by JB Dutton
* * * * *
I woke up and blinked my way to clarity. I was lying on a bed in some kind of operating room or clinic. Right next to me was another bed. I tried to sit up but couldn’t, and that’s when I realized that I was tied down.
There was a strap running across both my shins, another across my pelvis pinning down my arms too, and another across the top of my chest. There was no way I could get out. I raised my head. The table was... it was – oh man, this was totally effed-up – an operating table. And I was wearing a hospital gown.
Panic set in. Claustrophobia. I was caught like a fly in a spider’s web. And Mom could have been anywhere. If she was still alive.
I felt an incredibly weird mix of sensations: being adrift – not knowing what was even real any more – and being trapped at the same time. Either way, I was helpless.
I tried to focus on my breathing. Panicking won’t help you, Kari, I said to myself. Breathe in through the nose. Slowly, slowly. Now breathe out through the mouth. And again. Okay, this is good.
I had just about managed to get my heartbeat down below cardiac arrest level when I heard sounds. Footsteps coming closer, plus another noise, like something being rolled along a hard floor.
The door opened.
Two figures entered wearing green hospital scrubs and surgical masks. My heart sank. My mouth went pasty. What were they going to do to me? I lifted my head. One was pushing a metal cart covered with a white cloth. Lying on the cloth were scalpels and other scary-looking medical instruments. I recognized the faces behind the masks. They belonged to the Embodied who had trapped me at the airport: the Fake Elle and, unnervingly, the Embodied version of my mother. But I knew now that it was Bob. The Bob who I had encouraged Mom to date. The Bob who had kidnapped her or worse.
Someone else walked into the room behind them. It was Aranara, wearing a hospital gown just like mine. She made no eye contact with me, just calmly climbed onto the other operating table, lay down and closed her eyes.
I struggled against the straps, grunting and panting.
“You must calm down, pumpkin,” said Fake Mom.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” I screamed.
“Don’t worry,” responded Fake Elle to Fake Mom, “she’ll be out again soon anyway. The adrenaline her body is producing has negated the tranquilizer. I’ll administer a double dose of anesthetic.”
My tongue was like sandpaper. “What... what are you going to do?” I asked in a terrified whisper.
Aranara opened her eyes and turned her head to face me.
“You won’t feel a thing. And when you wake up, my diamond pyramid will be inside you, and this form you see here – ” she indicated her own, perfect body, “will die.”
I stared at her, hoping against hope that what I’d just heard wasn’t true.
“Dragard has been... practicing,” she continued, and though her tone was reassuring, her words certainly weren’t. “The operation should go smoothly. This is the only way.”
“Why...?” I whispered.
“Because we want to help you,” said Fake Mom.
“How is this helping me?!”
“He doesn’t mean you personally,” interjected Aranara.
I was confused for a moment. Why did she say “he”? Then I realized that for her, the physical appearance of Fake Mom was irrelevant. She was addressing Bob. For all the Embodied, the diamond pyramids were their real form, and their human bodies were just shells – a way of interacting with us.
“He means all of you, all of the creatures in this universe,” she explained. “We’re saving you. You and I, together, we’re saving the Light Universe.”
My head was spinning, and the worst thing was, I could tell that she was sincere. Not only that, but she was lying on an operating table next to me. She was risking something herself. But weren’t these supposed to be the bad guys? What did that make Noon and the Temple of Truth members?
Fake Elle prepared a syringe. I strained to see what she was doing. A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead and into my eye, causing me to blink frantically.
“But what’s gonna happen once your pyramid is inside me?” I asked. “Will I become, like, one of you? Will I forget who I am?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “When we pass through a portal and become Embodied, we create that human form ourselves. We become one hybrid being. But when my essence – my pyramid – is inside you, we will be separate but together. Symbiotic. And this should enable me to bring you through a portal to the Dark Universe.”
“What do you mean, ‘bring me to the Dark Universe’?”
“You need to come. It’s the only way.”
No, this couldn’t be happening. They were going to take me away from everything I knew and loved, to a place I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Death would be better than that.
