Lightning bolts tear through my body as the Morati flip the switch on me again, bringing me back with one terrible thought in my head. What the Morati said about Julian is true. He betrayed me. He caused the accident that killed me. I’m truly on my own. And then I black out.
CHAPTER 21
“WAKE UP, SWEET PEA!” Dad shakes my shoulders and pulls the thin sheet off me. “Mom wants to go out and pick up your birthday cake.”
I grumble but wipe the sleep out of my eyes as I kick my legs over the side of the bed. One of my feet gets caught in the mosquito netting, and only then do I remember where I am. Kenya. Our second day. The late-afternoon sun trickles in through a window so reinforced with metal bars that I don’t know why the builders even bothered to put in windows.
Dad hums in the hallway as I jam my feet into my red flip-flops. I grab my pink backpack from atop my suitcase. When I emerge from my room scratching a huge red bite on my arm, Dad hustles me down the stairs, out the door, and across the courtyard to the car.
Mother’s already sitting in the driver’s seat, and she puffs out short breaths when she sees me. “Why do you let her drag that infernal backpack everywhere we go? It’s so stuffed full of crap, she can hardly carry it by herself.”
Instead of answering, Dad calls shotgun. He gets into the front, ruffles my mother’s hair, and plants a loud kiss on her forehead. She laughs.
I get into the backseat and slam the door behind me, hugging the backpack to my chest like a shield. It holds my favorite sweatshirt, a few books, a notepad with a book I’m writing with Autumn, and a glitter nail polish kit.
The guard that Mother hired this morning opens the gate for us, and we cruise through the narrow streets of the housing area until we reach a main avenue lined with stalls of all sorts. Venders hawk flowers, traditional African clothing, even furniture. Then I spy sleepy bundles of white glossy fur. Puppies!
“Can we get a dog, Dad? Look how cute they are. Please, please, please? For my birthday present?” I stick my head and torso out the window to get a closer look and squeal when a puppy with chocolate eyes lifts his head and whines at me.
“Sit back down!” Mother engages the automatic windows, and they close all the way. “Porter told me they drug those puppies to keep them docile. It’s sickening.”
Dad shakes his head. “Sorry, sweet pea. What else is on your wish list?”
Ugh! Why doesn’t Dad ever stand up to her? “Nothing,” I say sourly. I imagine taking home my chocolate-eyed puppy. I’ll name him Hershey, and he’ll always sit next to me on the bench when I practice piano.
At the end of the avenue, we enter a roundabout and then pull into the guarded parking lot of a fancy-looking mall. Whereas the rest of Nairobi has been dusty and rough, the shopping plaza is a sleek and pristine white. Several uniformed men rush over when we exit the car, and offer to watch it for us. And when we climb the wide stairs to enter the stately main building, we’re greeted by at least a dozen armed guards.
“Well, if it isn’t Evangeline Ward.” A stiff man with a British accent approaches us and shakes Mother’s hand vigorously. “What brings you here this fine evening?”
“Porter Huntley. Lovely to see you again.” Mother smiles primly. “This is my husband, Elliot, and my daughter, Felicia.”
“We’re picking up my birthday cake,” I blurt as Porter and Dad shake hands.
“Well, happy birthday to you, miss.” Porter pats me on the head. “How old are you? Twelve?”
I stand straighter, gripping the straps of my backpack. “I’ll be thirteen tomorrow.”
But Porter has lost interest in me. He invites Mother for a ristretto. She says she’d love some and asks Dad to pick up my cake.
Dad tugs on my arm, but I dig in my heels and say I want to wait by the fountain. He nods and tells me to stay there and not to move.
The fountain is round and relatively plain. It looks like a kiddie pool or a small pond, except for the fountain that protrudes from the center in a trumpet pattern. I sit on the low bench surrounding it and make tiny waves in the water with my fingertips. I think about my sweet puppy Hershey and how I could go visit him while my parents are otherwise occupied. It will only take me a few minutes to walk there, pet him, and then walk back. They’ll never know I was gone.
