“We could have been happy together,” he says.
“I believe we were all we had and part of us wants to go back to the simplicity of that,” I say.
“But the world is not so simple,” he says.
“Nor should it be,” I say. “We are adults now and we have to live in this world, not the one we
made up, one that never even existed.”
He turns his eyes on me with a sadness I have never seen in them before. “I started to feel that
way, too,” he says. “That we were never real. We just became real for each other to help fill up those dark days in the pit of that plantation with some hope.”
“We made it out of there,” I remind him.
“We as individuals made it out,” he says, “but maybe we together, Ace and Tick, never really
did. We even changed our names.”
I want to cry. Finn desperately needs to move on and I won’t stop him. “Maybe you’re right,” I
say unable to mask the pain in my throat.
“There,” he says. “See?”
I look up to a million scorching lights that fill the darkness with rage and fury. A rainbow of
liquid colors and drops of doom.
“What do you think?” he says.
“I think I’m going to shove their fireworks back down their throats.”
Finn laughs until I feel better. “Cool,” he says. “I really hope you do.”
*
DAMIAN FINDS ME as I wrap Tobi up in a blanket. He takes my hand to stop me and forces
me to look at him.
“What are you doing?” he says. “You’re not taking Tobi with us?”
“Yes, I am,” I say averting my eyes.
“Why?” he says.
I can sense a certain amount of irritation in his voice. I stop to think about how to say this. “If we are to die, I want our son to have seen the sunshine. There’s no reason to think he would be safer here without us. ”
He lets go of my hand but our eyes remain locked. “I know,” he says slowly. “It could be our
last chance to be together, the three of us.”
We rush to the hangar where the space pod is waiting for us. Two guards bring in a cage on
wheels big enough to fit a polar bear. Kroll stands behind the bars with eyes starving for freedom. I’d recognize that hunger anywhere.
My eyes haze over as the pod engines are being prepared to reach maximum acceleration. I
believed Damian when he said that he would turn things around. In fact, I believed it so absolutely
that I came to think it was something I could do, too.
All we had to do was get back to Spring Town, back to the Dark Legion and back underneath the
sun. But what do I really have to base this blind optimism on? The word of a man who would say
anything to make me feel better? Or the word of my friends whose wishful thinking has been mutated
into fact?
But maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.
Maybe all I have to do now is listen to the little voice in my head. I go over to the cage and open
the door. Kroll salutes me with his usual reverence and vows to fight for me until the end.
21
The drones have been gathering for three hours turning the night sky into a palette of oranges and
whites and yellows. They hover in the distance like rubies across a velvet sea waiting for signs of
weakness in our defenses before they attack.
The people of Spring Town have been watching the steel vultures on the horizon in awe
wondering when they will come to devour the shield.
I sit by the window of a small room gazing at the troubling sky through the glass. I turn and
glance at Damian who’s sprawled over the bed with his arm underneath his head. I do not want to
wake him although I know he will be upset that I let him sleep for so long. He hasn’t shut eye in
twenty-four hours and that’s not going to help anyone. His breathing is shallow but he seems peaceful in his sleep.
Tobi has been in dreamland in his crib for a while now completely unaware of the doom in the
sky above.
“Tonight might be the night we are defeated,” I mutter to myself as I get in bed to cuddle with
Damian. His skin is warm and soft to the touch as I slide my hand under his shirt to feel his heartbeat.
He instinctively turns around and stretches an arm across my belly. I close my eyes and attempt
to empty my mind of my persistent thoughts for a moment. I yearn to just exist in the unconscious part of me.
I sense flashes of light through my closed eyelids. I open my eyes and turn them to the window. I
see bolts of lightning the color of oranges cut through the sky.
I gently slip away from Damian’s arms to go outside in the night of Spring Town. The drones are
still hovering in the east with their ugly bellies on full display.
Another sudden lightning flash startles me. I stop to consider what I have just witnessed. The
lightning seemed to be stemming from the ground and extend toward the sky, not the other way around
as it would make sense.
