Authors: Adrian Howell
I wanted to plug my ears. Dr. Greene even had the nerve to warn us that if Alia woke at all, not only would she need extensive rehabilitation, but there was a good chance she would be severely mentally handicapped for the rest of her life. And that was
if
she woke, which, now that more than two weeks had passed without her so much as twitching, he claimed was highly unlikely. The stupid physician never had anything good to say, so why couldn’t he just leave us alone?
Even when I wasn’t meditating, I often wasn’t in the mood for talking with anyone. Not even with Candace, who meant well but didn’t share my faith in Alia’s resilience as much as I wanted her to. She suggested that if Alia didn’t show any change by her upcoming twelfth birthday, we should take Dr. Greene’s advice and start looking for long-term care options.
We had a very loud argument, and after that, Candace spent more time out of the room. Though she still came in to wash and change Alia, sometimes she refused to meet my eyes. I knew that she and the others were talking behind my back. I was furious that they suspected Alia was lost.
I don’t know how everyone else was spending their time in Dr. Hanson’s house. I hardly ever left my sister’s side. Candace brought my meals up for me so that we could eat with Alia, but I usually left more than half of my plate untouched. It wasn’t just the lack of physical activity that was killing my appetite. Though I still couldn’t bear to face it, I too had begun to fear that there just might be a grain of truth to Dr. Greene’s prognosis, and that my sister was now well beyond the possibility of any meaningful recovery.
More days passed. I desperately wanted to stop counting, but I couldn’t.
“Why are you so eager to bury her?” I asked brusquely when Ed Regis suggested to me that we start planning our next move.
“I’m not,” insisted Ed Regis. “But we can’t stay here much longer, Adrian. James and Terry are dead. The Resistance is gone. Scott still hasn’t gotten anything from the Council. If we’re going to find the Royal Gate, then we need to get moving again. Candace has already agreed to take care of Alia for as long as it takes until she recovers.”
“You had no right to ask her that!” I said crossly. “Alia doesn’t need long-term care. She’ll wake up and she’ll come with us when we leave!”
“We can’t hide her here forever.”
“You handle the preparations, Ed Regis,” I said, turning away from him and looking down at my sister’s sleeping face. “Alia will be up by her birthday.”
March was halfway over already, and there was only a week left now till Alia’s finding day. She had to wake up before that.
I heard Candace’s footsteps enter the room, but I didn’t turn around.
“I know what you’re going to say, Candace,” I said hoarsely, “so please don’t say it.”
Candace gently touched my right arm. “I’m worried about her too, Adrian.”
“She can be like this sometimes,” I said, blinking back my tears. “She just needs a little time, that’s all. She just needs some time.”
“It’s been four weeks,” Candace reminded me. “She hasn’t gotten any better.”
“She healed herself, didn’t she?!” I snapped, wiping my eyes. “She’ll wake by her birthday. I promise she will. One more week. She’ll wake up.”
“Alright, Adrian,” Ed Regis said with a resigned sigh. “I’ll handle the preparations for our departure. One more week.”
“And make sure you pack for three!”
“I will.”
They left me alone, and I continued to sit, watch, listen and meditate. As the days crawled by, I heard the sounds of the coming spring from the window, but not one telepathic murmur in my mind. And with each passing stroke of midnight, as the 24th of March approached, I felt as if I was counting the days to my own execution, or worse, to Alia’s.
When the day came, I sat by her bed from dawn to dusk, still waiting, still unable to stop believing.
“You are my family, Alia,” I whispered to her as the sunlight faded. “You are my sister, my daughter, my protector and my friend. Please come back. Please don’t leave me like this.”
After dinner, Candace insisted on feeding Alia’s tube with the liquid equivalent of a slice of birthday cake.
“You should have some too,” she said, offering me a real slice from the chocolate cake that she and Scott had baked.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You never eat enough, Adrian,” said Candace. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”
“I said I’m not hungry.”
The lights seemed dimmer in the room. The whole world felt colder. I felt like I was surrounded by shadows flickering about me. And Candace’s cake was the one, horrible, inescapable reminder that my sister had now been unconscious for more than a month, and that Dr. Greene and everyone else was right. Alia wasn’t recovering at all. She was slipping deeper into her coma.