Fake Elle flicked the syringe to remove the air bubbles. “It’s time,” she announced.
Aranara closed her eyes again. I had never been so scared in my life.
Then I felt him.
Noon was there in my head, telling me to stay calm, to stall them somehow. He was on his way.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Please... Okay, I get it – I’m willing to help and I believe you about saving the universe. But can you just tell me why? Why me?”
Aranara opened her eyes once again. Fake Elle looked at her as though they were involved in a silent conversation. Then they seemed to concur on something.
“This is all about symmetry, Kari,” she began. “We are perfectly symmetrical. Not just our Embodied forms, but our forms in the Dark Universe – the forms that you see as diamond pyramids.”
I thought about this. Somehow it made sense. Their arresting beauty... their double handholding and – so bizarre – even their names were symmetrical.
“The Natan have observed your universe, have seen its asymmetry and want to destroy it because it is anathema to them.”
Stall, ask questions...
“A what to them?”
“It goes against everything they believe in,” she explained. “Imagine a religion of esthetics, of perfection. The Natan are the high priests of this Dark Universe religion. So you, Kari, have been bred to be symmetrical. We will travel to my universe together and the Natan will analyze you and see that the beauty of symmetry can exist in this universe and their intolerance will be appeased. We will have convinced them not to destroy the Light Universe.”
“I’ve been bred?” I asked, incredulous.
“Over millennia. Noon, all the others you saw at the arena, as well as Dragard, Bob, Cilic and myself, we founded the Temple of Truth at the dawn of your recorded history. We needed to show the Natan that you were intelligent, that your mathematics had perfection, that your bodies had symmetry. But now they have readied their attack faster than we expected. We have split from the Temple to pursue a different initiative. One that requires a certain degree of sacrifice. Noon and the others who stayed loyal to the Temple call us rebels, but they can’t see that sometimes it’s necessary to make sacrifices to benefit the greater good.”
“Sacrifices...? And what are the Natan?” I asked, trying desperately to process all this unbelievable information. And mainly to keep stalling.
Suddenly Aranara sat bolt upright and spoke to the other Embodied.
“Cruz is here. He’s in the building!”
Aranara and Fake Mom had another silent exchange, then Fake Mom took off her scrubs and left the room.
If I could just delay the operation a bit longer, either Noon or Cruz would get here.
“Don’t think for a second that this changes anything, Kari,” said Aranara. “Dragard will start the operation. Cruz will believe that Bob is your mother. I will influence his mind as I have done since he was born, and together we will convince him to leave. The transplant will take place as planned.”
She had been with Cruz all his life, just as Noon had been with me? The scale of the whole thing was incredible.
What chance did either of us have of escaping them? We had been mice in a laboratory maze since our first breath...
I had to keep her talking, if nothing else to distract her from influencing Cruz.
“But it isn’t a transplant!” I cried in desperation. “If you transplant a kidney or something it’s because the person receiving the organ had one in the first place. I don’t have a pyramid in my chest!”
Aranara’s brow furrowed. She was concentrating hard, trying to influence Cruz. So was Fake Elle. Time stood still for... how long? Two, three minutes? I screamed at them, using every ounce of breath in my lungs in a desperate effort to break their concentration.
Then Fake Mom reappeared through the door. It looked like the one person who was supposed to bring me comfort in this life was now orchestrating my doom. The fear that was coursing through my veins made it hard to convince myself that the woman who was smiling warmly at me wasn’t really my mother. I was a scared child, and she looked like the maternal comfort I craved.
She sighed, almost apologetically. “Cruz won’t be coming. I explained to him that the reason you had used your phone to ask for help was that you had been struck down by appendicitis at the airport. I explained that the ambulance came as my plane landed and I accompanied you here for emergency surgery.”
Oh man – it sounded so plausible that he probably bought it. But Mom would never say “struck down” or “accompanied”... would he notice something was weird about her?
Aranara relaxed once again and Fake Elle approached me with the syringe. She twisted my right arm around, looking for a vein. Even strapped down, I could at least rotate my arm, so I resisted, twisting it back again.
