Theta (4 page)

It was a reminder of what I could be, of my
power, of those who suffered the moment I stopped trying to fight
the fate Cleon wanted for me. The names were the first things I saw
in the morning and the last before I fell asleep. They watched me
slumber each night, and I imagined the spirits of those I’d killed
hovering around me.

I had nightmares every night, and it was
rare when I didn’t fall asleep crying.

My power had so much potential to do good –
and evil. The memorial had become my motivation to resist Cleon’s
directives and subdue the depths of my magic, so I never unleashed
the flood that could finish off what the gods started when the Holy
Wars began five years ago.

Dropping my gaze to the floor, I swallowed
hard and refocused on what I needed to talk to my only remaining
friend about. “Hey, Leandra. Something weird …”

Dizziness washed over me. My feet grew hot,
and the air around me sizzled with the scents of charred metal and
burning flesh. The brilliant white daylight pouring into my room
melted away, replaced by the dark night sky. I was somewhere else
completely. The ground beneath my feet was stone and resembled the
area atop the walls I’d seen once before.

Heat rolled over me and stung the inside of
my nose. I covered my nose and mouth and blinked ash out of my
eyelashes, unable to understand what was happening. Turning to face
the source of heat and light, I shielded my eyes and stepped
forward.

DC was on fire. Every last bit of it burned,
and gaping holes punctuated the cityscape where there was no fire.
The walls on which I stood were black, with much of them crumbled.
I took in the destruction, awed by its scope, and began searching
the ribbons for signs of life.

There were none. The fire gave off three
ribbons and everything else two, as if the entirety of the
population had been destroyed, along with the buildings.

This can’t be real.
I turned away, towards the darkness stretching
outside the walls of DC as far as I could see. Smoke gagged me, and
I moved towards the outer edge of the wall. My attention followed
the twisting smoke towards the sky.

No moon.

No stars.

The skies were filled with nothingness I’d
seen once before in my life, in a vision of my past.

“
What’s happening?” I asked
aloud, praying someone would answer.

No one was left alive to respond. I turned
all the way around again, and then I froze when I saw someone else
before me.

Adonis. His form was ghostly, faint and
varying shades of black, white and gray. He stood a meter from me,
not moving, watching with sadness in his gaze.

Brilliant light spread across the distant
horizon, bright enough to draw my gaze. Orange flames arced into
the sky from the earth and began to spread, devouring everything in
their paths as they raced towards the city. Behind it, nothingness
swallowed the ashes, chasing the flames and consuming
everything.

“
Mismatch!” I cried, facing
him again.

His ghostly form was gone. I was completely
alone.

DC burned behind me, and ahead of me, the
rest of the world was exploding into fire.

“
Come back,
Lyssa.”

The words were soft, and unfamiliar energy
tugged at the swaying magic in my blood. Too horrified by what was
ahead of me, I barely registered hearing the voice and definitely
wasn’t going to take my eyes off what was coming.

“
Lyssa. Come.
Back.”

The tug became stronger, and I was dragged
away from the fire, into an in between place where I felt I was
part of neither world, before I was then yanked out of the dream
completely.

My vision cleared to reveal the ceiling of
my room.

Bewildered by the idea I was right back
where I had been, lying on the floor with Leandra’s worried face
hovering over me, I had the sense I was floating, not fully
released from the world of fire and darkness.

I snapped into a seated position and grabbed
her hands, needing to ground myself with physical sensation. Her
hands were soft and warm. The marble flooring beneath me was cool
and solid, and no trace of flames or nothingness remained. I became
aware of panting, and the sweat that coated my body. I shook from
the intensity of the premonition – my first, which I’d been waiting
for since learning I was supposed to have them.

“
Gods, are you okay?”
Leandra, who had bullied and tormented me in school, was concerned.
She took my face in her hands and forced me to focus on her.
“Lyssa. Are you okay?”

I blinked rapidly until the final wisps of
the heat were gone, and only the cool air conditioning grazed my
skin. Leandra’s pretty blue eyes were glowing eerily, and a strange
tingle of electricity flew through her fingers into me. Just as
quickly, both were gone, but I felt more grounded, as I did sitting
with the Oracle in our cavern.

Leandra’s shoulders dropped, and she
released me as she relaxed.

I touched my cheeks, where her fingertips
had been. The lingering vision playing on a loop in my head
captured and held my attention.

“
I have to go.” I climbed
to my feet and darted towards the door.

“
Lyssa! Wait!” she
cried.

Ignoring her, I raced by my assigned guards
before any of them could react. While I would never be faster than
Adonis, I was lighter on my feet and more agile than anyone else
I’d ever meet.

I ran, trusting my instincts to guide me to
where I needed to go. Vaguely aware of those chasing me, I bolted
across the mall, through puddles and mud, and back to the tiny
shack situated on top of the Oracle’s cavern.

One of the two guards moved forward to
challenge me. They were under orders not to harm me, but even if
they weren’t, I was too possessed by fear and horror to care. I
punched him and maneuvered away from the second. Darting into the
building, I whirled and slammed the door closed with my magic then
used my power to bring a table and chair to life and ordered them
to corner the startled guard.

I rode the elevator to the caverns.

The powerful scent stopped me in my tracks
and yanked me out of the crazy state I was in. I breathed them in,
becoming self-aware once more. I trembled, and sucked in air as if
I’d been underwater for two minutes.

“
Cecelia!” I hurried across
the caverns to her. “My gods … something … something terrible is
going to happen! I had my first vision, and it …” I trailed off,
gazing at her, waiting for her response.

Unlike usual, her eyes were closed. The
machines and computers keeping her alive were all functioning, and
her life signs read as normal.

I sensed, more than saw, something was
different.

Leaning across the railing separating her
bubble from the rest of the chamber, I pressed a hand to it.

