Silent Symmetry (The Embodied trilogy) (21 page)

Panic set in. Claustrophobia. I was caught like a fly in a spider’s web. And
Mom could have been anywhere. If she was still alive.

I felt an incredibly weird mix of sensations: being adrift – not knowing what was even real any more – and being trapped at the same time. Either way, I was helpless.

I tried to focus on my breathing. Panicking won’t help you, Kari, I said to myself. Breathe in through the nose. Slowly, slowly. Now breathe out through the mouth. And again. Okay, this is good.

I had just about managed to get my heartbeat down below cardiac arrest level when I heard sounds. Footsteps coming closer, plus another noise, like something being rolled along a hard floor.

The door opened.

Two figures entered wearing green hospital scrubs and surgical masks. My heart sank. My mouth went pasty. What were they going to do to me? I lifted my head. One was pushing a metal cart
covered with a white cloth. Lying on the cloth were scalpels and other scary-looking medical instruments. I recognized the faces behind the masks. They belonged to the Embodied who had trapped me at the airport: the Fake Elle and, unnervingly, the Embodied version of my mother. But I knew now that it was Bob. The Bob who I had encouraged Mom to date. The Bob who had kidnapped her or worse.

Someone else walked into the room behind them. It was Aranara, wearing a hospital gown just like mine. She made no eye-contact with me, just calmly climbed onto the other operating table, lay down and closed her eyes.

I struggled against the straps, grunting and panting.

“You
must calm down, pumpkin,” said Fake Mom.

“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” I screamed.

“Don’t worry,” responded Fake Elle to Fake Mom, “she’ll be out again soon anyway. The adrenaline her body is producing has negated the tranquilizer. I’ll administer a double dose of anesthetic.”

My
tongue was like sandpaper. “What... what are you going to do?” I asked in a terrified whisper.

Aranara opened her eyes and turned her head
to face me.

“You won’t feel a thing. And when you wake up, my crystal pyramid will be inside you, and this form you see here – ” she indicated her own, perfect body, “will die.”

I stared at her, hoping against hope that what I’d just heard wasn’t true.

“Dragard has been
... practicing,” she continued, and though her tone was reassuring, her words certainly weren’t. “The operation should go smoothly. This is the only way.”

“Why
...?” I whispered.

“Beca
use we want to help you,” said Fake Mom.

“How is this helping me?!”

“He doesn’t mean you personally,” interjected Aranara.

I was confused for a moment
. Why did she say “he”? Then I realized that for her, the physical appearance of Fake Mom was irrelevant. She was addressing Bob. For all the Embodied, the crystal pyramids were their real form, and their human bodies were just shells – a way of interacting with us.

“He means all of you, all of the creatures in this universe,” she explained. “We’re saving you. You and I, together, we’re saving the Light Universe.”

My head was spinning, and the worst thing was, I could tell that she was sincere. Not only that, but she was lying on an operating table next to me. She was risking something herself. But weren’t these supposed to be the bad guys? What did that make Noon and the Temple of Truth members?

Fake Elle prepared a syringe. I str
ained to see what she was doing. A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead and into my eye, causing me to blink frantically.

“But what’s
gonna happen once your pyramid is inside me?” I asked. “Will I become, like, one of you? Will I forget who I am?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “When we pass through a portal and become Embodied, we create that human form ourselves. We become one hybrid being. But when my essence – my pyramid – is inside you, we will be separate but together. Symbiotic. And this should enable me to bring you through a portal to the Dark Universe.”

“What do you mean, ‘bring me to the Dark Universe’?”

“You need to come. It’s the only way.”

No, this couldn’t be happening. They were going to take me away from everything I knew and loved, to a place I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Death would be better than that.

Fake Elle flicked the syringe to remove the air bubbles. “It’s time,” she announced.

Aranara closed her eyes again. I had never been so scared in my life.

Then I felt him.

Noon was there in my head, telling me to stay calm, to stall them somehow. He was on his way.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Please
... Okay, I get it – I’m willing to help and I believe you about saving the universe. But can you just tell me why? Why
me
?”

Aranara opened her eyes once again. Fake Elle looked at her as though they were involved in a silent conversation.
Then they seemed to concur on something.

“This is all about symmetry, Kari,” she began. “We are perfectly symmetrical. Not just our Embodied forms, but our forms in the Dark Universe – the forms that you see as crystal pyramids.”

I thought about this. Somehow it made sense. Their arresting beauty... even their double handshakes and – so bizarre – even their names were symmetrical.

“T
he Natan have observed your universe, have seen its asymmetry and want to destroy it because it is anathema to them.”

Stall, ask questions
...

“A what to them?”

“It goes against everything they believe in,” she explained. “Imagine a religion of esthetics, of perfection. The Natan are the high priests of this Dark Universe religion. So you, Kari, have been bred to be symmetrical. We will travel to my universe together and the Natan will analyze you and see that the beauty of symmetry can exist in this universe and their intolerance will be appeased. We will have convinced them not to destroy the Light Universe.”

“I’ve been bred?” I asked, incredulous.

“Over millennia. Noon, all the others you saw at the arena, as well as Dragard, Bob, Cilic and myself, we founded the Temple of Truth at the dawn of your recorded history. Believe it or not, yours is the most advanced civilization in the Light Universe. That’s why we targeted you humans. We needed to show the Natan that you were intelligent, that your mathematics had perfection, that your bodies had symmetry. But now they have readied their attack faster than we expected. We have split from the Temple to pursue a different initiative. One that requires a certain degree of sacrifice. Noon and the others who stayed loyal to the Temple call us rebels, but they can’t see that sometimes it’s necessary to make sacrifices to benefit the greater good.”

