The Book of Olivia

by Paxton Summers

  I knew if I could only get to Marcus, they’d live, if the descent didn’t kill me first. Faster and faster I went. Things blurred. There was yelling below, yelling above, bolts of blue light as the soldiers below fired on me and my pursuers. All blended together.

  My feet hit the bush first, bringing my downhill flight to a sudden stop. I wiped away the mud covering my face and looked up at multiple faces, men who wanted me dead. All weapons pointed in my direction. Just as I was certain I’d breathed my last, Marcus slipped into view, grabbing a weapon from one of the men and tossing it to the side.

  “Don’t fire!” Blood trickled from his nose, but it wasn’t too late. I took a moment to absorb his every feature. “She’s the only thing that will keep us alive.”

  The soldiers pulled their weapons back, and he made his way to the front of the group.

  My heart pounded in pain and happiness. Happy to see him again, knowing he would now live, but sad I left a piece of my heart behind. Axel would never forgive this betrayal. I sat up and reached for his extended hand, but as I glanced in his eyes, I fractured to pieces.

  Distrust stared down.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know Axel infected me, that I was a carrier.”

  Marcus frowned as his fingers laced with mine. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Axel hit with the force of a charging bull elephant. First the end of the pipe he always carried plowed into me, puncturing my side, scraping rib, and then it continued through, shooting out of my back, spraying blood over the clay slope and Marcus’s face. It happened fast, but it felt like time slogged along at half pace.

  My hand pulled free from Marcus’s grip. Axel’s boots hit my torso next, spinning me around and into the branches, snapping off a limb that tore the flesh on my thigh. More blood spewed across the slope. I rolled for what felt like forever before I hit a rock, shattering the ribs across the injured side of my body, bringing me to a stop. I lifted my head. Shafts of pain skewered me. Too weak to hold my head up, I let the side of my face drop into the mud as I watched the scene before me. Bubbles of blood leaked from my nostril, swirling into the wet clay.

  “No,” Axel roared. “Not her. I didn’t mean to hit her.” He raised his hands when several of Marcus’s soldiers swung their weapons in his direction. The threat didn’t stop him. He scrambled to where I lay, slipping and sliding down the slope until he reached me. He dropped to his butt and lifted my head into his lap. “Don’t die, Olivia. Please, don’t die.”

  As though he can stop it. I blinked back the tears forming in my eyes, barely able to draw a breath. Each small gasp brought blood gushing to my lips and an icy haze over my eyes. “You can’t always save me.” I was certain they would be the last words I’d say to him.

  Axel smoothed my hair away from my forehead. “Stay awake.”

  I could do nothing but watch, gasp, and wait for my body to shut down. As blood poured from me, my heart slowed its beat. Thud, thud, thud… Thud…

  Two more of Axel’s men slid past, but nobody paid them any attention. All eyes were locked on us.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Axel said. “Forgive me.”

  Marcus turned to look at me. I mouthed the word no. He lifted his sidearm, pointed it at Axel. I shook my head. Don’t shoot him.

  Marcus’s laser began to whine, charging up. “Get your hands off my wife.”

  “Go ahead, shoot me. I can’t live without her.”

  “You want her to live then let her go.”

  The world faded to black.

  * * *

  Regardless what you heard, there was no tunnel of light when you died—or perhaps I hadn’t died. I only remembered darkness, the absence of life, no sound. Nothing. Perhaps this was Hell, my reward for all my good deeds. I couldn’t imagine it was the Heaven preached to me as a child.

  Warmth caressed my cheek. A hand. The smell of soap. This was not death. This was life, and someone had brought me back from the abyss I’d tumbled into. I could only guess who… until I heard his voice.

  “Olivia.”

  I opened my eyes. A haze floated over them like oil drifting across my pupils. I remembered the effect from when I’d had my transplant and had been placed in cryo-stasis to heal. It came from the anesthesia they used to bring you to a near-death state, slow your heart. But they only used that when they wanted to save you. Whirls of congealed color and shapes accompanied the activity and sound.