Fake Mom came to help her, grabbing my wrist harshly and pinning it down with all her weight.
I had to close my eyes to erase the image of her face as I struggled and screamed.
I felt the tip of the needle on the inside of my arm. Then there was a bang.
My eyes snapped open again. Cruz had burst into the room! The Embodied froze.
“Kari!” he shouted instinctively.
“She’s not my mother!” I yelled out.
He charged forward, taking out Fake Mom with a football tackle.
I watched helplessly as Aranara and Fake Elle joined in the fight. Cruz was big and strong, but even though it looked as though he was battling three women, they were alien, and, like Cilic, impervious to normal human pain.
The one weapon I could help him with was information.
“Hit them in the chest – it’s the only way to stop them!” I shouted to him as the four of them wrestled on the operating room floor.
He threw a punch at Fake Elle, hitting her square in the solar plexus. She crumpled lifelessly. But Aranara took this opportunity to jump on his back, and with her arms around him I knew she was able to control his mind as well as pin down his body.
Noon spoke to me silently. “I’m here now, Kari. I followed Cruz.”
Showing amazing willpower, Cruz was resisting Aranara’s influence. He struggled to his feet, grunting at the effort, and tried to throw her off. But as he righted himself Fake Mom encircled him from the front with her arms. The two Embodied had completed their circle of control. His resistance weakened.
Fake Elle groaned and stirred on the floor. I realized that the syringe she was going to use on me had fallen on the operating table right next to my arm. I carefully lifted my elbow and surreptitiously dragged the syringe toward my body, to hide it with my arm.
“Be calm, Kari,” said Noon in my head. And suddenly I was calm. The feeling was back – the flood of love.
Cruz was trapped by the two Embodied. The other was regaining her strength. And yet nothing mattered because Noon was with me.
Then he was there in the doorway. Without hesitation he grabbed a scalpel from the cart and ran behind me, facing the others.
In my head, I heard the words, “Trust me, Kari.” But aloud he said purposefully, “Let him go. Or I’ll kill her.”
I felt the blade of the scalpel against my jugular as he threatened them.
“You need her alive – we all need her alive – so let him go.”
Aranara opened her eyes. She had difficulty speaking, and I guessed that she was using most of her Dark Matter mental strength to overpower Cruz.
“Does Kari know, Noon?” she said, mockingly. “First her father, now her mother...”
I could feel Noon’s grip on the scalpel tighten as he answered.
“Aranara – you know that I wasn’t – ”
She cut him off. “Tell Kari how her father died then.”
Noon’s voice in my head: “Don’t listen to her, Kari.”
Aranara aloud: “Go on – tell her. After all, you were there...”
“What?!” I exclaimed.
I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. But Noon was silent. Silent in voice and silent in mind. My world had already been pummeled into an unrecognizable pulp over the last few days, and now this? How could I trust him now? What did he have to hide?
But before anything else could happen, Cruz broke free. Aranara had let her concentration slip and relinquished her hold on him. Cruz leapt over the operating table that Aranara had been lying on and grabbed Noon’s arm, pulling the scalpel away from my neck.
“STOP!” I yelled as they struggled.
Fake Elle was now back on her feet, and the other Embodied ran toward my operating table, where Noon and Cruz were fighting behind my head. I tried to turn around, but I couldn’t see what was happening.
Then I heard the clanking of the scalpel dropping onto the floor. Cruz must have punched Noon in the solar plexus, because he dropped down too. Cruz edged around the other side of my table, keeping it between himself and the approaching Embodied. But now, seeing Noon out cold, they ignored Cruz and dragged Noon’s limp body away from the tables.
Cruz started to unstrap me as they hauled Noon to his knees and surrounded him, just as the Temple Embodied had surrounded Cilic before he imploded agonizingly back into diamond pyramid form.
“No...” I murmured when I realized what these Rebel Embodied were about to do to Noon.
The first strap didn’t take long. My upper body was now free.