“Sacrifices...? And what are the Natan?” I asked, trying desperately to process all this unbelievable information. And mainly to keep stalling.

Suddenly Aranara sat bolt upright and spoke to the other Embodied.

“Cruz is here. He’s in the building!”

Aranara and Fake Mom had another silent exchange, then Fake Mom took off her scrubs and left the room.

If I could just delay the operation a bit longer, either
Noon or Cruz would get here.

“Don’t think for a second that this changes anything, Kari,” said Aranara. “Dragard will start the operation. Cruz will believe that Bob is your mother. I will influence his mind as I have done since he was born
, and together we will convince him to leave. The transplant will take place as planned.”

She had been with Cruz all his life, just as
Noon had been with me? The scale of the whole thing was incredible. What chance did either of us have of escaping them? We had been mice in a laboratory maze since our first breath...

I had to keep her talking, if nothing else to distract her from influencing Cruz.

“But it isn’t a transplant!” I cried in desperation. “If you transplant a kidney or something it’s because the person receiving the organ had one in the first place. I don’t have a pyramid in my chest!”

Aranara’s brow furrowed. She was concentrating hard, trying to influence Cruz. So was
Fake Elle. Time seemed to stand still for... how long? Two, three minutes? I screamed at them, using every ounce of breath in my lungs in a desperate effort to break their concentration.

Then F
ake Mom reappeared through the door. It looked like the one person who was supposed to bring me comfort in this life was now orchestrating my doom. The fear that was coursing through my veins made it hard to convince myself that the woman who was smiling warmly at me wasn’t really my mother. I was a scared child, and she looked like the maternal comfort I craved.

She sighed, almost apologetically. “
Cruz won’t be coming. I explained to him that the reason you had used your phone to ask for help was that you had been struck down by appendicitis at the airport. I explained that the ambulance came as my plane landed and I accompanied you here for emergency surgery.”

Oh man – it sounded so plausible that he probably bought it. But
Mom would never say “struck down” or “accompanied”... would he notice something was weird about her?

Aranara relaxed once again and
Fake Elle approached me with the syringe. She twisted my right arm around, looking for a vein. Even strapped down, I could at least rotate my arm, so I resisted, twisting it back again.

Fake M
om came to help her, grabbing my wrist harshly and pinning it down with all her weight.

I had to close my eyes to erase the image of her face as I struggled and screamed.

I felt the tip of the needle on the inside of my arm. Then there was a bang.

My eyes snapped open again. Cruz had burst into the room! The Embodied
froze.

“Kari!” he shouted instinctively.

“She’s not my mother!” I yelled out.

He ch
arged forward, taking out Fake Mom with a football tackle.

I watched helplessly as Aranara and
Fake Elle joined in the fight. Cruz was big and strong, but even though it looked as though he was battling three women, they were alien, and, like Cilic, impervious to normal human pain.

The one weapon I could help him with
was information.

“Hit them in the chest – it’s the only way to stop them!” I shouted to him as the four of them wrestled on the operating room floor.

He threw a punch at Fake Elle, hitting her square in the solar plexus. She crumpled lifelessly. But Aranara took this opportunity to jump on his back, and with her arms around him I knew she was able to control his mind as well as pin down his body.

Noon
spoke to me silently. “I’m here now, Kari. I followed Cruz.”

Showing amazing willpower
, Cruz was resisting Aranara’s influence. He struggled to his feet, grunting at the effort, and tried to throw her off. But as he righted himself Fake Mom encircled him from the front with her arms. The two Embodied had completed their circle of control. His resistance weakened.

Fake Elle started to groan and stir on the floor. I realized that the syringe she was going to use on me
had fallen on the operating table right next to my arm. I carefully lifted my elbow and surreptitiously dragged the syringe toward my body, covering it with my arm.

“Be calm, Kari,” said
Noon in my head. And suddenly I was calm. The feeling was back – the flood of love.

Cruz was trapped by the two Embodied. The other was regaining her strength. And yet nothing mattered because
Noon was with me.

Then he was there in the doorway. Without hesitation he grabbed a scalpel from the cart and ran behind me, facing the others.

In my head, I heard the words, “Trust me, Kari.” But aloud he said purposefully, “Let him go. Or I’ll kill her.”

I felt the blade of the scalpel against my jugular as he threatened them
.

“You need her alive – we all need her alive – so let him go.”

Aranara opened her eyes. She seemed to have difficulty speaking, and I guessed that she was using most of her Dark Matter mental strength to overpower Cruz.

“Does Kari know,
Noon?” she said, mockingly. “First her father, now her mother...”

I could feel
Noon’s grip on the scalpel tighten as he answered.

“Aranara – you know that I wasn’t – ”

She cut him off. “Tell Kari how her father died then.”

Noon
’s voice in my head: “Don’t listen to her, Kari.”

Aranara aloud: “Go on – tell her. After all, you were there
...”

“What?!
” I exclaimed.

I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. But
Noon was silent. Silent in voice and silent in mind. My world had already been pummeled into an unrecognizable pulp over the last few days, and now this? How could I trust him now? What did he have to hide?