by Celeste Raye
Then she knew.
That implant.
It had not burst of its own volition. He had somehow been able to reach into her mind, even from a distance, probably because the implant was hooked into some sort of technological device. He had deliberately spilled all of that knowledge into her brain, knowing that it could kill her.
But why?
She stared at him. Ben gave her a little shake and her head went rolling about on her neck until she stiffened it and yanked herself away from him slightly. Ben’s shouted, “I don’t have time for this! Open the goddamn chest, or she dies now!”
His weapon pointed right at her head. Marik looked at her from across the distance. His eyes bored into hers, and she felt as she always did: that sensation, that strange feeling that he knew every part of her and that he saw every part of her.
Then he said, “It’s the last thing that I gave you.”
What was he talking about? What was it?
It bloomed up in her mind’s eye again, that book. It flipped all the way to the back, each page flying by before she had a chance to scan them. Her rage grew with each page that went by. He could’ve killed her. Perhaps he intended to kill her. It made no sense; if he wanted her dead, he would not be there to rescue her. Was there something else happening here? If so, what was it?
Then she saw it.
She saw an illustration of a woman, her body still and quiet, her eyes closed, and an enormous light radiating out from her body. What did that mean?
Marik said, “You must use it.” Use what? She had no idea what it was that he wanted her to use. But that image stayed in her mind. The woman, quiet and still, and the bright light emanating from all around her. Coming from within her. What was it?
Her eyes went to the other page of the book, and only one word flashed in front of her eyes.
Weapon.
Weapon? What weapon? All she had was the little metal jug tucked into the back of her trousers. Ben’s weapon rested against her temple now, the steel of it cold and somehow warm at the same time. He spoke in a whisper. “I think I will kill you anyway.”
Of course he would. She had a sudden premonition. She would start walking across the distance, toward them and he and his Rovers would open fire but not before they got the chest. Ben would already be gone, running hard and fast when his Rovers opened fired on the group and her. Even if they killed all the other Rovers, he would escape. Perhaps he planned it that way. Fewer people to share it with.
Weapon.
Heat blossomed in her stomach. Her entire body vibrated. Her eyes closed tightly and a bright golden light filled her mind, filled her consciousness.
A weapon. She was the weapon. Marik had done something with that implant, done something that would see to it that she was a weapon.
And she was.
A scream, so horrible and so shrill that it tore at her senses, echoed right into her ear. The gun pressed closer to her temple and then it began to jitter up and down, on its edges, raking against the flesh of her face. Her eyes flew open, and her arms came up.
And then all hell broke loose.
Chapter 10 - Marik
Jenny had done it. She had reached down within herself, and she had found that last bit of gift a natural healer had. That gift was a double-edged sword, however. If used upon a healthy person, it became a weapon. Ben, her former lover, fell and kicked on the ground, his body arching and flexing as every illness ever known suddenly attacked him, coming in from all sides of his immune system and central nervous system.
The other Rovers broke into a run. Marik and his crew surged forward. There was nothing in the chest, of course; it had all been a ruse, and he had bet everything he had on Jenny.
He knew he had to get to her. He had to save her now. They had only needed her gift long enough to make a difference, to send as many Rovers as possible to the ground while their bodies battled illnesses and lost.
The Rovers were falling by the dozens. All of her energy was directed at the Rovers and not them, but Marik knew that she did not get control of it and soon it would spread and radiate outward. Nobody would be safe.
He took a deep breath. Talon said, “Let me. It shouldn’t be you.”
Marik said, “It has to be me.”
He advanced even further and called her name. Jenny’s eyes flew open. The golden light emanating from within her body made her long blonde hair stand up on end and crackle with energy and light. Her eyes shone, lambent and huge, and her mouth was open. Even her teeth were rammed in that light.
She looked right at him, and he saw tears, golden and beautiful, go running down her face.
He drew his weapon.
The weapon fired, and she went down.
The light that covered her winked out, and they ran forward. The Rovers were beyond help. There was nothing they could do, and they might possibly even be contagious. The only thing they wanted to do at that moment was save Jenny, and Marik was the first person there. He scooped her up in his arms, seeing the neat blast hole in her chest. She would die if she were not assisted; she was already now slipping into unconsciousness.
They turned and began to run. The Rovers, so frightened and horrified by the terrible deaths that their fellows were undergoing, also ran but in the opposite direction. It was the most anticlimactic fight that Marik had ever been in, but it was still one the most awful outcomes he had ever seen. It sickened him at the same time that it relieved him.
The Rovers would fall back now. That would give them a chance to load those who were willing to go, as many as possible, onto the ships. Talon’s ship was already at the dock, and two more were coming down. The other two were owned by space pirates who had agreed to carry the passengers for a fee.
