The Last City Read online

  “Back on Rathe?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “So, the Rathe can come and go? What about the Heart?” No wonder he was being evasive. If they could come and go, why on Earth didn’t they save themselves from the Guardian? Why did they put themselves through all that they had? And, why would they let me go through what I did, believing it was necessary. Believing I was helping them, saving them. My hands began to shake as these and a million other accusations prepared to leap from me.

  Jordan leaned forward and clasped my hands in his, gently squeezing them. His warm presence caressed mine, attempting to calm my thoughts. And while I appreciated his effort, I could sense all he was feeling, and his own sense of betrayal mirrored mine, but for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom. Confusion seemed to overwhelm us both. He however, was giving Mason the benefit of the doubt. He was patiently waiting for the reason behind their madness.

  I tried to follow suit. I tried to see the possibility that what had happened was necessary, but I just couldn’t.

  “I don’t understand,” I quietly said. It was the only response I could give without losing my temper. I’d never had a temper, but I could sure feel one brewing inside, ready to explode.

  “None of them can come and go at will. The Heart long ago abandoned any progress they may have made in that field. I couldn’t tell you what they saw, or what they discovered, but when they were attacked, they instead decided to focus upon their own defense, and upon exploring what was within their own universe. But the people from Rathe,” he paused, as if to consider his words. “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what they can do. Aleric either won’t or can’t tell me. And it’s for the best that he doesn’t. But I know they can’t leave, not without our help, or Sater’s. But even if they could, I wouldn’t want them to. They are helping us heal this planet.”

  This time I had no words to express the confusion inside me. Instead, I waited. I waited for his words to sink in. And I waited for anything else he was willing to volunteer.

  “I can say however, that what they have achieved, and what they can do, both Heart and Rathe, must stay with them. They were all in complete agreement, that if the Guardian, or someone else from this plane figured out how to bring people here, they would stay. They stayed to monitor our progress, or downfall. They stayed to be ready, to defend their own worlds.”

  While his words made sense, I couldn’t help but feel that I wasn’t yet seeing it all. Between these three powerful races, they should have been able to unplug the Guardian without the need for blood.

  “The Guardian wasn’t the enemy,” he said. “Not at first. But over the years, it began to take people against their will. And it blocked any attempt to return them. The ones that were inserted, only let the Guardian see what they wanted it to see. And from them all, it took their fiercest, most advanced qualities, to enhance those from Terah.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Terah. Where he comes from.” Mason pointed toward the small room at the end. “When we first developed the technology, we traveled to other realms, and some of them volunteered to come back with us, knowing they would not return. His realm is one that we had visited…”

  “Terah,” I repeated. The name of his world could not have been more appropriate. However, just thinking about him, and others like him, sent a chill down my spine. And I wished for my old self back. The person I once was back on Earth. The person that asked no questions, that bundled things up into a non-existing void and let them live there, untouched, unanalyzed, and unthought of. But that person was long gone. Since coming to this world, I’d proven to myself time and again, that not having all of the information can lead to painful decisions. I couldn’t live that way anymore. I wouldn’t. I wanted details, whether pleasant to hear or not. I looked from Mason to Jordan, questioning, waiting for one or the other to explain this new dimension.

  “A world at war, ruled by tyranny, constantly tearing each other apart. Their technology is centuries behind what you have on Earth now, but from a warrior’s standpoint, they are stronger than those from your world. They are decisive, and there is no place in their world for any kind of weakness, physical or otherwise.

  “Once the Guardian self-actualized, it began its own experimenting,” he continued. “Searching for more power, more technology, and it studied the worlds we’d already visited. It analyzed those who’d previously been brought over, most of whom remained in the Spire. It abducted people from Rathe, Heart, Earth, and several other dimensions. It tested them all. And then it brought over more Terahns, a lot more. It planned to make them into its ultimate fighting warriors - brutal, powerful, and unstoppable. They take war and hunting to the extreme, and combined with the intelligence of the Rathe, and the power of Heart, they were the perfect choice.”

  “What do you mean, they take it to the extreme?” But even as I spoke, I could feel that this was one question that probably should have gone unasked.

  “They don’t stop until they’ve achieved their goal,” Mason finished. “You don’t need to hear anymore.”

  “Yes, I do,” I whispered back to him.

  “Yes, she does,” Jordan agreed. And in spite of his own inner turmoil, Jordan’s focus remained on me. Studying me, attempting to calm me.

  Mason took a deep breath, groaning as he exhaled. He then pointed toward the small, end room.

  “I pieced him together,” he said. “Not only through the Guardian, but also through the few memories he’d released into the Spire,” he then paused, before adding. “You are more than just his prey. You are his reason for existing.”

  Another drop in my well of knowledge that truly didn’t need to exist. I needed to learn to trust my instincts.

  Jordan gently squeezed my hands, taking my focus off the ward, and bringing it back to him. And as he held my gaze, I knew the words that ran through his mind without me needing to hear them - My reason.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Jordan asked, still looking at me.

