Zero-Four opened the lock. The longboat descended slowly, weapons blazing, sending the Black to their hells with an almost casual ferocity.
((fifty feet.))
“It’s a spaceship!” West shouted over the din of the battle and the roar of the disintegrating planet. They all now stood shifted, ready to destroy the approaching alien hordes. The aliens flew at them. Each monster that drew near was burned alive and torn from this existence by light from above. But still they ran closer. More were generated by the mind-essence in flashes of heat and silver. Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty—
((twenty-five feet.))
“Get ready to help them aboard!”
Twenty feet. Fifteen. Hayes could see the featureless black faceplates of the aliens, the black armor—
And he was pulled up into the longboat.
((hovering at ten feet. surface is extremely unstable.))
Simon’s fury blazed at the endless onslaught of Enemy.
Jennings reached down, grabbed the shoulder of the young woman below him, and saw—
—PRESIDENT JENNINGS, SIR, BECAUSE OF THE EVIDENCE, THE BLOODY CLOTHING, NO RANSOM NOTE, WE MUST ASSUME THE WORST. OUR DEEP COVER AGENTS ARE QUESTIONING OUR INFORMANTS. BUT SHE’S BEEN GONE A MONTH, SIR. SHE’S GONE. WE SHOULD ASSUME THAT THE QUEBS GOT HER. SHE’S DEAD, SIR. PATRA’S DEAD. WE CAN’T KEEP SEARCHING FOR—
—“PATRA!?”
She had grabbed his arm and was pulling herself up when she heard her name. The voice was familiar. It was the voice of her
“DADDY!?”
she shouted and then she was in the ship and holding onto her father with all of her might. She sobbed with happiness, as did he.
Zero-Four wrestled West aboard the longboat as Hayes leaned out, took Flynn’s hand, pulled her upward.
The Enemy onslaught heightened. With an ear-splitting crack, a great rent formed in the Peak as the earth shook apart. The ground below them was a storm of light as the mind-essence generated countless Enemy. Simon was forced to shift the longboat to one side. As the vessel tilted, Flynn began to slip, and Hayes fell forward. Zero-Four leapt to grab his free hand.
The Enemy were on Flynn, struggling to climb up her into the longboat. Hayes groaned with exertion and his eyes locked with Flynn’s.
The longboat lifted fifty feet higher from the surface. Flynn, Hayes, and an Enemy warrior hung perilously from the vessel’s underside.
The alien reached back, preparing to silence Flynn’s screams forever. It painfully clung to her left leg. Where it made contact with her body, a silver web emerged, started to encompass her flesh.
Hayes was torn. With one hand he held on to Flynn; the other was clasped by the stranger from the vessel. He could do nothing to help her.
Flynn, screaming with agony, shifted her forearm and swept it downward, shattering the helmet and faceplate of the Enemy. Only her fingers touched the alien; its head was not taken off. Shards of armor erupted outwards in an explosion of black and silver slivers, shredding her lower back. She screamed, bore the pain and prepared to shift again.
She looked down.
Hayes was transfixed on the Enemy, eyes wide, filled with terror and fascination.
West gazed from above.
The cracked faceplate and helmet had fallen off, revealing the face of the alien.
A man stared up at them. A human.
Blonde. Silver eyes. An unsettling look of mindless determination and rapt hatred was innate on his face.
A human.
The soldiers of the Judas looked down upon a human.
The Enemy was humanity.
His face was illuminated with an unholy light as silver mesh of the web began to re-encompass it, covering the human visage with blackened alien metal.
Zero-Four extended his free hand and the Enemy’s human face became a mass of blood, teeth, and bone. The corpse released its grip on Flynn and fell to the ground into the midst of countless other Enemy. The silver tendrils weakened their grip on her lower body and fell lifelessly to earth.
Another fissure opened in the Peak. A great mass of rock rose into the air; a huge chunk that had comprised most of the Peak almost slammed into the underside of the longboat as it passed by, filling the air with dust and grit. Hayes looked down, blinked in disbelief as he saw the vessel that had been buried in the earth now partially exposed to the air. As the longboat struggled to maintain its position, he could see the now-dull black surface of the orb in the vessel beneath them.
Bathed in the Enemy’s blood and her own, mortally wounded, Flynn’s grip began to slip on Hayes’ hand. She exclaimed weakly, “Simon,” and Hayes struggled to tighten his grip.
Zero-Four’s heart stopped. He inhaled sharply.
Simon.
She was slipping.
“MAGGIE!” Simon Hayes shouted as her bloodied hand slipped free of his.
Heartbeat, and the screaming sound of a dying planet.
Inhalation.
Her eyes locked with his for an eternity, and he felt her touch in the space between heartbeats. She hung in the air, silver eyes searching his for help, mind reaching out and touching his with a calm and soothing reassurance. She hung in the air, and Simon could see how the furious wind blew her hair about her face, how that one unruly curl that he had had to brush out of her face so many times so that he could kiss her and kiss her waved in the wind as she slipped from his fingers into the space between life and death and heaven and hell. He felt the touch of her mind and it said the things he could not accept. Let me fall. Everything will be all right. Leave this place and live.
Heartbeat.
((maggie don’t leave me. i can’t do this without you.))
Living between heaven and hell, watching her fall.
Heartbeat.
Go, Simon.
Only ever really one story: a boy, a girl, and the end of the world.
Heartbeat, exhalation, silver eyes blink back tears of rage and terror.
She fell.
Hayes desperately looked at Zero-Four, who was still recovering from some unknown shock. Their hands were locked.
Hayes looked gravely and directly into Zero-Four’s gray eyes, so empty. Simon released his grip on Zero-Four’s hand. Zero-Four nodded.
Zero-Four let go.
Simon Hayes and Ember Magdalene Flynn fell into the scar in the earth, fell into destiny. The tumultuous surface of the planet closed upon them, and they were no more.
Zero-Four snapped himself from his reverie, stood emotionlessly. West reached over, grabbed his arm as Zero-Four walked by. Zero-Four tore from West’s grip, looked coldly and emptily into his eyes before continuing on. “Simon! Get us out of here!” A motion from Zero-Four’s hand and the bottom hatch closed. The longboat careened into the heavens to rendezvous with its fathership.
“You can’t just—” West’s eyes searched Zero-Four for some kind of encouragement.
“They’re dead. We have to leave.”
“But I saw you—”
Zero-Four slammed into West’s mind with his own. West was knocked to the matte metal floor, his face a canvas painted with terror. Zero-Four’s eyes blazed with metallic fury, and his eyebrows drew to an angry scowl. “What the fuck are you doing in this When? Are you part of Hannah’s little game?”
“I don’t know what—”
“What Program are you from? You aren’t from Seven. I’d recognize your pattern.”
“Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re just—”
Zero-Four reached out with his mind and touched West’s. His frown abated and he looked over to Jennings, who was holding on to a creature that was not entirely human.
“He’s a Styx. He’s not a Judas. We made him. He’s one of my soldiers.”
Zero-Four looked confusedly from Jennings to West, and his gaze finally rested on the silver creature looking warily out from Jennings’ protective embrace. “And what is that?”
“That—She is my daughter.”
Zero-Four saw then the web within which he had been entangled, and as the futures now long dead began to merge together before him, he felt overcome with despair, dizzy with the timeshift that for a moment infiltrated his pattern. Jennings was dismayed when for an instant the image of Zero-Four was clouded with static. Zero-Four returned to normal before Jennings could react. The image was as crisp and clear as ever.