by David Beers
Their eyes did that.
Their eyes all burned gray, each one of those mad people looking like a replica of the weapon.
“Yule, get over here,” Trinant called.
For a second, he didn’t move, remembering his prayer from moments before. Hadn’t he just asked God to save them? Said it was beyond his hands, beyond anyone on Earth’s hands?
Had God forsaken them? Had He judged Earth the same as He had Sodom and Gomorrah? Because what the Pope now saw, it froze him to the ground he stood on. Rows and rows of gray eyed evil staring straight ahead as if blind, though Yule knew they weren’t. None moved, though that didn’t mean they were blind. They stared straight ahead, all still, but Yule thought he knew why.
“They’re soldiers,” he said, uncaring whether anyone heard him or not. “They’re soldiers and their general is speaking to them now. Giving them instructions.”
The Pope was about as close to the truth as anyone could have guessed.
Tidus, of course, wasn’t thinking in such terms. All Tidus knew was that for a while, his focus had slipped, and now he understood that was actually impossible because nothing could slip when the Prophet was in charge.
He didn’t know what was happening to his body, the gray strands climbing up his arms or the static alive in his eyes.
The Prophet was speaking, and Tidus listened.
You are close now, he said. Let nothing stop you. Do not stop, do not slow, do not pause. Whatever is in your way, destroy it or kill it. Before nightfall, the Globe is to be no more, only a burning wreck in the sky for all to see, and realize the Unformed is almighty.
There was a pause in the Prophet’s voice, though Tidus didn’t move at all. He knew the Prophet wasn’t finished speaking, and he wanted to hear nothing besides his instructions.
An image flashed in Tidus’s mind, just as it surely did amongst the thousands beside and beneath him. Tidus saw a man in a large room, standing and staring up at large glass displays.
Kill this man, the Prophet said. Whatever else happens, he is to die.
Tidus understood and the man’s image solidified in his mind.
The Prophet left and the group around Tidus started moving again. Had they lost their purpose for a while? Tidus couldn’t remember. It no longer mattered, though, because they were unified now.
Tidus moved to the front of the group, next to a man whose gray strands were gripping the closed door in front of them. Tidus looked at him, curiously seeing that his eyes were burning gray just like the static flowing from his hands. In fact, the gray seemed to be wrapping around his whole body, and Tidus giggled at that—having absolutely no idea that the exact same thing was happening to him.
“How much longer?” he asked, the mission clear in everyone’s mind. They didn’t need to discuss anything besides how to accomplish it.
“An hour,” the man said. “Maybe two.”
Yule had walked across the room to Trinant and Benten. His back was to the windows because he didn’t want to see any more of what was happening.
General Spyden looked at him as he approached, and Yule vaguely recognized that she saw his despondency.
The general looked to Trinant, waiting for her permission. Trinant nodded.
“Here, here, and here,” she said, pointing out three different numbers on Trinant’s desk. “These changed over the past five minutes. The rate at which the attackers were hacking had been dropping steadily over the past few hours, meaning that their upward climb was slowing. It’s rebounded, and then some. Touch points have increased 500% in the past five minutes, and look ….”
Yule’s eyes followed her finger, and watched a number he didn’t understand climb higher—rapidly so.
“Those are actual touch points. Where the attackers are hacking our system.” The general looked up at Trinant. “It changes our plan of action. We were basing everything on that continual decrease.”
“No contingencies if it reversed?” Benten asked.
Yule looked to him, slowly. He understood what was being said, but was having a tough time believing anyone was taking the general seriously. What did it matter what she said? Contingencies, plans, strategies … these were all just words, and none of them made a whit’s difference to the people on that screen behind Yule.
It wasn’t that the Pope was losing faith, rather, the opposite was happening. He was beginning to understand with complete clarity that humanity wouldn’t save themselves this time.
“Of course we have contingencies,” the general said. “They’re just less appealing. Your Grace, I recommend option one.”
“What is that?” Benten asked.
Trinant was staring up at the screens that Yule wanted no more part of. “You saw what happened to the First Priest? We do that, but with the entirety of the lower levels. We increase the air pressure inside the Globe, and then the ships that now surround us fire. The air pressure will rip the attackers out the same as it did the First Priest.”
“Can we do that without harming ourselves?” Benten asked.
“No,” Trinant whispered, “Of course not.”
“What will happen?”
Trinant waved her hand toward Spyden, telling her to explain it.
“The Globe isn’t designed for such structural damage. It will fall.”
“How quickly?” Benten asked.
“It’ll progress, growing faster with each minute. Within ten minutes, we’ll hit terminal velocity.”
The group was quiet for a few moments. No questions came to Yule, because he thought this all futile.
“Can we escape within ten minutes?” Benten finally asked.
“Us in here?” Trinant said, still only staring at the horror behind. “Yes, probably. We’ll have to decrease pressure, hope and pray we can safely get a ship inside this room and then exit again, but most likely—yes … It’s the rest of the Globe. You can’t evacuate them.”
Yule’s eyes flashed to Trinant, taking his first real interest in the entire conversation.