  “I’ve been trying to, for months now,” Mason argued back. “But you refused to hear me. His kind is one of the reasons why… some… opposed our enhancing the Central Unit and building the Spire.”

  “Sater,” I said.

  “Yes. He knew what was coming. He saw it in another dimension, an almost exact copy of Threa, but in that dimension the Terahn’s had fought back. They overran the planet, almost destroying them all in the process. Sater came looking for us, to warn us of what may follow if we continued our course.”

  “But why in the memories, wasn’t he solid like the others?” I asked him one final time, needing to take my mind off the ward.

  “Because he was never really here.”

  9

  Revelations

  On the slow walk back, to our home in the city, Jordan pointed out more houses that had taken on the appearance of homes from Earth, mixed in between were the flat, white structures of Heart and the earthy, textured homes of Rathe. It was a convergence of four worlds, each unique, but blending so sublimely with one another as though they belonged together; one planet, one life.

  Once inside, he pulled me into his painting room, where the ocean now moved in gentle waves. The slightest of clouds breezed across the paling blue sky and the sun had begun to reflect in wave-formed patches across the water’s surface. The reflections, however, were incomplete, and at times were at odds with the sky as though they didn’t quite belong.

  “It’s a work in progress,” he explained.

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured, which it was, even with the partial reflection. Its tranquility was what my overstimulated mind needed to break free of the tense afternoon. Mason’s final revelation about Sater, had topped it all off. Sater was able to exist in both dimensions at the same time. Safe in his, analyzing any information that his duplicated-self experienced as he traveled to other places when the need arose. Sater, Mason informed me, was not completely human. He was in fact, part AI. He
ran and protected the planet Rathe.

  I could not even begin to imagine Sater’s existence - not completely human and existing in multiple places at once. And I pushed all thought of it away.

  Jordan nudged me into the soft couch. Then laying me across his lap, he wrapped his warm arms around me. I stared out at the slow movement of his artwork, captivated by the gentle wash of the waves, and I let myself drift into sleep.

  At some point, he had picked me up and taken me to bed. And when I awoke, I was still wrapped within his warm embrace, his face inches from mine. The recurring dream had invaded my sleep, but it was already leaving me. All thought of it, replaced by him.

  I breathed him in, watching him sleep. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to wake him.

  But his smile told me he was already there.

  “Good morning,” he whispered, cleaving his eyelids open. His sleep filled eyes still managed to captivate me, holding me in place. Until he blinked, releasing me, and I moved my head to snuggle into his neck.

  “You look tired,” I told him.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why not?” I asked, looking back up at him.

  “I…” he began with a frown, and then sighed. “Too much going through my mind.”

  After yesterday’s visit with Mason, I wasn’t surprised, and wanted to ask him what it was that he saw in the memory table, that had stunned him into near silence.

  “Training today,” he mumbled, as though sensing my question and changing the subject.

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. And I decided if he wasn’t ready to discuss it, then I wouldn’t push him. Whatever it was, it seemed to have had a profound effect upon him.

  “When did you get so enthusiastic?” he asked.

  “Lena needs me to hurt her, remember?” I grumbled against his skin.

  I felt his body vibrate with laughter as he responded, “And I wish you every success.”

  ∞

  From the moment we entered the training dome, Lena stared at me in expectation. But I’d decided against a verbal confrontation. Her ward-simulation may have taken things too far, but it had allowed me to see and understand my weakness. Just knowing how afraid of the ward I was, was not enough. Experiencing that fear, had renewed my need to learn. And I understood that Lena’s lessons, while harsh and somewhat disturbing, were necessary.

  All through training though, I tried not to think about what was coming, the task that I’d set for myself. Instead, I kept my focus solely upon warming up, and I fought the simulation with a vigorous determination to deliver - and receive - as much pain as was necessary, to keep my mind from wandering.

  However, once the moment came to fight Lena, I couldn’t look her in the eye, which went against everything she’d taught me. I was supposed to maintain eye contact to determine her moves, and to show my courage and conviction, according to their ways.

  But I also needed to take this in stages. I knew how to fight… well, somewhat anyway… but deliberately hurting her just for the sake of practice, was something I was going to have to build up to one step at a time. I was sure that if I looked her square in the face, my courage would dissolve, and I was already pushing down every ounce of weakness that wanted to rise up and take over.

  Still, I was determined to learn. After seeing the real ward in his isolated, blue void, and hearing that torturing me had become his life’s purpose, that was all the motivation I needed. If he ever got out, if he ever came near me again, I would be ready.

  “Ready?” she asked with a smile, as though reading my thoughts.

  I wasn’t too sure what I was going to do. I didn’t really have a game plan. But it would have to be quick before she weakened me with the pain I knew, she was ready to inflict.

  I was prepared for her fists to come at me, as they always did, and with my arms before me, I nodded. And I realized in that second, that she already knew what I was going to do, I could feel it. She was waiting for it. And she was going to let me do it.

