The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  The second I heard the banging on the door, my mind immediately began to suspect each of us. Yes, I even suspected myself. Perhaps I had slipped. Perhaps Caspar had been sent to test me. I hadn’t denied Lucy’s involvement, after all, and I couldn’t remember if I had confirmed it even by simply not denying it. I could barely remember mine and Caspar’s conversation, at least not in that moment. Had I betrayed the woman who had cared for me as her own for all of those years? And if I hadn’t, who had? I knew nothing about Tristan. I knew nothing of whether he was good or honest or even decent. I did not know how deeply his loyalty ran. But I had known Savannah for twenty years, and I knew that she would never betray us. She loved me. She loved Lucy, and she loved Macie. She was our link to Paul. She told us all he said and did. If she had known that he was on the trail of finding out Lucy’s secret, she would have warned us by whatever means necessary, even if it meant betraying to him that she was ours, not his. So it was either Tristan or Caspar. One of the men who had infiltrated our lives had betrayed us to the big man of our city, who very well might have betrayed us to the bigger man—arguably the biggest man—on the Orb. If Tyre knew what Lucy had done, she would not just be killed. She would be made an example of. I had seen that happen once or twice. I had prayed then, as I held Macie’s hand in both of mine, that I would never see it happen again.

  The door to my room was thrown open so roughly that it thrust the doorstop into the wall as easily as a hammer pushes in a nail. Macie was there with Millie in her arms. Millie, wrapped in the throw blanket from her bed. Millie, eyes wide awake, cowering into her mother’s shoulder. I remembered all those years ago, that last night in Shadow Village. The way that Penny had clung to James, how she had been wrapped in her coat and his coat, how she had hidden her face in his neck, how I had dropped her, how I had lost her…

  “You two have to go. Up. Up with you!” Macie demanded as she pulled the blankets off of me. Millie was attached to her skin the way that Penny had used to attach to Brynna. It only happened when danger was near, when the physical attachment would keep the child nestled against his or her greatest protector. When Macie bustled around my room, throwing clothes into a large duffel bag I hadn’t seen her carrying, she did so without having to hold Millie. I slid on my shoes and threw on my coat, and then crawled out of my window.

  “Macie…” I said, just as she pulled Millie off of her and pushed her gently through the window into my arms. I remembered how I had lost Penny. The last time I had been given the responsibility of a child’s life when we faced mortal peril, I had failed. I had failed my sister. I could not fail Millie.

  “You won’t.” Macie said, as though reading my mind, “You won’t, my darling Violet.”

  The tears welled in her eyes once again, and she could not stop them. Not for my sake, not for hers, not even for Millie’s.

  “This is it.” She told us, “This is going to be it. But it’s alright as long as you two get away.” She reached through the open window and grasped my cheek. “My girls. We lost Illa. We lost Millen. I won’t lose you two, as well. Now, go. Run. Get into the woods. Find your way. I know you can. Take care of her.”

  “Macie, come with us.”

  “No.” She shook her head, “I won’t leave Lucy to face this on her own. Go. Go.”

  “Macie…”

  “Go!”

  I jumped and landed on my feet, despite the height. I ran, despite the shakiness of my body, despite how Millie was crying, screaming, and reaching back. “Mommy!” She screamed, “Mummy!” I remembered Penny’s voice, “Daddy! Daddy!” I remembered how she had become unresponsive. How being separated from her mother and father had broken her heart to the point that she barely wanted to live. I prayed Millie would not succumb to the same sadness, but I knew that she would. There was nothing I could do but save her from the men and women in that village who would see her harmed, who would see her shut away in that hellish school, brainwashed into becoming one of them. I could save her from them, but I could not save her life. Not completely.

  “There they go!” I heard men yelling. Dogs were barking behind me, the monstrous black dogs they kept in the prison yard that were as big as small cars.

  “Get them!”

  They were after us, and with my enhanced hearing, I could hear Macie screaming Lucy’s name, sobbing and screaming, but I would not allow myself to imagine what was happening at the house. I would not picture them. I would not think of them. I would just run. The way I always ran. I would be spared, mostly. The way I was always mostly spared. I would just run away. Run away from the danger, from the pain, from the punishment, from being so bad that they deemed me dangerous. My sister had been tortured for days and imprisoned for decades for all she had believed, and all she had fought for, and all she had done, and I had run away. James had been tortured by her side, after he had saved my life, after he had helped me run away.