The Rebel Embodied joined hands around Noon’s barely-conscious kneeling figure. I watched in horror as Noon threw back his head and put his arms across his chest. The same hive-like drone I’d heard in the arena and even felt penetrate my skin was emitted by the circle of three.
Cruz untied the strap around my pelvis.
“NOOOO!” I screamed.
My arms were now free, and I feverishly helped him with the remaining strap binding my legs.
Then the drone ceased and something was ripped out from my heart.
From my mind.
From my soul.
Noon was no longer inside me.
The last strap came loose and I looked over at the Rebel Embodied. Noon’s diamond pyramid lay on the floor between them.
“Quick! Grab the pyramid,” I shouted to the astonished Cruz.
Our eyes met for a split second and I instantly knew how much I meant to him. And how much he was willing to risk for me.
The Rebel Embodied broke their circle. Cruz covered the distance in a heartbeat, then barreled into their legs, grabbing the Noon pyramid from the ground with one hand in a swift, smooth move, just as I’d watched him do with a football on the school athletic fields. He rolled to the far side of the room and crashed into a wall.
He was momentarily winded. The Embodied advanced menacingly.
Think fast, Kari, think fast. There’s no Noon to help you now....
I picked the scalpel up from the floor and held it to my own neck.
“WAIT!” I commanded.
The Embodied stopped and turned toward me. I could see them calculating internally, communicating their options.
“Like Noon said, you need me alive...”
I was surprised at how ca
lm, how together. I sounded.
“No, Kari!” said Cruz, getting to his feet.
“You won’t do it,” said Aranara.
There seemed to be some kind of inner conflict among the three Embodied, and while they communed, I walked slowly, but steadily to the door, still holding the scalpel to my jugular.
“Come on, Cruz,” I said quietly.
As he edged past them, the Embodied joined hands once again and closed their eyes. Cruz faltered. I could feel the strength draining from my arm and the scalpel start to move away from my neck.
“Cruz!” I exclaimed, “Focus. Focus on my voice. Focus on me. They’re messing with our heads. Look at me!”
Our eyes locked. He kept moving past them. I was regaining control. Somehow the power of the connection between us was weakening the influence of the Embodied.
I pressed the scalpel back against my skin. I could feel the blood pumping in my veins.
“I will do it,” I muttered.
Cruz was now beside me. Still looking at each other, we backed out of the room.
We were now in a larger, deserted waiting room. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my clothes and shoes piled on a chair.
“Run!” I yelled, throwing down the scalpel and scooping up the clothes. I didn’t dare turn around to see the Embodied chasing us as we fled.
The door out of the waiting room led to a long hallway with another leading off it. At the far end was an emergency exit sign. We rushed toward it, then crashed through the metal door and into a stairwell.
Cruz bombed down the stairs three at a time and I couldn’t keep up. I heard the door above clang open so I skipped down dangerously fast. We reached the bottom of the stairwell and another emergency exit door. This one had a textured glass window in its top half showing the welcome sight of the streetlights outside.
Cruz pushed the door’s metal bar. It moved but the door didn’t open. I heard Aranara’s heels coming down the stairs. He pushed again. It wouldn’t budge.
I stepped back, frantic, and saw a red notice on it: “Door locked from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.”
He hammered at the glass. The only other way out at the base of the stairwell was an internal door behind us. I ran to it. Locked as well. I looked up the stairs. The Rebel Embodied were descending swiftly and purposefully.
A waiting room chair with a broken seat lay overturned in one corner. I picked it up and thrust it at Cruz. Without hesitating, he let the diamond pyramid fall to the floor, grabbed the chair from me and swung it at the window.
“Shit!” he yelled as the chair bounced back, catching him a glancing blow on the forehead. He cursed and put a hand to his head.
“Cruz! Are you okay? Cruz!!” I shouted.
He nodded, wiping blood away from a gash with the back of his sleeve.
That moment was when something calm inside me took control. Was it the adrenaline or was it Noon’s influence? I don’t know, but saying Cruz’s name had given me an idea.
