Revelations (27 page)

The only way Emily knew she was falling was because her eyes were still her own: She saw the red grass rushing up to meet her, and in the final second before she hit the ground, she saw Mac’s distraught face as he rushed from the edge of the clearing toward her.

Then everything went white.

Emily found herself suspended in a place between sleep and wakefulness, enveloped by a warm light that had no color, yet seemed to contain every shade and hue imaginable. It might be that place, she dreamed, that humanity had defined as the ever-so-thin line between life and death; limbo, if you pleased. Or perhaps it was the sanctuary which, as a child, defined the limits between life and dreams, and that as an adult, had seemed lost to her forever. No matter where she was, it was peaceful, quiet; she was finally at rest. The non-light tingled against her skin, its silk-like texture holding her securely in place, not against her will, but
because
she willed it to embrace her. It brushed against her skin, warming her like the first sigh of a mother’s breath against her newborn’s body.

Emily tried to remember everything that had come before this moment, but all she found was a blank slate; there was nothing but the now, and she reveled in the knowledge that she was an anomaly, brand new, an incongruity overlooked by the universe, both newborn and eternal, yet somehow, still an irreplaceable facet of a vast mechanism, comforted by her own anonymity, her own individualism, her own uniqueness.

Time passed, and after what seemed like a quiet eternity of serenity, from the nothingness a red spot began to form in the vast and narrow limits of her mindscape. Tiny at first, it quickly spread through the non-light like a drop of ink in water, pushing outward as it grew, pulling in everything that surrounded it.

Emily watched as if from a distance, with no hint of fear, only wonder and fascination.

More tiny dots of color, each unique as she, appeared, quickly spreading out across the canvas, merging and bonding with each other until a sudden rush of experience soaked her, drenching her in memory.

She sensed herself exhale a gasp of astonishment…followed quickly by pain as the tide of reality washed her ashore, and…

…Emily sat up, instantly regretting the move as every nerve in her body seemed to send a simultaneous signal to her brain, a flood of information and experience that overwhelmed her, setting every synapse on fire. She slumped back down again, and a low moan escaped her as she was overwhelmed by disorientation. When it finally eased, she rolled gently over onto her left side, fighting against the urge to vomit, dragging in deep gulps of air. Slowly, the spinning began to subside, and her senses and nerves began to return to normal. Still, her skin tingled with static electricity strong enough it made her want to scratch every inch of it.

She forced her eyelids to open. Slowly! Slowly! Unsure of how they might handle any sudden light.

She tried to remember everything that had happened in the past few…? How long
had
it been? Hours? Days? She had no idea how much time had passed, or how she had gotten here; she had a hazy vaguely recalled memory of…an open field, beings that had no right to exist on Earth…and Thor!

Her eyes snapped fully open.

She was naked. She could feel a rapidly cooling liquid or membrane coating her skin and she suddenly felt chilled as it began to evaporate off her body. Ignoring the pain and disorientation she pushed herself back upright.

“Thor?” she called out, her voice a weak croak. Her vision swam for a few seconds with even this simple effort. A blur of swirling colors played in front of her eyes, gradually organizing themselves into shapes, which in turn coalesced into objects as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of her locale: curved walls, a ceiling of nothing but black above her still-whirling head, the hard shelf she sat upon, its surface smooth, slightly warm beneath the palms of her hands.

She was in some kind of a room, her senses told her. It was poorly lit but not dark, and, as her eyes were gradually adjusting to the twilight, she noticed she was not alone.

Three figures stood at the dimly lit edge of the room, hidden within the penumbra of shadow.

Thank God
. “Mac? Is that you?”

Emily blinked a couple of times as she tried to focus on what lay at the boundary of her sight as the three silhouettes finally resolved from the darkness around them. She stifled a scream of confusion and fear at what stood before her.

Two of the figures were the same elegant aliens she had seen in the field. They stood unmoving, their blank oval faces staring—if that was the right word, they had no eyes after all—directly at her. But it was the third figure, flanked by the two aliens as though they were his guardians, their shadows cast across the shorter shape, that caused her heart to pound. There was something disturbingly familiar about the outline.

The middle figure took two steps forward into the light.

An abrupt intake of breath from Emily marked her recognition, then a name shattered the silence of the room: “Jacob?” she asked.

She stared hard at the figure, unsure of whether what she was seeing was true or a trick played on her by the shadows.

It
was
Jacob, free of his wheelchair, his legs apparently now fully functional as he took another step closer to Emily.

“Hello Emily,” he said, his voice slurring slightly, as though he was still getting used to forming words with his mouth and tongue. “It is so very good to see you again.”

Emily pushed herself across the shelf she sat on until she felt a wall at her back, her eyes darting around the room, searching for any way out of it and finding nothing. The walls were seamless with no apparent exit.

“You have nothing to fear from us, Emily. We are not here to harm you,” Jacob said, a hand extended out in front of him, encouraging her to stop her nervous shuffling.

Us? We?
Her heart skipped a beat when she thought back to the creature that had tried to take her and Simon’s family in Stuyvesant. It
had
taken Simon and eventually Ben, turning the child into some
thing
that she had later killed, but not before the creature had used Simon, transforming him into a puppet to lure the children and Emily to it.

“What…what the
fuck
are you?” Emily asked, her eyes shifting constantly from Jacob to the two sentinels standing motionless behind him, then back to Jacob again. She could see no connection between the two silent creatures and Jacob, no black tentacles that would mean he was under their control. But that did not mean that he was not their thrall in some other way.

