"Hey, Amo," someone shouted, a voice she half-recognized. Greg. "How's this for a welcome?"
A crumpled ball of comic book paper flew and landed shy of Amo's knees. There was another shout and another ball flew, this time partly on fire. It struck Amo's chest and bounced off, eliciting a ragged few cheers.
Amo didn't respond. He didn't look up.
It broke Lara's heart. These were not Drake's people, or even Witzgenstein's, these were her own. Perhaps drunk, perhaps high on the chance to burn down the old establishment, perhaps reveling in the life's work that lay ahead of them, but her own people. Maybe they saw guaranteed sex with every woman in town, forever. A legacy of dozens of children each. Some had been tempted. Some had taken off their kind, neighborly faces and become something different entirely.
Something they'd always been, inside.
It was a new kind of apocalypse, a new kind of message sent out to change the world.
Drake halted at the front, where two rows of seating had been laid out. There were children here peppered throughout, some his, some from New LA. At the end of one row there sat Vie and Talia, and her heart ached.
"They need to see this too," Drake said. "You need to see this. It will get better from tonight, I promise."
He patted her hand again.
Lydia was sitting already, on one of the rows of chairs from one of the Theater's screens. On the seat beside her lay what looked like a hymn sheet.
"We're going to sing," Lara said.
"Nothing too religious," Drake said. "Two folk songs only. Witzgenstein requested them, and I thought, why not?"
"Why not?" Lara whispered, and sat. She could barely stand any more anyway. The paper in her hands shook. She read the titles.
This Land is Your Land – Woody Guthrie
The Star-Spangled Banner
Of course. The songs from that night in Pittsburgh, when they'd thought the end was upon them. Confusing such bold memories was everything, now. Reclaiming the strength of the other and calling it your own. These were the most powerful tools of the new regime.
She set the paper on her lap and turned to the side, looking to her children where they sat, turned out in their smartest clothes. It meant someone had been through her home, rooting through their closets, rummaging in their warm family life. Vie and Talia only had eyes for Amo though, on the stage.
"It'll be over soon," Lydia said softly, resting her hand on Lara's knee. "Be still, and you'll survive. Make any kind of noise, and you'll join Amo on the stage. Your children too."
Lara looked at the pale hand on her knee. It didn't belong there. It didn't move.
She looked up at Amo, kneeling with his head still bowed. Intermittent jeers rang out. More scraps of paper were tossed, but there was the sense of things coming to order, like an orchestra tuning up. The rabble in back shuffled noisily closer. Drake was nowhere to be seen now, but she felt him nearby, preparing for his largest performance to date.
So this was the end.
The audience fell silent, so quiet that she could hear Amo breathing on the stage. Her eyes welled with tears at what he must feel. These were his people, turning on him. His hair was lank and hung down over his face. She stared at him, willing him to look up. She wanted him to meet them with defiance. She wanted his anger to carry on down through the generations, for him to be exonerated in the end.
As if on call, he looked up. There was a collective intake of breath from the crowd. He was beaten, bruised, and there was plainly no defiance left in him. Because of her. Because she had sold Sacramento to save him.
It took him a moment to find her eyes. He looked at her, but there was no message there, and no anger. Only defeat. He looked back down, scooping a chunk of Lara out with him. It felt like all their lives, all their love being dismissed in one glance, because it was not enough. Love didn't trump anything, and wouldn't save him, or her, or their children from what was to come.
Drake took to the stage. Applause rang out and he spoke, but Lara didn't hear much. Odd words reached through, about the brightness of the future, about the necessities of the First Law and the world that was waiting for them. He gave thanks for something, and praised something, and all Lara could think about was how the hollow look in Amo's eyes was the worst thing she'd ever seen.
It made her more certain than ever. It was something she should have acted on long before she found Amo in Las Vegas, something she needed to instill deeply in her children so that tyrants and liars would never come to rule their lives again.
It wasn't enough just to survive.