  I always ran.

  I hate that I can say this, but it was a relief when they caught us. When I felt the jaws of one of those beastly dogs lock onto my ankle, when I felt twenty or so teeth piercing my skin like the spikes of a bear trap, I felt relieved. I tripped, and tumbled, and Millie flew from my arms. The fall occurred in slow motion, and in the dark, as she flew through the air, she was Penny, and then she was Millie, and then she was Penny, and then she was Millie again.

  My head had slammed into the hard ground, so when they dragged me to my feet and began to cart me back towards town, I was so disoriented that I briefly forgot where I was, and how long it had been since I had last run away. Millie’s screams were all that were keeping me in the present. They were dragging her away. In the city square. They were dragging her away, to that soot-covered building, to that hellish school. They were dragging her up the steps, she was screaming, and crying, and I was screaming, and crying, and vomiting, and wailing out her name, watching as she was dragged through the doors, screaming as the doors slammed shut. Her terror infected my heart; I felt every tiny iota of it, and there is nothing—nothing—like the terror of a child. Nothing hurts worse than the terror of a child.

  Macie was behind me, wailing, her head turned to the Joined Hands Academy, her voice crying out Millie’s name. Macie’s heart bombarded my heart, and I wondered if she was projecting her sadness and fury and desperation and terror onto me as punishment for me not getting away, but then I realized that she was simply lost to us. Her daughter would be lost to her soon, and she was already lost to us.

  “Quiet! Quiet!” Paul’s voice called, and somehow, silence fell over the utterly ravenous crowd. They wanted to see Macie and Lucy shamed and killed. They had suffered for too long knowing that they were up there on the hill, together, when it was so unnatural. Now, they would finally see them punished, not only for their “sickness,” but because of what Lucy had unleashed upon the city.

  I would not look up. I would not look up. I would not see what they had done to Lucy or to Macie. What they would do.

  “Luciana Miletus,” Paul said, in that sickeningly playful tone. It was all sport to him. It was fun and games, as well as God’s retribution. I don’t know why I was surprised. When he said her name, the crowd began to shout.

  “Idem!”

  “Whore!”

  “Lash her!”

  “Kill her!”

  A deafening cacophony of violence. Of judgment. I was sick. I was so sick. I was covered in my own vomit, in my own tears. I would not look. I would not watch Paul try her, because I already knew the outcome. She would be guilty. She would be killed, but how, I did not know. Macie might live. I might live. But I prayed that we would not. I would not want to live with Lucy dead, and with Millie lost to us, walking behind the women who ran that school, smiling that terrible smile, dead to the world, one of them.

  “Luciana Miletus, you are accused of using your invaluable and unrivaled medical expertise to create the strain of Red Fever that has killed a quarter of our city’s population
.You are accused of harnessing this strain and unleashing it on Noblemen and Noblewomen and their families. Do you plead guilt, or do you plead innocence?”

  She was silent. I looked. Her hands were tied together over her head. Her back was exposed, but otherwise, her clothes were not in tatters. She was bleeding. She was bruised. But she was alright. Maybe it would only be lashings. Maybe they would let her go.

  I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I knew it, the way Brynna knew things.

  “I will not play this game with you, Paul Valz.” She said, in that quiet, defiant way that was more resounding than a shout could ever be.

  “This is no game, Dr. Miletus, I assure you. This is for your life. Now, if you would like the good, pure, and perfect justice that gives this city its name…”

  I began to laugh. It began as a quiet giggle, but after a moment, it erupted into a full-blown fit of derisive cackling.

  “Oh, you already know you’re going to find her guilty.” I managed to say through my laughter, “You’re going to give her lashings right here in front of these fucking animals…” I turned and spat the word at the crowd, praying that it was tinged with that deep, profound, utterly unwavering hatred that I felt, “…who want to see her hurt. Then maybe you’ll kill her, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll give her to Caspar, maybe you’ll send her home. But there is no justice here, and there never has been. As long as you people have had control of this city, there has never been justice here. So cut out the theatrics, Paul. Stop fucking smiling and acting like there is anything more to this than what there is.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Olivier. You will have your turn in a moment.” He looked back at Lucy, “Dr. Miletus? What do you plead?”

