Tears flew down her cheeks easily as Exton and her father pushed her to the remaining pod; it was just across the way from the room she’d shared with Exton, where he’d shared everything with her—his world, his books, and his love and his body. His future.
“No,” she repeated, more firmly this time, as Exton gently shoved her into the escape pod and stepped back.
“Yes,” he told her. “I can’t let you die here, even if it means I have to. I need you to go on with the world. And the world, once it’s free of Osgood, will need the General. They’ll look to him to lead the world once it’s fallen apart.”
He glanced back at St. Cloud. “Isn’t that right?” he said.
General St. Cloud nodded. Aerie felt his full betrayal stab into her heart once more. “Exton’s right,” he said. “You need to go. I’m getting tired of listening to your fighting.”
Aerie felt herself fall backward into the escape pod. “Ouch,” she shouted, as she hit her head against the back wall.
As Exton rushed forward to help her up, that’s when it happened.
A shot rang out from directly behind him, and Exton fell to the side. He cried out in agony, and his hand went immediately to the left side of his body, where blood was pouring out freely.
“Exton!” Aerie cried out. She caught him, but then she fell back again; this time, the clunk she heard was not her own head hitting the wall, but Exton’s. She reached up, cradling his head and calling his name, as his body fell further on hers. She briefly felt the bump on his head, from where Brock had hit him before, and hoped it would not grow any bigger.
She glanced past Exton to see her father’s cruel smile. “You can thank me, Aerie, by being a good wife to him,” he said. He sighed and lowered his gun, tossing it onto the ground. “After all I’ve done to him, he deserves someone who will make his life better. Now, don’t wait; get to Petra and have them take care of your husband. He’ll need it, especially if he’s going to nurse a new vendetta against me after this.”
Aerie felt her mouth open in shock as the General reached forward and shut the door to the escape pod, squeezing the two of them inside.
Aerie met her father’s amber eyes with hers. She finally looked away and hugged Exton even more tightly to her chest. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, too, Aerie.”
Aerie could barely see as the escape pod doors closed, and her father disappeared, while she and Exton were shuttled out of the Perdition.
She brushed the tears out of her eyes just in time to watch as the Perdition, looking like a great knight lunging forward with its plank-like bowsprit extended, sliced through its grand enemy. The GPI and its menacing shadow collapsed and shattered in a supernova of fire and light.
♦28♦
The shadows came back to haunt him one last time. They fell swiftly over him, as pain shot out from his head and he felt himself slip away into the place where worlds overlapped and dimensions were interwoven.
He found himself in a dark world, standing alone. There was nothing cold, but nothing warm, and there was no one around. The pain in his head faded into memory, and even there, a barrier came between him and the recollections of the real world. A thump! called back from his memory, and it was accompanied by jarring sensation.
“What happened?” he heard himself say, and his voice seemed to cry out into the void forever.
Exton realized, at that moment, he was unconscious to the physical realm. He had been brought here through pain.
Before he could claw himself out of the darkness, a light sparked against the starless night. He watched as his hands formed out of the shadows, before they came up to protect his eyes. But the light wasn’t stopped; it seemed to have a life of its own as it grabbed hold of him, pulling him forward into the place where there was no darkness. He watched, terrified, as the light bent around his fingers, twisted around his arms, and finally took him captive.
There was nothing he could do to resist.
He felt his mouth open, and he felt himself scream silently. His eyes closed in preparation for the worst.
Nothing happened.
There was no strike of lightning, no charring of his flesh, no gnashing of the teeth.
Nothing.
He finally opened his eyes and gasped at the scene before him.
It was his father—Silas Shepherd—on the night before his death. He watched as he stared out the window in their unit, looking past the small kitchen and its homey decorations. The old leather Bible was in his roughened hands. His black hair was streaked with gray and speckled with white, and in need of a trim. The ice blue of his eyes, so similar to Exton’s own, gleamed with acceptance and faith.
Exton felt himself reach out, wondering if he could touch him. Wondering if he would be able to talk to him, to feel his father’s strength, to hear his father’s voice.
He was surprised when his father turned and looked right at him. Tears prickled into his eyes. “Papa?” he whispered, in near disbelief.
His father didn’t answer. He bowed his head and resumed his prayers.
Exton took a step closer. “Papa, can you hear me?” His hand reached out again to touch his shoulder.
Silas’s head suddenly came up, as his face turned toward the ceiling. “Thy will be done, Lord,” he spoke, the husky timbre of his voice sending a dizzying new reality between them.
Exton watched as his father’s words rippled into the air, the very fabric of time altering at their touch. A new world came forth from the power of the words, and Exton watched as his father began to disappear.
“No,” he cried. “No, Papa, come back. Don’t leave me.” The guilt over his death, mixed with shock and loss and anger, roared along with his cry.
As he watched, his father’s form continued to fade away, while he slipped through death’s door and time passed.
Exton stood there, his hand still reaching out. He watched as the shadowy figure of his father, fading away into the ghost of his spirit, grabbed his hand. Instantly, the figure transformed.