It was Amo's first lesson, first taught in the cornfields of Iowa. A life was a cheap thing if squandered. It should be spent on something greater. The insidious desire to stay alive was what had allowed Drake to take them over, and now she saw it for what it was.
Fear.
It had crushed her all her life, and she had let it, but she was tired of bowing down. Fear had limited her, fear had won when she should have been bold. 'You should have done this a long time ago', Cerulean had told her. Now was the time to finally throw it off. This was her pit, and she felt Cerulean at her back, guiding her on.
She stood up.
"You should execute me," she said.
Her voice rang out in the darkness, stopping Drake in mid-sentence. Lydia yanked at her arm, pulling her roughly back into her seat, but it was enough.
Drake turned.
He wouldn't let it go now, not when it was said in front of everyone. He ruled the mob, but mob rule was a different thing. He needed these people to self-police. To ride roughshod over her now would cause an outcry that would come out in petty rebellions later on, enough that more examples would have to be made. More waste. And perhaps, he was hungry for this. One last foe to vanquish.
She saw it in his bright dark eyes. She felt it in the waves of heat and cold rising off the crowd, drawn in by the two incredibly bright spots on the stage; Drake and Amo.
"Let her stand," Drake said, and his voice thrilled the crowd. Mutters broke out, a ragged cheer rose, though she didn't know if it was in support of her or Drake. Perhaps the crowd didn't know either. "Let her speak."
Lydia let her go, and she stood. She looked up at Drake. "You should execute me," she said, into a sharp silence. "For my crimes."
The long tension hummed in the air like a plucked string. Amo had lifted his head now and was staring at her with a kind of foggy horror.
"What crimes are those, Lara?" Drake asked, coming to the edge of the stage.
"If Amo murdered the three thousand in Maine," she said, "then I murdered them too." A gasp went up. It wouldn't matter to any of them now that she'd been in a coma when it actually happened. "If he murdered Masako, then I murdered her too. If he willfully set Julio loose on our community, then I covered up the truth. If he hung Sophia, then I tied the noose. If he worked to lead New LA astray, then I helped him crush all dissent. Everything you have charged Amo with, I was complicit in. I am as guilty as he."
More gasps peppered the audience. Vie and Talia were staring at her now. Every pair of eyes was on her, and for the briefest moment she reveled in it. So this was the feeling of standing in the court, controlling the argument, bringing the jury round to see your reality. This was what it felt like to stand up and fight.
Drake's faced ticked between amusement and annoyance. This hadn't been his plan, but the crowd would drive him to it. He'd had other notions for Lara, certainly. He'd wanted certain things, and had been enjoying the slow burn before he would take them.
"If Amo should die, then so should I," Lara pressed. "If New Los Angeles is to have a fresh start. I confess all my sins, just as they were charged, if there are people here willing to believe them. I don't want to live in a city where such words have become truth."
Drake's heavy expression settled on a thunderous frown. The crowd took their cue from him, and their muttering voices gathered volume like a storm. Lara heard Witzgenstein chief amongst them, but othe
rs too. So many. Calling for her death. Calling for the most severe punishment. Calling for her to be shackled in alongside Amo.
"What of your children, Lara?" Drake asked, feigning sympathy. "Would you leave them to be raised by such a place?"
Lara met his gaze. This was the hardest question. She looked sideways to Vie and Talia, who looked back with tears staining their sweet, young cheeks. It wasn't fair, nor was it right. But sometimes you could not lie down. Sometimes the example you set mattered more than your presence. She did not want them to live in fear, the same way she'd spent her entire life.
It was better to stand up and be counted. Let her pride and defiance in this moment be her enduring lesson to them
"I love them more than life itself," she said, and at that her voice shook. The crowd cried out. Perhaps they thought this was the cowardly act. "But I will not live a lie."
The crowd roared. Drake nodded once, then took it and worked it into his speech.
