“You remember those nights we would sleep in the backyard?”
James was looking up at the altar, a half smile on his face.
“Our bunk beds,” I said.
“I remember how Mom and Dad would go to bed and we would stay up talking, you know, just about—”
“Your crush on Mrs. Hurley.”
“I didn’t have a crush on Mrs.—”
“You told Mom and Dad that if they didn’t get you into her class, you were going to run away.”
“Well, what about you and — what’s her name?” James asked. “That girl down the steet. The redhead. Cassie!”
“No no no,” I said, waving him off. “I definitely didn’t have a—”
“I saw the poetry. I saw it. Would you like a quote? ‘Oh, Cassie! With hair of fire —’”
“Enough!”
James laughed and so did I, the sound echoing off the walls and brightening the inside of the Lighthouse. Once it faded, James and I sat side by side, a little breathless.
“The best thing about home was me and you,” James said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”
“I can’t believe this is a coincidence. God wanted you here.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask Him.”
“God doesn’t talk to me, James.”
“You don’t listen.”
An old anger began to smolder and I tried to hold it down. “How can you — I mean, the things Hill does. The Choice—”
“We’re trying to fix something that’s badly broken,” James said, repeating the line we had heard from a dozen beacons. “The Choice is a tool. Once we get where we’re going, it won’t be necessary anymore. Until then—”
“How can you say that?” I asked, my voice rising. “How can you believe that?”
“Because it’s—”
“How did they get to you?”
“No one got to me! I just—” James stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment and then continued. “I was just as scared as you after they took us. Just as angry too. Without Mom and Dad, everything just seemed… It’s like we were in the middle of this hurricane all the time. You know? But then I went to Lighthouse one night and Beacon Thomas explained that there was a path that ran through the center of the world. He said that no matter how chaotic things seemed, there was a plan and everything and everyone had their place in it. He said that once I pushed the fear and anger and doubt out of my head, I would know mine.”
A glow washed over James as he remembered.
“And he was right,” he said. “Once I saw it, once I let myself see it, I couldn’t see anything else. I didn’t want to. And it can be the same for you, Cal.”
“James.”
“I know you don’t believe it, but you have a path too. There’s a reason that you—”
“Maybe there are some things we just shouldn’t talk about.”
James fell silent. He turned away from me, staring down at the concrete floor, his hands on The Glorious Path.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Neither of us said anything more for some time. The quiet in the Lighthouse made it feel like we were trapped in amber.
“Guess they’ll want everyone at their duty stations soon.”
I nodded weakly, and James left his seat and started toward the aisle. The feel of him drawing away stopped my breath. If he left, if he opened that door, time would start up again and everything would be lost.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
James stopped. “I thought you were going home.”
“I think there’s something I have to do first,” I said. “A friend I have to help. But I don’t know how.”
James’s footsteps whispered down the carpet until I could feel him standing just at my shoulder.
“I don’t know if I even can.”
“God’s not cruel,” he said. “He wouldn’t put you on a path you couldn’t reach the end of. You have to trust that.”
I turned around. James stood like a pillar in the middle of the aisle. The way the candlelight struck his face, deepening the hollows of his eyes and cheeks, made him seem so much older. It was like we had switched places and he was the older brother now and I was the younger. Or maybe it had been that way for a long while and I had never noticed.
“Good luck, Cal.”
The noise of the war broke the spell of the Lighthouse as he opened the door. When it closed again, that same timelessness gathered around me — only now, I could feel the lie of it. Seconds ticked away inside of me like the fall of an axe.
I leaned forward over the seat in front of me. The altar and the glimmering sign of the Path seemed huge, overwhelming. Without thinking, I laced my fingers together and closed my eyes. Terror of the beacons had led me to spend months hiding in our barracks, rehearsing all the gestures and expressions of faith until I had them down perfectly. But sitting there in that Lighthouse, peering into the darkness of my closed eyes, a prayer unspooled deep inside me and for the first time it felt like something reaching out from the very center of me.
“God,” I prayed. “Lead me to my path….”
I stepped out of the Lighthouse and into the chaos of the battle. A siren was screeching and scores of soldiers ran by in a blur of camouflage, sprinting for their duty stations. There was a flash as a missile battery on the outskirts of the base fired. Veins of smoke shot into the sky, and seconds later, there were three explosions high overhead.
With all the confusion, it was hard to be sure, but I thought I heard small-arms fire just beyond the perimeter of the base. I joined the rush of traffic headed into the command building.
“Cal!”
James was running from the kitchens and I shoved my way through the mob to meet him.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” James said. “Something’s gone wrong but no one will say what.”
Down the hallway, officers were streaming in and out of the ops center. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Stay here.”
A soldier swiped his key card by the doors and I timed my stride to slip in right behind him. The room was packed with generals and their men, all of them huddling over communications gear and glowing computers. I eased back into the shadows and looked for Hill.
He was standing with a group of officers before a large screen that showed a map of the United States. Path forces were displayed as gold circles and Fed forces were blue triangles. One look and it was easy to see what fueled the chaos in the room. There was a lot more blue on the board than gold and much of it was south of the Path’s frontlines. It looked like Federal forces were streaming in from the east and west simultaneously and quickly overwhelming Path forces.
“I want to know what the hell is going on,” Hill said. “The Feds were not supposed to be able to do this.”
A general in a disheveled uniform stepped forward. “Mr. President,” he said, struggling to keep his voice calm. “There was a wave of drone and cruise missile attacks followed by large-scale beach landings and paratroop drops from stealth aircraft in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.”
“Which we weren’t prepared for,” Hill said.
“Sir, I—”
“Your assessment said that the Feds weren’t supposed to have half this many troops left.”
“We’re working on it now, sir,” the general said. “If we have more time, I’m sure we can come up with an—”
A junior officer spoke up from a bank of communications gear. “Sir, it’s confirmed.”