The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (114 page)

             
“No.” I answered. “I can feel great anger in him. He knows that he is mutating. He is a freak like his now-
bastard children. His thoughts are very loud. However, I assume that we are very close. I can feel others in their camp, fearing the change. It is not accepted. To change over means to die. Am I right in all of this, Adam? Because your face is in their min
ds as well, so I can guess that you have become familiar with them.”

             
Adam chuckled softly, a sound that sent a shiver down my spine that was far more sinister than the cold that surrounded us.

             
“You know far too much, Brynna. Your powers stun even me. You
have always possessed the ability to hold vast knowledge, to understand all things. Now that you are here, you do. It is a gift I envy. It is the only one I was not given.”

             
“If you want to play on both sides of the aisle, Adam, then we will no longer be
supplying you with any of the fruits of our labor, literal or otherwise.” The declaration rolled off of my tongue before I had a chance to stop it. It was an expertly formed sentence, full to the brim with emotional force and ringing truth, but it was cert
ainly unwise. Don looked at me, his eyes so wide, I feared they would fall from his head. James and Elijah stood tall behind me, backing up the assertion. Their support aided me in standing firm.

             
“Is that so?” Adam took a step towards me.

             
James was stand
ing in front of me. Immediately, I moved around him and grasped his hand in a silent, very quick show of gratitude at his will to protect me.

             
“They are terrified of you. But they also hate you. We have embraced what has happened to us since we have come h
ere. We have allowed ourselves to become more like your people with no fear, regret or hesitation. They prosecute those that show signs of changing over. Why would you want to help them?”

             
“My dear Brynna,” Adam grinned and looked down at me. He stood so c
lose that his delicious smell filled my nose, hypnotizing me for one seductive moment. “If I did not aid them, they would stand no chance. You know that I love the spectacle. Our race was forced from your earth, despite being
much older and far superior to
your own. Granted, it has played nicely in our favor. Your Earth was destroyed by the insolence of your inferior race. Now, I only wish to watch all of you crawl and fight and grovel for your place here, the way you forced my kind to crawl and fight and g
rovel. Unfortunately, you all have gained powers. It is almost insulting to know that you are becoming more like us but alas, I cannot stop it and I do accept it. I wish to see, once and for all, who will be left standing; our kind or theirs? Though, I am
sure you can guess on which side I would place my bets.”

             
I had been unaware that Adam’s kind had ever resided on Earth. In not knowing that, I could not have known that they were forced to leave. I still did not support his war order but I did understand,
however minimally.

             
“You believe this will be quick. You believe that we will destroy them in one bout, simply by using what we have become. You are wrong, Adam.” The tone of my voice betrayed a genuine sadness at his inability to see clearly. In my mind,
I saw that potent cloud of darkness engulfing our lives for many, many years to come. I saw Adam and his city consumed by it, both lying in the ruins of death.

             
I backed away a step and grasped James’s arm to steady myself.

             
“What is it? What do you see?”
Don demanded as he pushed past Elijah to get closer to me.

             
“There is no end to this. There is no point in storming the Bachums’ camp. It does not end here today. It is infinite. It is so large, I do not understand it.” I turned and walked away from them
all as my heart raced. I had just been gifted with a sight bred from my ability to know and see all things. That particular gift bred vast intelligence but also deep insight. What I had experienced on Earth had been profound and seen scarcely before. What
I was experiencing on Pangea was miles beyond that. I could now see backwards and forwards, though not at will. I could see the deepest recesses of a person’s soul. I could read their thoughts. That moment of understanding that the war was meant to go on w
as the moment my earthly self fled me, only to be replaced by who I would be for all eternity. I was no longer human in any sense.

             
Others would confide in me later their moments of realizing whatever fraction of them was still human had disappeared. Inter
estingly, it always follows a stunning revelation, though none have matched exactly what I discovered in that horrid sight.

             
“Look closer, Brynna!” Adam called after me, “You will be horrified at what you see!”

             
His words drove the stake of knowing deeper
into my heart; I struggled not to double over. The house was in flames and Violet and Penny were running, running, running…

             
The other natives had been watching, knowing they were not our primary enemy. The death of the boy we had taken from them had been
felt by his mother and father. They wanted revenge. They would take from us what we had taken from them… It was they who were aligned with the Bachums, not Adam… Adam merely encouraged them to fight…

             
There were no longer two wars raging on Pangea. There w
as but one, one that would require the two slowly intermixing races to align on their two different sides, to fight for their place, ideas and beliefs…

It was a war that had been fought so many times before, on Earth and Pangea. The reasons were always th
e same. My mother had done nothing to provoke what had occurred on Earth. It was always meant to be. Wars were meant to be fought and lost by both sides in every way. There was no victory. There was no end. It was no different on Pangea than it was on Eart
h. That was a truth as old as the sun above our heads and the land beneath our feet. It was a truth that predated the existence of those that would fight and die in the senseless wars…

             
I was running, my insides screaming at me to move quickly and without
pause. I obeyed; my legs carried me forward even as my lungs threatened to collapse under the strain of frenzied breaths. I could sense James and Elijah running behind me and others just behind them. We had abandoned everything at our makeshift campsite, i
ncluding Adam. As I realized that great evil had come over our home, so did the others. I had allowed my thoughts to become contagious. They were infected with my terror and knowing; though they did not understand what it was that was driving me, they did
not
question it.

