The thought of Everett sent him back into the other time line, finding more details to pull the bomb into this reality. The only way that Everett and his future children were ever going to have a truly better life was if they were free of the Apostles. He owed Everett that future. He had survived Horus’s slaughter for this purpose; he would kill the bullies that had murdered countless helpless people.
The world needed to be free from the Apostles.
All of the Apostles. Carlee had believed the best outcome would have been life with the Apostles but without war, but he had always believed the opposite. That’s why this task was his. If even one of them survived, humanity would never be truly free. They would look to the robotic god for guidance rather than making their own path, and their freedom would be dependent on the whims of another species. Everett deserved a future that was dependent on nothing but himself, where dreaming wasn’t a painful disappointment. Jeff would do what he could now, leaving Horus and possibly future vagrants to accomplish the rest.
In the other timeline, where Darwin was on its own as it attacked the mine, it knew that it wasn’t going to make it out alive. Instead, it had taken steps to ensure that the temurim-destroying bomb wouldn’t be separated from it. The device required a physical stream of energy from its creator to be activated for detonation. It was Darwin’s gift to his God and to the humanity it loved. A gift it would have no choice but to give in their true reality.
Jeff opened his eyes and saw the Apostle praying next to him as the air swirled around them. It would know what Jeff had done as soon as the device was created. If it cared about its mission, it would sacrifice itself, like it did in another reality. But Jeff knew the Apostle wouldn’t let him survive. He couldn’t press in a shield that would both save him from the giant robot and finish the bomb. He would join Darwin in martyrdom.
He shut his eyes one last time and pressed the massive bomb into existence, next to Darwin, with a connector as strong as Darwin’s armor tying it to the Apostle’s leg.
When he opened his eyes a second later, his brain swirled, confused as to what was real and what was a shadow from another reality. But a thread of conciseness made it through, giving him clarity among the intertwined time lines.
Jeff knew what he had done.
Darwin looked to the bomb and then to Jeff. His eyes glowed sorrowfully, and Jeff stared back at the Apostle that had given the vagrants hope, that had made a future with no Apostles a potential reality, that had done nothing to deserve the end that Jeff had forced upon it. Jeff didn’t look away. This was this calling, to do what was required for humanity’s future that no one else could.
Another second ticked away as the limitlessly powerful Apostle realized what Jeff had done. Jeff had turned them both into martyrs, whether Darwin wanted to be or not.
A force-field sword appeared in Darwin’s hand a second later. The massive blade glowed, filling the dark cavern with an added bluish light. Jeff had expected this, to die before the bomb even went off. He wouldn’t fight it; Darwin deserved to take Jeff’s life. He took his final breath and stood unapologetically tall, waiting for the Apostle to cut him down. It wouldn’t matter anyway. The bomb would go off in a few seconds, and they were too close to the device, which would rip the entire mountain to pieces.
Darwin slashed out with the sword in its left hand, whipping it violently forward. It cut off its right hand, severing it from its body. The fingers still moved as it landed on the ground next to Jeff. Jeff eyed it as it clenched onto his legs, with two of the massive fingers wrapping around him, locking him in place. At the same time, he felt himself lose control of his suit as he received notifications that the flight system was engaging.
“This was the end for which we were destined,” Darwin said. “I forgive you, my brother.”
A shield appeared around him, coming from the severed hand, surrounding him in a protective orb of energy. It glowed the same blue as Darwin’s eyes.
Jeff’s suit took off at full speed, launching him straight up into the entrance of the cave, putting him hundreds of feet above the bomb, which glowed beneath him before exploding into blinding white light.
He shot upward, fighting gravity with all of the suit’s might, but he could see the wave of unstoppable energy rushing toward him, reducing rock into nothing. He wasn’t going to make it, but all he could think of was Darwin.
He wasn’t even halfway up the mineshaft when the light from the explosion washed over his protective orb. It accelerated him even faster as it surrounded him in an incredible amount of energy that was desperately seeking space to expand. His orb trembled, and his body shook uncontrollably.
It was hard to be certain what was happening, but he thought he saw Darwin’s hand disintegrating along with his armor. He had a hard time breathing, like he was being crushed on all sides. His vision went dark as the force of the blast overwhelmed his specialized shield and hit his armor, knocking it offline.
Jeff didn’t scream or fight against the light as it took him. He was the first person in history to kill an Apostle, but his last thought wasn’t the comforting satisfaction of a meaningful death that he had hoped for.
46 CARL
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, JEFF?” Carlee couldn’t help saying to herself as she pulled up in midair. The eruption in front of her was unlike anything she had ever seen. The mountain bulged, fighting against the explosion from inside for a brief moment, before the tons of rock, dirt, and trees gave way.
She braced herself just in time for the sudden gust of wind that smacked into her like a giant flyswatter, blowing her backward through the air for almost a mile until she was able to regain control. The mushroom cloud of dust was already filling the entire sky; it loomed over the planet, making her feel small once again. It had been a feeling that she had fought her entire life.
Rocks the size of old electric cars started to rain from the sky, putting an old barn out of its misery. She knew she should turn around, go back to Stefani and their half dozen new recruits, and focus on keeping them safe. But she couldn’t. Her path took her forward, to the heart of the mountain-shattering explosion. If she returned without Jeff, she knew Stefani would go looking for him herself, and she couldn’t let that happen. Stefani was too emotionally involved, and she did too much pressing as it was, a topic that she had delicately approached to no avail. A boulder that streamed waterfalls of dust forced her forward, and she didn’t fight the momentum.
She didn’t get many helpful glimpses from other time lines; chaotic events like this were always difficult to understand. The slightest changes in other realities were enough to change the outcome of where a small piece of the mountain might land. But she occasionally corrected herself when she saw another time line that ended with her under a stone.
The dust from the explosion grew so thick that she had to rely solely on her sensors and glimmers of other realities to navigate. Debris rained down on her force-field flight suit so frequently now that the individual pieces hitting her weren’t discernable. She worried about her exhaust getting clogged, but she pressed forward, toward where the explosion had happened. She wasn’t sure if Jeff would even be there, but she was certain he had called Darwin.
It was the darkness that Jane had told her was there, a brooding that she had promised Carlee would manifest itself eventually. Carlee had thought that Stefani and her were changing him, but apparently, she had been wrong about that as well. It was cruel of him to let his passions get in the way of her friend’s happiness, a happiness that Stefani deserved more than anyone. Stefani had given so much of herself for others, had watched what happened to her mother and endured the pain of losing her brother and friends during their futile attack on Bud. Finally, she had found someone she cared for, and he had left her to do the same thing that had killed Bobby.