As Exton watched, his father was suddenly replaced by St. Cloud. Out of his father’s fluffy bearded face came the clean-shaven formation of the General’s features, complete with the stark lines of his cheeks and the hard jut of his chin as his thin lips curled into a smirk.
“This isn’t a game, Exton,” he said. “Life is not a game.”
Exton fell into speechlessness, as St. Cloud’s grip on his hand became more solid, more firm, and the rest of world before him slinked back into the recesses of his heart and mind.
Patches of the physical world crept back into his sight. Exton watched, helplessly transfixed. He could see the darkness of space, with the starlight twinkling with its iridescent inner fire. The earth in the background gleamed, with both pollution and divine prosperity. The sea shook with storms, the ice glittered with simulated sunlight, and the Memory Tree stood over it all, as a man stood at its base, beckoning him to come back home.
And then, it was over; the darkness returned, and sank, still helpless, into the nothingness awaiting him; the only thing Exton was still certain of, as he tread upon the last lines of his awareness, was the feeling of a hand holding onto his.
THE HAND SUSTAINING him remained strong and tight, but the feel of it became smaller and softer, and infinitely more welcome and familiar. Other sensations began to creep back into his mind, as if a million markedly tiny alarms were all going off inside his brain at the same time in hopes of waking him up, almost like he’d decided to use Christmas tree lights instead of a lamp to light a room.
Exton’s eyes blinked open, and he nearly squinted at the bright light above him. “That’s bright,” he murmured.
“Exton? Are you awake?” Aerie’s voice was sunlight against the clouds.
“I think so,” he replied, surprised to find his voice sounded scratchy.
“If you want to go back to sleep, it’s okay,” Aerie said, squeezing his hand in hers reassuringly. “It’s been
quite an adventure getting here.”
He had a feeling, from her words and the remainder of his dream—vision?—that she was grossly understating their situation.
“Where is here?” Exton struggled to sit up as he glanced around. At once, he recognized the various medical displays and supplies. “Oh. We’re at Petra.”
“Yes. That’s where all the escape pods were programmed, remember?”
Images flooded through him, as he stepped back into the moment before he was taken away to see his father—the escape pod. St. Cloud, standing over him, smirking. Aerie’s weepy voice, whispering in the distance, as even further back explosions and bright flashes of bombs went off. The end of the Perdition, as it collided with the GPI, that monstrous beast of a technological wonder, determined to be the end of the free world.
The last second of his energy as he struggled to fight off the pain of his body and his already-bruised head, all in order to save Aerie and her father from the fiery end they were determined to meet alongside him.
“What happened?” Exton asked. “Did we win? Did the plan work?”
“The GPI is gone,” Aerie said. “Emery and your aunt have been celebrating with the rest of our friends down in the command center. It was awful. A lot of the wreckage burned up and broke up at the top of the atmosphere. We’re still tracking the debris.”
“So Osgood is finished.”
“Yes.”
At her answer, Exton relaxed into the cot once more. Aerie watched as frown crossed his brow. “Why don’t I remember it?”
“Well ... my father ... shot you,” Aerie said carefully.
At her words, the pain in his torso, on the left side of his body, suddenly screamed, as if his body was already giving him the verification he would have asked for.
He groaned. “I remember now.”
“You fell over and hit your head again. I was upset at what my father did,” Aerie said, “but he picked you up, after you passed out, and put you and me into the last of the escape pods. And then ... we left, and he stayed behind.”
There was a sadness in her voice that told Exton all he needed to know; St. Cloud was gone. He had sacrificed himself so they would be able to get away. He squeezed her hand back. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Aerie nodded, but he could see her eyes were full of sadness. She swallowed hard before she continued. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it for a few moments,” she admitted.
“I would never leave you,” he said, bringing her hand up to his lips.
“You promised me once you would never lie to me.”
“I haven’t. I wouldn’t leave you.” He pressed his hand against his heart. “You’re in here.”
With her free hand, she cupped his cheek. “You know, this never would have happened if I had just stayed onboard the Perdition, way back in the beginning.”
He reached up and pulled her close to him, burying his face in her hair. “We saved the world from Osgood’s Planethood Initiative,” he said. “Your recklessness saved millions of people, including Petra and Chaya.”
“But so many people died,” Aerie murmured, close to tears. “Gerard’s gone, Dorian’s gone, and so is my father. And I almost lost you.”
He held her close, running his hand through her hair and down her back. He wasn’t sure there was anything that he could say. Exton knew he could tell her that there was a price for standing up in the face of evil, that there was still hope for goodness to triumph in a fallen world, that it was too big of a miracle to contemplate, that humans had any chance at all to alter their lives; he could tell her that she was rightfully worried about protecting her mother, that she had been driven by good things to do something that went wrong and right in different ways, that she wasn’t alone in her blame.
But he knew, from his own experience with Reverend Thorne in the days following the loss of his father, that those words meant nothing when divorced from his love for her. And she needed that first.
