Armageddon (58 page)

Therius stepped aside and nodded. “Take a look,” he said.

Ethan walked up and peered inside. Alara gasped when she saw the face looking back at her, but Ethan frowned. It looked human enough—two eyes, nose, chin, ears, long dark hair… but the bone structure was unusual, more angular, and the face was longer than the average human’s would be. The most striking and least human feature, however, was its pale, luminous white skin.

“That’s not even human,” Ethan realized. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more shocked than ever. He knocked on the glass to see if the woman would react, but she was sleeping too deeply.

“Let me help you wake her,” Therius said. He reached for the glowing control panel beside the tank, and Ethan took a hasty step back.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea…” he said.

But it was too late. Bright
violet
eyes snapped open behind the glass. Those eyes found him and flew suddenly wider.

Ethan stumbled back against the railing behind him, shaking his head. “Who is that?” he demanded, watching as Alara stepped up to the tank and placed a palm against the glass. The alien inside the tank mimicked her gesture, placing a hand with longer, more dexterous fingers against the inside of the tank.

“Those are my eyes…” Alara whispered.

“The eyes are the windows to the soul,” Therius said. “Never a truer word spoken.”

Ethan blinked. “There’s no such thing as souls.”

Therius turned to him with a wan smile. “Really? What do you think you are looking at right now?”

Alara turned to him, her cheeks slack with shock. “I remember… I remember
everything,
Ethan.”

He shook his head. “What are you talking about? Remember
what?
”

“She’s
me,
and I’m her…” Alara turned back to face the tank. “Somehow… we’re linked to each other. I can
hear
her inside of my head.”

Therius reached for the control panel once more, and Ethan watched as those alien eyes—
Alara’s
eyes—slipped behind luminous eyelids once more.

“What the frek is going on, Therius?” Ethan demanded, his legs trembling violently.

“I told you, my name is Etherus.”

“All right, Etherus, then. I need some answers.”

“We all do,” Atton added.

Etherus spread his hands. “That is why I brought you here.”

“I’m listening,” Ethan said.

“You call this world Origin. We call it the Garden of Etheria. We created the first humans here, but we didn’t want humanity to realize that they had been created, so we took a species from Advistine—
or Earth,
as it used to be called—and we spliced genes from that species with our own. It appeared to you as though your species had evolved naturally from the primates we spliced our genes to; the only evidence leading back to us was in the form of a few mysterious gaps in your evolution.”

Ethan shook his head. “Our ancestors left the Getties and settled on Advistine. They spliced their
own
genes with a local species to create humanity,” Ethan repeated all of that before he remembered the source.

“Omnius told you that when he came back online, and even though he lied about many things, he truly believed that was what had happened. Like you, he was left with a lot of mysterious clues and forced to draw conclusions from them. The conclusions he drew, however, were incorrect.”

“Let’s assume we believe you,” Atton said. “That explains how you created us, but it doesn’t explain why we’re linked to aliens that you call
souls
in this place that you say is a
prison.
What did we do to deserve imprisonment?”

“The link to your soul is passed down from your mother at birth. That link is broken when you’re resurrected as clones. That’s why Omnius was able to predict your behavior after Lifelink transfers. It takes time for souls to find their resurrected bodies, which is why Omnius discovered that as time went by, even resurrected clones became unpredictable again.”

Ethan chewed his lower lip. “So we’re in some type of symbiotic relationship with these aliens.”

“No, you and your souls are one and the same. As you saw with Alara, if I were to wake your souls, you would suddenly find your minds flooded with a much greater awareness of who and what you really are.”

Ethan glanced at Alara, but she was still staring into the stasis tube.