Jenny flopped in his arms, and he stared down at her face for a moment, disregarding the dangers and obstacles in the path ahead of him. She had to live. She just had to. He would die without her. He was sure of that. Oh, his body would go on, but his heart would be crumpled and broken to the point where it would not matter if it beat again at all.
They had been busy in the time between the ransom demand and the meeting. They had been rounding up the injured, asking who wanted to go with them to a new planet into a new home. They had sent a crew out onto the street to see if they could find any who were willing. The numbers of those who were was astronomical.
And already among the ranks, fighting was breaking out. Many of those who once lived above began to demand first passage, saying that their station required that they go first. Even now crew members were beating those angry people back, demanding that they wait in line, that they wait their turn, that they understand that all turns were equal.
Those who protested the most, who held their station up the most, who demanded first passage and would not listen to reason or be swayed by the fact that Talon had ordered children to be given first passage were immediately stunned into unconsciousness and then hauled away so as to leave the docks clear for others.
It was horrible. It was beyond comprehension.
They raced onto the docks. Marik laid Jenny down on the ground gently, looking up to see that the ship had not yet opened its bay doors. People, held back by the crew but anxious and frightened, crowded close. He knelt over Jenny and put his hand to the neat little hole in her chest. He put one hand on her pulse. It was weak and thready.
Was he already too late?
Had he shot too close to her heart after all? Had his aim not been as true as he had thought?
Marik summoned up every ounce of energy that he could for the woman that he loved, the woman that he could not live without, and the woman that he may very well have killed.
Marik awoke in a med bay. He lay there looking up at the ceiling, his entire body aching and sick. His head turned, and he stared at Jenny, who stood by his side. Her face was drawn and pale, and her hair was tangled around her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks were sunken and wan.
She said, “You saved my li
fe.”
He managed a smile. “I might’ve shot you.”
She looked away. When she looked back, there was something in her face, something that did not bode well. “Why did you do that to me? Why did you implant me with all of that? Why did you break the implant? You were able to with technology, Jessica told me. She only told me because I pressed and then, when she still wouldn’t tell, I threatened to… Well, I threatened to become a weapon and use myself upon her. I think I scared her.”
Despite the gravity of her words, Marik felt amusement pushing into his being. He said, “She had good reason to be frightened.”
Her voice held anger. “You turned me into a monster. I hate you for that. How could you do that to me? Why did you do that to me?”
He said, “I had to. All natural healers have the gift within them. You’re strong and true, but you have to know that it works both ways. You hold the balance of both life and death; all natural healers do.”
Her eyes burned into his. “Do you?”
He said, “Yes. It’s why I can heal when someone is very close to death, but I do not have the power that you have. I don’t know why you are so strong. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s impossible for you to have that gift. It rarely appears in humans. The last time it did was many, many centuries ago, back in a time of your history and race already forgotten.”
She looked down at the floor and then back at his face. She shook her head. “I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. How could you give me something that would kill?”
He tried to sit up, but the pain from healing her flattened him again. “I didn’t give it to you. I only gave you the knowledge of everything in the universe as far as healing goes. The gift was already yours. I gave you nothing but knowledge.”
Her voice broke. “And you gave it to me in a way that you knew could kill me. Why?”
Marik said, “Because I’ve seen war before. Because I knew that there would be a great many people down here who would need your help and that you were not prepared to help them. That you had no idea of how to do more than just simple healing and you needed to be able to do so much more. That if I gave that to you that you would be able to do so much more. That you can heal hundreds, maybe even thousands if you only accepted your gift.”
Her lip curled upward to show her teeth. “Accepted it? I didn’t even know I possessed it! Why didn’t you just tell me I possessed it and then I could’ve worked on it like a… Like normal people?”
He studied her face. “There is no such thing as normal anymore. Maybe there never was.”
Her head lowered. Tears filled her eyes. She said, “I don’t know why it feels as if nothing ever happened at all. I mean, in my body. I feel every weight of every death that I caused in my heart though. I feel it all. But in my body, I feel fine. I don’t understand.”
He said, “I touch healed you.”
She said, “I understand that. And I hate you for it. I don’t want to hate you for this. I’m so angry at you right now, and I don’t want to be. I’m angry at you for what you did to me on that ship. I’m angry at you for giving me the knowledge of how to kill. I’m angry at you for summoning that forth from me somehow. And I hate you for those things, but I don’t want to. More than anything else I do not want to hate you.”
He knew that she would hate him for a while. He only hoped that, eventually, she would forgive him. He said, “I am so sorry. I promise you that I would not have done it if there had been any other way. I…”
His mouth closed. How could he say to her now that he loved her? She would not hear him even if he did. He sat up; wincing slightly as one last bolt of pain went through his body then subsided. He said, “Have we left the surface?”
She shook her head. “It’s chaos down there. They are trying to load people onto the ship now, but they need help.”
He managed to get off the table and stand. “Then we should go.”
As soon as he said the words, he fell back into a dead faint.
