. Or to Jack’s, apparently. “Major…”
“Oh, do shut up, boy. It’s not like I’ve ever been one for goodbyes. Everybody here is too injured to make it, and they know it. Now, get a move on. I think there’s more of them coming.”
There are. I see the doors to the Fortress start to swing open, and Others pour out. I think I can vaguely make out Richard even at this distance.
“Celes,” the major says over the radio, “do an old man a favor and get Jack out of here. Now, please.”
He doesn knot have to tell me twice. I take one last look at the approaching Others, grab hold of Jack, and run for the cars.
SIXTEEN
I can’t answer Lionel, not looking at Jack as I am. I can see the hurt that the older man’s sacrifice is about to do him written clearly on Jack’s face. I reach out for him.
“We could go back. We could try to get him out as well. I’m willing to try it if you will.”
Jack hesitates, and I can see that he wants to say yes, but he shakes his head. It seems that he isn’t going to go against an order from Lionel. Isn’t going to risk my safety.
“No,” he says. “Lionel’s right. We have to go. And he… he’s going out a hero. Besides, he gave me an order.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t have to listen to orders then,” I say. I can still feel the remnants of the energy I used in fighting the others bubbling just below the surface, and I use it now. I use it to run, faster than Jack can move to stop me. I use it to reach out for the fence, ignoring the electricity in it. I touch it, and a whole section shorts out in a shower of sparks, falling down.
Others run at me. I reach out for them, touching them almost gently. The power within
me rises up to incinerate them. There are more, struggling with Lionel hand to hand. The Faders with him are dead, leaving him as the last of them. The Others seem content for the moment to try to subdue him, but how long will it be before that changes? I don’t know. I do know that I can feel the energy within me rising to the surface even more strongly as I see it. Lionel might not be Jack, but watching the old man die will hurt Jack too much to let it happen.
I run at the Others, and they see me coming, but it’s too late for them. The first few of them can’t run as I reach out to touch them one by one, making brief human candles of them. Even the next nearest few are not fast enough. I lunge after them, and they die too.
There are bullets then, flying around me as more of the Others turn their attention to me. There are bullets going the other way too, and I glance back to see Jack firing at those people targeting me. There’s an old man too, one with a rifle of some kind. I wonder briefly if I should burn him too. He isn’t one of us, after all. He isn’t like me or Jack, and it would take so little to destroy him. So very…
No. I force myself to focus. I will not be overwhelmed by this. That’s Lionel, I tell myself. Tell the part of me that seems so very inhuman. I’m trying to get him out. The glowing part of me doesn’t really understand it, but it seems to know what I want. It even stops for long enough for me to be able to grab Lionel without hurting him.
“I’m sure I told you to leave me,” he says.
“We need to go.”
“And how do you propose I do that on this leg?”
In the end, I prop him up, and we limp along towards the fence together. I try not to think about the people behind us with guns, and not only because it’s a frightening thought. There’s a part of me that still wants to rush at them. That wants to burn them all. I have to fight to keep it from the surface.
Jack fires over our heads at the Others behind us, forcing them back. I keep hold of Lionel, more or less pushing him up the hill. I wonder if I would have had the strength to do that a year ago. Almost certainly not.
When we get closer to the top, Jack takes over from me, putting Lionel’s arm around his shoulders to support him. The Others hang back, apparently unwilling to follow us closely, so we quickly make it to the cars intended as our escape. Grayson is in one of them with the engine running. The other cars have already gone.
“Hurry,” he says. “The Caines and the rest of the Faders have gone on ahead, but we need to go, now.”
We squeeze into the car. I barely have my door shut before Grayson hits the gas, driving as fast as he can through the darkness around us. For the first mile or so, he doesn’t even bother with full lights, obviously trying to avoid attention from any of the Others who might come after us. He only relaxes back into normal driving once we’re well clear of the Fortress, taking us back to the farm at what is still a decent pace, but one that isn’t quite so breakneck.
Even with the speed we use in getting back, the rest of the Faders have beaten us there. We head into the farm house to find Faders having wounds bandaged, sitting around eating, and trying to make sense of exactly how the mission went. Sebastian is at one end of the room talking to Jonas. They look up as we come in with Lionel, and Jonas nods an acknowledgement. I guess, with all the Faders we lost, this isn’t the time for anything more effusive.
Jack takes Lionel off to get medical attention. It’s then that Sebastian starts to speak.
“I’d just like to thank everyone,” he says, not loudly, but in the quiet aftermath of the mission, it carries through the room. “I know attacking the Fortress isn’t something we’ve ever tried before, and I know it cost us some good friends. Thank you for taking that much of a risk. I’d like to believe that I’m able to make it worth it, because being a Fader should be about more than just what’s best for a single person. I think everyone here lived up to that kind of higher standard tonight. And thanks to tonight’s mission, we have seen more of something beyond the merely human.”