  “Easy, she’s in shock.” A voice, familiar, but it sounded distant.

  “Why bother? She’s already dead. She’s nothing more than a clone’s whore anyway.”

  There was a loud thump followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground. “Get him out of here.” A hand brushed my forehead. “I know you didn’t mean for me to become sick.” Fingers stroked down my cheek. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “You have to remove your hand. I can’t shut the cell.” Another voice, as icy as the air encasing my body. Unfamiliar. Hostile.

  “If she doesn’t make it back to the hospital alive, everyone will die, starting with you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Marcus.” My heart struggled to beat. I willed my brain to give me one more breath for the last thing that needed to be said. My lips fell open but only fog escaped. I refocused, not wanting to die before I told him. Everything grew fuzzy. A cold mist coated my skin.

  “I won’t let you die. Sleep.” The lid of my coffin clanked shut and frost crept across the glass as little stars, growing together and obscuring Marcus’s face.

  I love you. Gathering all my energy, I pressed my palm against the clear lid. Marcus laid his over mine. I didn’t have to voice my feelings. I could see it in his eyes. He knew.

  I iced over.

  It’s said a person in a coma could hear what was going on around them. This is true. Marcus talked to me. He’d coughed and wheezed his way through endless one-sided conversations about the state of Aeropia, what he’d had for breakfast, or how heavy the air had become. I knew what had transpired because of his stories.

  He also told me of his dreams, how he’d always wanted children. I tried to open my eyes, tell him the city needed to be evacuated. I didn’t know if it was hours or days. But I lay there helpless for what felt like forever.

  One morning, I could only assume it was morning from the smell of coffee in the air and the sounds of trays being set on tables, the tone in Marcus’s voice was different. “You saved the city, Olivia. You saved me.” There was a pause that seemed to go on forever, and I was certain he was choked up. “We almost lost you. The nanites sealed the wound, stopped the bleeding. They are the only reason you are here. If you hadn’t…”

  I couldn’t tell him I hadn’t saved the city and my life wasn’t that important. As hard as I tried, I found myself unable to swim out of the fog. So helpless.

  “I knocked him out and left him on the slope, but I want you to know I didn’t kill him. He needed to know we weren’t his enemy, no matter how hard he tried to make it that way.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. “I’m thankful I didn’t. We’ve come to an understanding.” A chair screeched against the floor as someone else joined Marcus in my room. “He’s here now.”

  “Olivia.”

  My heart began to pound. Axel?

  “You were right. I need you to understand what’s going on, why I’m here, doing this. I need you to forgive me before I go into the underground to set my wrongs right.”

  Wait. He told Marcus about the explosives?

  The story began to roll from Axel’s lips as Marcus remained silent, and, once again, like I did when I faced off with Eva, I found myself trapped in a bed, hearing things I didn’t want to, but this time the person next to me didn’t want to kill me.

  “I was so angry. It didn’t matter that Marcus could’ve killed me but chose not to. I didn’t intend to return the favor. I’d come here to wipe him from existence and reclaim your heart. He’d taken you and left me behind.” I heard
rustling, and Axel took my other hand. “I understand if you hate me.”

  I couldn’t hate him.

  “When I came into the city, I came in force, with every man, woman, and child I could muster. I wanted to retrieve you and lay waste to the city, but the virus had… it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The streets were empty. Except…” His voice grew so soft I could barely hear him. “I brought with me the pipe that had wounded you. I wanted to ram it through him. I had no control, nor did I want any.” And so his story of redemption began, and I told it now because I need you to understand Axel wasn’t a bad man, merely what we’d created him to be. He had a soul, a conscience, and he had hit rock bottom.

  “Olivia!” he’d shouted.

  Nobody came out of the houses, everywhere the city whispered with the voices of ghosts. “Olivia!”

