“Tony? Tony! Did you get Nikolaj? Tony?”
Static squealed from the handset.
“Shit,” he said, scanning the space again. “Whatever this stuff is its screwing with my comms. Which means we go up.”
“Up?” KJ repeated.
“Up,” Teller said. “If she has a trigger, then she’ll need a clean signal. So, it’s either portable, or fixed up there.”
KJ opened his mouth to speak, but there was a banging at the door behind him. Someone had followed them here. Perhaps it was Catherine or the monks? KJ turned to Teller, hope in his eyes.
Teller shook his head, “we keep moving.”
K’awin warbled and KJ rubbed the top of her head. “It’s okay.” He sucked in a deep breath.
Teller reached the elevator and pressed the button and swiftly and silently a car glided down from above and came to a halt at their level. The doors slid open. They stepped in, K’awin squeezing in beside them.
“You know this is a trap, right?” KJ said.
Teller pulled a gun from his side strap and handed it to KJ.
It felt heavy in his palm.
“People always take head or chest shots. I want you to kneel in front of me,” Teller said. “If she opens fire, you take her out.”
KJ examined Jonathan’s gear. “You need your gear back,” he said trying to shuffle out of the bullet proof vest.
“Too late,” Teller said with a wink and pushed the up key. The elevator car began to ascend at an astounding speed.
KJ cursed and took a kneeling position, pushing K’awin behind him for protection. “If we get through this, we’re having words,” KJ said without taking his stare from the sight at the end of the gun barrel pointed at the crystal-like doors.
“Uh, huh,” Teller said. The click of his Glock slide followed.
The elevator reached the top, arriving in a glass box at the very apex of the pyramid. Through the transparent doors KJ could already see Victoria. She was standing, arms held high, facing out toward the Avenue of the Dead. The air inside the glass box grew hot.
The doors slid open.
KJ rolled out and back into a kneeling position, his weapon trained on Victoria who still didn’t turn around. K’awin crouched by him, gills erect and face contorted into the best snarl she could muster. He heard Teller step out onto the stone behind him.
“You got some balls, Victoria,” Teller started. “I could have shot you in the back.”
A shrill laughter filled the air.
“You wouldn’t, because you think I have something you need.” She turned around, her thin face seemingly gaunter than it was just minutes earlier. In one hand she held the orb and in the other, where her fingers were already beginning to grow back, a small black device no larger than a cellular phone. “But as always you are two steps behind.”
“Where’s the Doyen,” KJ interjected.
“Dead,” she said flatly. “Just as everyone on the planet will be soon. God’s Earth will finally be restarted. He has the chance to correct all mistakes.”
“Not if we don’t let you trigger Zeus,” Teller snapped back. “Yeah that’s right, I know how you’re going to send the power stations critical. Rods from God. Fitting since you’re some kind of zealot.”
KJ’s fingers were sweaty, the gun in his hand growing heavy.
Victoria continued to smile. “My dear Jonathan, you might kill me right now. And perhaps you might stop the stations from going critical, but the Earth will still be shaken to its very core.”
“The asteroid,” KJ said. “Tell us how to stop it.”
That sent her into a fit of laughter that made tears run down her face.
KJ looked to Teller who frowned.
“What’s so funny, you fucking nut job?” KJ fired, his index finger moving from the gun’s side onto the trigger.
Her face hardened. “Nutjob? You can’t stop it, you stupid fucking child.” Spittle clung to her lips. “Do you think a plan this long in the making could be stopped by two morons like you? The son of Kelly Graham and the man who fucks someone’s leftovers—what’s her name again?”
“Freya,” Jonathan said, through clenched teeth.
“Ah yes,” Victoria said, her sarcastic smile returning. “Well Freya and everyone else on Earth will die soon.”
“How soon?” KJ spat.
The bony woman turned her wrist to check her watch, glancing at it mockingly. “Oh, about twelve hours.”
“What?” Teller shouted.
Victoria cackled. “Your incompetent and very underfunded space agencies had no hope of finding it in time. They were looking in all the wrong places. Like our own back garden.” She looked up to the sky. “Yes, it’s all quite too late. Of course, irradiating everyone was the icing on the cake.”
