In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (44 page)

Cole
runs toward Julio, and Julio runs toward Cole. Cole suddenly stops, Julio doesn’t.
He can feel them now, out there watching him as he power leaves him.

The
stars.

He
hopes they can feel his anger.

Cole’s
arm is in the air, a single sphere, his last ounce of power, hovers in it.

He
screams.

---

“Hit
it now!” Wilker yells. The ticker in the cockpit passes twenty five million.
Noata slams his eyes shut.

“I’m
sorry everyone.” Noata hits the button.

Hundreds
of small blotch like circles appear on the paint of the Starkiller. Hundreds of
sun-like spheres appear over the circles and erupt off and over the city. They
expand to twenty times their original size and hail on both sides of the
Skyeater.

---

Time
slows for Cole, he powers everything he has into his final sphere. All his
power, all his anger, all his hate, disgust, all his fucking problems and with
all the love he’s ever had. He screams as he grows bluer.

All
his last happiness, agitation, desire, joy, sadness, emptiness, all his anger
of the world is pouring out of him, and all the despair and the last and only ounce
of hope he’s ever has in this world.

Cole
screams so hard it pierces the air as if he’s going to break himself and a part
of reality apart. Julio speeds forward.

In
the one second before he hits, Cole’s world blows away. He’s covered in
darkness and small shimmers of light.

He’s
surrounded by the stars.

But
hardly surrounded as they are only dots on the black. So fucking distant but
the closet he’s ever been to anything. He can feel their warmth in his bones,
in every ounce of his body and skin, just small tingles of power, laughing at
him, giving him a taste he cannot fulfill.

He
wants their power, he needs their power, to fight, to change reality itself, he
needs to.
Why do they get to be so distant from us, so far away, yet close
enough for him to see and feel? What gives them the right to avoid our
problems, laughing in the night sky, why do they get to shimmer without worry?

Why?

A
tear falls from Cole’s eye.

They
don’t. 

That
right is mine and mine alone to command. It is my power.

I
speak to the stars, I command them,
their
power is
mine. They will feel my worry, they will feel our pain, the anguish of my
world, the worries of my humanity, and the pain of our lives.

They
will be worriless no more.

The
stars are mine.

The
twinkles get bigger as Cole reaches out in anger, pulling apart reality itself,
his eyes become cloudy with tears as he pulls them in anger.

He
will not be alone anymore.

The
twinkles turn into sparkles, the sparkles into shimmers, the shimmers turn into
spheres. The spheres get bigger and bigger.

All
the stars converge onto him. They get big enough to encompass the darkness. The
darkness he was running away from. He has nothing to be afraid of anymore.

He
commanded.

And
they came.

The
stars engulf him until he only sees white.

He
can control the stars.

He
blinks, he’s back in reality. The sphere he holds grows ten times as big, it
spins faster and faster, tearing against the wind, breaking through reality,
blaring like a siren.

Cole’s
arm starts to tear, he screams, the power is immense.

Leif
jumps up, shock on his face. Cole looks at Julio, time has seemed to slow
around him. His power warping time itself. His arm is pulled into the sphere,
getting torn apart from reality.

No
.

He
screams again.

It
doesn’t control him.

He
controls it.

Cole
breaks past the limitations of reality.

Two-ten
foot long energy wings burst out of Cole’s back. The wings of an agitated
angel.

“No!”
Leif yells.

It’s
impossible!

Cole’s
skin appears whole again, glowing gold. The wings are what keeps him in this
world. Leif flies toward Cole. Cole screams as he swings down on Julio’s head.

The
sphere drills into Julio. It rips through his body and into the floor. As it
hits the floor, reality seems to come apart. The color explodes back, ripped
from reality itself, until only blackness is left as the sphere explodes
through the floor.

---

Spheres
explode and rain over the city, screams and yells are heard all over. The top
halve of the Skyeater cracks and explodes, the gravity and stability of the
star suddenly disappears. It hails past the star and falls onto the other side.
Millions of Serephins rain down.

The
star shudder, like a skip in reality, the bottom cracks open. Thora falls out
and Cole falls after her. His wings are gone, his skin is translucent again,
his sudden burst of disgusting energy gone.

His
time on this plane of existence is short, next is death. He has only seconds
left.

But
as soon as he transformed back to his lesser self, he remembered everything. He
remembered the thoughts that Jahum constructed in his mind.

The
lies.

He
never wanted to live, all his reasoning was a fabrication, the points in his
life that he held onto.

His
life was real, but the points he clung to
to
move
forward were not. Thora reaches for him.

Thora
was that point. He reaches out besides his current self.

It’s
not his current self that reaches out, it’s a twenty year older self, their
minds meld together, as his body leaves, another tries to take its place.

He
remembers like it happened just the day before, even though it’s happening this
very moment.

Cole
is just a blur, losing his form, trying to catch her.

The
feeling of power was great.

Thora
reaches for him as they slowly close the gap.

He
missed the thrill of the wind caressing his body, splitting apart the clouds as
he flies at ten times the speeds of sound.

The
Skyeater and the world explodes around them. The height of Serephin might
coming down around them.

His
memories are crashing down on him. He’s seeing the past, present and twenty
years in the future.

Twenty
years of darkness. He tries to pull his mind back to the present. As the cold
hard ground quickly approaches.

He
remembers the curiosity of being able to do what no regular man could.

But
then he remembers the past. A point when he truly felt safe, without worry,
without fear.

His
death.

