But the Dreng hadn’t been wrong.
It was killing him.
“GAOS, WHAT DO we do?” Jon said. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling his heart pounding harder as he looked between the high ceiling of the cave and the images flashing on the virtual screens in front of Dante.
He could hear it now.
He could hear the screams in the tunnels outside as they ran away from the sound of diggers getting closer to them through the walls.
They’d sent Yumi out with Wreg, Declan, Torek, Luriaal, Tawa and Black Wing.
Jon was trying not to think about his husband out there in that, but he knew they needed him. They needed to set up a new line of barricades, to organize some kind of military response for when they broke through.
He closed his eyes, fighting back the images that wanted to rise.
The explosions started up again and he winced, ducking, watching red dust sift down from the walls and roof. Wreg told them through the military channel that the Dreng were just flinging Mythers at the OBEs now, using human bodies rather than the more valuable genetically-enhanced hybrids to try and short out and overwhelm the organic mechanism.
Wreg said they hadn’t broken through yet, but they were starting to weaken the field.
“Ten minutes,” Balidor muttered from next to him. “We have maybe ten minutes, Jon.”
Jon looked at the Adhipan leader, nodding over the lump in his throat.
Balidor had stayed in here too, mainly to try and help shield Allie, since the rest of their infiltrators were helping the telekinetic team. Jon glanced at Cass, who’d had a bloody nose for the last half-hour or so. She and Maygar were both so pale, so drained of light, Jon was amazed either of them was conscious at this point.
Three of the telekinetic clones had already died. Balidor said it was probably from brain embolisms, a common diagnosis when beings were murdered inside the Barrier.
The Dreng were still hammering at all of them.
Balidor said they’d tried hammering Allie and Revik as well, but somehow, Allie flung them off––and Revik appeared to be so washed in the sun’s aleimic light, nothing could touch him up there.
That being said, Revik didn’t look good, either.
Balidor, Jorag and Raddi moved his and Allie’s bodies, manipulating their limbs carefully to get them to sit down in their trance-like state, to lean them against the walls. Their skins were so hot, they’d had to wear gloves to do it. Even then, Jorag showed Jon a burn on his arm from where Revik’s skin brushed against his while he moved him.
Jon didn’t understand how Allie and Revik’s clothes hadn’t burned off them, or why their hair or skin hadn’t caught fire, but Balidor told him it was still aleimic light, not physical light or fire––it affected living beings differently than something inert like clothes or hair.
Even so, Revik looked like he’d lost weight since this started.
His skin was flushed bright red, his long hair was soaked in sweat.
Their auras stood out from their bodies so far that no one could really get closer than eight feet without being uncomfortable, and no one had tried since Jorag, Raddi and Balidor moved them. Jon knew Balidor was keeping an eye on them behind the Barrier, doing his best to protect them while they did whatever they were doing, but it didn’t look good.
Revik, especially, didn’t look good.
Allie was just as flushed and sweat-covered as her mate, but something in her aleimi and skin looked like she was bearing it differently. She looked calm, even now, her face strangely serene, whereas Revik wore a grimace that looked and felt like it was equal parts triumph and pain.
Looking at him, Jon knew Revik was dying.
The thought broke his heart, even as he found it didn’t surprise him.
He’d known there was a good chance they would all die.
He’d known that, all along, but the reality of it now hit him like a ton of bricks. The reality of his sister dying, her husband. The reality of Wreg dying, of Balidor, of Lily and Maygar and Angeline and Dante and Gina and Vik all dying.
Impulsively, he grabbed Balidor’s hand.
The seer squeezed his fingers back, not letting go.
“Do we just leave them like this?” Jon asked him.
Balidor squeezed his fingers tighter, not answering.
“The OBE on the west side is losing power,” Dante muttered.
She looked up at them, her dark eyes tired. Next to her, Jaden was working over the same console, his skin flushed and blotchy, his expression exhausted. It was weird for him to be here now, but for the first time ever maybe, Jon didn’t mind.
“Eight minutes,” Dante said, still speaking to herself as much as them.
Jon squeezed Balidor’s hand tighter, and the seer sent him a plume of warm light. He opened his mouth to speak, maybe to say something reassuring––
When a white flash of light exploded out of the crystal-lined fissure in the rock.
Jon and every other being in that cave, seer and human, turned to stare.
The light grew brighter, tinged with a faint green like Allie’s eyes when they lit up for the telekinesis. Feeling the connection there as much as seeing it, Jon’s vision blurred as his eyes filled with tears. He stared at that light, watching it flash a few more times, like a heart beat coming out of the very Earth.
He saw flickers of blue in the light now, woven into that pale green.
Sky blue. Blue of the heavens.
The depths in those colors, the layers upon layers he felt behind that bright light, wanted to pull Jon out of his body altogether. There was so much presence there, so much light, so much living, breathing, feeling, fighting, loving behind it, he couldn’t take it all in.
