Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm (19 page)

“No.” His voice was a whisper. Gena was gone? The woman who’d helped his wife develop the unique skills of the Aeterni, who had been responsible for them meeting, who’d gone to Headquarters Island to find information to help him… gone? It made what happened all the more personal. In his rage over the Assassin’s murder of those he’d loved most, he’d killed far more innocents. Including those he cared for.

Was he any better than the man he loathed?

Angel nodded at the bed next to him. “Adam found her and pulled her to safety. But she’d stopped breathing for a minute before he got to her. He got the water from her lungs, but… she’s still in rough shape.” She took a deep breath. “She could use help.”

He finally looked past Adam’s motionless form to the bed itself. Gena was there, her face serene but pale. Her breathing was so shallow Fil wasn’t sure she was getting any air at all. Angel’s words hung in his mind.
She could use help. My help.

Perhaps it was his penance now to help those he’d hurt, if that was possible. In some small way, he needed to use the life he had left trying to rebuild what he’d destroyed.

And it would start with Gena.

He stood, wavering on weakened legs, steadying himself against the bed, before taking the tentative steps toward her. He moved around the far side and looked at Adam. The man looked every bit his four hundred years, wrinkles of worry atop wrinkles of grief. His eyes were red, not with the rage and hate of the Assassin, but with the mourning he’d experienced for the woman on the table. Fil knew Adam cared for Gena deeply, perhaps romantically, but thought himself unworthy of her. In many ways, the loss of Gena would be like the loss of a spouse for this man, who’d sacrificed so much of his long life toward helping Fil live.

Adam seemed to notice his presence, shifting his weight slightly in the chair, eyes flicking in Fil’s direction. But he said nothing, just sat and stared at the still form before him.

Fil took Gena’s hand. He dropped his Shield—when had he rebuilt it?—and thought of Gena as he knew her. Strong. Intelligent. Generous. He loved this woman like a sister, as he loved Angel, and he wanted her back to the way she was. The Energy, positively charged, seeped from him at first, then moved into her with ever-greater intensity. Fil watched her face, wanting to see the color return, the bright green eyes snap open, the mouth open in laughter.

He wouldn’t let go until she was able to leave that table on her own.

Angel came and stood behind him. She found a chair and had him sit, letting him focus his mental energy on Gena rather than maintaining his balance. She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing, and he could feel her empathic Energy moving into him, strengthening and encouraging him, an effect he was certain would only help them restore Gena’s health.

It seemed like hours had passed. And then her eyes fluttered.

He felt the powerful emotion as Adam bolted from his seat and bent over the table, watching her face. He poured more Energy into Gena, encouraging her to recover, to be healthy, to be happy. To be
her
. The Mechanic moved into view, watching as well, his face etched with concern. As Gena’s coloring continued to improve, as her eyes fluttered and then stayed open, the lines of worry faded from his face, replaced with a satisfied smile.

Everyone wanted Gena back to full health.

She was finally able to turn her head toward Fil, glancing down at the hand he held before looking up at him. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was raw, and her face showed the pain of the effort to speak. She coughed. “I didn’t—”

She was apologizing to
him
? “Shh,” he told her. “You need your strength.”

She glanced at his hand once more and nodded. “Thank you.” Her voice was a whisper.

He nodded back. “Any time.”

Thirty minutes later, Gena was able to sit up. The Mechanic had fetched a pitcher of cool water, and she drank greedily, soothing her throat burned raw from the salt water she’d swallowed. When she stood from the table, he finally let go of her hand. Adam was there to steady her as she moved around the room.

Fil moved away.

Angel intercepted him and nodded back at Gena. “That right there, big brother, is why we all need you.”

“How bad is it?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Outside. The world. The planet. How bad is it?”

She looked ready to offer a witty rejoinder, but decided against it. “It’s bad, Fil. I won’t lie to you. The cleanup effort will take decades.” She put a hand on his shoulder and voiced his concerns to him. “This was Abaddon’s doing, Fil. Not yours. He manipulated you and your love for Sarah and Anna into the result he wanted. What happened yesterday… every one of those deaths was a murder committed by Abaddon. Not you.” She paused. “And we need as much energy—and Energy—as possible to counteract what happened, to help the world heal and recover. That means we need
you
.”

He nodded once, not sure he meant it. He saw the video screen ahead, knew it was hooked in to human television networks. He moved in that direction.

“Don’t do it, Fil.” Her voice was laden with concern.

“Listen to your sister, Fil.” The Mechanic was there, standing between him and the path. “You need time to reach closure on everything before you start looking at the wider world. Don’t do it.”

He shouldered past both of them and activated the screen.

The first three stations he tried showed nothing but static. “Our receiver must be broken,” he muttered. Then he realized those stations might no longer exist or have the ability to broadcast anything.

The fourth station was operational.

On the screen, scientists discussed possible causes of the Great Cataclysm that had decimated populations just a day earlier. One speculated that it had been a test run of a new type of nuclear weapon. His colleague challenged that idea. Would one government test a new weapon on every major population center in sequence? She argued it was a rogue terrorist organization setting off devices stolen from old nuclear stockpiles, rather than a single government. Another noted that the destructive power dwarfed that of known weapons. It had to be a new type of weapon, not a nuclear warhead.

As they debated the cause, the images of cities impacted during the Cataclysm displayed, replacing the images of the scientists, who continued talking.

Fil bit back a cry.