I stay silent and still, my gaze focused on the direction of the extinguished lightning. A few
moments go by before I spot another one. This one lasts longer and gives me time to follow its trail to the east.
I hurry around the dorms and past the school, I turn behind the storage rooms and cross over to
the corn field. I freeze in my tracks rubbing my eyes to make sure I’m not dreaming.
I see Ava, sweet little Ava who once thought she was special like me. The small girl stands in a
desolate field glowing in the dark with a light that seems to be coming out of her own body. She lifts her hands up to the sky, rubs them together and produces what I mistook for a lightning earlier.
In reality, Ava is producing an energy field with her bare hands. She uses the energy to
communicate with the drones or at least that’s what it seems. Every time she sends up a beam, the
drones respond with their own lights.
What a blind fool I have been. I have once again underestimated the Dark Empress and I have
empowered Ava in more than one ways. This girl is not just like me. She is more than me.
I fall to the ground with hot tears streaking down my cheeks. It’s been Ava all along. She’s the
one who tested the shield, she’s the one who switched back Torik and the others. Who knows what
else she has done. The Empress planted her spy among us in the most cunning of ways. She’s known
everything that’s been going on in Spring Town and everything that I have confided in Ava.
I think about jumping on Ava and killing her with my bare hands but that would probably end
badly. For me. No, the best thing would be to get help.
When I turn to go a thought enters my head in a flash. Zolkon and his cryptic messages to me.
You still have some tricks up your sleeve, he said. Take fate in your own hands, he wrote .
It is a long shot but I stare at my hands anyway. I try to imitate Ava, rubbing them together and
then lifting them to the sky. Nothing happens. I try again and again to no avail.
I close my eyes and concentrate on my inner strength the way I did when I wanted to order the
receptor to produce a new kind of energy. I block out all thoughts and concentrate my being on one
single point like Wudak taught me.
My right hand.
My temples start throbbing and my heart rate increases. My ears begin to ring and my eyes get
teary but I won’t give in. I repeat the word power, again and again. Then I feel a jolt go through my spine. Energy spins within my head and I get a burning ache in my hands. I open my eyes and almost
/>
let out a cry of astonishment. My hands have produced a tiny energy field not unlike the one I created with the help of my receptor.
I bring my hands closer together to better shape and direct the energy beams that get stronger and
longer as I work with them. I throw my hands up in the air and create my own frail lightning.
Ava spots my beam of light and turns around unsure. I rise slowly hiding my hands behind my
back.
She sees me and fakes a smile. I walk to her smiling back. I stand opposite her and swiftly
reveal a pulsing ball of blue energy in my hands.
Ava retreats in shock. Her eyes dart left and right as if searching for support or an ally. I lift my arms and swing them back and forth turning my energy into long blue beams.
“Surprised?” I say. “It should be nothing compared to my surprise.”
She stares at me in silence, contemplating her next move. Nothing sweet or innocent remains in
her expression.
“Cat got your tongue?” I say. “How long have you known your powers?”
She looks at me defiantly. “It’s a nice side effect for us hosts,” she says. “The aliens cannot do
this. Join us, Freya. Drink in the power.”
I raise my hands and direct my light at the drones. Ava goes pale but still seems unable to react.
The drone searchlights go from red to yellow to white and then die off.
Ava attempts to run away but I block her way throwing a sizzling flame of energy at her feet. She
understands that she has no option but to stand her ground. She lifts her hands creating a long green lightning.
I grin as I thrust my blue beams against Ava’s green lightning. Our two energies meet and
explode in the air between us turning the night into day with their powerful light force.
Pain shoots through my hands and arms like the first time I used a receptor. Even worse. Without
the buffer of the receptor, the demands on my body are even higher. I don’t know what it will cost me nor do I care.
That little snitch isn’t going anywhere tonight.
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Daphne, the fierce and beautiful young warrior, must face a new enemy: herself. A strange vision
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Coming this winter:THE RISE OF THE SAVIORS
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[scifan] plantation 04 - beyond the river of time Page 19
