“It’s empty. Son of a bitch! It’s empty!” she screamed. She thrust clenched fists in the air above her head in frustration. “We’ve come so far! Too far!”
I was oddly calm, and somewhat relieved by their absence. I wanted nothing more than to go home, without any more talk of the Theos. I didn’t want to think about another challenge, or the Event, or the damned portals. I was ready to toss my Gatekeeper title into the trash and start a family with Mary. It was time. We were owed at least that much.
Slate looked exhausted, his face stoic and unreadable.
I moved to be with Mary, and as I reached her, she slid to the ground, tears streaming down her pink cheeks. “They’re not here.”
I knelt on the ground beside her and kissed the top of her head, which was wet from the rain. “It’s okay. We knew there was a chance that their messages were too old, that they might be gone for good.”
“I didn’t believe that. I really thought they’d be here,” Mary said, sounding more composed with each passing second.
“Boss,” Slate said, running toward us, “what is that?” His voice was strained, and I looked up just in time to see a black mist rising from beneath the crystal floor as it poured into Mary’s mouth, then my own.
Twenty-Nine
Ohio was dull. I longed for school to start again as the dog days of summer slowed life down to a crawl. My friends were all gone on vacations, leaving me alone with nothing to do but help my dad around the house and weed the garden with my mom. She hated the way I pulled weeds, always trying to pluck them from the tops instead of digging them out from the roots.
I didn’t care either way. I just wanted to finish the chore so I could go sit behind the barn under the elm tree and finish my book. I was nose-deep into a classic science fiction book. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember the name of it, but it had robots, and aliens, and an intergalactic strife of some sort. There was even a tinge of romance, which, for a fourteen-year-old boy, was foreign and exhilarating at the same time.
My mother smiled at me, asking if I’d like something to drink. Sweat beaded on my acne-covered forehead, and I forced a smile back, saying I would. Lemonade would hit the spot. She got up, her knees creaking, and left me to bask in the heat alone, hundreds of weeds still mocking me from the vegetable garden plot. I loved my mother. I saw how hard she always worked, and it made me strive to keep up, even though I didn’t want to help. I did it without complaint, for her.
When her form was nothing but a dot against our house, I stood up and took a break. There would be plenty of time for weeding when she got back. My back was aching, and it was hot something fierce.
I closed my eyes, black dots racing in front of my eyelids. When I opened them, someone was there. Fear instantly crept into my mind, sharp daggers ran down my spine, and I nearly screamed for my mother.
Something held me back, and the black figure solidified into something from one of my books. It was shaped like me, and when I lifted my right hand, its left hand followed like a mirror.
“What are you?” I asked it.
For a moment, I expected it to copy my voice, my words, but it spoke in a deep tone. “What I am is life. Or death.”
I was still scared, but part of me knew this wasn’t real. This was a hallucination from being out in the heat too long. My father called it heatstroke, and he always warned me to stay hydrated. I looked back to see if my mother was coming, but she was still inside the house.
I looked again at the form, which moved its head in time with mine. “What do you want?”
“Are you the True?” it asked.
What an odd question. I didn’t know how to answer it. The name felt familiar. The True. I tried the name out aloud, and my tongue felt fat as I said it three times in a row. “The True.”
“Are you the True?” it asked again.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what that is. I might be, though.” My books sometimes had riddles in them, and I didn’t want to discount the possibility of adventure, even if it was just in my head. “What does the True need to do?”
“The True is all and nothing. The True will bring darkness where there is light.”
I shivered in the afternoon sun. Darkness. I saw myself in the figure mimicking my movements and felt sick. I wasn’t the True. This figure was tainted. Bad. Terrible.
Evil.
The word rolled over my mind, and I said it quietly.
“There is no evil. Just balance. You are not the True. You are too weak. Be gone.”
I fell backwards, feeling a lush tomato plant soften my fall. My vision was blurry as I lay there, the smell of dirt heavy in my nostrils. I tried to rise up, to tell the figure to leave, but it was already gone. My mother was there above me, leaning over me with concern etched across her forehead.