I stride by the guards and enter the melee on the avenue. There are people and cars everywhere, and I have to push my way through the crowd. By the time I reach the puppies, my feet and bare shins are covered in grit. I’m sweaty, and the mosquito bite on my arm is driving me crazy. Hershey whimpers when I approach him, and the vendor, a scruffy, skinny man, holds him out to me. I scratch Hershey behind his ears and run my hands over his soft fur.
A car stops behind us, and a woman calls out, distracting the vendor. Hershey squirms out of his grasp and jumps away, weaving between people’s legs as he makes his way toward an alley. I dash after him, my flip-flops thwacking against the ground and my heavy backpack banging against my tailbone. I’m close enough to reach out and grab the puppy, when I trip over my shoe and fall.
“Crap!” I’ve skinned my knee, and I wince as I pick myself up. How am I going to explain this to Dad? Hershey skitters around the corner, and long shadows spill around me. I look up to see the oranges and pinks of a spectacular sunset, and I realize with a sinking stomach that I’m alone in this alley. I shiver despite the heat.
Bummed about losing Hershey, I turn to head back to the shopping plaza, and run straight into two men. The larger of the two has a scar that runs the width of his forehead. The smaller one holds out a knife.
“Give your bag here and we won’t hurt you,” the smaller one growls. Instinctively I back away, and the bigger one lunges at me. He tears the backpack off me, lifting me into in the air in the process. I crash heavily to my hands and knees. I cough, trying to stand, but something slams into the back of my head and I go down.
There’s a piercing light, a tunnel of sorts, and I blink furiously as I try to adjust to the brightness. When I squint, I can make out the shape of a boy a few years older than me. He’s looking longingly into something shaped like a mirror, but the glass doesn’t reflect his face. Instead it reveals a street scene. There’s a police car, a mob of people crowded into a narrow alley. A man lifts a girl—is it me?—and cradles her to his chest. He’s crying openly, inconsolable. She’s limp in his arms, blood streams down her face, and a single red flip-flop dangles from one of her feet.
The boy spins around, and his wild, dark eyes bore into mine. “You!” he exclaims, glancing back and forth between me and his windowlike mirror. He leaps toward me, and I feel the icy stab of fear when he touches my arm. “Time to go.”
I spin out of his grasp. I fall through darkness, and surface in my dad’s arms. The boy in my nightmare is gone, and the pain in my head is unbearable. I let out a scream to rival the sirens reverberating through the alley. I squeeze my eyes shut.
After two heartbeats the pain is gone. Hard surfaces press into me from all sides, like a coffin. This is my new reality, and none of what I’ve experienced has been just a nightmare. Though that day in Nairobi is long past, I really am trapped in the Morati’s palace, a pawn in their terrible plan.
Memories stream through me, and whether it’s in the blink of an eye or in the passage of several millennia, I experience the lifetimes of millions. First steps, first kisses. Last days of school, last rites. The pure concentrated energy of these individual moments flows through my veins.
Sometimes a memory of a girl named Felicia will push through, imprint itself into my consciousness, and I’ll think That’s me! I’m her! But am I still me if only my shadow self remains, even if everything I am is eclipsed by the demands of the Morati, my new hosts?
Connected as I am to them, I feel the Morati’s hubris. I can sense their movements, their gathering of an army of humans infected with the rage virus. The scanner drones relay positions of the enemy, and alarms blare as the rebels ambush the palace, trying to
draw the Morati out. Through it all, the Morati’s inner guard watches over me, and I have a front-row seat to the action, viewing it through their eyes.
I see Mira and Eli leading a charge of several thousand rebel troops against the Morati palace. The rebels are scarily efficient in dispatching the infected human army that makes up the front lines. These conscripts fall, and then fade away. The rebels’ human recruits also disappear shortly after being cut down. One I recognize as Virginia. She fights valiantly, flipping and kicking like a ninja cheerleader, but a Morati arrow pierces her heart. I feel her energy as it swirls through the palace, heading off to begin her afterlife journey anew, to be resorted. She will forget all this, and forget me yet again. Nevertheless, she is still a friend.
