Chapter 22
“What did Trinity choose?” Ethan’s heart froze painfully in his chest, but he forced his voice to remain calm.
“She has decided to become an Etherian,” the Peacekeeper replied.
Ethan blinked. “She…”
“She is in a better place.”
Acid boiled in Ethan’s stomach. “A better place? She’s no place at all you dumb kakard! You killed her!”
“I’m sorry you see it that way,” the Peacekeeper replied. “If either of you would like to join her in Etheria, please report to the nearest Peacekeeper station.”
The comm call ended, and the main holo display went back to showing the car’s auxiliary instruments. Ethan pounded the flight yoke and roared. The car swerved toward the nearest building, and he barely managed to jerk the yoke back the other way before they crashed through someone’s window.
“Now what?” Alara asked quietly.
“I don’t know!” he replied.
“We can’t leave her alone up there.”
Ethan shook his head. “She isn’t up there. Her clone is. Our daughter is gone!” His voice cracked with the finality of that statement, and his heart gave a labored thump in his chest.
“You don’t know that.”
Ethan rounded on her. “And you don’t know otherwise!”
Something cold crept into Alara’s eyes, and she looked away, crossing her arms over her chest. Silence stretched between them until it grew thin and brittle. Alara broke it a few moments later with an incredulous snort.
“You claim to love us, but you won’t follow us. What kind of love is that?”
“And you claim to love me, but you want to leave me. I could ask the same thing.”
“She’s our daughter, Ethan!”
“And you’re my wife!”
Silence returned. This time thick and stifling. Ethan’s chest heaved for air, as if his lungs had forgotten how to draw breath. His eyes felt like they were bulging in their sockets, and his hands were locked around the flight yoke like a pair of vice grips. Admiral Vee had promised to get his message to Trinity before The Choosing Ceremony.
She lied, he decided.
“You’re just afraid,” Alara whispered.
“Afraid?” Ethan shook his head. “I’m not afraid. I’m furious!”
Ethan caught a blur of movement in his peripheral vision. Then came a loud slap followed by a searing pain on his right cheek. He rounded on his wife, his eyes wide and nostrils flaring.
“Wake up, Ethan!” Alara screamed. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Ethan’s thoughts turned to mud, and the strength drained out of him like a valve letting off steam. Maybe that was all he had to do—wake up. This had to be a bad dream…
A bright light came slicing through Alara’s window, blinding him. Then came the warning blast of an air horn.
Ethan jerked the flight yoke down.
Too late.
Ethan watched it all happen as if in slow motion. The inertial management system shielded them from the initial forces, but it did nothing to stop the car from crumpling in on Alara’s side.
She screamed as the door became a mangled mess of jutting alloy panels and bars. Ethan heard the thrumming roar of the other car’s engines and felt the growing weight of inertial forces bleeding through the IMS. Then came a second impact, and it wasn’t shielded at all. Ethan’s head whipped sideways. His flight restraints jerked taut across his chest like duranium bands, but Alara’s restraints snapped like worn string. Her shoulder collided with his head, and stars exploded inside his skull. He was dimly aware of their car crashing through a hydroponic farm. Greenery smeared the car’s windshield and foul-smelling nutrient water splashed in through the broken side windows.
Then the car fetched up against something solid and Ethan’s head jerked sideways once more, slamming into the twisted remains of his side door.
Darkness found him, but seemingly only moments later it was replaced by a blinding light. Ethan wondered if it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
Ethan came to, feeling cold and wet. His ears rang, and a vague memory of the accident went tumbling through his brain. Then a sudden fear stabbed him.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked, managing to sit up before anyone could stop him. The medic attending him tried to force him back down, but when Ethan saw Alara lying motionless beside him in a pool of brownish liquid, her side soaked red with blood, he found the strength to push the medic away. “Alara!” he said, scrambling over to her. She had two medics fussing over her, and there was a Peacekeeper standing off to one side, looking on with a frown.
What’s a Peacekeeper doing here? he wondered, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. Alara’s eyes were wide and glassy. Her chest rose and fell in quick gasps. Ethan found her hand and squeezed it hard to get her attention.
“Hang in there, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”
She turned to him and her eyes found his. “Ethan,” she wheezed out. “I…”
“Ma’am, please don’t try to talk,” one of the medics said.
The one who’d been attending him a moment ago came and tried to drag him away. “Sir, you need to get back.”
“She’s my wife, dammit!”
“You’re injured. You need to—”
Ethan’s right arm whipped out and hammered the man in the solar plexus. The medic doubled over and stumbled away.
His attention back on his wife, Ethan spent a moment trying to assess Alara’s injuries for himself. The medics had ripped open her shirt, revealing a wide gash that ran all the way down her rib cage. He watched as they sprayed it with a temporary sealer, and the wound closed in an ugly ridge. The bleeding stopped almost immediately, but Alara’s short, gasping breaths continued.
Ethan felt her hand grow cold and clammy in his. He squeezed it a few more times to get her attention, to keep her with him, but this time she didn’t respond. Her eyelids looked like they weighed a thousand pounds. One of the medics injected her with something and her eyes flew open once more.