“Dean?” a man’s voice called, shaking me by the shoulders.
“Mom, I’m okay. It’s just heatstroke,” I said, still lying down.
“Dean, what the hell are you talking about?” Slate asked.
I blinked away my blurry eyesight and saw my big friend huddled over me.
“What happened?” I asked him, trying to remember what I’d just seen. My mother was there, and weeds. The smell of soil still lingered in my nose.
Mary was on the ground beside us, and I scrambled off my back and over to her. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing normally.
“How long was I gone?” I asked, wondering why Slate was unaffected. “Were you gone too?”
“Gone? No. The black stuff shot into you two, and you were down for just a minute before you woke,” Slate answered.
Mary’s eyes shot open and she took a deep breath, like a drowning victim fighting to get air into their lungs.
“Mary! Are you okay?” I asked.
She didn’t reply at first. She looked at me and set a warm palm to my stubbled cheek. Her eyes were watery and she gave me a sad smile before her look changed and she roughly pushed my touch aside, getting to her feet. Her movements were rigid, uncertain. The Mary that had gazed into my eyes moments ago wasn’t there.
“Mary, what is it?” I asked, stepping toward her. I walked into an invisible energy shield around her and jumped back at the jolt.
“Mary…” a voice said from her mouth. It wasn’t hers.
“Mary! Come back!” I yelled, making for her another time, but again, I was painfully reminded I couldn’t get near her. The memory of the figure standing beside me in my mom’s garden came back. Evil.
I started for her again, but Slate was there, grabbing hold of my arm. I shoved him, but he held firmly. “Boss, this isn’t her. Something stayed inside her. Let’s talk to it. Rationalize. Maybe they don’t mean any harm.”
But they did. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. They meant much harm.
“What do you want with Mary?” I yelled at it.
The Mary-thing stood only a few feet away, and I noticed the black speckles of mist floating around her whole body. “I owe you nothing.”
“You put us through hell and back, and now you’ve taken my wife? I’d say you owe me something. The Theos were supposed to be good.”
Mary’s eyes narrowed when I said the ancient race’s name. “The Theos were weak. They could have been powerful. Instead, they turned on us.”
This wasn’t a Theos. I looked around the crystal throne room, realizing we’d been duped this whole time. “It can’t be. The symbol. The ice planet. The challenges. The Theos shadow…”
It laughed, a deep throaty noise Mary had never made before. “Would anyone have played along if they knew it was for the Iskios?”
I’d never heard the name and wondered if telling it that would help or hurt my cause. I ignored the bait. “Why? To what end?”
“We’ve been here for countless cycles of this world. Hundreds of your lifetimes. But it was worth it.”
Slate stood beside me, his rifle raised. Seeing him point the weapon at Mary made me want to punch him. Instead,
I set a hand on the barrel and pushed it down. He nodded to me and relaxed his grip on the weapon.
“Worth it? How?” I was piecing together information, but also trying to stall. There had to be a way out of this.
“Mary. The challenges weren’t for the weak of heart. Only a True vessel would have made it this far. Dean,” it started, before taking a brief pause. Mary’s head tilted to the side like a curious puppy’s. “You intrigue us. Had it been you, we would have taken you. You could have been the True.”
Without hesitation, I shouted the words. “Then take me instead!”
Mary’s head went side to side slowly. “It’s too late. She is us. We are her. She is the True. Her heart beats twice.”
“To hell with that. You said I’d make a good vessel. Take me. I’m the Hero of Earth. I’m a world saver. I’m a Gatekeeper.” I was yelling, tears racing down my face. More quietly I said, “I’m the Kraski killer and barterer of planets.” Only after I spoke did I catch its phrasing. Her heart beats twice.
“Yes. We know all of this. But where you hesitate, Mary accepts and reacts. She is stronger than you. She is the True. She also holds a spawn. This is a pleasant surprise.”
