“Reyes!”
It snapped her away from Bruke and onto Sparks.
“Focus! I’m going to get Bruke out of there. I can see the route to get to him. You and SA need to take down the transmitter without me. Okay?”
Another look at Bruke, Reyes watched his eyes roll and then his head fall limp as he passed out.
“Okay?” Sparks said again.
Her head spinning from what she’d seen, Reyes looked at SA, but she couldn’t focus. A million and one traumas from her time as a marine flooded back. The Faradis sat front and centre of those memories. She’d seen too much suffering on the faces of those she cared about. It took for her to shake her head to get the thoughts away. It wouldn’t help them now. “I’m sorry, my head’s a mess.” She turned to SA. “Can you remember the way?”
SA nodded, the same steely look in her eyes.
“Okay,” Reyes said.
Sparks took control again. “I’ll see you both outside when this is over. Good luck.”
Chapter 43
Not only did Seb have to deal with the burn of the tightly bound ropes on his wrists and ankles, but the base of his neck ached from where he hung his head. Yet he didn’t lift it, keeping it slumped as if it were too heavy to hold. While staring at the floor, the harsh wind continued to crash into him, bullying his limp frame. His throat ached, his nose ran, and his view of the world blurred through his tears.
The woman in front of Seb stepped forward, her long white robes covering what would be his view of her feet. A gentle touch with a warm hand, she placed two fingers beneath his chin and lifted it so he faced her. His aunty smiled at him, and for the first time, he saw the familial resemblance. He saw her love for him. Compassion in her green eyes, she spoke in a gentle voice. “Are you wondering why your dad pushed me away?”
Seb tried to speak, but it came out as a croak. He nodded instead.
While stroking his face, the soothing touch of her soft fingers making Seb push into it like a cat enjoying the affection, she said, “It’s because of now. This moment.”
The same sensation as before, the green-eyed woman showed Seb another memory.
Seb’s head spun to watch the woman in front of him and his mum. They were inside, but he couldn’t see where. Not that it mattered. “Just give him time,” his mum said to her.
The vision came to an abrupt end, forcing a gasp from Seb. Back on the roof of the palace, he blinked against his tears and the biting breeze. Although he opened his mouth, his aunt cut him off.
“Your mum was behind me with this,” she said. “She knew what needed to be done, and she tried to help your dad see it. But he refused. He couldn’t see clearly because of our upbringing. He said Mum and Dad always loved me more. And maybe they did, but that had nothing to do with what I was trying to say to him. What your mum was trying to say to him.”
Still nothing to give, Seb simply stared at her. His hot grief leaked from his eyes.
“Your mum was amazing. She saw where I was coming from. She knew how we could stop the darkness spreading through the galaxy.”
The words crashed into Seb. The darkness in the galaxy. It had to be stopped, and he’d been the one prophesied to do it. It had to be the reason he’d found her. Then he thought about their battle on Aloo. Then all of the footage Sparks had shown him of the carnage in the galaxy. Of the massacre on Kajan. The dead bodies everywhere. “But you’ve killed thousands, if not more. You’re still killing them with the chaos you’ve let loose. You promote slavery.”
“We’re toppling regimes, Seb; we’re not killing.”
“You are killing.”
“Death is an unfortunate by-product of what we’re doing. We’re trying to change a tyrannical regime that sees most of the power in the galaxy held by just a few. It’s a dictatorship wearing democracy’s clothes. We have to bring down societies before we can show them a new way. It’s the only chance we have of making a change. Those in power have too much of a stranglehold.” She made a motion with her hands as if snapping an invisible twig. “We have to break that.”
Seb continued to cry as he looked at her.
“The darkness in the galaxy is inequality,” she said. “The light is justice. I can’t do this on my own. Your mum would be with me here now if she’d made it this far. I need you beside me, Seb, so we can take down the monopolies that control everything. You think you know what slavery is? Take a look at how they use the promise of credits in exchange for labour to keep people just above the poverty line. They make beings work their fingers and hooves to the bone just so they can eat for another week. Just so they don’t let their families starve. There’s enough resources to go around, so there’s no need for them to behave like that.”
“But you worked with the Countess.”
“I needed an army, and she could give it to me. I would have killed her if you hadn’t.”
A look from his bonds then back to the woman, Seb let her continue.
“I can see it in your eyes. You know why your mum was on my side. I hate that we have to break so many things to rebuild a better world, but change doesn’t come without a revolution kick-starting it.”
Seb watched his aunty pull a knife from her belt as she walked towards him. She slipped the blade beneath the ropes around his ankles and then the ones around his wrists. A sharp pull each time and the ropes fell away, relieving the pressure with a tingling rush of blood back into his feet and hands.
After Seb had toppled from the cross, his knees stinging from where they took the weight of his fall, his aunty helped him stand and wrapped him in a tight hug. She smelled of lavender. “I’m giving you this because your mum can’t. You still have family that love you, Seb.”
Broken by his sobbing, Seb lifted his arms and hugged her back.
Chapter 44
“I thought it would be harder to get here,” Reyes said, slightly out of breath from the run.