             
Endurance that never ran out was another gift of our kind. We were able to run despite the pain in our chests and legs. We were driven by the sight…

             
The air was thicker, almost impossible to breathe but we were still miles from the house
. In the sky, an ominous cloud of black smoke hung evilly and eerily, beckoning us forward while simultaneously provoking an urge to draw back. Don was yelling frantically. For a moment, I caught his mental frequency; he was fearing for those he was respon
sible for in his heart. It was shocking to find such concern for his people in Don Abba’s mind. It was admirable.

             
I was coming up on the runoff that had originally alerted James and me to the presence of the structure inhabited by Don and his people. Wate
r rushed through the ditch with the same violent intensity as the fear in my heart. Before my eyes, the water rose, whooshing past with ominous power. I did not allow myself to fear falling in, despite knowing that if I did, I would surely drown. I leaped
over the water and landed gracefully on my feet on the other side. I did not stop to mentally congratulate myself for making it or to marvel at my new powers that allowed me to make such a miraculous jump. I simply kept running, knowing that soon the bodie
s hanging from the trees would come into view.

             
The smell of the rotting corpses should have forced me to stop; I was inhaling the scent, allowing it to fill my nose and mouth with every harsh breath I took. But still, I ran.

             
We did this to ourselves,
the
cynicism inbred so deeply in me scoffed,
How could you believe they wouldn’t retaliate when we’ve killed so many of theirs
?

             
Get to Violet and Penny,
my mother’s voice, warm and welcome, spoke over the snidely sympathetic bitch in me. I nodded in response
to her invisible voice, my breaths raspy and my eyes wildly following the stars that danced in their sight.

             
I could not run when I reached the house. I could not move at all. I was firmly rooted to the spot in the wet earth, doubled over as I tried to dr
aw in a necessary inhalation only to choke on the thick smoke that had stolen the oxygen right out of the space I was standing in.

             
The house was on fire, falling apart at the seams. Our people were running away from it, some screaming, some sobbing, some
just wearing expressions of wide-eyed terror.

             
“Brynna, they hit us out of nowhere… they’re still here… they’re back there!” Rachel pointed back to the house. I looked at her with eyes that had turned over white. I no longer needed to breathe. I was on the
hunt, ready for the vicious, fiery fight. Those men and women I had grown to care for no longer had a home. My sisters were amongst the mass of people somewhere; they were desperately afraid and crying out for me. Yet despite my close proximity, I could n
ot feel their separate energies. They were far from me, farther than I could imagine.

             
I walked. The smoke in the air did nothing but sting my eyes, prompting tears to well but never fall. I was breathing not out of necessity but out of rage; I drew heavy,
rasping, rapid breaths as I scanned the crowd of people running past me for any that were not ours.

             
Finally, when the last of our large number ran past, I saw not only several of the Bachums’ people but also several cave-dwellers.

             
Alright,
I thought to
myself for one brief, motivational moment,
It’s on.

             
The roar that erupted from my throat sent them staggering backwards, tripping over themselves to run in the opposite direction, as far away from me as they could.

             
“They came back! They came back!” A man
was shrieking in horror and waving his hands in a manner similar to what one would expect of a lunatic just freed from a straitjacket. “God help us!”

             
I caught up to him first, dropping down so that I was sliding on my side through the wet grass and slipp
ery dirt. I spun my body sideways abruptly once I had caught up to him; my legs met his ankles and he tripped. He fell face-first into the dirt before throwing himself up immediately to crawl quickly across the ground. His scream was oddly similar to the s
ound of Penny's when she saw a spider.

             
Penny!

             
I grabbed his soaking wet hair; rain was cascading down from the heavens in an onslaught as violent as my own. After yanking his head backwards with a force that would have snapped his neck had I allowed it,
I sunk my fangs deep into his shoulder and crushed the bone in my sharpened teeth. The shriek he let out would have made a better person back off. No good man or woman would be able to tolerate such a sound of agony. I bit harder and pulled backwards to ri
p part of the bone clean from his body.

             
“Where are they?!” I screamed in his ear deafeningly. I noticed a small rock jutting out of the mud; I slammed his head down onto it before pulling him up so his back was against my front. “Where are they?!”

             
“Who?!
Who?!” He was sobbing now and struggling to free himself from my grasp. I pushed him forward again to hold him face-down in a puddle of thick mud and streaming water. With his face submerged in that puddle, he started gasping for air only to draw in mouth
fuls of that dense, saturated earth. As he struggled to breathe, I observed the scene unfolding around me through the thick, almost blinding sheet of rain and smoke; James, Elijah and the rest of our vigilante crowd were fighting through the stream of bull
ets that were cutting through the air with no mercy. The sound of gunfire echoed against the trees that surrounded us, intermixing with the screams of the wounded, dying or under siege. I watched a man with a machine gun run past me, shooting wildly over h
is shoulder. I pulled the man’s face from the mud as I ducked; after lying all the way on my back while still on my knees, I used his body to shield me. His body jerked back and forth as it was riddled with bullets. I was lucky that none had gone straight
through him.