Everything went numb. She was pregnant. We were going to have a family. It all came crashing in on my thoughts when I looked at her, knowing she wasn’t in control. “You lie. She’s not.”
“I need not explain anything to you. I know truths. Be gone.”
Slate stepped between us. “Boss, I don’t think this is going the way you want it to. We need to pivot.” He turned to it. “Where are the Theos?”
Mary’s lips curled back in disgust. “They lie waiting as well. In order to seal us away, they sacrificed much. The universe has two sides to it. Opposing forces. We are those forces.”
My hand was shaking, seeing Mary speaking those words in a stranger’s voice. “The yin and yang. The black and white,” I whispered. Mary was pregnant. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg it to take me instead.
It laughed again, louder than last time. “Yes, indeed. We do not have time for you anymore. There is much to do. The Unwinding is upon us.”
“What’s the Unwinding?” I asked, feeling like the end was near. I needed to know, either way.
“You won’t find out.” Mary had turned her back to us. I walked forward, feeling the energy field against my outstretched hand.
“Mary, don’t do this. You can fight them. It’s right. You are strong. We can have our family now. You’re stronger than I’d ever be,” I pleaded.
Slate looked at me with grim determination. He was ready to fight but knew it would do no good. I wanted to tell him to run, to save himself, but he wouldn’t leave my side.
Mary lifted a hand. Black energy flickered at her fingertips like dark lightning. She was still turned away, straight-backed and still. Slate stepped in between us, resolved to protect me even now.
A pulse blast echoed through the room, and a crystal shard the size of a person fell from the ceiling, shattering right beside Mary. She stumbled out of the way and fell to the ground. I looked back to the entrance we’d come in, and two insectoid aliens stood there, guns raised.
“The Iskios cannot be freed!” one of them said through a translator and fired a volley of shots at the ceiling again.
Mary, from her seated position, waved her hand toward them. Black mist shot like a bullet across the open room, striking each of them in the chest. Dark webs slowly covered their bodies, and with a pop, they were both gone. No sign of them remained.
Crystal chunks fell from the ceiling, breaching the barrier of energy set by the Iskios. The crystals. Of course. They held power, much like the green ones we’d used to avoid being pulled from Earth by the Kraski beams.
As the rocks continued to fall from above, Mary was being covered in them. I ran to her, expecting the shield to stop me, but it didn’t. I tossed large shards of broken gemstones to the side, trying to find my wife under the rubble. Slate came to help; eventually, we worked through the pile and found her chest, then face. It was red with blood, and her eyes blinked open to see me.
“Dean?” she asked.
“Mary! We’re going to get you out!” Her body was still covered in crystals, battered and broken by the fallen rocks.
“Dean, I can’t fight them. I love you.”
I touched her face, seeing her eyes start to mist up with black speckles. “I love you too.”
Her hand shot up from beneath the broken blue stones. “I send you home!” she screamed in defiance to the Iskios, and I felt a tugging at my being. I was being pulled away from her, Slate beside me.
“Mary!” I yelled, but it was too late. I saw the crystals flowing away from her body and saw her stand, her broken body mending itself. She looked at us with cold, calculating eyes as we flew away, up and into the ceiling. We weren’t solid. I tried to talk to Slate, to yell for him, but nothing came out.
Everything turned to darkness.
Thirty
“Dean, you need to eat something,” someone said. I didn’t know who it was anymore. The voices of concern were jumbling through my head after I’d holed up in my bedroom for over a day. Or was it two now? I didn’t know. Slate and I had appeared on New Spero, on my front lawn, with no recollection of how we got there. At first, I’d only intended to isolate myself in order to come up with a plan, but the longer I lay there, the harder I found it to move.
“Boss, if you don’t come out, I’m going to break the door down and drag you out here. It’s been two days, and we need to focus,” Slate said. I thought about calling his bluff, but he was right.