  “Don’t answer him, Lucy.” I told her.

  “Guilty.” She answered, and what began as a second of irritation inside of me quickly bloomed into a full blown rage. It was as though she had spoken just to spite me.

  “Was Ms. Olivier your accomplice? What about your ‘wife?’ Did Macina help you, as well?”

  “No. I worked alone.”

  “Thank you.” He told her, and he sounded genuinely thankful, “Thank you for telling the truth, Dr. Miletus. Thank you for confessing to this so easily, rather. I still do not believe that you are telling me the whole truth. I simply do not believe that you came up with this all by yourself. Did you create this strain of the virus? Did you plan the route of infection of your virus? Did you spread the virus? Were you the Little Red Hen, Dr. Miletus?”

  “The little red what?” Lucy asked, and even though I was furious with her for confessing, I wanted to laugh at how disdainfully she questioned him. Well, I wanted to laugh until one of the people in the crowd threw a rock that hit her hard in the shoulder. She barely grimaced, but Paul shouted for the man who had thrown it to be taken away.

  “Terrible allusion.” I snapped at Paul, “About the Little Red Hen. It was a terrible allusion. Loser.”

  I was shocked at my own boldness, and Lucy appeared to be shocked, as well. She actually laughed. Not hard, but we chuckled together in mockery at Paul’s attempt to be intimidating.

  “All on your own?” Paul asked, ignoring us, “I don’t believe you. Do you believe her?” He asked the crowd civilly. They did not reply civilly, however. The volume went from zero to one hundred in the city square. The blast of sound made me want to cover my ears, but the men holding me were holding my hands behind my back. Screams of “Idem!” “Whore!” and “Kill her!” sounded again, and in the corner of my eye, I watched as Paul approached a man wearing a black hood over his face. He was the executioner and the punisher, and I wondered if Paul was going to execute Lucy without punishing her, or punish her and then execute her. Lucy, on the other hand, appeared unfazed by what they were about to do. Her eyes were on the crowd, taking them in, drinking in their hatred of her. She watched, smiling very slightly, knowingly, and I tried to remain on her level of calmness and flippantness and apathy, but when I saw Paul approaching her from behind with a particularly brutal-looking, long, thick, black whip, I felt the panic spike.

  “Lucy…” I said in a shaking voice, “He’s coming. He’s going to…”

  “I know.” She told me coldly, “I know what he is going to do.”

  The crack of the whip through the air left my ears ringing. I struggled against the grip the men had on my hands, because I so desperately wanted to cover my ears before he hit her again. The roars of the crowd could not drown out that definitive crack, and I worried that they would not drown out the sounds of Lucy’s cries. Except when I looked at her, she was not crying. She was biting her lip, and she was shaking very slightly, but there were no tears streaming down her face. She showed no signs of getting ready to scream. I watched her, and behind her, blurred, I saw Paul gearing up for another hit. When that blow landed, she still did not cry out. She would not give them what they wanted. She would not give that bloodthirsty, sadistic crowd the satisfaction of seeing her scream or cry. They would more than likely embrace her lovingly if she repented. If she said she would no longer love Macie, and that she was sorry for what she had done, they would accept her. They would love her. She could have appealed to them emotionally, saying that for twenty-three years, she had cared for them when they were ill, delivered their children, eased their passage into the next world when they were meant to die, and she had done all of that while bearing their hatred and their judgment. She could have appealed to them, or she could have repented.

  Yes. And ocean waves could have stopped churning. The sun could have stopped being bright. The sky could have become the ground, and the ground could have become the sky.

  Her punishment continued. Every time I thought Paul was tired, he hit her several more times. The crowd never tired of shouting. Macie never stopped screaming in the direction of the Joined Hands Academy, and my eyes never tore from Lucy’s face. After countless hits, she began to lose consciousness merely from exhaustion, and possibly from blood loss; it had not taken long before her already wounded back was torn open and began to rain blood droplets down onto the stage.

  “Wake her up, Pierre.” Paul told the executioner.

  “Can’t do it yourself?” Lucy asked him, and though she was weak, she said it with such venomous taunting that I knew he would be unable to stop himself. “You can lay a whip on me but not your hands? God, what a bloody joke you are, Paul Valz. A bloody coward, and a bloody joke.”

