by Natalie Reid
Another bullet struck the front of the fighter. Now black smoke streaked up and into the cockpit. Two months ago, she had been in nearly the same situation. She had died that time. This time, she couldn’t see any different outcome.
“Tom, I have to tell you something. When I woke up from my crash…”
“Please stop acting like this is the end,” he breathed out in desperation.
“I thought I had been taken up to the Black,” she continued. “And I was terrified. I began to wish that I had been killed.”
Her plane began to spiral more fiercely towards the ground. Another bullet hit her wing, but the velocity of her descent was not changed by it.
“I was in so much pain. But then you put your hands on my shoulders. You said ‘you’re alright, Jessie. Calm down.’ And I knew then that I was human.”
She gulped down the nausea that she was feeling from the spinning, and readied her hand on the eject button. She had to wait until she was low enough to the ground, otherwise she would just be shot down by the fighters above.
“Tom, I wanted you by my side ever since then,” she admitted, closing her eyes in the commotion of swirling smoke and shaking metal.
Amidst the spiraling, a bullet ripped through the cockpit and soared straight through her stomach. She gritted her teeth and cried out in pain. Her ears were ringing, but she could hear Tom and Denneck calling her name, begging for her to be alright.
It would have been easy, she realized, to just go down with the plane. When it hit, there would be a brief moment of intense heat, and then there would be nothing. But she wasn’t dead yet. She still owed it to the ones she loved to keep fighting.
She pressed the eject button, and the cover of the cockpit flew off in the night as she felt herself being slammed upward. The pressure put immense strain on her stomach, and she would have cried out in pain if the wind had not been taken from her. When the parachute deployed and she had lost her upward velocity so that she started to fall back down, the jerk on her shoulders sent another wave of pain rippling through her stomach and up to her head. This time she screamed out. She gritted her teeth and grabbed onto the handles of the parachute so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Suddenly there was a loud boom coming from below her, and she looked past her feet to see that her plane had landed on the forest floor. Flames licked at the nearby trees, but the falling snow kept the fire at bay. She lifted her eyes to the sky, seeing the fighters pull up and abandon their quarry.
“Jessie, was that you?” Tom asked.
“C-could you see that?” she strained out in surprise. Tom must have strayed some miles from the cabin in going after Nel.
“I’m coming to you. Just hold on.”
She ground her teeth together and looked down at her stomach. She didn’t think it would be able to take another harsh impact.
“When you get to the sight of the crash,” she told him. “Head in the direction the wind is blowing. I shouldn’t be far away.”
“I’m not far Jessie. Stay with me. Just stay with me.”
By now her feet had reached past the tips of the pine trees. Just moments from the ground. She held her breath and braced for the impact. Suddenly her parachute caught on a tree above. Her shoulders were jerked violently upwards before the material of the parachute ripped, sending her plummeting back down towards the ground.
When she hit the forest floor with a loud thud, she could feel her body crying out in pain, warning her that her time was almost up. Her heart was running out of blood. She coughed, and a large heave of blood flowed out through her mouth. The right ear where the ear-piece had been felt numb and wet. No one’s voice came out through it. Something must have broken it on her crash down.
As she looked to her stomach and back up to the sky, seeing a patch of stars shining through the snow clouds, she realized that she didn’t want to die like this. She had said her goodbyes, but she didn’t want to die alone on an empty patch of forest with nothing but the blank sky to look down on her and see her passing.
The snow fell around her in a silent volley, but a small movement among the falling crystals caught her attention. Something had flown out of the tree above her. It had been the same tree her parachute caught on. The movement must have scared it out of its home. Though the moon barely poked through the trees, and it was far too dark to see any color, she still recognized the small silhouette of the red-breasted finch.
She watched as the small bird flew overhead, its tiny wings dodging the snow. Then she looked out towards the sky, desperate to speak to that indescribable guardian that was somewhere out there, on a rocky mountain top, or above all that carnage and darkness in space.
“Ben,” she breathed, blood puttering out between her lips as she formed his name. “You have him.”