“
Cecelia. I need you right
now,” I whispered. “I don’t understand what’s
happening.”

She didn’t respond.

Was she non-responsive, because I didn’t
share my power with her? Was this my fault? My panic started to
form again. The vision was crisp in my mind, too vivid for a dream.
It had been as real as I was standing before Cecelia, waiting for
her to wake up and help me interpret what I saw.

Five minutes passed. She didn’t move. I
lowered my hand, struck by the sudden sense of being utterly alone
with power I couldn’t control to prevent the fate I had
glimpsed.

“
You’re well?” Lantos asked
from somewhere in the room behind me.

“
Leave me alone,” I
replied.

“
Niko’s on his way. If he
has to break the door down, he’s going to take it out on
you.”

Unable to steady myself fully, I didn’t
exactly want another ass beating by Niko or to be sentenced to my
room for the rest of my life.

“
If you’re lucky, he won’t
mention this incident to Cleon.” Lantos joined me at the railing.
One of his unique powers was the ability to turn into a shadow and
travel unseen through the world. He’d made it down here when no one
else could, because of this ability.

His handsome profile was relaxed, despite
the words. There were no real consequences for him to be here, or
anywhere, when he could easily disappear. It seemed fitting that he
stood with me in this very spot. The charming politician had been
the person who introduced me to Cecelia, and my fate, months ago.
Of all the reasons I despised him, foremost in my mind was the fact
he alone was probably the only person on the compound who could
help me understand what I was going through, and I didn’t want him
to.

“
Her mind is quiet,” he
said, lifting his chin to indicate Cecelia.

My gaze returned to her. “I don’t know what
that means.”

“
She’s in what I’d call a
coma. She’s barely alive. I can read secrets and shadows in one’s
mind, but hers has neither.”

I gripped the railing, my heartbeat soaring.
“She can’t die,” I whispered, stricken.

“
Not that I mind seeing
Cleon upset, but what happened that caused you to set off the
alarms?”

Any other time, when I wasn’t terrified I’d
just seen the end of the world, I would have ignored his question.
But I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t dismiss the vision in my
head.

“
I saw something,” I
replied.

“
Saw something
how
?”

“
A … vision. My
first.”

“
What was it
of?”

I shook my head. Even considering voicing it
left my throat too tight to speak and my mouth suddenly dry.

“
That bad, huh?” he asked,
looking at me for the first time. “Oracles have visions. It has
always been this way. Is it the vision itself that alarms you or
the experience?”

“
The vision. Do they always
come true?”

“
No. That machine there,”
he pointed to one of the many panels of lights behind Cecelia, “is
a quantum computer. It helps Cecelia interpret visions and how they
might, or might not, come to pass.”

“
But she doesn’t always
know the answer.”

“
We have free will, and
even a quantum computer can’t calculate what billions of people
will choose to do every second of their days. Either that, or she
doesn’t share what she knows. Cecelia holds much more power than
anyone knows,” he said. The dark note in his tone drew my
gaze.

“
You don’t mean what I
think you do, do you?” I ventured. “You think she’s hiding things
from us? From
me
?”

“
You’re learning to read
between the lines. If you pay enough attention, you, too, may
experience an illuminating moment when you realize all you knew was
wrong,” he replied with one of his dazzling smiles. “Soon you’ll be
able to keep your own head above water instead of relying on the
little spy in your household.”

I flushed, irritated the master of secrets
had discovered Leandra. If I knew anything about Lantos, he would
keep that knowledge safe and quiet, until he needed a favor from
me.

“
So you foresaw something
terrible and came here.” His focus returned to Cecelia. “I don’t
think she can help you, Alessandra. If she could, I don’t think she
would choose to, either.”

“
She’ll always help me,” I
countered. “She just has to wake up.”

“
I don’t see that
happening.”

“
You don’t know that!”
Nothing scared me more than the idea I was alone to prevent an
apocalypse and had no insight into how it came about. “What am I
supposed to do?” I asked in general, not expecting Lantos to know
the answer.

“
Interpret what you saw
from every perspective you can. From my experience with Oracles,
every vision has multiple meanings and just as many subtle clues
hidden within it as to what might lead to its occurrence as
foreseen.”

I listened, torn between gratitude and anger
that, of everyone who might help, Lantos was the one to step
up.

“
Niko’s coming,” Lantos
moved away from the railing. “It wouldn’t be wise for me to be
caught here.” He shifted towards the shadows edging the
room.

Now was not the time for my pride to win
this battle, and I quelled the indignation in favor of accepting
his limited assistance. He began to fade. “Because you helped me, I
feel like I should help you,” I said grudgingly. “Niko thinks
Cleon’s going to get rid of you soon.”

“
Yeah. I know. He’ll try.”
Lantos winked.

“
I think we should
talk.”

“
I’m always open to a
dialogue. Come by tonight.”

Too distressed to say more, I returned to
Cecelia. Silence filled the space behind me, indicating Lantos was
probably gone. Seconds later, the elevator door dinged and slid
open. I tensed, sensing Niko before he exited the elevator car.

“
Five seconds before I
tranq you just for shits and giggles,” he called.

“
Something’s wrong with
Cecelia,” I replied quickly. I waited, shoulders hunched, for his
reaction. Sometimes, Niko didn’t care what my reasoning was. My
first two weeks on the compound alone, he had shot me with a
tranquilizer gun ten times.

After a moment, he
approached and paused beside me at the railing. The tranquilizer
gun was in one hand, in case I decided to use my magic in a way
that was not approved by Cleon, or in the common circumstance where
I became too uncooperative
.
Niko and I both knew he could beat me into
submission, and I wouldn’t use my power against him out of a
damning sense of honor. I was pretty sure he
liked
shooting people, especially
me.