The Far Dawn (28 page)

She throws up her hands. “I can't stop you from bringing me back. I'm a bunch of electrical impulses inside a glass head. But . . . if you do, Owen . . .” She stares into me. “I will hate you.”

“Lilly, don't say that—”

“No, Owen, I will! Oh man, I will hate you and I'll never forgive you, and I will never want to be with you, and I'll be a maniac and I'll do everything in my power to destroy what Paul has done. He'll probably shoot me again within minutes.” She puts two fingers to her forehead. “I remember a big bright pain . . .”

Everything is draining out of me. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because that's what you should want, too!” she shouts. “I know it hasn't been fair. None of this has been fair, but that doesn't change who we can be.”

“But, Lilly, I don't care who we can be. I just want you.”

“You have me.” She steps close again, and puts her palm on my chest and her other hand behind my head, fingers ruffling my hair.

Fake fingers.

Fake hair.

But still . . . “You'll always have me. You can visit me in my fancy little skull. It sucks, but it is. And the only way I'll be happy in . . . here . . . is if I know that you tried to do what we believed in.”

The words sink in. Sink in and wash away my intentions, my motivations, like what I thought were the deepest of convictions were just footprints on a beach.

The clean sands of Antarctica, where I pushed your coffin out to sea.

The words swirl and drain out, and more than anything, I feel like the world's biggest fool. How could I
not
have known she would feel this way? Maybe because I never thought about her. Well, I did, but only when I was thinking about me. About how I wanted her back, how I didn't feel like I owed the world any more of my blood and suffering. Maybe that's not surprising, given everything that's happened. But still.

Of course she was going to feel this way.

I thought it was a good idea,
says Rana,
for what it's worth.

I gaze at Lilly, the memory of her standing there. This isn't her. And even worse than when I pushed her out to sea, with a secret plan to stow her in ice, this . . .

This is the moment. She is really gone. Even if there is a body and a third option. There's no third option for Lilly. Maybe she's better than me. Maybe she's just stubborn and stupid.

But she's Lilly.

And who exactly am I?

Mendes's words echo in my mind:
In times like these, faith comes and goes. It's your soul you need to keep track of.
And in these choices, to save Lilly, to turn away from the Terra, from the planet, have I lost track?

Before the ice, what I wanted and what I believed in had been the same. Lilly, the mission, it was all united. And then torn apart. But by choosing what I wanted, what I felt like I needed, I forgot not just what I believed in, but what Lilly believed in, too.

Maybe this will always be a struggle. We will always want. We will always yearn and desire and crave and miss and feel empty when we can't have what we want, but to believe in something . . . is to know your soul.

I said once that I wanted to be true. All of this happened, even Lilly's death, after I said I wanted to see truth and said no to Paul. Where was that boy now? What had happened?

But I knew what had happened. Horrors. Things bigger than me that I could never totally understand. Loss, doubt, the world getting so big it folded in on itself and became something I could never fathom, something cruel and heartless and relentless and always sad. And yet, through all of that, there had been Lilly and me, an eye of the storm, the only good thing.

But hadn't I also believed in our mission? Yes. And how much of my belief had been my own, and how much had been because Lilly did, I will never know. Because it doesn't matter. There is only me now, and . . .

I have to believe enough for both of us.

And maybe that's not how a hero should work: maybe I've always been less than I should have been, less than everyone expected, and less than the world needed. Maybe this deal with Paul was just another pathetic act by the Turtle. Maybe the Terra was wrong about me. Maybe her next choice will be better. Because I'm
still
not sure I believe.

If I can't bring Lilly back, then she'll never know if I go to Mars. She'll never know if I stay on
Egress
. It won't matter.

I can do what I want and none of it will matter.

Except . . . it will.

Who am I kidding?

I do believe. It's just really hard.

I look to the Terra.

It's okay
, she says
, if you want to go. It has never been the way of man to free me, but I still believe in you, Owen.

No,
I say.
I'm ready,
but I don't even know how to free you
.
How do we break open that crystal cage?

It is easy. All you h—

The Terra flickers out and the lab flashes back into being around us. There is a whining of electrical energy.

Then the darkness of the island returns. Pleasant fake insects buzzing.

Paul is breaking the field
, says Rana.

Lilly has sat down on the grass and wrapped her blanket around her. “I'll be with you, Owen. Right here. Forever, now.”

“That's never going to be enough,” I say.

“I know.”

I cannot hold us any longer
, says the Terra.

The lab bleeds in on all sides.

“Lilly . . .” I suddenly want another hug, even if they are incomplete, only one of us breathing. I want to say more—

But then in a flash we are back.

I find myself on my knees on the lab floor. The Terra's eyes are closed again. Rana and Kael still silent and trapped.

Something's wrong, though. Through the window to the control room, a red light is flashing.

“The field is breached, sir,” Damon reports.

“Good, now fire!” Paul shouts. He's beside me, gazing at a large holographic projection screen that has materialized in the air in front of us. It shows a map with the earth, the position of
Egress
in orbit, and something blinking also in red.

Something heading straight for us.

There is a faint rumble through the floor, and now onscreen, two dots speed away from
Egress
toward whatever is coming.

“Missiles have lock,” Damon reports over the intercom.

I watch the dots close, nearing the incoming object . . . and then the two missile dots blink out.

“What happened?” Paul barks.

The incoming dot is still approaching. What is coming?

“Where did the missiles go?” Paul is as furious as I've ever seen him. “Somebody tell me something!”

Suddenly there is a huge crash from behind us.

“They missed,” a voice hisses from right beside me. “But I didn't.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see a light, and when I turn it has already blurred by, a streak of lightning, hurtling across the room and slamming into the glass containers in a spray of light and shards.

