by David Webb
In recent years, even as Aniya rejected Nicholas at every turn, she would still hold his hand in the dead of night, entranced by the stars, artificial though they were. The beautiful sight always put her at peace. Nicholas would often fall asleep, but Aniya could not bring herself to close her eyes, insisting to watch every second.
But these stars were different. They moved and pulsed brightly, obscuring her vision.
“Nicholas?” Aniya tried to speak but quickly realized that she had no breath. She tried again, but air refused to come.
Concern turned to panic, and she gasped, reaching for air with her lungs and for Nicholas with her hands.
Nicholas.
Suddenly, a weight was lifted off her body, one she never realized was a burden. As her chest was relieved, she inhaled deeply, managing to draw in air with a heavy wheeze.
Fluid glided over her neck, tickling her, and Aniya glanced down to see that although a cloak was wrapped around her body, her chest grew wet and warm as liquid seeped through the cloak and dripped onto her bare skin.
“Aniya, are you okay?”
William’s face came into focus.
“Hey, you.” She smiled, the gravity of the situation somehow a distant memory.
Her hand became warm, and she realized that another hand rested in hers, stroking her thumb slowly.
“Are you okay?” The words came again, but this time from Nicholas.
“Just peachy.”
“Hello there, Ms. Lyons. I thought you had left us.”
Another voice ignited the four corners of Aniya’s mind.
Her vision cleared, the pain returned, and her consciousness came crashing back down into her body.
The stars disappeared, and Aniya’s vision cleared to reveal the dark chamber that she had accepted as her tomb. Kendall had vanished, leaving only a dark screen that loomed blankly on the wall before her.
She turned to see the Operative standing nearby, his gun emitting a small wisp of smoke that drifted away carelessly.
Aniya screamed in horror as her eyes fell to Roland’s limp body at the Operative’s feet.
When her scream died away, the Operative simply laughed. “I was afraid you left us for a moment there, girl. It would have made the next few minutes quite boring, honestly.”
“Just put me back, okay?” Aniya held up her hands, her strength returning rapidly now. “I’ll go back in my pod, and you can keep me here. Just let them go.”
The Operative smirked. “Oh, I’ll put you back. You and your brother both. I don’t have any need for this one, though.” He raised his gun and pointed it at Nicholas’s head.
“No!” Aniya shouted, the full force of her voice returning. “Take him to the Adviser. You can’t just kill him.”
“I don’t trust the Adviser. Besides, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. It would defeat the purpose anyway. I brought him down here just so you could watch him die.”
Nicholas held up his hands and stepped toward Aniya. “Just give me a moment. There’s something I need to tell her.”
“Sorry, you’ve run out of time.” The Operative grabbed Nicholas’s shoulder and dragged him away from Aniya, readying his gun again.
Nicholas looked at Aniya, his eyes moist. “I’m sorry.”
But before anyone could move, the screen on the cavern wall came to life again.
“A moment, please.”
The Operative glanced behind him. “What do you want?”
Kendall raised an eyebrow, seeming almost bored. “You so rudely interrupted us. We have work to finish. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
The Operative laughed again. “I don’t report to you anymore.”
“So be it.”
William kicked the Operative’s hand, and the gun flew away as Nicholas spun around and jumped on his attacker.
“Aniya, run!”
The order came from Nicholas. Or maybe William.
It didn’t matter. She didn’t plan on following it.
Aniya turned.
The empty pod loomed before her, seeming bigger than before.
A gunshot sounded.
“Go!”
She dropped Roland’s cloak to the ground, pressed the button on the outside, and stepped bare inside the tank as the glass barrier began to rise.
“What are you doing?”
Aniya turned around to see William banging on the glass. He pressed the button repeatedly, but the water was already beginning to seep in from the floor, and the barrier refused to go back down.
Aniya placed a hand on the glass. “I’m sorry.”
Another gunshot.
