Kaleb Nation - Harken

I writhed, trying to pull myself back to my feet. Across the ground I could see Callista also crawling up, nudging the petrified Alli to encourage her to run. Wyck spotted her though, and I saw his shoes chasing after Alli as she tried to dive behind the truck for protection.

No! I groaned, my back feeling like it was broken in a hundred places, even my impenetrable scales feeling like they were cracked. But somehow I forced myself up, to crawl onto all fours and then to kneel. Alli screamed my name.

Wyck had gotten her. In one hand was the gun, under his arm was my sister. He stopped for only a second, looking from Thad to Callista and then to me all in one sweep. Seeing his motionless followers, he must have realized that he was far too outnumbered.

Se gritted his teeth and took off, crushing glass shards one moment and hovering in the air the next. He made a mad dash for the skylight with Alli still in his arms.

Hearing her screams brought me back. Wyck was not going to escape with her—I wasn’t going to lose her again. With my desperation as power, I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain as I launched into the air after him, the Blade held between both my hands.

I yelled at him in challenge but he was far too smart to take me on, the wake of the air behind him threatening to knock me off course. But nothing could throw me off. Nothing would make me stop: not the weakness I felt behind my adrenaline, not the pain from being slammed into the ground. I only flew faster, pushing into it every ounce of power I had left.

Wyck dangled the gun behind him, shooting backward, but I easily dodged the wild bullets until he gave up. The roof grew closer and closer, and Wyck—burdened by the weight of Alli—neared the Blade I held outstretched like the tip of a missile.

All of a sudden, I was right behind him.

I slashed the Blade forward.

It caught Wyck by the back of his heel. The effect was instant. The claws that had been so dangerously close to Alli’s throat vanished into silver dust, raining back like powder onto my shirt. Wyck was no longer held aloft, and he tumbled through the air, slamming into one of the large metal supports that held the building up. The roof reverberated with a massive clang.

I dashed through the air to grab Alli from him but he was quicker, spinning over and pulling her into his lap, arm enclosing around her tightly with the pistol into her ear.

“Don’t move!” he shrieked, tipping back and forth with the reddened face and wild eyes of a madman. He dug the end of the pistol into her head so deeply that she cried out in pain, her voice muffled beneath his arm that was clamped over her mouth. He sweat wildly, not believing what had just happened even as the blood dripped from his heel and hit the floor far below us.

“We will kill all of the worthless eaters!” he said, spit flying as he screamed, the former cruelty in his voice now turned into a blistering rage. “We will harvest through every human until there isn’t a single weed left!”

He was barely able to keep his balance, unaccustomed to only having hands and legs. If he so much as twitched his finger, there’d be no time for me to reach Alli before the bullet hit her skull.

“You intend to be the bringer of the dawn ?” he continued at me through his teeth, heaving breaths in and out. “So bring the dawn, then! Your planet’s dawn will fall only upon the corpses we leave behind.”

Wyck’s unbalanced swaying only made his lack of flight all the more obvious—I could see in his face that he’d been shattered inside. He’d been torn from his victory over me—he was on the brink of suicide, preferring death over what he’d become. He could shoot Alli and then himself and not even care.

Wyck winced in pain, fingers flaring out, and from his right hand slipped his red ring. He moved to catch it, but the ring fell out of his reach and struck the ground like a raindrop, bouncing across the concrete. Wyck’s jaw fell in anguish.

Through his startled cry, I saw a Glimpse.

Like I was swimming through murky water, I was forced to read past the emotions that first bubbled to his surface. I passed terror, sadness, insignificance, hope for his own death and also fear of what death meant.

But there was one other thing, one lingering revelation that I grasped onto.

“There are no bullets in that gun,” I read.

Wyck’s face jerked up to look at mine, barely breathing, his pale neck soaked with sweat. I was right. He was bluffing.

One push of power sent me hovering toward him but he reacted at the same time, pushing both Alli and the emptied pistol over the edge. I swept my arms out, grabbing her into mine as Wyck gave a gurgling, murderous scream, jumping to seize me in midair. But I was already floating backward, Alli wrapped in my arms, feeling such a rush of relief that it was as if Wyck didn’t even exist anymore.

He fell.

With no powers to hold him up anymore, Wyck was like a bag of grain, plummeting straight down, down, down, toward the rolling I/V unit that stood below us.

With a sickening crunch, the tall arm that had held the bag of sedative impaled him through his chest, silencing his cry at once. The momentum carried it to roll, where his body stopped in front of the camera and the television screens.

The Guardians on the monitors had been wildly speaking into telephones and unable to see most of the action. Their heads all snapped up at once. Their mouths stopped moving, eyes staring in horror. Morgan straightened like a rod. She looked away from the grotesque sight, as the other screens started to click off one by one.

I floated to the ground with Alli still clinging tightly to my neck, dropping her lightly then falling over to kneel, to breathe. Morgan saw me, and with widened eyes, she reached forward to switch her screen off.

Suddenly, the room was quiet again. I was too weak to lift my head, to see how many were still alive. So I counted the sounds of their breathing:

One.

Two.

Three.

And mine made four.

There are some places in the world that time seems to have no hold over, like an immortal paradise gated away from ruin or corruption. Wars might have raged and secret battles might have been fought in its very midst, but Arleta continued to stand like a beacon to me, a lighthouse even in the glaring sun of midday.

My feet brushed against the familiar grass of my old backyard as my flight came to a stop. Tall weeds had popped up since the last time I’d mowed it—back when I’d lived there, not so long ago. There was no silence here, always a car struggling to start or a garage door rumbling open or a dog barking at passerby. All the sounds blended together like a song, like a soundtrack to my life. My former life.

As if to signal how far away my old life really was, the silver Blade in my hands caught the sunlight, its sheath glimmering into my eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to let it out of my sight—rarely even risking putting it down. I knew the Guardians were scrambling to regroup and would not attack, at least not now. Still, I held on to it tightly.

My heart pounded a little heavier. I stared across the yard at what remained of my house. With the sun’s rays glowing around its edges, my house stood in the form of three remaining walls leaning in on each other precariously, the wooden porch caved in on itself and brick pieces scattered all over. All the windows were busted and the back door was mangled in three pieces, our roof having crumbled into splintery boards. Yellow police tape waved around the parameter.

I drew closer, stepping lightly on the circular pieces of concrete that my mom had put out as decoration between the porch and her tomato garden. How are you feeling? I asked myself. I was puzzled by my reactions: calm, composed, not at all what I’d feared to see from myself on the flight back to this place. Perhaps in the days that had passed between Wyck’s death and our escape, I’d finally come to terms with how much my life had changed.