  Her head fell forward, and she stopped talking, but she had made her point. It was not the executioner’s gloved hands that backhanded her across the face until blood began to dribble from the corner of her mouth. It was Paul’s bare hands that became bruised and bloodied the more he hit her.

  I knew what she was trying to do, but I wondered if she was so exhausted and still so loopy from almost dying that she had forgotten that the antidote was in her blood. She had wanted to take Paul out with her virus, but she could never quite get close enough. He was so intelligent, and he was always one step ahead of her. I knew that she was trying to transmit the virus from her blood to his blood, but if the antidote was in her system, then…

  But then I saw it. The red of her eyes. The reddish tint to her normally ghostly white skin. And I knew what she had done.

  “Tristan…” Lucy gasped out, “Now!”

  It happened so quickly that I could barely process it. Not only did Tristan rush forward from the line of Noblemen standing on stage, but Akio came charging through the crowd. Before Paul could even process the sudden presence of one of his trusted Nobleman by his side, Tristan had pressed the blade with all his might to Paul’s throat and slashed. Fangs out, with a roar that rose over the lustful bellowing of the crowd, Tristan cut open Paul’s jugular, and with another forceful slash, he severed his head completely from his body.

  He must have done it perfectly. He must have severed Paul’s carotid artery with the skill of a master swordsman, because the spray of blood was violent, spraying outwards forcefully. Like h
e was aiming a water cannon, Tristan pushed Paul’s body down so his blood shot out over the crowd, saturating them, and I began to laugh. Hysterically. So hysterically that I barely noticed Akio coming up behind me and slashing the throat of the man who was still holding me, because there was only one man holding me now; the rest had run off in fear. With that man’s body, Akio saturated the other Noblemen on stage, and I laughed harder. God, what a truly grotesque and disgusting plan. What a truly ingenious idea.

  “Violet! Get Lucy and Macie and go!” Tristan ordered, but I was too busy laughing to even hear him completely. The crowds were tripping over themselves, trying to get away from the spray of their leader’s blood, trying to avoid coming down with what would become known as the Miletus Strain. It was the most violent strain of them all, just like she was the most violent woman of them all. It fit, that the most vicious and merciless and brutal virus ever to be seen on Pangaea would bear her name, that something with such awesome and terrifying power would become synonymous with her. When I walked over to her, she was coughing violently, in the throes of the final stage already.

  “You are the worst.” I told her as I began to untie her hands. She collapsed, coughing until blood spattered out of her mouth onto the stage floor, “Where’s the antidote? Shit, Lucy, you don’t have much longer.”

  “No antidote.” She gasped out, “Used it all. On me. You. Them. Keep you all safe.”

  My laughter died abruptly. I truly did not know how I had ever felt so light a moment earlier, now that every part of me felt so heavy.

  “Lucy…”

  “It’s alright.” She whispered to me, “I got what I wanted.” Very weakly, she gestured with her head to the crowd, “I finally had my vengeance on them. The ones who took Millen from me. And Illa. Who imprisoned us here. Spat on us here. I have finally had my vengeance.”

  In my arms, she was so warm that I began to sweat despite the almost subzero temperatures of the western Pangaean winter. Or perhaps it was my fear making me sweat. Perhaps it was that sudden, unthinkable fear that soon she would be gone. That there was nothing I could do. Perhaps it was because I loved her, and I had never said it, and she loved me, and I knew that, even if she had never said it, either. Even if I had doubted it.

  “It’s alright,” She whispered, “I planned for this. I knew this would be how it ended, Violet.”

  “No.” I told her firmly, “No, Lucy. You are not going anywhere. Stay with me. Stay with me.”

  “After all I have done, will you allow me to make a final request of you? After I have hurt you all these years…”

  “You didn’t!” I managed to whisper, as the tears began to fall, “You didn’t hurt me, Lucy.”

  “I know that I did. I am… I am sorry, Violet. I am sorry for being so cold to you. I am sorry that I must ask this of you now…”

  “I’m not going to let you die, Lucy.” I sobbed, “Please. Please. Don’t go. Please. Stay with me.”

  “You have to get Millie. You have to take her and Macie far away. Into the woods. Where they won’t find you. Please, Violet.”