“Gaos,” he said, before he knew he meant to speak. “It’s so beautiful.”
Looking at him, a huge smile plastered on his face, Balidor nodded, wiping his eyes.
The Barrier door, the last door, the living door, the door the Ancestors left for them to transition out of the apocalypse… was finally open.
Now all they had to do was walk through it.
62
I WILL RETURN
I OPENED MY eyes, staring up at the high red walls of the cave.
My heart was beating hard in my chest.
Light sparked through me in erratic waves, like a circuit that had shorted out, or maybe one so juiced up on power it was just in danger of it.
I stared up at the crowd of people flowing past me, confused.
That crowd was silent at first.
Everything around me was awash in silent, unearthly stillness, despite the motion of the people I could see, the expressions on their faces, the movement of their bodies and lips as they talked to one another, most of them not noticing me.
For some reason, the sound came in afterwards––after my eyes, after my awareness. I couldn’t hear anything as I half-lay on the floor of the cave, my head leaning against a red rock wall. I watched bodies pass by me, moving quickly in a line as they disappeared through what looked like a bright, light-filled hole in the world.
As each one passed through, there was an even brighter flash of light.
I saw Balidor then, urging people to move, to step through, to take their turn.
He didn’t look upset, or afraid really, but a kind of intense urgency lived in his gaze.
I saw him looking to his right, his mouth pursing in a frown, as if he was expecting some kind of monster to burst through the door at any minute.
Maybe he was.
At the thought, I remembered where I was.
I remembered everything.
The sound came on in that same fraction of a second, and I wondered just how long it had been out. Had it been minutes? Seconds?
Hours?
The thought left me as it all rushed back in, exploding around me all at once.
“MOVE!” Balidor shouted. “MOVE, MOVE! MOVE! Don’t stop, just go!”
He waved them on, looking back in
the same direction as before.
I sat up with effort, mostly to follow his gaze.
The line of people extended all the way through the cave and out into the hallway outside. The OBE was down entirely now, and people filled the small space of the cave, standing in line for their turn to go through, filling the cavern on both sides.
I looked around for Revik.
I found him crumpled next to me against the wall.
Yumi knelt beside him, and she was wiping his forehead with a cool cloth. He looked delirious, but he thanked her in seer sign language, and when I took his hand, he squeezed my fingers back strongly, a wave of his presence running through me like liquid heat.
I was so relieved, I could have cried.
Are you okay, baby? I sent. Gaos, Revik… are you all right?
Really tired, he sent, as if even that much was an effort. Really really tired. Thirsty.
I looked at Yumi, realizing only then that all of us were soaked in sweat. It felt like it was about one hundred and forty degrees in that cave.
“Do you have any water to give him?” I half-shouted over the din.
She nodded, showing me the canteens all around her.
It looked like half the seers and humans in the place had donated their canteens to the cause. While I watched, she poured another one over Revik’s head. Steam rose in a cloud as it hit his skin, but she continued to pour until it was about halfway gone. Then she handed it to him to drink, putting the spout-end in his mouth.
He drank eagerly, draining what remained in a matter of seconds.
“That’s about his tenth,” Yumi said, giving me a grim look.
She was already opening the next one, and pouring it on his skin.
Steam rose again in a heavy cloud.
“Is he going to be okay?” Again, I was forced to shout, just like she had. I gripped his fingers, worried. “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
Yumi let out a snort, glancing down at Revik after he started drinking off what remained of the canteen. “Your mate? I’m beginning to think he’s indestructible, Bridge. Like the old stories say… he can’t be killed.”
I grinned at her, unable to help it, then leaned closer, kissing her on the cheek.
Smiling back at me, Yumi paused to grip my arm fiercely, affectionately, before she opened the next canteen and poured it on Revik’s head.
“You should drink one,” she told me, nodding towards the pile.
Hesitating, I looked at Revik, then shook my head.
“No, I’m good,” I said. “For now anyway. Just get him normal again.”
Revik squeezed my fingers, looking at me while Yumi poured more water on him.
Am normal, wife. Don’t forget it.
I snorted, staring at him. You are anything but normal, husband. You can claim a lot of things without getting too much of a side-eye from me, but that ain’t one of them.
His smile slid into a grin, even as he took the next canteen from Yumi, drinking more slowly that time before he poured the last of it on his face and neck. I could already see his color starting to return, shifting from that violent red to more of a blotchy pink.
Gaos. Yumi was right. He really was going to be okay.
Thank the fucking gods.
I looked away from Yumi and Revik briefly, searching for the Barrier door, and it hit me in a real way that time, that we were leaning against the rock wall only about six feet from the opening. The crowd flowed around us like fish, dropping canteens occasionally and touching us here and there, reverent looks on their faces.
I’d been so focused on Revik, I’d barely noticed.
Now, it struck me as almost funny.
My gaze returned to Yumi. “What’s going on out there?” I said, jerking my head towards the opening into the corridor outside. “Are we going to make it?”
