The 49th Mystic Read online

  It’s all I saw for a few seconds, because I reflexively clamped my eyes shut. But it’s not all I experienced. I felt the light collapse back into my chest, my body trembling with raw pleasure. My mind was soaring on the wings of numbing wonder. My right shoulder felt as though it was on fire.

  I was being branded.

  I had found the Third Seal.

  And then, just like twice before, the power was gone, leaving me there on the fountain, limp, tingling in the afterglow.

  But the light wasn’t entirely gone. I could see it through my eyelids the way you see the sun with your eyes shut. Red and hot.

  My eyes snapped wide. The clouds were gone. A blazing sun stood high above in an amazingly blue sky. My sight was back!

  Something was falling, like a mist or ash, slowly drifting down from high above the valley.

  The scales had fallen. I’d collapsed the synthetic sky.

  38

  I LAY STUNNED by my fully restored sight, trying to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I had collapsed the barrier that protected Eden from radiation poisoning.

  I reached for my right sleeve and jerked it up. A black circle, shiny like onyx, filled in the center of the white and green bands, still glowing. Black showed that although I was often blind to the truth that I was the light, I could learn to see. Three of five seals.

  White: Origin is Infinite.

  Green: I am the Light of the World.

  Black: Seeing the Light in Darkness is my Journey.

  The scales had fallen from my eyes. I was seeing the light in darkness.

  And then I remembered Vlad and the explosives.

  I twisted and rolled off the fountain, ignoring the pain that flashed down my spine. There was no sign of Vlad. He’d vanished, but his threat against Eden remained. He’d rigged the valley to blow—of that I was quite sure.

  As to his threat regarding the fallout? I doubted it.

  My father lay where he’d fallen, still oblivious. But that’s not what froze me. It was the light glowing around him. Coming from him. I blinked as if to correct my sight, but the light remained.

  I slowly turned my head and saw two residents, Abel and Susan, standing dumbstruck, staring up at the sky. They too glowed slightly. This was the same light I’d seen in my veins with Justin, only now I was seeing it more plainly. My perception of the world had changed.

  New creatures. All things new. The light of the world. I was seeing who they really were, but were they seeing it?

  No, I thought as two more people stumbled into the open. They were, however, seeing the falling sky.

  I stepped down from the pool and crossed the lawn just as the first flecks of ash from our vaporized sky reached the ground. Like snowflakes, only lighter, floating down in silence, landing on my face and arms, the grass, blanketing the entire town.

  Walking toward my father’s limp form, I felt as free as those flakes. As brilliant as the light coming from my father.

  I knelt on one knee and shook him, then patted his face. “Dad! Dad, wake up!”

  Only a half hour had passed since I’d shot him full of adrenaline, and he needed no more encouragement to regain consciousness. His eyes fluttered open and he stared up into my face, still lost between worlds.

  “Listen carefully,” I said, still taken aback by the light emanating from him. “I’ll explain everything later, but right now we need to clear the valley. We have forty-five minutes before this whole valley blows.”

  He saw the falling ash and jerked up. “What happened?”

  “The sky fell,” I said. “It’s okay, it’s a good thing. But it won’t matter if we can’t get everyone out.” I hesitated. “Can you see anything strange? Like light?”

  “The sky?”

  My father couldn’t see the light I was seeing.

  He twisted, looking frantically around. “Where is he?”

  Vlad.

  “Gone,” I said.

  Our eyes met and I knew immediately that he’d written Vlad into Other Earth. Not by the look in his eyes, but by a thought that entered my mind. His thought. I dismissed it as my mind playing tricks.

  “Don’t worry about Vlad right now,” I said. “All of it’s part of our journey.”

  His eyes filled with tears. “She was right.”

  “Who was?”

  “Miranda. She wondered if you were an oracle, going beyond and bringing back the keys to truth. That through you we were experiencing one of the most extraordinary events in all of human history. She was right. I’m so sorry . . . I . . .” Emotion choked him off.

