Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy Book 3)

by Rachel Fisher

  “Oh, well.” Rasmussen grinned. “Maybe your son will be interested one day.”

  She laughed, excited at the thought. Though some part of her hoped he would never have to be a warrior, with his genes, it seemed unlikely that he’d avoid that fate. “Maybe he will,” she said. “Or maybe my future daughter will. I assume the offer would be open to either?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Grey. Of course.”

  The General and Rasmussen moved on to continue tackling the responsibilities that come with victory in battle. Fi was relieved that Kiara and Luke’s wellbeing were her only real assignments at this point. Asher pulled her into an embrace. “Hey,” she said, looking up curiously. “What was that about?”

  “What was what about?”

  She laughed and swatted his chest. “You know. Before. When you snorted or something.”

  “Oh, that. Honestly, Fi, it took everything in me not to crack up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the struggle was written all over your face. I saw it. You really wanted to go to sniper school, didn’t you?”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  He tilted his head, silent, the corners of his mouth twitching.

  “Ok, Ash. Yeah, for a split second I really did want to go to sniper school.” She leaned into him, adjusting Luke to fit in the space between. “Were you mad that I even thought about it?”

  “How could I be mad? That fire is what makes me love you, Fi. You’re the girl who wants to go to sniper school…all five foot two of you. You may be a mom, you may be a wife, you may even settle down…sort of.”

  He smiled and reached into his pocket and drew out something on a red silk cord. Her hand flew to her mouth, shaking. It had been so long. He slid her wedding ring off the cord, the sapphire glinting as he took her hand and slipped it onto her finger. She closed her eyes as the icy circlet of gold laid claim to her once more. She held her breath, her eyes still closed, as Asher drew the silk cord with his lucky coin around her neck. The tiny, nearly imperceptible weight settled against her throat and she sighed. Her eyes fluttered open just as her husband leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers. “Don’t ever let anything put out that fire.”

  It felt so good to be close to him again that she actually ached. She thought of when they’d stood like this the first time…in the beginning, when two fires met and something new was forged. She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him to her. When his lips met hers, her blood ignited, the heat coursing through her – an unbearable spike of current. In the midst of the smoking ruin, they were alone in the world. They’d done it. They’d survived.

  The burn of her love and fear and relief all rose in her chest until she broke away, gasping. “Don’t worry, baby. Nothing can put out Dragon Fire.”

  Many Partings

  ------------ Fi --------------

  She wasn’t ready for the goodbyes to come so soon. They’d been on a mission for so long…so long, when she included the summer Seed...or Seeds…or pretty much her whole freaking life since the world fell apart. And now everyone was disappearing on the breeze before she had a chance to hold them close, to catch up and make their life’s details her own: their families, their homesteads, their histories, their joys, their sorrows. It was only one morning since the siege and they were already whispering away in steady stream, disappearing into the waves of forest fog.

  It would be a long journey back to their homes for most of the Army. With the rations and supplies they’d taken from Camp Truth, they wouldn’t have to worry about survival any longer, but they were weary and battered and ready to rest. For most it would take weeks if not months to reach their destinations.

  Fi waited anxiously by the Jeeps as a sleeping Sean was settled into the back of one. They’d managed to recover the Jeeps the Truthers had stolen from Eden and had added several from Diaspora as well. These were being set up to carry the critically injured patients back to the colony hospitals as quickly as possible. Even on back-up power, Eden was better prepared to save lives than the battle hospital.

  Sara squeezed in beside Sean first and then Fi wound herself carefully onto the other side, shifting Luke past Sean’s IV bag where it hung from the roll cage. Asher took the front seat with Kiara on his lap. She’d offered to walk back with the rest of Sean’s family, but Asher had insisted. That night he’d whispered in Fi’s ear, “It almost killed me too, you know.”

  Fi had snuggled into him, warmed and saddened at the same time. He was so tough. He never showed her his deepest fears, including how worried he’d been about Kiara. Regardless, she was glad that he’d insisted on bringing her because Fi didn’t want to let Kiara out of her sight yet either.

