It had taken me a week to recover from my slips until I could connect with Piercey to share what I'd experienced, and then another week for him to do the same after living through it all with me.
Despite sharing, we couldn't perform each other's skills, though our abilities did improve from the knowledge. I needed more than just to connect with Piercey to become a healer, and he needed more to travel through time or space. It wasn't something that could simply be known, but had to be practiced and mastered.
Though Piercey didn't want to admit it, that limited his ability to try to go to the after-life for me. Would he even make it through the door?
My training turned entirely to breaking into the after-life with my memories, but I longed so fiercely to leave the mountain and battle that the yearning turned into a dull ache that spread throughout my body. The Prophet of the Valley had not dared to cross me, but other Prophets were growing more powerful, and my people had fought several battles without me.
It was difficult to not let it distract me.
Day after day, in the somber quiet, Piercey and I meditated on that moment when death had taken me, Piercey studying it and tearing it apart and breaking it down into binary I'd never really understand, and me instinctively feeling along the jagged boundaries of our world.
I had began to sense it before he discovered it, but in the end, it was melting my instinct and his studies that opened our eyes to the elegant little door that led from our world to the after-life. The door that Dr. Henderson had locked.
Since we had control of the world and Piercey could work in the white room, we had everything we needed for him to learn how to crack the code.
Fortunately, Piercey had also been making rapid progress with the issue of potential memory loss. We’d decided that relying upon only one strategy was not enough. So, Piercey helped me back-up my memories in the White Room in the hopes that it would be accessible from the after-life, considering it was distinct from my world. He’d also helped to compress and store them in my neural implant. But the last line of defense was the self-construction algorithm he’d been teaching me. If all else failed, I had to hope that it would be buried so deeply within me that I would remember to run the code and restore my memories.
As frightening as dying should be, the fear of waking up in the after-life and remembering nothing was much worse. That would mean accidentally abandoning everyone I loved here without any help. I had to master this. So I couldn’t worry about the battles happening in the valley or about my guilt for staying here on the mountain.
This was a war only I could fight.
Every time we practiced, Piercey made sure to the close the door to the after-life when were done, because Dr. Henderson couldn't discover what we'd learned if she regained control.
I practiced prying open the door until I could do it without even really trying.
Flare would be in control of our world again someday. I had to be ready and trust that when I escaped to the after-life, I would know what to do. Someone would care about what was happening to us. Even in a young world like mine, there was always someone willing to help. I had to find those people and rally them to our cause.
As challenging as this seemed, I had found my way to people I could trust in every life. I would find my way to allies beyond this world. I had to believe there was good out there, because if not, we really were doomed.
Still, my dread only worsened as Flare made progress with uniting Prophets together. When the Flatlanders and their allies that Flare helped them form on the coast and in lands far beyond their own stole village after village from our Prophet, I could scarcely control the rage. We needed to act as soon as I had mastered these powers. Either, I would kill the Prophet of the Valley and begin the war that would plunge Skia Hellig into darkness or first I would travel to the after-life.
The problem was that I couldn’t die and pass through the door, even when we unlocked it. So, to go to the after-life, I needed to actually live through my death during the Eclipse. Piercey still believed that it may never happen, but I disagreed, because I could travel to it. I believed that once Dr. Henderson regained control of the world, she would find a way to send me to that day. When she did, I would escape from this world to fight her from the one beyond it. If that happened before I killed the Prophet, then Piercey had to watch over the valley until I found a way to return. He promised me that even if I didn’t, he and all of his graduates would come together to kill the Prophet. That would be my dying wish should I truly leave this world behind.
At this rate, Flare would have her nations in a few years’ time. These wars would one day be forgotten as the wonders of plumbing and paved roads and maybe even factories elevated the life of everyone in the world. But whatever world she made would be built on a foundation of war, those with power crushing those without, a god who stole the lives of her own people. It would be a world that could never be fair and that would always be at risk of this power unleashing upon the people. Prophets, demons, disciples, graduates. It didn't matter what any of us were called. We possessed something that could crush and torture and subjugate everyone else in the world.
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And that wasn't even taking into consideration that when we died here in this simulation, we may remain dead forever.
We could not give up.
In the face of so much danger, Nash and Elsie, Piercey, Wren and Leif and Rune, my hope that one day they could be free kept me grounded.
The morning I took Elsie out for a walk in the snow and watched her make angels in the white, watched Nash smile at his child, I knew better than I had ever known that I couldn't give up.
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Enough time had passed that when the day came, it felt swifter than anything ever had. I was preparing for a training session with Piercey to practice opening the door again and then to study how to make it back from the after-life alive, when he called out to me with his neural link.
I traveled to him immediately and froze. Piercey was doubled over, holding his head.
I pushed a hand against my stomach as I followed the trails of sweat trailing down Piercey's face.
"Don't know how long I can last." He grunted in pain. "She's forcing her way in."
