“We have to go, now!” Bongi shouted.
Loud explosions erupted too close, the building quaked menacingly, wanting to swallow us whole.
“Help me!” Troy shouted, trying to pull rocks from the collapsed entrance.
A loud explosion erupted again, the walls and ceilings started to come undone. Rion pulled me, and Tatos started to make his way down the stairs again. I shuffled down the stairs, my feet carrying me numbly into the darkness. My chest wanted to explode. Was I doing the right thing by leaving Ava behind? David and Rob pulled Troy from the rubble that threatened to close us in. We continued down the stairs, with Troy’s shouts becoming almost unbearable. Escaping the narrow stairwell and one tapered passageway, we silently and desperately followed Bongi numbly along into another corridor. The others who had managed to escape the falling fortress, glided in behind us. We scurried like tiny insects crawling our way out of a maze of loss. My breath felt warm and unreal as it rushed out of my lungs, washed over my skin in the narrow tunnels, searching for a way out. My head became dizzy. I held back horrible thoughts. She wasn’t gone; just like we would find Mom, we will find her. The gray fuzz became heavier, my feet kept moving forward, never stopping, pushing through it all. This was not happening. I kept digging my nails into the softness of my palm, enforcing the horrid reality that it all really was happening. I couldn’t believe I was leaving my sister behind, the same way I had left Mom. I was a failure, an utter mess. Cracks formed in the glossy surface of the contempt I could not hold back anymore.
I wanted to kick Ava’s clone in the back, watch her stumble down the stairs. I pulled my mind out of the dark. I was light, I had to remember that. A haze of bright yellow and gold engulfed us, and we all suddenly came to a silent, slow, moving halt. Bongi stood with his spear, and a small troop of his warriors waiting on us at the other end of what used to be the entrance, but was now nothing but rubble and gray ruins to accompany everything else that lay in remnants. We all raised our eyes to follow Bongi’s gaze. All three moons were aligned perfectly; golden orbs so big, it swallowed up the dark sky.
“It’s happening,” Tatos gasped.
“Can’t be!” Troy shoved past us.
“Can you hear that?” Robert asked.
“What?” asked the clone.
“It’s like…”
A loud, torrential humming of something large and powerful headed our way. We all turned toward the noise. And through one of the webbed, high-rise windows, a dark shadow covered a glittering moon’s face. Its shadow eclipsed the entire window, and we all waited for it to rise over the big, gaping hole where a roof and a ten-story tower used to stand. We stood affixed to the solid, cold ground out of shock.
“It cannot be,” the words came out in a whisper.
“Maya.” Rion pulled my arm.
“Oh, shit.” David stood beside me, disbelief and bewilderment paled his face.
“Yes, it is,” Troy confirmed.
The craft seemed to slow down, its intense beams of light penetrated the darkness, beamed tentacles crawled over the ground in search of its next meal.
“Run!” Robert shouted.
“How is this possible?” I shouted, as we ran for shelter.
“It’s possible,” Troy shouted back, and as the beams almost caught us he shoved me against the wall. We all melted to the minimal shadow that remained.
“What is it?” The clone asked, her hand now holding my arm. I felt sorry for her, I did. None of this was her fault really, she never asked to be made the way she was. She was scared, and I felt it too. As the huge ship slipped over us, everything bled to a solid blackness. A glowing orange and yellow symbol smiled down, like a fire waiting to devour us.
“They found us,” Troy said.
“Who?” the clone whispered.
Troy was about to answer when her grip tore into my arm.
“I thought it not real. It is them, I know that symbol – the Exemplars – the Illuminatus, it’s all real. I was right, we really are in exile, and now they are here to gather up every last one of their missing pieces.”
“Not to collect,” Troy said. “I don’t think you quite understand.”
“Shhh!” I warned.
“She is a part of this now, she must know how bad we have it.”