“That answers
how
we’re linked,” Atton said, walking straight up to Etherus. “But you haven’t told us
why.
”

“All of you remember Origin because you were awake when you first came here. You walked into these stasis tubes willingly. Most of your souls’ memories are repressed while they’re sleeping here, but we allowed you to retain a few memories of Origin to help you realize that there’s a bigger picture to your existence. That bigger picture is Etheria, the galaxy where the Immortals live. The Getties Cluster used to be Etheria, but it was made uninhabitable by the
First Great War,
the one you mistakenly call
the Great War of Origin
. The truth is, that war had nothing to do with this planet, immortality, or with your origin as a species.”

“So the ruins on the surface, the obelisks that Atta said were tombstones… they’re memorials from that war?”

“They serve many purposes. They’re the quantum transmitters that keep souls linked to their human bodies, and they’re also what’s used to generate the jamming field that defeated Omnius. They are the real Eclipser. And yes, they are also memorials. The bones found there are real, recovered from Immortals who actually died in the war. We piled those bones on top of your heads as a symbolic gesture, to represent the weight you carry on your consciences. Even though the dead were ultimately brought back to life, all the suffering you caused while fighting for your cause was real.”

“What cause?” Atton asked.

“Freedom,” Alara breathed, finally turning away from the stasis tube where her soul rested.

Etherus nodded. “Humans were created in order to give you all a taste of true freedom.”

Ethan’s brow furrowed. “Freedom from what?”

“You are made in our image, but we are not the same. Immortals are never tempted to do something that they know is wrong. Humans, however, were made to be curious. You want to
know
everything, to
try
everything, to
do
everything—even the bad things. That is what it means to be free, to be able to choose between good and evil. Humanity’s very first field test was conducted here.

“Once the test confirmed that humans were truly free, we put all of the rebels into stasis and sent the original pair to Earth to begin testing. Your sentence here was only ever meant to last as long as your human lives, but cloning and Omnius undid all of that.”

“What were you testing?” Atton asked.

“Your human lives serve to show you and us whether or not you really
want
to be free. Some people see the chaos that freedom brings, and they
regret
their mistakes. Those people are the ones that are both worthy and capable of living in Etheria once more. Then there are others who look back on their lives and see it all, even the mistakes, as a grand unfolding adventure. All they wish for at the end is more time to continue it. Do you know what we do with those people?”

“You send them to the Netherworld?” Ethan guessed.

“Do you know what the Netherworld is? Or where?” Therius asked.

Ethan hesitated. “No…”

“It’s here, all around you. Why do you think early depictions showed it
under
the Earth? In the distant recesses of your minds you still recalled that the Netherworld is what we called the underground prison complex where you were imprisoned. But we don’t have to send people here, Ethan; they are
already
here.”

Alara came to stand beside Ethan. She took his hand, and he felt her skin cold and clammy against his own. She was scared. He couldn’t blame her.

Ethan shook his head. “Why tell us all of this now?”

“Because the tests are over. They were over years ago already, but we wanted to be sure, so we left things running.”

“You ran out of souls,” Atton said.

Etherus nodded. “We stopped giving souls to new-born Avilonians long ago.”

Ethan blinked. He felt sick, afraid to ask the question that had just occurred to him, and unsure that he even wanted to know the answer.

“Do
we
have souls?” Atton said, asking the question for him.

“Everyone who came from the Imperium has a soul, but not everyone who was born on Avilon does.”

Etherus’s eyes settled on Ethan with a meaningful weight, and suddenly he understood. “Trinity…” he whispered.

Etherus began nodding. “Yes.”

“She can’t follow us to Etheria,” Alara said.

“She would have to go as a human, and that would inject unwelcome chaos to our way of life.”

“But you’re Etherus!” Alara said. “You created us! You can fix her!”

“I could, but there’s another way. I never answered your question, Ethan, about what we do with the souls who decide that they still want their freedom. The answer is, we left them here sleeping until now. Now we’re going to use Omnius’s Icosahedron to bring all of them back as immortal humans, just as Omnius did with everyone on Avilon. The difference is, he could only bring back
one
generation, but we have them all—minus the ones who went back to Etheria, of course.”