“How many people are still alive?” she asked.
“Last count put us over 100,000,” the general said.
“So,” Trinant whispered. “We survive and those who follow us die, or we all die together.” Trinant turned to Spyden. “Can you please escort them to another room? I need a few minutes alone to think.”
Yule’s eyes widened some, but still he remained silent. He glanced to Benten and saw surprise on his face as well, but the Minister kept quiet. What could either of them actually say? They were effectively under Martial Law, whether or not anyone would spell it out. Trinant ruled here, and the head of her military would do exactly as she said.
“Daniel,” Yule said. “Get Jackson. We’re stepping out for a moment.”
He spoke calmly, and as he did, his eyes found Trinant’s.
She was looking at him, too, and the weight he saw inside her … he wouldn’t want to bear it for anything in this world. He nodded, knowing that she might ask his thoughts on the matter, but in the end they weren’t important. It wasn’t his people that would fall.
Daniel made his way over, Jackson in tow.
The three of them left, leaving Trinant to consider a simple choice.
Save herself, or die with her people.
Yule found himself in a much smaller room across the hall, Daniel, Jackson, and Benten with him.
Yule and Benten sat at a table, Jackson against the back wall, and Daniel leaned against the door, looking down at the floor.
“What do you think she’s going to do?” Benten asked.
The Two Ministers had effectively controlled half the world between the two of them, but now neither could really give a single command to anyone.
“I don’t know,” Yule said.
“I keep asking myself what I would do,” Benten said, looking down at the table. “And it’s always the same answer, no matter how many ways I look at it. Some people living is better than none at all.”
Yule n
odded, though he stared at Daniel. “I’m just glad none of the True Faith’s Priests are here to give us their opinion,” he said almost absently. He didn’t know what Trinant would choose, and anything he guessed here didn’t matter.
He looked over at Jackson. The man sat in a chair, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor.
“I think we should talk her through this,” Benten said.
Yule ignored him, slowly realizing that too much had been happening for his mind to adequately keep up. The Pope was known as highly—if not hyper—intelligent. Yet, the past few minutes, his brain had been shirking its duties.
Man might not be enough to deal with all of this, but that didn’t mean God wasn’t here with them.
“What happened in there?” Yule asked, his voice directing toward Jackson Carriage—the man who everyone had overlooked, except perhaps Daniel.
Yule took on the tone he carried with his Cardinals when they were challenging him, or otherwise doing something he didn’t like.
He became Pope Pius XX.
Jackson looked over to him, his eyes appearing lost.
“In there,” Yule said, pointing at the door. “What happened? Before and after you fell? You said something, and I want to know what you meant. ‘God, or the closest thing to Him.’ What was that?”
Yule didn’t move, but the rest of the room had grown quiet. Even Benten heard the sound of Yule’s voice and stopped his rumination, turning to look at Jackson Carriage.
“Huh-huh-her,” the man stammered out. He recognized what he was doing and visibly took control of himself. “Nicki Sesam. She’s … She’s changed, but she’s back.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’s changed’?” Yule said.
Even Daniel was silent as Yule commanded both the room and the Church’s subject.
“Your Holiness,” the thin man started, but then paused for a second and looked down between his feet again. When he spoke, it was a whisper, and Yule wasn’t sure if he was speaking to the Pope, or himself. “This is beyond the sight. What we can do, people like us … we see things. Some of us can do a bit more, but that’s it. She isn’t like us anymore. She doesn’t have the sight. She ….” He paused and then looked up Yule. “There are limits to the sight, Your Holiness. There are no limits to her. Not anymore.”
Yule was quiet for a moment, not taking his eyes away from the man. He didn’t look to Daniel or Benten, his mind considering only what he was being told.
Finally, he said, “What did you tell her?”
“I could hardly say a word, Your Holiness. When she recognized what I was doing, she took control. I think ….” He paused again for a moment. “I told her that her father was safe. That was all I had time for.”
“Go on,” Yule said. “What happened?”
The skinny man nodded.
“She looked through me. Through all of me. I think she saw everything, my entire past right up to that room. She wanted to kill me, because … because she saw my problems. She knew what I am, and she was going to kill me, but,” he looked at Daniel, “he spoke to her, and she stopped.”
Yule said nothing in the brief pause, knowing to let the man continue on his own.
“She left me then, and that’s when I fell. Now … I don’t know any other way to say it. I thought she was gone, and that I was free, but something happened. She came back, and that’s when I looked at those screens. I think someone was speaking to her.”
“What did they say?” Yule prodded.
“I can’t remember,” he said, shaking his head, and Yule believed him.
The Pope turned to Daniel then, who was already looking at him.
Daniel shook his head, but said nothing.
Yule stood and walked over to him. Daniel didn’t quit shaking his head, tears filling his eyes the closer Yule got.
“No,” he said as the Pope reached the door. “No, I won’t do it. Don’t even ask.”
Yule stopped short of placing his hand on the man. “What other choice is there, Daniel? You heard them in there. Another hundred thousand dead. We might survive, true, but are you going to put those who die on your shoulders? Are you willing to walk around with that weight for the rest of your life?”