  As Axel’s horde rounded a corner, entering the central square, a fountain bubbled before them. There she sat with her hand dipped in the water and tears streaming down her cheeks, a little girl with blonde hair, who could be no more than three years old. A tot, he imagined. My daughter could look like her someday.

  Axel froze. Not a breath was drawn. Her cries were the only sound. Her fear seemed to echo across the city. The little girl’s curls were pulled back with colorful ribbons, her bright-pink dress stained, torn, and dirty.

  She glanced up with eyes full of red tears. “Mommy.”

  She raised her hand to her mouth and coughed, spraying blood across the front of her once-beautiful dress. She began to cry again, wailing louder. Axel glanced left and right, waiting, but nobody came to collect her.

  She turned her brown eyes to his and reached out to him with both arms, blood rolling down her cheeks.

  The iron pipe dropped to the ground with a loud clang. It echoed across the square. They are babies. A child, not the enemy, not the face he’d pictured dying from his disease. Axel strode forward, scooped her into his arms and made for the city’s infirmary. “We’ll find your mommy.” He brushed her hair from her eyes and kissed her forehead. Much too hot. All his doing.

  Yes, there were more than soldiers affected by his plague, but he’d refused to listen, to look, and, in the end, had been as heartless as those who’d killed his people. I’d tried to tell him I didn’t want to be responsible for killing them, that there were children and women who’d suffer. He’d never imagined what it would look like. It was one thing to meet your enemy on a field of battle, quite different to view the aftereffects, the fallout from your actions. This was a moment of awakening for Axel. He’d been consumed with blood lust, wanted to crush his enemy under his boot, and hadn’t cared who or what got in the way.

  Until now.

  One small child opened his eyes, and what he saw made him sick. “I’d been a fool, and now it was clear why you jumped on that slope and left me behind. I’m a heartless bastard.”

  “You’re not a heartless bastard. A bit misguided, but not heartless.” My eyes fluttered open, and Axel’s face came into focus. I smiled.

  “Get the nurse,” Marcus shouted. “She’s awake.”

  “No time for that. You need to get people out of the city.” Axel turned to look out the window, but I’d caught the sorrow in his eyes. “In case I fail.” The rain had picked up, outside the wind howled. They’d need to leave soon. The city was about to be under water, and we’d all die.

  “We can’t evacuate when half the city is too sick to get out of bed,” Marcus said. He turned his head toward where Axel sat. “Fail? What are you talking about?”

  “I might be able to stop the flooding, but I have to go down into the cistern.”

  Marcus nodded. “I’m listening.”

  I watched Axel and knew there was something more, something he held back. Marcus had no idea. Neither did I, but I knew Axel’s impulsive nature, and that meant whatever he hid was bad.

  Marcus looked from me back to Axel. “What are you not telling me?”

  I’d never had much of a poker face. I nodded at Axel, encouraging him to open up, put his trust in the man across from him.

  “I planted bombs. I have the codes to deactivate them, but I’ll have to swim with the crocs to get to them. Chances are pretty good I won’t make it. You need to evacuate your city. Get Olivia out of here.”

  “You planted bombs under my city?”

  “Axel? No.” I bit my lip.

  “I did. I planned to blow it after everyone was gone, cut the lines of communication to the south and disconnect the power network you fly your aircraft by and run your technology on. The same network the United Regions uses to fly into Aeropian airspace.”

  Marcus stared at him for several seconds. “And if we hadn’t been able to evacuate?”

  “I didn’t think anyone would be alive to evacuate.” Axel let go of my hand, turning back to the window. “I’ve since then come to my senses and give a shit. So let’s move on because nothing you say now will change the past.”

  “How can I possibly trust you?”

  “You’re going to have to.”

  “I don’t. You could be going down there to plant bombs you only claim are there or sabotage the drains further.”

  “I wouldn’t have come here, offered this information, if that were the case.”

  “You came here to get my wife.”

  “She’s not yours.”