“What about our previous lives?” Alara asked. “The ones we lived in Etheria… all of our memories… ?”

“What do you remember?” Etherus asked.

Alara shook her head. “As soon as my soul went back to sleep, I began to forget. Now it’s all very vague. It feels like a dream that I can’t quite remember.”

“And that is how it will remain. It wouldn’t be fair to leave you to live as humans, yet undermine that life by injecting memories of a previous one. Your souls will be incorporated into you, but your memories of Etheria will be repressed just as they’ve always been. You will be able to access them, if you wish, by focusing on your past life, but for most of you, looking back will be an unsettling experience that you won’t wish to repeat, and the memories you recover will fade away soon after you have remembered them.”

“So paradise isn’t for us,” Atton said. “We’d rather live in chaos. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Those who enjoy freedom will likely call it
exciting
rather than
chaotic,
and there will be rules to live by, just as there have always been. Undesirable outcomes will be mitigated by laws given to you by your ruler—me.”

“Aren’t you the ruler of Etheria?” Alara asked.

“That, too.”

“So… we’re all going to live on New Avilon and you’re going to be our… king?”

“Let’s rather call it New Earth, but yes, and for those who wish to be free even from my laws, they will be allowed to leave the Icosahedron and settle the Adventa Galaxy once more. For now, though, there’s more than enough room on the Icosahedron for everyone we’re going to resurrect.”

Ethan felt the first stirrings of excitement. This could be everything that Avilon should have been! Eternal life in paradise, but without Omnius’s lies and suppression of freedoms.

“What about the souls that returned to Etheria?” Atton asked.

“Only the ones that we’ve chosen will leave, and choosing them is about knowing who really
wants
to go. After all, if you don’t want to be in Etheria, you might just start another Great War, and we can’t have that.”

“So families are going to be separated again, just like they were with Omnius,” Atton said.

“Your loved ones will visit you. For now, since so many people have already returned to Etheria, we’re going to take the Icosahedron there to facilitate reunions.”

Suddenly Ethan realized what he was missing, and fear gripped him. What if Alara wanted to go to Etheria? He turned to his wife, wondering what he could say to convince her not to go. Why had Etherus brought them to see
Alara’s
soul? Why not some random person’s soul? His heart pounded in his chest, and his palms began to sweat.

“Don’t leave me,” he said.

Alara turned to him, and he looked deep into her violet eyes, trying to see what she was thinking—or what her
soul
was thinking. Her lips parted to say something, but he kissed her before she could. He poured all of his pent-up fears and desperation into that kiss. She leaned into it and kissed him back, making his head swim. He just hoped she wasn’t kissing him goodbye.

“Ethan…” she murmured against his lips.

He withdrew by a fraction of an inch. “You’ll be leaving Trinity, too,” he said, still trying to convince her.

“I’m staying,” she replied, her eyes bright and shining as she smiled. “And you’re enough reason for me to stay all by yourself.”

“I woke your wife’s soul for a reason, Ethan,” Etherus said. “I did it to put you both out of your misery. Even now that she vaguely recalls what it was like to live in Etheria, she would still rather stay with you in this life. Don’t you remember my promise to you?”

Ethan’s brow furrowed as he struggled to recall.

“I promised that you wouldn’t be parted from your family.”

“But how could you know what Alara would choose?”

“Like Omnius, it’s my business to know what my people will do before they do it, but unlike him, I don’t use my predictions to rob them of their freedom.”

Ethan let out a long, shuddering breath. “Thank you.”

“Thank your wife. She’s the one who chose to stay.”

“We all have families…” Ethan said, his brow furrowing once more. “Who would choose to leave them behind?”

“I would,” Atton said, turning from Etherus to face them.

Ethan blinked. “Son…”

“She went to Etheria, Dad. I know she did.”

“Who did?”

“My wife, Ceyla.” Atton turned back to Etherus. “She did, didn’t she?”

“Yes, and you’re going to follow her.”

Chapter 54