Diamond was harder than glass. I picked up the pyramid, lifted it to the window and carved a big cross in the glass using the tip. It scratched like plastic.
“Try now!” I said, breathlessly.
The Embodied were only one floor above us. Cruz swung the chair again and I shielded my face as the glass shattered. He used the chair to push out the shards from the window opening, then clasped his hands together to give me a boost.
The Embodied were seconds away.
I threw the pyramid and my clothes through the opening, mounted Cruz’s hands and climbed out. My heart was beating so fast that I didn’t even feel the freezing night air. Cruz leveraged himself up and halfway out just as the Embodied arrived at the bottom of the stairs and took hold of his legs.
He pushed to get out with all his might, kicking furiously. I dropped my things and grabbed his arms. We struggled, our heads crushed against each other. I could feel his every muscle and sinew straining to break free from the relentless, inhuman grasp of the Embodied. The sweat from his forehead soaked into my hair. He kicked again and must have connected with the solar plexus of one of them because he suddenly lurched forward several inches.
“Come ON!” I grunted, pulling harder.
He kicked again, I let go his arms, put my hand through the opening and scratched at the pair of hands holding his belt. My fingers dug into the flesh, but of course the hands felt no pain and stayed clamped tight.
In the midst of the struggle I could barely see through the opening to tell what was happening inside. It was Aranara who was holding onto Cruz’s belt, and Fake Elle was grappling with his flailing feet. So it was Fake Mom that he must have kicked in the solar plexus, putting her out of action for a while.
“Keep kicking!” I said. “You got one already.”
Cruz let out a roar and kicked like a mule. He hit Fake Elle square in the chest and she collapsed too. Now there was just Aranara, clinging onto his belt. She held on with one hand, then reached out with the other to grab Cruz’s jacket collar. This was my opportunity. She may not have felt any pain, but she was embodied as a teenage girl, just like me. No strength advantage. I pried her fingers off his belt one by one. Before she realized that she’d made a mistake letting go with one hand, Cruz gave one last almighty push and fell through the opening onto the snow-covered back alleyway.
Aranara started to climb through too. But once she was half-way out, she was a sitting duck. I was in the school soccer team... and now it was time to play ball. I swung my leg back and gave her the hardest kick I could. My foot connected with the middle of her body. It may not have hit her directly in the solar plexus, but it certainly had an impact, because she went limp, dangling out of the broken window.
“Quick!” said Cruz and grabbed my wrist.
I scooped up my clothes and Noon’s pyramid with my other hand. As I righted myself I saw Fake Mom staggering to her feet at the bottom of the stairwell.
“RUN!!” he yelled.
Just before we rounded the corner I looked back one more time and saw Aranara’s unconscious body being dragged back into the building.
We sprinted into the deserted parking lot. Cruz’s sister’s car was parked haphazardly across two spaces. I threw my things inside and jumped in. Cruz put the key in the ignition. The engine turned over, then nothing. He pounded the steering wheel with his fists.
“What a piece of shit!”
He tried again. This time it worked. We peeled out onto the street and sped away. Cruz barely slowed down as he went through a red light. In the passenger wing mirror I could see headlights a couple of blocks behind us. A white SUV. Was it them, already after us? Cruz took a corner, tires squealing, and we merged onto the highway.
I pulled on my clothes. It was 11:42 on New Year’s Eve. Almost no traffic. Seconds later, Cruz was doing over 90 mph in the fast lane.
“Slow down,” I said, as I buttoned my jeans. “I’m no safer with you!”
His knuckles were white, his shoulders hunched and his eyes were glued to the road. Luckily, the gash on his forehead was superficial and the blood had already dried. Both of our chests and our forearms were scratched up pretty bad though.
I placed my hand on his as he veered into the middle lane and overtook a minivan on the inside.
“Cruz, it’s okay, we’ve lost them. Just breathe, slow down...”
It worked. He took his foot off the gas. His shoulders dropped slightly. His jaw unclenched. His eyes flicked over to mine, then back at the highway.
“Kari, I...”
