Silent Symmetry (The Embodied trilogy) (18 page)

When we pulled up outside The Warrington, I rushed in with
Noon right behind me. After an elevator ride that seemed to last an eternity, I burst through the front door of the apartment. No one was there and nothing was out of place. Mom’s toiletries were gone from the bathroom, her suitcase was missing from her room.

I sat on the edge of her bed and started to cry.
Noon appeared in the doorway, his voice filling my head.

“I apologize,
Kari. This is my fault.”

I
blinked at him through my tears.

“What do you mean? Why are you in my head?”

He just looked at me. Here was a man who made me feel like no other. A man who was somehow inside my mind, connected to my soul. A man who had just saved me from the clutches of a... a what?

“I need some answers,
Noon. I really, really need to know what’s going on and if you care about me at all, you have to tell me.”

He closed his eyes. The voice I heard was almost a wh
isper.

“You’re right. Come with me.”

* * * * *

Noon
unlocked the rooftop access door and pushed it open, creating an arc and small mound in the pristine white snow. We stepped out into the chill night air and I pulled my winter coat tighter around me.

The view of
Manhattan was stunning from the roof of The Warrington. The Hudson river on one side, the Empire State Building and all the lesser skyscrapers on the other. To the south, the resurgent Ground Zero buildings and above us, the Milky Way.

He took my hand, our boots crunching underfoot, and said, “What do you see up there?”

“Stars, the Moon.”

“Do you want to see what I see?”

I gazed at his soft, soulful, beautiful features.

“There’s nothing I want more.”

He reached for my other hand and entwined his fingers with mine. We were doing the same double handshake that I’d seen him do with Silas in the classroom at school the day we met.

“Close your eyes, Kari.”

I did as he asked.

“Now look upward. But keep your eyes closed.”

I lifted my head. And then the most amazing thing happened.

I could see. But the stars above me were black and the sky was white. Yet not white. Patterned somehow. Like a web of pixilated, twinkling, shimmering, translucent shapes.

Noon’s voice filled my head once again. “That is my universe. That is the universe of Dark Matter. That is where I and the other Embodied come from. Now look back down at me.”

I gasped. The building wasn’t there. My hands holding
Noon’s hands weren’t there. And in front of me, where Noon should have been, was a floating diamond pyramid made of the same shimmering substance as the sky above.

“This is what I really look like. My true form.”

I let go of his hands and opened my eyes. The world instantly returned to normal. I was speechless.

“Your universe is the Light Universe, filled with matter and energy, and you think that it’s everything there is. But, as some of your scientists have discovered, the vast majority of the universe is filled with Dark Matter and Dark Energy.”

“Okaaay...”

This was as intelligent as I could possibly sound right then.

“We found a way to create a portal into the Light Universe and embody ourselves in organic forms that you can recognize. But our minds are still part of the Dark Universe.”

“But how come I can hear your thoughts? Are you, like, psychic or something?”

“I’ve been with you your whole life, Kari.”

“Huh?”

“Let me try to explain,” he continued, softly. “The synapses in the human brain can be influenced on a quantum level. We can vibrate your universe’s quantum energy and create resonance in its objects, like a crystal glass that hums in harmony when the right note is sung. You’ve literally grown up in tune with me.”

This was all too much. I turned away and walked toward the edge of the building. I looked out over the city and took a deep breath. The sharp air filled my lungs and cleared my head. I heard
Noon’s footsteps crunching across the snow-covered roof behind me.

“Kari.”

I turned around quickly.

“No, I don’t get it. And I don’t even
want
to get it!”

He reached me. I was breathing hard. Completely overwhelmed. When my eyes flicked up to his, they looked different. For the first time, I saw empathy. He could feel my confusion, my suffering.

The tension in my stomach dissolved as he moved even closer.

Then I kissed him.

At first, he didn’t kiss me back. In fact, he didn’t even move. I pulled him closer and something in him changed. He responded. With his mouth, with his hands, and with his body.

I could hear his voice in my
mind, at first barely audible.

“I love you, Kari.”

Then clearer, but still quiet, like a whisper.

“I love you.”

Then louder and louder until it filled my whole being. I felt like huge ocean breakers were crashing over me one after the other, powerful and unstoppable.

Unable to bear it any longer, I broke away.
Noon was staring at me, confused, shaking slightly. Maybe it was an illusion, but it seemed as though all the sounds of the city had fallen silent.

“I love you,
Noon.”

I saw the flicker of a smile at the corner of his perfect lips, then he looked down.

“This is why I had to go away.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We can’t do this. We can’t fall in love. We’re putting everything in jeopardy.”

I shook my head. “What?
! What could be so frickin important?”

He let go of my hands and sighed. “The
Temple of Truth. It’s not a religion, it’s not a cult – it’s a project. And if I don’t stop seeing you I’ll be destroying the work of millennia. My family, my friends, have given so much, and now I’m risking it all for selfish reasons, for this human emotion.”

“But I’ve never felt anything like
... this.”

“Neither have I,” he admitted. “That’s the problem.”

He started pacing, struggling with the turmoil he was clearly feeling.

“We just can’t be together,” he continued, “I’m not even human. You should go back to Cruz.”

No. I wasn’t ready to hear this.

“You felt human enough to me when we kissed.”

