Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

She raced towards them across the pebbles of the beach. The earth shook and boulders fell from the mountainside. The stairs leading to the gate crumbled, but she avoided the falling stones until finally reach­ing the five of them, frozen in that perfect connection. She knew her place there. She felt it without having to be told. The Vectors would kill her for her betrayal, but what would that matter now? They would kill her anyway. She pressed her way between them, cupped her hand gently around Dillon’s neck, pressed up against Deanna, and reached out to put her hand on Tory’s shoulder.

The moment she closed that final circuit, the world she knew, the life that she knew ended with an explosion of light and sound as her spirit fused with theirs, and she added to their powers the one thing they were lacking; absolute and perfect control.

The world heaved against the flow of entropy and eternity for a single sparkling moment, feeling the touch of the fused shards of the Scorpion Star like an embrace:

In Africa, a brown, barren plain grew green and fertile.

In India, the last vestige of smallpox bacteria quietly extinguished from the bloodstream of a carrier who had never known what he was on the verge of passing on to his friends and family.

In the halls of Oxford, a random number generator that for years had spat out chains of randomness, now put forth a growing series of sequential numbers in bold defiance of reason.

In a South American convalescent hospital, a paraplegic man stood from his wheelchair without even realizing he had done it, and crossed the room to turn down the heat.

In a fresh grave in Arlington, Virginia, Lt. Vincent Gerritson be­came aware. Not aware enough to know or understand his final dis­position, but enough to acknowledge that he existed—enough to lend the force of his spirit to the wind of life flowing through him.

In Southern California, where the sun had just set, Drew Camden had a sudden jolt of connection as he sat in his bedroom. A satori filled with joy, and hope. As he looked out of his window to the clear, dark sky, a vine slithered across the pane like a garter snake, sprouting leaves, budding with red trumpets. It took his breath away, because in that instant he knew. Without a doubt he knew that the Shards, whose lives had, for a short time, been so intertwined with his own, had finally received their destiny.

And in Poland, Elon Tessic, sequestered in his dacha, felt a blast of such enormous hope and light that he knew it could only be the finger of God.

Dillon was at the center.

The moment Lourdes touched him, he could feel himself the core of something infinitely powerful and intense. He—they—were no longer Shards; his own power of completion had reversed the entropy let loose in the death of the scorpion star, and their souls forged into a single great soul, with six minds. He was no longer just Dillon—he was the sum all of them—and he could hear their thoughts as clearly as his own.

As their spirits ignited, it burned away their bodies, incinerating the shore, the island, and miles of the Mediterranean, penetrating deep into the earth’s mantle and beyond the ionosphere. They were as a star igniting on the surface of the earth, and yet even as he felt it all burn away, Dillon held the patterns in a mind now so powerful and vast, it could remember every molecule, every cell, every soul caught within the fusion flame. He held the memory of every pattern with the ease he could remember a name, a face, a feeling.

In that glorious moment, the soft swirl of clouds dissolved around the globe, leaving the earth a naked, unblinking eye in the cradle of the heavens, and a wave of spirit swept out across the globe, encom­passing it, penetrating the dust and revitalizing the spark of every soul that had ever lived. Dillon held the history and essence of life together in this instant of resurrection, linking every spirit drawing on their energy, making them one with himself. It only lasted for an instant—but that instant had the essence of eternity.

A moment of enlightenment and ascension.

A moment of unmitigated faith;

of singular will;

of untarnished purity;

of unclouded joy;

pulled together and fused into a single force of life.

This was their weapon against the Vectors; not six beacons, but a single spirit at the center of billions of points of light all focused on a wound in the flesh of space!

Dillon wanted to relish this grand expansion of their spirit—but—

“—The Vectors.”

“Yes, the Vectors.”

“I see them.”

“I sense them.”

“At the breach.”

Lourdes thought, “Move toward them.” And their spirit impelled towards the breach at her command. As they moved, they now ex­perienced the world no longer with senses of the flesh, but with a vision of spirit; a mind’s eye that saw in all directions at once, altering their perceptions of everything around them. The space they moved through was not a sky—not an atmosphere, but a thick, gelatinous plasma; a living plasma that mere fleshly senses could not perceive. Now that plasma was violated by the breach, and at the edge of the breach they saw the true form of the Vectors; not angels, nor beings of light, but beings of living darkness cloaked as light. Soullessness swallowing souls.

They approached the Temporal Vector, immobile now like an animal caught in their light.

“I feel its fear,” Maddy said. This creature had been encapsulated in flesh long enough to gain a rudimentary arsenal of human emotions. Terror, fury, and hatred enough to level a city. They enveloped the creature, cutting it off from the others.

Now it was up to Dillon.

He knew that his power of creation and life was only half of what he needed to do. Each of their lights cast a shadow and Dillon’s shadow was destruction. With that in mind, Dillon pushed forth a single thought into the Vector’s tumultuous, furious mind:

Cease to exist.

It was the most horrible, most devastating act of destruction he had ever wished upon a living thing. The creature screamed, fighting the power of Dillon’s terminal directive, straining against his will, but it had used too much of its power tearing open the hole. Michael injected it with fear, it panicked, and its spirit finally succumbed to Dillon’s will. The Temporal Vector shattered, breaking into smaller and smaller fragments of anti-life until its consciousness was gone and its fragments imploded into nothingness.

The Shards moved on to the Lateral Vector—the one who had abided within the woman. They surrounded it. Imploded it. Their light swallowed it.

“Like antibodies.”

“An immune system,”

“surrounding,”

“isolating,”

“devouring it the way it meant to devour us.”

As their spirit crossed the breach to the leading Vector, they caught a glimpse of the infection. Thousands of dark entities spilled into the Unworld, crossing the outer breach from their own dying universe, all ready to cross the chasm to the inner breach. The Leading Vector was calling to them, reeling them in. This had to be stopped—but this last, most powerful Vector tried to elude them. There was nowhere it could run from their light; it was caught in their gravity, spiraling towards them until it reached the center of their spirit. It was the strongest, this creature that had hidden within a child. It lashed out now, probing its tendrils into their weakest points, trying to tear them apart, break them into pieces once again—and Dillon thought it might succeed, that their spirit would detonate from the pressure, separating into shards once more. If that happened, it would be over. The Vectors would triumph and the Shards’ deaths would light the path for these infecting entities. The infection would take root and spread from this point to the rest of the earth and beyond. Dillon felt weak with the thought, and that weakness gave the Leading Vector the upper hand. He felt himself losing concentration, losing this battle of wills . . . but then Dillon felt Maddy in his heart.