There was no resisting. Nothing else mattered.
Caleb knew it.
Raiden knew it. Raiden, who had brought him this far, who had found him and saved him for this one event, for this gift. He was already biting into the fruit, and—
Wait, look at the others. I don’t think we’ll come back …
But then the vine (serpent? download cord?) struck cobra-like, and plunged into Caleb’s mouth and down into his soul, locking on, expanding, and—
Everything changed.
Alexander stood transfixed on the sword of fire. The rift gave out waves of energy that felt like stinging gnats biting at his skin, even from twenty feet or more. He watched, squinting and, at times, could almost see figures in the swirling hues, through the gap. Figures — and something vast and powerful, with appendages or branches beckoning toward him.
“Step back,” came Aria’s voice. Gentle, at his ear. Her hand took his wrist and tried to pull him away, but he resisted.
“I can see him.”
“Who?”
“Dad’s in there.”
Her hand tightened.
Phoebe’s voice, from somewhere close. She sounded deathly scared, words ringing with helplessness. “He’s right. I see him too. And my children, and Orlando, that brave, reckless dumbass.”
“What about these others?” Nina asked, and Alexander took his eyes away for a moment to see the room: the six other tables, the IVs and monitoring equipment. The four men and two women appearing to be asleep or in comas, and when he took his eyes away, he could still see what looked like thin filaments, cobweb-like strands of light stretching from each body into the rift.
“They’re getting weaker,” he said, comparing the filament width to those winding from Orlando and his father’s hearts. “My guess is they don’t have long before their other, astral bodies become untethered for good.”
Phoebe touched her children’s foreheads, kissed each one, then reached for Orlando’s hand. “And then what?”
“They’ll die.”
Nina had a blade out, a sharp, bright thing still with some ice along its edge. She stood beside the head of one of the others, then zeroed in on Raiden’s body. Their enemy. It was all his doing, all this. And she could end it right now. The guardian goons were dispatched, and as far as she could see, there were no more threats down here. Not yet, anyway, but they were coming. The whole army, or what was left of it.
Jacob. She didn’t know — was he racing back? Did he save Temple?
Was he dead?
She put the thought out of her mind as she quickly went over and pressed the blade against Raiden’s neck. “Why wait? Let’s take these bastards out first. Give our team a chance.”
“I don’t know,” Phoebe cautioned as Nina stood over the red-clad body lying on its side beside Caleb. No REM movements behind anyone’s eyes. Barely a breath or a rise and fall of their chests. Nothing but a sleep like the dead. The teardrop shaped gem had slipped free and seemed now, for all purposes, like a worthless dime-store trinket around Raiden’s neck.
“I’m doing it,” Nina grumbled, grasping the head and tilting it back, exposing the jugular.
“Wait!” Alexander said, swooning…
He fell to his knees, eyes wide and white, staring straight into the rift.
“I’m seeing it.”
“What?” Phoebe asked, coming closer, gently touching his shoulder as Aria moved in and took his hand.
“But barely,” he said. “Jumbled. The past… the discovery by Byrd and the military. Nazis… down here. Tunnels and an army. Technology like… flying saucers. Augmented machines and deadly weapons. Scientists on the tables here, trying to steal secrets from the rift without… being lost forever.”
He groaned, winced, and started heaving. “They lost so many. I see them trying to wake the men. Bodies convulse, die and in that other world the astral forms, without a tether… they’re swallowed up, consumed by that thing.”
“I see it too,” Aria said with a sharp gasp. “But vaguely. A huge-ass glowing tree, writhing like some alien god, devouring everything, everyone like souls are just snacks.”
“Okay,” Nina said. “So… why can’t I kill these assholes?”
“It causes some kind of reaction to the tree-thing,” Phoebe said, nodding and breathing softly, calmly. “I think we’re all in the same vision now. I’m asking the question, demanding to be seen what happened down here, why they shut it down, and there it is…”
“We took over from the Nazis,” Alexander said. “Got them on the run, coming in under the ice in subs. A massive combined air-sea raid.”
“Operation High-Jump,” Aria whispered.
“Brutal battle,” Phoebe said. “But we stopped them, disrupted their defenses and took over the base, at least temporarily. There were others, and tunnels and escape routes; some went to South America…”
“Ancient history,” said Alexander.
“A fight for another day,” voiced Aria sternly.
“But then…” Nina prodded, still waiting to hear a logical response.
“Then,” said Phoebe, “we tried the same thing as them: sending scientists through to poke around and snag a few choice bits of wisdom; must have learned some things, because right around then our tech advanced so sharply. Microchips, computing power, space flight, miniaturization…”
Alexander coughed. “So, it wasn’t from crashed UFO tech, like some thought.”
Phoebe ignored him. “And while they were tethered to the tree, sucking at the trove of infinite wisdom, someone decided to kill one of the Nazis still in a coma, astrally-bonded on the other side.”
“The tree absorbed him, and it was like a bloodlust coursed through it,” Aria said, shuddering.
“Anyone else tethered to it… immediately shredded. And the bits devoured.” Phoebe shook her head and let go of Alexander, breaking the connection. “That’s the only word I can use.”
Nina stood up, folding the knife back. She hung her head in disappointment. “So… no killing.”
“No,” said Alexander, blinking now, turning away from the rift.
“What do we do, then?” Aria asked.
Alexander took a step closer to the red-clad body, as Phoebe returned to the table with her children, and closer to Orlando. She knelt by them, shaking her head.
“We can’t go in after them… there’s nothing left of the DNA-serum-changing catalyst thing.”
Aria sighed. “And we can’t get any closer physically.”
Another step, then Alexander dropped to a knee, under Nina’s watch. He reached out toward the dull gem around Raiden’s neck.
“Maybe someone can.”
He took the gem in his hand and felt it pulsing and warm, extending a vibrating sense of power and protection up his arm. Alexander saw a flash of the golden tree, the vines, and his father, hungry and nearly past the point of any return.
Then he was back. He ripped the gem free from Raiden’s neck, and Alexander stood and faced the rift.
“I know what to do.”
38
Raiden floated before his destiny. The Tree of Life, at last.
But he focused on The Serpent.
It wound and wound around the trunk: at first it had been almost impossible to perceive, but now as clear as day. On this most glorious of days.
How many lifetimes had he endured, shuffling through each one in blindness? Forged in amnesia, lost in an endless cycle of pain and confusion, he was a child wandering in the dark. Until he found the key, heard the call, and with his brethren here, braved the most inaccessible place on the globe, and proved himself worthy.