Chapter 57—Terra

I step away from Kahn, his words still warming my heart, and we walk quickly back to the castle side by side.

Stefan and the others have left, but Duncan's still in the dining hall talking to some men I haven’t yet met. They all turn our way when we enter the room. Duncan nods at them. “We can work this out later. I need to speak to Kahn and Alora.” The men file from the room, but several of them glance at me thoughtfully before they turn the corner.

“There's been a message from the Followers of Amun.” Kahn hands the scroll to Duncan.

Dad unrolls it and reads aloud.

Felicitations, Donny.

Who'd have thought, twenty years ago, that we'd be here now, squabbling over your little girl? I'll admit that until recently, it never even occurred to me that your wife and daughter might have survived the “accident.”

Well done.

For old times’ sake, I'm offering you a deal. You'll have heard reports by now that I received a second wave of reinforcements early this morning. I now command almost sixty thousand troops. That really was quite a trick last night, but unless your little princess can repeat it—about thirty times in a single hour—I’m guessing our next attack will succeed. When we do, I'll order my men to kill every man they reach, and we won't stop until we've neutralized your daughter.

And don’t hold out hopes for reinforcements. You see, my first move was to approach your Unit Leaders, the ones you left to their own strongholds. I had a discussion with them about their future, and they agree that Alora’s care should be handed over to someone who isn’t blinded by familial affection. They won’t be sending you more troops—not now, not ever.

If you care at all about the people you command, spare us all the misery and send your daughter out to me instead. The ending will be the same for her either way, but you'll have so much less blood on your hands—and a life in which to appreciate that fact. I’ll spare you and all your men for old times’ sake.

You have one hour to consider my very reasonable offer.

Devlin Duncan crumples the parchment into a ball in his hand. He stares out the window without uttering a single word.

“I thought you heard Devlin wanted to spare me,” I say. “Didn’t someone say that?”

“Neutralize is a polite word for kill,” Kahn says.

“I know that.” Duncan starts pacing. “I won't send my daughter to him to be butchered, but what's the alternative? We’ll all die. He's right. An army that large will roll over us. How did he get so many men here so quickly?”

“Do you really think he flipped the others?” Kahn’s eyes spark, and the muscle in his jaw jerks.

“What's going on?” Jesse walks in. “I heard a lot of yelling.”

No one speaks. None of us want to tell Jesse that it looks like both of Duncan's kids will be dead by tomorrow.

I sit down at the table and pick up an apple. “You should eat something. We don’t know much about the Wasting, but going without sustenance can’t help.”

Jesse looks at each one of us and frowns, but he dutifully leans toward the dining table and grabs a grape. Then he tosses it into the air and catches it in his mouth.

The motion looks so familiar.

Remember.

Something inside my brain shifts, and I see him do that same movement, but in another place, with something else. Something red. Something green. Not a grape. Then more images, more sounds, and more smells flicker and then flash. A barrage of sensation tries to squeeze into my brain from a crack in a doorway that leads somewhere else entirely. It's uncomfortable and it feels wrong. I want to slam the door shut and keep my brain right side up.

But that discomfort. . .

Remember.

Could it be dissonance? Could this have something to do with saving Jesse? Instead of slamming it shut, I lean in. I focus on the non-grapes Jesse threw.

As he walked down the sidewalk.

As he sat in a small room.

As he stood by a park bench.

I shove it farther open, and the pain, oh, the pain. I clutch at my head. Sharp, stabbing agony accompanies every new image, every new event. The memories aren't of Jesse, and yet, they are. He's wearing strange clothes, and his hair is cut way too short, but it's him.

And then, as abruptly as the door cracked, it slams shut, and the memories slip away.

Remember.

Remember.

Remember.

I slide down into a chair and close my eyes. I pick just one memory of which I saw a glimpse. The first one that surfaced. It may have hurt, but it wasn’t well formed. It wasn’t sharp.

For some reason, I feel like it needs to be clear.

It was Jesse, but it wasn’t Jesse.

I focus on the details. Not-Jesse tosses up a yellow, stone-looking thing. It lands in his mouth, and he crunches it with pleasure. He smiles at me. He shakes some other little stones out of a yellow bag that says “M&M” on it, but not in Terran. In another language, a language I inexplicably know. The one seared into the flesh of my arm. The not-Jesse holds his hand out to me, and I shake my head.