KJ’s heart beat fast in his chest as the information sank in. There was nothing they could do. The Nine Veils had won.
“You’re lying,” Teller said.
“Oh, I assure you I am not,” Victoria said. “Ask Kelly the Second. Here boy, I’ll even let you into my mind.” She closed her eyes.
KJ’s consciousness suddenly became flooded with Victoria’s. It was like no mind he had ever joined. A dark mess, a swarm of hatred and rage. A disdain for all life, entwined and sewn into her very being. He concentrated, trying to navigate the labyrinth of hate and filter out if her words were true.
“Well?” Teller pressed.
The pit in KJ’s stomach grew and the gun went limp in his hands. “She’s telling the truth.”
“Of course, I am,” she said. “Why lie?”
“Jesus,” Teller said, his words but a whisper.
“But she’s also stalling. A satellite, she’s waiting for it to align overhead.”
Victoria scowled.
“Zeus,” Teller said.
Two shots rang out from Jonathan’s Glock over KJ’s, but neither hit Victoria. Jonathan tumbled to the ground, a young man—the same one who’d attacked KJ at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent—thrashing down with a club.
KJ leapt to his feet, clasping his firearm. He pointed it at Teller’s attacker, but the tangled mess of limbs meant he couldn’t be sure he’d not hit Jonathan. He pivoted, swinging the weapon toward Victoria, only to be met with the naked form of Svetlana. Her shoulders were heaving from effort, presumably because she’d climbed up the outside of the pyramid. The blue paint now streaked across her skin, sweat trails cutting through the pigment. She bore a stare into KJ. Ribka coiled like a spring ready for the attack.
“Svetlana,” KJ said, his voice but a whisper. “Don’t.”
Victoria cackled again. “It all ends here boy.” A light on her device began to blink.
KJ’s chest cramped. It must have been the satellite, Zeus, in position.
Victoria raised her arm high in triumph, thumb hovering over the device, poised. “Time to die,” she said with a snarl.
“Yes, it is,” Svetlana said under her breath, then projected into KJ.
His eyes widened in realization.
Svetlana sprang forward and past KJ, colliding with Teller’s attacker. KJ squeezed the trigger and his gun barked.
Victoria screamed as her hand and the device disintegrated in a bloody mess. Ribka launched into the woman, forcing her to the ground. The orb escaped her grip and rolled toward the edge of the platform.
KJ pounced, stretching out his arms to catch the orb before it plopped off the edge and burst all over the steps below. His gun clattered away, but his fingers managed to slip around the gelatinous blob. Laid on the ground on his chest, arms hanging over the edge clasping the precious object, KJ’s focus shifted from the pulsating sphere to the warring Stratum and Huahuqui at the base of the pyramid. In their midst was Catherine, wielding an axe, swinging at anything that entered her personal circle. Merry and Lex had formed a telekinetic shield but seemed only strong enough to cover themselves. Just south of them, Igor hung, wounded, from his brother’s neck. As for their perso
nal Huahuqui, it was difficult to distinguish them from the others without diving into their minds.
Where the hell is Nikolaj? He thought. Don’t be dead, asshole.
He scrambled to his feet and held the orb high. KJ had to contact the Phalanx, calm them. Lead them. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The war filtered into his mind. The clashing of metal on metal. Pop, pop, popping of gun fire. Huahuqui clawing at each other. The orb tingled in his hands and he felt warmth rise from within the stonework at his feet. Whatever he was standing on seemed to amplify his ability.
But, the single-minded desire to survive of everyone down below was too great. His pleas to stop went unheard. The Phalanx seemed in zombified state, while his own Stratum merely fended off attack after attack. Soldiers were amid the fray, too. The Russian orphans and from what KJ could tell, Teller’s team.
Then, among the noise and the screams of pain, a sense of such strong love it almost stopped his heart. It washed through him, rendering his legs weak. He focused on it, chest heaving. So familiar. So close.
“KJ?” Came a voice. “KJ is that you?”
“Mom?” KJ projected.
“Yes!”
“Mom, holy shit!”
“I have an orb, it’s a long story. We have to stop the Nine Veils.” Freya coughed violently.