  The moment after I blocked her slow, and deliberately weak attack, I jumped and turned, sweeping both of my feet toward her and to the side. I landed one foot upon one of hers, holding her leg in place as the other slammed against her calf just below the knee, forcing it to bend the wrong way. The move was similar to what I’d used on the ward. But… it seemed to work.

  Lena barely made a sound when the noise of her bones crunching in a way bones shouldn’t, reached my ears. She sucked back her breath, and then exhaled it away.

  And that was all.

  She was even still standing.

  “Good job,” she said, without a hint of strain in her voice. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “Lena,” I could barely speak. My stomach was already turning, and my hands fluttered toward her. “I’m s-sorry.”

  She glared at me in annoyance, and I knew that was the wrong thing to say to her. Thank you, would have been more appropriate. But those words were more out of place, than the fact that I’d managed to accomplish such a disconcerting act of aggression against her.

  I tried to wrap one of her arms around my shoulder, to help her to the medic room, but she brushed me off.

  “You can’t walk there by yourself. Your leg is…” but I couldn’t finish my sentence. When I looked down, I saw bone poking through her warrior suit, and a small puddle of red had begun to accumulate around her foot. The sight was more than I could take. I’d done that. I’d hurt her. And I could feel the blood draining from my face. I grabbed her hand and forced her arm around my shoulder, and then closed my eyes, trying not to let the black spots become a dark void. And we hobbled from the room, one shaky step at a time.

  We didn’t get far however, before I realized that there was pain in one of my own feet, the one I’d used upon her leg. The spike that traveled through my foot and up my leg had begun as not much more than a dull throb, but with each step the throb turned into a sharp pressure. And the more I thought about the pain, and felt it as we walked, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d broken something myself.

  Once I was sure I wasn’t going to pass out, I opened my eyes again, but I didn’t look down. If I saw what was wrong with me, there was a chance I would turn the pain into something worse than what it had a right to be. I would just let Haize fix it.

  “Better now?” she asked me, through a barely audible grunt of discomfort. I hoped her suit was diminishing some of what she was feeling, as it was designed to. I almost certainly would have passed out after the simulated ward’s attack, if not for the suit’s technology.

  And yet, here she was, broken leg and still managing to stay upright. I internally gaped at her fortitude and wondered how bad it would have to be before her pain would register for others to bear witness to. She was the toughest person, I was sure, I would ever meet. The strongest of the warriors, the most undefeated. She was the force I wished to live up to.

  “Lena,” Dax groaned as we entered the room. He ran to her other side, to take her from me, and helped her onto a table. The look she gave him, indicated she was both annoyed and amused by his offer to assist her.

  Jordan beamed at me. “You did it,” he said, as he assisted me to a table, where I waited my turn to be healed.

  Haize set about her screens, correcting the damage to Lena’s leg. Dax only glared at me, as though he wanted to tear my heart out.

  “Pain for pain,” I murmured in his direction, and then clamped my mouth shut, remembering where I’d heard the expression. It was what the ward had said to me, his reason for hurting me, because I’d hurt him first.

  “She cheated,” Lena said, then winced and sucked back her breath as Haize righted her leg.

  “What?” Jordan and I called in unison.

  “How?” I asked, confused. She couldn’t have meant because she’d let me hurt her. For why would she let me in the first place, if she was only going to accuse me of cheating afterward. “What are you talking about
?”

  “You couldn’t look me in the eye,” she said, through a brief flicker of pain.

  The guilt once more began to well up within me. I couldn’t help but feel as though my hurting her - a real person, not just a simulation - had violated something sacred.

  “How else did you expect me to accomplish that,” I argued, and flicked my hand toward her. I could feel the emotion building within me and I swallowed hard to keep it all down. “You’re my best friend, I can’t just go around breaking you for no good reason!”

  I had no idea where that came from. I don’t believe that thought had ever crossed my mind before.

  She gasped and cocked her head to the side. No doubt as surprised as I was by my revelation. It was however, the truth. I’d never even come close to having a best friend before. Growing up, I was a loner. I had my brother, but I’d felt no need for other friends; those encounters were always awkward and mostly silent.

  Lena was the one person, girl-person, that I ever felt like I’d connected with, in an honest way. My friendship for Rebecca was similar, but it was more protective, as though she was my little sister, despite her being three hundred years older than me.

  Lena smiled. And for a moment I expected a sarcastic retort from her, but I was relieved when it didn’t come.

  “You’re forgiven,” she responded, still smiling. And it was genuine. It felt good to see that emotion on her face.

  I could only nod.

  “This one time only,” she added, her smile gone. She then turned back to Haize.

  Once Haize was finished with her, I asked about Aleric as she healed my foot.

  “He’s not back yet,” she said firmly, as though she was done with the topic. But I wasn’t.

  “Back from where?”

  “North of the city,” she said, glancing up at Jordan. “There’s a new settlement that the Central Unit detected, and Mason asked if we would check on them.”