by David Beers
I can’t, he thought. No matter what she’s done or will do, I can’t.
The light died in his eyes, and as it did, the strands flowing from them did as well.
The two stood in darkness.
“Go,” he said. “Away from me. If I see you again, Rebecca, I will kill you, because I’ll know that you mean to kill me.”
He turned his back on her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but he didn’t know what she was apologizing for, and he didn’t ask either.
“Go. Take that transport and leave.”
He stepped out into the night and walked away from his sister. Neither knew it then, but they would see each other again, and both would bring death with them.
“Why?” Rhett asked as the transport rose into the air. He sat by the fire with Christine, watching the ship leave, Rebecca Hollowborne inside. “You let her live. Why?”
He didn’t look to David as he asked the question, but stared upward, almost unable to believe what he was witnessing. The woman who had nearly ended everything, betrayed everyone, and killed him, was fleeing and with David’s permission.
Rhett realized too late he should have been looking at David instead of the sky, that it might have been smarter to silence his mouth instead of asking questions.
“Where’s Reinheld?” David asked.
That got Rhett’s attention, the anger in David’s voice unable to hide. He looked down and momentarily forgot his own anger, because David’s eclipsed everything.
“WHERE IS HE!”
“On the beach,” Christine said.
“Get him. Now.”
Rhett stood and looked at David just outside the campsite. He knew what was coming, and he didn’t want to see it. “David, maybe just take a second—”
“Now,” David said, the word itself a threat.
Rhett looked down at his feet and nodded.
He walked down to the beach, taking his time. He could have called Reinheld using his nanotech, but the longer he was able to keep him from David, the better this would turn out. It’s not that he really cared about what happened to Brinson, only that David shouldn’t be making the decision now. Not after what just happened with Rebecca. Rhett had heard the shouting, hair rising on his arms. He’d seen light glowing from the transport, sure that David was going to end her.
It hadn’t happened, though. Instead, the traitorous bitch took off, and now David’s raw rage was looking for someone to take it out on.
He finally found Reinheld. He was sitting alone; since promising his life for the infidel’s, he hadn’t spent much time around her—Rhett didn’t know how great of a strategy that was, but alas, Rhett wasn’t the one that made the promise.
“David wants to see you.”
Reinheld nodded as if he knew this was coming.
The two stood and walked back across the beach, then up to the fire. Maybe 20 minutes had passed, but Rhett only needed to glance at David to understand time had done nothing to calm him.
“What has she decided?” he asked as Reinheld stepped into the firelight.
Rhett watched Reinheld almost whither under the Prophet’s glare. His eyes weren’t alight, but Rhett knew the man couldn’t handle this, let alone what came next.
“I need more time,” he said.
“You don’t have any more time,” David answered. “What’s her answer?”
“It’s only been a day,” Reinheld said, Rhett barely able to believe the man was talking with how shaken his face looked. “I needed more time when I converted. I needed over a year. She needs the same.”
David had been sitting, looking up at Reinheld. He stood now, and Rhett stared at his eyes, watching for the slightest twinkling of static. They remained quiet.
“The Unformed will be here in only a few days. She has no more time. So tell me now, what’s her answer?”
Reinheld looked at his feet but said nothing.
“Bring her to me.”
Rhett said nothing. He sort of felt for Reinheld and what was to come, but he had made the mistake. Not Rhett. Not David. He had put his life on the line for someone without the Blood, and now he would have to face the consequences of such an action. Yet, this was because of Rebecca, not Reinheld, nor even Brinson.
He wasn’t going back down to the beach, though. He hadn’t seen the woman when he went looking for Reinheld, and David wouldn’t dare tolerate being made to wait longer.
It’s Scoble, he said, his nanotech contacting hers. Come to the campsite.
There was, of course, the chance the woman might run, but where could she really go? This island was small, and eventually she’d be found. Rhett sort of hoped she would run, though, as it would give David more time to calm down.
Minutes passed and Rhett received no response.
“She’s not answering.”
David looked to Reinheld. “Where is she?”
“I haven’t seen her since this afternoon.”
David stepped forward then, passing by the two men and beyond the campsite toward the beach. “You call her,” he said to Reinheld.
Rhett watched green pinpoints light up in Reinheld’s eyes. He was obeying, but Rhett had an idea that something was wrong here. Something beyond her simply hiding in the trees.
His eyes remained green, five seconds turning into thirty, and Rhett knew he was talking to the woman.
She’s gone, he thought, and you know exactly where she went.
Rhett kept quiet. David’s back remained to them, and Christine only stared at Reinheld from where she sat.
Finally, the green in his eyes faded.
“She’s gone,” and his voice was death personified. “She went with your sister.”
Rhett thought about stepping forward, about saying something to David, but there simply wasn’t time.