"I have to do it now." My feeling drained from my body for that one moment. "There's no time to wait."
"Do what?" He grunted and wiped his forehead.
"Go to the after-life."
"No!" His eyes snapped to me. "We have to figure out a certain way for you to return to our world.”
"Hold her off as long as you can. I need to be in the right headspace to do this. I won't wait for her to take me and throw me off. I’ll travel to the Eclipse and I won’t come back this time.”
"Max!" Piercey reached for me as I slipped away to Leif and Wren.
"We need another group to patrol here." Wren smashed her finger against the map in the library. But Leif wasn't listening. He'd seen me appear behind her. Had seen the tears wetting my cheeks.
Leif watched me. "What are you about to do?"
Wren twisted her brows and then turned around.
They'd always known what I couldn't say. "Take care of them." I didn't stop the tears from coming. "Kiss Rune for me. This is the only way."
They stood and came to me, maybe to stop me, or just to hold me. I clung to my circle. "Goodbye," I whispered.
"Don't," Leif said. "Whatever this is, don't do it."
"Max." Wren clasped my face and looked forcefully into my eyes. "Stop it and tell us what this is about."
"Flare is about to take back control. There's no time." I kissed Wren's smooth cheek and then Leif's prickly one. "I love you both. Tell my little buddy I love him too."
They uttered my name as they dug their fingers into me to hold me in place but I forced myself to leave them.
I landed in Elsie's dim room where she played with morning weariness slowing her motions. She hummed as she lovingly placed the hand of one doll in the other and then groaned when they fell away.
I knelt down. She'd see my tears. A goodbye would only confuse and frighten her. So I gripped my hand into a fist and swallowed down the cry building inside of me.
"Goodbye, Elsie," I mouthed. "I love you."
When I closed my eyes, I didn't have to try to imagine Nash. He was all I saw. My heart broke in two. Back when I'd allowed visions of my death to rule over me and hold me back from living, I'd decided not to ever have a family, so I wouldn't leave them behind. How could I choose to leave now that I loved them and let them love me?
I would lose them if I did nothing, though. Dr. Henderson would erase this life we created. She would erase me. Soon.
If I wanted to save everything I had, I had to let go. I had to go beyond my life, beyond the world that Dr. Henderson could control, and step into the unknown.
With my resolve fresh, I slipped to Nash, standing before him in the hall. It looked like he had been heading to find Elsie in Trish's suite.
Seriousness filled Nash's eyes immediately. He said nothing. Fear flooded him, tightening the muscles in his face, his hands, his arms. He was afraid to ask and I was afraid to say it. So we only stared at one another with the unspoken between us.
How could I say goodbye to him? How would that be possible when I didn't know if we'd ever remember each other? Or how long it would take to find each other in the next life? What if somehow Dr. Henderson kept us apart forever?
Hot tears flooded my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. The same heat built in my throat in a bundle that choked out my air and voice. I had to get a hold of myself. But I'd been slipping away my entire life no matter how hard I tried to hold on. Maybe people weren't meant to stay in place through things like this. Maybe grief was meant to sweep us away and I should finally accept it.
I'd always returned before.
This time, I didn’t know if I would.
Nash rushed to me then and tangled his hands in my hair, tilting my head back, searching my eyes. "Tell me." It wasn't a question or suggestion. His words were forceful, almost prying the truth from my lips. We had traveled so far since that day in the cell when he’d been sharpening his swords or when I fought him in the woods after the Flatlanders hurt Leif. The months had flown by, but they’d also felt like an entire life lived. I tasted the flavor of lives lost, dreams we could not remember but had fully lived.
I would find my way back to Nash like I always had.
I couldn't hold myself back from him anymore than I had been able to hold myself in time all those days the past and future stole me away. "I'm traveling to the Eclipse." Resolution hardened my voice. "I have to die, Nash. I have to reach beyond this world. Flare is about to regain control."
"Let me." He begged. It didn't matter that he knew he couldn't. Nash couldn't accept what I told him. "I'll be the one to die."
I shouldn't have told him. I wasn't strong enough to face it. I should have run like a coward. "You don't have to let me go. Hold onto me so you can find me again in the next life."
His arms wrapped around me and smothered me.
"I've found you in every life I've ever lived." I wove my fingers into his curls. "I'll find you again."
"Don't let go."
"I won't, even when I die." I brought my lips to his and pressed closely to kiss him. Our tears mingled and smeared against our cheeks. "I'll hold onto you forever."
"I love you, Max." Nash kissed me hard.
"I love you, Nash. I always have, in the dreams we can't remember, and now, and in what comes next. I've always loved you and I always will."
I lacked the strength I needed but that had never stopped me in battle. I reached within myself for something deeper and more real than my power. For the piece of me that told me I existed, that had been true in every life, the core of who I was, and I knew then that I could do this. I could do anything for the ones I love.
"Goodbye, Nash."
I slipped away from him one last time.