A bullet bounced off the tank, just over William’s left hand.
As William stepped away from the glass, Aniya saw Nicholas sprawled on the ground, alive but wounded.
The water reached her knees, and Aniya took a deep breath, resolute but terrified as she prepared for her imminent death.
Beyond the glass, William charged at the Operative, knocking him to the ground.
The liquid reached her chest, and Aniya attached the hanging tube to her mouth.
William shoved the Operative off the rock floor, letting him drift away in dead space.
Her head was completely submerged.
William shouted, “Kendall, shut off the anti-gravity shafts!”
The wires began to prick Aniya, sending tiny jolts of electricity racing through her body.
Time stood still as the Operative remained suspended, reaching for the gun that floated nearby, just beyond his fingertips.
Her extremities went numb again as the wires quickly covered her body.
“Hurry!” William’s voice took on a panicked tone.
Her vision began to go dark.
The Operative finally grabbed his gun, and almost instantly, his body was propelled forward by an invisible force, right before Kendall shouted from the screen, “Done!”
Aniya’s vision cleared one more time just in time to see William jump away from the pillar, meeting the Operative in mid-air and stopping his momentum. She watched in horror as the two men collided and fell as one into the depths of the cavern.
She screamed into the tube, the numbing sensation giving way to pain as her anguish cleared the brain fog. Her rage and grief flowed out in one guttural cry before finally going quiet.
As her voice died, she felt her body go limp, the last of her energy spent on her grief.
Her vision completely blackened, and she gave herself up.
Aniya drifted, miles away from the horrific cavern beneath the Citadel. She was back home, in the arms of her father, who stroked her hair and whispered, “Welcome home, Annelise. The light of my life.”
She gave herself over and collapsed in his loving embrace. It was over. It was finally over.
No more running, no more fear. Safe in her father’s arms once more, never to leave again.
Her home around her faded away, leaving only Aniya and her father.
Then, with one last kiss on her forehead, her father slowly disappeared.
There was only black.
Aniya gave one last breath.
Splash.
Aniya pushed against an unseen force, trying to see the source of the noise. She realized that her eyes were closed, and she opened them with significant effort.
She was back in the Hub, in the pod, but now there was someone else in the tank with her, gazing at her and caressing her cheeks.
Nicholas.
Everything became clear once again, and her body woke in alarm as she thrashed her legs in the thick liquid.
What are you doing here? Get out!
Aniya would have given anything to speak, but she could only push Nicholas away in desperation, shaking her head.
The tank’s liquid took on a red tint as blood flowed from Nicholas’s shoulder.
Get out, you fool. Get out.
Dry heaving into the tube, she shook Nicholas as hard as she could.
Nicholas didn’t
fight back, his only response a sad smile. Slowly, he reached behind his neck and pulled a necklace from his shirt. The clear crystal, washed free of blood, looked like an emerald as it floated in the green liquid.
He tied the necklace around Aniya’s neck, letting it drape over her bosom.
As Aniya began to lose energy again, he wrapped his arms around her, leaned close, and spoke through the thick liquid.
“I love you.”
Aniya was almost grateful for the tube secured to her mouth because the emotions she felt for Nicholas were too many to express in whatever time they had left.
Friendship, frustration, tenderness, anger, gratefulness, rage . . . and, yes. Love.
She felt his arms go limp around her, and she pulled back to see Nicholas’s eyes looking back at her, empty. Void.
With no energy left to cry or scream, all she could do was stare at his lifeless body drift away slowly.
Then, lack of energy was no longer an issue.
Heat flooded through Aniya’s body, a furious energy filling her from head to toe. Every atom of her body swelled and burned as the wires emerging from her skin pulsed an angry red, making the crystal on Aniya’s chest sparkle with crimson highlights.
Nicholas’s face grew bright, and Aniya grew hopeful, but she quickly realized that the light was coming from her own body. She looked down and saw that her entire body was glowing with white light.