SA looked at her, unable to respond.
A window on their left gave them a view into the ballroom with the transmitter in the centre of it. It stood as a large metal antenna at least four metres tall. Take that down and they could get out of there. Reyes looked at the empty room it sat in. “And we’ve done it with time to spare.” She rested against a nearby wall. “Just let me get my breath back.”
They had to walk down a short corridor to access the ballroom. Two more doors between them and stopping Enigma. All of the others had opened automatically. Everything had been a little too easy. However, despite having to keep their guard raised, they didn’t yet have a good reason to stop. They couldn’t defend against a bad feeling. Until it became more tangible, they had to keep going.
One final deep inhale to fill her lungs, Reyes nodded at SA and walked towards the penultimate door. It opened with a whoosh, but before she could step through it, SA grabbed her left bicep in a hard grip and dragged her back. It forced Reyes to pull in a sharp breath, her anger spiking in reaction to the pain. It settled when she looked at her friend. First, SA wouldn’t hurt her unless she had a very good reason. Second, SA would kick her arse if it came to trading blows. Still irritable, she shrugged as she twisted from SA’s grip and said, “What?”
When SA pointed through the window, Reyes saw it. “Oh.”
Two doors at the other end of the large room where they hadn’t been a moment ago. Much like the long room Sparks had obliterated, the doors were invisible until they weren’t. A seemingly unending line of guards ran in through each one. They moved into the room and spread out, filling one end and holding their weapons at the ready. Although, it didn’t look like they’d seen Reyes and SA yet.
While watching them, Reyes let go of a long exhale. “It looks like we have a battle on our hands, then.”
A sharp shake of her head, SA pointed her own thumb at her chest.
It took all Reyes had to stop herself from laughing. “You think I’m going to let you in there on your own?”
A nod this time. It suggested Reyes
didn’t have a choice.
“Why would I do that?”
At that moment, SA raised her right hand. She held the leveller in it. When Reyes saw she had the pin in her left, it took a second for her to find her words. Unable to take her eyes from the armed explosive, she finally said, “Oh my. When did you decide this was a suicide mission?”
Obviously SA didn’t reply.
“Surely there are other options.”
SA’s fine and crescent-shaped eyebrows lifted as she looked from Reyes to the guards rushing into the ballroom. The glint of crystal everywhere, Reyes had never seen a building so beautiful, and they were going to destroy it.
At least one hundred guards in the room now, more were still coming in. The two of them stood no chance if they wanted to fight them. But she couldn’t let SA die alone.
Just before Reyes could speak, SA did. “I need to do this on my own.”
It sent Reyes stumbling back a couple of steps. She’d never heard her talk before. Other than singing, she didn’t think any of the others had heard her voice either. “You … you can talk?”
SA stepped towards Reyes and stared into her eyes. With a pinch of her brow, she spoke. Her voice sounded like it belonged to an angel. “Please, let me do this. You can see we won’t survive. It makes more sense for one of us to die than it does for both of us. And either way, I’m going in there.”
“What about Seb?”
Tears filled her brilliant eyes before she looked at the ground. Drops fell from her face to the stalt below. “Believe me, I’ve thought about that. I love him more than any other being I’ve ever met, but I can’t be so selfish as to put my happiness before the fate of the galaxy.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Huh?”
“Let me do it.”
It took several shakes of SA’s head before she finally said, “No. This was my idea. I’d rather die myself than live with the guilt of sending you in there.”
Her head still spinning, Reyes tried to find an appropriate response. She looked from the grenade in SA’s hand back to her friend’s grief-buckled face. When SA took a slow step towards the room with the guards in it, the door to the small corridor opened again.
Reyes followed. “I can’t let you do this on your own.”
“Don’t be a fool, Reyes.” SA took another step away.
“We can find a way out. We can destroy the transmitter and survive this. Look at all of the other things we’ve made it through. Why not this?”
A slight sag to her frame, SA shook her head. “Look at it in there.”
Reyes looked to her left through the window again and watched more guards flood into the place. They hadn’t seen her or SA yet. When they did, it would be game over. But they were the Shadow Order. They always found a way. Besides, she’d lost too many people; she couldn’t lose any more.
Had Reyes not been watching the guards, she would have seen it before it happened. Instead, it took for the whoosh of the automatic door closing for Reyes to look back at SA on the other side of it.
Reyes lunged for the sensor to open the door again, but before she could trigger it, SA shot the control panel on the other side, locking the door in place.
Steel in her eyes, SA stared through the small window at Reyes, her beautiful voice muffled because of the barrier between them. “You don’t have a choice now.”
While looking from SA to the guards, Reyes started to cry. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing this on my own. Tell Seb I love him.” SA looked to her right. Enigma’s army came forward in a wave. Her voice quickened when she said, “Now go. Save yourself and get our friends off this cursed planet. They need you much more than I do right now. You’ll be more useful to them than you will dying in here.”
