Chapter Twenty-Eight

AUGUST

 

August disappeared into the night and instinct drew him to the city. He didn’t know where Nathen went, but he was the best bet of finding him. He was older and much faster than Nathen, and, unlike the others, would be able to catch up to him if spotted.

Scaling the facade of a building, August sprang onto a roof. He didn’t see Nathen anywhere and expected a long night. Bouncing his way onto another building, he scanned the streets below before moving onto another. Still no signs. He found a perch on a building above all the others, overlooking the city and its skyline. Sirens, people shouting, talking and laughing, the normal sounds of night he had grown accustomed to filtered all around.

In the distance a dark apartment building with all the lights off caught his attention. A second later, on the topmost floor, a light came on and a young woman dressed in a white nightgown strolled across the living space. He wobbled, attention tunnel-like, and focused in on the face of the woman behind the window. Her corn-silk hair was pinned up in a pile at the back of her head: a thick bun which betrayed its length. She reached toward a light switch in the kitchen and turned to face him outside the window. A slight longing smile tickled her lips, and then…darkness.

Before August consciously knew what happened, he jumped, traversed the distance between, scaled the building, and broke into the apartment he had just been observing. Empty. Abandoned. Storming the length of the apartment, all he found was dust and the distinct smell of mold and decay. But then he spotted a strip of white light on the floor behind a closed door at the end of a corridor. Focused on the light, he cautiously approached it. A woman’s weeping echoed through the dark empty apartment. Margaret.

With a trembling hand, he twisted the door handle, allowing the door to slowly creak open into what he knew was coming. His wife was standing looking at herself in the mirror in horror as the life inside her was bleeding out on the white bathroom tile. Her agonized scream reverberated, but there was no one to answer her plea for help. He had been working, and she was alone. Bed rest to help the baby along. Paralyzed, he was unable to even reach out. She grabbed her belly and collapsed onto the floor as the life within her clawed just under the surface. The tile was slippery with her blood, but she managed to force her way toward the tub.

She turned on the water while breathing and letting out air forcefully with her mouth, like the midwife had taught her. She climbed into the water and seemed to be transfixed as it bloomed crimson.

August dared not look away as his wife’s head lolled, eyes heavy. The water darkened and clouded. Her skin paled as her breathing spaced out and shallowed. Slower and slower the breaths came, until the bathroom stood silent with the intermittent sounds of dripping from the faucet into the scarlet bath water. Margaret’s serene expression and motionless eyes staring into the blank eternity spoke of her peace.

August didn’t know how long she had lain there when he found her that day. A cry filled the darkness. A cry of sheer agony he knew was buried deep inside him: the cry of a man who had just realized the death of his love and future.

He saw himself, as he was then, running to the tub, slipping on blood, and collapsing to the ground on his knees. He picked up her lifeless body and hugging her to him, crying the same primal call.

He shook, babbling incoherently to her, to himself, to God, salvaging through delusion the life that now lay limp in his arms. He cradled her for what seemed like hours, holding her in his embrace.

It all faded as he became aware of himself in an empty, darkened, dilapidated bathroom bent over a tub overgrown with black mold, the bottom ringed with dried water stains. He hugged and rocked himself.

Though his eyes were not wet, he had the distinct sensation of just having cried and woken from a dream, a nightmare he had tried to forget every moment he thought of her. A presence stood beside him in the bathroom. The earthy aroma of leaves and wet fertile soil filled the air; sweet and familiar. He remained on his knees at the tub. Drips echoed in the room from tears he couldn’t hold back as the memories flooded him.

When Dara’s comforting hand settled on his shoulder, a sense of peace washed over him. “We intervened on this day.” As she spoke, he saw himself sitting on their bed with blood on his hands, his clothes, the bedsheets, nightstand, and a silver revolver in his mouth. His finger on the trigger fueled by hot tears streaming down his cheeks.

“We felt death near,” she spoke again.

He held his breath and tightened the trigger. The hammer slowly rose and click, nothing…

He withdrew the gun, rolled the cylinder, locked it, and put the barrel into his mouth again. This time, Dara acted. In his mind, a sudden swelling of love and peace grew over him, and he saw the image of mother and child appear in his mind’s eye. He had the thought, “She wouldn’t want this…” It wasn’t his voice, yet it was, and as he focused on it, his fury slowly melted, and he threw the gun to the floor.