"You see the power of the First Law!" he boomed. The crowd lapped it up and spewed it back. "You see the beauty of the truth, coming free at last. Let this day mark our new beginning, our Resurrection Day, with lives given of their own free will, that we all might be clean. So I thank you, Amo, and I thank you, Lara."
Only words. Perhaps he could steer all their minds to his view, but he couldn't erase their memories. They would remember, that was Lara's only hope now. They would remember the words she'd said, and the way she went to her end, and it would be a crack in Drake's foundation that would one day bring the whole edifice down. Then-
"No!" Amo shouted, but his voice was muffled by the roar of the crowd. Drake gave a gesture, and Lydia took Lara by the arm.
"You've done it now, girl," she muttered, and pulled her on. Round the side of the stage they went, briefly out of sight of the crowd, then up makeshift stairs and onto the boards, where the spotlight glared in her eyes.
A performance. Lara looked out over her raucous people. It was simple to imagine them as the ocean now, baying for something they did not understand. They were mindless. They might kill her, but why should it hurt if they didn't even know what they were doing? The physical pain, of course, but they couldn't really hurt her, because she'd chosen this. This was her will, not theirs. They'd already taken everything else, what more was there to lose?
Their breath wheezed in and out like one giant lung. She smiled through her tears. Amo was shouting still, until someone cuffed him in the head, sending him lolling and the crowd raging. Soon, she wanted to say. It'll be over soon.
They pushed her gently to her knees, and she went down, only feet away from Amo. They had no shackles for her, but they weren't needed. She watched the crowd while Drake whipped them further, then she turned to Amo with love enough for both of them burning in her eyes. This was all that was required, this love, this faith, this belief in something right and true. She understood at last the stories Peters had told, of gazing love into his Abigail's eyes every day in Julio's pit, whether it hurt or it helped, because it was true.
Amo was barely conscious. He weaved in position, prodded upright, but all it would take was one moment, one second, one touch. She felt the great ball of hot and cold in her middle start to boil, nurtured for so long and now bringing on another vision, another fit, another apocalypse, which good people would somehow survive.
Drake had his gun in his hand now, striding up and down the stage. He was an expert showman. He'd won the crowd back, ready to use these deaths as his five hundred year bonfire. So had Pilate, Lara thought, when he hung a good man from the cross.
Then there was Cerulean. He knelt before her on the stage, blood dripping down from his savaged throat like an inverted crown, with his arms outstretched to either side, and she understood.
There was the power. There was the difference, and this was what made two thousand years of stories so powerful, because it wasn't about the death or the pain, it was about going to death from above. It was acceptance. It was forgiveness.
So while Drake railed about forgiveness and the great power of the Laws, of all the wonders they'd build atop this sacrifice, she stretched out her hand to him. As he moved to her, and stood beside her to give the crowd a clean view, and extended the gun to her temple, she offered him her hand.
For a long moment he stared. Lara beamed, because Cerulean was smiling at her now. He nodded his head. 'Yes,' he mouthed. 'Yes.'
Drake was uncertain. He was trapped now by his talk of forgiveness, but the ocean swelled in response, loving the way this looked, rising with the emotions like a tide, and he read that well enough, and he took her hand.
Tears broke down her cheeks, as the jolt shook them both. Drake hid it well, but Lara was almost knocked backward by the intensity of the waves. The ball in her middle spun and raged.
"Silence," Drake called, and the crowd went silent. He looked down at Lara, the muzzle to her head, her outstretched hand in his. Somewhere a child cried.
"Mommy!"
Vie. Someone shushed him roughly. The ocean before her breathed, and breathed, and waited for the moment to come.
"Lara," said Drake, with all the weight of a priest reciting the wedding vows, "do you have any last words?"
The ocean licked their lips. The ocean hungered.
She turned to Amo. His head still hung, but she willed him to look at her. Spittle trailed down from his battered lips in a long ropey string.
"Amo," she said, "look at me."
