The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (113 page)

             
An exhausting surge of warmth erupted between James and I, manifesting where our bodies were touching. I closed my eyes and laid my head agai
nst his chest. I grasped his firm shoulders, pleading with the God I did not believe in to spare us. I had never thought about dying before. I realized that the thought provoked the same childish terror in me that was felt by all living creatures as they f
aced the end. We are bred with the will to survive at all costs. Death is the endgame we all seek to avoid, even if the effort to live will be what kills us in the end. It is universal. It is a malignant truth.

             
I was hallucinating, surely. The warmth betw
een us was simply a physical manifestation of the love I had in my heart for him. It was the tangible intangibility of the feeling that filled me up when he kissed me, held me or even said my name. God or Gods, I loved that man, foolishly and recklessly, b
ut brilliantly as well…

             
“I have to tell you something.” His voice whispered in my ear. I opened my eyes to find that we were lying side by side in the sleeping bag once again. His brown eyes were shaded by his drooping eyelids; he was struggling for consc
iousness, trying so desperately to watch over me with a vigilance that had long been weakened by unimaginable exhaustion.

             
I shushed him now, begging him with the sound to stay quiet when only before I had been begging him to speak. I had not the strength
that was needed to talk anymore. The warmth between us was a blanket so snug and soothing that I could not resist the temptation of sleep. Whatever was left of my strength was used to turn my head up so I could kiss his cracked, freezing lips.

             
“I have to
tell you. I should have told you…”

             
“You love me. That’s all I need…”

             
I fell away into that seductive sleep.

XXX

             
If we had died then, it would have made the rest of the tale much easier. There would have been no betrayal, no fight to the death, no war t
hat raged for countless years. There would have been no more pain. While humans sidestep the inevitable final consequence that is death, they secretly wish for the peace that it brings. Once crossed over, we no longer feel the suffering that has long defin
ed us as humans, as being one step above the other animals in God’s creation.

             
The evolution we were experiencing on Pangea was almost a step backwards, I found myself thinking as I slept. We were reverting back to the ways of our forefathers, when we walk
ed on all fours and hunted our food with nothing but our hands and teeth. Our animal nature was our only link to continued survival. The only difference between our original ancestors that had first populated the earth and what remained of our race on Pang
ea was that we felt and reasoned without pause and with an intensity strong enough to buckle our knees, so to speak…

             
“Brynn?”

             
His voice was so beautiful in my dreams. His masculinity was evident even when he spoke. I had always had a fascination with str
ong, protective men who would die for their significant other. Alas, James fighting for my life with more force than what he utilized to fight for his own was something else we shared in common with our ancestors. Chivalry, as I called it, always existed.
Or perhaps that was ideology bred from that childlike fear I had experienced as I died…

             
“Brynna?”
             

             
His lips stimulated warmth wherever they pressed on my face. Had we traveled from the realm of the living to the mysterious next together?

             
“Wake up, baby
. Come on.”

             
“Her lips are starting to turn back to normal.”

             
What the hell was Elijah doing in mine and James’s eternal paradise? Violet used to place her hands, palm of one rested on the back of the other, and twiddle her thumbs, calling the gesture in a
dull monotone the “awkward turtle.” Generally, that strange hand sign was used when situations became uncomfortable in our home. I always chuckled to myself, though I was baffled as to how a shelled sea creature could possibly be clumsy or inept at handli
ng social situations…

             
I opened my eyes just so the sight of James’s handsome face would shut those inane thoughts out of my mind. My brows furrowed instantly at the harsh white light over their heads. It had long been rumored that when one dies, they are
faced with the blinding, comforting light of the afterlife. It was supposedly brighter than the sun, yet it did not hurt to stare into it. I closed my eyes again, moaning softly. That light behind James and Elijah was agonizing. I hated liars…

             
“How is she
doing?” Don’s voice was as welcome as the fabled devil’s. All I needed was to hear Adam’s voice and then my paradise would dissolve completely into hell.

             
“She is very strong. I am sure that in a moment, she will be on her feet, scathingly criticizing you
r stupidity, Donald.”

             
Seriously?

             
“Why, dare I ask, are all of you hovering over me?” I asked slowly with my eyes still covered. I was not sure if I truly wanted to know the answer to that question.

             
James eased me up into a sitting position. I widened my
eyes and shook my head slightly to suppress the dizziness that followed somersaults performed in rapid succession or a night of binge-drinking. Or, as it pertains to this particular occurrence, once one regains consciousness the morning after almost freez
ing to death on a guerilla mission.

             
“Didn’t you claim to possess the same knowledge and wisdom I possess?” I asked as my index and middle finger massaged the center of my forehead firmly. After the tension had eased and I realized
that my question had sti
ll not been answered, my gaze snapped onto Don. “Hello? I am addressing you.”

             
“I said that I knew what we were getting ourselves into, coming up here.”
             

             
“You said that you knew how Pangea worked.”