He pulled back from her ever so slightly. He looked deeply into her eyes, those eyes that haunted him as much as he pursued them. He took the moment to memorize the distinct shades of amber, basking in the glow that hinted at her inner fire. And when he felt his own soul latch onto hers a moment later, he said, “I still love you. And so do many others.”
His voice was hoarse and husky, and he was pretty sure his pain medication was keeping him from being fully awake; but as Aerie teared up again, he knew, for now, his love was the best he could offer her, and he knew, for now, it would be enough.
Aerie scooted back from him a moment later. “Sorry,” she said. “I know I wasn’t cut out for war.” She gave him a tiny smile and a small attempt at a laugh.
“You don’t have to apologize,” he told her. He sat up against his pillows more, trying to focus on her completely. “I can imagine that you’d enjoy this part, though, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“The role reversal,” he explained. “I’d say you probably like being the one outside of the bed, rather than in it yourself.”
Aerie’s smile widened a little at his words. “You do have a point,” she conceded.
“All I need now is Moona on my lap,” he told her.
“Ha!” Aerie laughed. “Moona wouldn’t be willing to wake up from her nap in Emery’s room to come and see us. She apparently spends the majority of her time on the cat bed Tyler bought for her.”
“Tyler always liked animals,” Exton said. “I’m not surprised he managed to find a way to get Emery to like her.”
Silence came back after their laugh. As Exton woke up, he thought about telling Aerie about his dream, where he saw his father. Some part of him wanted to keep that for himself, as a secret between him and God, but as he watched Aerie, as she lovingly tended to him, he eventually told her what happened.
She frowned. “I wonder what it means,” she said.
“Could be nothing,” Exton replied. “I never took stock in things like dreams and visions from God. At least, not for myself. But he seemed determined to prove me wrong with miracles when it came to you, so I have to admit, I’m not sure what it means.”
“But it does mean something.”
“I guess so.”
“Huh.” Aerie sat back thoughtfully. “Well, if that was a message to you from your father or mine, it at least certainly sounds like him. He used to tell me survival wasn’t a game all the time.”
“I know him well enough to take him at his word,” Exton said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something he wanted to tell me. It was a good way for him to die, from his perspective. He finally found a way to atone for his sins against me.”
“And me,” Aerie said with a smile. Her eyes glistened with tears. “He shouldn’t have bothered. I would’ve forgiven him anyway.”
Exton held her against him, allowing himself to enjoy the feel of her underneath his hand. “Me, too,” he admitted. “I still feel like my father didn’t need to die. But war claims a lot of victims, both in the mind and on the battlefield. Maybe my father did go mad at the end.”
“There are some things we will never know,” Aerie agreed quietly.
The door to the room opened. “If you’re talking about Papa, I don’t think he went mad,” Emery said as she walked into the room.
“Emery.” Exton reached out with his free hand and took hold of his sister’s.
“Yes, brother dear,” Emery said, her tone ever practical, but her eyes full of sisterly affection. “I’ve been keeping tabs on everything for you, and I will be happy to fill you in on everything you’ve missed in the last couple of days.”
“Tell me about Papa first,” he said. “What did you mean, he didn’t go mad?”
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t be distracted from that, even though there’s a lot to report,” Emery said. “I had Tyler comb through the Boötes system some more. He caught a few more details about Osgood’s plan for the GPI. He was going to start his onslaught at Chaya. App
arently, he has been planning this for several years.”
“He wouldn’t have liked that.”
“No, he wouldn’t have,” Emery said. “Once the initial plans for the GPI were submitted, the anomalies began appearing in Papa’s designs for the Paradise.”
Everything suddenly became clear. “Once he found out about it, Papa decided to steal the Paradise and save the Ecclesia.”
Emery nodded. “That’s best guess, anyway,” she said. “There are a few more things we likely won’t ever find out.”
“Why is Chaya so important?” Aerie asked. “It seems like an unusual place to start destroying the world.”
“Before Petra was created, Chaya was one of our smaller allies, but it was also one of the most resourceful,” Emery explained. “They had a lot of leading scientists there, including the botanists and geoengineers who are now going to work on cleaning up the earth’s atmosphere. And in addition to that, it is considered part of the Holy Lands from the history of the Ecclesia.”
“So your dad wanted to protect it,” Aerie said. “Osgood threatened it, and your dad stood up to protect it. Just like you did, when Petra was threatened.” She brushed a lock of his dark hair out of his eyes.
“Your father wanted to stop him, because he wanted to get the URS onboard and then blow it up,” Emery added. “At least, that’s what Merra told me yesterday when I went to babysit Marcus for her.”
“I guess Merra is doing okay, by the sound of it,” Exton said.
“She’s more than fine, physically,” Aerie answered. “Emotionally, I think it will take more. Right now she’s working on healing, but she’s planning a memorial for my brother. She was very upset to learn about Dorian’s death.”
Emery shook her head, her fingers resting protectively over her own belly, where a small bump was minimally protruding. “I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child,” she said. “This one is not even here, and I worry for him.”
The Price of Paradise Page 27