He stirred. She felt the ocean rising with her, willing this moment to happen; the redemption of the villains at the last moment, indulging them in the love they so plainly felt. It was the perfect climax.
"Look at me!" she shouted, with the ragged edge of desperation coming through in her voice, and the ocean gasped. They sucked it down. This moment would last forever. A villain like Amo was perfect for Drake's story, but a villain you could love? It was better than Guy Fawkes. It would make a wondrous new legend, and she could feel Drake's excitement mounting through his touch.
"Amo!"
Amo's head lifted a second time, like a leviathan surfacing from beneath the depths, and the ocean gasped. His eyes blinked. And he looked at Lara.
What was this now, they wondered, this look of despair and loss? Was he angry, or was he spurned, or was he glad? Lara gazed right at him.
"I love you," she whispered, and hoped he would see what she meant it for. So she'd been weak, but couldn't he forgive that? She'd agreed to turn on her own people to save them, she'd sacrificed Sacramento to keep him alive, but couldn't he see the strength in her heart? This wasn't only a loss, it wasn't futile, but a grander gesture than any cairn-sign they'd painted to date. It had meaning, and she willed that to shine through in her eyes.
"I have loved you," she said, and stretched her other hand to him. The ocean drew in breath and listened as one. Amo weaved and looked at her. Long moments passed and no one moved or breathed. This was iconic stuff. This was the truth, happening right before their very eyes. Even Witzgenstein would shed a tear.
"Amo," Lara pleaded, stretching her hand an inch closer. Tears raced down her cheeks. "Please!"
He stared. And he stared. And then something seemed to break in him, perhaps it was forgiveness, perhaps it was love, and he reached up slowly, so slowly it was agonizing, and he took her hand in his own.
EAST
ANNA 5
The zombies dropped.
Wherever they stood throughout the deep, sheer-sided well of the Bordeaux bunker, whether it was scrambling at the base of the pit or tearing at the calves of demons as they strove to climb the remnants of girders in the walls, they dropped.
The ocean dropped. The demons dropped. In a single instant the chaos of their battle stopped.
It was like someone had turned out a light. Long seconds passed, during which Anna stood at the railing alongside Ravi, Peters and Jake and stared, not believing what she was seeing. For hours they'd been waiting and watching as body after body leaped
out of the elevator shaft to fall down five floors into the flickering dark, watching for so long that it had become a basic, core reality. Bodies fell. Bodies fought. Bodies tried to escape.
Now they were still, they'd all just stopped, and that defied everything. Anna blinked, waiting for this glitch in reality to resolve, but it didn't. Perhaps it was the shield, she wondered, but then the shield had been turned on the whole time, successfully reverting the ocean back to attacking the demons. So what was this?
She turned to Jake and Peters, and her voice sounded unnaturally loud after the constant din of thudding flesh. "What's going on? Did you set the shield to shift on a timer?"
It wasn't even a sensible question, because the shield had no timer, and even if it did, they had no other signal to shift to, especially not one that could just make all the ocean drop dead as one.
Peters' mouth yawed open and a perplexed sound came out, which seemed to catch his eyes by surprise. He blinked, shook his head, then managed to form words.
"I felt it," he said, at the same time Jake found his voice too.
"I don't know what it was," Jake said, "but it wasn't the shield."
Anna looked down into the pit. Below there were thousands of still bodies, like corpses in a mass grave. Vertigo hit and she gripped the railing tightly. It was like being back in Mongolia, looking over the great canyons filled with motionless millions. All the world's people, stilled, like a frozen ocean.
It wasn't right.
"What the hell did it then?" Ravi asked in a low whisper, showing a fitting reverence for that great mausoleum.
"Something very big," Peters answered. "I can't even feel its edge." His hands on the railing trembled. "Not near here. Somewhere far to the west." He looked at Anna. "Back home."
That dazed Anna, like a sucker punch. Back home? The ocean had never done this before, anywhere. She'd never seen a demon just drop.
"Anna," Ravi said. "What do we do?"
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