Chapter 11 - Marik
It was chaos. Jenny rushed down to help as people crowded close, desperate to get on the ship and off the surface of the planet that was no longer home for them. Those who had lived above were still fighting, still demanding first passage for the most part. That sickened her but did not surprise her. She called out, “We are taking the elderly and the youngest first!”
Talon called out, “Those of you with small children, come forward! Those of you who are family to the elderly and have your elderly with you, come forward.”
As Jenny watched a sharp-faced woman who wore the stained and torn robes that marked her station as having been from above snatched a small child from an obviously injured young woman wearing the faded and filthy tunic and trousers worn by those who came from Below. The sharp-faced woman rushed forward, the child held high in the air. She called out, “I have a child! I have a child!”
The young woman wearing the tunic and trousers tried to cry out, but she was lost in the crowd. Jenny darted forward and snatched the child from the woman, passing the child back to one of the crew members. Her hand came up, and she shoved the woman to the ground. That rage boiled up again, and she felt that light within her trying to come forth.
The woman, on the ground and on her bottom now, began to scrabble backward as she looked up and saw deadly intent written all across Jenny’s features.
Jenny said, “Why can’t you ever learn? Why can’t you ever learn that birth does not dictate what kind of person you are? Why can’t you learn that people are equal? Why can’t you, even now, see that just because you were born to wealth and privilege makes you no better than everyone else? Why can you not let someone else go first?”
The woman began to weep. Talon drew his weapon and approached. “Is there a problem here?”
The woman shrieked, “I’m afraid, and I want to leave!”
Talon said, “You will get your chance.”
Jenny pointed to the child’s mother, and Talon shouldered his way through the crowd, picked the young girl up, and slung her over his shoulders and carried her through the crowd. He took her up the ramp that led up to the bay. Her child stood screaming in the doorway, and the mother rushed to the child, dropping to her knees to hold the child close and cuddle it.
They began loading people on. Jenny helped with the elderly who could barely hobble, along and those with children to reach the ship. Her heart ached as she saw that some of the children were from Below, and obviously so, while others were from above. Many, far too many, were without parents.
Their parents were dead or missing, and they would probably never see each other again. It was incomprehensible, the effects of war. It was something she hoped she never had to see again, but she knew that she would. There was no way around it. War was everywhere, and war would only continue until the Federation and its poisonous grip on the universe could be broken forever.
Even as she helped load them onto the ship her heart hurt. She had told Marik that she hated him and she had lied. Part of her hated what he had done, but she did not hate him.
Despite everything, she still loved him. How that was possible she did not know. She should hate him. She truly should, and she had said those words hoping that they would bring up that emotion in her.
They hadn’t.
All they had done was make her aware of just how deeply he had betrayed her and how deeply she was hurt over that betrayal.
She thought it could get no worse, but it did. The other ships touched down and people loaded into them as well and the docks were crowded with would-be refugees.
As each ship was declared full, more people gathered. Screams and tears began as doors started to shut. Jenny stood on the observation deck, her hands against the chilled panes, watching with tears streaming down her own face as people tried to batter the way through the crowd, their hands and their faces upturned as they begged and pleaded not to be left behind.
Talon had promised to try to hire on
more ships, or to return. That might not happen though. They could only do so much. They had done all they could for the moment.
Word had just reached them that war had broken out all along the universe and this trip might very well be the last one they could make for some time.
They would have to stop for supplies along the way and hope that many of the outlying planets that were not yet involved in war were still trading enough to give them what they needed to help take care of these thousands of people that they were transporting off the Earth’s surface and to Revant.
Jessica tapped her on the shoulder. Jenny turned around. Jessica said, “You should go to Marik now. He may not last the night.”
Terrified at the thought, Jenny turned away from the sight of her fellow humans down there, abandoned and hopeless now, and ran to the med-bay where Marik lay.
A silent prayer filled her mind. He had seemed to be okay, weak but okay, when she had left the med-bay, but she knew that looks could be deceiving. That natural healing gift that he had would not help him heal himself, not now. Touch healing someone who had been as close to death as she had been meant taking on everything that that person had been through and all of the weakness of their body. She had his strength, and all he had was her weakness.
Praying, hoping against hope, she raced into the med-bay to his side.
She placed a hand down on his body, and she whispered, “Heal for me.”
A slim band of golden light appeared on her finger, and she placed it on his lips. His eyes opened, and he said, “Don’t. We both might end up dead.”
He drifted off again. She stood there staring at his closed eyes, her fingertips still glowing. “I don’t want to live without you.”
The ship landed on Revant Two, and nothing had been resolved. Marik had healed but the hurtful and hateful words that she had said to him stood between them, and she had been unable to face him. She spent most of her time dealing with the injured and the sick, as did he. There were a great many of them. They lost three dozen of the passengers, those who were so gravely ill or just too elderly to make the trip.