Elizar's head shot up in surprise, his Shadow skin rippling with the distortion of the spell. As he brought his elongating hand to his mouth to send the sphere away, Galen turned to the spheres in the air around him, sent them, one after another, to surround Elizar, and so with the spheres in the rock, and the spheres around the soldiers, encasing him in layer upon layer, darkness upon darkness, isolating, suffocating, crushing, beyond all escape.
With a great rolling crack the spheres collapsed, crushing Elizar to nothingness. Satisfaction resounded through them. Now Galen's task required just one more death. He saw Morden with the plasma rifle just as the blast hit him. Then he was on the ground, his heart hammering, his arms searching belatedly for balance. Morden stood over him, face twisted with anger – whether at Galen, the Shadows, or himself, Galen didn't know.
Morden fired into his chest again and again, each thump sending a shock of pain through Galen. The plasma was burning through the weakened black covering over his heart, searing the skin beneath. Although Morden's rifle was less powerful than the beams of Elizar and Razeel, Galen had little protection left. When it failed, a single blast would be sufficient to kill him. His skin scalding, blistering, Galen forced himself to be still.
Morden was simply completing the final step of Galen's task for him. He would not fight back. He felt no desire to strike at Morden, only an overwhelming sadness at all that must be lost. Soon Morden would die, Anna would die, John would die.
The soldiers and substrates still held in slavery would die, the Eye would die, Z'ha'dum would die. He could do nothing for any of them. As the burning thumps faded one into another, Galen's gaze wandered upward, along parapets and rune – covered walls. Across the chamber and far above, on one of the balconies, a flash of movement caught his attention – John, the Eye revealed.
Even farther above, the cavern's towers, even higher, the great skylight, and beyond it, a falling point of light, like a shooting star, universal source of curiosity and wonder, Kell's symbol for the techno-mages. The White Star would finish his task. He need only wait, and soon it would be over. Yet something within him cried out for life. Did he have to die?
They were just beginning to understand. There was so much more to learn, and they could learn it together. Galen didn't know if the thoughts were his or the tech's, but it didn't matter. He didn't have to be a monster anymore.
Whatever purposes the Shadows had designed him for, he had his own now. Could he not fulfill them? In the hiding place, the rest of the mages struggled and fought and died. He could teach them what he had learned. He could help them to free their tech, to become one with it. The tech shared his desire.
The shooting star plunged downward, its brilliance shining through the dusty atmosphere, spreading a growing radiance through the stopped firing, looked over his shoulder to find the source of light. His head whipped back around to Galen, his face alive with surprise and, perhaps, relief. The rifle dropped to the ground. Galen had thought that neither of them would escape the Shadows' influence, except in death.
Morden had sworn to serve them for as long as he could. Yet perhaps, if the Shadows were defeated, destroyed, Morden could finally be free. Perhaps they both could be.
* * *
Exactly as Justin had told her, John came out from the side passage into the tunnel where Anna waited. He stumbled to a stop, glancing her way, taking in the two liberators behind her. His head was bleeding, and he was streaked with dirt. He had no weapon.
After a moment, again as Justin had said, he ran away from her down the tunnel. It led to a dead end, a balcony overlooking the great city. He would see the power of the liberators there, if he had failed to recognize it before. And he would despair. Then she would gain control over him, and the liberators would witness her victory.
She walked down the tunnel after him, imagining that she was the Eye, as she soon would be, that she directed the great city, and the entire planet, and all the forces of chaos beyond. John plunged through her dark tunnels, finding no escape. It pleased her to think of him in her implacable embrace.
She came around a curve in the tunnel and there he was, on the balcony of stone, overlooking her vast, dark domain, her towers and minarets, her great arching vault, the beautiful letters etched into her skin, and directly below him, her deep, black abyss. She would turn him. She had no choice. And now he had none.
"John," she said, and he spun around, his breath hard, eyes wide.
"There's nowhere to run. Come back inside. We can work this out."
She continued toward him, searching for the words that would give her control. They both knew that she was not Sheridan. But she must convince him, somehow, to love her, to accept her as his wife.