He
was a sleep with the stars, the universe, until something pulled him back.

Thora
is only a few stories from the ground. His hand encompasses hers. She smiles a sign
of relief, happiness.

Jahum
pulled him from the sleep he wanted, from his equilibrium. He can feel the
eternal sleep pulling him back, his power gone, he can barely grasp Thora’s
hand.

He’s
tired.

Of
everything.

Cole
closes his eyes as this world leaves him too weak to open them. His form near
impossible to see. He needs to sleep, forever, death.

The
only reason he’s here is because Jahum created a reason. The reason was Thora.

Thora.

Maybe…

If…

As
he fades from the world so does his thoughts.

Maybe…if
she dies…

I
can finally rest again…Sleep forever…

Then
I won’t…be…alone…anymore…

With
the last of his energy, he opens his eyes and looks into hers.

Sorry…Thora…

He
pulls back his hand from her grasp. She opens her mouth to yell as she hits the
ground.

The
bottom of the Skyeater cracks open. Chunks of the red crystal sky rain down
over the Atlantic Ocean.

Thora
falls from the cracks, still alive. She still reaches up for the thing that’s
not there.

Cole.

Past
the cracks, Leif hovers under the Skyeater’s star, the crack is gone, but above
it the Earth’s sky shows its beautiful baby blue hue.

Leif
grins in disgust as the star falls and engulfs him.

The
Starkiller zooms under Thora and she disappears in a flash. It speeds off as
the Skyeater continues to rain down. Leif’s star ascends into the sky and grows
smaller and smaller until it disappears into nothing.

Leaving
behind the remains of the people who once worshiped him.

“Do
you believe we’re alone in the universe?”
Thora asks. Cole, Thora and Julio lie
on the sand on the beach in upscale clothes on a giant flowery blanket. They
just came from an event and decided to stop by the beach.

It’s
night time, the secluded beach shows off the stars, the galaxies, and the
odysseys, unhampered by the city, pollution, and humanity as a whole.

It
looks so clear it’s like there wasn’t a sky at all, only the stars. They all
gaze into it.

“There
are millions of galaxies out there. It’s hard to believe we’re alone when we’re
not even a stone splashing into a vast ocean,” Julio says.

“Well
do you believe in a god?” Thora asks.

Julio
sighs, he doesn’t answer.

“We
are all made out of star dust, stars that were full of life and died billions
of years ago,” Cole replies.

He
lifts his hand out in the air. He stares at it against the backdrop of the
stars. He examines every intricate line and detail, the complexities of Human
DNA.

“Seeing
how we are right here right now must mean something, right?”

Cole
puts his hand down and stares at the stars. He doesn’t care if nobody answers
him. He just wants to gaze into the stars forever.

A
Cliffside looks out
into the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s
two weeks after the
attack. Giant crystal spires poke out of the blood red ocean.

The
Skyeater’s wreckage. Crystal chunks extend past the horizon. On the cliff there
are nine small metal crosses in the ground. Thora sits in front of them with a
string around her neck, the Starkiller only a mile behind her. She rubs her
left hand, the one she should’ve lost.

Wilker
and Noata walk up behind her. Noata carries another cross and a hammer. He sees
her rubbing her hand.

“How’s
the hand?” He asks. Thora clenches it.

“
It’s
fine, I’m still getting used to it.”

With
the Astrons and Eliite technology they can do almost anything.

“Good,
if it feels bad tell me, I need practice,” Noata says as he walks next to the
crosses.

As
he hammers in the last cross, Thora peers past him into a blood red ocean. “All
sea life. Gone,” she mutters in a mono tone.

“Not
all…Most,” Wilker replies. Noata finishes and steps back.

“Done.”

There
is a name on each of the crosses. Thora’s mom and dad, Lane, Lance and Serena,
Julio, Erin, Neil and Arnold and finally Cole.

On
each cross hangs an artifact symbolizing them, if they have nothing physical
symbolizing them, then there is an object carved out of metal to symbolize
them.

Thora
takes off her ring and puts it on a string. It’s not the same ring, but Noata
was able to create another almost completely similar one to her specification.

She
stands up and walks over to Cole’s cross, she puts her ring around it.

“Goodbye,
Cole.”

“I
can’t believe you still believe in this after all that happened,” Wilker says.

“Somebody
has to,” she replies.

Noata
tried to make one for his late wife but was met with protest.

“When
are you going to wake up the others?” Noata asks.

“It’ll
be a few days before the ship is done terraforming to our expectations. The
only reason we woke her up was because of a favor to our late comrade,” Wilker
states.

“Thanks.
For that.”

“But
we can start our effort to clean the oceans and find any survivors until then.
Even with all we’ve been through, with our new-found knowledge we can start
farther than we left off. And we can stop this from happening again.”

Noata
and Wilker walk away, toward the Starkiller, in front of them, behind the
Starkiller are hundreds of dead angels chained to their platforms. Noata lowers
his head as he walks.

Thora
continues to stare at Cole’s cross.

…

It
is twenty years later. Cole stands in front of the same cross. The same once
blood red ocean is now only sickly brown. It only took twenty years, instead of
millenniums to come back. To become whole again.

He
bends down and grabs his wedding ring and holds it. A screen pops up on his arm
and shows a map of where Thora is.

He
digs a small hole and puts the ring in it. After burying it he stands.
It
was never the end
.

He
looks up into the sky, past the clouds and into space as a single star streaks
by as the stars disappear one by one.