             
“Pangea…” Adam repeated with a roll of his eyes and a la
ugh, “Such a ridiculous name…’
             

             
“It is actually not, considering that the land here is combined to form one large mass of land, which, if you are familiar with how the land on Earth was originally…” I stopped. Not worth it…

             
“I know exactly what you’re go
ing to say.” Don spat at me, “You’re going to say that I should have known that coming up north would mean snow and frigid conditions and that…’
             

             
“You are the one that claimed you were a genius.” I shook my head in condescension. “Do not snip at me becaus
e you were too empty-headed to realize that by old world knowledge, going up meant temperatures would go down. It is all very simple.”

             
“So, you knew that we would come up here and almost freeze to death?” He asked me angrily. “If so, why did you come?”

             
“This is not about me,
Donald
. This is about you.” I turned my scowl to Adam, “And what are you doing here?”

             
“I was due for a trip north.” Adam answered vaguely.

             
“You are lying.” I replied as James helped me onto my feet. We were still in the tent that h
ad miraculously remained standing despite the strong wind and the strength of the falling snow. I did not know why I was surprised; they were military tents constructed to withstand sandstorms and extreme temperatures.

             
I was uncomfortable with the amount
of men in my tent, so I pushed past them all to move into open air. I would not be surrounded by males in such a confined space. Nothing would happen, surely, but it was still disturbing on a level I knew all too well. Once outside, I momentarily allowed m
y eyes to drink in the beautified landscape; the mountains surrounding me and the ground beneath my feet were both covered in the whitest snow I had ever been privileged to see. It would be a sin to trample on such purity. I remembered living in New York b
riefly and experiencing back-to-back snowstorms that had left the greatest city in the world buried deep.  It had been a comfortingly surrealist sight. As I observed the rising sun that was casting a soft glow on the snow-covered hills in hues of pink, ora
nge and soft yellow, I felt the same soothing wonder and awe. It filled me to the brim with a warmth that fended off the still-biting cold.

             
Then Don spoke again.

             
“The bottom line is, I don’t know how they made it here without your help, Adam. You said th
at you were on our side!”

             
“Your accusations hold no real weight. Perhaps your enemies found warm clothing in the ship. Perhaps they were just very lucky.”

             
“Perhaps both of you gentlemen need a time out.”

             
There I was, sticking my nose into matters that n
either concerned nor interested me. Don was more than likely correct; given Adam’s mysterious nature and his disloyalty to our kind, it would not surprise me if he was aiding the Bachums as well as us. He thought himself to be the emperor of Rome and we, t
he gladiators thrown into the ring to fight to the death. If he wanted to aid our separate quests for survival by throwing some spears and knives into the fighting space, then he would, but only so the fight would be bloodier and as a result, far more ente
rtaining.

             
“How did they make it here? The truth!” Don demanded and I frowned at the sky as clouds appeared where there had only been the light of dawn before.

             
“Statement and question!” I interrupted Adam, and stepped in between them. “The shift in the we
ather is quite interesting. Where only moments ago there was sun, now there are clouds that foreshadow another blizzard. Are you doing this?”
             
“It is not me that is doing anything, Ms. Olivier. It is him.” Adam pointed at Don.

             
“You made that blizzard hit
us last night?” Elijah demanded in rage, “What? Is that another side
effect of harnessing your emotions, or whatever you said you could do?”

             
“That’s not me. I would know if it was me.” Don replied, but he sounded unsure. He looked to Adam for an explanati
on.

             
“That is the Bachums making that happen, though surely they do not know it. As I have been told, they are unkind to those who harness what you all call ‘powers.’”

             
“And what do you call them?” Elijah asked him, his momentary anger replaced by a slight
fear he was not hiding well. He feared Adam’s power and rightly so; even I knew that with a snap of his fingers, Adam could kill us all. The forces of the universe that we called powers and the new, enhanced state of being we called evolution had cradled
him for thousands upon thousands of years. He could utilize any of the strange powers we found ourselves now able to wield with expert precision. I knew that he was powerful, gifted with abilities by God or the Gods that we were only just beginning to unde
rstand. Yet, I did not fear him. Even when I had first spoken to him and his deep eyes had never left mine, I was unafraid.

             
“We call them ‘gifts.’ Someone aligned with the Bachums is very afraid or very angry. They are manipulating the space around them
to match what they are feeling. I am unsure whether it is intentional, meant to drive all of you back, or if they do not even realize they are doing it.”

             
“Do you know who it is that’s doing it?” Elijah pressed him. “Because they’ll be the first person I g
o after.”

             
“I do not know. But Brynna does.” Adam’s knowing gaze turned to me. I shuddered internally as I looked into the depths of those flawless green eyes…
             

             
“It is our father.” The sound of my own voice and the disgusting feeling of repulsion that fi
lled me up as I spoke of him jerked me from the hypnotic spell Adam’s eyes always put me under.

             
“What?” Elijah asked, “Does he know we’re coming?”