The Far Dawn (27 page)

But his fingers slip through my skin as if I am not completely there, and I feel myself leaving, being sucked away from the world and into white light.

There is wind like I have known twice before. And in a flash, I am inside the skull. Not Kael's.

Rana's. Summoned here by . . .

My eyes can barely adjust to the dim light, but I can make out enough to see that someone is right in front of me: long, dark hair . . . Rana. No. The Terra. No—

“Lilly.”

Her sky-blue eyes bore into me. And she looks—

Furious. “What the HELL?!” she shouts, and she shoves me in the chest with both hands.

24

THERE IS NO TIME INSIDE THE CRYSTAL SKULL. There is before, and there will be after, but within the crystal electric medium there is only a sense of now and that all things are and have been and will be.

I trip over something and fall to the ground on my elbows.

Lilly glares down at me. Lilly is here. In Rana's skull but this is not Rana's place, not the temple where I met her in Tulana on the coast.

This is somewhere I know much better than that. A place I've spent many hours remembering while roaming the borderland of sleep.

I tripped over the large stump of a birch tree. Above, stars glimmer through a gap in the pines, but they are too gauzy to be the real stars. The sky has a satin quality of humid air. Not the steam of the Desenna jungle. This is climate control and SimStars.

Three candles flicker in tin cans on a slab of rock surrounded by tall, matted grass. The lapping of water nearby.

This is Tiger Lilly Island, Lilly's place. Somehow, we are there.

Through the white realm.
I see that the Terra is here, too, and so is Rana. They float together at the edge of the clearing, like a ghost jury.

All of this I see just in my peripheral vision because I am staring at Lilly, who is standing over me in candlelight and I nearly can't breathe to see her again. Even though I have mourned her and tried to remember every inch of her in my mind over and over, I know now that I was wrong. Oh, how I was so wrong and not even close, not even close because she is so much more wonderful than that—

But also, at the moment, she is seething with anger.

“What are you doing talking to HIM?” she shouts, throwing a hand over her shoulder. We both look in that direction, but the lab is gone.

“You can see outside the skull?” I say dumbly.

“Not really,” Lilly snaps. “I can sense the Qi and An, though, and I can tell what's happening well enough to know you're, like, making deals with Paul! Why would you do that? And what is that place you're in?”

“Lilly, hold on!” I finally overcome the shock and lurch to my feet and grab her before she can resist or hit me again—you never know when she is this angry. . . .

Was
, I have to remind myself. For a second, reality wavers and I have to remember that I am not waking up from a nightmare. We are not back on Tiger Lilly Island the night she smushed brownies in my mouth. We are not waking up later in that dark after a twisted and terrible dream.

It all happened.

Even as I am wrapping my arms around her as fully and tightly as I can and I am feeling her warmth and her breath on my neck, I am also turning to look at Rana.

You did this,
I think to her because it seems that Rana and the Terra are only here for me, that Lilly is not aware of them.

Rana, down on the floor of the ice cave with the skull.

I performed the preservation ritual before she died,
she says.

You uploaded her into your skull.

Yes, to save her for you. At the time, it seemed like the only way.

Why didn't you tell me?

Because this isn't completely her. It's like me. A split. You
needed to say good-bye to the real Lilly. I was going to tell you after that, but then you had this plan. If Paul brings her body up here, she and her skull essence will be reunited. I wasn't going to tell you about this ghost of her unless that plan didn't work. But I didn't realize she could sense what was going on outside. And I didn't know she could draw you into the skull.

She didn't do that
, says the Terra,
I did. Lilly was calling out to you, but only I could hear it. So I made this connection.

The perfect night flashes for a moment, like a burst of lightning.

But I cannot hold us here for long
, says the Terra.
Paul will be able to disrupt the frequency of this skull connection with his machines.