He gestures towards me then, and the eyes of everyone in the room turn to me. They’re quiet, and it occurs to me that every person here has seen what I can do. They’ve seen me glow with power. They’ve seen me kill. I don’t know if I want that kind of attention. Not for that. Not for something that scares me more and more, because I’m starting to wonder if I really have any kind of control over it.
“Celestra is proof of what we have been fighting for all this time,” Sebastian says. “There is life beyond what we see and know. There are things that we have yet to discover, and they can help us. All our efforts and our losses have not been in vain. We will continue to discover more. We will not let the Others stop us. Good job tonight everyone.”
Sebastian’s words do a lot to lift the subdued atmosphere of the room. I guess that, for the first time, the Faders are really seeing how much their efforts might achieve. Even though it feels to me like the whole mission went badly wrong, it probably still counts as a major coup for them.
It isn’t long before Jack comes back from taking Lionel for treatment, I go up to him and he takes me into his arms.
“What’s going to happen next?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone has seen what I’ve done, what I’ve become. They’ve seen what I really am. So what now, Jack?”
Jack nods. I know he understands the fear behind those words. After all, he has been hiding what he is from his friends for a long time. “You’re safe,” Jack promises. “You saw tonight how far the Faders will go over this, and right now, you’re the most valuable find we have.”
“Well, that’s one way to make me feel special. I’m a find now?”
Jack smiles, kissing me. “You know what I mean.”
“So I’m safe?”
“You are here, though don’t be surprised if people look at you a little differently. Just because you’re what everyone here has been looking for all these years, that doesn’t mean you aren’t strange to them. They don’t know you yet.”
“I’m not that strange,” I point out. “You’re like me, and they know you.”
“But they don’t know that. I’m not sure they’d even believe me if I were to tell them.” Jack looks around the room. No one seems to be looking at us. “I’m just Jack to them now, and unless they saw me glowing, that wouldn’t change.”
Which they didn’t. I glowed in public. I disintegrated people. Jack… well, like he said, he was just Jack.
“I don’t even think I should tell them right now,” Jack says.
I don’t get that. Is Jack ashamed of what he is? Is he ashamed of being like me?
“Why not?” I demand.
“Only a few people know, right now,” Jack says. “My father, Jonas, Lionel. Not the other Faders. They would think of all the years I lied to them, and it would cause problems. Then there’s how they would be on assignments. They wouldn’t know whether to protect me or let me do my job. I’d be something to be studied, not the guy who could get them out of trouble.”
“How do you think I feel,” I ask, “with everybody trying to protect me? After all, who rescued Lionel back there?”
Jack smiles at that, kissing me again. “Thank you for that, Celes, but next time, please don’t take that risk. Lionel had already given an order for us to go.”
“Since when do you care about orders?”
“It’s not just that,” Jack says. “In a situation like that, if you go back, other people will go back with you, and that could get them hurt. Sometimes, it’s about weighing up the consequences.”
I shake my head. “What’s the point in weighing up consequences if it means you end up doing something you know isn’t right? I couldn’t just leave Lionel behind, Jack, not with what it would have done to you.”
“And if it had just been the other Faders?” Jack asks. “The ones who died?”
I don’t answer him, because I don’t have an answer. Would I have left them behind? I almost left Lionel, getting as far as the
cars before going back. So I can’t say that I definitely would have gone back to try to help them. The part of me I can’t control certainly wasn’t thinking that way. It was thinking about Jack. It was thinking about how he would be hurt if Lionel died.
It was thinking about the opportunity to hurt more of the Others. I don’t want to think about that, but I can’t avoid it. The part of me that is getting more powerful is also getting more dangerous. How close did I come to killing Lionel in those moments before I remembered who he was?
I shake my head. “Can’t we just enjoy the moment, Jack? Your father’s free. Lionel’s safe, and I… well, I have my family back for a little while too. I’m not sure that the rest matters very much.”
SEVENTEEN
“You should go see your family.” Jack suggests. “They’re just in the next room.”
I shake my head. It’s not that I don’t want to. I do. I can just picture them there, trying to make sense of everything, drinking coffee brought to them by one of the Faders. But I’m scared. Scared of what it will be like.
“They don’t know me anymore, Jack,” I say. “I’m not sure I can sit there with them, knowing everything about them, when they haven’t even got a clue who I might be.”
Jack shrugs. “It’s your decision, but I know I’d want to see them, Celes.”
I don’t answer that immediately. “What will happen to them now?”
Jack lets that deflection go. Why is he so kind to me? “The Others obviously know about their cover identities here,” he says. “And there’s no reason to suggest that they will stop being a threat. If anything, they’ll be more of a problem now that they’ve seen you in action at their base.”