  “Lucy…”

  “It’s alright,” She told me again, “Everything is going to be alright, Violet.”

  “No.” I cried, pressing my forehead to hers as she coughed until she bled again.

  “Millie.” She told me, “Macie. My girls. Please. Everything will be alright if the three of you live. Alright? Everything will be alright if you all live. Please, Violet.”

  “I can find something, there has to be something to stop this, there has to be something…”

  “Violet!” She managed to bark at me, “It is time to be strong now. It is time to fight. It is time for you to stop running, stop hiding, stop letting me be your protector. They are yours now. Go. Go now. Get Millie. Take Macie. Run.”

  I was crying so hard that I could not breathe. I could not lose her. I couldn’t.

  “GO, Violet!” She shouted.

  It welled up inside of me. It was all hers, I knew. It was Brynna’s, too, though. It was that defiance for which they were infamous, that had gotten them into so much trouble. It was that need to disobey direct orders. To act flippantly.

  “Akio!” I shouted, and Akio came running over to me, his eyes white, his fangs out. “Take her and Macie into the woods.”

  “What? Violet, Tristan told me that she said…”

  “I don’t care what this stubborn fucking mule of a woman said. I am saying to take her into the woods. Give her the cooling root. What I gave you for your fever. You remember where it was?”

  He nodded.

  “Bring the fever down. Keep her hydrated. In the grove, there might be some of the plant to coagulate blood. Give her that, too. Break her fever, get the blood to stop pooling. And Elixir! Find it. Do whatever you have to do to find it. Understood?”

  He was looking at Lucy, who was fading out of consciousness. He was remembering her orders not to deviate from the plan.

  “AKIO!” I bellowed, “I am in charge now! Take her and Macie, and go!”

  “Where are you going?!”

  “I am going to get Millie, and I’ll meet you in the cave by the grove.”

  “Okay.” He told me, “God, you’re scary. God, I fucking love you!”

  As Lucy slowly died in my arms, and as the people around us screamed and ran and stomped each other to death as Tristan went slashing through the crowd, spreading more and more infected blood around, I threw myself into Akio’s arms, and he threw himself into mine, and we kissed. With everything left, we kissed.

  “The cave. The grove.” I told him after our mouths had broken apart, “And I love you, too.”

  He took Lucy from me, and I jumped off the stage into the carnage. Under my feet, blood had saturated the cold blocks of the street, and as others slipped and stumbled, I walked smoothly, my eyes trained on Tristan. When one man charged me with a large machete, I reached out and crushed his throat with one hand. Nothing would stop me on this mission now: Tell Tristan where we were going, infiltrate the Joined Hands Academy, save Millie, and get to the Grove. Nothing could stop me… Nothing…

  Caspar grabbed me out of nowhere, so suddenly that I could not deflect his grasp, nor could I counter it. His hands were locked around my upper arms, and there in the chaos, we stood still, him looking into my white eyes, drinking in my rage, my power, as the lightning of my own making struck the crowd, as the snow on the ground turned completely red with blood. It was the rivers running red. It was a plague of my making. Of Lucy’s making. We were retribution. So much power. I had so much unfathomable power…

  His eyes were tinged with red. His skin was beginning to flush. The sight of it made me laugh hysterically once again. Above us, lightning flashed and struck the courthouse, the building of “justice,” and it began to crumble. The sonic boom from the loudest blast of thunder I had ever heard dissolved the rest of it. Caspar was sick. He was infected. He would die soon.

  “The antidote… the antidote…” He managed to wheeze out to me.

  “No.” I shook my head, laughing even harder, “It’s gone, Caspar.”

  “Where…”

  “All… gone!” I half-sang, before laughing again.

  “You…” He began to gasp out, but just then, Tristan appeared with his knife, and Caspar stumbled away, far from me.

  “Where are you going?” Tristan asked me, his eyes watching where Caspar was running so that he could follow him and finish him off.

  “To get Millie. Meet us at the Grove.”

  “I will. Stay safe.”

  “You, too. What a night, huh?” I asked as I walked away, and together, we laughed until the buildings fell and the snow cast a blinding haze. We laughed until the city died.