Looking back up, Aniya watched as Nicholas’s skin grew more and more pale. She noticed that many of the wires that had attached themselves to her had detached and were now embedded in his skin, and they pulsed angrily, sucking beams of red light from his body. With each throb of red that left his body, Aniya felt herself grow stronger and stronger. But as energy coursed through her veins, she watched, horrified, as Nicholas’s hair and skin turned a ghostly white.
Aniya looked back at her body as it grew brighter, the luminosity rapidly growing until she could no longer make out the details of her hands.
Suddenly, beams of light burst forth from her feet, shooting straight into the floor. Tendrils shot from her hands, piercing the glass and the surrounding machinery. Her eyes grew incredibly hot, and her vision went white. A sensation of fullness built up inside her, stretching her insides, her guts, her lungs.
Aniya opened her mouth, and a massive beam of light spilled out, narrowly missing Nicholas’s face and bursting the glass wall of the tank into thousands of pieces.
Her vision cleared just in time to see Nicholas’s body spill out of the tank and onto the ground in front of her, but her own body remained suspended, supported by absolutely nothing.
Aniya gasped as one final surge raced through her body. She no longer could tell the difference between her own body and the light that consumed her.
As the light shot forth from her skin, it pierced the crystal around her neck and split into infinite colors, bathing the cavern in a beautiful rainbow.
Then, in one instant, everything went black.
And then she fell.
51
Roland lay in a pool of blood and green liquid, his breath ragged.
Meltdown imminent. Evacuate immediately.
Robotic voices echoed throughout the cavern, urging him to leave.
But Roland wasn’t going anywhere. Even if he wasn’t bleeding out, miles beneath the Hub, where was there to go? His friend’s pale body lay before him, dead. His brother was at the bottom of one of the anti-gravity shafts, dead. His sister lay crumpled up in a ball on the floor of her broken tank . . . dead.
He cursed Nicholas under his breath. It should have been Roland to step into the tank in a final effort to keep Aniya awake. He was as good as dead anyway.
“I owe it to her,” Nicholas had said as he climbed into the tank to be with Aniya.
What does that even mean, anyway?
It would have been just as easy for Nicholas to boost Roland up and help him in through the open top of the tank. No need to waste a life when people are dying left and right.
Even Kendall was gone. The tangible, deadly beams of light that came blasting from Aniya’s tank had not only destroyed her glass prison but also the screen on the cavern wall.
With considerable effort, Roland climbed to his hands and knees, ignoring the glass shards that bit into his hands. Nicholas lay a few feet away, but the journey may as well have been a mile.
Wincing in pain, Roland pulled himself toward his friend. Nicholas was completely white. Not pale—white. His skin, his lips, his hair, all stark white. In contrast, his eyes were a pure and empty black.
Roland dragged himself past Nicholas and closer to his sister, who lay sprawled out in the open tank.
Aniya’s body was white as well, but not quite in the same way. The unearthly color came from a vibrant white-green glow that covered her body, gently pulsing. A crystal lay around her neck and over her chest, pulsing green in time with the light.
Roland reached for his cloak, which was soaked in blood and green liquid. He placed it on Aniya’s naked body, almost taking it off again when it sizzled loudly. But the hissing eventually stopped, and he sat back and stared at his sister’s face. Slowly, he touched her bare cheek and shuddered as his hair stood on end.
Aniya’s skin was cold, but the light surrounding her body was quite warm. Her icy skin was not completely devoid of life, however. As his skin made contact, Roland felt tiny jolts of electricity racing up his arm, causing his heart to beat just a bit faster and his vision to clear slightly.
Probably residual energy left behind by the machine.
Roland pulled Aniya out of the tank and toward Nicholas, doing his best to keep her body away from the scattered shards of glass. Though it took all the strength he had left to pull her, the contact with her skin continually sent shocks through his body and gave him tiny bursts of energy. He laid her body next to Nicholas and jumped back as Nicholas’s hand grazed Aniya’s arm, sending sparks flying.