  I pulled his head close and kissed his forehead. “Thank you for saving me.”

  He hadn’t really saved me, but he’d tried with all he knew to do, and that was all that mattered to me. He was still in Ba’al’s Thrall—Elyon only knew what he would endure while he waited for me to save him.

  And what if I couldn’t? I was in a deep hole below the Elyonite city, all alone, dead to that world as I slept there, dreaming this. Vlad was now there somewhere, sure he would blind me again. And through my blindness, he would blind the world. It was what the Shadow of Death did.

  But not in Eden. Not today.

  I put my hands on my father’s shoulders. “Forget about all that now. Right now we have to clear this valley. Get everyone to the tunnel.” I glanced up and saw seven or eight people walking tentatively down Third Street, led by a shell-shocked Linda, who held her hand out, watching the flakes alighting on her palm. All of them had that same light.

  “How many are we now?” I asked.

  My father pushed himself to his feet, staring at the sky, finally coming to himself. “What about the fallout?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, speaking with more urgency now. “But that won’t matter either if we can’t clear this valley. How many? A hundred forty?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at Linda, grappling with memories of last night. “It depends.”

  “The fewer cars the better. The tunnel isn’t big enough. Get the vans and trucks. Use a bullhorn. Do whatever you need to do, just get everyone up into that tunnel in the next thirty minutes.”

  “What about you?”

  I stood. “I need to find out what’s waiting for us up there.”

  Boots pounded on the pavement and Barth tore around the church, then pulled up sharply, glowing with the same light coming from my father. He stared at the sky, Linda, my father, and me. At least a dozen more residents had emerged from hiding to see the new sky filled with ash. All of them, the light of the world and not knowing it.

  The light faded and winked out. But not exactly. I just wasn’t seeing the world as clearly as I had a moment ago.

  “What’s happening?” Barth stammered.

  “Vlad’s happening,” I said, walking toward him. Then loudly, turning so they could all hear me, I said, “He rigged the whole town to blow in forty-five minutes. Follow my father and Barth. Get everyone to the tunnel. Everyone!” Then to Barth: “I need a car.”

  He hesitated, still in shock. Dug into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “The blue truck.” Behind him, parked on First Street. “It’s an automatic.”

  I closed the distance between us and put my fingers on the keys, but I lingered there, eyeing him closely.

  “It’s over, Barth. Vlad’s gone. Help my father.”

  He hesitated, then gave me a short nod.

  “No more guns,” I pressed. “Promise me.”

  Another nod. I took the keys and headed for Linda.

  “You heard her, everyone!” Barth snapped. “Let’s move it!”

  They moved, hesitant for a moment, then with something close to panic as the threat of explosions settled in.

  Bill was yelling, “The town’s gonna blow!” at the top of his lungs, running for his hardware store. Cindy Jarvis was shouting something about the buses. My father was trying to urge calm, shouting for Bill to grab three bullhorns.

  Barth turned and ran north in the
direction of his house, maybe unconcerned about the fate of the rest, maybe just to get to his wife and children.

  The fact that seven children were still missing sat like a stone in my gut, but I had a notion—the only hope for them, really.

  “You can drive, right, Linda?”

  The moment her eyes met mine, I knew her fear. Knew it in the same way I had known my father’s thoughts only a minute earlier.

  “Yes, but what—”

  “I need someone to drive me to the tunnel,” I interrupted, hurrying for the blue pickup truck. “And I need you with me.”

  “What for?”

  “To find the children.”

  I DARED not give Linda any false hope as she sped up the blacktop, taking the switchbacks at a speed that had me clinging to the center console. “If they’re not where I think they are, then we’ll make another sweep,” I said.

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “It’s just a hunch.”

  “What hunch?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Why can’t you tell me?”

  She overdrove a corner and overcorrected at the last minute, sending us careening toward the ditch before jerking back on course, though on the wrong side now.