“Shhh,” I calmed him, “don’t say anything right now. Just breathe and drive. Breathe and drive.”
We cruised along like that for a few minutes, with my hand resting on his on the steering wheel and Noon’s pyramid on my lap. We passed a sign for the George Washington Bridge. It was only two miles away. Once we crossed it, we’d be back in Manhattan. Back home. Maybe we could hide from the Embodied among the teeming millions. But I was still no closer to finding Mom.
The bridge was lit up with festive lights for New Year’s Eve, but almost free of traffic. I looked at the clock. 11:55. No kidding it was empty – everyone was already wherever they wanted to be at midnight.
We took the bridge on-ramp and my heart leapt. Were we really free of them? The skyscrapers were welcoming beacons in the crystal-clear night air. My feeling of relief didn’t last long. Out of nowhere an eighteen-wheeler thundered past us.
“Jeez!” exclaimed Cruz, stamping on the brake as the car rocked, buffeted by the turbulence from the massive truck.
But... could it be? Was that Mom’s face in the truck’s wing mirror?
“Cruz...”
Then the truck swerved. I held my breath. It jackknifed. Everything happened in slow motion. The cab was now across both center lanes, the trailer following it in a graceful curve. It was definitely Fake Mom in the driver’s seat.
Cruz swung the wheel and we began to skid too, following the same pattern as the truck. We spun around. The white SUV was right behind us, no other vehicles in sight. We completed the 360-spin and the truck came back into view. It was stopping almost sideways, occupying the entire four lanes. We continued our crazy pirouette, about to plow straight into it. I screamed as Cruz threw the wheel the other way. He did something, I don’t know what, that got us out of the skid.
Then everything was quiet.
We had stopped in the fast lane. In front of us, the truck was blocking all four lanes, barring our way across the bridge, our escape route back home. The cab door opened and Fake Mom climbed down. The white SUV had stopped behind us. In back of it, a couple of cars had slowed to a crawl, their flashers on.
“Crap, crap, crap,” I said under my breath as Aranara and Fake Elle got out of the SUV.
Cruz tried to restart the engine. It wheezed and coughed.
Then I saw the gun.
Fake Elle had it. She strode purposefully forward, holding it in one hand at head height, aiming right at us.
“Get down!” I shouted.
A millisecond later the back windscreen shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Holy shit!” yelled Cruz and tried the ignition key again.
Fake Elle reached the car, the gun still trained on us. She jumped onto the trunk and slithered inside through the back window. Aranara was coming around the passenger side.
Cruz opened his door, grabbed my wrist and dived out, dragging me with him.
Another gunshot rang out and the front windshield exploded.
We rolled onto the asphalt. Scrambling. Breathless. Scared.
And then we were on our knees at the edge. The frigid, killer Hudson massively gray below us, sparkling menacingly in the bridge’s Christmas lights.
Fake Elle, gun still in hand, was getting back out of Cruz’s car. Aranara was only a few feet away from us and Fake Mom was now almost upon us too.
Cruz squeezed my hand tightly.
Fake Elle raised the gun again, pointing it at his head. Without thinking about it, I moved in front of him.
“Stop!” I ordered.
The Embodied halted instantly. They were looking at something in my hand. I realized I was still holding the diamond pyramid. Noon. One of their kind. I could feel Cruz behind me, struggling to accept that this was the only way.
Distant sirens. The other cars on the bridge were reversing. This was not a scene any innocent party would want to be close to – two kids on the edge of the bridge, three women moving toward them, one with a gun.
Aranara spoke. Her voice like honey, as always.
“Kari, Kari, Kari... You don’t need to do this. You already know what you need to do. You can save the world. You can save Cruz.”
“What about Mom?” I asked, “Where is she?”
“She’s safe,” answered Fake Mom.
I shuddered. It was beyond creepy. And I didn’t believe her for a second. There was no way I could step away from Cruz. They would kill him instantly. But something was tugging me forward. I realized that the Embodied were controlling me. I fought against it, reaching back with one hand and grabbing Cruz’s wrist.