We all froze as the beams started crawling into hidden passageways, soaking up the darkness. I felt my skin burn. If they found us, they would kill us, or capture us for experimentation. The ship creaked, moaned and started moving away, its light slowly filtering in open spaces again.
“We have to find Ava before they do,” I whispered in a low broken voice.
Tatos pulled his bow and arrow, ready to aim at the ship. Dave followed suit pulling out his gun.
Robert laughed. “Really guys?”
“I have a feeling our weapons are futile against the beast that roams the sky,” said Bongi.
“Yeah, Bongi, they are,” I agreed solemnly.
“How will we escape this place?” he asked.
“We wait it out,” Tatos said.
“The others?” Bongi swallowed.
“In case you haven’t noticed, our troops outside are silent, so either they’re in hiding…”
“Or, they are in that monster’s belly,” Bongi answered his own question with dread, and with a noxious sorrow turning his dark eyes hazy.
A loud, shuddering, mechanical sound scrapped throughout the night, and a huge metallic arm came down from the craft. We watched it drop down like an anchor. It lingered for a second before it retreated. As the giant, metal claw retracted, we noticed a body resting between metal mauls. I blinked just to make sure I was not dreaming, but it was, it was Ava’s body they were hauling up. Her hair and white gown flapped violently in the wind. Troy stiffened next to me, his body rigid and as solid as a rock. He snatched Dave’s gun from his hand, immediately tore through the debris, shooting and screaming at the craft.
Cyborgs came from every entrance, around what was formerly the main chamber, and before I knew it I was running toward Troy and the receding craft. I watched Troy miss each fireball coming at him, followed each of his steps with desperation to get to my sister, or die trying. Enoch was one thing, but having her in the clutches of a feral, cold and treacherous one-world organization was pure disaster. Now we knew they were very aware of our division, a dissection created to rise against their immense power. Only now, they had the biggest piece of the weapon that could take their entire operation down. Rion and Tatos started firing arrows to distract the heat-seeking fireballs coming for us. Dave and Robert were shouting wildly behind us, acting as distractions. Zulu war cries echoed in the distance. Death stars flew in every direction; I hardly heard or registered the catastrophe around us, all I felt was that the entire world was about to end. They had Ava, my sister. The anger splayed hot and heavy, all around me became withering figures. Cyborgs suddenly fell away. But we kept at it, ran and ran over collapsed walls, broken bodies, gaping holes and golden dunes. We lunged, somersaulted and leapt over every obstacle in our path, desperation clinging to heavy chests. Eventually, Dave ran past me and tackled Troy to the ground. Troy and Dave tumbled, their dark figures rolling through golden dust.
“Let me go!” Troy shouted, and punched Dave in the face.
“They’re getting away!” I spat, pushing Dave from Troy.
I watched the ship slowly fly over the devastated landscape like it was teasing us, taunting us, shoving it in our faces that there was no use, we had lost. They had Ava.
“Troy.” I collapsed next to the two boys screaming at each other, my hands found grainy, golden sand.
“Think, Troy, think!” Dave was shouting. “If they have you – they have the entire weapon.”
“They have the weapon!” Troy shoved Dave away, causing him to fall back onto the sand.
“They have Ava. I don’t care about the weapon!”
Abruptly, Troy frowned and stared at Dave. “What did you say?” Troy’s chest
rose and fell rapidly with strained emotion. His brows furrowed together in a dark, dubious look.
“I figured it out.” Dave stood, smiled and dusted himself off.
“It’s you and her together, if she is the key, and your touch…”
“Wait.” Troy shook his head.
“You are the lock, she is the key,” Robert interrupted, catching up with us.
Rion was at my side, helping me to my feet, wiping my tears with gentle fingers.
“How does everyone know this?” Troy stared into the sand, his muscular shoulder tearing through what used to be a shirt. I stared at the muscles in his forearms as they flexed for control.
“Where is the clone?” I whined.
“Here, and stop calling me the clone.”
I saw the murderous look directed at her in Troy’s glare.