Candace put the cake down and said carefully, “Mr. Regis said he wanted to get out of here in a few more days if possible.”
I remained silent, still watching Alia’s face for signs of movement. There were still a few hours left to our arbitrary deadline. She could still wake up.
Candace continued, “Scott says we can relocate to one of the Guardian outposts far from Lumina. Alia will be safe there. I promise we’ll take good care of her.”
“She’s alive,” I said. “She’s alive and I’m taking her with me.”
“She’s alive,” Candace agreed quietly.
“Don’t, Candace.”
“Adrian… You know she’s not coming back.”
“No!” I hollered, jumping up from my chair. “You don’t say that!”
I lost control of my power, putting a long crack in the ceiling above Alia’s bed. Candace tried to take my hand but I snatched it away.
She gave me an injured look and said, “Please, Adrian. I know it hurts.”
“Get out!” I bellowed, turning away from her. “Just get out!”
“It’s alright, Candace,” I heard Ed Regis say quietly behind me. “Just let him be.”
Soon I was alone in the room. But the shadows around me were larger now, dancing in front of the light, growing ever heavier in the pit of my soul. As I continued to look down at Alia’s peaceful expression, I realized that the shadows, the darkness… all of it was my own doing.
The time for self-deception was finally over.
Candace was right: I did know that Alia wasn’t coming back. I had known for weeks now. All these years, I had tried so hard to be Alia’s guardian angel, just as she had always been mine, but now it was over.
Ever since the gathering of lesser gods, I had slowly learned to accept my sister as a soldier, not all that different from Terry or James. Alia was the youngest-ever Honorary Guardian Knight. I had complete confidence in her courage and strength.
But that was never who she was to me, and I wasn’t at all prepared to deal with the reality of losing her like this.
For all the risks I had watched her take, from our raid on the towboat to her blood running in Lumina, I could never once bring myself to imagine how I would feel if she really were to be killed in combat. From the day I met her and even now, my mind just couldn’t cope with the idea of her death, and so I had managed to trick myself into believing that it couldn’t happen, that somehow the rules of this war didn’t apply to my sister. That she would always be there, even long after I died.
But Alia had gone first.
And in a way, what happened to my sister was even worse than being killed in combat. At least James and Terry had ended their lives with dignity. Alia was bound to a bed, a plastic tube shoved into her slowly decaying body, unable to wake, unable to die. As if it wasn’t enough that she had lived so much of her life in terrible pain, now her end would be the same. It would have been much more merciful if she had been killed instantly.
But nobody is destined to live or die. That was the one lesson I had learned over and over in my years as a psionic. It was the one lesson I knew best.
Friend or foe hardly made a difference anymore.
This war had claimed so many lives.
Guardian Knights and Angel Seraphim…
Innocent bystanders…
My mother and my father.
Dr. Kellogg…
Dr. Otis and Dr. Denman.
Riles… Gabriel…
Mr. Watson. Mr. Barnum…
Grace. Charles. Growler. Mr. Simms.
Laila Brown.
Ralph P. Henderson. Queen Larissa Divine…
Peter. Max. Felicity. Steven. Merlin…
Ms. Decker. James. Willow and her baby. Raider. Terry…
Alia.
The lights were still on, but the room was pitch-black. I could see nothing but the endless shadows of all the people I had killed and all the people I had watched die.
And here, at last, on the far side of darkness, my paradox was solved.
Here, on the far side of darkness, I had found the one road that I could still take.
Because the girl that lay on the bed that I could no longer see, lost from this world, wasn’t just my sister. She was all that was left of my pathetic excuse for a heart. Now I was free to finish this in my own way.
Adrian Howell.
Cat.
I nodded slowly and smiled to myself. A grim but satisfied smile. Anyone seeing me smile under these circumstances would probably conclude without doubt that I had gone insane, but nevertheless I couldn’t help smiling. Just this once, I would choose my own fate.
I heard the door open behind me.
“Adrian?” whispered Ed Regis.
“Yeah?”
“It’s past midnight.”