KJ’s lungs burned. “Mom, what’s wrong? I can feel you.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “It doesn’t matter, help me stop them. There’s an asteroid and need to—”
“We can’t,” KJ interrupted. It’s too late. “It’s already here.”
“What?”
“It’s already here,” he repeated. “We can’t stop it. Few will survive. Probably... probably only us. Maybe those at Alpha Base. A few cities. But, that’s it.”
His mom hacked some more. KJ felt pressure build up in his skull. She was dying.
“KJ ...”
“Mom, you have to let go. There’s nothing to stop. It’s not worth dying for, you could survive there. You can be one of the few.”
“No, baby. I can feel them. The fight there. If the asteroid is coming anyway, then the Stratum there must survive. You have to survive.”
“Mom, no—”
KJ’s thigh exploded open, flesh peeling back as a bullet tore through. He yelped and crumpled to the floor. His connection to the orb lost, now only mortal pain soaked into his brain. He clasped his hand to the wound, blood seeping between his fingers. In the other he managed a grip on the orb.
“You may have stopped Zeus, you little shit,” Victoria spat, leveling the gun he’d dropped at his head. Svetlana lay unconscious at her feet, Ribka tending to her. “But Apophis is still coming, and you won’t be around to see it.” The gun bucked in her hand and the muzzle flashed.
KJ pinched his eyes closed, but no pain came. Only a weight pressing down on him.
He pried his eyelids open. Jonathan’s limp body laid across him, blood oozing from a gaping hole in his chest.
“No!” KJ screamed. “Jonathan... oh shit no, please.”
Jonathan coughed up a glob of blood, looked up and gave a weak smile. He reached up and touched KJ’s face with his fingertips then exhaled loudly. His fingers slipped away. KJ searched Jonathan’s lifeless eyes, but his aura was gone.
Tears filled KJ’s eyes. No final words. No chance to say I love you, as he should have so many times. A piece of KJ’s own chi broke away, a hole now in his very being. One that he knew would never be filled again. “Dad ...”
“Your turn,” Victoria said.
“I don’t think so, bitch,” came another voice.
KJ looked up to see Nikolaj deliver a roundhouse kick that knocked the gun from Victoria’s hand. Chernoukh swished his tail and ruffled his black gills.
“My Phalanx will kill you both,” she hissed, lips curled into a snarl.
“The hell they will,” screamed KJ, cradling Jonathan’s lifeless body in his arms.
Anger rose in him emanating from his core. It reached out and connected with the rage pulsing through Nikolaj. KJ’s shoulders heaved with his heavy breaths, locked in sync with his brother’s. Their combined loathing of the woman who had killed both of KJ’s fathers and Nikolaj’s mother melded together in a white-hot ball of energy.
Victoria grabbed at her skull, her face wracked in pain, the veins in her forehead bulging. “What... what is this?” Her scream was shrill, her eyes full with panic. “I am immune!”
“You were, but you let me in. Remember, bitch? Now you’re mine,” KJ spat back.
“Ours,” Nikolaj corrected, his jaw set firm.
The brothers’ eyes glowed blue as did their Huahuqui’s. A sapphire haze filled the stone platform, lighting up the orange sky. Victoria’s screams grew louder. KJ felt her heartbeat, the rapid drumming of her pulse in her chest and head. He focused on the chambers, pushing them to work harder and harder. Nikolaj constricted the vessels in her brain increasing the pressure until, finally, they burst. Victoria’s screaming abruptly stopped and her eyes rolled back in her head. Blood flowed from her nostrils and she slumped face first into the stone.
KJ blinked, his trance over, the anger subsiding. He locked his gaze on Nikolaj who stood, his expression a visage of shock. They had killed Victoria. They were both relieved and horrified. They had murdered her with a mere thought.
Svetlana groaned and tried to rise from the floor. Nikolaj broke his gaze from KJ, slid off his jacket, and covered her. She nodded to indicate she wasn’t mortally wounded. Seemingly satisfied, Nikolaj stumbled across the small stone platform to KJ and crumpled down next to him. He placed a hand on Teller and closed his eyes.