Despite remaining in front of the door in the hope it would somehow open, Reyes quickly gave up. A blurred view of her friend, she watched the yellow-skinned woman raise her grenade at the window to the ballroom. The guards needed to see what she’d come armed with. They slowed their charge towards her.
SA then pressed her palm against the small window separating them. Reyes pressed the other side, the touch of the glass cold.
“I’ll give you two minutes to get out of here,” SA said. “Any more than that and I’ll be pushing my luck.”
When SA pulled her hand away and made a shooing motion with it, Reyes nodded at her friend, blew her a kiss, turned around, and ran away from her. Tears ran down her face, and her weak legs barely carried her, but she had to get out of there. The others might need her. SA was right: there seemed little point in all of them dying.
Chapter 45
While Seb stood on the roof, holding his aunt, a deep sadness crashed into him. It forced him back a few steps. The contact of anyone would have been too much, especially her, a stranger. His hand covering his heart, he tried to ride out its now erratic beat. A feeling he’d never felt before. His head spun as he tried to make sense of it. Pain and suffering, it almost overwhelmed him. A drop more and he wouldn’t be able to hold it in his heart. His mind then separated from his body, leaving his physical form behind with her on the cold and blustery roof.
Like a bird taking flight, Seb’s consciousness flew over the top of the vast and beautiful stalt palace. When it got to the edge of the structure, it dived, dropping down before it doubled back and entered via the foyer he’d been in earlier. Instead of going the way he’d gone before, he flew in the direction his friends had gone.
Through the first doorway, Seb came to a long rectangular room. Even with the devastation—the dead bodies and the shattered stalt—he could see how it had once been a place of beauty.
Something guided Seb and he let it. It dragged him through one of the many open doorways. Then he suddenly stopped. A noise halfway between a gasp and a moan left him as if his consciousness had been on the receiving end of a gut punch. When he got his words back, he said, “Mum?”
A smile more radiant than he’d ever seen from her before, she stepped towards him and held her graceful hands in his direction. He grabbed them, his view of her blurring through his tears.
“You’re okay, sweetie. You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “You’ve come home.”
The cold wind crashed into Seb again, dragging him back to the roof. He now held his aunty’s hands like he’d held his mum’s. While staring at her, a vivid green glow looking back at him, he said, “That was you in the palace?”
“Your mum lives on in me, Seb. When she was alive, we were close and we spoke often. I know her as well as any being.”
Seb’s breaths slowed, and some of the tension left his upper body. The pain of loss he’d always carried in his chest eased a little for the experience he’d had. Then he looked at his aunty again, the world in front of him blurring through his tears. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“This is,” his aunty said as she squeezed his grip. Her hands were warm and soft. They gave him something to cling onto on the cold roof. “This moment right now is real. We’re on the verge of something great here. We’re about to reset the galaxy. We’re going to demolish poverty and inequality. You’ll be a hero. Your mum would be so proud of you.”
For every second Seb held his aunty’s hands, the pain that had forced his consciousness from his body abated. Almost like she could control it if he let her; like she could give him a truth she wanted him to see. She could show him his mum whenever she chose to. What would he have seen in the palace if he hadn’t met her there? But it made sense for them to end poverty. His head spinning, he barely knew up from down when he said, “What do you need from me?”
“It’s not what I need; it’s what we must do to heal the galaxy.”
“But how? What can I do? I keep being told I’m the chosen one, but I know nothing. I can’t do anything special. Not compared to what our ancestors were capable of.”
A shake of her head, her white hair dancing on the breeze, Seb’s aunty stepped close
r and encompassed him with her warmth. The smile he couldn’t see was evident in her voice. “You’re so much more than anyone before you. You just don’t realise it. You saw me when I was reaching out to you, didn’t you?”
Seb flashed back to when the first transmission went out and he’d seen the Pillar of Peace like SA had. Then when he’d touched it on Kajan. “Yeah, I did.”
“Not only do you have psychic powers, Seb, but they’re so strong in you; you’re a transmitter too.”
“A what?”
“I can help the revolutionaries take over the planets they’re on. If we work together, we can make this a peaceful transition.”
“But I’ve seen the chaos out there. The chaos you’ve unleashed.”
“Until now, I’ve had to use the transmitter in the palace. It’s clumsy and basic. With you beside me, I can reach so many more revolutionaries. I can help them make the right choices. I can guide them in real time. The only reason they’re running riot is because stalt is a poor alternative to using you for getting the message out. Together we can guide the revolution. We can restore peace, and when we do, it will be a fairer, more just galaxy for everyone.”
“Nothing’s making sense to me anymore.”
His hands still in hers, Seb’s aunty squeezed them again, her voice running through his mind as a soft whisper. Her words loosened his muscles like he’d stepped into a warm bath. “Just let go. Trust me like you would your own mother.”
A tingling ran through his hands. The same tingling he felt when he healed someone; the same magic at work. She could help him unlock what he had inside. She could help him fulfil his destiny.
Chapter 46
Barely the energy to put one foot in front of the other, Reyes almost fell into every step as she ran. The hard stalt floor sent shocks up her legs. Her knees—already sore with fatigue—burned with a deep, throbbing ache.
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