He heard the same gut-wrenching cry, the one he knew he made, and realized he was awake and aware again on the floor in an empty dark room.

Dara was standing in the doorway. Her light steps across the room were soundless. He reeled, unsure of his sanity for all he could focus on was his pain.

“This is the choice we offer you. You have not forgiven yourself or let go. You saw she died in peace, her essence continues, yet you have not let her go. If you will let us, we can help with the process. But you must ask.”

August, through the numbness and tears managed to blurt out, “Yes.” He didn’t know what she meant. He didn’t care if death was coming, for he wanted it.

“Close your eyes and think of her,” Dara said. His eyes were already partially closed from exhaustion, and he complied.

He was sixteen and unconcerned with the fact he had just gotten off work and was filthy from the fields. He ran across the road, dodging the carriage. And there she was—her laugh, magic, her voice, sunshine. “Sir, you’re not very observant, are you?”

The air shifted and warped around him, as though waves of hot and cold air collided and moved away. Her scent hit him first. It was hers though with a slight sweetness he didn’t recognize before. He inhaled deeply. Eyes still closed, he wrapped his arms around her torso—warm, soft, her belly full of life of their future child, her smell now a comfortable blanket.

He held her, pulled back and opened his eyes slowly. It was Margaret gazing down at him, with a kind smile: her heart-shaped face the perfection artists crave to capture. As though he had been holding his breath too long, he swayed, lightheaded. In this moment he yearned to breathe her in, to get lost in her.

She bent down and kissed him, giving him all he needed. He couldn’t control himself. He had missed her, missed being with her, missed saying goodbye. His body and heart took over, his conscious mind stepped out as he soared past it. Their lips interlocked, speaking beyond the words he couldn’t say to her.

He awoke, cradling his love as the sun crested the horizon.

Some memory on the tip of his mind scratched at his awareness. No matter—he had work in a few hours. He bent over and kissed her and their sleeping child inside. She stirred but didn’t wake. He gingerly rose and went through his morning routine, finally heading downstairs to make breakfast. Sun filtered in through the open windows and birdsong could be heard on the wind.

There it was again, something at the edge of his mind, an itch that wouldn’t go away. Something’s wrong. He focused on it and stumbled as memories crashed into him like a horrible nightmare. But it was just a nightmare, wasn’t it? He turned and saw his wife standing in the kitchen smiling at him. He willed the horrid images out of his mind and returned the smile. “Did I wake you?”

She shook her head, and said, “You can stay here and live your life over again, but it will not truly be her, just an idealized memory of her that lives on through me. I won’t remember what I was but will be as you remember her. I will start with her and progress as her, but her essence has already moved on. You won’t believe it, thinking it but a dream, but the truth will always live under the surface. You choose. Stay with the dream in this timeline or accept what fate had wrought and remain the man you became.”

What? He took a deep breath again as the vision of his Margaret faded. He was standing alone in the kitchen holding a kettle of water. Realization slowly seeped into his conscious mind. He silently returned to the bedroom. Margaret was laying on the bed, chest rising and falling rhythmically. He quietly took her hand, kissed it, pausing momentarily, letting his lips linger. Her hand slipped away in slow motion as he whispered, “Goodbye.”

In a blink of his eye, August was once again standing with Nathen and Cameron on a stone disc floating near the man in Sanctuary. The man said, “We thank you,” and bowed his head in respect. August was overcome with a sense of deja vu.

*

NATHEN

 

Nathen plopped onto the ledge of the very tall building that overlooked the city and waterfront. He wasn’t sure of his location, but it was peaceful. The cool wind rustled his hair, and with no one in his mind talking, he finally had the serenity he had become accustomed to. Being alone.

He retrieved his phone from his pocket to take his mind off what it was spinning on: Cameron’s dismissal of him, his view that he was incompetent… Nathen startled at his own low growl.

Focusing, he opened the News app and browsed for a few moments before closing it in disgust. Nothing good came out of that: murders, strife on the international front, political and social polarization at home… Centering on the sound of the wind, the city and its nightly denizens—people scurrying to and fro. Considering the events in Sanctuary, and what Cameron had said right before, was painful, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of them yet. Clearing his mind, he started the process of meditation. Focusing on the ambient noise, he began dismission sound by sound—turning them off one at a time. The sound of vehicles—off; people talking—off; animal sounds—off. Soon he was no longer as agitated, nor was he replaying the painful memories in a loop.