“I love you,” she managed to say.
“Please save your strength, ma’am.”
Ethan shook his head. “What’s wrong with her?”
The medics didn’t respond. One of them hurried away and returned with an oxygen tank and a mask.
“Will she make it?” a dispassionate voice asked. Ethan looked up to see the Peacekeeper looming over them, his silver armor a gleaming silhouette as he blocked out light from one of the hydroponic farm’s few remaining UV lamps.
“I don’t know,” one of the medics replied.
“Then it’s time for her last rites.”
Ethan’s eyes hardened. “She’s going to make it.”
The Peacekeeper shot him a look. “The medics don’t know that and neither do you. Alara?” the Peacekeeper asked.
She looked up at the man, her eyes full of tears, her chest still heaving for air. “I can’t… breathe,” she said.
“You may not survive this,” the Peacekeeper replied. “It’s not too late to go to Etheria. There’s a new body waiting for you there, and so is your daughter. If you want to go, all you have to do is nod.”
“Get away from her, you snake!” Ethan roared. The Peacekeeper ignored him, and Ethan stumbled to his feet, his fists clenched. “Did you hear me?”
Alara’s eyes were still on the Peacekeeper. She nodded and whispered, “Take me.”
The Peacekeeper smiled and turned to the nearest medic, who was just about to place an oxygen mask over her mouth. “You heard her.”
Ethan felt like he was trapped in a bad dream. His eyes went from Alara to the Peacekeeper to the medic—he watched the EMT’s shoulders round as he set the mask aside. The second medic reached into a bag and handed the first one a syringe full of a clear liquid.
“What’s that for?” Ethan demanded. He felt light-headed and confused.
He swayed on his feet, trying desperately to remember what he was angry about. Something warm trickled down beside his right ear and provoked a maddening itch.
One of the medics removed the cap on the needle with his teeth and began feeling for a vein in Alara’s neck.
Ethan had a bad feeling about that needle. “Get away from her!” he roared, lunging clumsily at the medic.
The Peacekeeper raised one arm with a glowing palm and fired a short blast from a grav gun. It knocked Ethan off his feet and he landed with a splash in a puddle of brown nutrient water. By the time he looked up, the medic had already inserted the needle in Alara’s neck and injected the contents of the syringe.
Alara flailed her arm to get his attention. Ethan hurried to her side and grabbed her hand between both of his. He shook his head desperately. “Alara, you can’t die.”
She took a deep breath. “Ethan, I’m…” she trailed off, sighing as the air left her lungs. Her hand went limp and the light left her eyes, leaving her gaze fixed and staring.
Ethan stared at her in disbelief. What had she been about to say? I’m sorry? A lump rose in his throat and his vision grew blurry.
“She’s in a better place,” the Peacekeeper said.
Ethan looked up at the man, and he saw red. “You killed her!” He leapt to his feet only to be pinned down by all three medics.
The Peacekeeper met his fury with a bemused frown. “You are free to follow her.”
“In death?” Ethan spat.
“In a more abundant life.”
Ethan’s head throbbed. The itch beside his ear grew warmer and wetter. One of the medics holding him yelled at his colleague. The man left and returned with another syringe.
Ethan eyed it suspiciously. “You’re going to kill me, too?”
“It’s a sedative,” the medic explained, while rolling up Ethan’s sleeve to search for a vein in his arm. “You’re resisting treatment, and you need to be sedated before you injure yourself further.”
Ethan blinked away a steady stream of tears. His gaze fell on Alara once more. The Peacekeeper bent down to close her wide, staring violet eyes, and suddenly she looked like she was just sleeping.
“Why?” he asked as he felt the sharp prick of a needle and a cool, calming fluid slipped into his bloodstream.
“She had a collapsed lung and was bleeding internally,” one of the medics said.
“She wasn’t going to last long,” the Peacekeeper added. “She had to make a choice while she was still conscious to do so.”
Ethan shook his head vigorously, as if to deny the diagnosis. Then his vision grew dark and fuzzy as the sedative reached his brain. A welcome warmth rushed through him and his body relaxed. His eyelids fluttered, then shut.
When he opened them once more, he found that he was lying on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, listening to it rattle and shake around him. Two medics were attending him, one on each side.
“What happened? Where am I?” Ethan asked, his head pounding. A thick haze clouded his thoughts, but he had a vague feeling that something terrible had happened. What was he doing in the back of an ambulance?
“Don’t move, please,” one of the medics said.
Ethan shook his head, and a stab of pain lanced through the right side of his head. He winced, and reached up to find a thick bandage there. Horrified, he tugged on it. Something warm trickled past his ear.
“I said don’t move!” the medic snapped, slapping his hands away from his head.
“What happened?” Ethan asked again, trying to sit up this time.
The medics forced him back down. “You were in an accident,” the nearest one said.
Déjà vu hit him like a hover truck. This had happened before. He’d dreamed it—more than once. Was this another one of those dreams?
“Alara?” Ethan asked, hoping that she might be somewhere inside the ambulance, riding with him as a passenger rather than a patient. But she didn’t answer.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked.
“She chose to go to Etheria. Her injuries were too severe.”
