Sebastian looks at Jake who is moving in closer to me now. I have to try and connect with Nate, Xander, or Ezra. I look down and focus on the ground and open my mind to them. “Nate! Xander! Ezra!”
As soon as I release my thought, it evaporates, vanishes.
No connection.
No receiver.
No link.
I look up at Monica and make a move toward her. “What did you do?”
Elisha backs away with Nick as Jake moves in, blocking my advances. “Jesca, that is enough!”
Sebastian’s stern voice pipes in, “She did what any of us would have done. We were dying! She implanted us with the modified Copula to save us, Jesca! The chance of survival, adaptation, she couldn’t control all the variables of the implantation.”
Oh no. No, no, no. Did they die? Is that why they aren’t telling me what is going on?
I bend over, ready to throw up. I gag, but nothing comes up. My gag quickly turns into an audible quivering inhale and sob.
Monica comes closer to me, her hand back in her pocket
. No! It is not possible. They are strong. If I can adapt and survive, they can too! Ezra is the strongest man I know! Nate and Xander too! I see their faces in my mind and shake my head knowing that they aren’t gone! They can’t be!
Recklessly, I rush Jake, knocking him off balance, then shove Monica out of the way catching her off guard.
Sebastian yells after me as I breakaway from the room, but I don’t hear his words. I can only think of getting to them; Ezra, Nate, Xander. I dash from one corridor to another along the hall. None of them give as I jiggle the handles.
The clamoring of feet on tile makes me move faster and I yell out as I move faster from door to door, not wanting to risk them stopping me. “I’m not running away! I just need to find them!” I turn and move more quickly. “Ezra, Nate, Xander!”
I round the corner with Monica, Jake, Siobhan, and Sebastian flanking me. Jake reaches out and grabs hold of my arm. Expecting it, I pull away from his grasp and stumble backward. I gain control of my footing, but run right into a notable mass, stopping me in my tracks; Xander. I grab
hold of his dark, grey Henley, wringing it between my fists not wanting the others to pull me from him. Breathlessly, I whisper, “You are alive.”
Xander looks up at the others behind me, then back down at me with concern written all over his face. He pulls me into his chest. Even though the questionability of his reaction is stirring in my mind, I just want to feel that he is really here, with me and that they aren’t going to take me away from him, so I surrender to his warm embrace.
I whisper, “Where is Ezra and Nate? Please tell me.”
No one speaks.
I pull my head up and look at him, waiting for my answer. For the first time since we met, Xander’s vibrant hazel eyes, have become pale, dim. He looks down the hall, working his jaw, then back at me, the rims of his eyes giving away his emotions. My strength deceives me when my voice gives around my words, “Are they dead?”
Xander shifts his body, making me aware of the door he is blocking. The door he just exited from. Ezra or Nate, one or both of them have to be in there.
I try and pull away from him, but his grip holds me in place. He looks over me toward Monica and shakes his head. “You didn’t tell her yet?”
His words, solidifying that I needed into that room, trigger me into action. I take my anger, my sorrow and focus on the door just beyond Xander. Everything in the observable space around me, the walls, the hallway, the doors, Xander begin to blur and fragment into a heavy, thick dust. In a split second, the dust is clearing, defragmenting, and I am standing in the room facing the door. The door knob turns, but I am on it quicker, locking it and keeping them out. If they really want in, they could jump and astral project too. I wait to see if any of them do, but they don’t. They must realize that it is too late to try and stop me now. I look at the door for a minute, wondering what I will see when I turn and look at the room. Will it be Nate or my father?
I pinch my eyes closed and breathe in deeply. I turn around, eyes still closed, and lean against the door. I slowly open them and see my father lying on a gurney, covered up to his neck with a white, stiff sheet. My eyes move down to where the sheet rests on his chest. I can’t breathe until I see that he can. The sheet rises and falls slowly and I exhale a wavering breath.
His face is so stoic, yet peaceful; like a statue. I don’t realize that I have moved closer to him, but I am standing by his side now, studying his regal features. My mind wanders to Nate. I look around the spacious, white room. He isn’t here. He must be in another room.
Ezra clearing his throat pulls my attention back to him I squat down next to the bed and I touch his shoulder to let him know I am here.
“Hey you.”
He blinks his eyes open and turns his head, wincing a little. I suck in a hissing breath, “Be careful there, old man.”
His face softens, closes his eyes and raises his eye brows in Ezra fashion. “Old man, huh? What’s your excuse?”
The Ezra humor cannot be held down.
He coughs a little and clears his throat again. I squeeze his shoulder. “Rest, alright?”
He nods, opens his eyes and says. “It is happening.” He looks at me. “We are evolving, adapting, and surviving.”
His honey brown eyes wait for my response, my reaction. I nod slowly. “Yes, for now.”
His eyes come to life suddenly and intensify. “Spoken like a guardian.”
I scoff, trying
to make light of his compliment, “Spoken like an Ezra clone.”
Ezra looks away and up at the ceiling, groans and sighs audibly. It makes me smile.
He looks back at me, serious now. “No. You are more, Jesca.”
My smile fades away as I think of Nate, holding me, healing me beyond the veil.
“If I was more, I wouldn’t have needed saving beyond the veil. I could have sealed it.”
Ezra closed his eyes, feeling the weight of what I was really saying. “We may be evolving and adapting, but we are not invincible. None of us are. We all need saving every once and a while
, love.”
I hear the rattle of the door knob and stand quickly, just as Monica appears in the doorway. She eyes my clenching fists and puts her hands up in the air, making it obvious she isn’t going to stick me. “No syringe, promise.”