“We don’t want to harm anyone,” continued Aranara. “Even you.”
A million rapid-fire thoughts. Nothing Noon had told me contradicted what she was saying. For god-knows-what reason, I had been bred to fulfill this destiny. It was bigger than me. Who was I to stop it? This was what my whole life had been leading up to. This moment. This decision.
And the truth was, this moment was somehow part of Noon’s plan too. And I loved him. Cruz would do anything for me, I knew that now, but he was too much of this world. With Noon I... I saw a door opening. A door to the whole universe – a chance to live what no one else had ever lived. And maybe a chance to find out what happened to my father.
The sirens were much louder. I could see the red and blue lights out the corner of my eye.
Time to step through the door, Kari.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Almost imperceptibly, Aranara relaxed.
“Thank you.”
Fake Elle lowered the gun a few inches.
I gulped. “On one condition.”
“Don’t do this, Kari,” said Cruz.
He stepped aside and Fake Elle raised the gun again, following his movement. I held his wrist tight and moved to block him again. He pulled back, but I steeled myself.
“This is how it’s going to be, Aranara,” I insisted. “No negotiations.”
The whoop of the siren was now coming from the far end of the bridge.
“Do the operation,” I continued. “Insert the pyramid.”
I held out the heavy, symmetrical crystalline form. The lights on the bridge were refracted in the massive diamond like a thousand rainbows.
“But do it with this one.”
Aranara held her breath.
“If I have to go to the Dark Universe,” I continued, “I’m going with Noon.”
The Rebel Embodieds’ eyes flickered in silent conversation. They were discussing. Communing.
“Alright,” answered Aranara. “but we need to go now.”
The sirens were closing in from both sides of the bridge. Aranara advanced toward me, smiling. She was so, so perfect. Just like the pyramid, her beauty was almost hypnotic.
Then Cruz grabbed the pyramid from my hands and before anyone could move, he launched it over the railing and into the Hudson.
I screamed, “NOOOOOO!!!” and ran to the edge just in time to see the pyramid – Noon – disappear into the dense, forbidding river.
Fake Elle raised the gun at Cruz once more. Her finger squeezed tighter on the trigger. But Aranara ran into her line of sight, climbed onto the railing and swan-dived after her brother into the icy water. I watched her plummet, then disappear deep into the river a hundred feet below with barely a splash.
Cruz and I looked at each other in shock, then back at the gun. Fake Mom and Fake Elle seemed totally stunned, almost like computers that had crashed.
Five police cruisers screeched to a halt behind the SUV. A couple more arrived behind the jackknifed truck. Cops leaped out and crouched down behind the car doors, guns trained on Fake Elle.
“Put your weapon down,” came the command over the police megaphone.
Fake Mom and Fake Elle communed silently once more.
“PUT YOUR WEAPON DOWN!”
Fake Elle calmly lowered the gun and placed it on the ground. Then she and Fake Mom walked together to the railing, right beside us.
“Don’t move!” ordered the police.
But the two remaining Rebel Embodied ignored them and climbed up the railing.
“Stop. Or we will shoot!” was the final threat, before they both jumped off the bridge too.
“Oh my god,” murmured Cruz.
We both leaned over and looked down at the water, but there was no sign of anyone.
“Stay where you are,” came the new command from the police.
“People die jumping off thi
s bridge every month,” said Cruz.
I looked at him, and could tell from his eyes that he was scared. The relief had drained the last of his adrenaline and now fear was taking over. But I didn’t feel like that. The only sensation I could feel was a simmering anger. How would I ever find Mom now? And get some answers about Dad?
A half-dozen police officers approached cautiously from both sides, weapons drawn but pointed downward. The captain radioed for an ambulance and rescue divers. A policewoman asked us our names and where we were from. It all felt like a dream. The New Jersey cops stood down. Cruz and I were escorted past the eighteen-wheeler to separate NYPD cruisers.
As we were about to get in, I heard fireworks in the distance. Cruz turned to face me. Our eyes met and I smiled weakly at him.
“Happy New Year.”