KJ didn’t need to read Nikolaj’s mind to know his brother was searching for a sign of life. A small spark. A tiny flicker like a dying candle in the dark. There was nothing. Their adoptive father was gone. “I’m sorry,” KJ whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
His brother didn’t respond.
“The asteroid, the power stations,” Svetlana said. “Did we stop it?”
KJ shook his head. “The power stations... they won’t explode. But the asteroid is still coming. It always was.”
Nikolaj looked up and sniffed away a tear. “Then we’re all that’s going to be left?”
Clanging and gunfire echoed out from below.
“Yeah,” KJ said.
“Then we have to stop them.” Nikolaj nodded outward, toward the war that still raged on the Avenue of the Dead.
“I can’t,” KJ said. “I tried. Perhaps with mom, she has an orb—”
“I know, I felt her too,” Nikolaj said.
“But, it’s killing her to use it. Her disease. She’s not strong enough. I can’t lose her too.”
Nikolaj put his hand on KJ’s shoulder and held his gaze. “She’s my mom too. But, you know she’d want us to save the world. Jonathan, he’d want that too. She would have used the orb knowing what it would do. Because that’s Mom. We are the future. They are the future, down there.”
KJ couldn’t speak. He’d often been told of his father’s crushing grief. Pain the likes of which he was unable to let go. It consumed him. KJ had just lost Jonathan. Now he had to take his mother’s life to save what was likely the remnants of humanity.
Nikolaj put one hand on the orb, keeping the other on Jonathan, then leaned in and pressed his forehead to KJ’s. “Together,” he whispered, wet trails cutting through the dirt on his cheeks. “We do it together.”
With a painfully deep breath, KJ closed his eyes and allowed the orb and Nikolaj to enter his mind. Together they reached out to the under-ice temple where Freya and the rest of the Stratum waited.
“Mom,” KJ projected. “Mom, are you there? It’s us, it’s KJ and Nikolaj.”
“I’m here,” she answered.
“Mom, we have to tell—”
“Did you stop them, the Nine Veils? Are they still fighting?”
“No not yet, we co—”
“Then we must, you know we mus
t, we’re out of time.”
“Mom listen to me,” KJ pleaded.
“No time, KJ, I know the risk.” She convulsed, limbs jerking and pain wracking her body. “We have to stop it now.”
KJ looked to Nikolaj who simply shook his head. Telling their mother about Jonathan now wasn’t going to help. KJ tightened his lips, the stone in his throat growing.
“We’re ready, Mom,” Nikolaj said.
KJ felt a nudge at his leg, K’awin’s snout rubbing at him. Chernoukh and Ribka had joined them too. He looked up to see Svetlana shuffling toward them, Nikolaj’s jacket pulled around her. She knelt beside them and put her hands on Ribka.
Together, they focused on Freya, the orb in Antarctica and the Huahuqui there. One inescapable feeling rushed through them all: love. A mother’s love. That inexplicable bond of a parent. A closeness known only to those who have children and cannot be known before. The very thing that drives a person’s need to be a better human. This was the message Freya wanted them to project to the Stratum and the Phalanx fighting below: the world is worth saving, not for those who live in it now, but for the sake of the children who would inherit it. KJ and his friends must teach the next generation to be better.
The blue haze grew around the three friends and their Huahuqui. KJ squeezed the orb and pushed Freya’s message, her love for him and Nikolaj, into the world. He let it flow through him, acting simultaneously as an amplifier and a lens.
The sounds of war below began to subside.
KJ opened his eyes, keeping his concentration, and studied the many faces now staring up at him. Weapons clanged and clattered to the stone work as the topaz miasma grew and began to envelop both the Stratum and the Phalanx. Catherine, Igor, Leo, Merry and Lex were among soldiers, tribes’ people, and Huahuqui on both sides of battle. Bodies lay strewn like dolls between their feet, and blood stained the sand-colored stones. As if suddenly awake, the warriors stared at the carnage in horror, then back up on high to KJ.
KJ climbed to his feet and held the orb high. There was no chorus of happy cheering, only silent understanding at what had happened there that day. Humans and Huahuqui had been set upon one another in hopes of destroying civilization. Somehow, they had come out alive. The war was over. But the fight for survival had only just begun. Those who would survive Apophis now had to rebuild the world.
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