  “Getting us there in one piece would be helpful,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Just focus.”

  She gripped the wheel in both hands and bore down, face white.

  It took us less than ten minutes to reach the exit. The gated fence on our side of the cliff was open, as was the tunnel. But there was no light coming through from the other side, which could only mean that the exit doors on the tunnel were closed.

  If Vlad had locked them, we’d have to find a way through. Short of that, we’d hunker down in the tunnel and hope the walls were thick enough to protect us from any blasts.

  Linda pulled to a screeching stop at the tunnel entrance. We stared into the long darkness, silent for a few breaths.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  I opened my door. “Wait here.”

  “No way. I’m coming.”

  I set my mind on the far end of the tunnel and walked up the yellow dashes in the middle of the road, leaving Linda to follow. The darkness didn’t bother me. I could see well enough with my blind sight, one foot in front of the other, like walking through any dark valley.

  Halfway through, I began to jog. Linda needed no encouragement. The slapping of our shoes on the pavement sounded like two tap drums out of sync.

  A paper-thin thread of light ran down the center seam of the twin doors, and I kept my eyes on it, only it. Then I was there, grasping the large vertical handle, tugging. There was no lock that I could see.

  Linda crashed into the door, breathing heavily.

  “Pull!” I said.

  She pulled.

  The large doors grated as the metal wheels on which they rode squealed stubbornly.

  “Pull!” she cried.

  I pulled.

  The door gained some momentum and suddenly rolled freely, coasting wide to reveal the world beyond Eden.

  Linda and I stood side by side, panting, gazing at majestic green mountains as far as we could see. Towering red boulders framed pine and aspen in a valley that descended to a huge lake twenty or thirty miles distant. My heart soared.

  “How . . .” Linda took a step forward, shaking her head. “This isn’t right. What about the fallout?”

  “There never was any fallout,” I said, walking past her. “He lied to us.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted us totally unraveled and divided. He pitted my father against Barth, knowing I would try to save my father. If not for the threat of fallout, we might have banded together, desperate to get out. Smart.”

  A wide band of ash several hundred yards down the valley marked the perimeter of the collapsed dome. The last time I’d stood here looking out, the green trees had ended there, at the edge of a wasteland. But that wasteland had been only an image on a screen, like the synthetic sky inside.

  A thumping sound reached me, and for a second I thought it might be the detonations inside Eden. Then I saw the black helicopter circling wide.

  “So we aren’t in a safe haven?” Linda asked.

  “No. None of that was true. But we are in a bubble, isolated from the rest of the world. We were, that is.”

  She turned to me, stupefied. “So then why, if there was no nuclear war?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  The sound of beating rotors grew louder as the helicopter spotted us and sharply turned down. Tires screeched behind us at the mouth of the tunnel as the first of Eden’s residents arrived.

  “You mean the rest of the world still exists? There was no war?”

  “That’s what I mean. The synthetic sky was real enough, but the story about the fallout was Vlad turning the screws. And it worked. Nothing like a nuclear holocaust to terrify the tissue-tops.”

  “What about my children? You think . . .”

  “I’m hoping whoever’s in the helicopter can tell us where they are. But I don’t know, Linda. I really don’t.”

  The helicopter angled in toward us, blowing up dust and debris as it feathered its blades for a landing on the turnaround up the road. Feet slapped the pavement behind us. Dozens of them. Then slowed to a walk as the scene before them came into view.

  The black helicopter settled to the ground.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Linda.

  A tall, slim man in a navy suit dropped from the helicopter’s open door, took one long look around, and walked toward us as the engine wound down. We met halfway.

  His eyes were bleary and red, his face drawn tight. He nodded and looked past us to the open tunnel.

  “I need to speak to Simon Moses.”

  I hesitated, not sure how I should address him. So I just said it: “Vlad Smith had him executed.”

  His face paled. “Who’s in charge?”