“Kari, I showed you my real form just now when you closed your eyes. All of us, all of the Embodied, are crystals of Dark Matter. When we pass through a portal into the Light Universe we materialize as carbon pyramids.”

Okay
... just like the pyramid that Cruz had seen in the ToT apartment.

“And once we’re here we become Embodied in
the carbon-based life-form of our choosing, with a diamond pyramid at its very center.”

I was listening, but I didn’t want to hear.

Noon carried on. “So when you hit Cilic here – ” He gestured toward his solar plexus, “you disrupted the link between his Dark Matter self and his Embodied form.”

“Like I said,” I persisted, “You seem human.”

“I know it’s not easy to understand, but although I’m real, physical flesh and blood, I’m not... stable. None of us are. We don’t eat, we don’t need to sleep, and – ”

“Wait!” I interrupted. “I saw beds in the
Temple of Truth apartment.”

“We aren’t stable. We aren’t viable organisms. And if we don’t return to the Dark Universe every so often, our Embodied forms suffer a catastrophic failure. Resting just prolongs the period of time we can remain Embodied.”

“A catastrophic failure? What... you mean you could die? Without warning, just like that? What period of time are we talking about?”

“No, it’s not death, Kari. We simply revert to the diamond pyramid form, like Cilic did. There’s no set period. Usually, after a few weeks of being Embodied, we can tell that we have to return.
Maybe months. We don’t know what influences the time period, but we have no choice – we have to go back.”

“Back home.”

“I guess so. But I couldn’t begin to describe ‘home’ to you.”

Right at that moment he seemed so lost, so alone. Like a
wounded soldier who has crossed a mountain range to deliver a vital message. Or an explorer stranded on a desert island.

I took his hands in mine. Looking into his eyes, I could have sworn that he was even feeling scared. I pulled him closer and kissed him again. This time he responded faster. I felt his hands squeeze my hips. Our tongues explored each other’s mouths. It was amazing, unbelievable, timeless.

And then I heard a noise. Right there, on the rooftop.

We both turned toward the sound. Silas was standing in the access doorway, watching us.
The man who had vanished in the beam of light between two crystal pyramids in the arena.

“Oh no,” said
Noon under his breath.

Silas looked at us for another second, then turned silently and left.
Noon walked away from me, rubbing his forehead.

“You have to go see Cruz, Kari.”

“What?!”

“Just talk to him. Please.”

“But I need to know more! What’s this project? Why did Aranara and Cilic need me?”

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t tell you,” he said, every word filled with anguish.

I rushed up to him and grabbed his hands, but he pulled them away.

“Why do you have to keep me in the dark?”

He smiled ironically. “Because I’m trying to keep you in the light.”

I groaned with frustration. “Fine, don’t tell me anything. But at least help me find
Mom.”

Noon
looked at me sadly. “I’ll do what I can. I’m sure she’s okay.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure. Oh forget it, I’ll just call the cops.”

He put his hands on his hips. “That won’t do any good.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is beyond them. Even if the Embodied aren’t in tune with every human the way I am with you, any of us can influence someone’s behavior as long as we’re in close proximity. Believe me, if Aranara doesn’t want it, there won’t even be an investigation.”

My emotions were running high. I suddenly felt chilled to my bones. I had to get off the rooftop, away from the confusion I felt from
Noon and back to the comfort of my bedroom.

I looked him
straight in the eye.

“I love you,
Noon, whatever you are. I don’t even know why I love you, but I do. And right now you’re hurting me because no matter what you feel for me, there’s something else you love even more, and that’s the Temple of Truth.”

I stormed past him, teary-eyed
, and ran to the access door.

Back home, I threw myself down on the bed and cried my heart out. Everything was so simple six months ago and now there was absolutely nothing I could count on.

Except... maybe Noon was right. Maybe I should see Cruz.

* * * * *

I slept until 11.30 a.m. Guess I was exhausted. The apartment was so empty with just me there. I felt like ass, and despondently ate a bowl of cereal, staring at the kitchen cupboard door that had started the whole effed-up mess. As I munched and crunched, I glanced occasionally at my phone on the table in the hopes that it would ring or buzz with a message.

My
friends back in Lancaster
were posting the usual crap on Facebook. School dramas, music links, funny pix... all of it seemed a million miles away and a thousand years ago.

I drifted back to what
Noon had told me about the Embodied. Had they really been on Earth for thousands of years? And if they had, why could I possibly have been so important to them? Kari Marriner, a schoolgirl from Wisconsin. A nobody. No special powers, no hidden identity, no secret destiny.

This wasn’t a fairy tale and I was all-too human. The reality I was living in was that my mother had been kidnapped. Was she even alive? The only person I could really trust in the
whole world. The only person who had always been there for me. Would she ever be there again? I picked up the lucky bunny that she had bought for me after Dad had died and stroked its raggedy ears. I had carried it with me ever since. But Noon’s revelation that he had also been with me my whole life totally bugged me. Was that the only reason I had all these feelings for him? Because he was some kind of extra-terrestrial stalker?

Part of me wanted to go see Cruz, to talk to him in person and find out what had gone on between him and Aranara. I mean, it wasn’t like I could trust anything she’d told me, right? Maybe
her story about him telling her he loved her was just a lie.