“You know I'm terrible at that,” I say.

It's my voice, but it's not me saying it. It's Jesse, but not quite. Then, like I'm pulling on a piece of cord, trying to work out a knot, I feel a tugging. Another memory comes directly after that one. Jesse, who's not quite Jesse, says, “You can just put them in your mouth you know. Not everyone can be as amazing as me.”

I squeeze my hands more tightly over my ears. A buzzing sound comes from all around me. It grows and grows and grows until I can't hear anything else, and then there's a tremendous pop that knocks me back against the chair. I rub my eyes and clutch at my head because it feels full of cotton, and while the buzzing has lessened, it's wider, broader, more massive.

Will it ever go away?

Will I ever turn right-side up again?

When I open my eyes, Kahn, Duncan, and Jesse peer down at me. I'm looking at the same room and the same people as a moment ago, but they're all different, too.

Especially Jesse.

I know him so well. He's Jesse, and he's not-Jesse, but they're the same. He's beloved, he's my rock, he's my favorite person in all the world. And that’s when it hits me that not-Jesse. . .is gone. He was torn from me by evil people, by the same person who’s threatening to eliminate every person standing with me in this castle.

Devlin Rochester.

The man who wants to harm every person who has defended what is right and true and good. Not-Jesse is gone, and as a result, Jesse is Wasting.

But now I know how to save him.

I feel it all around me. In my exhaustion, my depression, and my despair, I finally feel the edges of the world we're all trapped inside. The gentle humming surrounding me has always been here, but I've never noticed it, never listened for it. I've tuned it out my entire life. The dissonance, the noise at the edges of my consciousness when I was beyond tired, that’s the true nature of Terra.

Nothing in this world is real except the people. Everything else is composed of threads and strings, cords and cables of energy, pure energy, forced into the forms that surround me. Rocks, food, furniture, even animals, every bit of matter here is a construct.

A construct I can now access and utilize, now that I see it.

I turn toward my dad. “I know how to fix this, all of it.”

He looks confused, but he nods. “What will you do?” He doesn't argue or question my proclamation. He simply believes, and he's willing to do whatever I ask.

I won't let him down.

I'm sure he thinks I'm going to hand myself over to Devlin, because before this happened, I was leaning toward that. I would have insisted on it, in fact.

“I'm going to end this war. It isn't fair to either side.”

“You can't give up,” Kahn says. “Devlin may have more troops than we do, but he hasn't seen what you can do, and we have contingencies in place. Your dad even has an evacuation plan, if it comes to that. And we hold the upper hand in terms of fortifications and terrain.”

I shake my head. “Which is exactly why we can't run. You all know that as well as I do. And with odds as long as they are, we need a different angle. We need leverage.”

Kahn looks as if I’ve punched him.

“Don’t worry.” I smile. “I’ve found it.”

Now that I understand Terra, and I understand myself, I can end Devlin and as many of his men as I need, before the war even starts. I can wrap them in cords of energy and pull. I can fire projectiles at each of them, one by one, or hundreds upon hundreds until they yield. I won't run out of energy, because it's literally all around me.

Except that’s not the solution to everything, not yet.

I turn to my darling brother, the bedrock of my life. “I need you to come with me, Jesse. Can you do that?”

Jesse nods. “Yes.” Simple. He trusts me entirely.

Kahn says, “I'm coming, too.”

I frown, because I'm not sure what to do with Kahn. “If you come with us, you should know. We won't be returning.”

Kahn shrugs. “So be it.”

I turn and hug my dad for the first, and possibly the last, time. When I pull back, a tear rolls down his face. He doesn't understand, but he trusts me, too. “It's going to be okay, Dad, I swear.”

“You won't be coming back.”

I shrug. “I can't explain my plan right now. You won't understand. But I promise you’d agree if I could make it something you’d get.”

“Should I come?”

I shake my head. “Devlin needs to think I'm surrendering.”

His forehead wrinkles as his eyebrows rise. “But. . .you aren't surrendering?”

I am in a way, but not to Devlin, which is what Dad’s asking. “No.”

My dad hugs me one more time, and then he hugs Jesse, but not too hard. I can't blame him. Jesse's gray face and sweat-soaked brow don't inspire confidence.

I really can't wait any longer.