But the pain of it all was too much to bear. Mary was gone, with our child inside her. I rolled over, pulling the blankets off my head. I was on Mary’s pillow, and I could still smell her honey and lemon shampoo on the pillowcase.
The room was musty and dark, and the first thing I did was pull back the black curtains to see what time it was. The sun was high and bright. Mid-morning on New Spero. Seeing the lush green grass and foliage out back was enough to get me to open the door. It was high time to stop hiding from the fact that Mary had been taken by some evil Iskios bastards, and time to do something about it.
The door opened. Magnus, Natalia, Slate, my sister Isabelle, and her husband James were all there. Worried looks spread over them all, and Isabelle ran to me, wrapping her arms around me, giving me comfort the way only family could. Slate was cleaned up, shaved, and wearing casual clothing. It looked strange on him after our last week of EVAs and adventures.
A dog barked, then another, and Carey was rubbing his head into my shins before making way for Maggie and the others to jump up on me and bark their hellos. I choked back a response and knelt to the ground, petting the dogs, feeling grateful for their love and affection as they licked and played with me.
“I’m so sorry, Dean,” Isabelle said.
“Buddy, we’ll figure this out. Mark my word. We’ll find her, and we’ll bring her back home.” Magnus’ hand squeezed my left shoulder.
I wiped my hand over my face, feeling a week or so’s worth of stubble growing out. I needed a shower, and food. I needed Mary.
“Damn right we will.” I smelled food from the kitchen and saw a cooling pile of pancakes on the table. Dirty plates lingered around the space.
“Eat something,” Natalia said. For the first time, I noticed she wasn’t pregnant any longer.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked her.
She nodded and smiled, despite the somber mood of the room. With loss, there was life, only Mary wasn’t lost yet. She was far from it.
“Patrice. Her name is Patty,” Natalia said, tears forming in her eyes.
“It’s perfect. I can’t wait to meet her.” I slunk to the table, grabbed a plate, and set to eating a couple of cold syrup-drenched pancakes while the others discussed our next course of action.
“We don’t know where the planet is, but we know who does,” Slate said.
“Who
?” Magnus asked.
“The insectoids. They surprised us twice and were hell-bent on stopping us from releasing the Iskios. They’re the key to this,” Slate said, cracking his knuckles.
“How do we find them?” James asked, and I gave my old friend a weak grin. It felt like two worlds colliding, having him sitting around discussing our insane adventures and current predicament.
“James, imagine if our twenty-five-year-old selves could see us now,” I cut in. “Slate’s right, and we find them on the hybrids’ world. We’ve seen their kind there twice. Leslie and Terrance will be able to help us.”
“Will they, though?” Nat asked.
I thought about it and decided I wasn’t sure. But I had to put on a strong face. “They will.” One way or another. Nothing was going to come between me and finding my wife. Nothing.
“When do we go?” Magnus asked.
I shoved the last bite of pancake in my mouth and chewed slowly. “We go tomorrow. First, I need to see someone.” The period alone in my room had been good for me. I’d had a lot of time to soak in my new reality and to decide my course of action.
“Who?” Slate asked.
“Sarlun. He has to know more than he was letting on. The Gatekeepers have been keeping secrets.”
____________
Mary stood atop the crystal pyramid. It wasn’t a throne, like Dean had suggested; it was a graveyard. The whole world marked the Iskios’ burial grounds. Those arrogant Theos thought they could sacrifice themselves and save the universe. Little did they know the Iskios would never let that happen. They’d set a plan in motion to find a physical vessel, like the ones stripped from them by their enemies.
Millions of bodies were buried on Lainna, the crystal world; only then, it was a near-dead world, with little atmosphere or gravity. The energy of the Iskios had created what was here now, the stones emerging from the fallen Iskios. Mary was impressed and proud of the outcome. Lainna was where their journey had begun millennia ago, and the Theos had thought it was where their legacy would end. But they were so wrong.
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 85