Daniel, eyes full of tears, looked at Yule. “If it means my daughter lives, then that’s fine with me. I’ll carry it forever. I’m not asking her to come here. I’m not asking her to save me, or anyone else. I’m not putting her in harm’s way ever again.”
Yule nodded, seeing the truth that Daniel refused to. If he had thought this was out of man’s control minutes before, he had been wrong. Confused. Lost in the haze of so many ideas coming at him at once. There would be no light shining from the heavens that fell on this Globe, nor on the rest of the world. That’s not how God worked, not anymore at least.
“Daniel, we thought things had changed,” Yule said. “We thought that we had won, but we haven’t. We thought that we didn’t need your daughter, but we do. Maybe we always did.”
Daniel only shook his head again.
“We need her right now. Not you and I, because we’ll probably survive. But the other 100,000 people won’t. And Daniel, when we get out of here, what do you think is happening in the rest of the world? The Black has returned, if it ever went away. Maybe Its weapon, too. You and your daughter can’t hide from It. You can’t shield her, and you can’t shirk your duty.”
Yule was whispering, his voice perhaps able to be heard by the others, but not well.
“You love her,” he said. “I know it, but you can’t hide her if she could save the human race. You know that.”
“What do you want me to do?” Daniel asked. “You want me to tell her that the same people who’ve hunted her, tried to kill her, who almost did kill her, want her to come back?”
Yule held Daniel’s eyes for a second and then looked to the floor.
“I’m not asking you to make her a sacrificial lamb. I don’t know if I would ask that of you, even if the Lord commands it. What I’m asking is for you to explain the situation to her, and then let her make her own decision.” Yule looked up. “You remember our discussion about humanity. I said you shouldn’t give up, nor judge us too harshly. Well, I’m betting on mankind, Daniel. I’m betting that if you give your daughter the choice, she’ll make the right one. I’m betting that she’ll save the people here, and if she can, she’ll stop whatever is happening down below.”
“I can’t ask her,” Daniel said.
“You have to,” Yule answered.
Yule and the others were brought back into Trinant’s office shortly. There simply wasn’t much time for longer deliberation.
“I’ve spoken with Spyden and come to a decision,” Trinant said to Benten and Yule.
The Pope was quiet, and so was the Constant’s Minister. Yule would wait to hear what the decision was before he brought up the possibility of Nicki. He had already decided that whatever this Minister decided, he was going forward with it. Daniel hadn’t fully submitted, but God hadn’t placed Daniel in this spot for him to buck the Lord’s will at the very end. Yule had to have faith, and while he had very little else right now, he wasn’t going to lose that.
Trinant continued talking. “We can hold out firing on the Globe until the attackers reach the floor below ours. That’s the absolute latest, though, and General Spyden thinks it leaves our floor open to the possibility of the same fate as those below us. An errant laser, and this floor will be under the exact same air pressure conditions as the others. Still, it’s the latest we can wait.”
Trinant was quiet. The mirrors to the left were transparent again. The scene with those gray eyed monsters gone, and Yule was glad for it. Sitting in his chair, he looked out the windows, the sun going down outside. A question came to him: Will this be the last sunset I ever see?
Yule discarded it, almost lifting his hand to wave it away, but catching himself just before.
No, it wouldn’t be the last sunset he viewed, because God wasn’t done
with the world. If Yule doubted that even for a second, all he had to do was remember that Nicki Sesam existed. All of this, the torture of waiting inside here—Daniel thinking his daughter dead and Yule practically forgetting about her—it’d all been for naught, because the woman lived. She was alive and in this world, and that meant God was alive and in this world.
Perhaps Earth was on fire, but someone who shouldn’t exist—let alone be alive—did.
This wouldn’t be the last sunset Yule saw, because God still loved the world.
“I’m going to let them get to that floor,” Trinant said, “and if they break through, I’m going to order the ships outside to fire on them. We will then have 10 minutes to evacuate here, and we won’t attempt saving anyone else, because it’s simply not feasible.”
She turned and looked out the open windows, quiet.
“Trinant,” Yule said. “There’s something else I’d like to try first.”
“Does it have to do with what happened back there? With what happened with the girl?”
“Yes.”
Trinant’s silence drew out; Yule felt no panic, no nervousness. His mind was made up, though he knew that really didn’t matter either. The Lord’s mind was all that mattered now, and Yule knew he was simply in line with God’s path.
“Let me hear it,” she said, “though, I’m going to be frank: I don’t have high hopes for her or it. She has brought nothing but pain to this world.”
Yule nodded, no one glancing to Daniel on the other side of the room, though without a doubt he had heard the Minister’s words.
Seventy-Six
After the weapon left, the arguing had continued for what felt like an eternity, though in reality, Raylyn knew it to be less than an hour.
The arguments could be summed up in very simple sentences.
“We’re going to my father.” That was Nicki’s side.
“It won’t matter if we save him, when the entire world is lost.” That was Rebecca’s.