  The Jeep rocked as their two guards, both Diaspora Seals, boarded. One would be their driver and one their gunner. Later, Fi would remember being amazed at the resolution in the gunner’s face. The highway leg of their trip was twenty hours and yet he stood stock still the entire time, cemented in his two inches of space, his eyes locked on the horizon. That, she thought, was a soldier. She was just an animal that refused to go down.

  When seat belts clicked she stiffened. Now she would be the one saying goodbye, leaving the Army and Truthers behind, speeding away until it all became a dot on the horizon, fading into nothing. They took off across the Dead Zone toward the distant highway. Fi looked up at Sara, her short ebony hair whirling in the whipping wind. She grabbed her friend’s free hand. “We did it, Sar. He’s going to live. You’re going to live together.”

  Sara nodded, silent, her tears streaking from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the dust sticking to her cheeks. She hadn’t said a word to anyone but Sean since she’d collapsed in Fi’s arms. Not even her family. Fi had let her know the day before that Lily and her parents had made it across the river and joined the General’s support forces, but Sara had barely registered the information. If she hadn’t closed her eyes, once, slowly, Fi wouldn’t have known that she’d even heard.

  She couldn’t blame her. If it had been Asher…she shuddered, recalling the time she’d thought him hurt, stumbling out of the woods, covered in blood. She’d never gone so cold in her life. At the time, she’d thought of Job, for just a second, wondering if God would test her like that, if He could be that cruel. But Asher hadn’t been harmed, not really…not like Sean. Her throat swelled and she gaze fell to her friend as they turned onto the highway and the tires sang on the asphalt.

  He slept, blankets pulled to his chin, his dark lashes like shadows against his fair skin, his arms folded across his chest. Despite Doc Ron’s assurances that Sean’s progress was “promising,” and that “he was definitely going to recover,” Fi felt sick every time she looked at him.

  She would always feel like the one who started it all, the one who pulled Sean, a gentle spirit, into her twisted world. It didn’t matter that the world twisted around them and that they’d clung to each other out of love and necessity. She was the one with a dark heart, full of fire and glory. Sean… She touched his cheek gently. Sean was everything that was right with the world. Smart, kind, fiercely protective. He didn’t have a violent bone in his body. Of the two of them, he should not be the one fighting to live.

  Fi turned into the wind as tears filled her eyes. It was over, but it would never be over for her. The years would roll by, and Kiara would grow into a young woman, a fighter, a stunning beauty for sure, like Maggie, and who knew what else. Luke would grow and absorb the world, no doubt with a bevy of siblings, given the way of things now. But she would never be whole. Nothing could seal the rent in her soul where nine billion others tumbled into the abyss, like the sunflowers she’d dreamed the night her father revealed the truth.

  The only thing that would matter now would be living. Being a friend, a wife, a mother, a scientist, a compatriot…there was nothing more to be done. Finally. It was no longer up to her to save her sister. It was no longer up to her to save humanity. She knew that the change would take getting used to, even thou
gh she’d been gradually relinquishing control for a long time. She’d never trusted the world to spin of its own volition if she let go, but now…

  Now I do.

  Lost in thought as the miles rolled away, her mind drifted to faces. Her father, her mother, her brother Luke, Sensei Bob, Margie and Russ, the nice man she’d bartered with for fruit cocktail…what was his name again? Oh, yes, Mark. And all of the others…the attackers, the raiders, the Lobos, the Truthers, the colonists, the Army volunteers, all of them flipping through her memory like a stack of cards, as if her mother’s magical shuffle showed them to her one last time before her mind closed the door.

  There were cards in that deck that were Missing: cast aside, torn, mangled. And there were cards that were Found: repaired, restored, rescued. But the game was over now. At least, it was for her.

  ###############################################

  On the second day of their travels, the Jeeps slowed and jostled as they climbed off the road into the forest. Sean startled awake at the motion and Sara jumped to reassure and settle him, making sure he was comfortable. For the rest of the drive it would be much bumpier and Sara was determined that Sean not feel a second’s pain. And as much as Fi wanted to fuss over Sean, she knew that was Sara’s job now. Sara’s privilege.