“Owen.” Lilly's voice is quiet now. We are hugging with no space between us, and yet, while I am heaving with fast breaths, Lilly doesn't move. No rise and fall of her chest, no ribs aligning, no hearts thumping code to one another. She is just still, like a photograph or a statue.

“I died,” says Lilly softly in my ear, “didn't I?”

I feel the draining inside me all over again and it is all I can do to stay on my feet. I hold her as tight as I can, this heatless version of her, but she still feels real, Lilly arms and Lilly hair and Lilly eyelashes against my cheek, but . . .

“Yeah,” I say. “You died in the ice, in Antarctica. . . .” The memories flood back and I can't believe I have been making deals with the person who aimed a gun at Lilly's head and pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through her brain. That man . . .

The darkness flashes again, a glimpse back into the lab.

“Dead,” says Lilly. “I figured. And what about you?”

“I survived, barely. The Sentinel in the Andes, Rana, she uploaded you into this skull, though I'm not sure why you're on this island.”

Lilly glances around. “I think it's the last place I was thinking about, kinda like a cryo dream, and it stuck. I always felt safe here, more than anywhere else. I remember I was dreaming of being here, and there was a bright light and cold, the ice, but the light must have been the skull sucking me up. Oh god, Owen . . .”

She starts to cry on my shoulder, only there are no actual tears here.

“It's okay,” I say. “Lilly, I love you”—ninth time—“and you're going to be okay soon. I'm going to fix this. You won't be in here much longer.”

Lilly's face rubs up my neck, across my cheek. She kisses me quickly and pulls back. “Really? How is that possible?”

Her eyes are more than I can handle. I have to look away. But maybe it's because I am worried about how she's going to react to what I say next. I have been imagining her eyes opening, the spark of animation returning to her face, her joy at being alive again. It has been the image that has kept me going for days. And then, once she was back, I would explain the choices I had to make, but here . . .

“Owen, what is it? What's going on?”

The lab flashes again.

I have to spit it out. “The Heart of the Terra has the power of eternal life, of resurrection. It can bring you back.”

Lilly's lips purse. “Okay, but . . . that lab you're in, with the Terra in a box. And
him
. How are you going to free her to do that? What's the plan? Are those Sentinels going to help?”

“I, um . . .” My heart races. I can feel the danger in what I'm about to say. “We don't have to free her to save you. We can use a sample of her energy—”

Lilly's face contorts. “A sample? What, is she a lab rat now, too?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“Typical Paul,” mutters Lilly, “locking up everything he can . . . Okay, but how do we free her when I'm back? How are you going to revive me without Paul knowing?”

With each of Lilly's questions, I feel myself twisting into a knot inside. “No, Lilly, listen. Paul . . . he
knows
. His men are the ones going to get your body. He's helping me to save you.” These words don't sound as convincing when I say them to Lilly. I worry that they sound like a betrayal.

Sure enough, storm clouds blow across Lilly's eyes. “Paul. Helping us. And why would he do that? Why would
we
do that?”

And now I have to tell her. “Because I told him I'd help him. I can communicate with the Terra and so I said I would help him if he agreed to bring you back. It's the only way.”

I reach out to touch her arm, but she pulls away and glares at me like I am something radioactive.

“Owen, what are you saying? How can you help him? He's tortured you, murdered our friends, murdered
me
! And how many other people?”

“I didn't have any other choice,” I say, pleading but now hating hearing my own words, because now I am seeing them through Lilly's eyes and realizing, oh no . . . have I been a fool? But, no, I haven't. “What else was I supposed to do?” I say, nearly shouting. “He had the Heart of the Terra.
Egress
is a space station. I could have blown it up, but if I did . . . you'd never be able to come back. You
died
, Lilly.”

Lilly won't look at me. Her face flickers in the candlelight. She speaks slowly. “And when I come back . . . if I come back . . . what then?”

“Well, we . . .” It is all sounding so wrong but I try to spit it out. “I mean, first of all, you can be alive. And then, we'll get to travel in space like you dreamed about! You said you would have given anything for that chance.”