Gray webs ripped from his eyes, circling back around him and wrenching hold of Reinheld before anyone else could even open their mouths. Rhett stared on, horrified, as David remained facing the ocean and the strands wrapped themselves around Reinheld’s neck. They lifted him 10 feet into the air, and he gasped for breath. He reached for the strands, trying to pull them away, but burning his hands the moment he touched them. Smoke rose into the sky as the man strangled above them all.
“David,” Rhett said. “He has the Blood, David. He is of the Unformed.”
Christine came to her feet, staring up at the dying man. Rhett looked to her for a single second, seeing horror across her face too.
“This isn’t Stellan. There is no reason for this. The woman escaped because you fucking let Rebecca go. Had you killed her—”
His words were cut off as gray strands leapt out at him. They took his neck as quickly and tightly as they had Reinheld’s, then hoisted him up. The two hung together, and just as Reinheld had tried, Rhett reached for the strands. Hot pain blazed across his hands and he pulled them away. He felt no heat on his neck, only the outside was burning.
His lungs seized up, trying to find air, but his throat closed off from it.
“David,” he said, his words barely above a whisper. “David, no.”
“DAVID!” Christine shouted, Rhett barely able to see her rush toward the Prophet. “STOP!”
Another web of light shot out and grabbed her, and she joined the two already hanging. The night grew quiet except for their stunted gasping.
Rhett struggled against the chords, his hands back on them again, not caring if it burned, only trying to stop from dying. The smell of burning flesh filled his nose and his vision started blurring.
“David,” he tried again, not knowing if the Prophet heard his words at all.
His eyes were slowly closing, and his arms fell down to his sides. The panic was receding. The need to breathe deadening. He was slowly feeling better and better. Rhett couldn’t really even see the other people hanging with him, nor David below.
It was okay.
Everything would be just fiiiii—
He hit the ground
hard. He lay there, looking up at the branches and stars, breathing in haggard gasps, his vision slowly coming back to him. He didn’t look around, though. Didn’t even try to move—just lay there, his body and throat hurting, his lungs full of fire.
Finally, after a minute or so, he sat up coughing. David wasn’t in front of the campsite, but further down on the beach. Rhett hacked roughly for a few seconds before he realized the other two were doing the same.
He looked over at them, and their eyes were on him as well—pale terror gripping everyone.
Never in Rhett’s life had David attacked him before.
Rachel and Nicki
Rachel Veritros had been riding just under the Unformed’s radar for a millennium, doing her absolute best to disrupt Its plans.
After 1,000 years, she now found herself at a loss as to what she was watching. It wasn’t something she understood, nor did it make any logical sense. Veritros had recognized that her connection to the Unformed, and then Its connection to humanity, had allowed her to contact people. Only two—the Prophet’s sister and then this new girl. Nicki Sesam. Yet, logically that had made sense.
Veritros had understood such reasoning.
Now, though, she watched a world she didn’t understand. The young woman’s powers had always been strong; Veritros felt that from the beginning. Her engineered brain becoming active when the Unformed’s powers were flowing across Earth—the combination had created something special.
But … this?
Rachel Veritros stared on uncomprehendingly.
She couldn’t step forward, something was blocking even her. She could do nothing but watch as Nicki existed in a world that sat between life and death.
The world, without any doubt, was in turmoil. Again, it had started to burn. Everyone—literally every single person alive—was aware and in the midst of it. Everyone besides Nicki Sesam.
Nicki, for the first time since discovering the sight, had found happiness. Not total happiness, such a thing can’t actually exist; but for her, she was in a good place.
She wasn’t wandering around in a daze. She knew what had happened, remembered it very clearly. The dark man staring at her with those gray eyes, the only thing about him actually alive. She remembered the fat man, the thin man, and her father. She hadn’t known what would happen in the end, when she pulled all that static back to her, but her last words to the dark man had been right.
Let’s be done with it all.
If they were forcing her to kill her father or herself, then they were simply forcing her to commit suicide.
She had thought she might die, but she hadn’t been sure. She only knew there were two choices, to let the light continue on its path forward, or to bring it back. And since her father was there, she’d done the latter.
Nicki knew she wasn’t inside her own head. This wasn’t some psychological trip, but rather a …
And that’s where language broke down.
Because it wasn’t a physical place, nor was it fully spiritual.
She was in-between.
It was the only phrase she could think to describe it, but then the natural question to ask from there was, in between what?
She didn’t know, and she found herself okay with that.
Not knowing, but still being safe, Nick found a sort of peace. Not the enraptured type of peace that she’d felt at that black, exploding border. It was closer to the peace she’d felt with her father, back in the Old World. Before all this started.
Here, in this place, she wasn’t running from anything, nor chasing. For the first time in a long time, she was simply existing.
Nicki stood on a road, right in the middle of it. The road was black and looked to be made of glass … with three lines of neon blue lights running through it. The sky above was the same neon blue, though dark—as if night had fallen on this in-between world. Nicki stood there for some time, looking at the place around her.