  “She is,” Linda said, stepping forward and pointing at me. “We . . . Can you tell us where the missing children are?”

  The man eyed her, then me, mired in deep fear. And in that fear, I knew his thoughts. Not the words of those thoughts, necessarily. Just the meaning of them before they became my own thoughts and words. It was the third time I’d been able to perceive what someone else was thinking when they were under duress.

  The Third Seal had expanded my perceptions. I knew some things about this man, starting with his name, which was Steve.

  “What children?” Steve asked.

  “My children!” Linda looked at me, eyes frantic. Then at him, angry. “You don’t know where they are?”

  “I . . . You have missing children?”

  “Are you deaf?”

  A car door slammed near the tunnel behind us. The faint voice of a young boy reached me over the helicopter’s dying rotors. “Can I see my mommy now?”

  I twisted back and saw Barth’s black Suburban, doors open. Jordan, Linda’s boy, stood next to Barth, hand in his. Several others were climbing out behind them. The missing children.

  “Jordan?” Linda sobbed. She took off, tearing for them.

  By the look of shame on Barth’s face, I knew . . . He’d taken them on Vlad’s orders. More chaos. I felt pity for the man. He’d only acted out of his programming from the start. The whole town had. Just like the whole world.

  Linda swept her boy off the ground and grabbed her daughter, weeping tears of joy that filled my throat with a knot. Other cars had pulled up, bringing other residents. All emerged staring at the world beyond the bubble—a world they’d never seen.

  I saw little Carina among them, blonde curls tangled but otherwise no sign of harm. I wondered if she knew that both her father and mother were dead. I wanted to rush to her and hug her and tell her how beautiful she was.

  But if we didn’t deal with the explosives, she wouldn’t be the only child without a mother or father. My pulse surged, like a clock wound too tig
ht. Time was running out.

  “We would have come in days ago,” Steve was saying behind me. “But we knew he’d detonate the explosives we’d set as a safeguard when we built the town. And the ones he rigged at all the entrances. We have no clue how he hacked the system.” He was talking in a rush, spilling all of his secrets, seeking absolution as he paced, one hand in his hair. “You have to understand, I—”

  “It’s okay, slow down.” I decided to cut to the chase for his sake as much as ours. “Your name is Steve and you’re from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” I said. “DARPA. You helped create Eden and it’s all gone wrong so you’re afraid. But you know that you were only doing what you were told. It’s going to be okay, but we have to get everyone out.”

  He stared at me, at a loss. “How did you know my name?”

  “The same way I brought the sky down,” I said. “But I don’t think you’d understand.” I refocused. “What year is it?”

  “2038. You brought the seal down?”

  “Who’s the president?”

  “Calvin Johnson.” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry. I . . . What’s your name?”

  Inchristi, I thought.

  “Rachelle,” I said.

  “Rachelle Matthews? The programming didn’t work with you. I thought you were blind.”

  “I was.”

  “And . . . You really brought it down?”

  “What’s Project Eden?”

  “A controlled experiment in epigenetics and quantum consciousness. Its purpose was to study the effects of both physical and cognitive perception to better understand to what extent we create our reality based on agreed-upon beliefs. It was a noble concept, you understand, dedicated to the survival of our species.”

  “Are there other towns like this?”

  “No. Just Eden.” Steve buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. We’re gonna pay a price for this. The whole world’s gonna crucify us. All of the initial residents volunteered. They knew we’d wipe their memories . . . But they’re gonna say we should have known.”

  “Then maybe it’s best if the world doesn’t know. Right now we have to—”

  “They already do! This place will be crawling with media within the hour—I made the call as soon as the seal collapsed.” Seal. Evidently DARPA’s official term for our sky. “There are two choppers on the way as we speak. We couldn’t get in, you realize. Not without blowing the whole sky. You can’t cut through it.” He eyed me, unbelieving. “You’re sure you took it down? How? It’s made from carbyne fibers.” A beat. “What else can you do?”