"I know this isn't the Anna that you knew. What I am is what was made in her, a new personality. She can never come back. But I can love you as well as she did."
He looked up, at the huge skylight in the cavern ceiling far above. If he hoped for help, or escape, he would find none. Why did he insist, even now, upon resisting? He had no option but surrender. Anna reached out to him.
The great city of darkness spread before Kosh, reeking of the ancient enemy's pestilence. Although he had never seen it, only one feature surprised him. Directly below Sheridan, centerpiece to this vast temple to chaos, stretched a gaping abyss. It was possible that the enemy had planned poorly, that they had built their city haphazardly around this pit, which created an obstruction that served no useful purpose.
Yet Kosh knew the enemy too well; though they spread the pestilence of chaos wherever they went, they themselves plotted and planned with intricate precision. If the abyss was at the center of their greatest city, it was there for a purpose: if not a practical one, then a spiritual one.
The abyss must embody a connection – either real or symbolic – to Lorien, who had once lived deep within the planet. If the connection was only symbolic, or if Lorien had long ago departed, then Sheridan's situation was hopeless. If the connection was real, though, perhaps Lorien would sense Sheridan, and help him.
The possibility did not offer much hope, but Kosh clung to it. For if Sheridan died, it would mean that the forces of order and chaos had destroyed the only hope that their cycle of war might ever end, the only hope that the younger races might ever escape the firestorm.
For millennia, Kosh had burned with the righteous certainty of the Vorlons, questioning solely others, not himself. He had known, without hesitation, that the Vorlons' canon, their methods, their goals, would lead to the greatest good for the younger races. Bit by bit, though, doubt had eroded those beliefs, until now he felt certain of nothing.
Sheridan backed against the parapet, his wife before him, the light of the White Star growing above him, nowhere to go. In that moment, it struck Kosh that even if Sheridan died and the war was lost, he had made the right decision in coming here. For the war could never be ended with a victory by either order or chaos. The younger races could never reach their fullest potential by being molded into an echo of either the Vorlons or their enemy.
The only way to end the cycle, he realized as the White Star plunged toward them, was for the younger races to mature enough to move beyond the two sides to a third side, their own side. In coming here, in defying both the Vorlons and the maelstrom and going past them, to the eldest of them all, the first of the First Ones, Sheridan might find that third way.
Within Sheridan's mind, Kosh spoke.
"Jump. Jump now."
* * *
Galen seized Morden's wrists. Shadow skin flowed out from Galen, running up Morden's arms, over his horrified face, coating his body. Galen climbed to his feet, yanked Morden a few stumbling steps, fell with him into the Eye.
As the mass of squirming bodies covered them, Galen saw John, high above, jumping from the edge of the balcony, dropping toward the great abyss below.
It seemed hopeless for them all, but at least they would try. A platform pressed against Galen's and Morden's feet, drove them headfirst deeper and deeper, following the wall of the pit. The machine people moved aside. They wanted him to live, for all of them, for all they had gone through.
Above, the Eye saw the great cavern filling with light. The White Star was nearly upon them. Galen knew he wouldn't get deep enough. The bombs were too powerful. But what other shelter was there? The Shadow skin was strong, but not strong enough. Galen wondered if he could conjure a second layer of it.
As the thought occurred to him, a second layer of blackness flowed out over him and Morden. Then he knew what he must do. Another layer, and another, and another. He told the machine people to do the same, but they didn't have the ability.
He and Morden raced deeper, layer after layer covering them, faster and faster, closing them in a thick cocoon of blackness. In the cavern above, the tiny brilliant sun crashed through the skylight. Then there was light. For a moment, everything flashed a white so white that it seemed reality had been stopped, erased. The cavern was overwhelmed by it, consumed by it.
From Galen's position deep within the pit, the opening of the Eye appeared a blinding disk. A sheet of sun cut down through the machine people, turning them into brilliant pale figures all around him. The light penetrated even through the layers of his cocoon, so that for one, frozen moment, he and Morden found themselves staring at each other.