“I know,” I replied emptily. “Everything is dark.”
“I think you should get some sleep.”
Stepping up to the bed, Ed Regis looked down at Alia’s motionless form.
“She’s dead,” I told him. “She died in the car.”
“I know that,” Ed Regis said softly. After a moment of silence, he asked hesitantly, “Were you crying, Adrian?”
I slowly shook my head. Then I looked up at him. “Major Regis?”
“Yes?”
“No more rules.”
Chapter 17: Opening the Gate
As the colorless, nearly full moon disappeared behind a veil of thin clouds, Ed Regis eased our rented jet-black two-door sedan into a dirty alleyway between two old redbrick apartment buildings. He put the gear into park, but kept the engine running.
I looked down at the silver chains around my wrists and breathed slowly.
Ed Regis looked down at his chains too. “This is it,” he said quietly. “They should be here soon.”
I didn’t reply. As I sat silently in my seat, I found my right hand fingering the pendant around my neck, gently stroking the tiny horn protruding from the little horse’s head.
“Last chance, Adrian,” said Ed Regis. “There’s no turning back after this.”
I let go of my sister’s unicorn pendant and scoffed. “What makes you think I want to turn back?”
“We should probably wait outside,” said Ed Regis, “where they can see us.”
But still he didn’t cut the engine.
We sat in the car, waiting.
It had been just over two weeks since Ed Regis and I left Dr. Hanson’s house, and I was glad that the journey was finally over.
On the morning after Alia’s finding day, when I had explained to Ed Regis my plan, he listened with a cautious frown, and when I was done, he asked, “Are you sure that’s how you want your life to end, Adrian?”
“It’s not about what I want,” I replied quietly, “but yes. Everybody ends someday, and this still might be a better end than others.”
Ed Regis said cautiously, “If we do this, we’re going to need help from someone outside of the psionic factions.”
I agreed. There were too many Angel spies in the Guardian network, and too much at risk. But I had an answer for that too: Terry’s answer. After all, no one can keep secrets like the faithful.
“The God-slayers will help us,” I said confidently. “There’s no one else left, anyway.”
Ed Regis wasn’t as certain, but he didn’t argue. He told me that we could leave at any time.
“Today, then,” I said. “I’m tired of being patient.”
Leaving me in Alia’s room, Ed Regis went to speak with Scott and Dr. Hanson. Candace came up to deliver my breakfast and tube-feed Alia.
“I’m sorry I was so horrible to you, Candace,” I said.
Candace just shook her head sadly.
“I’m leaving with Ed Regis today,” I told her. “We still need to find the Royal Gate and stop King Divine.”
“I’ll take good care of Alia,” promised Candace. “We’ll find a quiet place.”
“I know you will,” I said.
“I love you, Adrian,” she said. Putting her arms around me, she whispered into my ear, “But I know you’re keeping something from me. Are you sure you don’t want to share it?”
“I love you too, Candace,” I said. “But this is something I have to keep.”
“You sound like you’re not coming back.”
I didn’t want to lie, so I said nothing.
As we held each other, Candace let out a quiet sob and said, “You should at least leave her a letter, Adrian. In case she wakes up.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in miracles.”
We broke apart, and I looked down at Alia’s bed. My eyes moved slowly from my sister’s peaceful face to her unicorn pendant still hanging from the bedpost.
After an awkward silence, I took a deep breath and said, “There’s something else I need to ask of you, Candace.” I closed my eyes for a moment, and then added, “Something horrible.”
Candace didn’t reply, but she probably already suspected what I was about to ask her to do. I figured that I should just go ahead and say it.
“Half a year,” I said. “Give her half a year, and then let her die.”
“Adrian, no.”
“And when she’s dead,” I said, speaking quickly to get it all out, “destroy the body. Burn it. Leave nothing behind, not even the bones. If I succeed in killing the Angel king, the balance of power will eventually return, and so will the Wolves. Alia is the greatest healer who ever lived. I don’t want anyone finding her again.”
Candace looked at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.
Taking another deep breath to steady my trembling voice, I said, “Promise me, Candace. Please. She’s been through enough already.”