She closes the door behind her and steps into the room only a few steps, arms crossed in front of her chest and cautiously approaching. “He is right. We all need saving sometimes, even the strongest of us.”
She looks down at Ezra, then back at me, continuing her approach across the room. I walk around to the other side of Ezra’s bed, forming a solid distance between Monica and I. Monica continues, “If Xander hadn’t responded as quickly to the modified Copula, he wouldn’t have been able to save Ezra.”
Xander saved my father? I look down at Ezra for validation. Ezra clears his throat, “My body was rejecting the Copula. We think it was because I was wounded beyond the veil, but aren’t sure. Xander gave me his energy freely.”
I think of the energy Nate shared with me beyond the veil and the energy Xander, Nate, and I shared here when we arrived back on Earth. Xander made it. Did Nate use all of his energy?
I pinch my eyes closed and wring my hands together. “I can’t feel him. Why do I not feel our connection?”
I open my eyes and the tears fall as I look down at Ezra first, then to Monica. “Did Nate die trying to save us when we got back? Is that why I can’t feel his presence?”
Ezra’s eyes stay steady on mine. “Nate is alive, You and Nate, Nate and Xander...you are no longer bound by a manufactured link. No one is. ”
What? I stare at him for a minute. How is that possible? After everything that Nate, Xander, and I have been through together, using our links to save one another, rescue one another, now it is just gone? Why?
Monica cuts in, “We knew there would be a chance that the link would not transfer simply because of the modifications we had to make to the Copula. Six months ago, the environment changed drastically. Levels of helium shot through the roof and other element levels increased comparably. We were scrambling here and back in the US to get the modifications complete and out to all of the guardians and the expanding fellowship. With us being the enemy now, the resistance, coding links between guardians was not a modification we had the luxury, or time, of working on. We still don’t. We are a fellowship working together, but the evolution has changed us, it is now each man for his self when it comes to survival.”
We are a team, but we are alon
e in this. I think of Angela. “Is that why Angela died? Because no one could link with her to save her? She died alone.”
Monica says defensively, “She walked into a swarm of Sondians with explosives attached to her body! She did not look to be saved
, Jesca. She did it to save us!”
I choke back the cry within me, the cry I want to release for Angela’s selfless bravery.
Ezra says, “The link, it was just a fabricated bond, Jes.”
I look at Ezra, he closes his brown eyes briefly, then reopens them. “When the spirit, the soul within you bonds with another, that connection can never be broken, in life
or death. Angela was not alone.”
His expression, his words, are brimming with the insinuation of the bond my mother Anna and he shared. The kinship Xander and Nate have developed. My bond with each of them and how it will change. How I will need to make a choice between the two of them.
I cover my face with my hands and rub my eyes, not wanting to cross that bridge until I have to.
Change the subject, Jes.
“Where is Sam?”
Monica, “Yes, he has undergone re-implantation. He is in and out of consciousness. Corinna is guarding him like a lioness, worried that one of us will kill him the first chance we get.”
Monica grits her teeth. Ezra breaks in, “He is not the man he was before ascending the veil, Monica.”
The next qu
estion is one I am careful with, “What about Anna?”
Ezra slowly shakes his head from side to side, his lower lip quivering. “I can’t feel her near.”
She had to have gotten out. “Well if Michael did, then she did!” I walk the length of the room, thinking. “How many days have we been back?”
Monica responds, “Twenty-four
hours, why?”
I turn and walk back. “He is going to Georgia. In the other universe, I had a premonition. I saw the Etowah Mounds and three stars above the highest mound off in the horizon; Orion’s belt. Michael saw it too. That is where he is going.”
Hearing the door knob turn, I pivot around. Sebastian slips in and closes the door behind him quickly. He looks up at me briefly, then down at Ezra. He doesn’t speak, he just walks quietly over to Ezra and rests his hand on his shoulder. Ezra places his hand on top of Sebastian’s and squeezes.
Sebastian
says, “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Ezra
replied, “As are you, old friend.”
Sebastian looks at me suddenly
as I watch their interaction. “Jesca, truth lies in the illusions. What I saw over there, beyond the veil, it was truth. Truth that is resurfacing because it is the only way to save what is left of our world, our humanity.”
His words release a deluge of reflections.
The conversation beyond the veil; our ancestry, our roots in Georgia, the Etowah mound and link with Orion’s Belt. Sebastian calling Michael Sanderson’s father, a murderer.
Ezra interrupts my reasoning,
“Sebastian, what’s going on?” Ezra looks shocked, something I’m not accustomed to seeing. H
ow could he not know? Unless Sebastian withheld the truth about my lineage.
My eyes meet Sebastian’s.
“Wait, you never told Ezra? Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
For years, Sebastian had Ezra guarding and protecting those mounds without telling him the deeper reasons. That the mound held the possible salvation of our world.
Ezra hisses between his teeth, “Tell me what?”
Eyes focused on me, Sebastian shakes his head slowly from side to side. “I never told any of them.”
My mind begins slipping away.
Sebastian
replies, “It was for their own protection.”
Slipping further.
Sebastian continues, “I didn’t expect Michael to make it back. I thought this battle between our fellowships would end beyond the veil with his death. This battle between our lineages would have been over.”
Slipping into detachment.
Sebastian went on, “Now, the legacy our fellowships has been masking must become transparent to save us all.”
The departure of my emotions.
Sebastian explains, “In order to save us, we must transcend the legacy.”
I’ve heard of disasso
ciation before, removal of oneself from a situation or series of events for self-preservation; to avoid the trauma.
Ezra throws the sheet from his body and bolts upright. Sebastian and Monica jump back from Ezra, but I remain unmoved. I watch Ezra advance, “Damn it Sebastian, tell me what is going on!”