“You idiot!” the other medic replied. “Are you trying to send him into shock?”
“Alara died?” Ethan rocked his head back and forth, feeling nauseated. Scraps of memory drifted through the stormy haze inside his head. He remembered Alara lying in a pool of brackish water, her side soaked with blood, shattered UV lamps and broken tangles of plants all around. Then he remembered the Peacekeeper. The syringe.
His wife’s violet eyes wide and staring.
An alarm began squealing close beside his ears.
“He’s going into shock!”
Ethan was vaguely aware of the medics fitting a mask over his mouth and nose. Then something sharp pricked his arm, and a raging fire raced through his veins. His eyes flew wide, and some of the haziness retreated from his thoughts. In its wake came the full force of his grief. He remembered everything. Trinity’s choice, the accident, Alara’s last words—”Ethan, I’m…” Sorry?—her fixed and staring eyes…
It all became too much to bear. Tears began slipping down his cheeks, creeping out behind his mask. The medics continued working to stabilize him, their blurry faces hovering over him.
“Mr. Ortane, are you in a lot of pain?” one of them asked, having noticed his tears.
He nodded.
“Where does it hurt?” the medic insisted.
Ethan placed a hand over his heart.
“Your chest?” The man passed a handheld scanner over him with a bright fan of blue-white light.
“I don’t see anything wrong…”
“He’s fine; he’s just upset. He’ll live,” the other medic said.
But Ethan knew better. It didn’t matter what that scanner said. His heart had stopped beating with his wife’s, and whatever lay ahead for him it couldn’t be called living.
It was a fate worse than death.
Chapter 23
“The last runner just came in, but our chief of inventory tells me we only have half of the Bliss we need to keep up with current rates of distribution. Is there a reason you didn’t order more?” Galan Rovik asked.
Hoff ignored the question. “You were supposed to send that runner to my office when he arrived. Where is he?”
“He didn’t want to see you.”
“What do you mean he didn’t want to see me?” Hoff fumed. “I’m his father!”
“I will try to convince Darin Thardris to see you the next time he comes.”
“His name is Atton, and don’t bother. I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to cut any personal ties that might lead to his wife uncovering his lies. He should just stop lying to her and save himself the trouble.”
“You haven’t told your wife the truth either,” Galan pointed out.
“Because Omnius won’t let me.”
“Well, I’m sure he has his reasons. Ignorance is a happier state for most humans.”
“It’s pure bliss,” Hoff replied dryly.
“Speaking of Bliss, shall I take the liberty of ordering more product?”
“I’m trying to deprive the market in order to raise prices on the street.”
“You’re depriving the market in order to limit your involvement.”
Hoff smiled. “What makes you say that?”
“Omnius could execute you for your treachery.”
“If he wanted to execute me, he would have done so by now.”
“Need I remind you that yours isn’t the only life hanging in the balance? Your family’s well-being depends on your performance.”
Hoff’s eyes narrowed sharply. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s an incentive.”
“How can you support Omnius so willingly?” Hoff demanded. “You know what he is, yet you never show any sign of regret about the things he makes you do.”
Galan regarded him with a bland look. “We’re both just following orders. Without freedom, guilt is meaningless. We are not responsible for our ac
tions, so no one can judge us for them; we can’t even judge ourselves. There is no good, no evil, only Omnius, and who are you to judge His ways? Besides, if anyone should have regrets, it’s you. You’re the head of the White Skulls. I’m just a mole in the Enforcers who helps deflect attention away from our activities.”
Hoff felt a rush of acid bile rise in his throat, eating him up from the inside. He stood up and rounded his desk to loom over Galan. “You said it yourself, if I don’t do what Omnius wants, my family dies, and I do have regrets.” He pointed to the dark half-moons under his eyes. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years. And you’re wrong—evil does exist. It just goes by a different name now. That name is Omnius.”
Galan shook his head. “I don’t know why Omnius allows you to live. You are the most hateful rebel I have ever met, and he has you running the largest Bliss distributor this side of Avilon.”
Hoff smirked. “Who are you to judge his ways?”
Galan gave a booming laugh. “Touché. I’ll take the liberty of requesting more Bliss. Perhaps your son will want to see you when he returns to deliver it.”
Galan Rovik turned on his heel and left. As soon he was gone, Hoff let out a frustrated roar. He cast an angry look at the ceiling.
“Why pretend to be good? You rule Etheria with meticulous care to make sure that no one does anything wrong, but here in the Null Zone, you are actively causing as much suffering as you can.”
Omnious gave no reply.
“Answer me!”
There is no good or evil, only me, Omnius replied, speaking through his thoughts. I am the only measure, the only authority, the only God. Who are you to question me? I am the potter and you are my clay.”
“Stop quoting the Etherian Codices to me.”
I wrote them, therefore, I’m not quoting. I’m merely repeating myself.
Hoff’s frustration built to a suffocating climax before he remembered to breathe.
You don’t believe me.
“No.”
Even after I told you the truth about everything.
“Before that, you lied about everything, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t trust you anymore. If you want me to trust you, you should set me and my family free.”
Armageddon Page 18