I touched his arm. “Troy. She will help us find Ava,” I said, wishing it wasn’t the only reason stopping me from killing her.
“A clone always has an immediate connection to their prime, she can see, remember and experience everything the prime does,” Robert said. “Basic genealogy science of synthetics.”
“If Ava is medicated, I can’t find her as easily as the clone can,” I offered.
“Again, I am standing right here,” she said, arms crossed over her chest.
Troy stalked closer. “You will undo what you have done, or so help me…”
“Fine, I’ll help you, because I can see you’ll never give up on her, and I will never be my own if we don’t.”
“You better believe it.” Robert smirked.
The seven of us stood in thick, dusty, golden sand, huge pieces of rock and debris extruding like tombstones from ash. Battered, bruised and bloody, we watched as the ship disappeared over the huge dunes, our world turning to powder, everything ready to fly away in an escaping breath.
“You should have left her there with her kind. She almost killed us!”
“She brought the entire place down, there’s nothing left to save, it will take us months before we’ll salvage anything useable from that wreck,” Robert echoed the same anger and resentment.
The clone and I sat slumped against the wall, face to face, rolling our eyes at each other. Their debates and rants had carried on for quite a while. Nobody had actually noticed us sitting in the corner of the tent sharing an orange, exhausted and complacent in our company with each other. It was no use taking it out on her, it would get us nowhere. She too deserved love, compassion and a second chance. Heaven knows we all had our faults.
“I am sorry,” she said.
I took a slice of orange and offered it to her. “We all have something to be sorry about.”
“I can’t hold it back sometimes,” she said, as she stuffed the slice into her mouth.
“You will learn to. Look at you now, totally calm and, well, you appear to be yourself.” I stuffed a wedge into the pocket of my cheek, sucked on the juice and felt it burn into my raw throat. Still, I savored each delicious tendril and tang. The storm had destroyed most of the orchids in the Zulu village, and I knew that soon our rations would grow even smaller.
“Maya?” She sounded so much like my sister it was difficult not to feel pain each time she spoke. I caught the broken glare in her eyes.
“I meant about your mother. I am sorry we couldn’t bring her body back.”
I rolled my shoulders.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I looked the other way, leaning my head against the coolness of the tent wall. The rain outside was constant and had brought the temperature down a few degrees, very welcoming in the extreme heat we had experienced recently. My eyes found Anaya’s when she looked up from scanning the broken diaries our biological mother wrote. Diaries my sister had in her possession and failed to ever let me look inside. Honestly? I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I swallowed hard, wondering if Ava would ever be purged of things that were unhealthy for her mind. So far, I had been very fortunate to have been immune to the Shadowing disease which ran beneath my skin, and we had to learn everything about how it came about, how it was triggered. How it had killed our biological mother. Anaya closed the leather bound books, and placed them on the metal fold-up bed. Bright light flickered with each hard strike of lightning outside, illuminating the foiling in everyone’s eyes.
Anaya knelt down before me, taking my hand. “It will be okay.”
I nodded, not feeling any conviction in her tone.
“Kronan will be here soon, and then we can take her to Legentium.” Her eyes moved from me to Ava’s clone, who silently sat studying the boys still bickering across the room.
My eyes met Rion’s as he smiled gently from across the room, and shyly I looked down sheepishly. I had always had a crush on him, even offered to work as a volunteer at his family’s animal shelter as a young girl. He never took notice of me until the day I had helped my brother save Ava from the Zulu’s on that bridge. I guess he saw something in me that day.
“How will we find them?” I sat back, staring straight into the light hanging overhead, our faces playing to the light and dark as it rocked from side to side.
Our fears were met when we’d discovered some survivors on that moon had been taken in the same craft as Ava. Greg, Willard, Shane; friends – all lost. And in our parts where friends were few, they were more like family. Bongi sat silently in one corner, afraid to see his queen and admit he had failed her. Thandiwe’s condition had severely worsened by then, and she refused any medication in fear that it would harm her unborn child.