Helicopter footage showed massive piles of rubble, with the names of the former population centers flashing as the screen shifted from location to location. Debris filled nearby rivers, bays, and seas.

What Fil noticed most of all was the lack of movement. Cities with combined populations in the hundreds of millions, even billions, showed no activity.

They were all gone.

“The only thing we can say with certainty is that we cannot absorb another blast of that weapon, whatever it was,” one of the scientists said. “It may take decades to calculate the damage and death toll, to identify the dead as well as the living. The world is a very different place today than it was two days ago.”

Fil’s thoughts turned immediately to his parents. Had they—?

He turned to Angel, who gave a grim smile. “They’re fine, Fil. I can still feel their presences.”

He looked back at the screen, where a helicopter camera panned along for several minutes, showing the massive size of the blast area. After a dozen minutes, the helicopter cameras finally reached a living tree, a road that began suddenly, a small community of homes with people moving about.

How many had died?

The words from the scientist appeared on the screen.
The world cannot absorb another blast of that weapon.

The weapon was him. His living put everyone on the planet—everyone that still survived—at risk. “You should have let me die. Not for failing my family, but for the risk I present to every other family out there. The world can’t be exposed to the risk that what happened yesterday will happen again. The only way to prevent that is for me to—”

“To realize that what happened yesterday will never happen again. That what happened yesterday never
can
happen again. That maniac and those he serves have no further power over you, Fil.”

He turned away. The words stung in their finality.

“I know the words hurt, Fil. But you must recognize the truth contained within them to recognize your purpose here. Your nature is one of generosity, of caring.” She pointed at the screen. “
That
is not you.” She seized his shoulders and turned him, forcing him to look at Gena. She was standing without support, smiling at something Adam had said. “
That
is you. You take things that are broken and fix them, make them stronger and better. The world is broken, Fil. The world needs you.”

He turned away, saw the Mechanic staring at both of them, his face twisted in a contorted mix of emotions Fil couldn’t decipher.

“Who saved me? Who pulled me out of the void in the ocean.”

The Mechanic’s face unclenched. “I did.”

Fil studied him. “Why did you do that?”

He considered his answer for a moment. “It was something I was able to do. Since I couldn’t do anything else, I did that.”

Fil considered the message and the wisdom in the older man’s statement, and the applicability to his own predicament. The only thing he wanted to do was bring Sarah and Anna back. But that was impossible. They were gone and—his horror mounted—even their bodies were irretrievable, swept away in the maelstrom he’d generated. He wanted to take back the destruction he’d unleashed, unintentional though it was. But he couldn’t do that either. They clearly hadn’t used a future time machine to prevent the horrors. Undoing the events of yesterday was no longer an option.

He couldn’t do that. But he could do what Angel had suggested. He could help the world heal from the devastation. Perhaps, in time, healing the rest of the world and those residing there would help him heal himself.

He looked at Angel and the Mechanic. The loss of Sarah and Anna, and the rest of the devastation, were twin bullets to his soul, alternatively driving his guilt. The counterbalance left him numb, unable to mourn or grieve over either. It would take time.

In that time, he couldn’t do everything he wanted. But he’d do what he could.

“Thank you,” he told them.

He glanced over at Gena. She’d nearly died as a result of his eruption. He could start by offering apologies to her. He moved in her direction.

She looked up as he approached, and her face fell. He lowered his head. Would he face this type of rejection for the rest of his life?

As he dealt with his sense of rejection, her crushing hug surrounding him. “I’m so sorry, Fil,” she whispered. “I didn’t find out in time to prevent—”

He lifted his head to look at her. “Why are you apologizing to me? You nearly died as a result of what I did.”

“Adam told me what happened, Fil. What you did was react as anyone would when faced with the tragedy you faced.” She studied him. “Your focus fell entirely upon doing what you could. You were angry, because you saw them threatened directly. You did everything you could to get to them. I struggle to think that any person could say they’d react differently.”

“But that meant—”

“Fil. Stop.” She pushed back from him. “I’m here right now because of you. I feel better than I have in years because of you. Do what you can. Don’t focus on what you can’t control. Trust me on this one. I have experience in beating myself up over things I can’t control.”

She was talking about Mark, about her fiancé, a man who’d accepted his death, who she’d not been able to save when his clone changed his mind. They’d held long conversations, conversations in which he’d played the role she now played, helping her to ease her guilt and to move forward, to find a new focus.

And now he needed to follow his own advice. In the mental numbness as he tried to grasp his new reality, he resolved to make his purpose to rebuild the world he’d destroyed, to honor the memory of those lost by helping those who remained. He’d avoid putting himself in a position to be manipulated, and he’d make certain that no Assassin could use him to accomplish works of evil. His power would not be restrained; it would be used for good, for healing like Gena’s, for the reconstruction of a world in need of recovery.

He looked at Gena, then at the Mechanic and finally at Angel. “Thank you. All of you. Again. I can’t say I won’t need help, because it’s going to be a while before I can process everything that’s happened in the last few days. When that happens, I’ll need you—all of you—to remind me of what I’m saying now. I’m going to help the world heal, help it recover to be something better and greater than it was before. That work will be dedicated to all those lost in the past day, and I will succeed because I owe it to all of them.” He looked at each of them again. “Will you help me?”

Each of them nodded in turn.

Fil nodded back. “Thank you. I think you’ll get your first chance soon.”

And he collapsed to the ground, the effort of holding his emotions in check finally overwhelming him. The sobs wracked his body; the tears drained him.