When the glow settles, the ghosts of Rana and Kael hover free.

They are joined by a third.

“Lük,” Rana hisses, “what are you doing here?”

“I figured you needed a rescue,” says Lük. “Don't you?”

“We do now,” I say.

“Erica!” Paul shouts, pointing at the three. “Arm the electric—”

But Paul stops speaking and staggers, his head whipping back and his hands leaping to his neck . . .

To the ghostly edges of a triangular throwing blade embedded there.

“That's for fifty years in a test tube,” says the shade of Kael.

And just like that, Paul falls to the floor beside me.

25

AT FIRST I CAN'T BELIEVE IT. PAUL, LYING THERE, blood spouting from the side of his neck. His fingers flick at the edges of the blade, twitching like the legs of a crushed spider. His body spasms, and he tries to get up.

I suddenly find myself feeling cheated, like I owed Lilly, owed myself and Elissa and Carey, owed them all vengeance against this monster, like I should have been the one; but once again, just like so many other times on this journey, I've never been able to be the killer. Never quite had it in me, just like Leech feared back in the desert, and it makes me feel weak, less worthy. Paul was
mine,
after all he did . . . and yet Paul had many enemies, a world of enemies, and I was only one of many with a score to settle.

“Nice shot,” Rana says to Kael. And then to Lük, “How did you get here?”

“I flew the ship,” he says.

“I thought it needed decades of work.”

Lük seems to shrug. “It didn't seem like you had decades.”

Rana smiles more than I've ever seen.

“It's a pretty good ride,” says Lük, “bulky compared to my old craft, but not bad. It's waiting outside, but we should hurry.”

I glance toward the control room window and see that Erica and Damon are gaping at us. Their mouths move, talking to one another, and then they turn and run. Just as they disappear, alarms begin to sound.

A choking sound makes me turn back to Paul, lying on the floor. He's slapped his sunglasses free and his electric blue irises flash in their seas of red. His pupils are whirring, opening and closing. “O-wen . . . ,” he croaks. He's reaching for me. The pool of blood has spread beyond his head.

I want to say something to him. I want him to know . . . what? All I feel is blank seeing him like this. All the anger, all the betrayal, but in the end, Paul is just another frail body of blood and tissue, of electrical impulses, one that will have lived, and will die and will be gone, no worse or better a fate than the rest of us, despite all his efforts.

What comes out surprises me. “I'm sorry,” I say.

“O . . . ,” he croaks, his voice torn and blood soaked. He motions with his hand like I should come close. I find myself bending over him, taking one last look into his bionic eyes with one of my own, its focal point fixating on his. In spite of everything, some part of me wants to know his final words.

Instead, his hands seize me by the neck. He drags me down, flipping me over, and he slumps on top of me. I feel the gush of fluid from his neck hitting my chest. His eyes whir and his fingers press down. “I can't . . . die . . . ,” he says in a haggard whisper. “You . . .”

He squeezes and I can't breathe, struggling but he's too heavy—

Suddenly his eyes brighten from blue to white. Sparks shoot and his eyes hiss and spin.

His whole body begins to glow, and though his mouth is still moving, no more sound comes out.

“You want to know what it feels like to be a god?” Rana hisses from inside him. “I will show you.”

Paul grows brighter. His eyes go dark, but everything else is dissolving into light, his face and hair and shirt and tie, his hands that were on my neck, all become a ghostly shimmer and his face looks almost ecstatic, his mouth wide-open, before it is erased in light.

He rises off me, and Rana brightens more and Paul is lost to light, lost to energy, and his body disintegrates in glowing dust, like fireflies, all flying free.

And he is gone.

“Live bright,” I whisper, and I watch the light swarm away. . . .

Actually, it all flows in the same direction. Toward the doors. And as it does, I become aware of a sucking sound and a breeze tugging me in that same direction.

“Attention,
Egress
citizens”—the pleasant female voice returns with no more urgency than ever—“please return immediately to your staterooms. All personnel in the forward labs please proceed with a code white. Repeat—”

Her last words are drowned out by a wicked shriek of twisting metal. And the sucking sound increases.

“Lük,” Rana hisses, “how did you get in here?”

The control room glass cracks in a spiderweb pattern.

“Well,” says Lük, glancing that way, “I didn't think there was time to sneak in, so I came through the wall.”

Another groan of metal. The sucking breeze becoming a roaring wind.

“Warning to all forward lab personnel: code white. Hull breach,” says the female voice. “Evacuate or report to life pods immediately. Forward lab will be ejected from
Egress
core in thirty seconds.”

“You blew a hole in the wall,” says Kael. “Subtle.”

“But it's an easy way out,” says Lük.

The control room glass bursts backward over the consoles, and a furious wind begins spiraling out of the lab, pulling me with it.

“Not for someone who needs air,” Rana says, and Lük looks at me.

“Oh, right. Him.”

Owen, quickly
.

I turn to the Terra.

Free me, and I can protect you.

“Okay, how?” I have to shout over the wind and now it claws at my clothes and hair as I get to my feet. It increases so quickly that suddenly I am yanked backward, staggering against its force.

The question
.

“I don't know—” I am dragged into the air, slamming against the robotic armature. “The question!”

The room begins to upend. No, it's gravity failing. The Terra's cube begins to float. Glass shards swirl around the room like an ice storm, and the wind becomes overwhelming and everything is moving toward the door. The walls buckle. Groan. Tear. Everything collapsing and pulling and I lose my footing and topple back over myself and see the white of the lab and then, far too close, the black of space. All the walls have ripped open, are peeling wider by the moment. In the last second, I reach for the bag with Lilly's skull, snaring it with my fingers as it bobs in the air. And then I am gaining speed, already feeling short of breath and cold. Colder than I have ever felt. Space.