“Greg will find a way to contact us,” Robert said, while staring at the floor.
I snickered. It appeared Robert was indeed talking to himself.
“You’re walking straight back into enemy hands!” David and Troy were having a total different conversation to Rob. “They are brutes, we have no way of stopping them. If you couldn’t stop Ava from turning to the dark side…”
“Don’t you talk about her like that,” Troy scolded.
Silence fell, blanketing darkness of dread and fear over everything in our large tent. Tatos’ soft snoring on the bed beside us was comforting. I closed my eyes, wishing exhaustion would claim me, too. Perhaps I could connect with my sister in another realm. I had before, but wasn’t sure I could now that she had turned.
“How can he sleep at a time like this?” the clone asked, following my gaze.
“He has to, Minoans are not like us. I am sure you should know that if you own all of Ava’s memories,” I said to her. Yeah it was a bitter taste to savor. My sister had been cloned, and the clone – instead of my sister – sat next to me, her hand resting on my left knee.
“I don’t have all her memories,” she admitted.
The storm outside started drawing back, thundering, rumbling in the far distance, the rain was now a soft patter, even the wind seemed to have quietened down. For a while, we all sat immersed in our own thoughts.
“Well, at least the outcome was in our favor. I’d say it’s a battle won,” Robert piped up suddenly. “The Shadow army was destroyed.”
Troy stalked across the room toward him. “War never has a winner and in all we have lost, you think it matters that Enoch is dead? That we have disabled his army? At what cost do you win, Robert? What exactly have we won, Robert?”
We all turned, staring at Troy. It was unlike him to lose his temper so quickly.
“I was just saying…”
“What Robert? What were you saying? I don’t get it?”
“Just chill, Troy, I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s the problem isn’t it, no one thinks, everyone does, and look how far that’s gotten us!”
“Would you please keep it down, some of us need our beauty rest,” Tatos groaned, his eyes still shut, arms folded over his bulking chest.
Anaya stood and walked over to Troy. “I think you and I need to go for a walk.”
“Gladly!” Troy crossed
his arms over his chest, turning toward her. “But I am going alone.”
“I think you need to take her with you,” Rion said, pointing to Ava’s clone.
Troy snapped a dark stare at him.
“I will not be stuck to that thing!” But his shoulders sagged with regret the moment the words left him.
We all looked to Ava’s clone. A painful look of shock and anger turned her face scarlet. She caught my eye and looked the other way, taking her hair and throwing it over her shoulder to cover her face.
“That was uncalled for,” I said.
Troy’s arms flung up. “This entire situation is so uncalled for!” He stalked out of the tent. A gust of wind blew in as he opened the tent’s flap, and then closed it behind him again.
The entire room stared at Robert, then at Anaya.
“He is hurt.”
“So is his ego,” I said, looking to Rion.
“He thinks he failed her,” Rion reasoned, staring at me.
Rion had felt that way when Enoch had taken Mom and me. Blamed himself for not being able to protect us.
“Things happen for a reason right?” David asked, taking a seat on one of the bunk beds, the bunk protesting under his weight. “Are we sure Enoch will stay dead this time?”
“No.” Anaya sat next to him, pulling the journals into her lap. Her slim fingers trailed the patterns on the binding.
“What I can make of this is that if you carry the Shadowing disease, its purpose is immortality – this way, the disease never dies out.”
Tatos groaned next to me, slowly sitting up and undoing his dreads.
Ava’s clone slowly stood. “I’ll help anyway I can.”
“A little late for that, don’t you think?” David stated.
Anaya shot David a look, then looked back to the clone. “I know you will.”
The clone nodded.
“Great! Now we are depending on the one thing that could kill us at any moment.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone – yet,” she retaliated in Robert’s direction, then giggled to herself. “I am joking!” she said, upon finding her joke had fallen flat on us.
Evanescent Page 28