Yumi hesitated, glancing at where more and more humans and seers continued to pour through from the outside hall. After seeming to weigh different answers back and forth in her head, she turned back to meet my gaze.
“It’s going to be close,” she admitted, opening another canteen. She poured it on Revik’s head and back, without taking her eyes off me. “It’s going to be damned close, Esteemed Bridge, to save all of us.”
Nodding, I frowned a little, turning back to stare at the thickening line of humans and seers pouring into the opening in the cave wall.
Another explosion rocked the cave walls as I did, and I looked up, watching red dust sift down from the sky, covering the heads, shoulders, hands and arms of the humans and seers lining up to pass through the door.
I honestly couldn’t tell if they noticed.
I glanced up at Balidor as he guided the next one through, watching the brighter flash of light as the male human disappeared, only to be followed by a young female who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.
Watching the light flash brighter around her as well, I swallowed, wishing them both well.
I had to hope they would find the right place.
I had to hope we were doing the right thing.
“THE FUCKING GALL of this,” Gregorio swore, looking at something on his handheld.
Dropping his hand from his ear, he stared at Deifilius, fury in his eyes, although that fury was not aimed at his master, the monk.
“These sons of whores are sending out messages through the iceblood channels. Telling them to pass through the doors if they can… to escape while they can. They even sent one directly to Beijing. Apparently the door is working there, too.”
Gregorio scowled, silent briefly as he listened to something in his headset.
Swearing after a few seconds more, he switched it off.
“They are telling them to ‘overpower us’ if they can… they are saying the planet is dying, that they have nothing to lose. Can you believe this? From even these demons, this is too much. They do everything in their power to destroy the world, and now, in this final hour they have created for us, this perversion of the very light in the sky, they are recruiting?”
Clenching his jaw, he waited for the monk’s response.
When Deifilius didn’t speak, Gregorio’s scowl deepened.
“Would that even work?” he growled. “Could they actually send people through, even if God can’t go through? Or the angels? Could we pass through this door, like they do? Or would we burn in the trying? Is it too corrupt for the Children of the One God now?”
At that, Deifilius finally turned, meeting his gaze.
“It does not matter any more, brother,” he said. “None of it matters.”
He looked down at the skin on his arm. It was already blistering from the rays and heat of the sun, despite their crouching under the organic dome. He felt the throbbing heat of those rays, even now, with the artificial air blowing on his skin.
“So do we let them go?” Gregorio frowned. “Those in the cities. Do we tell our guards to shoot them, or––”
“It does not matter,” Deifilius said, cold. “If they would follow those evil cowards, let them go. Our only task now is here.”
The silver strands whispered then, and Deifilius shook his head, fighting to think.
“Shoot them,” he amended. “Save their souls.”
Gregorio grimaced, but nodded.
Deifilius fought to think past the strands roiling above his head, squinting at the growing, expanding orb of the sun. That sun looked like orange and red fire now––it filled the screen of the virtual monitor projected on the wall of the organic tent.
Shaking his head as he watched Gregorio talk on his headset, he muttered to himself.
“It is all we can do. It is all we can do. It is all that is left,” he murmured.
Frowning, he stared down at his blistering skin.
He looked out through the doors of the tent at the soldiers out there. They crouched in whatever shade they could find, panting, their faces covered in blisters.
Gregorio clicked off his headset, on
ce more looking at him.
“Did you say something brother?” he asked gently.
Deifilius looked up at him.
“It is all we can do,” he repeated. “It is all there is left for us. We must do what we can to lessen the number of demons, heretics, murderers, perverts, and sinners who make it to the next world. That place is no longer for us. It is no longer the promised paradise meant for the chosen. We have lost. We have failed our God. We have failed Him.”
He fell silent, staring at his slowly darkening skin.
“We are unworthy,” he murmured. “We have handed paradise to the Antichrist to piss on and wipe her feet. What else can we do, but slaughter the innocent sheep before they can be corrupted by the serpent?”
Gregorio laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“We did all we could,” he said simply.
Deifilius shook his head, as if trying to purge his mind from the other’s words.
Frowning deeper, he looked up at the massive, red orb of the sun, which had by now grown to eight times the size of what lived in the sky before.
He and Gregorio crouched under an organic sun-shield, waiting for the world to die, surrounded in artificially cooled air.
Deifilius knew none of it would help for much longer.
He looked out through the tent, and saw smoke in the air on the mountains.
The world was already starting to burn.
“Is there anything we can do?” Gregorio growled in frustration. “Is there any way to close the door, even now? To force them to suffer the same fate as the rest of us?” Fury infused his words. “They cannot just… win. The war cannot end, not like this.”
“Would you live in a world without God, brother?” Deifilius tilted his face up to his lieutenant’s, his voice and eyes distant, thoughtful. “Would you prefer their world… to no world at all? Could you conform yourself to their decadence and lies, their lack of morality, of laws, of righteousness? All for a cool drink? A false paradise?”
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