I think, “We are moving faster, Sebastian!”
I open my eyes curious to see if the energy surrounding us has changed. Not a good idea; my head begins to move in a whirling motion from the force of the vortex. My head lulls from side to side,
and then jars from left to right. The pounding in my head brings a nauseating headache and I know I’m about to go under.
I think, “I feel like I’m going to pass out.”
Sebastian’s thoughts are panicked. “It is the pressure of the black hole bearing down on us. You need to make contact with Nate, let him know we are traversing. Xander hold her tighter. If she passes out, she will let go. We can’t lose her while we are traversing!”
Xander tightens his arms around me and I hear fear in Xander’s thoughts. “I won’t let you go
, Jes.”
I pinch my eyes closed and the nausea subsides a little. Think of Nate, think of Nate. My mind flips through a rolodex of Nate images; when we first met in the facility, when he saved me in the pool during training, when I thought he broke our link, when he helped us fight to get Corinna back in Florida, when he held me during and after my nightmares, training with him, kissing him. Finally, my mind holds tight on one image. I am staring into those blue, green eyes as he holds me to him. We are swaying steadily to the sound of the soft music. Incandescent, hanging lights surrounding him, the feel of my hands around his neck and his strong arms around me, feeling like he would never let me go, the scent of eucalyptus and mint; the way Nate smells. It was the night of our date. The image starts to fade and my hands begin to loosen their hold. I try and grip harder, to hold on, stay alert, but I’m slipping away.
A bellowing voice that feels inches from my face pulls me back from losing consciousness. “Jesca!”
“Nate?”
There is no response.
No! I have to tell him that we are on our way! I have to find out where they are!
Swiftly, Nate’s familiar energy is back with a force that takes my breath. It is so strong, it feels like he could be standing directly in front of me.
“I’m here
, Jes!”
I want to open my eyes, see if he is physically here, but I am afraid I will lose my chance to tell him we are here. I think quickly, “Nate, we are traversing. Where are you? We need to know how to find you!”
Nate’s voice exudes so much energy in my mind, it reverberates within my chest. “Home Jesca. When you arrive, go home.”
“Go home? What the hell are you talking about Nate? We’re coming to get you!”
Nate thinks, “No, you don’t understand! When you get here, this place, it will look like home! Marietta!”
Sebastian
’s thought come through faintly, “Jesca? Xander, she is slipping!”
T
hen Xander’s fearful thoughts, “No, no, no. I got her!”
All of a sudden, a wall of intense heat hits me in the chest and burns straight through me; suffocating me, snuffing me out.
Sebastian
I hear children laughing; Caleb and Balthazar. I want to open my eyes, but they are so heavy.
One of their small voices strikes a memory. “Daddy, come play.”
Caleb calling me to play with him.
“What time is it?” Did I just say that? No, I couldn’t have, but it sounded like something I have said before.
I feel a delicate hand on my chest and a woman’s voice answers just then, “They need you Sebastian.”
Dobria? Oh my God, it’s my wife, Dobria
! I force my eyes open wide enough to search for her, but all I see is small slivers of sunlight through a mass of golden leaves. I try to sit up on my elbows, but my head feels so heavy and the pain is so intense, I fall flat to the ground again.
The woman’s voice
is barely a whisper on the wind, “Don’t leave them like you left me Sebastian.”
Fear spikes within me as I do my best to lull my head in the direction of the whisper. I expect to see my deceased wife, but all that is there is a concrete sidewalk, vacant except for the few tumbling leaves scrapping the cement. A sharp, dull, pain pumps in time with my pulse in the middle of my forehead forcing me to close my eyes again. When it subsides, I feel stronger, like the effects of the traverse are beginning to wear off. I sit up slowly, trying to keep any spike in pain from returning. I try and concentrate on moving my eyes more so than my aching head, looking for Jesca and Xander.
Her voice comes again, still a faint whisper, “If you had been there, they would not have come for me.”
I clear the thick phlegm that has settled in my throat and find my voice. “Who came for you?”
As I scan beyond the sidewalk and into the open meadow of tall grass, I see her, my Dobria, kneeling with her hands tied behind her back. My eyes dart from the quick rise and fall of her chest, to the long rip in the sleeve of her blue dress. I remember her putting that dress on the last morning I saw her.
I look down, reflecting on the two troopers that came to our home that night. “Mr. Onoch, your wife was found not far from the lake this afternoon...it appears she was taken into the woods...there had been a struggle at the abandon car.”
The sharp clarity of her quickening breathes through the gag in her mouth jar me to look up at her. Her head has risen to meet two dark-suited men with twill hats approaching her. Rich brown ringlets are clinging to her tear-streaked face and the whimper from her concealed mouth tears me apart. I notice the dark metal in one man’s hand. No, I can’t see this! I can’t watch this! I close my eyes and hear Dobria’s faint whisper on the wind that feathers against my face, “You left me and they came. They knew about your family, your legacy. They knew what you had discovered. They had been watching.”
Dobria
’s whisper sounds panicked and her breath is coming faster now, “They had been watching, Sebastian. They were coming for you and found me.”
The gunshot’s ring invokes a series of wails from deep within me as I cradle myself with my own arms.
I’m so sorry, Dobria. I’m so sorry.
The sound of long grass being crushed under fo
ot getting closer. My sobs cease as the footsteps stop in front of me. I feel the looming weight of a presence bearing down next to me now. I open my eyes and see that I am no longer in a field. I am in a home watching a small boy sitting at a dining room table. A little girl, sister maybe, sits across from him. They are coloring. I move closer to the table cautiously. An unforgettable voice hums in my ear. Michael.
“They can’t hear you. It is a memory Sebastian, my memory.”