Meltdown imminent. Evacuate immediately.
He shook himself out of his stupor and focused again on Aniya. After years of learning from Gareth, he had a good grasp on many medical techniques, but if Gareth had ever brought someone back from the dead, Roland was not around to see it. Severely injured, yes. But dead?
Roland pinched Aniya’s nose and pressed his lips against hers, breathing firmly into her lungs, then again. He pressed down on her chest once, twice, thirty times.
Nothing.
He breathed into her mouth twice again, then compressed her chest several more times.
Still nothing.
Roland repeated this, ignoring the rocks falling around them as the cavern began to shake.
After several cycles of this, Roland began beating on her chest, crying.
“Come on, Aniya. Wake up. Wake up!”
Suddenly, Aniya’s eyelids flickered open, blinding Roland as bright light shot forth from her eyes.
Roland stumbled backward, shielding his eyes and blinking furiously. “Aniya?”
She didn’t respond.
Slowly, Roland lowered his hand and looked at his sister as the light receded back into her eyes.
The girl sat up and stared back at him, unmoving and silent.
“Aniya?” he said again, this time with caution. Whether it was the way it stared at him, eerily still, or the fact that its eyes glowed and danced, embers crackling from within—whatever was looking back at him did not seem like the girl he had come to know.
“Roland,” the ethereal being said, matter-of-factly. As it spoke, light freely flowed from its mouth and spilled on the rock below, which quivered at the resonating power of the being’s voice. It was masculine now, with hints of Aniya’s feminine voice seeping through. Her speech carried a childlike tone, but the timbre of her voice seemed ancient. It was like nothing Roland had ever heard before.
Above, more rocks began to fall. Whether it was due to the overloaded reactor or the being’s powerful voice, Roland couldn’t tell.
; “You’re hurt,” it said plainly.
He laughed, wincing as the blood flow increased. “Just a nick somewhere in my spinal column. No big deal, right?”
The being did not react to this, but instead cocked its head and stared.
In an instant, the light vanished, and it was just Aniya.
His sister turned to him and gasped as her eyes moistened. She opened her mouth to speak.
Then, just as quickly, the light returned, changed now from a brilliant white-green to a deep, rich, sickly green.
The being uttered a shriek that violently shook the pillar they sat on. Roland slapped his hands over his ears as the screech nearly deafened him, sending shivers down his spine.
Debris now fell like rain around them. Roland looked up in fear, but saw that as rocks fell directly toward them, they disintegrated upon entering the glow emanating from the being.
The pillar, however, seemed to be dangerously close to breaking apart, and Roland could feel himself beginning to sway.
He gripped the being’s shoulders and shook them, ignoring the searing pain from the wound in his back.
“Aniya! Aniya, you’ve got to stop!”
The light diminished again, reduced to a faint glow around Aniya’s skin.
“Roland.”
Her eyes opened, and Roland recognized his sister once again.
He smiled.
“You’re back.”
Aniya smiled but then shuddered as tears began to fall. “They’re so loud. Make it stop, Roland. Please make it stop.” She covered her head and rocked back and forth.
Roland gently wrapped his arms around his sister and let himself rock with her, now comforted by the warm spark coming from her body.
Meltdown imminent. Evacuate immediately.
“You need to get out of here, Aniya.”
Aniya pulled herself away from him. “What do you mean? You’re coming too.”
“I don’t think I’m going anywhere,” he said, smiling weakly and turning to show Aniya the hole in his back.
She examined his body. “You’re hurt,” she said again as if just now noticing his injuries, this time her voice laced with genuine concern. Her gaze traveled to Nicholas. “Oh,” she gasped, a fresh round of tears streaming down her face. She raced to his side, seemingly unaffected by the torture her body had endured just minutes earlier.