  Grace

  “Where are they?” I asked Illa softly. Penny was asleep on my chest. Everyone was asleep, except for Illa and me, and James, Adam, and Brynna, who were not in the room. Unlike her adoptive mother (and my biological mother), Pen
ny did not hold a grudge against me for what had happened that night in her room. She had not even let me apologize.

  “Grace,” She said with a sigh, “We can just let bygones be bygones, as they say.”

  I had laughed at that so hard, and felt such an undeniable swelling of love for her in my heart. My love for her had grown naturally, as though it were always meant to be there, as though there had always been some place in my heart that had remained vacant only so my love for her could fill it. Brynna had asked, without looking into my eyes, and very quietly, if I would hold Penny while she stepped out of the Hollow. I had agreed, very softly, and I had not looked at her, either. I could not look at her when I knew what had happened to her.

  She never told me. No one told me. But her physical and mental exhaustion corroded the barriers around her mind, and my power, coupled with my need to understand her, to know her, allowed me to gain easy access through her battle-worn defenses. I had been horrified at what I saw, and I had pitied her, even though I knew how she would hate me if she knew I was pitying her.

  “Illa?” I asked, because she was sitting in the corner of the room, with a book rested against her knees, twirling a piece of her long, almost maroon colored hair as she squinted to see the words in the dim torchlight.

  “Would you like to lower your voice?” She gestured with her eyes towards Janna, who was asleep in her sleeping bag with Idan nestled against her chest. “Look around you. People are trying to sleep. You will wake everyone.”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, and as always, her ire rattled me. I went back to stroking Penny’s hair and listening to her soft breathing.

  As it always did, Illa’s mind tried to broadcast something to me without her consent, and as always, my still burgeoning power could not decipher the message. All I heard were garbled sounds, like a string of incoherent vowels. Her heart told her mind to speak, though both were hesitant to say the words out loud, but she wanted to say them. From where they were coming, I did not know—if they were from a place of guilt or a place of anger, I didn’t know, which made deciphering the message even more difficult. I never pushed the issue in hopes that in time, she would tell me on her own what it was she wanted to say.

  “They are in the hallway.” She told me curtly as she turned the page, “Brynna needs to walk. She gets very restless when she does not walk.”

  “It’s so dangerous, though.” I told her softly, “Sneaking out and using that industrial sink as a shower is so dangerous. Going out there at all is dangerous.”

  “Being here is dangerous. Adam does not know what his men did to the ship. For all we know, this monstrosity is sinking, and seeing as how we are in the belly of the ship, we will be the first to go when the ocean begins to seep through the walls. I have heard drowning is quite torturous, at least at first. We shall see.”

  “You say that so nonchalantly.”

  “I do. Because I do not care if I live or die.”

  I wanted to ask her to elaborate, but I knew that she would not. So I remained silent, though I did not look away from her face. I had never seen someone my age who was so pretty. She was not my age, at least not literally. Physically, she was my age. But literally, she was somewhere in her thirties. Brynna was somewhere in her forties, and James was in his sixties. It was so strange to think of them as being so old in reality. It was strange to know that their faces could lie so easily. Looking at Penny was particularly shocking; she remained six years old, but she was actually twenty-six. Her heart, mind, and body were that of a little girl, but she had been around for so much longer than six years. It was so strange to think. So strange, and so mind-boggling, that I kept talking to the always-so-talkative Illa in order to avoid thinking about it for any longer.

  “What book are you reading?”

  “The Handmaid’s Tale. Earthean author named Margaret Atwood. Brynna loves her. The Warden got this for her. It is contraband. He had to send one of his men into a vault to get it.”

  “What is it about?”

  I was truly curious. I wanted to know what stoked my mother’s interest. Suddenly, after seeing her, seeing what had been done to her, and realizing that I could have lost her, I wanted to know about her. Instead of asking her, though, I was asking Illa, and I was asking in the most roundabout way. But still, it was a start.

  “Would you like to begin reading it? I am very tired, so you may borrow this copy and begin it.”

  “Uh…” I reached out, and took the book from her when she extended it towards me. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Alright, then. There will be a test in the morning, so read well.”

  I giggled a little harder than her sarcastic joke warranted. She looked at me, brows furrowed, and my smile and laugh faded abruptly.

  “Sorry,” I apologized hurriedly.

  “Do not be. Goodnight. Shut out the light when you are done.”