The two children continue to color, when a door opens and shuts quickly followed by footsteps. The children drop their crayons and run beyond me. I turn to see them latch onto a dark suited man, just as he removes his twill hat to scoop them both up in his arms. The dark suited man that took her from this earth.
This man, this father, killed my wife. Who was he?
The room flashes brightly,
and then fades into the scene of a young man and a young Balthazar shaking hands. The dark eyes against the pale skin giveaway the identity of the young man, Michael Sanderson. A young woman appears behind him, catching young Balthazar’s eyes. The woman, I have seen her in the worst of times. The image of my son cradling his dying wife and my grandson, Marcus, in his arms fills my mind. Miriam.
Mic
hael’s whispering voice deepens, “She was a traitor. She threatened my family’s legacy, got in the way. Just as your legacy passes on, so has the one my father has passed on to me. This burden spawned from your curiosity, the Copula, the traversing should have ended with you. Not your wife, not your son, not my sister, Miriam, not my nephew, nor any of the others that will suffer because of your actions. You brought this on all of us. You will be the reason for the end of mankind as we know it. The end of humanity as it was. There is no turning back now. Under my direction, my lead, our world will become strong again. The weakness humanity has cast on our world will be flushed out. A stronger, superior world will emerge.”
He is insane to believe that without humanity, our world will become superior. Our world will self-destruct.
As quickly as Michael’s heavy presence ascended upon me, it dissolves leaving me with my fear and anguish for those that have suffered and will suffer in the wake of the Onoch legacy.
Xander
I feel the tickle of her breathe along my neck when I wake; Jesca. I must have caught her fall when we landed. I open my blurry eyes and blink quickly to clear them, get them working again. I am lying flat on my back with Jesca splayed across me, her hair partially covering her face. Moving my hand to brush her hair away takes more energy than I expect; must be side effects of traversing. As soon as I lift my head to get a better look at her, a sharp pain stabs through my eyes and pulses throughout the top of my head.
Damn it, this is worse than a hangover.
I lower my head back down carefully and close my eyes. Maybe if I lay here a few minutes, the effects will start to wear off. I lie here listening to the sounds of the trees rustling in the breeze. It is hard to believe that this is a different world, a different universe. The sound of the rustling leaves softens,
and then disappears all together. When I realize the silence, I open my eyes very slowly. The trees above me are still, the sky has dimmed to dusk, and Jesca begins to stir.
She groans, I guess feeling the same effects of traversing that I felt. “Ahhh, my head.”
She rolls away from my chest and onto her back. Her breathing is heavy and slow.
“It’s the effects of traversing. It will pass. Just lay there for a bit. It took a while for my headache to pass.”
I raise my head slowly, testing my theory. There is a slight ache, but nothing like it was earlier.
Wait, how much time passed? First time I woke it was still light out. Now, it is beyond dusk.
I slide up slowly on my elbows and take in the surroundings. Lampposts and trees take turns lining a mix-master of sidewalks. I follow one sidewalk with my eyes until it dead ends into an enormous stone building.
I sit up all the way now and study the doorway, the buildings windows completely dark, except for one sole light and two figures passing before it. I remember this. I look back at the mix
-master of sidewalks. This is Jesca’s campus in Marietta. I look back at the stone building and the glowing window; Ezra’s office.
Jesca’s moan pulls my attention from the window. She is trying to sit up. “Where is Sebastian?”
I help steady her with one hand under her elbow. “I don’t know. He isn’t here.”
I look back at the building and notice the light in the window is off. I feel Jesca’s body tense under my touch and I turn back to see if she is okay. My eyes meet hers and they are filled with terror as a shining blade rests above the Copula medallion around her neck. Squatting behind her and looming over her shoulder is none other than Sam Crest. His appearance is disheveled and his dilated eyes look crazed against his almost gray skin. “Hi
, my boy. I’ve been expecting you.”
I want to lunge for him, tear him apart, but then I see the blade in his unsteady hand under Jesca’s chin and I hold still.
Sam’s chuckle is sinister. “You could have saved her, Xander. Before you ever knew who she was, when you were stalking him for me.”
Sam looks up into the trees as he thinks. “Well, for Michael, but I guess that i
s me since he took over and...never mind.” Sam shakes his head restlessly and narrows his deranged eyes back on me. He lifts his chin high in the direction beyond me, urging me to look.
I turn to follow his gaze and see Ezra walking down the front steps and away from the building, disappearing around the corner.
Sam’s trademark tsk makes me wince with hatred. “You followed him that night. You saw him enter that diner, sit with a girl, the same girl you ran into the first day you laid foot onto that campus.”
I look back at Jesca, her hands wrapped around Sam’s strong hold. Sam tightens his grip on her and grinds his teeth
. “This girl.”
Jesca grits her teeth and tries with all her might to push the knife away from her throat, but Sam is immobile.
I hadn’t figured it out until Jesca was already in danger in Florida. If I had, could all of this have been prevented? Corinna Cain being abducted and implanted and enslaved with a Sondian Copula, the wormhole being opened in Aokigahara Forest welcoming an invasion into our world, Nate and Ezra falling into the wormhole with Sam, Jesca’s life being in the hands of the man that murdered her mother and my parents.
Sam lifts Jes to her feet, blade still resting on her jugular. I stand slowly and cautiously, not wanting to provoke him into doing anything to hurt her. He pulls Jesca back against his chest and tucks his chin between her shoulder and neck. His face contorts monstrously,
and then reverts back almost immediately. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick.”
To my surprise, Jesca struggles against Sam hard enough that the blade moves from her neck and she is able to break away from him, but for only a second. Sam flips the blade in his hand, throws, and strikes Jesca in the chest.