After a few days, when the infected human army is annihilated, the rebels set their sights on the Morati. They don’t generally shoot to kill, only to incapacitate. Eli shouts orders, and fallen Morati are bound and dragged away. But sometimes one of my Morati brethren is ripped away from the confines of this dimension, and I experience it as keenly as an amputation.
The battle rages on. Losses are high on both sides, but the Morati’s inner guard stays put. They stick so close to me that their pollution coats my skin like a thick sheen of sweat.
Until one day a horn blasts, thundering through the palace. The Morati guards flow away from me like a retreating tide. My physical body has been left alone. My eyes see only what the Morati see: vicious fighting, the severing of wings. My ears are attuned to the deep silence of the hall. I call out, “I’m still here!” But no one answers.
Until someone does. “I am too,” says a voice, reaching for the shell of the girl who was. “I’m here to save you.” He pulls at my hands, trying to disconnect them from their grooves in the Morati’s mainframe, but they won’t budge.
“It’s too late,” I say. “I know what you are. What you’ve done. How you gave me to the Morati.”
“That wasn’t me. You have to believe me,” he says, his voice rising.
I don’t answer. There is nothing to say.
“Yes, I was supposed to kill you that day in the police car,” he admits, “but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have—you know that. Because if I did, you would’ve skipped this level.”
“You’re the one who told me that. Likely another lie.”
“I couldn’t have killed you.” He pauses then, as if he’s taking a deep breath. “Because I love you.”
“Prove it,” I say. I know he can’t. He doesn’t even know what love really is.
“They took everything from me. They took away my chance to live on Earth. They took you. I was so happy to find you again here in Level Two . . . I would never turn you over to them.”
“That’s not proof.”
“I can prove my intentions,” he says.
I wait. Julian retreats. Time passes. I don’t know how much, but the Morati guard does not return. They’re still busy with their fight.
“I’m here. And I’ve brought him with me,” says Julian.
“Who?”
“Neil.”
At the mention of Neil I feel the essence of the girl who was once Felicia and how she yearns to break free. Perhaps she and I may rejoin after all.
“Felicia! It’s really you!” The voice is pure love, adoration, gratitude. Pure Neil. He traces his fingers down the cheek of the body that stands before him. He peers into eyes that can’t see him, because they’re watching the Morati gain the upper hand again. Mira and Eli and the rest of the rebels are falling back, slumped over with exhaustion, their clothes in tatters.
I pull my attention away from the rebels’ imminent defeat. I want to concentrate on Neil now, while I still can.
“How did you die?” I ask Neil. I feel a sob build within Felicia. She hates that his life was cut short, but she loves that he’s so close, after all this time spent missing him.
He sounds shocked. “You don’t know? I died with you.”
So Julian lied about that, too.
“That doesn’t matter now,” Julian breaks in. “What matters is that there’s a whole army out there fighting the Morati. We can beat them back, but only you can end this. Can’t you see that everything you’ve been through, all your training, has been leading up to this moment? This choice? You have the chance to fight the Morati from the inside. Don’t you see how big this is?”
“Don’t you know you’ve already lost?” I ask.
“Felicia!” says Neil desperately. “Look at me!”
“I can’t. I can’t see you.”
“Don’t look with your eyes. Look with your soul,” he says. His voice is so near that when lips touch mine, I know they’re Neil’s.
The tingling sensation his kiss leaves and the confidence in his voice push me to pull together the little strength I have left. I reach deep into my shell. I struggle to set myself free. Finally I surge through veins clogged with the detritus of other souls, burst out, and reclaim my body.
Then I’m able to gaze upon the boy before me. The boy who never doubted me, even when I doubted myself. The way he’s looking at me tells me he doesn’t doubt me now. I smile at him, a single tear running down my cheek. “Thank you, Neil. Thank you for showing me what real love is.”
As I take in the faces of Neil and Julian behind him, it becomes clear to me what I need to do. What my role is. The Morati stuck me in this machine because I’m a piece of their plan to break into heaven. But I don’t have to let them use me. By sacrificing myself, I can take down the whole system, saving Neil and saving everyone else. At least I got to see Neil one last time.