Then the shock wave boiled out, and as the Eye screamed, he screamed with it, the agony of Z'ha'dum filling them, the explosion blasting through towers, ripping through stone, roaring down tunnels, raging through channels and shafts and chambers, hurtling outward, melting, incinerating, disintegrating.
The wave of destruction stormed down through the pit with crushing pressure and searing heat. In a foaming rush one after another of the machine people was blown apart, and at the same time, with each explosion, he was blown apart, the pain an overwhelming blur of sensation broken only by the tech's tortured wail resounding inside him.
Z'ha'dum was dying; the Eye was dying; he was dying. As the blast rushed deeper it seized his cocoon, pressure squeezing around him, heat sinking through layer upon layer of Shadow skin until it reached his skin. The heat pressed into him, building, searing, cooking him alive, burning away all coherent thought until he was left only with the pain, the blazing, radiant pain, penetrating deeper and deeper until it reached, at last, the very heart of Z'ha'dum. His heart.
* * *
Anna ran to the balcony's edge, bent over the balustrade.
John was a tiny dot of movement against the blackness of the abyss.
How could he choose death over her? Why would he?
Whatever the reason, she had failed. She would never have the Eye now.
The abyss was filling with light. It shone down from above, spread through the cavern. She looked up to the great skylight, and it looked like a sun, a tiny burning sun racing down toward them. It burst through the skylight, and as it plunged into her city, she realized what it was: the White Star.
The Eye had also failed, had failed to protect the liberators, had allowed chaos into their midst. The nexus John would destroy them all.
She despaired for the liberators, for their ancient knowledge, their great machines. But for herself, if she would never be rejoined with the machine, then she would welcome death, and she would meet it, as her sisters did in battle, shrieking. There was a brilliant, mind-stopping flash of whiteness.
And then in a strange, attenuated moment, the shock wave struck through her, ripping apart tissue, cells, atoms, particles – dissolving her, reducing her entirely to chaos.
Ecstasy.
C
HAPTER 20
Galen awoke, his back on fire. He jerked, finding himself disoriented in the darkness, covered in – something. He touched a hand to his face, but his fingers were numb. Then he remembered.
His back was raw with burns, while his chest and hands had no sensation. He struggled to get his bearings within the cocoon, decided, finally, that he was lying on his side. He felt dizzy, sick. His stomach convulsed, and he held himself still, fighting the impulse to throw up.
As he lay there, he became aware of the tech's presence, a comforting warmth. It urged him to sleep. But there was a sound within the close layers, a wet, irregular sound – labored breathing. Morden.
Through the Shadow skin, he sensed Morden's body behind him, curled up in a ball. With effort, Galen turned, studied Morden with his sensors. If not for the shielding of the machine people, they would have died instantly. The cocoon of Shadow skin had provided additional protection. Even so, Morden's condition was critical. The front of his body was covered with third-degree flash burns.
Beneath, Galen found extensive hemorrhaging. Radiation had burned him internally, actually cooking patches of tissue. Galen knew there must be cellular and genetic damage as well, though he couldn't detect it. Morden's breathing was growing more labored. His lungs were filled with blood and fluid.
Galen forced himself into movement. He pulled Morden into a half-sitting position, to aid in breathing. Then he had to rest for a moment. The burning in his back made it hard to focus. When he pressed his numb hands to Morden's chest, the Shadow skin retreated from between them, allowing Galen to touch him directly just as if they shared the same mage shield.
Galen ripped away the burned remnants of Morden's shirt and, with a thought that resonated through the tech, sent organelles into Morden, again, again. As the microscopic agents of healing flowed out of him, he sensed that they would do all they could. He pushed the flow to continue, his numb hands tingling, the blood shifting inside him as if he'd stood up too suddenly.
He fell over, faint, breathing hard. He knew the organelles would provide only limited benefit to a non-mage, unless their activities were directed. On their own, they did not have the ability to coordinate their movements, to prioritize tasks. But he could not reach the organelles inside Morden's body.