Lilly breathes in slowly. “What about the rest of the world? I can sense its pain, like everyone is crying at once. The Terra's been taken. . . .” A shudder runs through her. “No one can hear its music,” she says, horrified, “even the little bit that was still in the world. That was the last bit that was holding us together, keeping humanity from dying out. It will be the end.”

“Well,” I stammer, “yeah, but . . . not for us. We'll be okay.”

Lilly's eyes return in a lethal glare. “How can you say that?”

“Because!” I shout. “There was never going to be a perfect beach, a clean ocean for us to live beside, me catching you fish or whatever. There was never going to be an Eden or somewhere for us to be! Those were just stupid dreams. Our whole quest was doomed, and you died! You died. But now we can actually have that thing we always imagined—”

“We?” Lilly throws up her hands. “I never imagined
this
! I never thought we'd be talking about sacrificing the fate of the earth!”

Her words are making my brain feel blank, stuck spinning. “But,” I say, and I know how desperate I sound, “we'll be together. We'll be safe. Isn't that all that matters?”

Lilly stares at me hard. I have no idea what she'll say. Then her eyes shake and she steps in and hugs me again. “I can't imagine what it would be like to lose you. To watch you die, to . . .”

“To build you a coffin,” I say, my legs threatening to buckle beneath me as the words come out, “To push you out to sea.”

“Oh, Owen . . . I couldn't have done that.”

“Yes, you could have,” I say into her hair. “You're stronger, Lilly, and I need you. You're the only thing that matters in this world to me.”

Lilly shakes her head. “But I'm not. I can't be.”

“What do you mean? You are.”

Lilly steps away again. She stares down into the candlelight and then holds her hand above the flames. “I'm kind of transparent,” she says quietly.

“Not for long,” I say.

“Stop!” Lilly presses her temples. “Just . . . stop. O . . .” She sighs. “I know where you're coming from, but . . . we can't do this. It's wrong. We can't put ourselves before the whole planet.”

Her words are burning me up, maybe because I should have known. Of course this is what she'd say. And yet, these noble thoughts of hers, where had they gotten us? “What's wrong,” I say, “with thinking about us, for once? No one else ever has. No one's ever cared except to use us as pawns. What's wrong with putting me first?”

“You?”

“I mean us!”

“And what about everyone we were fighting for, who lived on in our mission? What about Carey?”

“They're dead!” I shout. “You're DEAD! But I can bring you back! Everyone else is gone forever, but not you. This is our only chance to be together! Isn't that worth it?”

But even as I am saying this, I have this terrible feeling that I know what Lilly will say. She wouldn't have had this choice if she'd already been back, but . . . who am I to take her choice away? It isn't fair, and I knew that, didn't I? Maybe that's why I tried not to think about it, about her.

Lilly wipes at her eyes again. Looks to the sky, around her little island, her virtual tomb . . . “No,” she says finally. “I love you, Owen, but I can't live with this. You can't live with it because I can't, we can't live with this choice. It's too . . . wrong.”

“Says who?”

“Says, I don't know, me? My brother, my parents, they all died for me to be in Eden! In a way, they all died for me to have this chance. Carey died to show you Paul's lies. Even Seven died to save us from Victoria! This may not have been our choice, being Atlanteans and all, but that doesn't change the fact that we are the only ones now who can do what needs to be done.”

“
You
can't,” I say. “You're dead.”

“God, I know! Believe me, I know. I've had plenty of time to think about that, stuck on this island inside a skull. I'll never see a sunrise again, never watch the beauty of trash falling from the skies, never fly with you again, never joke about bow tie–shaped cookies with blue frosting. . . .”

Of all this, the mention of our old game nearly kills me. “Geronimos,” I say quietly.

Lilly smiles tragically. “That name never made any sense.”

“Lilly . . .”