“Our creators gave us no name, but over the millennia, other species have named us.
You
may think of us as the Caretakers. It is the most appropriate, I believe.”

“I know you’re not Jacob, so, what are you?” she insisted.

“You are correct and incorrect,” Jacob said, his eyes drifting down to his own legs, legs that had been useless when Emily had last seen him. “We are here to ensure the transition of the planet takes place as it has been designed. I
am
Jacob, perfect in every single way, minus his infirmities, but I am also a part of the others you see here and those of us stationed around this planet. And we are all connected to the change occurring here.”

Emily felt rage begin to surge up from deep inside her, sublimating the confusion she felt listening to this
thing
try to explain itself.

“
You
are the ones responsible for everything that happened, aren’t you? You’re the ones that…” she could barely control herself at this point, the anger erupting from every cell of her body “…you are the ones that killed us. You destroyed our planet. Our civilizations, my family, my friends, my parents. You
murdered
us by the billions!” The last sentence was coated with such venom and hatred she half expected that the three creatures standing in front of her would disintegrate from its vehemence. But, of course, they did not. Instead, they remained as immutable as they had since she woke here.

Jacob seemed to ponder her accusation before answering.

“I understand your confusion, Emily, but
we
did not destroy this planet, we saved it. That is our task. The preservation of life. We have repurposed almost every biological entity on this planet to become more efficient, to ensure survival, to ensure growth. Nothing has been wasted.”

“Re-fucking-purposed? What the fuck do you mean ‘repurposed’? You took everything that I had that was precious to me and destroyed it, turned them into monsters. Monsters! Jesus Christ, I killed a little boy because of you fuckers. I
murdered
a boy.” She was on her feet now, closing the gap between Jacob, spittle flying from her mouth as the words, emotional gunshots each of them, exploded from within her.

Something warm and wet trickled through her fingers. Looking down at her clenched fists she saw a rivulet of blood leaking from between her fingers, nails dug deep into the heel of her palm.

“We are…aware of your emotional pain, Emily, but the end was near for our, your, species. Within a span of several hundred years, you would have been reduced to a statistically insignificant number. Your survival viability was…negligible.”

“Then why not just leave us to wipe ourselves out?” she yelled into Jacob’s face, all fear of him gone now. God damn them all to hell. “Why the fuck would you want to come in and destroy us now? Why not just let us do it to ourselves?”

Jacob returned her gaze unflinchingly, either unaware or uncaring of the rage that was directed at him.

He continued, his voice still soft, still low, as if he was talking to a child, “Because your species would not have been the only one to have become extinct. More than ninety-eight percent of this planet’s species would also have been lost along with you. Given the high probability that the remaining two percent would also become extinct within a thousand years, we decided to act while there was still sufficient biological material available to ensure success.”

“So what?” she yelled, her voice cracking from the strain. “So fucking what if we destroyed this world? It was our world to destroy, you fucks.”

“This was
never
your world, Emily Baxter,” Jacob interrupted, the first real hint of emotion entering his voice as he leaned in closer to her. “That was a delusion your species created to ensure its continued pillaging and self-destructive actions. If you could see what I see, Emily, if you had the knowledge that we have, you would understand. You would know that life in this universe is so very, very rare, so fragile. When we find a world like this one, we observe it in the hope that its occupants might correct their course. Inevitably, they do not. That is when we initiate our program. While there are still enough biological resources available to reverse the downward spiral.”

Emily slumped to the floor, her legs folding beneath her.

“‘Biological resources.’ You mean people, right? People and animals and plants. My friends and my family.” She flicked a dismissive hand toward Jacob. “Jesus, even you and the shit you put me through. They even used you.”

“Your animosity toward me, toward who I
was
, is understandable, Emily. Both you and I are so very similar, we are both perfect examples of how badly life wants to try to exist. My memories tell me that I had to deceive you to ensure my continued survival, just as you have done so very much to ensure not only your own survival but also that of Rhiannon and your other companions.”

“I am
nothing
like you,” she screamed, pushing herself to her feet. “
Nothing!
You, whatever
you
are, are pure fucking evil.”

This time Jacob smiled when he spoke.

“Your concept of good and evil is an outdated one, Emily, the product of a young, deluded species. The race that created us evolved past such emotions while your solar system was nothing more than a swirling mass of dust and noble gases. They had explored this universe and others like it and found
nothing
but darkness. The only light, an occasional gemstone of a living world. Being creatures of pure reason, they assumed the task of preserving that life where they could, and ending it for the greater good where they must. We are the tools they created to accomplish that task.”

Emily slumped back to the floor. Its surface was warm, with an almost living texture and heat. It was repulsive and she shuddered, drawing her hands into her naked lap.

Jacob continued, “The life on this planet was used to feed and nourish the new life we have created: better, more efficient life that will ensure the continued viability of this planet.”

“If your makers are so fucking omnipotent then how did I survive? Why did
I
survive?” Emily asked, her energy lagging now from the emotional outpouring.

Jacob crouched down until his eyes were at the same level as Emily’s before he spoke. “There are always survivors from the original inhabitants. Always some who, through a natural immunity that we could never account for or cosmic luck, possess a resistance to the effects of the red rain, as you called it. It is always a statistically insignificant number. You, and the others like you, are an anomaly that, by virtue of being so unlikely, become a probability. That is why we send the Harvesters, to ensure the complete integration of any surviving life forms. But there are always those that manage to elude them.”