  They drove for half the morning and then stopped by a surging stream at the edge of a Dead Zone to fill up their canteens and stretch their legs. Fi relished the break. The sun was high and the air had grown warm enough that she’d unzipped her jacket. There was a green smell in the breeze, the unmistakable harbinger of spring. It was amazing the way that time spent outdoors had attuned her to those things. When she was younger, she never would’ve detected the fresh scent of new buds or the loamy tinge of good soil.

  Sara and Asher helped Sean down from his makeshift bed in the back of the Jeep. Doc Ron was in another Jeep with two other injured Eden colonists and Lucy. He’d suggested that they help Sean to get up and walk around some. Something about preventing blood clots. Sean was so weak that he needed to lean on Sara with every step, but he smiled at the sunshine, accepting her fluttering attentions.

  Fi smiled as well, pulling Luke from his sling and nuzzling him.

  “Giving the little guy some sunshine?” Sean said as he and Sara made their way carefully, joining her and Asher at the edge of the Dead Zone.

  She rocked him and nodded. “Of course. He’s got my genes, so he’s gotta love sunshine.” And indeed, he cooed and blew raspberries happily.

  “Are you looking forward to getting home, Fi?” Sean asked.

  She tilted her head, regarding her best friend from birth. It was so like him to be half-dead and yet, still worried about her. “Yes, Sean. Believe me, I’m looking forward to rest.” He raised an eyebrow. “No, I mean it. Actually, to prove it to you, let me rephrase that. I’m looking forward to retirement.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. When I first realized I was pregnant, I thought I could never give up the warrior life, but now…”

  How could she explain? How could words match the feelings in her heart, or make sense of the fact that the switch was flipped and she couldn’t go back. She wasn’t sad to “just” be a mom. She wasn’t sad to “just” be a wife. She wasn’t sad to “just” be a girl who loves science. The part of her that wanted violence and action and revenge was “just”…gone.

  “It’s ok. You don’t have to explain.” Sean’s voice was even and steady.

  Just like him, she thought. They stood looking out over the Dead Zone in silence. Perhaps he was right. Maybe she didn’t have to explain. Maybe she’d never have to explain herself to anyone again. She rocked Luke gently and hummed in his ear. “You know what I really want, Sean?”

  “What?”

  “I want to help find the cure for cancer.” As soon as she’d said it, she felt the rightness of it. That was what she wanted now. No more survival. No more fighting. Not that kind of fighting. Her new fight was going to be waged in the labs and fields of the new world.

  “We’re practically there with Truefood already, Fi,” Asher smiled.

  “We’re closer. That’s true. But cancer has always existed, and Truefood alone isn’t going to fix that. We have to learn more, to understand more about our connection to everything around us.”

  A breeze blew, lifting the dust in the Dead Zone into a silty cloud and bending the small plants poking up from the stream’s banks in the distance.

  Wait…what?

  Fi pulled her sunglasses onto her head and squinted. The breeze strengthened and she saw it again. It was a motion near the ground that echoed the dust of the breeze, only it wasn’t dust. It was growth. But the gnarly desert-style shrubs that had taken up residence in the Dead Zones didn’t bend in the wind. She took a few steps forward.

  “What is it?” Asher’s voice was wary.

  “I don’t know…” It was only two more steps when her mind clicked and her hand flew to her mouth. “Guys! Guys, do you see that or am I crazy? Is that…? …But it can’t be.”

  But it was.

  Asher gave a shout. She turned back to her companions as she stood, stunned, her hand still covering her mouth. The colonists in the other two Jeeps came tumbling from the forest, drawn by the noise. They stood in the dust and pointed and danced and sobbed. There was no mistaking what they saw. What was growing in the Dead Zone was grass.

  Epilogue – Five Years Later

  ------------ Fi -----------

  Fi picked her way carefully behind Kiara as they followed the trail along the lake back from Town Center. She was hot as “bejeezus,” as her eastern neighbor Mrs. Finnick always liked to say. She was looking forward to a dip in their pond when they got back.