It was a neighborhood, just like any she might have seen in the Old World, yet—except everything was made of that black glass, with different shades of neon lights running through it. Some pink, some orange, some green. It was beautiful, but slightly frightening too.
Is it always night here?
And Nicki had no real way of knowing if it was night … yet, that still felt correct.
Nicki walked across the road, her feet silent on the black glass beneath her. She wondered what would happen if she threw a rock at any part of this place, whether the entire world would shatter and then she would simply fall forever.
She moved from the road to the lawn of one of the houses. The grass was made of the same black glass, yet it bent beneath her feet, the same way real grass would. She knelt down and touched it, feeling its cool slickness. Nicki pulled at a blade, breaking it off. The glass shattered at the inflection point and tiny flecks dropped to the ground.
They laid there for a minute, black on black, and then Nicki watched as the shattered pieces sunk into the glass beneath.
Nicki stared for a second longer, enraptured by this place. She probably should have been frightened—would have been—if she hadn’t just left something much, much worse than a neon world.
She stood and walked across the lawn to the house in front of her. The strips running through it glowed pink, shining and reflecting off of the glass building.
She was halfway across the lawn when the door opened.
A woman stepped out onto the stoop; she pulled the door partly closed behind her so that Nicki couldn’t see in, but she didn’t close it all the way.
The woman—besides Nicki—appeared to be the only thing in this world not made of glass.
Brown hair hung to her shoulders and something about her looked vaguely familiar, though Nicki didn’t think she’d actually seen her before. Perhaps she only saw familiarity in her because the rest of this world was so unfamiliar.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the woman said.
Nicki didn’t have a clue how to respond, so she asked, “How do you know?”
“Where’s your house?”
And Nicki almost laughed at the question, because it was too obvious and too easy. She didn’t have one, and if ownership in this neighborhood determined whether one belonged, then she didn’t.
Nicki shook her head and looked at the black glass beneath her feet.
“Is anyone looking to sell?” she asked, grinning.
Nicki heard the door shut and looked up, half frightened the woman had gone back inside, but she was still standing there.
“How did you get here? Did you die?”
“Die?” Nicki asked, thinking about the question. “I don’t think so, but maybe.”
“What do you remember?”
Nicki smiled again, feeling more comfortable here with this strange woman in this strange land than she had in the past month. “It’s a lot to explain. But I remember it all. I don’t think I died.”
“Then you definitely shouldn’t be here.”
“Where is here?” Nicki asked.
“There isn’t an official name,” the woman said, offering a smile for the first time. “I call it The Land of the Unjustly Killed, but that might just be my prerogative.”
Rachel Veritros watched, unsure what to do. She understood the danger on Earth, perhaps better than anyone else. Yet out here, looking in, Rachel could do nothing. She was only an observer, and the Union was growing close. The Prophet had survived, taking more of the Unformed’s power in exchange for more of his soul. His power was growing, and the only person who could challenge him was lost inside some world that Rachel didn’t understand, nor could she enter.
So Rachel watched, looking for any sign of structural weakness in the outer boundaries of the world. Some place where she might be able to enter.
And when the woman walked out of the house, she might have looked vaguely familiar to Nicki, but Rachel recognized her well. She knew the woman standing on the stoop.
And suddenly, without
any doubt, Rachel Veritros knew all was lost.
The woman walked out onto the black grass. The lawns sprawling the neighborhood were the only places without neon lights running through them, containing only that bendable black glass.
“Were you unjustly killed?” Nicki asked.
“When I first got here, I thought that was the case. That was a long time ago, though. Now, I guess it depends on who you ask.”
Nicki heard another door open from across the street. She turned to it and a person poked their head out of the door. They looked at the two of them for a second and then quickly went back inside.
“I think everyone knows you’re here.”
“Why don’t they come out?”
“They can’t.”
“Why?”
“You’re not on their lawn,” the woman said, still looking at the neighbor’s house. “Had you shown up on their lawn, I would only be able to look at you, too.”
“I don’t understand this place.”
The woman smiled. “I don’t either. I guess I just sort of understand the rules, and have a few theories about them.” She looked at Nicki. “How did you get here? If you’re not dead, then that doesn’t really align with the rules.”
“Are you dead?”
“Almost 20 years now.”
“You’ve been here the whole time?”
The woman nodded, still looking at Nicki for an answer to her question.
“I really don’t know,” Nicki said. “Something was happening, and then I reacted. I had a choice and I made one that I thought would kill me, but now I don’t think it did. Next thing I knew, I was standing on the road.” She turned and pointed.
The woman stood silently for a moment, staring at where Nicki pointed.
After a moment, she said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
Tidus
Tidus was a bit like a King, at least sometimes he thought that, though he always (almost always) remembered who he served.
He was only a King for the moment, that’s what he had to remember. In here, inside the Globe of One, his kingdom ruled. It was his mission to expand the borders, because even a King answered to God, and God most certainly was coming.