  “The fuck she isn’t.”

  “Enough!” I yelled as loudly as my unused voice would let me. “If Axel says he planted bombs down there, they’re down there. And you”—I pointed at Axel—“shut up and listen to him. I’m his wife, and nothing you do will change that, so stop. This is about saving the city, not your egos. So stow the testosterone and fix this before we all drop into a grave.”

  “I did this. I will fix it.” Axel looked at me but addressed Marcus.

  “I’m not trusting you with the lives of all the people in this city. I’m going.” Marcus looked toward the door as a soldier entered and saluted. He motioned him over and eyed the holo-pad he handed him. The soldier saluted again and exited.

  “Marcus, no, you can’t go. You need to listen to Axel. Get the people out of here. Trust him.”

  “We don’t have time to argue about this.” He looked up from whatever news the soldier had delivered. “I just got a report from my outposts. Ships from the United Regions have crossed into our airspace. Somehow they found out what was going on, and I suspect it has something to do with my brother’s disappearance. They’ll be here in less than four hours. If we don’t get the city drained and the shields back up, we’re all dead, evacuated or not. We need to do this now.”

  Pilot was a lot like his father. He’d kill his brother to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was Aeropia. I knew this because he’d confided in me before he tried to kill me.

  This time, Axel didn’t argue. He followed Marcus to the door and glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix this.”

  “Come back. Both of you.”

  He gave me a sad smile and nodded. I knew it for what it was—a silent promise he wouldn’t let anything happen to Marcus, no matter what he thought about him. As he’d always told me, he’d never intentionally do anything to hurt me.

  “Where are the valves?”

  “I’ll take you to them, but we have to hurry. We’re running out of time.”

  Marcus flagged his men to follow. The dizziness was still there, but the bleeding had slowed and the fever had eased. Another day and surely he would have been at the point of no return, fodder for the worms. I had risked my life to get to him, and that said more than any words could’ve.

  Axel walked down the corridor beside him. “Does she love you?”

  “I believe she does.”

  “But do you know it?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because I need to know more about the competition. Killing you will only make her hate me. That’s not my intent. I love her. I’ve loved her from childhood, and I’m not goi
ng to let you take her.”

  “So, you’re doing all this to get her back?” Marcus asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s good because you had your chance. She’s mine now. I’ve waited all my life for her, and you can’t keep me from holding what fate and God have declared is mine.”

  “Then you and I will have a talk after this is over. Yes?”

  “Yes.” They’d have their talk all right. Somebody had a good ass-kicking coming to him, courtesy of his boot. “We’ll talk, but you aren’t getting her back.”

  14

  Lights in the sky streaked toward the city. Comet tails of vapor followed the ships from the United Regions in the north. They meant to take the Aeropite capital, or, more likely, flatten it.

  Something told me Pilot was behind it. The United Regions seemed to know the most opportune time to attack, and Pilot hadn’t been present since he came after me in my room. He was a problem we would have to address in the future. But not right now. We had bigger matters to address.

  If our power didn’t come up soon, they would achieve their goal without any effort on their part. The metropolis was flooded; the hospitals were full of those recovering from a plague. There were no ships to evacuate the population, and the cities to the north were too distant to get here in time, nor did they want to take the chance of spreading an infection we had barely gotten under control. We had never been as helpless as we were now.

  If the drains were not opened and the backup generators buried under the water activated, the electromagnetic shields would not rise to protect us from the airstrike. But what came from above was the least of our worries. The cistern underneath was full and held several bombs that would go off if we didn’t get to them soon. If that happened, this city would be nothing but a chapter in a history book, read by children of the future, a lesson in what not to do with power.

  Marcus had to destroy the ships. He had no choice. Everything was chaos. Before I went into how I got here, standing in front of this window on the top floor of Capital General Hospital, watching an invasion that most likely was the beginning of the end for Aeropia, I wanted to explain the events leading up to this moment.