His eyes fluttered open, and he leapt back and away from the woman with bright neon-blue hair who poised, suspended in midair as though she, or it, was in water or weightless. Around her, floating like motes, were bits and pieces of electronic parts. Resistors, silver microchips, capacitors, and bright LEDs of various colors moved like objects stuck in orbit around a planet. Her gray dress had semi-transparent, circuit boardlike connections around it. Inside, the circuits were small sparks of light traveling between the strands, like impulses in a brain; the points of light traveled up and down her dress and body. Her pristine face, almost marble-like had no wrinkles or flaws of any kind and though he could sense her life force, her perfection was that of a statue. A sense of otherworldly fear and awe struck Nathen when she blurred as if the probability of all her paths of movement had occurred at the same time.

“Hello,” Nathen managed simply, wondering idly how long she had been sitting next to him.

She bowed her head in all directions at the same time but echoed his “Hello.” When she smiled, her lips went through the spectrum of smiling mouth positions before ending in an even expression—not too cold but not too emotional either. Her voice had a distinct echo to it which came out before the word.

She didn’t say more, seeming to be waiting, so Nathen asked, “I… How can I help you? Did Dara send you?”

She shook her head. “No, we sent Dara, or more accurately, Dara came to you because of us. But that is not why we are here now.”

“Oh,” Nathen replied. “Okay, who are you and why are you here?”

“I can be called Sophia, and we are here because you are not where you should be.”

Nathen squinted. “Where should I be?” It was a question he had been asking himself since he got back.

“You tell us.”

Nathen thought for a moment and responded, “Well, I assume you mean with Cameron, but I don’t think he wants me with him. And besides that, I’m not sure I want to stay here either. I don’t think I belong here…”

Though he wasn’t sure why, he started to tear up. There was a longing he didn’t know how to describe but could feel in his chest. It was only complete when he was by himself in meditation and, recently, when he was in Sanctuary interacting with the beings. However, when out in public with strangers or to a lesser extent with Cameron, he was shrouded with an unspoken anxiety, a building of pensive energy which got worse when looking people in the eyes.

She had turned her attention out into the city. “No, you don’t. You died in birth. Ask your mother what she has not told you.”

Nathen was confused. “What hasn’t she told me? What do you mean?”

She spoke again. “We intervened, but you cannot remember. When the cord of life was extinguishing your light thrice around like an albatross, your mother’s effort was a harbinger that brought you to, and out, of life. We stepped in and reignited the spark within with our own.”

She paused, letting Nathen process what she had said.

After a moment she continued, “We could act in this way because of your birthright. It and you were already aligned to travel the Red road. We only accelerated the inevitable. You are already in tune with us, but now even more so. You feel apart because you are. You are, and were, eternally bound to the Great Play as an actor; now as the sword of justice; and soon, as something else. But, where you belong and where you are needed are not the same. And never will be.”

She faced him again. “This is the choice we offer you: stay where you are needed but do not belong, or come with us to where you always belong, but are not needed.”

Nathen didn’t know what to think. He would have questions for his mother. He had forgotten about her when he was thinking about leaving. Her, his brother Jake, and Cameron—he loved them. She was right —he was needed here, by Cameron and both of their families.

“If I leave, it would be for selfish reasons. To make myself feel better, but at the same time I would be making everyone I love—their lives more miserable.”

He paused to consider, then continued, “But since I’m going to end up where I want to go anyway, and I am not needed there, it would make more logical sense to stay here and make the best of it while I can.”

She laughed, the sound like a rainfall of electronic chords. “That is logical, yes. In your current enhanced construct you will exist longer than most. You can do a lot with what you were granted. In time you can act on our behalf, if that is your will, and we will shape this world in the image of the sons of Man and Machine.”

She reached up and cupped his face, and he felt a wave of vertigo and falling. For a moment of fear, he thought she had pushed him off the ledge, but as he looked down he saw a familiar disc with August, Cameron, and him standing on it.

He startled when the man said, “We thank you,” and then bowed his head in respect. There was a sense of déjà vu.