The sky was still, but Jessie nodded and breathed out a painful sigh.
Tom was nearby now. He couldn’t have been more than half a mile away. And she realized that he could get there in time, pushing his legs and heart across the frozen forest. And she, suffering through the pain, might just have the strength to hold onto life long enough to let the brilliant scientist that had twice saved her, do it one last time. And she would see his face upon waking, and they would smile at each other because they had made it. And they would find a way to get her dad back and, with her mom there, they would be a family together.
But Tom had not yet reached her, and she still laid cold and bleeding on the ground. Light began to fill her eyes, from the moon or from the synapses in her brain, or even from the past when she had crashed in that Bandit fight and had heard her mother’s voice before she died. And in the light, her eyes glazed with peaceful recognition, and she smiled up at the sky.
Somewhere there was a boy with black hair and blue eyes. Somewhere he was slurping noodles, skinning his knees, singing to birds, and growing tall with his friends. Somewhere he was alive and looking up under a great warm sun, feeling its gaze and knowing that he was human.
* * *
December 21st, 3033
Jessie’s fingers gripped around the window’s ledge of their small cottage. It was dark outside. Snow was falling on the dried stalks of wheat just several feet away, yet all Jessie could make out was her own reflection filling up the window. Her mom stood behind her, stroking a hand down her hair. The soothing action made her eyes droop, but she fought the urge to give into slumber.
Her hands lifted from the window seal and curled around the Potential Band that circled her neck. As her mother moved her arm, the line softly knocked against her side, swaying like an idle jump-rope.
“Does it hurt mom?” she asked, peering harder into the window to see the reflection of where the Band met her skin. “When they take it off?”
“No, sweetheart.” Sarah lightly placed her hands on Jessie’s shoulders. “Are you nervous?”
Jessie bit down on her lip. “What if it doesn’t work for me? What…what if I never evolve?”
“That is not possible, Jess. You don’t have to worry.”
She gave out a poof of air, the moisture crystalizing on the window in front of her. She lifted a finger and drew a line down the foggy glass. “Does it feel weird? Being human? Will it feel very different from this? And when will I know? Right when the band comes off, or sometime later?”
Sarah gently turned her daughter in her arms, her movements as graceful as spring water. “Jess, don’t you remember what I told you?” She drew her arms around her, leaning back just far enough to still see her face. “How do you know you’re human?”
“Mom,” she complained.
Sarah tapped her nose. “How do you know you’re human, sweetheart?”
Jessie sighed, leaning her head against her mom’s shoulder. “When you’re cold and…”
“And somebody warms you up.”
Jessie shook her head. “But it doesn’t make sense mom! I get cold now, and you’ve warmed me up. Shouldn’t that make me human already?”
Sarah closed her eyes and smiled, resting a hand on the back of her daughter’s head. She rocked them back and forth, softly humming a song in her ear.
“Mom, you didn’t answer my question,” Jessie pointed out, her voice stumbling with sleep.
“You really want to evolve so badly?” Sarah asked, holding tightly to her.
“I’ve been waiting to evolve my whole life! If I don’t go, then I won’t…I won’t be human. And I want to be human. You’re human.”
Sarah drew away and held the side of her face, the warmth of her palm spreading out and thawing Jessie’s cheek. “There are more important things in this life than being called human. In time you will understand. It isn’t this label that connects us; it is something deeper.” Her gaze lifted to the window behind her, and her eyes filled with the light of silver stars. “Something much more powerful.”
Chapter 20
The Gift
The light knock on the door was not enough to draw Katherine’s attention away from the darkening shadow in the corner. When the pounding grew louder, she curled her legs into her chest in panic. Ever since the mysterious song from last night had played on the city’s speaker system, she had been on high alert. All her senses were peeked for something to happen, a Task Force raid, a Bandit attack. Most of all, she feared that the black figure in the corner would come out from its hiding spot and finally take her.
With one decisive motion, she leapt out of bed, exhausted and tired of waiting for something to happen. She was about to step into the shadows of her room, when the muffled voice of a stranger reached through the wood of her front door.