  “Jack says that all of the kids are coming tonight,” Kiara was prattling on happily about her Interdependence Day plans. Lakeland always had the best Interdependence Day party. With this being the five-year anniversary of the new Declaration’s ratification, she knew it would be a doozy.

  “You mean Marshall Holland will be coming,” Fi teased.

  Kiara ignored her and kept on, flushed and enthralled with her own teenaged monologue. Fi didn’t begrudge her the self-focus. Being a happy, well-adjusted fifteen-year-old was exactly what she’d dreamed for her little sister all along. She huffed along the path behind Kiara and tried to ignore the sweat trickling down her back.

  Once, soon after they selected a house in Lakeland for their summer home, Jack had offered to have a well dug on their property, but Fi had demurred. “If I didn’t give Kiara an excuse to go to Town Center to see her friends every day she would drive me crazy, Jack.”

  To be truthful, Kiara was hardly selfish. She’d offered to carry both water buckets on this trip, insisting that Fi shouldn’t be doing so much anymore now that she was so far along with Maggie. Out of the blue, Maggie kicked hard and Fi cramped and stopped.

  Kiara whirled and set down her buckets. “Everything ok?”

  Fi nodded and grimaced. “Here,” she said, pulling Kiara’s hand to the bottom of her belly. “Can you believe this little nit? She keeps sticking her foot straight into my bladder and locking it there.”

  Kiara made a face. “I don’t see how you like it so much. It seems like a lot of pain.” She nodded at Fi’s swollen ankles and added, “And suffering.”

  Fi blew out as the baby relaxed her foot and then laughed. “Yes, it can have a lot of that, but that’s life. What’s great about it is hard to explain. There are times you feel like everything is right with the world in a way that nothing else can. When Ash wraps his hands around my belly and I feel the baby kick…I don’t know,” she grinned. “It’s just awesome.”

  Kiara screwed her face up and nodded. “Well, it seems like you named her right because she’s gonna be feisty, just like you said Mama was.”

  Fi’s face fell. The way she’d said their mother was…because Kiara could barely remember her. The baby kicked again, bringing her back to the
present, and she managed a smile. Yes, this baby was a little mover. Probably destined to be a basketball player like her grandma.

  Nowadays thoughts of her parents mostly brought comfort. She believed in her heart that her mother and father were watching them from somewhere. Surely her father wouldn’t miss watching little Luke becoming a scientist, with “Why?” as his constant and confounding question.

  As they approached their modest wooden home, originally a vacation home with a small, screened porch and three quaint little bedrooms tucked beneath the pitched roof, Fi felt the familiar wave of contentment. The windmill over the fields whirled, powering the fuel cell that gave them electricity. Pops of color hovered among the branches of their heirloom vegetable garden like balloons, as tomatoes, peppers, and squashes swelled.

  There was a kerfuffle in the corner where their heritage flock picked and squawked over insects. Kiara laughed and waved her foot. “Shoo, Napoleon,” she chided the rooster, who made it a point to glare back at her while slowly marching his glorious self out of her path. Kiara shook her head, still gripping the heavy buckets. “No hurry or anything, Naps.”

  This was their third summer in Lakeland. Despite Fi’s ongoing love for Eden, Lakeland was the place that whispered home in her heart. It had taken hold of her the first time she’d come and she’d never been able to shake it: the gentle breezes, the murmurs of the massive lake, rolling with waves just like the ocean. When Asher suggested that they live outside Eden in the warmer months, she’d jumped at the chance. She liked to joke that they were confused snowbirds, traveling East-West instead of North-South.

  She tromped up the porch stairs with Kiara, only to be nearly run down by her headstrong four-year-old. Giggling like a maniac as he ran from a toddling two-year-old Anna, Luke bumped into a table just inside the door and almost knocked over their one photograph: a framed copy of their wedding photo, with all of the Family smiling in the background. “Luke David Grey!” Fi protested, catching it.