Chapter 47—Earth

“Where’s my brother?” I ask.

“We found you both behind the movie theater. We came by ambulance because that’s easier to explain to the authorities. We even brought a Healer.” A muscle in Kahn’s jaw twitches. “But in spite of our best efforts, it was too late to save Jesse.”

“No,” I say. “I don't believe you.”

Kahn looks at his shoes. “We thought you might say that.” He gestures at the camera. The door opens and a man dressed in a white lab coat wheels a stretcher through the door.

“No.” I leap to my feet. I close my eyes tightly, willing this away, but when I reopen them, nothing has changed. “No, no, no.” I shake my head. “The ambulance came. You said there was a Healer. You must have saved him.”

Kahn reaches for my hand.

I jump away. “That's not my brother. It can’t be.”

Kahn stands and walks behind the stretcher. “I'm going to give you a little while. When you want me to come back inside, call for me.”

The man in the lab coat follows Kahn out. I'm not sure how long I sit on the bed, staring at the stretcher that holds a body covered with a white sheet. Eventually, I take the three steps that separate us and peel back the fabric.

It's Jesse, and it isn't.

It looks like him, and it doesn't.

I can't quite tell why it's not him, but he just feels wrong. I'm shaking my head, and I can't seem to stop. I start to shake, my hands first, and then my arms, and finally my entire body. I fall back on the bed and curl into a fetal position, my eyes still locked on my brother. He can't be gone, he can't. Because the world is all wrong without him.

Once, when we were really young, we had a garden. Mom, er, Debra—I have no idea how to think of her anymore—loved strawberries, and Jesse and I were barely old enough to help her pick them. We had two raised planter boxes full of strawberry plants, so we picked a big bowl of them almost every day for weeks. But sometimes when you grabbed a big, red, perfect berry, it collapsed in your hands. It looked fine, perfectly normal, but when your fingers closed around it—it was actually nothing but slimy seeds and strawberry skin. The snails, you see, would hollow the berry out. Everything good, everything that mattered, was gone. I’m just like that.

Nothing but seeds and skin.

I can talk and move and curl up on my side, and I look perfectly fine.

But inside there's nothing left.

I'm a hollow shell. At the slightest touch, I’ll collapse.

I’ve never been in more desperate need of repair and refueling, but my anchor is gone. A ship without an anchor drifts. It crashes against the rocks or it’s lost at sea and capsized.

Sobs wrack my body. I curl more tightly inward, my arms wrapping around my legs until I take up the least space possible. “You can't be gone, J. You can't. I can't survive it.”

Eventually, my tears run dry. I have no idea how that could happen, but I guess a body can only make so many. I'm sure if I drink a glass of water, they'll come pouring back out. But something occurs to me then, once sobs no longer wrack my body.

On Terra, Jesse’s Wasting.

Which means he’s still alive.

I have two days until that’s no longer the case.

No one in Terra ever gets ill. No one gets colds, or the flu, or a stomach bug. Other than cuts, scrapes, or other injuries, no one's body malfunctions. No one dies of old age. You die in battle, or you Waste, and that’s it.

Suddenly it hits me. Jesse died here, and now he’s Wasting there. Wasting is what happens in Terra when your body dies on Earth. It must be. How did I not see it before? It’s like the puzzle Jesse said we could piece together, if only we saw enough parts of the bigger picture.

Somehow, Terra’s a warped reflection of Earth. It must be, but how can I change that? And what does it mean that Jesse's still alive there? A desperate need drives me. I look at Jesse’s body, a body that’s still alive on Terra. Can I bring him over to Earth somehow?

Can I save him?

I think about the prophecy. I'm the Warden, or so they say. I'm supposed to end everything or begin it all. It's so unclear, but if anyone could change the Wasting, if anyone could bring someone from Terra to Earth, shouldn't it be me? I have more power than any Lifter. I’m the only female who can Lift.

And now I can Lift here on Earth—even more than I can on Terra.

But what if saving Jesse. . .destroys everything? What if it’s the catalyst of this ending?

I look at my brother, and I realize that I don't care. No one on Earth has ever cared about us. Why should I care about any of them?

I'll burn the world down to bring him back, if that’s what it takes.

And I won’t even regret it.

I glance up at the camera. Isis should have the answers I need. I think about what they know about me already. They know I’m on Terra, but Kahn clearly doesn’t have memories of me there. Maybe they don’t know that I’m the Warden or that I can Lift here.

If they find out, they might keep me in this box forever.

What answers could Kahn want from me? I haven't Lifted around him, and he hasn't asked me to. Declan, or Devlin, or whoever he was, could Lift here. I'm positive I can too, but can Kahn? Can the Followers of Isis? Declan said something about them being unwilling to do what it takes.

“I'm ready to talk.”

After a few moments, Kahn steps through the door again. He glances at Jesse, whose body is now lying uncovered. His eyes shift from the body to me and back again, but ultimately he says nothing. He crosses the room and sits down beside me.

It’s a struggle, as always, to ignore the powerful pull between his body and mine. I want to giggle and scoot next to him and kiss him on the mouth. With my brother’s dead body a few feet away. I couldn’t possibly hate the exordium and destiny more than I do in this moment. What kind of twisted fate would make me want to kiss someone while my brother’s lying dead next to me?

“What do the authorities believe happened?” I ask, because it’s an answer I can process right now.

“That's a good question. We have men and women placed within essentially all of the critical organizations. They doctor reports with the police, rubber stamp claims with insurance, and prepare appropriate releases for the press. In this case, I believe it was listed as a terrorist attack the police detected early and prevented from causing any significant harm. That sort of thing disappears quickly when you control the bureaucracy. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to know what actually happened.”

And now we’re back to what he needs from me.

“The men who attacked you were Amun operatives. You may have worked this out already, but all the men on Terra have telekinetic powers, while only a few key individuals on Earth do—always male.”

I swear under my breath.

“I agree that it’s not fair—I’m simply telling you how things work. Each person on Terra has a body here on Earth—males and females alike.”

“I figured that out, yeah.” Like two minutes ago, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Terra’s quite small, which is alright because it houses only the humans who have the abilities of Lifting and Healing.”

I don’t understand. “What do you mean, it houses them?”

Kahn blinks. “Terra’s a prison, basically.”

I splutter. “Wait, a what?”

“I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this. I don’t usually introduce people to any of this, and typically it happens—I should start over.”

“Who does introduce people?” And why didn’t they come to talk to me? “Why are you here?” As if I don’t know. They rushed him in here to try and lower my guard. Good guys? Yeah right.

“I should start at the beginning, really.” His eyes search mine for something, possibly agreement.

“I’ll try and be patient,” I say. I should be giddy—after seventeen and a half years, I’m getting some answers. Finally. The cost has been too high, but with enough information, maybe I can fix this. Maybe I can make things right again.

So I close my mouth and resolve to keep it shut.

“You clearly have dreams of Terra.”

I nod.