Closing my eyes, I call up every shred of power I have within me. I must become part of the system in order to bring it down. What starts out as a low hum gets louder and louder until my body is shaking with energy as loud as a roar. My skin expands, begins to connect with the metal around it.
“Noooooooooo!”
I hear Julian’s agonized scream at the same time I am torn from the mainframe and thrown across the room. I force open my eyes, gritting my teeth through the pain, to see that Julian has taken my place. Because of our connection when I crossed over that day in Nairobi, I realize his energy is the only acceptable substitute for mine, and he must have known that too. As Julian’s body fuses with the system, he looks directly at me. Light streams out of his every pore, but his intense gaze does not waver.
A powerful quake rocks the palace, and Neil is beside me, looking for a place to hold my body that is not ripped raw or cut. “We have to go!” he shouts into my ear, scooping me up into his arms. But I keep my eyes riveted on Julian, dazed by his sacrifice. Why did he do it?
A flash of light, more powerful than an atom bomb, blinds me, knocks us to the ground. For a long moment there is only white. And then it’s over. Julian is gone. The palace is gone.
Neil and I are lying under a blue sky in a vast field of green grass, surrounded by wildflowers. There is not a single hive or sterile white surface to be seen.
He props himself up on his arm and surveys my body from head to toe. “Your injuries . . . they’re gone,” he says with wonder. “Am I dreaming? This all seems so surreal.”
I laugh, pinching my skin, as fresh and pink as a baby’s, and I smooth the folds of my yellow sundress. “It’s real. We made it real.”
And then he smiles the luminous and pure smile I’ve been waiting my whole death to see again. He fans my hair out around my shoulders, and I reach up and undo the top button of his blue-and-white-checked shirt. He presses against me, and when our lips meet, all the pent-up feelings inside me—the uncertainty, the longing, the joy, the sorrow—explode in my chest. Immersed in our kiss, we roll over until I am on top of him.
Neil breaks away first. “Uh . . . there’s someone staring at us.” I roll off him and look up. Mira. Glowing with a radiant inner light.
“You must be Neil!” She extends her hand to Neil, and when he shakes it, she pulls him up.
He looks at her in
a daze. “Are you an angel?” I scramble up and stand beside him, now wondering the same thing.
“Why, yes. I am.” She trills her bell-like laugh. She traces a circle above her head, and a halo appears. “Does this make it easier for you to tell?”
“And Eli?” I ask, flabbergasted. “Is he an angel too?”
“The head of the rebellion?” She smirks at me indulgently, shaking her head slightly. “Of course he is. Right now he’s rounding up the rest of the Morati and locking them away until Judgment Day. We think God will be pleased. You’ll put in a good word for us, won’t you?”
“Maybe you could clear something up for me,” I say. If I ever expect to get any answers, now is probably the best time to ask. “Do you know why Julian took my place? And if his energy was a substitute for mine, why didn’t he sacrifice himself from the beginning? Why drag me into it?”
“Julian did try once to take down the system on his own. He was angry that they broke their promise to him that he could stay on Earth. He wanted revenge. But the mainframe was molded for you. When your energy and the Morati’s intermingled during the fissure, it opened a channel to your world and your technology—it was their access to your consciousness that allowed the Morati to create the mainframe at all. And that fusion was what made you so special here—such an active subject who could adapt relatively easily without the net. That was the reason we needed you just as badly. You were always the one who would have to start the process, either for the Morati or against them.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe he sacrificed himself because he was looking for redemption. Or maybe he had nothing left to lose.”
“So that’s it—he’s gone?” Pressure builds in my chest when I think about how they had all known all along what I meant to the system. How they manipulated and used me. How Julian played me for a fool, over and over again.
Mira laughs again. “Not gone, my dear. His energy had to go somewhere. Question is, was he deemed worthy enough to ascend to the next level? I don’t think you’ve seen the last of Julian.”
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