“Excuse me. Does Katherine live here?”
The voice that had asked this sounded old and weathered, yet somehow kinder for it. It was as if, where life had made her crueler with age, it had decided to make him gentler.
Her bare feet were frozen numb from the cold, but she managed to hobble out of her bedroom in a stiff trance. Light spilled in from the crack underneath her front door, and she stared at it curiously, wondering if it had always done that. As she made her way over to the door, the knocking stopped, and she thought she heard the shifting of the stranger outside as he moved away.
“Wait!” she called out in alarm. She didn’t know why, but somehow she felt that she needed desperately to see this stranger at her door.
Outside, the sound of footsteps stopped, and then grew louder a moment later. Katherine nearly tripped as she reached out for the door-knob. She rattled the locks and bolts free, and with quivering hands and squinting eyes, opened up her front door to let the morning world inside.
The man she found standing in front of her had graying black hair and a thin beard that wrapped around his features in gentle lines. His eyes lit up warmly when he saw her. Immediately she took it for a great kindness, for she knew she must look a mess.
“My name’s Kenji,” the man introduced himself, holding his hand for her to take.
In a daze, she let her icy fingers clasp around his warm hand.
“Are you Katherine?” he asked. When he spoke to her, he did not look away. He stared her confidently in the eye, accepting all the damage that riddled her face and silently answering that it was okay; he knew the world could change people this way, and he wasn’t afraid.
She nodded mutely at him before clearing out the dust in the back of her throat and responding, “Yes. I’m Katherine.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a square piece of folded paper. “A friend of mine told me to give this to you.”
She gingerly took it in her hands, but instead of unfolding it, looked back up to the man. “What is it?” she asked.
Kenji smiled warmly. “I believe they call it a gift.”
She stared dumbly at the piece of paper, but when she heard the sound of the man stepping back down the hall, her head shot back up.
“Wait!” she yelled out.
He stopped and looked back.
Katherine tried to respond, but nothing would come out of her mouth. What was there to say to keep this stranger at her door?
“T-thank you,” she stuttered out through chapped lips.
A wide smile spread across his face. “If you’re ever looking for a place to eat, I work over at The Ancient Ramen Restaurant.” He tipped his head to her in a sign of gentlemanly respect. “I’d be happy to see you anytime.”
Kenji turned and walked down the hall, leaving Katherine to stare blankly after him. She stood in her open doorway for several moments, even after his back was no longer visible from the stairwell at the end of the hall.
Suddenly her neighbor’s door burst open. Rosie hurried out with a look of joy and anticipation on her face. She looked so happy; it was as if she had decided, when her head sprang up from her pillow that morning, that today was to be the best day of her life. As she hurried down the cold hall, giving off small squeals of delight, her son Mick bobbed behind her. He was practically skipping as he hurried down the hall, and would knock into his mother when he went too fast, and then get jerked forward when he moved too slow.
The mother and son had been so happily preoccupied with leaving their apartment that they hadn’t even bothered to close the door. From where Katherine stood, she could see inside past their living-room and over to the small, home-made furnace that burned in the corner. Little bits of black charcoal had fallen to the floor beneath it, reminding her of how Ben would take a lump of coal in the morning and draw on the walls with it.
Suddenly a painful swell of emotion rose in her chest. Before it could over-take her, she looked down to the paper in her hands and slowly began to unfold it. When she saw what was waiting inside, her throat gave out a hoarse guttural sound, and she clasped her hand to her mouth. Her back hit the doorpost, and she leaned against it for support as she stared down at the paper.
Light streamed in through the window at the end of the hall. Outside, she could see the last of the snowflakes of a winter storm falling from a breaking sky. Heat found her face and her hands once more, and the dark shadow in her apartment left its hiding place and fled out the window.
Gingerly she held the paper up to the light, smiling through a stream of tears at the gentle curving lines of the red-breasted finch.
Table of Contents
Part One: Dissonance
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Two: Variance
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Three: Resonance
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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